Salt Fat Acid Heat: A Cookbook Journey

Back in January when there was flurries and fluctuating temperatures, I let the internet decide the fate of my yearly cookbook journey. Several rounds of voting and one dwindling bracket later, the good people on the world wide web chose Salt Fat Acid Heat. 

I was ecstatic that this was the decided cookbook. I had been intrigued with chef Samin Nosrat’s work since watching her Netflix docu-series special. Her journey from eating one night at Chez Panisse to deciding to dedicate her life to the culinary arts is nothing short of fascinating. The show became ingrained in my brain whenever I decided to whip something up in the kitchen with available ingredients. Now, just about every time I start cooking my brain goes through the checklist of salt, fat, acid, and heat. This was all before I even opened a single page in her book.

Once the Amazon package arrived and I tore open the bubble wrap envelope, the first month or so was spent sitting down and reading the actual book. This isn’t your typical cookbook or recipes where you can skim the pages or click a button to scroll to the ingredients at the bottom. This was a cooking literary journey. Through the first half of the book I learned different structures of salt, studied flavor maps of the world, and found the different roles fat can play in dishes. In a way, it was as if I picked up a textbook and was studying how to cook. It was once I committed some of these key lessons to memory, then I could pick up a pan and start cooking. Well, get closer towards that step anyways.

I have always loved the Vietnamese noodle soup, Pho, but Salt Fat Acid Heat finally gave me the courage to make it at home.

Another factor I needed to figure out is how to tackle Samin’s recipes. In general, her recipes aren’t structured like a traditional cookbook where you can flip to the breakfast section and whip up a frittata. While there are categories like salads, sauces, and meats, knowing what to pair together to make a meal requires a little more thinking. I ended up using a handy dandy Excel spreadsheet like a Blue’s Clues notebook and got to work organizing.

I pieced together different aspects of the book like clues to a mystery, color coding here and citing sources there. Once the spreadsheet came together, I was able to look at it as a whole and solve the dilemma. It was as if the lightbulb had turned on over my head. I needed to cook through the cookbook based on the season.

I had never tried making Persian food before, and I have enjoyed experimenting with flavors from the Middle East  over the past few months.

In reality, cooking based on the season is not a life changing concept. It’s something that has been done for millennia before the invention of giant supermarkets and overnight cross continental shipping. But it is a key component that makes food taste better, and Samin reminded me of that when I was flipping through the pages of the first part of the book. I was brought back to growing up around gardens in rural west Tennessee where we ate blackberries straight from the bush and picked the reddest tomatoes from the vine. These are the flavors I wanted to focus on recreating in a new and exciting way.

So far, the recipes and recommendations in Salt Fat Acid Heat have pushed me in my culinary journey. For some of the more basic recipes, like making homemade mayonnaise, I recruited my sister-in-law in culinary school to show me the best techniques. Other recipes have not been as technically challenging but have challenged my tastebuds, like trying Persian food for the first time. Overall, I feel this new cooking endeavor has been educational yet leisurely. I look forward to transitioning from the bright summer recipes full of cucumber and tomato salads to the warm recipes of fall like roasted squash with sage and hazelnut. I have a feeling my kitchen will be smelling a lot like cinnamon and ginger this fall as I continue my Salt Fat Acid Heat adventure.

Samin's granola was the perfect blend of salty and sweet. I look forward to trying more sweet recipes this Autumn.