For a Michelin-starred, Food & Wine Best New Chef Paul Virant (Vie, Perennial Virant) has the modest manner of a natural-born Midwesterner (St. Louis to be precise). So when he claims to have written a cookbook that has a whole new way of cooking in it, he immediately looks a bit sheepish and hurries to give credit to all the different inspirations that have informed his work over the years. Still, look through his new The Preservation Kitchen, written with Kate Leahy (A16: Food + Wine), and tell us there isn't something to be said for his book being one of the few that really takes a fresh perspective on how cooking works. In fact, it's two books. The first is a guide to preserving the bounty of farms and farmers' markets; there, its distinction is that, in a world full of homey guides to putting up food, here's a chef offering a range of more sophisticated, restaurant-level canning and pickling recipes. The second, which is the more novel part, tells you how to use the things you've preserved in a wide range of recipes. If Chicago food is about anything, it seems, it's about using acidity to add sparkle to dishes, and this is his guide to using the flavors of preservation as elements within a dish — not to scream "pickled!" but to heighten the natural flavors of your ingredients. We met him at Perennial Virant to talk about his book, which comes out next Tuesday.
