pricey. Can you substitute walnuts? You bet. They are likely to be much fresher and half the

price. Can you tell the difference in flavor? Maybe if you have highly developed taste buds. But

your pesto with fresh walnut still beats an authentic version that uses stale or, heaven forbid,

rancid pine nuts.

One of the greatest of French chefs and authorities on French cooking Auguste Escoffier

(1847-1935) said "The greatest dishes are very simple dishes". In more recent years (1995) the

editor of Cook's Illustrated magazine, Christopher Kimball stated "At the heart of all good,

populist cooking is economy, forthrightness, and a good measure of common sense". That's

common-sense cooking. His common-sense cooking encompasses the use of fresh, seasonal,

available ingredients and "economy of technique". These two concepts from two different era,

simple cooking and common-sense cooking are the essence of this book.

Two examples illustrate the type of cooking I urge you to avoid. Shortly before a

Thanksgiving holiday a radio host interviewed a chef about baking turkey when you are in time

crunch. The chef declared that you can cook a fair-sized turkey in two hours. She recommended

to roast the turkey in a 500°F (260°C) oven and guaranteed it will be done in time. However,

roasting at such high temperature you are not likely to get more than just barely edible meat—

you may be better off to buy a full Thanksgiving dinner from a supermarket. Even if you can eat

the turkey, think about your oven! At such high oven setting the turkey fat will spatter for two

hours. By the end of the period the grease will burn on every square inch of the oven walls, the

house will be in a cloud of smoke (you had by now disconnected all smoke alarms), the burning

grease smell will stay in the carpets and curtains for weeks. And cleaning that oven will take

several hours and plenty of elbow grease.

I am also against unnecessary and unjustified recipe complication, and I illustrate this

with a second example. A French brioche recipe, claimed to be authentic, appeared in a popular

food magazine (1998). I tried it right away since I love a good brioche. I found the recipe very

involved and difficult, and its preparation would be a true misery if you are not yet a master of

yeast dough. My own similar, more updated recipe (with much less butter) uses a far simpler

technique. Are the results different? Maybe very slightly but, again, you need a highly educated

palate to tell the two apart in a blind testing.

Lean cuisine

"Never trust a lean cook" is a popular way of expressing misgivings about the food a lean

cook prepares. How much a cook eats, exercises, watches his or her diet has nothing to do with

cooking ability. But the opposite is more often true. A fat cook is likely to use rich, fattening

ingredients. Take a look at the jacket photo of a cookbook author then figure out the fat and

cholesterol count per serving of most recipes. Is there a correlation between rich foods and

overweight cooks?

This book is definitely not a low-fat, low-sugar diet cookbook. But fats, sugars, salt and

cholesterol in most recipes are as low as you can go without sacrificing flavor. Virtually all

recipes and ideas I present you promote healthy, nutritious food and eating, and portions I

suggest are moderate in size for a person of average weight.

According to a survey by the International Obesity Task Force in late 1990s, fully 35

percent of Americans are considered obese, that is also becoming true throughout the Western

world and this number is growing every year along with the waistlines. (For comparison, 15 to

20 percent of Europeans are obese, but as high as 50 percent in Eastern Europe. Scandinavians

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