Everyday Cook - Alton Brown (2016)
RANDOM NOTES IN LIEU OF A PROPER INTRODUCTION
Technically, this is my eighth book, but in some ways it feels like the first because (like it says on the cover) this time it’s personal. The recipes herein were not created to illustrate scientific principles or flesh out story points for a TV show. These dishes were concocted because somebody (usually me) was hungry. Sure, some of the lessons learned while cranking out fourteen years of Good Eats episodes informed this food, as did discoveries made while hosting hundreds of Iron Chef America episodes. And yet, these dishes are personal. This is what I eat and, more important, what you’d probably eat if you came over for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or anytime in between. Do I have more? Maybe…but that’s another book.
Concerning the order of things: I didn’t arrange this book by time of day to be different or difficult, it’s just how my brain functions. If it helps at all you can flip through to the back and consult a list that sorts things by ingredient and by meal. But I do hope you’ll actually consider pasta for breakfast because that should be a thing.
Besides the recipes, there are a few sections you might peruse at your leisure. The Pantry area tours some less-than-common ingredients that have emerged as stock players in my day-to-day cooking, while the Hardware pages profile a few of the tools I would have a hard time living without. Finally, in the Methods section I share my particular ways of doing some particular things such as working with pressure cookers or cleaning cast iron, something that’s become a bit of an obsession of late.
Oh, and a word about measurements and the like: Despite the grumblings of my editor, I’ve decided to quantify these recipes the way I do in real life. That is, they are not standardized according to any particular methodology. For instance: I combine weights (metric no less) with standard volumetric measurements, that is, tablespoons, in the same recipe. I do this not because I’m crazy but because it’s practical. I weigh when it matters, and when it doesn’t, I don’t. However, when I do weigh, it’s always metric because…
I hate fractions.
I also hate working with decimal points, and that’s the nice thing about grams. No one ever says 18.4 grams unless they’re weighing out something that’s controlled either by local/state/federal laws or by international treaties. Now, I know that there are those of you who say food isn’t worth the trouble of purchasing a decent, multiformat digital scale with tare function (allows weights to be zeroed out), but you would be flat-out wrong. You can purchase a great scale for well under a hundred dollars, and I believe that no purchase could be more beneficial to your cooking game. And trust me, if a recipe herein states a weight and you decide not to weigh…well, don’t come crying to me, buster.
Other than that, nothing too unusual here. Most of the recipes are written in a fairly informal, narrative style, so please just take a few minutes to read them through before you go tearing around the kitchen gathering up stuff. But when you do go forth to gather, remember…organization will set you free.
About the photos: This is the first time that I’ve actually shot food specifically for a book, and unlike most authors who are more than happy to hand the chore off to a specialist, I’m a bit of a control freak, so I insisted on keeping the production in-house. And to make things even more challenging, I insisted we shoot every photo from directly overhead with an iPhone 6s Plus. That’s right…we shot the whole book with a phone.
As for plates, silverware, glasses and all that jazz, that’s all my personal stuff and yes, I really eat with surplus U.S. Army forks; yes, that’s a Mercury hubcap on this page; yes, I have carried potato chips around in a briefcase; yes, that’s my car on this page (his name is Klaus); and if you’ve never eaten french fries in bed, well…I just feel sorry for you.
Welcome to my world.
ALTON BROWN
P.S. Oh, every now and then in these recipes you’ll see a little letter in a box. They’re there to let you know there’s more information about whatever it is either in the Hardware H, Pantry P, Bar B or Methods M section. I’m guessing you can figure out which letter represents which section.
