Laurie Colwin - Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen

Home Cooking

A Writer in the Kitchen

Laurie Colwin

Home Cooking: An Introduction

Unlike some people, who love to go out, I love to stay home. This may be caused by laziness, anxiety or xenophobia, and in the days when my friends were happily traveling to Bolivia and Nepal, I was ashamed to admit that what I liked best was hanging around the house.

I am probably not much fun as a traveler, either. My idea of a good time abroad is to visit someones house and hang out, poking into their cupboards if they will let me. One summer I spent some time in a farmhouse on the island of Minorca. This was my idea of bliss: a vacation at home (even if it wasnt my home). I could wake up in the morning, make the coffee and wander outside to pick apricots for breakfast. I could wander around the markets figuring out that nights dinner. In foreign countries I am drawn into grocery shops, supermarkets and kitchen supply houses. I explain this by reminding my friends that, as I was taught in my Introduction to Anthropology, it is not just the Great Works of mankind that make a culture. It is the daily things, like what people eat and how they serve it.

I love to eat out, but even more, I love to eat in. The best dinner party I ever went to was a black-tie affair to celebrate a book, catered by the authors sister. When we sat down in our long dresses and tuxedos, my heart failed. What sort of fancy something or other were we going to get? I remembered the sad story told to me by a colleague who went to a white-tie dinner and received, for the main course, one half of a flounder fillet.

When the food appeared at this party I could scarcely contain my delight. It was home food! The most delicious kind: a savory beef stew with olives and buttered noodles, a plain green salad with a wonderful dressing, and some runny cheese and chocolate mousse for dessert. Heaven!

When people enter the kitchen, they often drag their childhood in with them. I was brought up on English childrens books, in which teatime and cottage life play an important role. These formed my earliest idea of comfort: a tea table in a cozy cottage. As an adult I have reinforced these childhood notions by reading English cookbooks as if they were novels and rereading such classics as Consuming Passions by Philippa Pullar, An Englishmans Food by Drummond and Wilbraham, as well as Food in England and Lost Country Life by Dorothy Hartley.

The thing about homebodies is that they can usually be found at home. I usually am, and I like to feed people. Since I am a writer by profession, it was inevitable that I would be inclined to write about food. Now that these essays have been collected into a book I feel it is only fair to explain a few biases.

This book abounds in recipes for chicken. Nowadays, almost everyone I know has either given up red meat or restricts it severely. Furthermore, I began to cook for myself at a time when beef prices skyrocketed and people on tiny salaries simply ceased to think about it. But chicken was and still is cheap.

I myself prefer an organic chicken. They are not easy to find, but they are worth looking for. Organic eggs from free-range chickens really and truly do taste better than anything you will find in the supermarket. These are available at health food stores and farmers markets. These days most people have cut down on eggs, but the few eggs you do eat ought to taste like eggs. As far as meat is concerned, if you have a source for organic beef or veal, go for it. Not only is it tastier (and frequently leaner), but you also do not have to worry about feeding anabolic steroids to friends and loved ones.

It is a depressing fact of life that we must now be so vigilant about what we eat. Not a day goes by that we are not told that something else is bad for us: butter, coffee, chocolate, tap water, wheat. When my daughter was a toddler and beginning to drink large quantities of apple juice, I (and the rest of the mothers in this country) learned that the apple crop was universally sprayed, year after year, with a known carcinogen and mutagen. Thereafter I began to order apple juice by the case from Walnut Acres, an organic farm in Penns Creek, Pennsylvania. I also routinely order organic applesauce, preservative-free yeast, and a remarkable organic bread flour. I have also invested in a high-tech water filter that removes just about everything (including fluoridebut this is not much of a problem since most children will eat toothpaste as if it were candy) from your water and makes it taste as if it came from a mountain spring.

We live in an age of convenience foods and household appliances. We do not have to slaughter pigs, pluck chickens, or make soap and candles. We do not hand-wash clothes. Machines often wash our dishes for usand still everyone complains that they hardly have any time. The American family, we are told, is falling apart. It does not dine: it grazes from snack to snack.

I have no idea whether or not the American family is falling apart. I do know that many people still like to cook for their family, but that when they rush home after a day at the office they may not have a lot of time and energy to spend on cooking.

I am no superwoman, but I like to cook and I am lucky that I work at home. On the other hand, while I like a nice meal, I do not want to be made a nervous wreck in the process of producing one. I like dishes that are easy, savory, and frequently cook themselves (or cook quickly). I like to feel a little more ambitious on a weekend, when I have time to cook without too much interruption.

I do not believe that you have to spend a lot of money to eat well: it is hard to beat a plain old baked potato. But there are things it is worth spending money on. These are the accessories of cooking, the culinary equivalent of the beautiful handbag or wonderful shoes that make everything else look better. Sweet butter and really good olive oil are worth the money. So are high-quality vinegar (my own favorite is sherry wine vinegar from Spain), sea salt, fresh pepper and fresh herbs. For everyday use I like raw sugar, which tastes like sugar to me and not like some supersweet chemical. At holiday time I like to spring for a few fancy thingsa little smoked salmon, some fancy biscuits or chocolate pastilles.

These essays were written at a time when it was becoming increasingly clear that many of our fellow citizens are going hungry in the streets of our richest cities. It is impossible to write about food and not think about that.

I hope that those who are lucky to be well fed will find this book useful in feeding family and friends.

Laurie Colwin

New York City, 1987

Starting Out in the Kitchen

Cooking is like anything else: some people have an inborn talent for it. Some become expert by practicing and some learn from books.

The best way to feel at ease in the kitchen is to learn at someones knee. Years ago a child (usually a girl) would learn from her parent (usually her mother) by standing on a chair next to the stove and watching intently, or by wandering into the kitchen and begging to help. I was once given an amazing lunch by a young woman whose mother had been unable to boil water but was quite able to employ expensive Chinese help. Everyone should have the good fortune either to be Chinese or to be rich. Either way, you can end up learning how to make homemade won tons and duck stuffed with cherries and fresh lichee nuts.