“As I traveled, I noticed that in every country, whether I was watching home cooks or professional chefs, and whether they were cooking over live fire or on a camp stove, the best cooks looked at the food, not the heat source. I saw how good cooks obeyed sensory cues, rather than timers and thermometers. They listened to the changing sounds of a sizzling sausage, watched the way a simmer becomes a boil, felt how a slow-cooked pork shoulder tightens and then relaxes as hours pass, and tasted a noodle plucked from boiling water to determine whether it’s al dente. In order to cook instinctually, I needed to learn to recognize these signals. I needed to learn how food responds to the fourth element of good cooking: Heat.” ― Samin Nosrat, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking
Samin Nosrat has an infectious laugh. Just as contagious is her curiosity about food. Her documentary and interviews show not some overly serious celebrity chef, but someone who loves food and still enjoys learning about its ingredients, flavors, techniques, and history. She is someone you would love to sit down to dinner with, knowing you would enjoy the company as much as the food.
I first heard of Nosrat from Shanon Ables, host of one of my favorite podcasts, The Simple Sophisticate. She had watched Nosrat's food documentary on Netflix, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, and recommended it as that week's "Petit Plaisir." That evening, my husband and I sat down to watch the first episode in the four-part series and fell in love.
Nosrat was born in San Diego, California, to Iranian immigrants fleeing religious persecution. She grew up eating Persian home-cooking and, while in college, enjoyed a meal at a restaurant so much she immediately asked for a job busing tables and ended up working for two years as an unpaid apprentice in the kitchen that prepared a different fixed menu every night. She says they never used recipes, yet there was a pattern. No matter what they were cooking, they always paid attention to the salt, fat, acid, and heat of the dishes.
Watching the documentary changed the way we cooked because we understood food in a much better way. It is a more involved, holistic way of cooking that involves the senses.
I don't have the cookbook yet, but hope to get it soon. If it is anything like the documentary, it will be a fantastic resource.
If you are interested in more about Samin, check out a few of these interviews:
* BBC World Service: Food Chain
* Food & Wine: The Communal Table
* NYTimes Conference: Chew it over
* NPR Fresh Air
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