The Kitchen Counter Cooking School (37 page)

 

You can make your own version of cake flour by sifting
cup all-purpose flour (84 grams) with 2 tablespoons cornstarch (15 grams) for each cup of cake flour called for in a recipe.

 

2
cup confectioners' sugar
6 tablespoons cocoa powder
6 tablespoons butter, softened
5 tablespoons evaporated or 2 percent milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

 

Sift together the confectioners' sugar and cocoa; set aside.

Using a mixer or a beater, cream the butter until smooth. Gradually shake in the sugar-cocoa mixture, alternating with the milk. When all is combined thoroughly, add the vanilla. Beat until light and fluffy. Add more milk or cocoa powder if needed to adjust consistency and to taste.

CHAPTER 12

 

For the four years I lived in London, I held a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Most people outside North America seem confused by the whole concept. An English friend once asked, “So what does Thanksgiving have to do with the Fourth of July again?” It may take the isolation of expatriation to appreciate the curious nature of Thanksgiving. We commemorate a holiday prompted by the most puritanical of Christians with one of the seven deadly sins, gluttony.

The reason for the original Thanksgiving, at least the one attributed to the Pilgrims,
³⁴
was to celebrate bounty in a time otherwise gripped by hunger, since the Puritans spent the bulk of their time and resources figuring out how to avoid starving to death.

Many things interest me about Thanksgiving. It's one of the rare opportunities when most people give genuine thought to meal planning, cook a whole animal, make a lot of food from scratch, and celebrate the use of leftovers. Part of the experience of the holiday is the nature of the feast, each person assigned a role, from setting the table to mashing potatoes to crafting a pie.

Of course, that's before everyone falls asleep in a tryptophan haze in front of the television. As my husband likes to point out, the occasional Cowboys and Redskins football games scheduled on the day demonstrate just how far we've drifted from the whole concept of that first Thanksgiving with our Native American hosts.

Even as they bemoan food prices, American consumers are generally unaware that they spend less of their wages on food than any other country in the world; just under 10 percent of their paychecks.
³⁵
Compare that to 1900, when 40 percent of wages went toward food. Around 1960, the first time the amount spent on food was no longer the biggest expenditure, the figure was about 25 percent. The declining cost comes with the rise of industrialization of farming practices and the shift of everything we eat—from pigs to cows to orange juice—into mass-produced merchandise.

Perhaps it's the lack of investment that leads to a cavalier attitude toward food. We may give thanks for our bounty once a year, but then as a country we collectively waste about 40 percent of the food produced for consumption the rest of the time. Anthropologist Timothy Jones spent more than a decade studying food waste. His research finds that some crops sit abandoned or unharvested in the fields where they're grown. Supermarkets or suppliers discard another few percent dismissed as too imperfect for retail. The rest—about 25 to 30 percent—we throw away at home. That food goes into landfills to rot, where it emits clouds of methane, a greenhouse gas more toxic and damaging than carbon monoxide.

“By treating edibles as a disposable commodity, we teach our children not to value food,” says Jonathan Bloom, author of the book
American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It)
. He puts the figure on what we waste at more than $100 billion annually. This jived with what I found in the interviews with the volunteers and the kitchen visits and what I observed in my own house and in the homes of friends. A few of the volunteers agreed to keep a journal of what they bought, ate, and threw out for two weeks. The result? They reported less waste due to the guilt they felt knowing they had to write it down, but even then, an average of 18 percent of their grocery bills went into the trash.

But why do we waste so much? Both Jones and Bloom offer some interesting insights.

First, people often shop for the life they aspire to, not their real one. Everyone knows that they're supposed to eat fruit and vegetables, so we stock up on perishables. Since most people don't plan meals for the week, those beets or greens that looked so great at the farmers' market sit untouched as we end up eating convenience foods. With proper planning, buying in bulk or loading up on twofor-one deals can be a genuine money saver; without a plan, it's just a recipe to double or triple the amount of food tossed away.

Dr. Trubek from the University of Vermont has studied the activities of home cooks for years. To her, the greatest lack of skill when it comes to cooking isn't the inability to wield a knife. “Planning menus is the greatest skill that we've collectively lost,” she said. “That, and what to do with leftovers.” Fortunately, I found two people to help out with both subjects.

As part of my search for volunteers, I had been a guest on a radio show with celebrity chefs Tom Douglas and Thierry Rautureau. A week after the show, Chef Thierry e-mailed me. “I'm curious about your plan. Would you like some help?” As I noted earlier, Thierry hosted a regular radio segment called
What's in the Fridge?
Callers would dial in and discuss the contents of their kitchen, and Chef Thierry would offer suggestions. Thierry had walked callers through using everything from slivers of avocado to too much zucchini to half a turkey. If anyone could inspire someone to use leftovers, he was the man.

Chef Thierry walked into our kitchen in shorts, a tasteful tropical shirt, and flip-flops, his expensive chef's jacket flung over his shoulder.

“I am here!” he announced with a flourish, smiling and extending his arm in a wide embrace. Thierry has the classic dark coloring of a Frenchman and immediately owns a room. “
Mes chéris,
do you have anything for a cocktail? Tonight is my night off.”

That week, people were crazy from the heat. The temperature spiked up to 103 degrees—a record. Lisa went to five places looking for ice and found a lone bag stranded at the bottom of an ice case at a gas station. We chiseled an area out of the packed stand-up freezer for our sacred bag. We presented him with a bowl of it and led him over to the fridge. Jeff and Mike moved around the table and chairs to set up an ersatz demo area as Thierry demonstrated his first use of leftovers, a pitcher of cocktails from remnant vodka, vermouth, and limes. He held up his glass and smacked his lips after tasting his creation. “Ah!
Fantastique!
Now I can talk leftovers!”

For him, teaching people not to waste food is personal. He grew up on a small farm in the Muscadet region of France in an area where cows and chickens outnumbered people. His family cooked only what they grew, and as the oldest child, Thierry routinely took on the task of helping with dinner. His family ate meat only once a week, usually on Sundays. He remembers many lean times. At age fourteen, he started an apprenticeship with a local restaurant, training that eventually took him throughout France, to Chicago, and ultimately to Seattle. One of the best meals I've had in my entire life was at his restaurant Rover's. The simple roasted squab sat in a warm bath of seafood
nage,
a kind of light broth. I qualify that meal as a near sexual experience; it was embarrassing to eat in front of the two people with me at the table. This kind of reaction may account for the popularity of his restaurants.