Intuitive Cooking

By Jenny Breen

Wouldn't it be great if there was a book out there which, instead of giving you specific directions and ingredients, it told you HOW to cook? I don't mean how to make custard, and I'm not talking about how to make a roux. I mean how to listen to your intuition and your instinct to plan and prepare a delicious, wholesome and well-balanced meal.

Enter Intuitive Cooking by Joanne Saltzman. Saltzman, a native of Minnesota, has a history chock full of creative and sensory activities. She danced for many years with the Nancy Hauser Dance Company in Minneapolis, and eventually founded the School of Natural Cookery in Boulder, Colorado. It was in the creation and building of this school that her philosophy was solidified. Saltzman speaks in terms of cooking "tools," of the "alphabet and grammar" of cooking, cooking "methods" and recipe "sketches." Her book reads more like an art teaching guide or encyclopedia than a cookbook. And, with good reason. From the outset, she pooh-poohs the traditional approach to cooking, in which an expert tells you exactly what and how much of an ingredient to put into a dish. Instead, Saltzman gives clues and suggestions to help the reader cultivate a personal relationship between his or her own senses and cooking.

She explains the basic 'language' of preparing a meal (alphabet and grammar) - each element's function and use, for example: "Fire equals sun. Once upon a time fire was the center of human activity, whether it revolved around the sun or a burning pile of wood. Fire is a nutrient with the power of life and death... The amount of time food spends on the stove is directly related to how much sun is available to the plant while it grows... a carrot becomes bright under fire, and the taste of a sauce with multiple ingredients comes into focus. This won't happen in a microwave oven." In this section, we get a feeling of the sensuality and spiritual nature of food; we also get some biology, some ecology and finally, an idea of how this relates to how we might prepare the food. Amazingly though, Saltzman never tells you what to do.

In another section, titled (appropriately) "Cooking Methods," Saltzman addresses various methods for actually cooking food. Although these are very practical and applicable descriptions, the dancer/creative feeling still prevails: "...sauté, a term borrowed from French cuisine, means "to leap." I think of sauté as a quick, half in the air, half in the skillet method that uses oil. In the classical method, sauté sounds like a complete cooking method. I am not convinced this is true for plant cuisine; thus I reserve the word "sauté" to mean sealing the edges of vegetables." Her descriptions are three-dimensional, almost as if she is standing beside you while you cook together. This is the tone throughout the book; her role as a teacher is clear. Each section is well-organized and consistent. Again, although she does not give recipes per se, she gives a variety of techniques, methods and combinations and it is the reader's job to fill in the blanks with specific ingredients and flavors.

After thoroughly explaining and taking the reader through all the important parts of meal preparation, Saltzman lays out some formulas. She never gives quantities or measurements, but she does help to flesh out some compositions. These appear as a list with specific categories, for example: "Primary element: spaghetti squash, First-stage method: pressure steam, Oil: olive, Salt: umeboshi, Cooking liquid: marsala wine." Ideally, even if this would have intimidated someone before, after reading Intuitive Cooking, the reader will gain the understanding and the confidence to take this list and follow instincts on the path to a delicious, balanced and well-prepared meal.

Saltzman's faith in every person's ability to cook is the foundation of her book. Cooking is something everyone can do given the proper tools and techniques. Although slightly esoteric, Saltzman has made a useful attempt at articulating and teaching the internal and sensory process of cooking. After reading this book, cooks of every level will have a clearer and more developed understanding of intuitive cooking, and the confidence to try new and different things.