The Kitchen Counter Cooking School (38 page)

With a celebrity chef as a teacher, the volunteers turned up in force, a few bringing along friends or family members. As the crowd spilled in, Thierry put his chef's jacket over his shirt and downed his drink. “Ah, the chef must stay hydrated,” he said as he poured another.

I welcomed everyone in. “No diapers today, you are just going to watch.” Everyone took a seat.

“But I want Chef Thierry to see my knife,” Sabra said, disappointment in her voice, as she sat down next to Gen.

“Oh, speaking of that, I got a new knife,” Gen said. “And I just bought a whole chicken yesterday. It was so much cheaper than buying the chicken breasts already separated. My boyfriend was pretty confused about how I am going to turn this whole chicken into fajitas, but he shall soon see how it's done.”

Dri piped in. “Oh, I buy them all the time now. I'm getting so fast at it. I mean, they're not the most beautiful pieces of chicken, but they taste the same, right?”

“I roasted a chicken, too,” Shannon added. “And I have to say that I've rarely done that because I was so scared of undercooking it. We have two meat thermometers and neither seemed to work. One said it was 130 degrees and the other one said it was 230 degrees. I was like, What's going on with this chicken? So I pulled the legs away toto check on the juices and pierced the thigh to tell if it was done. My husband was like, ‘How did you know to do that?' It was like a Jedi trick or something.”

“Hey, have any of you made the bread?” Trish asked. Jodi, Shannon, Dri, and Cheryl said they had at least once. “Mine didn't turn out. I wonder if my yeast was bad.” As they started to discuss their various bread experiences, Chef Thierry clapped his hands at the demonstration table. Almost immediately, sweat beaded on his neck. It felt about a thousand degrees in the kitchen.

“I'm not going to turn on the stove since it's a record heat day here, yes?” said Thierry, the seasoned charmer. “So
What's in the Fridge?
is based on a very simple idea that happens in every home, even mine.” People buy ingredients for a recipe but don't use them all. Or they're left with bits of random food. It's easy to throw those out.

“In America, we have a full fridge and it's so full that we can't even close the door. People look inside at this stuffed fridge and think, There's nothing to eat! I always wonder, What are you waiting for? A hand to hold out a sandwich for you? But one of the most important things to learn in life is to nourish yourself and those around you. I've been doing it for thirty-five years, which is amazing considering that I am only thirty-nine years old!”

I mentioned to him that I had just taken part in a challenge posted by a food writer friend, Kim O'Donnel, as part of the national movement called “Eating Down the Fridge.” The idea is to avoid buying groceries for a week, and instead try to use the remnant food instead.

“I love that!” Thierry approved. He suggested putting a favorite photo in the back of the fridge and freezer. “You'll want to see it, and if you can't, there's something wrong. Your fridge shouldn't be that full.”

Using up older products first is known as rotation in restaurants. Home cooks need to learn it, he said. “Buy one pepper, not three. Buy three potatoes, not three pounds. You'll have less waste and it will help you as a cook.

“If you have less food in your fridge it will actually push you to cook better. You will have to make something different. It will force substitutions. You think, I don't have a green pepper but, oh, wait, I have a zucchini, so I will try that. It's a good thing. That's how you learn.”

People give up on food too easily. They throw out a whole apple due to one dent that could easily be cut away. “That zucchini that looks a little soft today? It's like anything, like paying bills. The more you avoid it, the worse it gets. It will never look any better. It will just look worse in a week when you get around to throwing it out.”

Thierry has some fundamental strategies. “Soup is a gift for leftovers. In the summer, I love to make cold soups; in the winter, I make hot soups.” He will unload all the unused vegetables from his fridge. “Get half an onion, caramelize it, add your leftover vegetables, some water or stock; it does not take long to make.” Salads are big with him. “It is easy, and it's almost like not really cooking.” With that, we went to the fridge.

Everyone shifted off their seats to the set of handsome upright commercial fridges. By this point, we had accumulated leftovers from all the various classes. We had also asked people to bring in leftovers. Sabra brought in the remnants of a cheeseburger and fries; someone else brought in a hard-boiled egg; another, leftover chicken salad.

