Yum.

That’s the watchword for the new Nora Ephron movie, Julie & Julia, in which Meryl Streep once again proves herself to be the screen actress without peer. Like the food she prepares, her performance is simply scrumptious.

“What do you like to do?” Paul asks Julia.

“Eat!” she says with her inimitable hoot. “I like to eat!”

And from this moment of insight, as simple as it is penetrating, a woman accustomed to getting things done set about to change the way Americans eat.

But how did Julie Powell swing this book deal and then this movie deal? To be portrayed by Amy Adams, and to garner Meryl Streep as your star takes moxie.

Amy Adams bubbles with her usual performance – perky and cute – with an occasional dramatic reach into pouty and cute. The angst of wanting to be a writer, however, is nowhere shown convincingly on screen.

Having taken a look at Julie Powell’s blog, however, Mr. Henry thinks perhaps Amy Adams may have been appropriately cast after all. It’s no wonder Julia dismissed Julie. Julia was a serious person, someone who wouldn’t waste her time or yours. No matter the subject, Julie writes sentences that are perky and cute spiced here and there with swear words. Like red pepper flakes on overcooked broccoli, it’s both overdone and under-imagined. The tone is breathy, squishy and, most damning, cheerful.

That Julie learned how to cook through Mastering the Art of French Cooking and took along thousands of readers along with her, however, is indeed commendable. Learning to cook enriches your life and the world around you. If you cook with what the French call intelligence, that is, practical good sense, you will perforce buy good local food which in turn promotes markets for that food.

Mr. Henry is not a jealous person but he wonders whether or not Judith Jones, famed Knopf editor, might possibly work him into her schedule. He’s thinking of which actor might portray him in the movie. Tyrone Power, Jr., perhaps?

Do you harbor the suspicion that high school mathematics only served to help get you into college? Do you maintain that polynomial equations should be banned as torture under the Geneva Convention?

You may be right, but basic middle-school mathematics remain essential to adult life, particularly the concept of ratio as amplified by Michael Ruhlman.

Baking always seems to be more wizardry than science. While rolling dough you must pay special attention to keep the butter from melting. With confidence only gained by experience, that is, the experience of failure, you must administer timely applications of ice water.

Firm in the belief that all sensuous pursuits require spontaneity, however, whenever Mr. Henry sings, bakes or makes love, he likes to wing it. And since winging it precludes thumbing through cookbooks searching for recipes, he rarely follows directions.

Ruhlman’s Ratio is the new bible for a chef in the heat of passion. No fumbling around for cookbooks. No fluttering the pages. No searching in the dark for your chef’s toque.

Do you judge a book by its cover? For Ratio, the book is the cover, that is, the treatise inside is summarized in the chart illustrated on the cover. Ratio is a Periodic Table of the elements of cooking, especially for custard, crust, dough and sauce.

Mr. Henry’s favorite ratio is phi, the golden ratio first described by Euclid in 300 BC (or very nearly). The angle of the Great Pyramid (Khufu) at Giza conforms precisely to this ratio. Some argue that the Parthenon does, as well.

The golden ratio is 1 to 1.6180339887.  Unique among positive numbers, the ratio of the short part to the long part is the same as the ratio of the long part to the whole. That is, A is to B as B is to A + B. This ratio occurs naturally in the arrangement of branches along stems as well as in the geometry of crystals. Throughout the Renaissance the golden ratio was considered to be the guiding principle of aesthetics.

What does the golden ratio have to do with food? Although Ruhlman fails to pursue this avenue of enquiry, a serious lacuna in his exegesis, fortunately for his readers Mr. Henry can report the surprising answer here:

Bread, the staff of life, man’s essential food, what Charles Issawi called “the only thing worth eating.”

In bread the ratio of water to flour is 3 to 5, close to the golden ratio of 10 to 16, arguably close enough to achieve mathematic and aesthetic harmony. Q.E.D.

This is the story of a duck that became a ham but failed to find happiness roasted atop lentils. Chopped into hash and sautéed in two spoons of its own pure white fat, however, the duck found bliss as simple peasant fare.

Following instructions has never been one of Mr. Henry’s signal virtues. He subscribes to the well-worn opinion that “a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” an argument applicable to husband or father, young or old. When banging kitchen pots and pans, a real man resents the intrusion of recipes. This applies equally when asking directions from his car.

What to cook for Valentine’s Day? What would be rich, robust, and lusty? Chocolate soufflé is well established, perhaps too well established.

Mr. Henry decided to do duck, a dish he rarely attempts principally because its stubborn flesh refuses to become tender. Either it emerges undercooked – chewy and bloody – or it emerges overcooked – dry and tough – its rich dark flavor forever lost in murky, carbonized grease.

For help Mr. Henry turned to a platter of figs, his favorite new cookbook.

