The Importance of Paul Bertolli

I have a lot of cookbooks that I don't use. I have maybe ten that I've actually used in the last year, of which there are three or four that I consider indispensable. Cooking by Hand by Paul Bertolli is far and away the number one book on my list. This is a cookbook that actually brings tears to my eyes. I am really struggling trying to figure out a way to tell you what this book means to me. It has great recipes, but also philosophy, essays, ideas, resources, and techniques. More than any other book I have come across it will teach you how to cook. It will teach you how to think about food. It will teach you how to live a better life. Skip the self-help section at the bookstore, just pick this up and go to your kitchen.

Bertolli presents a culinary philosophy of food made by hand, with care and attention to detail. Bertolli on pears:

To neglect a pear on the table and then return to find it ripe days later is merely a lucky coincidence. But to keep a pear in mind as it ripens is to practice cooking in its simplest form. It is through such observance of any food from the point of purchase throughout its preparation and later in the act of eating itself, that cooking is purged of lapses of attention, imposed formula, impatience, or expediency. Like a fresco restored to its former glory, food reveals what we wish for or remember it to be.

Why is Bertolli important? He articulates what we have in our hearts here at Reserve, and he does it more eloquently than I, at least, am capable of. Cooking starts in the mind, with thinking about the ingredients, trying to understand how best to reveal their essence, before we ever get to the part of shaping them with steel and with fire. We pay attention to food, we buy the best ingredients and we strive to honor them. It's simple and it's very complicated. We take our time and we cook with our hands.