Learn to COOK - Jeremiah Tower Cooks : 250 Recipes from an American Master

For those of you who are not swayed by emotional arguments, here goes the real review.

Jeremiah Tower has packed more useful, controversial, and scholarly material into this book than any three other celebrity chef cookbooks combined. There is much here with which many respected chefs would take issue, but that just adds to the pleasure of reading the book.

One issue on which I disagree with chef Tower is in replacing some French terms for common cooking items or practices with ?American? translations. As a cook, I will never have a thousandth of the credentials of Monsieur Tower, but I am something of an expert on language, and Tower is simply wrong on this point. For example, he substitutes the phrase ?aromatic vegetable mix? for the French term ?Mirepoix? meaning, 1 part chopped onion, 1 part chopped celery, and one part chopped carrot. Tower adds a bay leaf to the standard definition, with which I have no argument. The mistake is twofold. First, he is substituting his new usage for all vegetable mixes, including soffrito, sofregit, and picada. Well, each of these terms means something different from mirepoix, yet he is subsuming these different meanings under a new word. Second, this new term is unknown to his audience, while mirepoix is learned upon first opening one?s first book on French cooking. On more than one occasion while reading Tower?s recipes I had to scratch my head and think twice when he said ?aromatic vegetable mix?. If he would have used the word, mirepoix, I would have sailed right through that text with no confusion whatsoever. The same argument can be made for the terms ?Au Jus?, ?Bouquet Garni?, Mesclun?, and ?Duxelles?. Tower?s claim has some merit when it comes to using ?blue? in place of ?bleu? and ?cream? in place of ?Cr?me?, depending on context. So Tower is not a linguist, but he is a cook. His following section on the meaning of conventional English cooking terms is entertaining and dead on accurate.

Tower?s recommendations on standard techniques are impeccable, and there are a lot of them. His descriptions of brining, sweating, toasting, parboiling, and pureeing are fussy enough to make Alton Brown turn green with envy. The little essay on brining brings out another rich dimension to this book in that it identifies the source of current enthusiasm for brining to be Jane Grigson?s book ?The Art of Making Sausages, Pates, and other Charcuterie?. Scholarly references like this may not mean much to some, but to me they are positively titillating. The book is packed with references to works going back to the seventeenth century, with a heavy concentration on the French classics by Careme, Escoffier, and Curnonsky. Unlike most other writers, it reminds the reader that there is not a whole lot in cookery which is really that new. My great regret on this theme is that Tower neglects to add a bibliography to this book so that one does not have to page back through the text to find the exact name of a fondly remembered reference. See his book ?California Eats? for an excellent bibliography.

Tower?s great hero among contemporary writers is Richard Olney, famous primarily as the editor of the Time-Life ?Good Cook? series and as the author on some of the most influential books on French cooking in English. Tower praises Olney for his search of quality, simplicity, and proper scholarship. It is clear that Tower has acquired the same values. However, some people, myself included, may be very puzzled by what the author calls simple. I will forego any long discussion of this until I read Olney?s famous interpretation of ?simple? in French cuisine but I will say that cooking is hard work and what is simple to Jeremiah Tower is just not so simple to amateurs like me. This does not, however, lessen the value of this book, it enhances it. Great results require exacting procedures and great respect for ingredients.

Tower?s attitudes about techniques and materials fits exactly into one of my favorite Mario Batali doctrines. If you make small improvements in the quality of your ingredients and your techniques, you will surely end up with dishes superior to those done without attention to these little details. While Mario and Tower have an enormous respect for one another, I am sure they have a lot of differences. One which stands out is Tower?s preference for fresh tomatoes in making tomato sauces. I?m afraid I have to side with Mario on this one and be happy with canned San Marzano tomatoes.

One of the most instructive of Tower?s obsessions is his recommending the mortar and pestle and the food mill over the blender and the food processor. I am certain he is right on these points.

Tower?s selection of recipes is largely from the French. All recipes show the same attention to detail. Some recipes and sidebar discussions give more than usual attention to ingredients like lobster, lettuce, and truffles, among others. Some recipes are truly simple and the novice should not dispair that the book has nothing for them. The instructions on stocks are dead on accurate. This man knows what he is doing. An interesting twist to this is that in more than one place, Tower prefers water to stock in order to bring out the tastes of the primary ingredients of the dish.

The book has no photographs of completed dishes, and I did not miss them. The impressionistic paintings by Donald Sultan add an ample visual quality to the work. The index is flawed. There are two references to Julia Child and I found at least three different references.

This book is a must for people with any interest in cooking.