The Art of Simple Food

Lisa was worried about how we would deal with another year in Chicago, if it comes to that, and I responded that we would have to commit to projects. I thought about Sophie Calle, how she ate a "chromatic-diet" consisting of food of only one color on any given day. How could we adapt her kind of thinking? I thought, what if we focused on one food book, preferably in our collection, for a span of two weeks, preparing at least one recipe per day. This way we could meaningfully get to know the books we own, the chefs, styles, and forms. The results would be delicious and the longterm effects significant. Lisa agreed. We determined the only loophole will be that if three consecutive dishes are terrible we can abandon a book in favor of another. The project will last indefinitely.

Lisa chose The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters to begin because it is a seminal work and the recipes are not complicated. The food should be pleasant, getting us off to an auspicious beginning, and now that the farmer's market is open we can get the fresh ingredients necessary to execute many of these ingredient-centered recipes.