Cook Like a Rock Star (3 page)

FOREWORD
BY
MARIO BATALI

I have known and cooked with Anne Burrell for more than fifteen years and have always known that she was ready for prime time. I cannot remember a dish of food that she ever made that left me anything but purely satisfied.

We first worked together at a wine store. My partner there at the time was a bitter tyrant who was her boss. Every day he would throw bad attitude curve balls at her and yet she was still capable of creating delicious food and purveying a relaxed and joyous feeling about food and Italian culture that made everyone who walked in feel happy. Her resolute and firm belief in the adage that real food in a real setting will calm and soothe both the palate and the person was the heart and soul of first her kitchen, then the staff, and eventually the whole store and its myriad customer base. When it came time to choose players in my very first
Iron Chef America
I really did not have to think twice about Anne being on the team. We went to L.A. and met the original masters, competed first against Morimoto and then with Chef Sakai against Bobby and Morimoto in an odd sound studio, and Anne fell for Sakai like a ton of bricks.

Anne could cook, she could take the heat, and she had a good time. All three still ring true. I do not think anyone in New York was quite prepared for the thrilling and thoughtful food Anne first presented at Centro Vinoteca when it opened in 2007. Her casual yet serious food became a true trademark, particularly the category of small tapas-style antipasti called piccolini. Here Anne really got the traction she deserved in the world of YUM and the place became the San Juan Capistrano for foodie swallows around the country as the faithful found a place to worship at Anne’s culinary altar. We continued as a team and as friends
through four seasons of
Iron Chef
and worked the teamwork and work ethic components to yield a pretty great record in kitchen stadium. Of course the smart folks at Food Network fell in love with Anne in the studio and have since groomed her to be the Big Thing on air. She has a couple of fun showcases for her irreverent brand of food smarts and playful innuendo that works perfectly in the post-modern world of hybrid food competition and information programming that has become the new hallmark in the food space. I imagine she will have a long and successful TV career into the future. Maybe I could lure her back into a restaurant kitchen!

In the absence of a place to pull up a bar stool and taste her creative and lusty dishes, this book steps in to fill the gap. Now I can steal her food (like I have for years on
Iron Chef
) and make it at my own home. The piccolini are simply delicious and easy to make, and a series of three or four of them could easily become a casual breezy meal in no time. The legendary pasta, the same “noodles” she has made on
Iron Chef,
can now effortlessly become part of your repertoire and you can wow your friends with your Italian know-how and kiss kiss–ciao baby way in the kitchen. Anne breaks down each of her recipes into easy to understand mise en place and then technical steps that reduce complicated-sounding dishes to a level that even a novice cook can make. All of this is presented in her voice, one that you can hear on your mind’s TV, coaxing the cook in you forward through these dishes to the ultimate and tasty finish. Like Anne, this book is fun, easy to understand, and ultimately delicious. Like Anne, there is more to this book than the simple layout and recklessly trick-free recipes.
Cook Like a Rock Star
is tasty happiness and ready for the party.

People say that chefs are the new rock stars. That’s why I named this book
Cook Like a Rock Star.
Because YOU are the chef of your own kitchen—so you are a rock star too.

Being a rock star in the kitchen means taking control, having fun, and thinking of cooking as entertainment. Yes, dinner is entertainment, but I want to help you make the process of
making dinner
entertainment too. This book is about empowering you to own what you do in your kitchen, to be excited by what you’re making, and to experience the same kind of joy that I feel every day when I cook.

It doesn’t matter who you are, what size or shape you are, what day of the week it is. If you whip up a quick meal from scratch that you’re proud of, rather than just open up a container or pull a tub out of the fridge, then you, my friend, are a rock star. Own it and have fun!

MY MISSION IS TO HELP YOU MAKE DINNER—TONIGHT!

Cooking is not a genetically inherited skill—people forget this. Just because your mom or your grandma is a good cook doesn’t mean you will be. Cooking is something that you need to
learn
how to do—just like everything else. The purpose of this book is to teach you how, in a fun way, to cook—or to help you expand your skills and your repertoire if you’re already comfy in the kitchen.

When I was in grade school, high school, even college, I just wasn’t interested in school; I did as little as I could to get by. But when I went to culinary school, it was all about doing and using my hands—not just listening. I was like a sponge. Finally, I was in the right place at the right time in my life; I actually enjoyed school and
wanted
to learn. And that’s my goal with this book: to get you cooking and tasting things and having so much fun you don’t even realize how much you’re learning.

I went to culinary school to learn how to cook and I’ve been working for years to know all that I do today—but I’m going to leapfrog you ahead. I’m giving you the benefit of my blood, sweat, tears, and even my mistakes in this book. But I’m also giving you my happiness and joy—my triumphs!

As a girl who has spent most of her career in restaurant kitchens and as a culinary teacher, cooking is part of my soul. For years I’ve been internalizing cooking techniques, losing sleep over them, and forever fantasizing about food. I’ve learned how to coax the most out of a dish, how to combine ingredients to get the best flavor, and how to time everything so it all comes together at the moment it should. I’ve worked hard to become the cook that I am, and I’m proud to call myself a chef. But chefs aren’t rocket scientists, and most of what we do is not all that difficult. It’s stuff you can do at home once you know how—which is what I want to teach you with this book … and we’re going to have A LOT of fun along the way.

