Who’s easy now?

Here’s the quote that caused the trouble, from a recent story I wrote about preserved lemons: “Preserved lemons can take a month – certainly not less than two weeks. By that time, I’ve put aside my North African cookbooks and I’m on to an easy French or Hunan cookbook, or a book that’s all about ice cream or pickles.” [emphases added].

One commenter took exception.  “Easy? Clearly, this gal has never tackled too many French cookbooks.”  This prompted a smile.  Oh, if only she knew how many French cookbooks I’ve tackled!

But the comment made me think.  Of course, what I had been referring to was the category “easy French”, which is a newish one – books like The Little Paris Kitchen and last year’s The Bonne Femme Cookbook.  But “easy French” is still a contradiction in terms for much of the cookbook-buying public.  Unlike, say, “easy Italian,” “easy French” still seems to protest too much.

So what cuisines do people consider genuinely  easy?  Well, I think Italian qualifies, unless maybe you’re making the timpano from Big Night (1996).  Every time you throw together a pasta, you sort of feel like it’s Italian, the same way that when you throw together a stir-fry, a lot of the time you sort of feel like it’s Chinese.  That makes Italian and Chinese feel like easy cuisines, even though we all know that in a million delicious ways, they can both be really difficult.

But there are a few other nationalities that are making the big bid for “easy” these days.  “Easy Thai,” for example.  With the widespread availability of Thai curry pastes, a lot of cooks are willing to buy into to the idea that Thai food can be a 30-minutes in-a-hurry on-a-weeknight kind of meal.  Then there’s “Easy Mexican,” which has historically been a harder sell than “Easy Tex-Mex”.  Just look at Rick Bayless’s books.  Whereas Rick Bayless’ Mexican Kitchen was a tribute to authenticity–chiles roasted and soaked and ground in a stone mortar and all–his later books have gone from cooking one plate at a time to cooking with teens to cooking weeknights to just plain partying with dips and cocktails.  And “Easy Indian”! I guess as soon as McCormick started marketing garam masala, that was a foregone conclusion.

There’s even a sort of easy Persian cookbook coming up, I’ve noticed.  There’s a cuisine whose cookbooks have been the opposite of easy for many years.  (As usual, I blame it on the grandmothers.  Any country whose grandmothers cook harder than Iron Chef – I’m looking at you, France! and Burma! and Venezuela! – is not an automatic contender for the “easy” category)

What is it that drives a cuisine in the “easy” direction rather than the “authentic” direction (the way regional Italian cookbooks were in the 80’s, the way Southern books were a decade ago, the way Japanese cookbooks seem to be going now)?  Maybe it’s the mood of the country (or its cooks).  Maybe it’s the accessibility of the ingredients?  I don’t know – and I wouldn’t want to have to choose between “easy” and “authentic”.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s a big world, and it takes all kinds, both the Easy and the Not So.