Customer Reviews

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks

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3 star:		(5)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

I understand another reviewer who didn't quite get if this was a memoir or a cookbook, and she's right because it's something else. It's a whole new genre of its own, a call to arms, or more accurately, a call for all of us to take back our kitchen, one meal at a time.

People lament the issues of obesity, diabetes and cardiac health in this country but no one ever talks about what could be a remarkably simple solution: cooking one's own food. As Flinn says in this exceedingly well told narrative, if you can't cook, you're reliant on others to make your meals and most often they're corporations. They're biggest motivation? It's not your health, it's their bottom line.

I went to culinary school and yet I still felt I either learned or relearned many important lessons in this book. I've tried to get through some food policy books (most notably by Michael Pollan) and I just never quite finished. Yet, she discusses food waste, sustainability and the concept of doing less-with-more in such an engaging way that I couldn't put this book down.

In fact, I want to just rewite everything I learned in this book, right now, to get you to buy it because I honestly think it's the most compelling book that I've ever come across in terms of encouraging cooking that I've ever come across. I am encouraged to make my own vinaigrette, to avoid wasting food, to make my own no-knead homemade bread. This comes from me, a professional cook who went to culinary school. It's the best book I've ever come across in terms of the hope of engaging people to cook. Like Kathleen, I truly think that the more you cook, the better your health. Who the heck needs all this processed stuff? Why are we eating out of boxes? I love that she took classical French training at Le Cordon Bleu and used it to to examine something universal, namely how to benefit home cooks.

While I enjoyed her first book, this one falls in a different class altogether. It's unusual to run across a book with the potential to be life changing for people, but this is one of those rare books.

I am part of a book club that primarily reads food-related titles, so I have read a lot of them. While I enjoyed Kathleen's first book immensely (it's still one of the favorites of the book club), this one taps into something deep. I like to cook, but I often don't -- I can find plenty of reasons to order a pizza or make a box of stuffing mix. This book convinced me that cooking is worth my time and raised a lot of questions about what we as consumers have come to accept as "food." One thing she notes is a whole history on cake mix in a chapter called "What's in the Box" that recounts the history of many convenience foods and their origins in army rations. Many chapters follow individual classes she taught from knife skills to what to do with a whole chicken to pasta to salad dressings to soup. Other chapters cover the concept of flavor as an important thing to consider, and that home cooks need to learn techniques and basic sills rather than blindly follow recipes.

She comes across as very likeable and empathetic to home cooks who have so many things to figure out these days, rather than a more classic "foodie." I identified with many of the women in this book even though I consider myself a good cook. I am often overwhelmed at the supermarket, and find myself buying a lot of groceries and then tossing many away because I don't have a plan for what to do with my broccoli. She quietly offers home cooks confidence to try, and the permission to mess things up.

I particularly loved this passage: "Not every meal has to be from scratch nor does everyting you consume have to be organic, locally sourced and pasture-raised. Try to find a comfortable place somewhere between the Tuna Helper and Top Chef. If you burn, scorch, drop, boil over, overcook, undercook, underseason or otheriwse put a meal together that's less than a success, in the end it doesn't matter. It's just one meal. You'll make another one tomorrow."

Today, for the first time in years, I bought a whole chicken. I have taken her advice and put Post-It notes on the food in my fridge to discourage throwing away produce. (North Americans throw away up to 30% of their groceries on average.) Yesterday, I started her online cooking program and found it excellent. I just can't recommend this book enough.

I'm a closet foodie and I love to cook and bake, but after working all day I don't have the energy. After reading this book I realized I'm far from alone.

For The Kitchen Counter Cooking School project, author Kathleen Flinn recruited nine volunteers who needed help. Each had something that needed improvement - they were cooking unhealthy food, buying take-out and resorting to what they thought would be the fastest and most convenient method of food preparation. All the volunteers were women and I could relate to all of them to some degree.

At the start of the book, the author introduces each volunteer by describing a visit to their homes and in particular their kitchens. There were issues with outdated food, too much food as well as content. Food labels were looked at, cooking methods discussed and even storage issues confronted. Each woman was surprised when a spotlight was pointed at their fridge and cupboards. Sometimes it takes an outsider to say, yep, storing 15 boxes of pre-made pasta dinners at this cost doesn't make sense when you can make something yourself for a fraction of the price, is much healthier and doesn't take nearly as much time as you'd think if you know what you're doing. The author rented a kitchen and once a week the volunteers learned how to do exactly that.

