Books |
The Kitchen Whisperers: Cooking with the Wisdom of Our Friends
Dorothy Kalins
By
Published: Sep 07, 2021
Category:
Food and Wine
It’s said that the French kings had Lafite rubbed on the lips of their newborns so they’d enter life knowing a standard of quality. As a first taste memory, that’s hard to top. I can’t recall mine, but I don’t imagine it was more luxurious than custard or farina. Yours, I’d guess, is just as ordinary — we were born too late for chef-created taste sensations. Because cooks write more than cookbooks, we get to read about meals others had in days gone by. There are so many good ones. I’ll never get enough of A.J. Liebling’s Paris in Between Meals or the descriptions of dinners James and Kay Salter served in Life Is Meals. And then there’s M.F.K. Fisher, and…
And now we have “The Kitchen Whisperers: Cooking with the Wisdom of Our Friends,” by Dorothy Kalins. Readers of a certain age will recall Metropolitan Home magazine, which she founded and edited. More relevant to this book, she was the founding editor of Saveur, a magazine that made you want to get on a plane and, on arrival in some esoteric destination, go directly to a restaurant. She was Executive Editor of Newsweek when it was a real magazine and was the first woman ever named Adweek’s Editor of the Year. She is the co-author of books by chefs in the Danny Meyer universe. I’ve praised The Gramercy Tavern Cookbook and V Is for Vegetables. And she is the godmother to the Canal House cooks.
The résumé dazzlies. The person dazzles me more. And this presents a hurdle to me as a reviewer, because I wrote a batch of profiles for Dorothy at Met Home and then, decades later, became her friend. Now Dorothy and her husband, the filmmaker Roger Sherman, are in my Lifeboat crew. In the absence of objectivity, may I say I enjoyed her book? May I say I commend it? [ To buy “The Kitchen Whisperers” from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
If I can’t honorably review the book, I can honorably grill the author…
JK: “A book about cooking, about what — and who — we think about as we cook.” If I start thinking about people, I could accidentally cut off a finger. Do you really do this?
DK: Of course! That’s the book: the people I think about as I cook. And when I explain the idea, I’m delighted to see the inevitable smile as people connect with their own memories. I will freely admit to being slightly nuts, which is probably why my publisher wouldn’t buy the subtitle: “Cooking with the Voices in Our Heads.”
JK: Your book begins, correctly, with your mother. How about your other whisperers?
DK: Writing about my mother doesn’t mean she influenced me the most. I think we all remember selectively and randomly. It wasn’t until I began to write that many origin stories started to come back to me. A central idea is that we all have such memories and stories, and to gently urge readers to look at their own kitchen practices and to stop and think about and value the folks who put them there.
JK: You wrote most of this book during the 2020 lockdown, when restaurants struggled to survive and the homebound learned to cook and socializing with chefs was almost impossible. What was it like to write in that dark time?
DK: Writing was pretty much the only thing I could do last year and I am very lucky to have had this project to draw me to my office and fill up my days (and nights when I’d run in to write down a sentence at 3AM, knowing that it would be gone by morning).
JK: Reading Liebling’s “Between Meals,” I’m reading about a Paris that ended a century ago. I don’t think, “I wish I could go.” Reading your book now — as intelligent restaurants require masks and proof of vaccination and our attention is drawn to other issues like, say, the survival of human life on the planet — I acutely feel nostalgic. And old. Some of the people you write about… they’re gone. I feel I’m reading an elegy for a golden age that’s lost. Do you think it’s lost? Capable of revival? Capable of evolving?
DK: It is not lost. Christopher & Melissa are currently running a restaurant, cooking splendid food (you should go to Sunday dinner at Canal House Station. Not a long drive and an extraordinary experience). David Tanis is now in Los Angeles starting a new restaurant in the Hammer Museum with Alice Waters. Mike Solomonov and Steven Cook are running world-acclaimed Zahav and have 7 other restaurant brands. Michael Anthony rides his bike from our building to run Gramercy Tavern every single day. Just because we Covid-shy folks may not be going to restaurants much, these cooks and chefs I’ve written about press on.
JK: Your book deals with the beauty side of food. We now know about methane as an environmental problem, the horrific conditions of meat production, chemical fertilizers used in industrial farming. At the same time, we see more home gardens and farmer’s markets and meatless burgers. Beyond working on books like “V Is for Vegetables,” do you now look to do projects that are on the side of the angels?
DK: I’ve been really lucky to work with — and to choose to work with — cooks and chefs who have a reverence for real food; any chef worth his sel de mer insists on the best products he/she can get his hands on: Christopher, David, Mike & Michael. It’s where we are intellectually and, I suppose, morally.
JK: Your book contains stories about Marcella Hazan I’ve read nowhere else. Your favorite Marcella Hazan recipe?
DK: There are so many, but I guess the one I use most is her simple tomato sauce: a can of tomatoes, butter, one onion, salt, and forty-five minutes. I wish she and Victor had a dollar for every time it saved dinner in America.
JK: Marcella taught you to wait until the pasta water is boiling to add salt. Why?
DK: Probably because the flavor is stronger, not diluted by boiling.
JK: You’ve got a midnight deadline. 500 words to go. What’s for dinner?
DK: Good one! A frittata: Turn on the broiler. Sauté a sliced onion in olive oil in a saucepan, then add whatever greens and a few fresh herbs I have and wilt them. Add 4 beaten eggs and cook till almost set. Sprinkle over whatever cheese I have and slide the skillet under the broiler till melted & crispy.
JK: You mention Kalustyan’s, my go-to for spices. Other favorite sources?
DK: I mention many in the book. D’Artagnan for duck and that cassoulet kit. Soom Sesame Tahini Paste. Rancho Gordo dried beans. New York Shuk harissa. Heritagefoods.com for politically correct farm-raised organic turkey. Maya Kaimal Inspired Indian Food, especially her simmer sauce. Funky Italian fish markets for dried salt cod. And more…
JK: Essential kitchen tools?
DK: A large salad spinner. A manual citrus squeezer. A set of pastry scrapers. A 2-cup Pyrex measuring cup. A French mortar and pestle. And I’m an enthusiastic convert to this handheld blender.
JK: Victor Hazan: “’Making dinner now comes close to the bottom on most people’s list.” Agree? If so, is there a way to reverse this?
DK: I think the pandemic had a sinister way of reversing this trend. I do think, sourdough bread aside, that having to cook made many people discover or rediscover their cooking chops.
JK: Confession time: Popeye’s chicken? Big Mac?
DF: I’m a salty crunchy girl: potato chips, French fries, popcorn (organic & popped in olive oil!).
JK: Do you dream about food? Do your dead whisperers whisper to you?
DK: I do dream about cooking, not about meals I’ve had in restaurants, but cooking for/with friends at home. And of course the dead still whisper! Endless examples in the book: Camille Lehman, my Aunt Gillie, Lola Mae, that French grandmother, my mother.
JK: Do you miss regular, frequent publication and a biggish readership? Do you feel (and resist) the lure of a blog and podcast?
DK: YES! YES! And YES!
JK: Ever want to have a restaurant of your own?
DK: NEVAIRE!!
