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‘Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat’ Is a Love Letter to Amateur Cooks

theatlantic.com

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Re: ‘Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat’ Is a Love Letter to Amateur Cooks

#131

Post by agentdrtran »

Tomte wrote: post #16

I'm not a fan of the book. I mean, it's all correct, the illustrations are beautiful, not much to bicker about. But it fell flat for me, maybe because I already have Twenty and a few other books. I did not find really new concepts, and none of the recipes really jumped out at me and made me want to cook them, I returned the book. It's fine, really, but I think there are better ones. Twenty for concepts, Ratio for "sh…

There is several paragraphs in the book about adding way more salt to pasta water.

Re: ‘Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat’ Is a Love Letter to Amateur Cooks

#132

Post by markdown »

lorenzhs wrote: post #121
markdown wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the buyer is making the decision to purchase. It's their choice, and particularly in this case they have very good data to support the decision (actually leafing through the book in a bookstore, reading the countless reviews available online, etc). Caveat emptor. If OP had bought the book from Samin Nosrat selling her own book out of a stall, I highly doubt he'd return the book a week later demanding his mone…

As Tomte noted, EU law requires that you be able to return online (and catalogue, phone, and other distance marketing) purchases within 14 days, exactly because in those cases you don't have the possibility of leafing through a book or having a product demonstrated at a store. Reviews aren't a substitute for that. Full detail can be found at https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/gua...

Thanks for that.

Re: ‘Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat’ Is a Love Letter to Amateur Cooks

#133

Post by jboynyc »

twic wrote: post #118
jboynyc wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been wanting to watch it since seeing it described as "a Marxist fantasy" in this essay: https://www.eater.com/2018/10/19/17995884/salt-fat-acid-heat...

FWIW a Marxist acquaintance denounced that review as anarcho-primitivist.

ha, love it!

Re: ‘Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat’ Is a Love Letter to Amateur Cooks

#134

Post by Tomte »

agentdrtran wrote: post #131
Tomte wrote: post #16

I'm not a fan of the book. I mean, it's all correct, the illustrations are beautiful, not much to bicker about. But it fell flat for me, maybe because I already have Twenty and a few other books. I did not find really new concepts, and none of the recipes really jumped out at me and made me want to cook them, I returned the book. It's fine, really, but I think there are better ones. Twenty for concepts, Ratio for "sh…

There is several paragraphs in the book about adding way more salt to pasta water.

You're talking about the wrong book.

Re: ‘Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat’ Is a Love Letter to Amateur Cooks

#135

Post by amb23 »

morsch wrote: post #126
amb23 wrote: post #29

If we're on the topic of how to cook rather than just what to cook: I just got A New Way to Dinner (a cookbook from Food52) earlier this summer and have been using it religiously pretty much every week since. It's a strategy guide on how to prep all your food on the weekend and have diverse meals throughout the week. You basically do 1-3 hours of cooking on the weekend to make the components for your dishes, and then…

Sounds like something I might want to try. We mostly cook vegetarian, so roast chicken turning into salad and then sandwhiches is out, would you still recommend it? On a sidenote, this made me realise Food52 is back online for me; it used to be down with a GDPR apology page, I stopped checking after a while.

I would not recommend it for vegetarians as most of their menus have meat as a core dish unfortunately. The idea is translateable to a vegetarian diet; the menus are not.

Re: ‘Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat’ Is a Love Letter to Amateur Cooks

#136

Post by amb23 »

knight17 wrote: post #98
amb23 wrote: post #29

If we're on the topic of how to cook rather than just what to cook: I just got A New Way to Dinner (a cookbook from Food52) earlier this summer and have been using it religiously pretty much every week since. It's a strategy guide on how to prep all your food on the weekend and have diverse meals throughout the week. You basically do 1-3 hours of cooking on the weekend to make the components for your dishes, and then…

Thank you for mentioning it. It is a useful way to organise a book for busy people who wants to cook. I found this aspect of the book interesting and searched for some reviews and found this critique of its ingredient list; that it is expensive: >>> ... seem unaware of their privilege ... ask you to buy near industrial quantities of certain expensive ingredients. Worse, there’s often no suggestion as to alternatives…

I haven’t found the ingredients to be too expensive for most of the menus honestly, but I also live by a really cheap fruit and veggie store. (A kilo of blackberries isn’t gonna break the budget when it’s $1.00 a carton.) The book’s recipes are sized for a family of four hence the huge portions; I’m single so I usually cut the recipes in half and save a lot for leftovers. I’d say there’s a lot of substitutes you can make in the book for rare/pricier items and it’s realistic for most middle class budgets. They also group menus by season, so you buy the ingredients for the week when the produce is at its cheapest. But yeah, they do have the occasional ingredient like ground lamb or garlic scapes that can make the menus annoying/expensive to put together exactly.
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