Cook the Collection #7: The Art of Simple Food

 

I’ve been craving potato leek soup for a few weeks now, and thought I’d better get to it while the weather’s still cold and dreary and calling for warm soups (such is the end of May in the Pacific Northwest). When I went to the bookshelf to find a good recipe I knew just which book I hoped would have one: The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters. Hooray – happily there was a potato leek soup recipe and I was good to go. Its such an easy soup with just a few ingredients but with great flavor, and the family loved it and ate it all up.

All of the recipes in this book really highlight individual ingredients and let the flavors of each shine through. This is a book that encourages the reader to not just cook but to be a cook, by offering lots of potential variations on recipes and by honoring the cook’s intuition and skill. For example in the potato leek soup recipe one of the handful of ingredients is salt, but there is no amount listed. Its up to the cook to add the amount of salt that they feel the recipe needs. This book is a great read and also great to cook from – a winning cookbook combination!