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A new food channel has been launched, the Cooking Channel. More celebrity chefs and TV personalities are writing cookbooks. Tables are stocked with Mario's, Giada's, Tyler's smiling faces. But where is the charming little cookbook "The Cuisines of ____(fill in the blank)"? We’re slipping away from those rich cookbooks of yesteryear that became our favorites, ripe as they were with information, understanding, fantasy, love and quirkiness. More and more cookbooks are celebrity-chef-written cookbooks that serve as no more than a marketing vehicle for the chef or their restaurant rather than an heirloom treasure of "secret" recipes for us to explore and fall in love with. Can we be critical of this trend?
It's OK to be critical when it comes to recipes. Recipes can be critiqued just like you would any book. Don't accept a recipe at face value. Deconstruct the recipe and understand what it means. The principle means of expression employed by the cookbook writer is the recipe. Recipes guide the reader not merely to think in a certain way, but actually to do something in a particular way. The cookbook author hopes to communicate enough information so the reader can re-create a dish and want to re-create the dish.
In one of my favorite cookbooks, "The Food of Southern Italy" author Carlo Middione writes about his spaghetti with mussels (spaghetti con le cozze).
A tale of two shells
A recipe needs an introduction that helps the cook understand the background of the dish and to entice the cook to prepare it, and to provide inspiration and guidance. Middione introduces his recipe by telling us that it is a dish from Apulia. He writes: "When I left Puglia , the battle was still raging between two old men I had met in a restaurant there about whether it is necessary to remove the shells from the mussels of spaghetti con le cozze or not. One felt the shells looked unsightly on the plate, and no host or hostess who wanted to make a bella figura (look good) would do such a thing. The other man maintained you get more flavor with the shells left on, and if your hosts were really considerate, they would let you pick them up and suck on them to get every last drop of sauce. It really depends on the host and guests, whether to shell the mussels or not. Me? I never take the shells off. The discussion about whether the parsley should be cooked in the sauce along with the mussels or simply strewn on top of the finished dish would be too lengthy to present here."
By contrast, check out a recipe from Giada de Laurentiis, the granddaughter of the film director Dino de Laurentiis and a Los Angeles-based caterer with her own Food Network TV show. She once made her dish, conghilie with clams and mussels (seashell pasta with clams and mussels) on her TV show and the recipe comes from her book "Everyday Italian."
De Laurentiis has no introduction to her recipe. We don't know where the recipe is from nor do we know her inspiration. Sadly, conghilie is a misspelling; the proper spelling is conchiglia. When Middione tells us that he can't go into how to use parsley here, we become even more intrigued by the recipe and what it might promise and we want to know about that parsley. De Laurentiis and her editor can't even take the time to look up the correct spelling of the word in her dictionary. Does such carelessness extend to the cooking?
Middione's recipe is simple and strikes directly to the essence of this dish. Put 5 quarts or more of water in a large pan, add salt, bring to a boil and add the spaghetti, stirring. Put the (marinara) sauce into a small pan, and heat it until it just simmers. Keep it at a simmer. Heat (3 tablespoons olive) oil over high heat in a frying pan large enough to hold all of the mussels until it is quite hot but not smoking. Put the mussels into the hot oil and shake the pan. Keep the heat on high until the first mussels begin to open, pour in the hot Marinara sauce, mix it well with the mussels and add salt and pepper to taste. Turn the heat off, and let the mussels and sauce set until the spaghetti is al dente.
Drain the spaghetti, leaving a little of the cooking water on it. Return the spaghetti to the pan, and set aside for a moment. Divide the mussels equally among heating serving plates, removing them from the sauce with tongs or a slotted spoon. Finish opening any mussels that are only half-opened. Arrange the mussels all around the edge of the plate to make a border. (Work very quickly or the pasta will get overcooked and stick together). Divide the pasta equally among the plates, putting it in the center of the mussel border. Put the sauce on the pasta, and serve the dishes immediately. "No cheese on this dish, please," he advises.
Cooking with a philosophy
Middione has a philosophy. He can't get into it right now and he can't explain everything, but by merely enunciating his ideas, we are enticed. What about the parsley? And, no cheese please. Bravo, Middione.
De Laurentiis does not tell us where her recipe is from, but we know it is southern Italian-inspired because of the ingredients. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the pasta (1 pound) and cook for 6 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the broccoli (1 pound florets) into the pasta water and continue cooking until the pasta is tender but still firm to the bite, and the broccoli is blanched, about 2 to 3 minutes. Drain pasta and broccoli, reserving 1 cup of the cooking liquid. Meanwhile, in a large, heavy skillet heat the olive oil (¼ cup) over medium heat. Add the garlic (3), red pepper flakes (⅛ teaspoon), salt (½ teaspoon) and pepper (¼ teaspoon) and sauté for 3 minutes. Add the clams, mussels (1 pound each), and wine (1 cup white). Cook for 5 minutes, making sure all the shells have opened. Discard any shells that remain closed. Sprinkle with the parsley (⅓ cup). In a large bowl, toss together the pasta, broccoli, and shellfish. Add the reserved pasta water, ¼ cup at a time, to moisten. Toss to combine. Transfer to a serving platter and serve immediately.
De Laurentiis' recipe doesn't mention al dente pasta and clearly she doesn't trust us to salt and pepper to our taste, or to even inquire what our tastes may be. Her recipe lacks the charm and inspiration of the Middione recipe, even though her recipe has more ingredients. Her recipe is cold and lifeless. Who makes this recipe? Why do they make it? Do different families make it differently? When do they make it? Do cooks argue about how to make it? Should you use cheese? This is important because Americans might not know that southern Italians never use cheese with seafood. We just don't know.
A recipe is not a formula. A recipe is an inspirational aide to guide a cook to reach higher, to prepare food that will dazzle others and make them happy and to do that the cookbook author needs to help them in the decision to make the dish in the first place. It's not just about ingredients. A recipe should have a soul, as it's about the material expression of a culinary culture.
Clifford A. Wright won the James Beard/ KitchenAid Cookbook of the Year award and the James Beard Award for the Best Writing on Food in 2000 for "A Mediterranean Feast."
Photo: Mussels
Credit: Clifford A. Wright
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