Book part memoir, part cookbook

Elissa Altman's love affair with food can be traced back to her childhood.

Raised by a father who loved food and a mother who was scared of it, the conflicting philosophies resulted in a bipolar gastronomical background. Altman and her father secretly dined at the best restaurants in New York City, but went home to canned asparagus.

While the meals her mother made were nothing to blog about, the pageantry that surrounded them was.

“In my family, nice is perfectly fine. But fancy is always much better,” Altman writes in the first chapter of her memoir, “Poor Man's Feast: A Love Story of Comfort, Desire, and the Art of Simple Cooking” (Chronicle Books; March 5, 2013).

That explains how Altman, a Jewish foodie with a love of cheese and expensive cuts of meat, would spend years obsessed with all things edible. She'd fill her tiny Chelsea apartment with knives and cleavers, and prepare elaborate dinners designed to amaze.

Looking back, Altman acknowledges the spectacle that was her culinary experience. So focused on making food impressive, she neglected to appreciate its simplicity.

So how does she transform from fancy foodie to simple cooking extraordinaire?

Love.

“Love can change everything - if you're open to it,” Altman says in a recent phone interview.

It was her relationship with Susan Turner, now Altman's wife, who transformed Altman from a knife-wielding culinary perfectionist to a woman content with growing her own vegetables and herbs. For more than four years, Altman has blogged about the benefits of cooking simply on her James Beard award-winning blog, Poor Man's Feast. Her new book of the same name further illustrates her journey from more to less.

Part memoir and part cookbook, “Poor Man's Feast” shows how - and why - Altman shed her trappings of pageantry, leaving her apartment in the city for a home filled with animals in Connecticut.

Anyone who's ever moved from the city to the country will appreciate Altman's panic when she can't fulfill her craving for sliced pickled beef tongue at 3 a.m.

Anyone who had a parent obsessed with weight will understand how their fears affect your approach to food.

And anyone eager to impress a new love will sympathize as Altman tries to awe her girlfriend with fancy dishes, only to be rebuffed for more common fare.

A prizewinning writer, journalist and essayist writing on food and culture, Altman has the culinary know-how, but she never comes off as a know-it-all.

“Poor Man's Feast” is her story of how and why she chose to live a simpler life.

She leaves us wondering: If she can do it, why can't we?