“Wow, this is so well stocked, we will eat like
cochon
tonight,” Thierry said, tossing out the French word for “pig” as he pawed through the bounty, which included mushrooms, basil, garlic, eggs, lemon halves, bell peppers, a red onion, and various cheeses. “Wow, this is fun, but this is probably a lot more food than you have at home. Most of you have things more like that,” he said, picking up the bit of chicken salad. “Oh, look, here's some zucchini.”

Some volunteers traded glances. “We've cut up a
lot
of zucchini,” Terri said.

Jeff set down a big bowl for Thierry to collect his choices from the fridge. He started dropping the produce into it. Then he came to some cream left over from last month. “Oh, this doesn't go into dinner. This should go into a museum!” he said.

He stumbled onto tomatoes. “Oh, no, tomatoes in the fridge.” Uh-oh, I put those in there. “Never do this, do you know why?” he asked the group.

Trish raised her hand. “Because it kills the flavor?”

Thierry pointed at her and then slapped his hands together in affirmation. “Yes! Lemons shouldn't really go in the fridge either.”

He concentrated again on the fridge and took out a nearly empty jar of mustard. He turned to the group. “Love it. This is great. You get to the bottom of a jar of mustard, you add some lemon”—he picked up half a lemon from the bowl—“and then some olive oil and shake it up. Voilà, you have vinaigrette. Or just add some vinegar and canola oil. Use what's in your house; that's the name of the game.”

“We learned to make vinaigrette, but I love the tip about the mustard jar,” Shannon said. “You could do that with the end of the jam in a jar, too.”

“Or the end of a bottle of olive oil, since there's always some on the sides,” Dri added.

I conjured up many options: the bottom of a jar of pesto, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, or sesame oil. “That's a great tip, Chef,” I said.

He stumbled onto a bouquet of parsley. “Greens, store them like flowers, the stems in some water. And a batch of parsley like this?” He held up a bunch of the green stuff. “It is a massive amount for a couple of people. Make a kind of pesto sauce with it. Chop it up in a food processor with olive oil, garlic, perhaps walnuts. Freeze it in ice cube trays. It will be a frozen cube of green. You can then take some hot, drained pasta and toss in a cube of the pesto, or you can add it to the top of steamed or roasted vegetables. You will look like Martha Stewart!”

“That could be a great flavoring for chicken,” Dri observed.

His inventory complete, he brought his choices back to the demonstration table and everyone sat down again. Lisa circulated more ice water. The traffic was loud outside, so we closed the door so that Thierry could be heard, but the heat became unbearable. Thierry waved for us to open the door and just talked louder.

“It's so tempting to overbuy, but discipline yourself,” he said. “Don't buy enough fruit for the next two months. Buy it just for the next two days. Just because you can buy something doesn't mean you should. That half flat of raspberries? Yes, it looks great. But that's six pints, it's a lot. You need a Plan A
and
a Plan B
and
a Plan C on what to do with that much. We've lost the art of preserving and of canning, the whole idea of harvest,” he said. “There is seasonality to food, but we don't feel it. There was a tradition to get as much as you could from the harvest and save it for the year.”

I thought about that point. We live in a time when you can get peaches in January in Cleveland thanks to an international transportation system that can ship food long distances. In America, food comes from sunnier states such as California and Florida, Mexico, or Central or South America. In Europe, the food comes from Spain, Turkey, or various African countries.

Thierry advised that if you buy too much, you can do home IQF, which stands for “individually quick frozen.” Spread berries or vegetables on a tray, freeze them, and when frozen, put them into a plastic bag. “In January, you can pull out a handful onto your pancakes and it's summer again.” He took a sip of his cold drink and mopped his face with a diaper.

All the volunteers had small legal pads. He noticed. “I see you writing. Here's an assignment. Go home. Open your fridge. Take everything out. Toss out only the truly bad expired stuff. Then come up with a plan to use what's left.”

