The Kitchen Counter Cooking School (43 page)

She had Brussels sprouts that had somehow gotten overlooked at Thanksgiving. She'd never made them before, but she figured she'd give them a sauté. We could smell bread baking in the oven. Jodi opened her fridge door to reveal a plastic bin with dough nestled into the center. “I've used more flour in the last three or four months than I've ever used in my entire life! I got a couple of big plastic containers for white and whole wheat flour, and I'm refilling them all the time.”

“I make a version that's kind of half wheat and half white now. My son likes it and I like to make it. I find it rewarding to pull hot bread from the oven, and it's something that I can make after work at least a couple of times a week.”

She proudly showed off her new copy of
Joy of Cooking.
“This summer completely changed the way that I think about cooking and nutrition, especially around processed foods, you know? I have tried a ton of recipes, which I would have
never
done before. Also, we buy way more organic now and I read the labels on everything. Don't get me wrong, I'm still not making mayonnaise from scratch or anything like that, but I've come a long way.”

On my earlier visit, the small walk-in had been packed with cases of canned and boxed goods stacked in piles on the floor. Now it looked organized and functional, and notably absent were ultraprocessed foods, save for a few boxes of macaroni and cheese. “I tried to eat through a lot of things like canned tomatoes, but some of the stuff I cleared out and took to a food bank.”

Her fridge was similarly less cluttered. In her fridge door was a jar of parsley pesto, a tip she had taken from Chef Thierry. She was still working on eating through the freezer.

Inventory over, she went back to her cutting board. She tenderly separated leaves from a few sprigs of rosemary, chopped garlic, and effortlessly seasoned her chicken as she talked. She seemed as if she had been doing it for years. Even so, she still feared falling into the gender role that had trapped her mother in what Jodi viewed as a life of voluntary servitude.

“I don't mind cooking, as long as my husband and I both agree that it's a partnership and it's not just
my
job,” Jodi said. “I think that it should be about who gets home first rather than the assumption that I'm supposed to do it, even if, to be honest, I rather like to cook now.”

Interestingly, her newfound interest in the kitchen both gave her equal footing and threatened the delicate balance of the power that had existed when her husband was the main cook in the family.

“We've had a couple of arguments about cooking, but that's probably because I never used to have an opinion.” She now rejected suggestions and debated technique. Recently, she made a dish that left a layer of food stuck to the bottom of a skillet. Her husband kept scrubbing and complaining. “I said, ‘Hey, it's no big deal. Just deglaze it.' He was all ‘What?' I said, ‘Get the pan hot and add some liquid. It will come right off.'” He kept scrubbing and finally threw the pan in the sink in disgust. “I went to the stove, got it hot, and added water, and it was clean like that,” she said, snapping her fingers. “Ha, so I knew that, and he didn't.”

“So, this is funny,” she said in an obvious move to change the conversation. “I have been trying to find a recipe for Japanese curry that doesn't use a cube. But all the Japanese people I asked say they use the dang box! I'd say, ‘Hey, don't you know what's in that?'” She laughed. “So I asked a food writer friend who is Asian, and she thought it was a great question. So she's going to research it and I'm going to help with recipe testing.”

So while she still makes golden curry, she's thinking about it more and making it less. “I know this sounds dumb, but I used to think that the stuff in a box was something you couldn't make. Now I know they all just mimic real foods, so if it's in a box, there's got to be a way to make it for real. If you go to a good restaurant in Japan, then they'll have this same curry and it's amazing. So I guess that's my holy grail now. One day I will learn how to make that same curry
without
the darn cube!”

Dri had moved from the hood into a comfortable condo in a leafy urban neighborhood. “The greatest thing? I'm just across the street from Mutual Seafood,” she said, naming one of the city's most respected seafood outlets.

Dri seemed happy and relaxed. She also looked as if she'd lost a bit of weight. Compared to her former one-cook-is-too-many-sized kitchen, her new one seemed vast and luxurious with its open plan, dark maple wood cabinets, and stainless steel appliances. “It's great. I sometimes wake up in the morning and think, Wow, I live here. I feel like such a grown-up.”

