"Où est le Garlic" -- French Cooking Codified

Do you ever think about a topic (say, French cooking) and feel as if you could boil it all down to a few simple principles -- a flowchart or two, a basic explanation of the equipment and materials needed, a few simple examples that would enable someone to grasp everything? In other words, one of those moments when everything is clear and your mind is enlightened?

Then do you wake up?

Two Deighton spy novels -- the first ones I found on our
bookshelves this morning. I admit that I haven't read them.

Reading Où est le Garlic: French Cooking in 50 Lessons by Len Deighton made me think of this kind of fantasy. Much better known for his spy novels, Deighton, in this short book, purports to tell you everything -- yes, EVERYTHING -- you could possibly need in order to be a skilled French home cook. "The really important things are all here," he says, though "some steps will require practice and sometimes the first attempt will be short of perfection." (page 8)

To me, the title tells you a lot about the author's attitude. It's so pretentious! The words "Où est le" are in student-level French, while the word garlic is English (the French word for garlic is ail, pronounced like the pronoun I ). Ouch.

The central approach of the book is to codify French techniques and recipes into a series of comic-strip lessons and summaries, along with text explanations, notes, and even flow charts. The illustrations were published as a newspaper column prior to being collected as a book. I think they would have been amusing when they appeared a few bits at a time. As a book, the whole comes across to me as vastly overreaching -- one of those fantasies that suddenly everything makes sense!

Some Sample Pages

Everything you need to know about French cooking equipment.

How to make choux pastry.

This one might work! You know, as easy as boiling water?

In addition to the mushroom hunting techniques he lists here, Deighton recommends that you buy a book
"that has coloured pictues to give you confidence." He warns "Most of the ones listed as inedible are
merely unpleasant to eat ... (but it's true that there are poisonous mushrooms)." Oh my!

I recently bought a copy of this book, which is long out of print since its publication in 1977. I'm curious about cookbooks by authors who wrote in very different genres, especially by mystery authors.