Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Cooking in fire and coals wasn't important to me until I ate in a humble farmhouse kitchen in the mountains of the Veneto a few years ago. The flavors of woodsmoke in the roast squab and the wild-mushroom risotto were magical. They transformed simple, lean ingredients into something amazingly rich, complex, and soul-stirring. I was haunted for months after by the memory of those flavors. Then I had one of the greatest meals of my life at Chez Panisse, which featured flame-broiled rabbit sausages and coal-roasted lamb, which was finshed in the kitchen fireplace in a puff of rosemary smoke. From my vantage in the dining room I watched the utterly simple preparation, an immemorial process, and vowed to learn whatever I could about hearth cooking. In lieu of a grandmother with traditional hearth-cooking skills, I had books, and The Magic of Fire continues to stand out above the others.
This book teaches almost everything I've needed to know to cook with fire. It starts with a lucid little essay [TOO little: I would have loved something deeper] on hearth cooking, aptly weaving the poetics of the practice into the pragmatics. It introduces the tools of the craft and provides a quick peek at various hearth-cooking methods. Again, much more detail would have been welcome, but this is a tantalizing glimpse into a craft that can absorb years of practice. There are a couple of pages on the fire itself, and a few coy words on the complications of preparing multicourse meals. Then to the food.
The food: 100 recipes of heartbreaking simplicity and flavor. Have you ever eaten a sweet red pepper roasted to blackness in wood coals? One ingredient, simply transformed, may be the most delicious vegetable you'll ever eat. Unless you've had the great fortune to have eaten a young eggplant prepared the same way. Roasted garlic-sage duck will scent the neighborhood like no lighter-fluid-marinated hamburger patty aver will. And, if you crave an instant return trip to the north Veneto, try the grilled polenta with porcini. It is unaccountably good.
You are unlikely to find such pleasures from such simple preparations anywhere else. A warning: complications, both financial and conjugal, may arrise if your dedication to these hearthside pleasures leeds you to tearing out the patio in preparation for building a dedicated outdoor fireplace and bread oven. But great pleasures are a path of no return.
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