The Pot And How To Use It

[jazzfish]

Roger Ebert, The Pot and How to Use It: The Mystery and Romance of the Rice Cooker

This is not a cookbook. The "recipes" section makes up maybe a quarter of the book. It's not a cooking reference: the cooking tips have been scattered throughout the text.

Ostensibly it's a paean to the glory of the rice cooker. In reality, it's a Roger Ebert essay about cooking. Not Cooking, where you have recipes and spend four hours slaving over something delicious, but cooking meals that are easy, not time-consuming, and reasonably tasty. It's just that all of them can be made in a rice cooker. Including sauteeing onions.

The conversational style works well. Ebert's slightly crotchety, sometimes exasperated, voice gives the book a "no really this is not that hard" tone, which makes it easy to read. I never got the sense that he was lecturing or ranting. Even the frequent "eat healthier" bits come across less as tirades and more as cooking advice.

Sadly the essay makes up only half the book. I've mentioned the recipes, which seem decent enough but I've not actually tried any of them. The last (well, third) quarter of the book is culled from the best of the comments to the original blog post. This is probably the weakest section: still fun reading, but it could have stood to be more heavily edited. The commenters just aren't Roger, and their words fare poorly in the comparison.

If you like Ebert's movie reviews or blog posts (I do), you'll like this. If you're casting about desperately for some way to make good cheap food on a strict budget and/or in a tiny kitchen, you'll get some use out of it. It's not going to tell you what to do and how to do it. It's more intended to get you thinking about things that you can do.

Comments

[pictsy.livejournal.com]

I got a little rice cooker for Christmas! Still haven't tried it, though, what with all the leftovers.

[jazzfish]

I look forward to reports of your culinary experimentation! Once the Xmas leftovers are done, anyway.

[tam_nonlinear]

See, having read Ebert's blog post some time ago, I have a expectation of rice cooker enthusiast.

So when my dad told me he'd bought a rice cooker, he was (understandably) confused by my enthusiasm.

Me: Really? What are you going to cook with it?
Him: Rice.
Me: That's it?
Him: Yes. You see, it's a rice cooker.
Me: ... fine. Be that way.

[jazzfish]

Heh. Understandable. Has he been convinced to cook other things in it yet?

[notmatt]

I basically only use mine for making rice. But I do that rather a lot. Mine has a steamer insert, but my attempt at steaming artichokes with it was a dismal failure.

[jazzfish]

I'm not sure whether I believe in steamed veggies or not. (Although I wonder how well one could steam dumplings in The Pot. Hmm.)

[(Anonymous)]

I really like steaming veggies with things IN the water. E.g., broccoli with lemon juice splashes. Cauliflower with vermouth. Mmm.

[jazzfish]

Greetings, anonymous commenter!

Part of my problem with steamed veggies is that many of the veggies that one steams are veggies I physically can't stand. Like broccoli: the scent of cooked broccoli is literally, physically, repulsive to me. Or cauliflower, or spinach, or kale, or any of a number of other such things.