She had a basket on her counter filled with the kinds of stuff that she had discussed abandoning in the final class: dehydrated soup mixes, pasta side dishes, broccoli soup mix, and corn muffins among the lot. She blushed, a bit embarrassed.

“So this is awkward,” she said. “I did a favor for my friend and as a thank-you gift she gave me this lovely basket with all this packaged stuff.” She could not stifle her laughter. “It was such a nice idea, but I thought, I just don't do that anymore. I guess for some people it's a treat, but now I know better.”

Like a lot of people who live on their own, Dri reported that she found it hard to get motivated to cook for one. “The project amplified the importance of taking time to cook and actually to make it a priority,” she said. “Plus it changed the way that I plan and stock my kitchen by about 175 million percent. I know that's a really big number, but it's true.”

She opened a cabinet to show off a collection of oils and vinegars. “I got most of this stuff after our lesson in salad dressings.” She'd stocked up on red wine, balsamic, and champagne vinegars, soy sauce, sesame oil, and a good extra-virgin olive oil. “One big takeaway was that you don't need to go out and buy something specific, but use what you've got. I can make an almost endless variation of dressings. I used to eat plain steamed vegetables, which are pretty blah and hard to get excited about. Now I think, Huh, what can I put together to make those actually taste
good
?”

The contents of Dri's French door–style stainless fridge resembled those of other volunteers, with a bouquet of greens in water and a plastic container with bread dough. “I don't shop for meals as much as I shop for basics, which I consider onions, carrots, celery, garlic, lemons, limes, and a few other ingredients. I always have those on hand now,” she explained. “I feel like I can make most anything from these staples.”

This is radically different from the way she used to shop. “I used to go to the grocery store or a farmers' market and I'd see all these various things and think, Oh, that looks good, this looks good. I'd buy a whole bunch of random stuff. But then I wouldn't really have anything in mind about what to do with it. That's where a lot of my food waste came from.” Dri said she made many decisions with Thierry's voice in her head. “Now when I look at something highly perishable, I think, Okay, if I buy that, then what am I going to do with it in the next two days?”

As she chatted, Dri started dinner. She moved with calm purpose as she chopped vegetables for a curried cucumber salad with a new chef's knife and pulled a beautiful small loaf of bread from her oven. Where Dri had dubiously poked at her chicken only a few months earlier, that night she demonstrated how to “spatchcock,” a technique in which the backbone is removed to butterfly a whole chicken so that it lies flat to cook faster and more evenly. “I learned this from
Cook's Illustrated
. The editors use poultry shears, which I don't own. It's a little tricky with a knife but it works.”

She put her weight down on the backbone to break it. Using the tip of her chef's knife, she made a surgical-like outline around the length of the spine. With one big tug, she ripped out the backbone and set it aside. She turned the chicken over and placed her hands one over the other as if to perform CPR on the bird. Instead she put her weight down on the sternum to break it with a mighty crack. “Funny, I remember not being terribly thrilled by the sight of a chicken in that class,” she said. “I guess it doesn't bother me now, huh?” She placed the chicken on a cushion of thinly sliced potatoes lining the bottom of a roasting pan, “to soak up the yummy sauce,” she explained. She seasoned it simply with fresh thyme, olive oil, and salt and pepper before shoving it in the oven.

Dri cooks one big meal during the week and a pot of soup on Sunday. With leftovers, that covers meals for at least four days. Other nights, she makes a quick salad, sandwich, or pasta with staples she keeps on hand. “I still suffer from this issue of cooking for one and trying to get portions right. I try not to have
too many
leftovers. I don't mind them on day two, but on day four? I usually can't go there. Sometimes I just take all the leftovers out of my fridge and bring them to work. I'll say to somebody, ‘Hey, you want some chicken? I brought you lunch.'”

