Jill Carle - The First Real Kitchen Cookbook: 100 Recipes and Tips for New Cooks

MEGAN & JILL CARLE

PHOTOGRAPHS BY SHERI GIBLIN

Youre finally out of college and in a real place of your own, or at least one that doesnt make your parents shudder the first time they see it. You feel like a grown-up because your bed actually has a frame instead of the mattress sitting right on the floor. Youve looked at new furniture, realized how much it costs, and bought new throw pillows for the old stuff, figuring that will spruce it up for now. And you have a real kitchenincluding a stove with four working burners, a refrigerator with all the shelves, and a countertop that was actually made sometime in this century! So now what do you do with it? Were glad you asked, because we can help you with that. (The kitchen part anyway. For the decoratingyoure on your own.)

We both started helping our mom in the kitchen when we were about three years old. Messing around is probably a better way to say it, though, since we probably werent any help and certainly made plenty of messes. We both love cooking and spent a lot of time in the kitchen over the years, working on our creations. We are not professional chefs and dont pretend to be. They work way too hard. We just like to cook and are pretty good at it, if we do say so ourselves. Through many years of experimenting, weve learned what works and what doesnt and, between the two of us, have come up with a large and varied repertoire of dishes. We have completely different tastes in food; one of us leans toward comfort foodswhether they are American or other ethnicitieswhile the other loves any kind of ethnic foods, the hotter the better. For you, that means a lot of different choices in our book.

Although there are a wide variety of recipes, we only used ingredients you can get at a regular grocery store. Were not going to make you run to six different ethnic markets trying to find unusual ingredients. And when we use pricier ingredients, we try to give you cheaper alternatives. We understand the whole budget thing very well. We each have one roommate and neither one of us spends more than $200 a month on groceries for both people. We do eat dinner out once or twice a week, but we eat breakfast at home and usually take our lunches to work. Its not that we try that hard to stay on a budget; being thrifty just seems to be in our genes. Youll notice that most of the recipes serve four people. Even though were cooking for only two, we make the meals for four, and the leftovers become the next days lunch. Its easy to spend a lot each day on lunch out, so bringing it from home saves a ton of money. We also stock up when things are on sale. You can get canned tomatoes or beans at less than half of their regular price when they go on sale. You can bet when they do were buying ten or twelve cans. They last a long time, and we know well use them. You can also save a lot of money that way on meat. When its on sale, its often about one third of the regular price. Buy the family pack, cut it into the sizes you usually use, individually wrap them in plastic wrap/cling film, and freeze. (We do this with everything except whole chickens because they take up too much space in the freezer.) The bonus is you dont have to run to the store all the time. If youve got some meat in the freezer, some canned goods, and a fresh veggie or two, you can always come up with a good meal.

We make quite a few (in our view) common-sense assumptions about cooking practices and ingredients. Wash your fruits and vegetables before eating or cooking with them. Dont touch goopy, raw chicken and then touch your raw vegetables. Wash your hands after touching raw meats. Its not rocket science. Youve been hearing it for years from your mom, so pay attention to her advice! There are a few other assumptions that we make that may not seem as blatantly obvious as proper hygiene, like vegetable size. If we specify a small or large onion in a recipe, we mean a small or large onion. If we dont specify, we mean a medium onion. When we say butter, we mean butter in the generic sense. If you want to use salted or unsalted butter or (gasp!) margarine, go for it. There will not be an earth-shattering difference in the taste of your food. We use salted butter because its what were used to. The same goes for mayonnaise, milk, sour cream, etc. Use what you use normally, unless youre baking; then go for full-fat everything, which is probably why dessert is so delicious.

You'll notice that we include metric measurements and celsius temperature equivalents. (We didn't want our European friends left out.) Make sure you're following the measurements and temperatures that apply.

Neither one of us has a gourmet kitchen; it just seems that way compared to our last kitchen. We rented a place together in college that had a four-burner stove so small that a frying pan took up two burners, the oven wouldnt fit anything larger than a 9-by-13-in/23-by-32-cm pan, and it literally had 2 ft/61 cm of counter space. After that, anything seems spacious. If youre like us, youre still using your pots and pans from collegeat least the ones that still have handles. As you can afford it, think about upgrading to a few better pieces. Start with a good-quality frying pan and saucepan with metal handles so they can also go in the oven. Buy the larger ones first. You can cook a small amount of food in a large pan, but you cant cook a large amount of food in a small pan. You can add the smaller ones later. Pans like that arent cheap, but theyll last forever. You can lessen the blow a little by shopping around. We have found them at outlet stores for about half of the regular price. One large and one small nonstick pan also come in handy. We buy them at a discount store so we dont feel as bad about replacing them every couple of years when they get scratched. You should have a couple of 9-by-13-in/23-by-32-cm baking dishes and a couple of baking sheets/trays. You dont have to break the bank on those; just make sure they are thick enough so they dont bend. And remember: If you have a small oven, measure how wide it is; the baking sheets with the handles on the sides might be too long. We know that from experience. A set of stacking bowls, a colander, cutting board, measuring cups, measuring spoons, vegetable peeler, a blender, and a can opener are also necessities. You can get away with just a few utensils: a metal spatula, plastic spatula for nonstick pans, rubber scraper, large spoon, large slotted spoon, and a few decent knives. If you already have those things, you can move on to the helpful, but not necessary items such as a box grater, garlic press, whisk, strainer, meat thermometer, grill/barbecue pan, and a pastry brush. With the exception of the pots and pans, none of those items is very expensive, and they are fun to buy. Or maybe thats just us. Its kind of ridiculous how excited we can get over a new set of stacking bowls or a garlic press.

Once you learn the basics, you can begin to adjust things to your taste. Dont worry; we wont be offended. The idea isnt to learn to cook what we likeits to learn to cook what you like. If this book helps you learn to cook without a recipe, we consider our job more than done. Obviously, thats a stretch since we ourselves still use recipes (some of us more than otherscough, cough, JILL, cough). But, our goal is for you to figure out what you like and realize that most recipes are not immovable works of art but interpretations of various dishes. So why shouldnt you be able to have your own interpretation? Something youve made just right for you? So give it a whirl and see what you come up with. We suggest starting with a basic recipe and modifying just a couple things to start. Maybe add a different spice, or a new vegetable. Try to keep the proportions similar so you dont end up with way too many vegetables for the amount of sauce in a stir-fry, or a beef curry thats swimming in coconut milk. Eventually, youll feel comfortable changing things around or even making up your own recipes. If its awful, then you know not to do it that way in the future! Either way it wont be that bad. In fact, it might be even more delicious than you imagined.