The book is divided into parts and each describes a food product or group and how best to prepare it. The volunteers were given the tools and instructions and were encouraged to experiment. Their delight in discovering that they could produce healthy and attractive dishes was evident. I like how the self-esteem of a person can be raised just by learning a method of cooking they previously thought had been impossible to master. At the end of the book, I enjoyed seeing how each volunteer benefited from what they'd learned during the lessons.

Each chapter ends with the recipes that are taught in the class. I found the chapter on meat to be especially instructive and after reading about how many hormones and antibiotics are fed to livestock, I want to learn how to cook more vegetarian dishes!

People may dislike cooking or simply don't cook for various reasons. Perhaps they were never taught properly, or as children they were shooed out of the kitchen. Maybe their spouses like doing it more than themselves. Whatever the reason, I recommend this book. It shows how anyone can learn to prepare nutritious and cost-effective meals even if they've always thought the task a daunting one. The recipes are simple and fast and there's something for everyone in The Kitchen Counter Cooking School.

Seattle's Kathleen Flinn, a graduate of Paris's Le Cordon Bleu culinary school, was concerned: over the two generations since World War II, home cooks had grown dependent on the food industry's offerings of processed foods, and despite their desire now to follow advice like Michael Pollan's "eat things your grandmother would recognize as food," they had grown utterly unfamiliar with whole foods and the techniques and utensils (especially knives) needed to prepare them.

She declares, "Recipe writers don't use certain words anymore, like 'braise.' Instead, they write, 'Cover and simmer in the oven,' because people don't know what 'braise' means." Food television has largely turned into entertainment -- a spectator sport -- versus the instruction of Julia Child's day. And home cooks don't know the reality of today's media -- "that there is so much pressure to make recipes short that food writers have to cut out steps or ingredients to make them look simpler [or...] less expensive." They've thus lost their confidence, blaming themselves when magazine recipes fail, whereas when they "make stuff from a box, it always turns out right."

So when Flinn happened upon an episode of TV's "What Not to Wear," she had the idea to adapt its makeovers of the fashion-clueless to a cooking project: recruit a group of struggling home cooks; observe their kitchens and meal preparations; offer hands-on instruction and coaching; and re-observe. This book documents that project in a way that gives readers helpful takeaways just as What Not to Wear benefits its viewers.

Following Flinn's earlier memoir about learning to cook (The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry), this book is about her teaching others to cook: how to stock a pantry; how to hold and use a knife; how to taste, including comparative tastings and suggested seasonings; how to bake simple bread and prepare eggs, whole chickens, fish and meats. She writes well and accessibly, describing techniques in the preparation of a couple-dozen recipes. (Still, it was helpful to watch the video clips on her YouTube page -- search there for "katflinn.") She does digress into a couple memoir-ish chapters about teaching culinary techniques on a cruise ship and at dinner parties; these seem self-indulgent and out of place. Otherwise, Flinn is supportive, entertaining and informative; she inspires a respect for food and a desire to jump in. Her basic eggs, no-knead artisanal bread, and fish en papillote are easy essentials. Recommended for beginning home cooks and those wanting to cook "outside the box."

(Review based on a copy of the book provided by the publisher.)

P.S. For a lovely companion read -- fiction about a series of cooking classes, also set in Seattle -- I highly recommend Erica Bauermeister's The School of Essential Ingredients.

I have been cooking for many, many years. I have children, grandchildren and now a great grandchild! I have cooked for everyone and I thought I knew a lot about cooking.

However, as I went through this book, I learned so many things I have done wrong all my life - such as keeping too much food in the refrigerator and pantry. There is only two of us now and we do have a busy life so I guess as Kathleen says, "I buy for the life I inspire to have rather than my real life."

I used to end up with wilted romaine, yellow broccoli with flowers, and limp celery too often. After reading the book, I have changed my buying habits - I shop more often and buy less produce at a time. So far I have wasted nothing and I feel so proud.

I even put a photo at the back of my fridge which I can always see - so my fridge isn't stuffed any more. Sometimes it looks even a little bare but there is no waste.

I also learned to taste all kinds of canned goods - what a difference in canned beans when I was making chili. I even threw out one can - it was that bad. Some store brands are better than others but sometimes you have to go with the name brand for taste and texture.

I have been practicing my knife skills too and I chop things so much faster now. I like showing that off to my hubby (who doesn't cook at all by the way).

My pantry is getting bare but that's okay - I know everything I have and I am sure nothing is out of date.

