Peasant's Alphabet

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

For Barber, getting food ready to eat is a vigorous, energetic
undertaking. Vegetables are plunged into water, herbs are tossed in by
the handful. Everything worth having is copious.

Barber writes as if he were in front of a camera, which is where he
performs his day job as Canada’s most famous TV cook. He hops about
the book, recounting bits of tradition and lore from around the world
while he chops, stirs, and adds garlic to every food stuff in sight.

His premise is simply “food is good”—who can argue with
that?—and preparing it is an activity that calls for joy. Joy, he
pronounces, is the most important ingredient in any kitchen.

You can almost hear the arias in the background as Barber leads us
through an unconventional alphabet of cooking. “C” is for cheap,
“J” is not only for joy but also for juniper and jerk, “K” is
for kisses and kale. “L ”is for love, lemons, and luxury, and
“Y” is for yearnings. It is transparent that the recipes packed into
the spaces between the alphabet essays have been imported from
Barber’s television show. They’re all short, use very few
ingredients, are very simple to prepare, and tend to be showy. Just the
thing if you need to entertain an audience while producing something
attractive that you can present with a flourish before the commercial
break.

There’s no order to the recipes; soups, entrees, beverages, desserts
may suddenly appear in any section, intermingling with vigor and joy.
Conventional logic took a holiday when the recipes were sorted. For
example, asparagus isn’t under “A,” but in the “L”
(“love”) chapter. If this is a stretch, try to locate the watermelon
juice recipe. It can be found under “U” for “unlikelies.”

The book is a riot. Ridiculous, as only a cookbook containing an essay
on farting can be. But great bedtime reading.