Trends go and come, but deliciousness is forever. Andy Baraghani would know. During his tenure at Bon Appétit magazine in the late 2010s, he was at the molten epicenter of food media influence. His sway continues on social media today, and his debut cookbook, "The Cook You Want to Be: Everyday Recipes to Impress," won a James Beard Award in 2023. This is a tome very much by an author of the moment and a writer who transcends it.
Foundational ingredients
Pickled chiles, yogurt tossed in every direction; glugs of fish sauce; herbs of all stripes used with indulgence — Baraghani's recipes have the trappings of fashionable cooking. But he comes by his kitchen foci honestly.
Herbs are an inherent element of Persian cuisine. Baraghani is Iranian American, so cilantro, dill and parsley are a green lifeforce of his upbringing. You experience them in his recipe for kuku sabzi, a verdant Persian precursor to frittata. Yogurt, too, is a keystone of Persian cooking. In "The Cook You Want to Be," Baraghani drags the fermented dairy into new frontiers: It becomes the base for both roasted sweet potato halves that have been slapped with spicy-sweet hazelnuts, and beets finished with mint and sesame seeds.
Those pickled chiles — and chiles in general — have no connection to Baraghani's childhood. "I'm not sure where my taste for the spicy stuff came from," he writes. "Both my parents have a low tolerance, but it's difficult for me to not make most of what I cook just a tad spicy." A guess: Years of cooking in restaurants, like Berkeley's Chez Panisse and New York City's Estela, along with eating in boundless others, instill an urge for salt, heat and acid. These, he knows, are some of the tools for transforming food from simply good to staggering.
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Big flavors, versatile dishes
Let's be clear: Baraghani's food is superb. He has a way with, for example, cucumbers. His eat-with-everything cucumber salad, dressed with grated ginger, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar and crushed sesame seeds, honors its name. It complements both kicky stir-fries and long-braised meats. Fried toasts with either vinegar and herbs (again!) or tomato and garlicky mayonnaise are sublime appetizer-snacks.
I have cooked his pork chops with toasted garlic and spicy capers at least four times. Each occasion I mutter and curse as I eat. The interplay of meaty, spicy, sharp and green in the pairing of seared pork with a quick sautéed sauce of capers, thin garlic slices, red pepper flakes, parsley and red wine vinegar is all that is righteous about cooking and dining. It is also a pristine representation of why "The Cook You Want to Be" sings. Shrewd technique, cunning flavor combinations and an author who not only wants you to succeed but shows you the trailheads to arrive there.