The recipes in this book are very near and dear to me, and they get me excited every time I look at them. (Even while I was writing this book, I’d sometimes stop and think, “This sounds SOOOOO good, I want to make this now!”) This collection tells the story of who I am as a chef, and if you take these recipes and make them your own, they’ll help you develop your inner chef too (a.k.a. your inner rock star).

So here’s the dealio: I want you to have fun making dinner tonight, and then I want you to sit down with your husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, kids, closest friends, first date, neighbors down the hall, anyone, and eat the delicious meal that you made—from scratch—yourself. I want you to know what it feels like to create lovely food for people you care about and feel confident that you can do it over and over again. I want you to rock out and be the chef of your own kitchen! And I want to help you do it.

THE MAKING OF A GIRL CHEF

Apparently I started on my journey toward becoming a chef at a very early age. According to my mother, when I was three years old I came to her and said, “I have a friend named Julie,” and she asked, “You do? Julie who?” And I said, “Julie Child! I watch her every day on TV.” It was another twenty years before I
had the epiphany that led me to make cooking my career, but even as a kid I knew that dinner—making dinner—could be fun.

When I started out in the food world, there weren’t many women in restaurant kitchens, and the Food Network was in its infancy. I started cooking because I was totally passionate about food—the concept of celebrity chefs didn’t even exist yet! I went to culinary school because I wanted to know everything I could about food and become a badass cook. All I wanted to do was work in a restaurant.

After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, I did a second stint at a culinary school in Italy to learn how to cook Italian food. My time in Italy opened my eyes to a whole other world of food, cooking, and a way of life that I didn’t even know existed. When I got back to the States, I headed straight to New York City—where I’d always wanted to end up—and I was immediately drawn to Lidia Bastianich, the owner and chef of Felidia. I wanted to work for her because I had worked with several women in Italy and it felt like a natural progression to do so back home. I also wanted to learn all I could from someone I respected. I watched how she handled herself, her staff, and her food, and I learned a lot about how to be a girl chef in what is still mostly a man’s world (kitchen). And I learned that I liked being one of the only girls in the boys’ club!

From the very beginning of my career, my mantra was, “I will work harder than any guy; I will stay later and be better than anyone. And no guy is ever going to have to pick up a stockpot for me!” So I worked like crazy to prove myself. You have to be tough in a professional kitchen—playing with fire and knives is dangerous, and I do it wearing a skirt and a smile. I feel very lucky to have found my passion and I love the path I’ve chosen. I can go anywhere in the world and do my job. I love the people who work in restaurants—they’re intelligent, creative, and have a different take on life. And my education is never over. In this business there’s always something new to learn.

LOOK AT YOU, BECOMING A CHEF!

Being a chef is a matter of having a good basic foundation—an understanding of the principles and techniques of cooking. Sure, there’s talent involved, but the majority of it is simply learning the process, knowing the techniques, and practicing them over and over again until they’re ingrained in your being. Cooking is about learning what to look for, what to listen for, how a dish should smell, how it should feel, and, of course, what it should taste like—you use all your senses when you cook and those are tools that we all have at our disposal; we just need to
use them
.

For the home cook, it’s not so important to know a bunch of culinary terminology. So I’m going to skip a lot of the technical kitchen terms and put everything into everyday language so it makes sense and becomes part of your daily existence in the kitchen. For example, a recipe might tell you to brown a piece of meat and then deglaze the “fond.” But what the hell is “fond”? It’s the crud on the bottom of the pan—the flavor, the stuff you want to scrape up and use to develop your rich brown food! By ditching the fancier cooking terms and speaking in plain English, I’m going to help you
to understand
why
you brown the crap out of things (because brown food tastes good), and
how
to get the crud off the bottom of the pan (deglazing).

I’m simplifying everything here because I want you to cook! If you’re new to cooking, I want to help you get over the fear factor and bump up the fun factor. If you’re someone who already cooks, then I want to share some of my hard-learned lessons with you so you feel even more empowered at the stove. I have a little saying: Food is like a dog; it smells fear. If you’re nervous, scared, or bunched up when you’re cooking, your food will sense it. But if you embrace cooking with a sense of confidence and an air of fun, your food will taste SOOOOO much better. If you change a recipe, the recipe police are NOT going to be on their way over. If you want to use three cloves of garlic instead of one, knock yourself out. What I offer you here are my opinions as a professional chef. You can take them or leave them (but I recommend you take them).

A FEW WORDS ON RECIPES (
AND WHY YOU SHOULD READ THEM BEFORE YOU COOK
!)

Have you ever had a dinner party and told everyone to come over at seven, but you didn’t sit down to eat until ten because dinner wasn’t ready? I have, and it wasn’t because I was running fashionably late. It was because I was making braised short ribs and hadn’t read my recipe ahead of time. I didn’t realize how long those guys had to cook. The result was a tipsy group of friends hoovering down a delicious dinner that no one even tasted because it was so late, and everyone was tired and ready to go home by the time it was ready. All my effort was in vain because I hadn’t read the recipe.

Or, have you ever been happily cooking along, excited to taste your amazing creation and call yourself a rock star, only to get to the part of a recipe that says “add the remaining flour,” and you think, uh-oh,
what remaining flour
? This is something that can easily be avoided if you read the recipe first and have an understanding of where you’re headed.