After cutting away a thick winter’s layer of fat and skin, leaving only a modest covering, he brined duck sections for two days and then boiled them for 45 minutes. The results were neither beautiful nor appetizing.

In the leftover duck stock he cooked lentils which were quite tasty. Then he sautéed a mirepoix (diced carrots, celery, and onion) in duck fat. Mixed into the lentils, the result was scrumptious, precisely fulfilling the requisite Valentine profile of a rich, robust and lusty meal.

Because the duck hams were dry, oh so dry, Mr. Henry put the brined, boiled, and baked fowl out of its overwrought misery. He chopped the flesh into hash, giblets and all. Mixed with lentils and reheated in a skillet (with another tablespoon of duck fat), the mishmash magically transformed into a wintry romance.

The remaining ham stock will be used to make Boston baked beans. The remaining pint of rendered duck fat, Crisco of the gods, snowy promise of singular flavor, will be used to coat duck legs for that ultimate slow-cooked taste delight – confit – or else to make the very best fried potatoes.

Most of Mr. Henry’s friends don’t yet own a copy of Michael Ruhlman’s The Elements of Cooking, but soon enough they will.

Borrowing the format from The Elements of Style, Ruhlman’s book is an instant classic. Its prose has been lovingly reduced to a pure, essential cook’s stock. Essays on heat, sauce, and the egg are delightful. A short essay on the veal stock in itself is worth the price of the book.

 The essay on salt as the critical kernel of any cook’s knowledge, however, was the most surprising and most enlightening.

Do you really understand an emulsion?

Can you make sauce á la minute?

What is a “mother sauce?”

Should you salt meat ahead of time?

Do you understand the fundamental distinction between dry heat and moist heat?

How many knives do you have in your kitchen? (You only really need two.)

Should you cook tomatoes in your cast iron pan? (No.)

If you know the answers to these questions, you are already a genuine chef. In that case you will be pleased to read Ruhlman’s eloquent distillation of rules you learned the hard way. For the rest of the us, The Elements of Cooking is a free semester at cooking school.

For three days Mr. Henry stared at three little eggplants lying wistfully in the vegetable drawer of the refrigerator. On a hot afternoon in the Citarella market they were beautiful, purple and plump, the most attractive vegetables on display. He bought them without a care and without a plan. Then he faced a moment of decision.

Summer is a languorous time of year, a time when there is time to spare, a time for experimentation with short pants and odd vegetable preparations.

Mr. Henry makes a mean Moroccan zaalouk, a fine Lebanese babaganoush, a veritable ratatouille, and a convincing caponata. Although these are not difficult dishes, to roast them requires firing up the oven for a good 45 minutes, or in the case of the ratatouille and its Sicilian cousin caponata, preparing the other ingredients takes at least as long. Eggplant parmesan is even more of a chore. All are best avoided on hot summer afternoons when you don’t want to heat up the house.

Long ago he made a lightly-battered fried eggplant by first soaking eggplant slices in milk to combat the eggplant’s natural bitterness. Now that Mrs. Henry installed her fancy convection oven, what would happen if he simply soaked eggplant slices and then blasted them in the convection oven? Would he get a mushy eggplant ragout that fell apart on the spatula? Would he get an eggplant rigor mortis permanently fused to the pan?

In this perilous world, boldness and cunning have their rewards. Milk may not be an ingredient that leaps to mind when considering the eggplant. In Consider the Oyster, however, the peerless M.F.K. Fisher (John Updike called her “our poet of the appetites.”) lists a dozen recipes for oyster stew (which is not really a stew at all, but that is another discussion). All but one recipe contain milk, and lots of it.

What about buttermilk?? Such a pairing could be interesting. But where to look for spices and flavor ideas? Both buttermilk and eggplant are found in Middle Eastern cuisine. Given that eggplant has been central to Jewish cuisine, perhaps Claudia Roden in her masterful The Book of Jewish Food might have an answer.

Turkic peoples, Iranians, and Indians often use a spiced yogurt dressing but, alas, Claudia does not include recipes containing both eggplant and buttermilk.

Not dissuaded by the absence of traditional recipes, Mr. Henry seized his chance. After all, we live in the New World. Marinating for several hours in buttermilk and a bit of nutmeg, eggplant slices were cooked two ways: half were fried in olive oil, half were baked. Slowly fried in olive oil, slices emerged crispy and perfectly ready to eat. After 15 minutes the baked slices received a topping of grated parmesan and bread crumbs and then went back in the oven for another 25.

Curiously, although the baked slices were good, not mushy, fried slices came out better. They had that desirable crunchy exterior and soft interior. As Kit Pollard remarked in an inspired moment on her blog Mango & Ginger, they remind one of soft shell crab. Indeed, the eggplant is a mysterious playmate.

In the end, however, neither preparation with buttermilk exceeded the pleasure of a first class caponata enjoyed with a Rosso di Montalcino. Perhaps our Old World ancestors knew something after all.