I didn't realize in the first visit that behind her quirky, smiling exterior, Dri's innate desire to make a radical life shift ran deep. “When it came to how I approached food, I knew that I needed to change course, but I had no idea where to start.”

Andra seemed in good spirits when we met her in December at her apartment in Sea-Tac. She looked more rested and her face seemed thinner. When I mentioned that I thought she looked like she'd lost weight, she laughed. “Oh, that's so nice of you to say! I can't say that I've lost a ton of weight but I definitely feel like I'm eating better.”

I'm endlessly fascinated with her apartment. This time, I noticed that the entire length of the fridge was plastered with a mosaic of different magnets. A dress covered up a magnetic statue of David in the top right-hand corner; magnetic poetry spelled out “Yes, a shadow wakens.”

After the project, Andra made a concerted effort to add more fruits and vegetables to her diet and to cook more. “As usual, money is tight, but it's getting better now because I'm working more. Of course, the holidays are always a bit of a drain financially.” She relied on public transport instead of a car. “Sometimes I'm on ten buses in one day. It's exhausting, but that's my choice. I've started to take the new light rail train, which is nice. But some nights, I get home exhausted from all the travel.”

Due to the maze of buses that makes up her daily commute, she now relied on sandwiches or other foods that are easy to eat en route. She avoided the inexpensive burger joints that she used to frequent for lunch. “Fast food is not a good value. I am hungry not long afterward and I don't feel good after eating it.” She timed both to confirm that it took longer to stand in line to order than it took to make a sandwich and pack an apple at home. “It's less money, less time, and healthier. It just takes planning.”

Andra missed more classes than any of the other volunteers. A shame, because as we talked, it was apparent that she took away a lot from the ones she did attend. As the others agreed, the knife skills class proved to be the most useful. Shortly after the last class, she made her first roast chicken. “It was just me and my cat, but she seemed to really like it!” Roasted chicken thighs and vegetables had become dinner staples, and she regularly made artisan bread. She sometimes cooked salmon in paper. In a pinch, she relied on scrambled eggs. “I've cooked for some of my friends and I have had no complaints.”

At Thanksgiving, she made stuffing from scratch with her mother and helped cook the turkey. “She noticed my new chopping skills, and that felt good. I even made the vinaigrette for the salad.” She was impressed by tasting different types of lettuce. “I confess that I buy bags of salad, but that's a big move for me. I wouldn't have bought greens before at all.”

Her cupboards were more filled out this time, with whole wheat pasta and cans of tomatoes, beans, and soups. She selected one of the small plastic bags of herbs she'd purchased in bulk to use in the eggs she was making for lunch. “I think about what your chef said, that if you don't have anything else, you can make an omelet. I make scrambled eggs more often, but an omelet feels more like a meal.” We watched her crack the eggs into a bowl, quickly whisk the yolks together with salt, pepper, and a bit of thyme, and then pour them into a pan. She added a bit of grated cheese to the center, and then slid the omelet to fold it onto a plate. It was perfect.

It struck me that her omelet was a world away from the hyperprocessed pizza bites that she had made the first time I visited. I asked her about the contrast as she cut the edge of her eggs with a fork. “I don't know if I would buy those now,” she said. “I think more about value rather than just cost.” A big bag of greens costs the same as a fast-food dinner, she observed. She searched out places to buy vegetables less expensively than in a conventional supermarket, such as a local farm stand. “I've got limited money for my food, so I need to get the most out of it that I can.

“Now that I can cook better, I don't have to settle for crappy food. It's been ages since I ordered a pizza, and those guys used to know my voice on the phone.”

Terri had finally tossed her four-year-old frozen turkey dinner. “I didn't want you to come back and find that it was still there!” she said with a nervous laugh. Her fridge was still relatively bare. “I've gotten rid of all the science experiments,” she admitted. Little else had changed in her cabinets. “I find that I'm going grocery shopping more often, which is funny since I actually hate grocery shopping,” she said. “But I also don't want to waste food, so I usually just buy enough for a day or two and that's why I don't have a big stock of it here.”