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 This
fall will see the publishing debuts of two of Peter Kump’s
talented chef-instructors. Both books will add to the avid cook’s
bookshelf.
Hiroko Shimbo Beitchman, a native
of Japan who has taught Japanese and other Asian cuisines at
the school since 1996 and who regularly teaches the five-day
intensive Asian Cooking Workshop, has penned The Japanese
Kitchen (Harvard Common Press, November), a compendium of
Japanese ingredients that both serves as an encyclopedic reference
for Westerners and offers traditional Japanese recipes. Have
you wondered what the proper rice for making sushi is? Do you
wish you could find another use for miso? The Japanese Kitchen
provides the answers, along with 250 recipes along the lines
of Tori no Tsukune (Broiled Ground Chicken Dumplings) and Kurigohan
(Classic Chestnut Rice).
It was Shimbo Beitchman’s teaching experience that spurred
her to write a book cataloguing Japanese ingredients. “I
began to operate my own cooking school in Tokyo in 1989,”
she reports, “and ended up running it for 10 years. I had
foreign students from a wide variety of places, and they asked
me all sorts of questions about ingredients—things like
how they were made, where they could be purchased and how to
store them. This led me to visit authentic, artisanal food producers,
and when I saw how much I was learning from those visits, I
realized that everyone could benefit from that information.”
Shimbo Beitchman, who has contributed articles to Saveur
magazine on sake and miso, points out that some Japanese ingredients
have already begun to find a place in the Western kitchen, and
that Japanese food’s light touch is making it more popular
than ever. “There’s no cream or butter on the list
of Japanese ingredients,” she notes. “And people are
more and more interested in items like kombu, katsuobushi (fish
flakes), miso, mirin and sake. I hope the day will come when
non-Japanese professional and home chefs can prepare a variety
of Japanese dishes in their own kitchens just as easily as they
do American or European-style meals.”
Richard Ruben, too, has been inspired
to write through teaching. Ruben has taught at Peter Kump’s
for five years, and his favorite assignment is Cooking in
the Moment—Greenmarket Cuisine, an improvisational
class for which he first leads his students through the nearby,
world-famous Union Square Greenmarket, then helps them to develop
dishes using the fresh produce, meats, poultry and other ingredients
they’ve purchased there. The same inventive spirit that
fuels that class spurred Ruben to write The Farmer’s
Market Cookbook (The Lyons Press, October) with more than
100 recipes and a smattering of original food-related haiku.
“I’ve traveled all over the world, and I’ve always
found my way to local markets,” says Ruben. “People
from all walks of life use these centers of community activity
and nourishment. But I realized in teaching my classes how many
people were a bit intimidated by the myriad of unknown products
found at the Greenmarket. I really just want to empower cooks
to explore fully all that is available to them.” Recipe
headers contain anecdotes about Ruben’s market experiences
everywhere from Santa Monica, California to Palermo, Italy.
Like Shimbo Beitchman’s The Japanese Kitchen, Ruben’s
The Farmer’s Market Cookbook is both a traditional
cookbook with clear and concise recipes—such as Steamers
with Wild Ramps and Yellow Gazpacho (made with yellow tomatoes)—and
a wonderful resource for shoppers. Recipes are arranged by season,
and each chapter ends with a blank page for the cook’s
notes. “My hope is that cooks will use the book as a road
map to their local area and their own palates,” says Ruben.
“No recipe is static, and I do encourage people to personalize
the recipes according to their own inspiration. I consider it
a great success when I am told I motivated someone to try something
completely new.” Ruben himself is working on something
new—another book. He hopes to complete his next, Food
Lessons, sometime in 2001. |
