Focus on How-To: Cookbook looks at different techniques for known dishes

Credit: John Wiley & Sons Photo

The organization of this new cookbook is unusual in that it takes some tried-and-true dishes and teaches by comparison how different variations produce different tastes with slight ingredient or preparation-technique changes.

By: JournalNow Staff | JOURNAL STAFF AND WIRE REPORT
Published: May 20, 2009

■ Cooking Know-How, by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough. John Wiley & Sons, $34.95.

Mark Scarbrough and Bruce Weinstein's Cooking Know-How is an unconventional and internationally flavored book that focuses on technique.

Each of the book's 64 chapters focuses on a particular dish -- cacciatora, frittata or roasted birds, for example -- and then, in a departure from typical cookbooks, offers side-by-side variations using different ingredients in handy, easy-to-read charts.

The whole approach here is not to teach techniques in the abstract, but give readers a recipe they like and want to make, then teach them the techniques to do it.

There also are random little snippets of advice that show up along the way, such as this mini-recipe for mashed potatoes:

Microwave four to six smallish Russets (without poking holes or peeling them) on high for 8 or 9 minutes in a semi-covered dish. Let them stand covered for 2 or 3 minutes and then mash with a potato masher or beat with an electric mixer, adding milk, sour cream, broth, Dijon mustard, or whatever you wish.

The book offers lots of step-by-step photos to help the novice cook. These include how to prepare a bird for roasting and how to assemble a gratin.

Other dishes and techniques covered in the book include paella, risotto, East Indian curry, stir-frying, souffle, fricassee, marinara and macaroni and cheese.

■ Tequila, Joanne Weir. Ten Speed, $16.95.

The slim new Tequila by Joanne Weir seems pretty basic at first. It has short chapters on the history and making of tequila, a glossary covering blanco, reposado, anejo and extra anejo, the idea that tequila is moving beyond its image as a "fraternity rite of passage." No surprises there.

But Weir's recipes are full of surprises. The Nouveau Carre calls for mixing anejo tequila with the herbal-honey liqueur Benedictine, the bright white-wine-and-citrus Lillet Blanc and a few dashes of spicy, red Peychaud's bitters. The standard advice on anejo is never to use it for mixing, only sipping.. But this drink challenged common wisdom, and the "incorrect" usage of anejo worked perfectly to create one of the most complex drinks I've had in long time.

That wasn't the only cocktail to think about. How about a frothy riff on a margarita that involves an egg white and does away with the Cointreau in favor of the sour-cherry maraschino liqueur? Called the Prado, it was worthy of the allusion to the famed Madrid art museum. Most margarita variations are lame, ridiculed by the cocktail cognoscenti. This one was so inspired that it seemed to take cocktails down an entirely different path.