Nadine shares more recommendations for cooking styles, food choices and good cookbooks to have in your kitchen.  She will continue to provide tips in this Cooking Beyond Recipes column.  If you missed her first post, click here to be introduced to her concepts.

Cooking Beyond Recipes

I am neither original, nor alone, in advocating these cooking concepts:

• Start with real, whole food, locally grown whenever possible—ingredients that burst with flavor before the cooking begins.

• Let the ingredients inspire you. I sometimes come home from the farmer’s market, lay out my purchases on the kitchen counter and ask, “What would Alice Waters do?” For a beginning or hesitant cook, Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food is a wonderful reference. I also like the Fanny Farmer Cookbook for classic American recipes (when I ask, “How many things can you do with apples?” for example), and The New Basics Cookbook by Julee Rosso & Sheila Lukins of Silver Palate fame.

• Prepare food simply, so the ingredients can continue to speak for themselves: raw, steamed, sautéed, grilled, roasted.