When we last saw our heroine, she was departing France in a blaze of glory, forever unleashed from bondage to the strictures of cookbooks and their hidebound recipes.
Well, not really, to be honest. I still have a great big cookbook collection and still use them all the time, though I am considerably less obedient than while I was acquring the skills and concomitant instincts of an intuitive cook.
However, these intuitive-cook-skills-and-instincts have, over time, resulted in a great deal of grumpiness about cookbooks. (See some of that grumping here.) Excessive fussiness, no attention to streamlining the use of bulky pots and pans, taste bought for a huge sum instead of produced through skillful execution, and constantly reinventing the wheel rate high on my list of complaints.
Which is why Lateral Cooking was a game changer all over again, just like its big sister The Flavour Thesaurus.
As in The Flavour Thesaurus, there is a deep logic at work here, and once you see it, you kind of wonder why you never did before. The basic notion is that one type of dish leads to another. For example, bread:
Start with flatbreads and crackers: just flour, water, and maybe some fat, rolled out flat. Take the same thing and add a little more liquid plus a chemical rising agent like baking soda… voilà, soda bread and scones (what we in the colonies call “biscuits”… “biscuits” being British for cookies. There are some charming faux amis for an American reader, not least of all “flapjacks” referring to a kind of damp granola bar, not pancakes… weird, right?). Sub out the baking soda for yeast, and you have tall fluffy bread. Make the tall fluffy bread with a little more fat and break it off into smaller pieces, and you’ve got buns. More fat still (preferably butter), as well as egg, and you’ve got brioche. More egg still—plus some syrup to finish—and you’ve got babas and savarins. One recipe leads to another!
Segnit shows the same logic in many other categories, in which for sure baking dominates but does not stand alone: after Bread there is Cornbread, Polenta & Gnocchi; Batter; Roux; Stock, Soup & Stew; Nuts; Cake & Biscuits; Chocolate; Sugar; Custard; Sauce; and Pastry.
Moreover, this being Niki Segnit after all, each master recipe in each category provides not only method variations but flavor combinations—and thank goodness, for I would have been desolated without them. The laterality extends both horizontally and diagonally, between methods as well as between flavo(u)rs.
In the flavo(u)r category, I was utterly wowed by the milk chocolate-passion fruit ganache; I mean, jaw-dropping, family-fighting, should-we-take-a-flight-to-Okinawa-to-source-more-passion-fruits-since-the-season-is-over-in-Tokyo wowed. I had never made beurre blanc at all (some excuse for a long-term France resident, n’est-ce pas?) but thanks to Lateral Cooking I did, specifically the apple variation, which was delicately lovely. I have tried nearly all the gingerbreads and nearly all the nutmeal cakes, which blast pretty much all other cakes out of the water. Then there’s the Salami-Pecorino Gougères… the Fig-Fennel-Almond Biscotti… the Bánh Xèo (which revealed to me upon completion that I’d been ordering it all along at the local Vietnamese dive, just had been unable to penetrate to its name through the linguistic mire of Vietno-Japanese)… Marzipan, which I made to top a friend’s wedding cake this summer (see pic)… the Digestives, which are so much tastier than such a plain cookie has any right to be (it’s due to the lard)… be still my beating heart, the Salted Caramel Sauce (transporting me right back to the crèpe maker at the Strasbourg Christmas market)… nearly all the dals and half the gumbos… Bacon Mayo, Pesto Scones, Green Curry Pumpkin Soup…
One quality I particularly like in Segnit’s writing is that she exposes her failures as well as her successes (see strawberry + chocolate in the previous post on The Flavour Thesaurus). Here is particular favorite of mine, an entry for Egg & Dill in the Soufflé section:
“Egg soufflé—an edible tautology? While researching roux variations, I came across a recipe for egg croquettes in The Constance Spry Cookery Book. In comparison to the salty, punchily flavoured ingredients of your standard croquette, boiled egg seemed rather demure. But the idea stuck around, and I found myself curious about how egg-flecked soufflé might work. Early one morning, I cooked the first few and sat down, napkin tucked into pyjamas, facing a brimming ramekin and some buttered toast soldiers of Special Forces sturdiness. I loved the little pieces of boiled egg, held in frothy suspension and gently seasoned with dill. I switched off the Today programme and sat watching the birds hopping around the garden while I twiddled my toes in my fluffy slippers. This must be mindfulness, I thought, as I reached for my second helping. The next batch came out of the oven just as my husband had roused himself, his face crumpled like the first draft of this page. I silently passed him his soufflé and waited for the praise. ‘Some of the egg has gone lumpy,’ he grouched.”
Similarly intrigued by egg-squared but undeterred by Segnit’s implicit warning, I set about making my own h-b egg + dill soufflé, though I made it in a regular size soufflé dish and added tons of dill as well as a hefty dose of ground black pepper (eggs and black pepper love each other). I served it to my husband for lunch one day. I chomped through my portion with steady enjoyment. He always eats slower than I do, so I thought nothing of his trailing behind me. Surprised that the usual compliments at my cooking were not forthcoming, I asked what he thought. “Well,” he said, “I just don’t see the point of a soufflé with weird little chunks of egg scattered all through it.”
So there you go. Niki Segnit knows everything. Rush right out and add both volumes to your collection. The only question that remains is: what will she come up with next?
