table talk / By Joseph Byrd

Simple Cooking

America’s best food writer, John Thorne

(July 16, 2009) 

Last summer I submitted some articles to Gourmet and Saveur magazines. They weren’t accepted, but as a kind of consolation prize, it would seem, I got free subscriptions. Every month, a thick issue arrived, full of glorious food photography, accompanied by rich prose and richer recipes. I have nothing against slick food magazines — I think anything that encourages people to play with their food is good — but it was hard for me to get into them. (Which might explain how they respond to my writing.)

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The recipes, for one thing, tend to be in 8-point type, so as to make room for the pictures — reading them at my chopping block is impractical, an exercise in squint-and-dice. For another, they are mostly recycled versions of familiar ones: I’m currently looking at an oven-baked crispy drumstick using crushed tortilla chips, served with roasted potato wedges and cilantro-lime mayonnaise. Not exactly challenging concepts. But gorgeous on the page.

And, of course, these are really not so much about cooking as they are about lavish entertaining, travel and restaurants, which is why so many national advertisers buy space in them. Or rather, used to buy space — like many print media, cooking magazines face severe cutbacks due to the depression. Still, Ruth Reichl is a joy to read (and she doesn’t give recipes) and Coleman Andrews is the most talented restaurant reviewer I’ve read — if you don’t mind his ongoing love affair with himself.

All this is in the context of a New York foodie chauvinism that rivals San Francisco’s navel-worship. As one award-winning food writer says, “The NY food scene is so self-involved it’s practically irrelevant.”

Are there slick food magazines that are truly useful for the home cook? Absolutely. Cook’s Illustrated, a New England-based publication, is full of useful, clear information, with mostly black and white drawings and photographs, step-by-step instructions, and scientific analysis of culinary concepts like marinades, sauces, soufflés, etc. For the moderately advanced cook, it is a pleasure to read, and a constant temptation to try new techniques.

But for the past quarter century I’ve been a loyal subscriber to Simple Cooking, a newsletter that has no food photographs and few illustrations, and costs $5 for a densely packed eight pages of prose, much of it by the self-publisher, John Thorne, and his wife Matt. Once a hit-or-miss quarterly (some early issues were late by several months), it has settled down, after a fashion. Thorne has been called, with reason, “America’s best food writer.” He brings a unique combination of liberal education, narrative skills, culinary experience, a perceptive intuition and infectious curiosity to topics ranging from homely to exotic.

Recipes are provided, of course — often not just one way of making something, but several, with thoughtful insights. And there are random titbits of interest: Should eggs be room temperature before starting an omelet? How do you make awesome iced coffee? Where can you buy Sichuan peppercorns? What’s Thomas Keller’s secret sauce for haricots verts?

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