Moskin Julia - Cookfight : 2 cooks, 12 challenges, 125 recipes : an epic battle for kitchen dominance

COOK FIGHT

2 COOKS, 12 CHALLENGES, 125 RECIPES

AN EPIC BATTLE FOR KITCHEN DOMINANCE

JULIA MOSKIN & KIM SEVERSON

with a foreword by FRANK BRUNI

photographs by EVAN SUNG

We dedicate this book to all the strong-willed cooks who have come before us, fighting to their last breath over whether there should be pork in the meatballs or raisins in the stuffed cabbage

CONTENTS

by FRANK BRUNI

Y ou show me a cookbook worth relishing, and Ill show you one thats about a lot more than food.

Sometimes the larger themethe ber overlayis only flickering in the margins, dancing in the background of all those enticing ingredients, all those mouthwatering pictures. It sneaks up on you, whispering rather than shouting its presence.

And sometimes, as with CookFight , its loud and proud and front and center. This is a book about friendship, in all its salty, sweet, and sour glory. The jousting herein, the part that provides the second syllable of the title, isnt solely or even mainly between recipes, though there are recipes galore, and they are fine, accessible ones that youd be foolish not to try and wasteful not to put into heavy rotation. Its between personalities, sensibilities. Its the clang and clash of two people enjoying and lamenting and working through their different approaches to, and perspectives about, both cooking and life.

In the pages that follow, the two of them do their own terrific job of introducing themselves. So let me talk here about my own experience of them. A culinary metaphor is probably in order, given that what you hold in your hands belongsif I may be briefly highfalutinto the genre of culinary arts, and given that the three of us met and got to know one another in the Dining section of the New York Times.

Julia and Kim were my ciabatta, and I was their prosciutto. That is to say, they sandwiched me. Julia sat in the cubicle to one side of mine, Kim in the cubicle to the other. I was in the middle.

And I was in the middle toostuck there, caught thereat the beginning of CookFight.

As Americans adjusted to a long, grinding economic downturn, those of us in the Dining section frequently discussed how the Times s food coverage could best reflect and respond to it. The idea to have Julia and Kim each do a small, multi-course dinner party on a tight, unyielding budget came up.

As we refined the idea, we decided that the exercise should be a contest of sorts, to make the doing of it and thus the reading of it livelier. And there should be a judge. And the next thing I knew, my role as the newspapers restaurant critic had landed me in that hot seat.

I had to pick a winner, and thus a loser.

Giving one half of the ciabatta a crown, and the other half the back of my hand.

Suffice it to say that these were the first two dinners that ever gave me indigestion before, not after, the actual eating.

Off to Kims I went. She was then living in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, on the ground floor of a lovely townhouse, and we moved from the living room to the dining room as she staged a Mexican fiesta of sorts, replete with canaps and assemble-your-own tacos. She was clever, that Kim. She camouflaged her tight budget with extra work and a bounty of flourishes and fillips: chile-spiced peanuts, pickled onions, two kinds of homemade salsa, homemade slaw. Thats Kim. Ever spirited. Ever inventive. Ever fun.

I gorged on everything she made, with a song in my stomachbut also a knot. There was no way Julia would outdo this. And she was going to hate me something lethal when I gave Kim the nod.

Off to Julias I went. She had just moved into a new apartment on Manhattans Upper West Side, and I was getting my first glimpse of it. Two stories, river views: lovely place.

And lovely meal. Oh, what a lovely meal. If Kims had a special kind of gusto, Julias had a particular kind of grace.

She presented homemade gougres. She served a velvety soupmore of a bisque, reallywith tomato and cumin in it. A perfect salad was followed by a perfect pasta dish. The courses had a very proper rhythm, until dessert, when she punctuated the end of the meal with the epicurean equivalent of a childish giggle, combining tangerine and vanilla into what was essentially a Creamsicle float. Thats Julia. Very much the lady, but with a mischievous streak just under the skin.

So what did I do?

You saw this one coming: I declared a tie.

I suspect some of you would have favored Kims feast; others, Julias. And that may be your experience of the book theyve produced, organized around a series of cook-offs, a sequence of good-natured battles. Who can do the better comfort food? The better childrens meal?

One obvious payoff of this approach is that you get two storehouses of recipes in one, doubling your counsel and pleasure. But the less obvious payoffand for me the bigger oneis that you get a dialectic. A dialogue. A conversation whose participants are as resourceful and engaging as any youll find. You can trust me, because that prosciutto-dom of mine? It lasted more than three years, all of them extraordinarily happy ones.

CookFight celebrates Caesar salad and onion dip and black beans and smoked salmon and pots de crme and all the rest of it, rummaging exuberantly through a diverse larder and nudging youno, tugging youtoward the stove. And it also celebrates the way two very different people can forge one very special bond. Its delicious.

W ell never forget our first fight. It wasnt over food, although by then we had already argued plenty about mayonnaise, Mexican food, and the impact of industrial agriculture.

The fight was born of the kind of tense situation that comes up when reporters collaborate on a story. Kim was in the weeds on a deadline and Julia offered help, then bailed at the last minute without apology. There was slamming of phones, searing silences, maybe some crying in the bathroom. It wasnt about the work. It was about loyalty.

Thats because we were always more than coworkers. We were work wives.

Everyone needs a work wifethat one person at the office who always has your back. Your work wife is who you really spend your days with, who listens to you when youre on the phone with your mother, who knows that you like your coffee just barely sweet, who orders your lunch when you are cranking out a page-one story on your birthday. When youre away on vacation or a business trip, your work wife makes sure you dont miss important news and gossip from the workplace (especially when its about you).

The office can be a cold and lonely place, but a work wife makes it manageable.