An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace

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The idea of an everlasting meal where one meal feeds into the next and that the next is a beautiful idea. My restless mind has found no better palliative: after a little time with the gratifying solidity of a bowl in my lap and the sound of legumes pattering into it, I always feel as though some cobwebs have cleared. What doubtless is true, whatever your take, is that An Everlasting Meal: Cooking With Economy and Grace isn’t really a cookbook, as Alice Waters points out in the foreward, who adds that the book “gently reveals Tamar’s [Tamar Adler] philosophy.

Adler helps jump-start your creative process with easy ideas for even the most specific bits and bobs. I loved her paragraphs on roasting vegetables and what she has to say about adding "a few bunches of dark, leafy greens.but today as i was making broth in my kitchen for the next couple of weeks, i realized it was because of this book, and that the change it had brought about in my life, tho small in some ways, is probably one of the more significant forms of impact a book has ever had on me. Now you can easily transform a leftover burrito into a lunch of fried rice, or stale breakfast donuts into bread pudding. Before moving house I finally cooked up that bag of beans and it became a warm soft mash beside a Fiorentina-style steak, then part of a breakfast fry-up with apple slices, then (best of all!

But if you are like me - a fairly competent cook, who loves to do it, but wanting to bust out of the recipes, then I think this little book might have a lot to offer. Not to mention that it's also an extremely privileged stance; most of the people she's trying to reach will not be lucky enough to have their own chickens or have access to them (or afford them at a farmer's market).That said, this was a mildly successful book, in that it did teach me some things, while also boring me through some chapters of stuff I already know. Adler's chapter titles (which are lovely) acknowledge her debt to MFK Fisher, and Fisher's style is clearly what Adler is shooting for. I don't like to think of food as carbohydrates and fat because it gives an incomplete picture of how we digest. I love the elegant honesty of Tamar’s writing, the sureness of her direction and the range of her ideas.

Beginner chefs may balk at not having step by step instructions or exact measurements (Adler tends to suggest rather than dictate, and it can be dizzying at times to attempt to follow all of the uses she finds for one ingredient) but for anyone comfortable at a stove, Adler's book will feel like learning long-lost tricks in grandmother's kitchen. Her prescriptions are very specific, and without going into the general principles behind why she is doing the things she is doing, a beginner would find it hard to generalize and find substitutions. Once greens are cooked as they should be, though: hot and lustily, with garlic, in a good amount of olive oil, they lose their sense of moral urgency and become one of the most likable ingredients in your kitchen. An Everlasting Meal is beautifully intimate, approaching cooking as a narrative that begins not with a list of ingredients or a tutorial on cutting an onion, but with a way of thinking . Some other reviewers have complained about the writing style, but I found Adler to be fun and literate without being pretentious.

Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, the NewYorker. Inspired by the book, I sauteed up the shallot, bell pepper and garlic, added the tomato and let that cook down. This sort of vegetable is impractical if you're trying to look ahead, but is very good at making you stop and look around.

While I also enjoyed the MFKF book, TA's book has had much more of an actual impact on my life with food.I really can't explain it, but my eyes feel totally opened by what are really some basic, yet sage, words of advice. Adler has won a James Beard Award and an IACP Award, and is the author of An Everlasting Meal and Something Old, Something New .