'Beyond Measure': Portland author wants us to cook outside the recipe box
Tuesday, December 2, 2008 11:38 PM PST
By Cathy Zimmerman
Printable version
E-mail this articleIt’s funny how many really good meals come from rummaging around in the kitchen. You’re hungry, and the week’s worth of menu ideas have run dry. Rummage in the frig, rummage in the cupboards, and bingo: You throw together a delicious dinner.
Human beings are wired to cook this way, said Jean Johnson, the Portland author of a new book called “Cooking Beyond Measure,” which advocates whipping up meals without any instructions.
The author, who will sign copies of her cookbook at a Skamokawa Christmas craft fair, talked by phone about what she wrote and why she wrote it.
“All I want is dinner, not a set of rote directions,” Johnson said. “I’m not a gourmet, I’m not a trained chef, I’m an everyday cook. I just want to eat good food, and I don’t have much time.”
It’s Johnson’s mission to get other everyday cooks to rely on creativity and playfullness instead of recipes that require “small-scale chemistry experiments,” she said.
The book reads like a set of conversations grouped around breakfast, soups, salads, main dishes and “endings.” Johnson focuses on whole grains, legumes, vegetables and fruits, but eggs, cheese, a few shrimps and salmon patties make their way into her otherwise vegetarian kitchen.
She writes breezily of how to make all kinds of pancakes for all kinds of meals, including “rolled-ups,” polenta waffles and corn cakes. She invents frittatas and hash, chilis and chowders and slaws.
Everytime, they taste new, depending on what she has on hand.
In her short chapters on this and that bean or grain or squash, Johnson tucks in facts as if she were loading a taco with beans and cilantro.
“A fermented foodstuff, wine brings umami to foods,” she writes. “Umami is that unidentifiable mouth feel people find so enticing.
“I’ve made carrot soup, for example, both with and without white wine. You have to let the wine cook into the soup a bit, of course, but once it does, there’s really no comparison on which version has more depth of flavor and interest.”
If you don’t choose to use wine, she adds, develop “umami” with fish sauce.
Johnson has all kinds of nuggets like this in the book, about beets and leeks, millet and quinoa.
But no fractions. No ounces. No cups and dashes.
What turned the author on to the idea of measure-less cooking was a chance remark in a history class at Washington State University, where she earned a doctorate degree and realized she was more interested in cultural history than in war and politics.
“After the Civil Way, and during the Industrial Revolution, we got our first measuring cups and formal measuring tools,’ she said. “Domestic science ... is a phenomenon of Western culture over the last 100 years,” when “science and technology became the be-all and the end-all.”
In mid century, the American food industry picked up steam, and “in collusion with journalists in the women’s glossies,” Johnson said, they pushed packaged products that would make it easier to put dinner on the table.
Gradually, women began to see themselves as burdened by cooking for their families, Johnson said. The idea rooted itself in modern culture, but a new extreme came along to balance it out, she said: the idea of perfection.
Americans are either “terribly glad to get out of kitchen,” or they have to “follow exact instructions,” she said. “There’s nothing in between.”
Cooking a meal “has become a businesslike project. There’s all this pressure to use certain ingredietns, to get the same results every time.”
We now live “in the land of crinkly packaged food,” with huge supermarkets full of prepared snacks and prefabricated meals.
“No wonder our food bills are so expensive,” Johnson said.
She also wonders about what the food industry and food magazines have done to our attitudes, “the shift in cooking as an art to cooking as a science.” In her travels, Johnson visited cooks in Europe and Asia who came home and cooked wonderful food “on a shoestring, after working a full day. And they did it without recipes.
“It’s so enjoyable. It’s an art, full of satisfaction, and it’s so easy to do.”
Her book encourages people to recapture that attitude, to “lighten up in the kitchen, to come out from under the furrowed brow of having to get it right.”
Her ideas hark back to the ‘60s generation, Johnson said. “Many of our ‘fringe’ ideas from back then are now mainstream — in music, in food and in throught.”
The time couldn’t be better for her book. It espouses espouses simple, inexpensive foods at a time when people are more aware of being frugal, and when the culture is turning to fresh, local foods.
Johnson never lectures or talks down, and she freely shares her own wild adventures. It was somewhat alarming, for instance, to read about the spicy wild rice and cilantro salad to which she added ... white chocolate chips.
“I don’t know what to say,” she said. “It certainly worked for me. Here I am. I have greens, a carb, a protein. So virtuous, and nicely seasoned with a little chili to zip it up ... lovely, lovely.”
Then, she said, she spies the chocolate chips.
“Oh, whoopee!” They reminded her of Thai orchestration: “sour, spicy, salty, sweet. That’s what they play with. There’s really no fat in their food.”
When she sprinkled on the sweet creamy chips, “They made that salad — so good!”
Meet some cookbook authors
What: Friends of Skamokawa Holiday Open House, with art and craft items for sale and appearances by cookbook authors Jean Johnson of Portland (“Cooking Beyond Measure”) and Beth Sheresh of Skamokawa (“Picture Yourself Cooking With Your Kids”)
When: Arts and craft sale from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday; authors on hand 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday, with food samples
Where: Redmen Hall, restored 1849 schoolhouse at 1394 State Route 4 (Ocean Beach Highway) Skamokawa
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