Learn How to Cook in the Green Kitchen

In 2008, an event was held in San Francisco called Slow Food Nation. Alice Waters, one of the orga­niz­ers of the event, knew that peo­ple would be com­ing from all over the coun­try to taste and learn about cook­ing. So she and her co-organizers decided to include a sim­ple demon­stra­tion kitchen as part of the event, con­sist­ing of only a table, a cou­ple of sharp knives, a cut­ting board, a hot plate, a mor­tar and pes­tle, and a com­post bucket. The point was to show what all great chefs have in com­mon: a set of basic tech­niques com­mon to all cuisines.

The event spawned an online series of videos called The Green Kitchen, which then evolved into a book enti­tled In the Green Kitchen: Techniques to Learn by Heart. The entire focus of the book is to com­mu­ni­cate the sim­ple pro­ce­dures that the chefs demon­strated at the event and in the videos so that the reader/student can get a tech­ni­cal foun­da­tion. From such a foun­da­tion, one can cook com­fort­ably and con­fi­dently with­out recipes, inspired by the ingre­di­ents to hand. The book of course con­tains recipes, but the idea is to teach these basic techniques.

“It seems to me that the key to ensur­ing good food for the future is get­ting more peo­ple to cook,” Chef Dan Barber, one of the con­trib­u­tors to the book, told Organic Connections. “Not just special-occasion rib roast kind of cook­ing, but the hum­ble every­day cook­ing that is sim­ple and intu­itive. It’s more health­ful, more eco­log­i­cal, and cer­tainly more eco­nom­i­cal than din­ing out (not to men­tion more deli­cious). That might sound self-destructive for a chef, but it’s an impor­tant step in recon­nect­ing to where our food comes from.”

Barber is among 30 con­trib­u­tors to the book, includ­ing Paul Bertolli, Anna Lappé and Bryant Terry, Rick Bayless, Darina Allen, Lidia Bastianich, and many more.

“At home in their own kitchens, even the most renowned chefs do not con­sider them­selves to be chefs; there, they are sim­ply cooks, prepar­ing the sim­ple, uncom­pli­cated food they like best,” Alice Waters wrote in the intro­duc­tion to In the Green Kitchen: Techniques to Learn by Heart. “Preparing food like that does not have to be hard work. On the con­trary, the whole process—thinking about food, decid­ing what you want to eat, shop­ping for ingre­di­ents, and, finally, cook­ing and eating—is the purest plea­sure, and too much fun to be reserved exclu­sively for ‘foodies.’”

The basic pro­ce­dures described in the book are many and include dress­ing a salad, sim­mer­ing a stock, mak­ing bread, roast­ing veg­eta­bles and grilling a steak. Waters explains that the fea­tured recipes are intended as exam­ples of tech­niques that apply to all cook­ing everywhere.

“In her new book, Alice hosts a party of friends and co-conspirators who demys­tify ‘good’ cook­ing, show­ing us how cook­ing in sea­son can be easy and fun,” co-contributor Anna Lappé told Organic Connections. “In our Iron Chef celebrity cul­ture, it’s easy for cook­ing to feel like some­thing only peo­ple on TV do. This book helps lay the foun­da­tions of good eat­ing by encour­ag­ing the exper­i­men­ta­tion and freestyle cook­ing that I adore and that makes healthy eat­ing acces­si­ble to all of us.”

“Alice’s con­cept (like most things she does) was sim­ple and com­pelling: Give peo­ple the tools they need in the kitchen,” Dan Barber added. “Inspire and instruct, but do it deliciously. There’s no ego to these recipes—they’re acces­si­ble and end­lessly uti­liz­able for the home cook. It’s not a coffee-table cook­book, which is why I love it.”

In the Green Kitchen: Techniques to Learn by Heart is avail­able from the Organic Connections book­store, or wher­ever books are sold.

To see Alice Waters’ online video series The Green Kitchen, visit www.alicewatersgreenkitchen.com.