Pot on the Fire: Further Confessions of a Renegade Cook

How to come up with yet more laudatory adjectives to describe the continuing excellence and inventiveness of America's premier philosopher of food? If the sustained historical reckonings of Thorne's last book, the ambitious Serious Pig, overwhelmed some readers, this one will gladden the hearts of fans of the looser IACP/Julia Child Award-winning Outlaw Cook. Thorne, who has relocated from the northerly reaches of Maine to Northampton, Mass., here abandons his forages into dour Puritan food culture and throws himself joyfully into the pursuit of, among other things, the perfect pizza, the ideal savory breakfast and the quintessential Vietnamese sandwich. As usual, Thorne's exploratory approach to cooking leads to the debunking of much conventional wisdom. He discovers, for example, that risotto, theoretically a finicky dish, is in fact simple and forgiving; that homemade bread, so often coveted in its fresh-baked state, is perhaps more breadlike two days later. ""Knowing Nothing about Wine"" reveals more in 17 pages about wine drinking (and wine anxiety) in this country than any number of full-length books. Illuminating disquisitions on pot-cooks vs. knife-cooks, the Irish potato famine and the legacy of Richard Olney divert Thorne from practical experimentation, but he always ends up back in the kitchen. Such is his giftDthe ability to range back and forth from armchair to stove top, inspiring cooks and readers alike. (Nov. 14)