The Kitchen Counter Cooking School (28 page)

“All I can say is that my food is heartfelt and not pretentious because that's who I am, so that's the way that I cook. That's what you'll see.”

That season I watched Robin struggle on
Top Chef
. Her lack of culinary training did put her at a disadvantage at times when challenges called for complex dishes with tactics such as deconstruction or refined haute cuisine techniques. She was criticized more harshly by her fellow contenders than she was by any of the celebrity judges. At one point, I cringed when a chef in his twenties referred to her as “Grandma”; Robin and I are around the same age. Another complained that she wasn't even “a real chef.”

What defines a chef, anyway? What defines any of us? I had a culinary degree, but Robin had spent a dozen years cooking in the culinary industry and owned a successful restaurant for five of those. If lack of a culinary degree disqualifies, what about all the Michelinranked chefs who worked their way up the food chain as apprentices?

It takes guts to go on a national reality show, especially one essentially devoted to fetishizing the entire concept of cooking. It was that foodie bubble all over again. In my kitchen, she was generous with her knowledge, patient, and encouraging. It struck me that in a curious way Robin could be a stand-in for home cooks looked down on by culinary elitists.

I thought back to the original questionnaires. Shannon's mother had snipped that she burned everything, but in the space of six weeks, I'd seen no evidence of anything other than someone with terrific curiosity and an unrealized natural talent in the kitchen. Another person had admitted that she ate Tuna Helper while watching Gordon Ramsay. When I pressed her for a reason why, she responded that cooking felt beyond her reach and not worth attempting. She was so discouraged by her cooking skills that she declined to be a part of the project—and it was
free
.

“I think that one of the things that has ruined home cooking are the TV cooking shows,” said veteran cookbook author Rick Rodgers. In his life, he's taught more than five hundred cooking classes and met his share of struggling cooks. “First, the majority of the shows teach lots of stuff but cooking is not one of them.” When he sees twentysomethings obsessing about foam or rushing around the kitchen in a competitive cooking challenge, “it's kind of like watching pornography. I think I'd love to do that, but I'm afraid I'll throw out my back.”

I suppose that's what made Julia Child so endearing. Not long after the meat class, I looked up the episode of
The French Chef
in which she attempts to flip a pan-sized disk of potatoes. “When you flip anything, you just have to have the courage of your convictions,” she stated, even though she looked less than convinced that the whole thing was going to work. She gave the pan a shake and a hearty flip, but rather than landing neatly back in the pan, half of its contents fell and splattered on the stovetop. As she investigated the fallen pieces, she explained what went wrong. “When I flipped it, I didn't have the courage to do it the way I should have. You can always pick it up.”

Then came the moment that sealed her fans for a lifetime: “Besides, if you're alone in the kitchen, who is going to see?”

“Julia's little kitchen catastrophe was a liberation and a lesson,” wrote Michael Pollan in a story on the decline of home cooking in
The New York Times
in 2009. She offered a simple but obvious observation. “The only way you learn to flip things is to just flip them! It was a kind of courage—not only to cook but to cook the world's most glamorous and intimidating cuisine—that Julia Child gave my mother and so many other women like her.”

Perhaps that was her greatest contribution. She didn't limit herself to offering instructions on how to execute a particular dish, but instead imparted a more generalized sense of courage for cooks willing to navigate unfamiliar culinary terrain.

How often are we rewarded for going off the map anymore? Or given the freedom to trust ourselves and the permission to make mistakes, cooking or otherwise? My mother has many phrases, two worth noting here. “Who says you can't?” with emphasis on the “who” was her invariable refrain whenever any of her kids alleged that something simply couldn't be done. The other: “In a hundred years, no one will know the difference.”

So
who
says you can't cook? Not every meal has to be from scratch, nor does everything you consume have to be organic, locally sourced, and pasture raised. Try to find a comfortable place somewhere between Tuna Helper and
Top Chef
. If you burn, scorch, drop, overcook, undercook, underseason, or otherwise put a meal together that's less than a success, in the end it doesn't matter. It's just one meal. You'll make another one tomorrow. In a hundred years, no one will know the difference.

 

 

Season the main ingredient with coarse salt and ground pepper.

Brown the meat thoroughly in oil over medium-high heat.

Sauté a mix of aromatics, such as onions, garlic, shallots, leeks, carrot, or celery, or even fruit, such as apples or pears, in some oil.

Add some liquid, such as water, stock, or wine. Stir to scrape up any browned bits on the bottom of the pan; this is known as “deglazing.”

Return the meat to the pan and cook until thoroughly tender, from 2 to 5 hours.

If desired, take out the meat, vegetables, or fruit from the pan and remove any extraneous fat. Thicken the sauce by boiling it until some evaporates; this is known as “reducing.”

 

 

Use a heavy pan with a tight-fitting lid (see note on Dutch ovens on page 171).