“I have always loved Ed Behr’s approach to food: he peels back the layers to get to the true, pure heart of a dish. His deep gastronomic understanding allows him to create recipes with a kind of beautiful simplicity.”

Alice Waters, Executive Chef, Founder, and Owner of Chez Panisse

"The Art of Eating has been a not-so-guilty indulgence of mine ever since the first issue. Ed Behr has pointed the way to outrageously good meals, whether in Venice or Vermont, with the underlying themes of authenticity and simplicity. Finally, with The Art of Eating Cookbook, we have a collection of recipes that was born of passion and first-hand experience rather than yet another slavish bow to healthy convenience. Bravo!"

Christopher Kimball, Founder and Editor, America's Test Kitchen

“Edward Behr’s carefully curated and tested recipes from his always-excellent magazine provide not only fabulous eating but also intelligent and beautifully written lessons from which every cook, both amateur and professional, can learn.”

Wolfgang Puck, Chef and restauranteur

“The Art of Eating Cookbook is the cookbook we all wish we'd written. Combining the insight of an epicure with the appetite of a hedonist, it's entertaining, authoritative, and -- most important of all -- delicious.”

Dan Barber, Chef and Co-Owner of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns

“For a lucky generation of cooks and readers, The Art of Eating has delivered the seductive delights of tradition--described in fine prose with great recipes--making each beautiful issue a satisfying feast. The dishes in the cookbook are true, simple, and pure, they feel like old friends--even the ones I am meeting for the first time.”

Judy Rodgers, Chef and Co-Owner of Zuni Café

“This is no common cookbook but rather an elaborate menu, the delicious contents of which inspire meals for all seasons and occasions. The recipes themselves celebrate in large part the culinary traditions of Italy and France with a clear ring of authenticity that echoes Ed Behr’s dedicated travels to the source.”

Paul Bertolli, Chef and Founder Fra' Mani Handcrafted Foods

"The Art of Eating has been a source of culinary education for me for many years. I'm relieved to now have a cooking companion in Ed Behr's unique and insightful style."

David Chang, Chef and Owner of Momofuku

Edward Behr is the chief writer, sometime photographer, and publisher of The Art of Eating, the widely acclaimed magazine about food and wine. He is the author of The Artful Eater: A Gourmet Investigates the Ingredients of Great Food.

The Art of Eating Cookbook

Essential Recipes from the First 25 Years

By Edward Behr, James MacGuire, George Bates

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Copyright © 2011 Edward Behr
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-520-27029-9

Contents

Introduction, 1,
Three Notes to the Cook, 4,
THREE BREADS AND FOUR THINGS THAT REQUIRE BREAD,
CHARCUTERIE,
SOUP,
PASTA AND POLENTA,
CHEESE, EGGS, AND SALADS,
VEGETABLES,
FISH, SEAFOOD, AND SNAILS,
POULTRY AND RABBIT,
MEAT,
DESSERT,
Index, 265,

CHAPTER 1

THREE BREADS AND FOUR THINGS THAT REQUIRE BREAD

SCHIACCIATA

Flat Hearth Bread

BREAD MAKES OTHER FOOD TASTE BETTER. Potatoes, rice, and other starches do the same, but not with the same flavors of fermentation or textural contrasts as bread. It enhances a salad, fresh cheese, or grilled meat as much as it does sauces, strong cheeses, or cured meats. You can eat a lot of very fresh bread, but older bread is good, too, as in the age-old use of a slice in a bowl of soup. A baguette, a grainy "country" loaf, sour rye—all have their place, according to what else is on the table. A meal can be anything you want; it can start and end where you like. It can be a single item, such as a big bowl of soup—a beginning and an ending in one—or it can run on in multiple courses. But, at least in the context of Western cooking, nothing is more important than bread. That so many restaurants in English-speaking countries treat bread as an appetizer is an utter misunderstanding or maybe a giving up in the face of customers who don't "get" bread. This and the two recipes that follow are for unfermented or mildly fermented breads—more ambitious bread baking, with all its complications of flour, leavenings, and ovens, fits better in its own book. But each of the breads here has its attractions of texture and flavor. The four other recipes are for items that especially require bread.

Schiacciata, which literally means "flattened" or "squashed," is a kind of focaccia. Even in places where the dominant bread was big and round, flatbreads were once almost universal too. Forming some of the bread dough into flat rounds was a way to test the oven's heat—in the oldest type of wood-fired oven, schiacciate go in first, when the temperature is highest. The interior of this Tuscan-style schiacciata makes a sweet contrast with the salty crust, because the dough itself contains no salt. But dough without salt ferments more quickly—often too quickly to gain real flavor. The best solution is probably a sourdough leavening, traditional for Tuscan bread (though rare today), but that requires special knowledge, not to say practice and devotion. And the simple commercial-yeast sponge below provides good flavor.

