The Breakaway Cook

As I've mentioned before, I don't really read cookbooks for the recipes. Instead, I read them for the tips, techniques, and thought processes that they contain. By this standard Eric Gower's The Breakaway Cook is a great cookbook. This isn't to say that the recipes in it aren't worthwhile, but the real gems here are in the first fifty or so pages of information on ingredients and techniques.

Gower focuses on what he calls breakaway cooking. He claims that this is distinct from fusion in that it is concerned with keeping things simple. I call that splitting hairs (or, perhaps more likely, an attempt at branding). This is a fusion cookbook. There's nothing wrong with that. It isn't overly complicated. Simply because some fusion is complicated doesn't mean that all fusion is. It doesn't need to be. Gower concentrates on what he calls "global flavor blasts" - ingredients with strong flavors from around the world that can be added to otherwise-simple dishes. Some of these flavor blasts are familiar (vinegars, chiles), some are less so (maccha, umeboshi), and some are things that you can make yourself (flavored salts, garlic confit) with the simple recipes included to keep on hand.

Gower spent fifteen years living in Japan, and it shows. Many of the flavors he favors are heavily used in Japanese cuisine, and a number of the recipes in the book have at least some Japanese influence to them (though other cuisines are not neglected). He has apparently also written a cookbook - The Breakaway Japanese Kitchen- that focuses more on Japanese food than this one. Still, it was easy for me to read this and expand the basic ideas to include flavors from other cuisines. For instance, I could easily adapt the recipe for Umeboshi Duck Legs to become Tamarind Duck Legs.

It is the flavor blast idea that I really took away from this book. It is something that I've done often on a not-fully-conscious level in the past. Gower gave the idea a name, which lets me think about it consciously and more effectively. It also raises the possibility of other sorts of "blasts" - what about a texture blast? Later this week, I'll toss out some flavor blasts that I use regularly.

You can read more about this book and style of cooking on the Breakaway Cook Blog.