High-low pantry/cooking
- Aug 15
- 5 min read
"An extended love letter to simplicity, this book is about finding joy and satisfaction in the tiny miracles of cooking - all of the deliciousness that comes from making something from nothing." Alison Roman
Yes it's another book, and this was going to be an overview/review of this wonderful book - Something from Nothing by Alison Roman - a cook of whom I was dimly aware via the New York Times I think. It has been sitting on my desk waiting for its moment for a while now, so I felt I needed to refresh my memory of it so began flipping through it again.
And was once again enchanted from page one. So I have sort of changed my mind and have decided to concentrate on her philosophy - a grandiose word I know - but appropriate I think. Others might decide on attitude instead. Anyway - herewith her philosophy, as illustrated by her introduction and virtually all of her first few recipes from her Snacks and Things to Start With chapter.
Before you get anywhere into the book you encounter this spread of a selection of pantry staples - for her - yours and/or mine may be different - together with a few fresh items. Which is sort of the philosophy that most of my very favourite cooks, from Robert Carrier to Ottolenghi bang on about. So in that respect I guess she is not an original. However, what she does with those pantry staples is original - even when not, if you see what I mean - encouraging and inspiring.
Way, way back in a section called The Emergency Shelf, in his classic book Great Dishes of the World, Robert Carrier said:
"Impromptu meals - whipped up in a minute without the fuss and bother that often go into a a full-scale dinner party - can be enormous fun. And success is practically assured with a little forethought and planning. ... I rely on my emergency shelf for simple casseroles or knife-and-fork soups that come almost entirely from package or tin."
Modernised by Alison Roman as:
"Nothing gives me more pleasure than rooting around the cans and tins of a dimly-lit kitchen and emerging with the best tomato soup of my life."
Maybe this is it - the recipe is in the book anyway - Buttered tomato soup with lentils and fennel (from the Châtelaine website) - tinned tomatoes and lentils, chiili flakes and fennel seed with fresh fennel and onion. !0 mins to put together, an hour to cook. It's certainly an example of the high-low approach - the high here being the fennel.
And the same approach is certainly showcased in the snacks section:
"as well as some non-recipes, simple reminders of what great snacks can be made using little more than the contents of your pantry and perhaps one splurge item: high-low pantry let's call it. ... Humble little pantry ingredients waiting to be brought to life with a little special something, reminding you why you keep them around in the first place."
And perhaps the most extreme example of this is potato chips topped with sour cream and caviar.
"I believe that, in the same way the best ketchup comes from a bottle, the best potato chips come from a bag ...
potato chips are best paired with the extremely high - or extremely low-brow and there is no greater example of this than caviar and sour-cream and onion dip made from a packet of Lipton Recipe Secrets. ... Yes, in the pursuit of excellence, I've made sour-cream and onion dip from scratch. I've caramelised onions for hours, built complex layers of flavour in a skillet and crossed my fingers that by the end of that painstakingly long process, I would have something more delicious and perfect than something store-bought. And guess what, I never did. I can say with full confidence that no onion dip made from scratch is better than the one from a packet."
Her first love - well it's neck and neck with jarred artichoke hearts I think (thank you Dionne for giving me some) - is anchovies
"I love anchovies for how they behave when sizzled in a skillet and melted down into a pool of olive oil with which to bathe a tangle of green beans. I love smashing up with cloves of raw garlic to dress a piece of nicely seared steak"
Illustrated by her non recipes for Basque-style Gildas and Artichoke hearts, with anchovies and Parmesan and her recipes for Wine-braised romano beans with anchovy - Williams-Sonoma and Steak like tartare
Another of her very favourite snack ingredients is radishes of which she says:
"Every time I slather a crisp, spicy radish with salty, creamy butter, I am floored at the exquisite simplicity and amount of pleasure two things can bring. Crunchy and soft, spicy and sweet. It is also, I'll admit, a cheap trick. At pretty much any dinner party I have, radishes and butter start us off - not because I'm unimaginative but because I have good taste, and radishes and butter are a perfect elegant snack" which "contains multitudes"
The multitudes being the choice of butter - including flavoured butters of which she gives us three examples, and a choice of radishes, including:
"Regular grocery store radishes cut into wedges, served with a slab of the very yellow, very expensive butter say that I am the very embodiment of the high-low lifestyle."
And I have to agree about the elegant simplicity. It was a frequent starter for dinner in France - just as in the first picture above - not forgetting the perfect baguette of course.
The above are all tasters if you like - apart from the beans and the steak - but I hope it demonstrates what a wonderful book this is. I'll do a more general overview another time.
Buy it.
POSTSCRIPT
The leftover hummus saga continued last night with a kind of fricassée of leftover roast chicken (Sliced pieces of breast), with fried mushrooms and onion, tossed in a sauce of a goodly chunk of hummus blended with a couple of of cornichons and their pickling liquid, lemon juice, parsley, dill and garlic plus cream. I was going to cook my potatoes separately but in the end mixed them in too. It was pretty good and you couldn't really taste the hummus at all this time. It might have been better with rice or pasta. Tonight I'm going the stir-fry route.
YEARS GONE BY
August 15 - Happy birthday Abby
2025 - Matar paneer
2023 - The second time around
2022 - Another Parisan address
2021 - Missing
2020 - Missing
2018 - Vale Reg
2017 - Lucky dip - figs
It all sounds delicious with or without a philosophical underpinning.