Now, happily, there’s a third approach, exemplified in a trio of smart new cookbooks. These authors manage to keep faith with the vivid, complex flavors of traditional cuisines while acknowledg- ing the major obsessions of American home cooks: speed, fat grams and an intractable fear of weird ingredients.
For Mexican Light (416 pages. Bantam. $29.95), Martha Rose Shulman took on an especially tough challenge: Mexican food with a minimum of fat. But there’s life after lard. By emphasizing the natural- ly low-fat ingredients abundant in traditional Mexican cooking–including corn, beans, fish, chilies, garlic and cilantro–Shulman was able to streamline old favorites and dream up new ones. Her black-bean tostadas get their kick from cumin, fresh salsa and a sprinkling of roasted almonds; and a thoroughly nontraditional green salad with sweet potatoes is great.
The challenge for Madhur Jaffrey was just as daunting: whoever heard of a first-rate Indian meal that didn’t require bags of ingredients and hours in the kitchen? But Madhur Jaffrey’s Quick & Easy Indian Cooking (144 pages. Chronicle Books. $15.95) makes it happen. Reducing her ingredients and techniques to just a few essentials, she achieves bright, lively flavors that hold their own next to more labor-intensive cooking. Her curried tuna–plain old canned tuna, sautEed with ginger, cilantro and curry powder–is a revelation.
Faith Willinger takes no shortcuts; she doesn’t have to. Red, White & Greens (339 pages. HarperCollins. $25) shows how to cook vegetables the way Italians do, which means the recipes are inherently straightforward and delicious. An American who has lived in Florence for many years, Willinger makes a witty and insightful guide to such homey treasures as cabbage soup, bread salad and chicken with peppers. But pay attention to her chief fetish: perfectly fresh produce. As all three cooks know, the simpler the recipe, the more im- portant the ingredients. If there’s a downside to easy ethnic, it’s that persnickety shopping.
