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Narrative Touch: An unorthodox approach to cooking
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Published: October 8, 2008
I somehow missed The Amateur Gourmet when it was published a year ago. But I'm glad I stumbled upon a copy of the new paperback edition (Bantam Dell, $13).
The book is by Adam D. Roberts, who founded a popular Web blog at www.amateurgourmet.com in 2004.
Roberts was a frustrated or bored law student at Emory University in Atlanta who "started cooking to stay sane," according to his Web site. The New York Times reported that Roberts' blog became a hit after he published a recipe for a cupcake resembling Janet Jackson's breast after her ill-fated exposure during the 2004 Super Bowl. And the site's subsequent popularity led to a book deal.
It turns out that Roberts is as zany as that cupcake recipe, but he's not frivolous. He has a neat approach to teaching people about food: "I don't know anything about food, but come follow me while I try to find out."
Roberts' audience is supposedly twentysomethings who may know all the Japanese names for various types of sushi, but they don't know a whisk from a spatula.
Roberts, who later moved to New York, includes essays, restaurant reviews, cooking lessons and goofy videos on his Web site.
A supposed recipe for pesto is in the form of a poem, which is a conversation -- fictional, I assume -- between Liza Minnelli and former husband David Gest.
A lot of the recipes are as much description and commentary on recipes, as recipes written in the conventional format. But Roberts makes up for this failing, if you want to call it that, with numerous photos that show how the dish should look at various stages.
The videos are unlike any other food videos you've seen. One called "bulimic tomato" is nothing more than a song, with somewhat bizarre footage about a lonely tomato that doesn't fit in and ends with its guts being squeezed into a toilet. I did say it was somewhat bizarre, right?
The book is a bit more tame, but still unconventional. It begins with a chapter on spaghetti, in which Roberts tells how his mother stopped cooking for his father after he threw spaghetti at her one night early in their marriage. It moves on to Roberts and his friend Lauren simultaneously cooking spaghetti in separate locations while Roberts dictates instructions over the phone -- Roberts' way of showing how easy it is to cook.
That Roberts goes on for 14 pages about a simple tomato sauce is a testament to his narrative powers. In short, it's the storyteller in Roberts that makes his site and book noteworthy.
And the best part is that his narratives manage to be entertaining and instructive. Through the funny tale of his mom and dad in the spaghetti story, and a few goofy bits as he tries to teach his friend to cook over the phone, he actually weaves a decent lesson on tomato sauce. He throws in such tidbits as how salt breaks down tomatoes, so add it in the beginning for a smoother sauce or at the end for a chunkier sauce. He explains how to chop an onion. He provides a visual clue for the proper thickness of the sauce (similar to oatmeal). He explains why you shouldn't rinse cooked pasta -- it washes off the starch needed to help the sauce cling to the noodles.
And by the end of the story, he even manages to rhapsodize on the magical nature of cooking, the cook's/sorcerer's delightful transformation of ingredients into a feast for the senses.
Roberts achieves similar feats of multilayered messages in chapters on how to shop, use knives and cook for your family.
A highlight of the book for foodies may be the chapter in which Roberts has lunch with Ruth Reichl, the editor of Gourmet magazine, to learn how to eat out "like a professional." He formulates 10 "commandments" for eating out. And though maybe he exaggerates the situation for laughs, at one point Reichl seems to become irritated with him, declaring, "Stop it with the word should! There is no should when it comes to dining out!... This is about pleasure."
■ Michael Hastings, the Journal's Food editor, can be contacted by phone at 727-7394, e-mail at mhastings@wsjournal.com, or mail at c/o Winston-Salem Journal, P.O. 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27102. His most recent columns can be read on our Web site at www.journalnow.com.
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