“Luv” back at you, Poochie, for your comprehensive and very informative letter on Disney restaurants.

At Epcot and at the resort hotels they do serve passable fare. Mr. Henry has eaten at the Swan and Dolphin, at the Beach and Yacht Clubs, and at most of the country pavilions, but he has yet to eat anything really delicious. The hamburger at Spoodles was probably the best meal he had in all of Disney World (with Sam Adams on tap, to boot).

At Animal Kingdom, soaked from hat to shoes after the Kali River raft ride, he froze solid in the Rainforest Cafe’s air conditioning even before being seated in their windy frigidarium.

The real problem at Disney World is not the absence of good food but the near impossibility of getting a table. You have to book months in advance. (“Is a 5:00 reservation alright?”) A vacation lacks a certain spontaneity when you know exactly where and when you’ll be eating lunch and dinner each day.

Pilgrim writes that the Moroccan restaurant at Epcot serves great food. Well, yes but not quite. Mr. Henry ate there once and remembers it as a pale approximation of the real thing. Paradoxically, Moroccan cooking is one of the great undiscovered cuisines of the world, but not for lack of restaurants.

After his first trip to Morocco Mr. Henry, high on the vapors of couscous and nectarines, decided to abandon his research into modern Moroccan cultural and political history so as to write a Moroccan cookbook instead, one that captured the genius of Esther’s recipes. Landing on the American shore, he straightaway went to the bookstore to discover a freshly published book by a first time writer, Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco by Paula Wolfert (1973).

Although Mr. Henry may cavil with the inclusion of smin (rancid butter) in some recipes, a special bugaboo of his, the book is a monumental achievement. In addition to capturing the wild spirit of the place, Wolfert offers a spot-on description of the most celebrated and difficult Moroccan dish, basteela, (Paula calls it basteeya) a savory pie of braised squab, curdled eggs, and toasted almonds. You haven’t lived until you’ve tasted a great one.

On reading Wolfert’s Couscous, Mr. Henry abandoned his high ambition and returned to the drear of academe, defeated and directionless.

Wolfert noted then that no restaurant anywhere – not in Fez, Marrakech, or Paris – prepares food that even approximates the delicacy and refinement served at home. This remains true even today 35 years later.

Mr. Henry believes the clue to this riddle lies in the sexist and medieval division of labor that marks Moroccan society. Although women do all the cooking at home, and all the rest of the housework as well, they are not permitted to leave home to run service businesses like restaurants. Consequently, no Moroccan restaurant anywhere has a real Moroccan chef in the kitchen.

At Epcot last month, having been refused service by Europe and North America, Mr. Henry quickly dusted off his Arabic as he approached the hostess of the Moroccan pavilion. “Do you have a table for seven?” he asked flawlessly. She disappointed him both by refusing to find a table and by responding in French, the same way the deracinated Algerian youth in Paris respond, despite their militant identité arabe. Oh well. Mr. Henry’s high hopes were bound to be disappointed, and not for the first time, either.

Wolfert, by the way, now lives in San Francisco. Only in California, where the climate mimics Morocco’s, can you find the exceptionally flavorful tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and the like that are essential to Moroccan cuisine.

January is the time when Mr. Henry hides from creditors and curls up to read the books he received at Christmas.

From the marvelous Maria came Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well by Pellegrino Artusi, a book so full of wit and style, even cookbook haters will love it. First published in 1891 and never out of print, it is an essential food source book unavailable in English translation until 1997. Here are some sample quotes from the introduction:

Cooking is a troublesome sprite. Often it drives you to despair. Yet it is also very rewarding, for when you do succeed, or overcome a difficulty in doing so, you feel the satisfaction of a great triumph.

If you do not aspire to become a premier cook, you need not have been born with a pan on your head to become a good one. Passion, care, and precision will certainly suffice.

Life has two principal functions: nourishment and the propagation of the species. Those who turn their minds to these two needs of existence, who study them and suggest practices whereby they might best be satisfied, make life less gloomy and benefit humanity.

But let me tell you, and I say this reluctantly, that with our century tending toward materialism and life’s enjoyments, the day shall soon come when writings of this sort will be more widely sought and read than the works of great scientists, which are of much greater value to humanity.

Blind is the man who cannot see this! The days of seductive, flattering ideals, the days of the hermits, are coming to an end. With greater eagerness that it ought to, the world is rushing to the wellsprings of pleasure, and those who know how to temper this dangerous inclination with healthy morals shall take the palm.

Some of Artusi’s ingredients are rare in today’s markets – ox marrow, for example. Most recipes, however, seem quite contemporary. He chose representative dishes from every corner of Italy but did not fall victim to local hype. On typical regional specialties he lavished praise or criticism in equal measure. Some dishes will surprise the experienced gourmand. His Bolognese sauce, for example, has no tomato. Pensa!