The bonus is I have saved a lot of money at the grocery store and I like that. I make all my own salad dressings now and that is great fun and a real saving.

You're never too old to learn new tricks in the kitchen.

This book is not only a great read - it is life changing! I loved it.

I have mixed feelings about this book. I think the author had good intentions, both in assembling and teaching her group of students and in writing her book, but (like at least one other reviewer) I was turned off by an elitist attitude. What caught my attention more, however, were the consistent grammatical errors, and at least one erroneous title, author, and publication date in her bibliography (Steve Ettlinger, not Steve Ettingliner, wrote "Twinkie, Deconstructed," not "Twinkies Deconstructed," and the book was published in 2007, not 2002). When I see errors like those, I wonder how much else is wrong.

I just finished this book and it has already changed the way I think about food. I am married with 2 small children. I never had an interest in cooking before and was guilty of buying the quick and easy/ heat and serve things at the store. I had no idea what we were actually eating, I just wanted to get food on the table as quickly as possible. Now, I understand that my relationship with food/cooking really influences my kids. I want them to grow up feeling comfortable in the kitchen, not nervous about wrecking a recipe. The author presents simple, healthy choices in a non-preaching way. I just went to the grocery store today and I felt like I knew what to buy! I wasn't embarrassed of my cart in the check-out line either. It was full of lots of fresh foods and not many items from the middle aisles of the store. I can't express enough how if you feel lacking in the kitchen, you should read this book and it will fill you with confidence and pride. This is the only time I have written an Amazon review. Buy this book or gift it to someone you love who needs kitchen confidence.

I read this book after a good friend recommended it. I honestly thought, "Hey, I'm really too good of a cook to read something meant for novices." But I'll be the first to admit that I was wrong. This is an inspiring tale for anyone who loves food...and would love to take control of their culinary lives. Flinn proves that anyone can learn to make healthy, delicious meals. She gives her novice protégés confidence, and provides a base of knowledge that miraculously turns these non-water boilers into some pretty darn good cooks. It provides intriguing insight into how one looks at food, from the smallest ingredient (such as salt), to the big picture view of how food, cooking and even relationships intertwine. In between bouts of genius, (like the tip of using post it notes on food to determine how much you spend on leftovers), you find yourself wrapped up in these womens' lives. Flinn blends the expertise learned from the culinary powerhouse, Le Cordon Bleu, into layman's terms with accessible ingredients. It's truly a great read!

Flinn had me hooked in her intro when she followed a woman around a grocery store, dismayed at the fact that she didn't have any real food in her cart, only processed, chemical-filled, nutrient-deprived garbage. As someone who has recently (in the last year or two) begun to value eating real food over processed, the idea that there a book that addressed the topic intrigued me.

I'm the furthest thing from a foodie there is, and I pretty much hate to cook, but this book sparked my interest even more in taking healthy cooking to the next level. More memoir than cookbook, I still learned more from this book about cooking than any cookbook I've ever read. The Kitchen Counter Cooking School starts with the author visiting the homes of women who wanted to overhaul their family's eating habits and taught them where they were going wrong...and, more importantly, helped them fix things.

I loved the chapters on taste and what to do with chicken especially, but the book was filled with foodie wisdom and healthy tips that only seem difficult. The book is rich with ideas and is packed with sensory delights that will entice anyone to take on cooking as an art that anyone can master. There's even a wonderful chapter on how to use leftovers.

Though I dumped frozen dinners and boxed mixes two years ago for more real food, I still have a long way to go. The Kitchen Counter Cooking School inspired me to increase my skills and do even more to embrace healthier eating, for myself and for my family.

After reading her 1st book I knew I was going to buy any subsequent ones because she is such a good writer. The writing does not disappoint, it is as good as ever. What I enjoyed less about this was what it covered. The first book was about much more than just attending a prestigious cooking school in France, although that alone made it worth reading. It was also a captivating personal story of adventure and challenge. This book is covers a more narrow ground. While she does try to bring her students alive with descriptions she of course knows far less about the students then herself and the difference shows.

My real puzzle about this book, though, is what it is intended to do. Michael Ruhlman comes to mind as an author who wrote about cooking school and then went on to write books explaining how to cook. This book goes partway there, describing the author's foray into teaching cooking skills. But even though it includes recipes and advice, it is not detailed enough (no drawings, for instance) for a culinary novice to learn from it alone. Certainly the 9 students she describes leading in class gained confidence and skills, but I doubt they would have found the same success if just handed this book instead.