Cooking Techniques and Kitchen Gadgets

It was in the early to mid-80s and I was about 10-11 years old. When we went to the supermarket, I would always have my parents buy me the little Pillsbury cookbooks that were in the check-out line. I remember one specific of the cookbook series because I made every single recipe in it, including a chocolate pudding pie. I crushed up chocolate Nabisco wafers, made a crust, poured in instant pudding and topped it with some sort of doctored-up Cool-Whip.

Last year at Artisan, I was planning for a dessert menu change for the summer and I pictured that chocolate pudding pie. We serve modern American food – so we put a modern twist on old classics – and I knew I could make a modern version of that pie that would take people back to their childhood. The challenge was taking that pie, which at the time you were 10 was the best you’d ever had, and updating that memory for your adult palate. I kept the crushed wafers as the familiar taste, put them at the bottom of a half pint Mason jar, put the chocolate custard on top, added a croquant for texture, and finished it with a marshmallow fluff in lieu of the Cool-Whip. After toasting the fluff with a blowtorch I ended up with a dessert that was reminiscent of chocolate pudding pie and s’mores, flavors that bring back fond memories to all!

I remember so well my Mom making pancakes for us during the rather meagre times after World War 11. She would toss them up and often they would stick on the ceiling and we would find that so funny. There were always lots of eggs around as we would go to a nearby farm and get them and fresh milk and lots of herbs that me and my sisters would pick. We would lean over the side of the pig stys and watch with big eyes, what seemed like gigantic animals snorting in the mud! We ran after the chickens and were allowed into the coops to stick our fingers in and prise big brown eggs from under the nesting hens. Often the cock would frighten us off by screeching as we gathered the eggs!

My first cookbook was called ‘Round-the-Clock’ Cookery and was filled with awesome recipes for every meal, food and drink, and pictures describing how to truss chickens, make galettes and fill pies, baste eggs, the list of plates goes on and on. But as I love pancakes here is my favorite recipe. I often just squeeze lemon juice and a light coating of caster sugar on them.

I’ve been working in the kitchen like a galley slave for the last few weeks – since before the holidays, actually, and it’s time for a parole.

Don’t get me wrong, I love cooking – every aspect of it: I love schlepping the four heavy grocery bags (“Don’t forget – we need six bottles of San Pellegrino”) through the slush-filled rivers at each corner on Broadway; I love the insistent bump of the grocery cart into my Achilles tendon during the holiday rush at Fairway; I love the cutting, the chopping, the blanching, the browning. Oh God, do I have to make another battuto? I have battuto nightmares with hostile little cubes of celery coming at me brandishing Wüsthofs. I’ve got to get out of the kitchen.

Do you know battuto, by the way? It’s the Italian version of a mirapoix – onion, celery and carrot are the basics; sometimes you add parsley and sometimes even a bit of pancetta – and you cut them into small dice. A battuto is the beginning to many a good meal, the first step in recipes from pasta sauces to osso buco. A good rule to remember is that it’s always twice the volume of onion to each other veg. i.e. a half cup onions; a quarter cup carrots; a quarter cup celery; quarter cup parsley. You can’t go wrong. Put it all in a hot pan with butter and oil (or lard) and you’re off to the races.

I'm sure somebody has done this already, but there should be a book solely filled with lentil recipes. A lentil bible.  And every kitchen should have one. The lentil is an edible pulse and part of the human diet since Neolithic times.

I inherited a bias towards lentils. Growing up in a conservative (Tory) household, the unspoken idea was that people who ate lentils didn't shave their armpits, wore hemp and hung out in muddy trenches at Greenham Common. I was so, so wrong. (I am also now a bleeding heart liberal who favors Birkenstocks, mu-mus, progressive education and sheep's milk yogurt).

I would argue for the elegance of the lentil - a simple, beautiful, shiny little bead packed full of nutrition and deliciousness. They are cheap, adaptable, adept at picking up flavors. Lentils are gloriously comforting and most cheering. For so long lentils have been the back-up singers. I'd like to make a case for them as the star of the show.

Amanda Hesser's single girl's salmon with lentils from the lovely "Cooking for Mr. Latte" is one of my favorites, a recipe I go back to again and again, with or without the salmon. My friend Marta's lentil soup gets a ringing endorsement - warm, homely, soothing perfection.