For easier stretching, water in a proportion of 75 percent of the flour by weight (the baker's way of measuring), as below, works well with American unbleached all-purpose white flour at about 11½ percent protein; softer flour, like that used in Italy, requires less water. The salt sprinkled on top should be fine, not coarse. You need at least a couple of schiacciate to feed six or eight hungry people, but a home oven will bake just one at a time, so inevitably the second ferments more than the first. Fortunately, the fast cooking in a hot oven overrides much of the difference, and in this bread a lot of flavor comes from the broad expanse of brown crust.

½ teaspoon (2 gr) instant yeast
3 ¾ cups (500 gr) unbleached all-purpose flour
1 5/8 cups (375 ml) water at about 80° F (27° C)
excellent, fresh-tasting olive oil or melted lard
fine salt
coarse semolina

Mix the yeast with 1 cup (130 gr) of the flour and 1 cup (240 ml) of the water. Cover and leave overnight in a cool spot, cooler than 70° F (21° C). Then combine this sponge with the rest of the flour and water to make a soft dough, mixing it only enough to incorporate the flour fully. Put the dough in a bowl, cover it, and place it in a warm spot, 75° to 80° F (24° to 27° C), to rise for 2 hours. Then lift up one side of the dough and fold it onto the other, pressing lightly so the two adhere, cover again, and leave to rise for another hour.

Half an hour into the second rise, set an oven rack in the top half of the oven and line it with a baking stone or quarry tiles. Heat the oven to 500° F (260° C). When the rising time is up, turn the dough out of its bowl and cut it in half with a dull edge. Flatten each half with an open hand—rolling would press out too many bubbles—and then stretch each half to an even round about 12 inches (30 cm) wide. Onto each pour a spiraling thread of oil or melted lard or brush the top minimally with oil or lard. More generously, sprinkle each with salt. Let the rounds rise for 10 minutes. Sprinkle a peel or open-sided baking sheet lightly with semolina and place one round on it. With your fingers, press a dozen or more dimples into the top of the dough, and slip the loaf quickly and confidently off the peel onto the stone or tiles. Remove when well browned, after about 15 minutes, then promptly bake the other round. Serve warm. Makes 2 loaves.

CORN BREAD

MARY RANDOLPH PUBLISHED THIS RECIPE in her fine cookbook The Virginia Housewife, in 1824, before chemical baking powders transformed American baking. She counted on eggs for loft, or, as here, yeast. Industrial cornmeal has very little flavor, and most of the interest in corn bread comes from using the best cornmeal you can find. The more freshly ground, the better the flavor; the highest quality tends to come from old milling varieties of corn that are stone-ground. In the South, the color of cornmeal is usually white and, as a rule, white and yellow cornmeals have distinct flavors, the first often being earthier and the second richer. Finely ground meal rises higher. Mary Randolph made muffins with her batter; I bake it in a skillet.

2 cups (300 gr) cornmeal
¼ cup (50 gr) unsalted butter plus more for the pan
scant ¾ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon (2 gr) instant yeast
2 large eggs
1 cup (240 ml) warm milk

Place the cornmeal in a large bowl and rub the butter into it using your fingers, until the combination loses and then regains the consistency of meal. Add the salt, yeast, and eggs. Stir in enough of the warm milk to make a medium-thick batter (finer meal will absorb more liquid). Cover the bowl and set it in a warm spot, at least 80° (27° C), for about 2 hours, during which time, lacking the gluten of wheat, the batter will rise only slightly, increasing by perhaps one-eighth.

Heat the oven to 450° F (230° C). Butter a black cast-iron frying pan about 10 inches (25 cm) wide and set it, empty, in the oven to heat to almost smoking hot. Remove it, immediately fill it with the batter, and return it to the oven to bake until the corn bread is set, 12 to 15 minutes. Serve promptly. Serves 4.

FARINATA

Chickpea Pancake

ONCE A COMMON STREET FOOD, FARINATA IS A VAST chickpea pancake, soft and floppy, baked in special heavy copper pans about a yard wide; you eat pieces with your fingers. Farinata is mainly Ligurian, but it's made on a long stretch of the Mediterranean coast from Nice, where the name is socca, through Liguria, where in dialect it's called fainâ, into...