Chef in a Can

You’d think that a book with a title like “A Twist of the Wrist: Quick Flavorful Meals With Ingredients From Jars, Cans, Bags, and Boxes” (Knopf, 264 pages, $29.95) would be about liberation — freedom from hours of being chained to the stove. Instead, it starts off with a guilty conscience.“I realize that for many people, preparing a dish of pasta that takes advantage of jarred tomato sauce … might not seem like a big deal, but for me, it was a total anomaly. Some might even say a fall from grace,” Nancy Silverton writes in the introduction to her new book. “For me to write a book in which a jar of mayonnaise is even mentioned is revolutionary.”Ms. Silverton is just about the last person one would expect to take on the subject of timesaving convenience foods. She’s a world-renowned chef who just launched one of the hottest restaurants in Los Angeles, Mozza, with Mario Batali. Simply put, she’s no semi-homemade-cake-mix doctor. But after a career spent preaching the gospel of freshness, Ms. Silverton realized that convenience foods could be “an inspiration, not a compromise.”So there are no rhapsodic descriptions of esoteric varieties of radicchio. No insistence on baby artichokes brought straight from the farmers’ market. If it’s a Thursday night in spring and you don’t have time to go to the market and procure some impeccable asparagus, Ms. Silverton says you can still make a meal that’s just as dazzling, just as sophisticated, if you open a jar of white asparagus and top it with brown butter, capers, and a fried egg or two.Ms. Silverton lets home cooks off the hook on what makes a meal, too. As she rightly points out, dinner doesn’t have to mean meat, starch, and vegetable. It can be a tarragon chicken salad with avocado and bacon using a bought rotisserie chicken or a creamy corn soup that starts out in a carton. Eggs become dinner when cooked with chorizo and potatoes to make a frittata, or a simple dinner crostini topped with pea purée and prosciutto. Influences from France, Italy, and Mexico dominate, but the eclectic combinations more often show off Ms. Silverton’s own creativity.Many of the recipes are more creative than convenient. Ms. Silverton often strays from the path of pragmatism, seduced by ingredients that are difficult to find even in the most well-stocked gourmet food stores. Farro, paprika paste, and sage pesto might taste terrific and quickly perk up a dish, but that’s hardly the point when you need to order them online to make Ms. Silverton’s recipes. Very often, she offers no substitutions for these hard-to-find ingredients, either. Five of her recipes even call for sushi-grade tuna, an ingredient most people aren’t likely to have lying at the back of the fridge, and one that can be tough to track down even at a fish counter.Other times, Ms. Silverton throws the baby out with the bath water. Her Sicilian-Style Trenette pasta cleverly uses canned roasted eggplant, but then she calls for hard-to-find canned San Marzano cherry tomatoes instead of the ubiquitous fresh variety. And if her goal is avoiding a trip to the market for fresh ingredients, then why list fresh oregano rather than dried in the same recipe? Likewise, in her recipe for “Meringues with Warm Raspberry Compote and Vanilla Ice Cream,” she asserts that “finding good meringues is an easy task” — as far as I know, meringues hardly come ever come packaged, since they absorb humidity and turn soggy so quickly.But for busy cooks willing to flip past those errant pages, there are plenty of ideas that manage to be sensible and sublime, from a deeply savory Mexican mole casserole to rigatoni with a cleverly balanced sauce of anchovies, garbanzo beans, and celery. Ms. Silverton also shares shortcut recipes from other prominent chefs, and there’s a definite thrill of satisfaction in learning that Tom Douglas makes pot sticker stir-fry using dumplings from Costco, and that Ruth Reichl, editor in chief of Gourmet, bakes her emergency blueberry pies using frozen berries and a frozen crust.When Ms. Silverton sticks to a more modest palette of ingredients, she manages to capture the brilliance of a world-class chef in a can.Rigatoni With Anchovies, Garbanzo Beans & CeleryThis recipe, adapted from “A Twist of the Wrist,” is from the cofounder of Saveur, Colman Andrews. Anchovy paste, which comes in tubes, can be substituted for the canned anchovies. The recipe takes 30 minutes, start to finish.Kosher salt 8 ounces rigatoni rigate (or penne rigate) 12 anchovy fillets (with about 1 tablespoon of the packing oil or extra-virgin olive oil) One 15-ounce can garbanzo beans (1 1/2 cups), not drained 1 small celery stalk, trimmed and minced (about 2 tablespoons), leaves reserved for garnish 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil Parmigiano-Reggiano wedge, for grating Freshly ground black pepper High-quality extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil over high heat and add a generous amount of kosher salt. Stir in the pasta, return the water to a boil, and cook the pasta, stirring occasionally, until it’s al dente.2. While the water is coming to a boil and the pasta is cooking, use a fork to crush the anchovies, with their oil, in a medium bowl. Strain the liquid from the garbanzo beans into the bowl with the anchovies. Set the garbanzo beans aside and stir the liquid and anchovies together to form a thin paste. Stir in the minced celery.Drain the pasta and, while it’s still dripping with water, return it to the pot it was cooked in. Add the anchovy mixture and toss well. Add the garbanzo beans and olive oil, grate about 1 tablespoon of Parmesan cheese into the pot, and season generously with freshly ground black pepper. Toss to combine the ingredients and season well with kosher salt.Spoon the pasta out of the pot and pile it onto four plates, dividing it evenly. Drizzle with the high-quality olive oil, top with a few celery leaves, and serve with grated Parmesan cheese on the side. Serves 4.

Chef in a Can

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