A BOOK WORTH GRILLING FOR By Fred Bacher Recipes. Such deplorable reading, given the summer weather. Recipes belong to those months of reason which, like port and philosophy, feed you better when it’s cold. Enough perfection. It’s summer and how dare you. It’s like telling me how to walk on the grass without spilling the zinfandel. But if there’s a chef out there who might give us some new culinary instruction while respecting our need for summer relaxation, it’s Chef John Ash from California. I’ve been reading Ash’s new book Cooking One On One: Private Lessons in Simple, Contemporary Food from a Master Chef. This is a stress-free approach to cooking that does not completely rely on recipes. Ash proposes a sustainable cuisine that uses local, organic food products as essential ingredients. The prose will pick you up. It spreads out like a summer that’s earth-warm with mellow Sonoma tones. I had to put on some mild sunscreen after a few pages. There are even some funny lines, but I forgot them at the beach. John Ash shows you how to cook like chefs. Chefs don’t work from recipes, they think in terms of themes. Summer grilling is casually taught through lessons on flavor-makers, great salsas, and marinades. As a complement to the grilled cuisine, the sections on pestos and vinaigrettes would fill out a summer buffet. Ash offers some theories that relate cooking with social changes. They’re interesting. He thinks people have lost necessary culinary technique because families don’t cook together any longer. He thinks that several generations of home cooking has been lost. Yes, there are recipes, like the one printed here, but there’s more emphasis on traditional technique with contemporary appeal. There’s a nice chapter on pot roasting. The history of the family roast comes from the simplest of French technique. It’s a winter thing, but I’ve always wanted to write a cookbook called The Chef’s in the Pot, about dishes that mysteriously transform themselves in the oven. See you in December. He has won the ICAP Cookbook award for his previous From the Earth to the Table, a must-read for vineyard cuisine enthusiasts. He runs the kitchen of a swank Sonoma restaurant, teaches at the American Culinary Institute, and has a food column in the Los Angeles Times. Ash teaches some traditional grilling techniques and gives some pointers on how best to deal with the smoky stuff in terms of environment. Ash recommends untreated, hardwood charcoal as the most atmosphere-friendly. Salmon is a great fish for summer grilling and Chef Ash gives this fish some special attention. Ash is an authority on aqua-culture issues and speaks against farmed salmon. He recommends wild Alaskan. There are Asian elements that mix well in the overall Californian style of presentation. Myself, I decided on the beef with rosemary, capers, and lemons. I found the rosemary at the Niagara Herb farm in St. David’s along the Niagara wine route. For the New York strip steaks, I went to Pilgrims, a drug-free butcher in St. Catharines, also along the wine route. Went to Wyndym Farms in Niagara-on-the Lake for the arugula. As for the capers, I made them myself from a family recipe I can’t disclose until well into the upcoming fall issues. Happy grilling on the green. Fred Bacher is a Canadian writer and filmmaker who has received awards for his work on both sides of the border. Back to the Table of Contents Back to Top