This is especially true with spices, he said. “Most people have a museum of spices. If you have spices that are more than two years old, toss them out. Find a place that sells spices in bulk and buy one ounce of all the spices you think you'll use. After a year, see how much you've used. When you have fresh spices, you'll notice. Everything will taste so much better. You will taste cinnamon, not dust.”

Then Chef made a salad. He started to discuss onions. “I like to caramelize them; it adds so much flavor.” He picked up a knife and got ready to chop. “Do you all know how to chop an onion? Does anyone want to come up and chop with me?”

Sabra bolted her hand in the air. “We're professionals at that,” she declared. She jumped up to cut with the chef. Thierry chopped his onion, a fluid motion. Sabra then chopped hers quickly and confidently. Thierry raised his eyebrows. “Ah, you do know how to chop an onion. I am impressed.”

Chef showed Sabra how to skin a bell pepper, a tricky technique that involved sliding the knife under the pepper. Sabra did it. She raised her hands over her head in victory. Gen and Shannon highfived her as Sabra returned to her seat. “You all are very good. You must have a good teacher,” he said, and winked at me.

Not to be outshone by a twenty-three-year-old prodigy, Chef finely sliced a tomato into paper-thin slices and then curved them into a circle, a classic French technique. He briefly sautéed the onions, adding strips of the peeled red pepper. He placed them artfully into the center of the sliced tomato and topped the dish with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar, chopped basil, and a sprinkle of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano. Finally, he topped it off with two anchovies.

“It is nice to really think about different ways to make salad. You do not necessarily need lettuce, see? It doesn't take too many components to make it work. It's funny, most people are afraid of messing up their kitchens by cooking. I want to ask, How do you feel about your bedroom?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

Then he presented his dish. It was beautiful, with the deep red of the tomatoes set against the green of the basil and zucchini and the velvety caramelized onions.

“Trust yourself. Yes, I am a chef, but I am like all of you. I just want something good to eat after a long day working,” he said. “I believe all of you can do it. Prove me right.” With that, the chef took a bow, tipped his hat, and the crowd applauded. “You know what I have for dinner some nights? Fresh bread, jam, and hot chocolate. You don't have to cook every night. Just eat real food.”

Then he looked at his glass. “Oh, no, this is empty. Is there any more . . . water?” With that, I understood why he wanted a
clear
cocktail.

I knew that Chef Thierry would be a hard act to follow. But the way to avoid a lot of leftovers in the first place is to plan meals. So the next week another guest speaker came to talk to the group. Jenny, the supermarket chef, waddled into the kitchen eight months pregnant. A fair-skinned blonde who was likely a waif in her less exaggerated state, she looked tired when she arrived. “I'm so excited to teach tonight, but do you have a stool? I can't stand up for more than eight minutes.”

Jenny started her culinary career working in restaurants (at one time for Chef Tom Douglas, in fact). But she decided that she wanted to make more of an impact on how people cook at home. Her present position was as a chef with a high-end grocery where she interacted daily with shoppers and home cooks. Most people acquire their food through supermarkets and Jenny knows how markets work.

“Strategists figure out how to use every single inch of a supermarket to get the most profit out of it,” she said. “Nothing is left to chance.”

Few of us realize that we shoppers are mice in a complex retail maze. Supermarkets spend a vast amount of money to figure out how shoppers behave. Every detail is purposeful, from the music they play to the size of the font declaring sales. For instance, you probably notice that it's chilly in a supermarket. I used to think that was because the chill helped to preserve the food. In fact, cold triggers hunger. If you're hungry, you'll buy more. The first thing that you run into in a supermarket is the produce section. The tactile experience of touching food and the bright colors get you in the mood for shopping. The milk, flour, and cereal are invariably spaced far apart. Why? Supermarkets are designed to slow you down. The longer you spend in the maze of a store trying to find staples, the more likely you'll buy something on impulse. Food manufacturers pay for premium shelf placement at eye level, or, in the cereal aisle, at the eye level of children.