A REVIEW from the SOHO JOURNAL
www.sohojournal.com
For those of us who find cooking for friends or loved ones more akin to Playing House than an expected and necessary part of our day, “The Unofficial Lazy Slut Cookbook,” by Rhoda Carroll Fairman, is a fun, playful guide to the oftentimes daunting world of the kitchen. This is made clear in one section of her introduction about potential deterrents to cooking: “The Wrong Man, The Right Man, the Wrong Pan, Money Loss,Weight Gain, New Diet, Old Diet, A Small Kitchen, A Very Small Kitchen and/or a kitchen that’s even smaller than that.”
The recipes throughout the chapters of the book, organized first by the different types of Meats, then Soups, “Stars of Starch”(Pastas and Potatoes), Veggies, and Desserts, are intended for an entire rainbow of busy women and creative men and their various culinary ailments. The chapters are headed with famous quotes, or humorous anecdotes about the subject and how its fashion has changed over time (“The mothers taught the daughters well. Instead of saying, ‘Eat fish, you’ll live longer,’ they probably said ‘Fish makes you sexy. I won’t let you eat any until you’re eighteen.”)
The recipes themselves come from actual friends of the author, and sometimes with a little back-story; they have fun names, are quite delicious, and indeed are easy to make, each requiring little more than an hour in total preparation time, and only several commonly found ingredients (unlike most conventional cookbooks which call for a dash of fresh basil and leaves the other 8 oz to rot in my refrigerator for a month). They also include tips for simplification, such as asking your butcher to cut the meat in advance, and their preparation is explained in simple, layman’s terms in a paragraph, rather than over a page. But for all its lack of pretension, “The Unofficial Lazy Slut Cookbook” contains some bangin’ recipes—my particular favorites are “Rosemary’s Roasted Rack of Lamb with Rosemary Au Jus,” (p.74) the “Simple Frittata,” (p. 95), and “Tiffany’s $100 Hamburger,” (p.55) which is pretty cheap to make, and absolutely dreamy. The desserts are great too, and laughably easy, showing how a little sugar and cream can really go a long way. Fairman ends the cookbook with a tip: “Put the coffee on first, before dinner starts. Then it’ll be ready for dessert. But you knew that, didn’t you? Oh, you didn’t. Well, now you do.”
The greatest thing about “The Unofficial Lazy Slut’s Cookbook” is Rhoda Carroll Fairman’ s emphasis on the “creative,, curative power in preparing food for people you love, like, respect, or just haven’t absolutely made up your mind to hate yet.” This truly comes through in the city of Bouley, Balthazar, and 8×10 kitchens, in the age of “Top Chef” and “Martha Stewart Living.” And while if you are a Lazy Slut, you may not be inclined to go out and buy this book, buy it as a present for another member of the tribe. It’ll surely prove fun and delicious.
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