Well, not quite, but she hates what the idea of chef-ness has done to our culture. In today's NYT, the grande dame of Italian cooking says that the worship of the chef in contemporary society hurts us by implicitly devaluing home cooking. Excerpt:
The food Americans eat that is made fresh at home by someone who is close to them is shrinking compared with food consumed at restaurants or prepared outside. And while eating out or taking in may save us time or bring us enjoyment, I would argue that it deprives us of something important.I am my family's cook. It is the food prepared and shared at home that, for more than 50 years, has provided a solid center for our lives. In the context of the values that cement human relations, the clamor of restaurants and the facelessness of takeout are no match for what the well-laid family table has to offer. A restaurant will never strengthen familial bonds.
Which is why, as we come together over the holidays, we should take a moment to think about how we might become cooks again. We could even begin, in these financially straitened times, by replacing store-bought presents with meals cooked at home.
After all, what experience of food can compare with eating something good made by someone you can hug? Like other forms of human affection, cooking delivers its truest and most enduring gifts when it is savored in intimacy -- prepared not by a chef but by a cook and with love.
Read the whole thing. Marcella's Italian cookbooks are wonderful, by the way; she's kind of a kitchen goddess in our house. I learned how to cook brisket through her super-simple recipe, which makes the most fantastically tender and succulent piece of meat imaginable.
The key is slow cooking. You take the meat, poke about 10 to 15 holes in it in, and into the little cavities stuff a small piece of bacon or pancetta, and a clove. Then salt and pepper the thing. Next, slice four onions very thin, and create a nest at the bottom of a Dutch over. Place the brisket on the nest, put a tight-fitting lid on the pot, and cook it in a 350-degree oven for three and a half hours. Every half hour, take the meat out and turn it over. About 90 minutes into it, you think you must be doing something wrong, because it looks pasty-gray. Just have patience. By the time you get to the end of the cooking process, the meat will be a gorgeous mahogany color, and so tender you could cut it with a fork. It will have both released the fats in the bacon, and absorbed the moisture of the onions, which rest in the pot as a gloriously intense beefy confit.
You could make the thing from the description I've provided here. Or you could ask Santa Claus to bring you her "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking."
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We have a tradition every year where family members send around the best recipes for the year to everyone else. They all go into a family cookbook. It's the cookbook I use more than any other because I know the recipes are favorites of fine cooks and using one another's recipes keeps us a part of each other's lives. As I try recipes throughout the year I think about which ones I want to include and I try to make sure the old favorites make it into the book as well. Marcella Hazan is absolutely right that home cooked meals are the place where families come together. If there is anything good about the economic downturn, perhaps it is that families will have to stay home and cook together to save the expense of eating out.
me - What a great tradition! My family has no terrific cooks so I've spent 30 years learning - trial and error, classes, reading cookbooks. It is not that hard, but as Kevin pointed out, you need good tools. Most kitchen knives are more likely to bruise a tomato than cut into it.
The celebrity chef craze only increases insecurity - as if you have to make ridiculously fancy performance dinners to be a decent cook. It makes cooking, something every culture on earth has figured out how to do with the materials and foodstuffs at hand, into another "expert" skill.
One thing, Martha Stewart's little monthly cooking magazine that is for sale at grocery stores is quite good - both recipes and cooking instruction are accessible.
Amazona--I used to work for a kitchen design company. The rule of thumb is that the more people can spend on a kitchen remodel, the less likely they are to actually use their kitchen.
Having just been laid off from said company--do you all here think I could support myself teaching people to cook in their homes?
One of the best things I did as a young mom was sign up for a service called Menu Mailer (from savingdinner.com) which sends a weekly email containing six recipes with a shopping list and instructions. I learned so much about cooking. I learned about seasonings (besides salt and pepper!) and now I actually run out of things like cumin. I learned about cooking with a variety of meats as well as vegetarian foods. I've also found recipes that are simple enough that my children can help. They get immense satisfaction from being part of the cooking experience (of course, in cooking with kids, I've learned that they get just as much pleasure out of making a pb&j by themselves as in making some fancy thing that requires cutting and stirring!).
I used to hate cooking because it seemed overwhelming. But now that I kindof know what I'm doing, I really enjoy it. And I have found that I enjoy cooking for other people, too. I have a few things that I make really well and I enjoy sharing those foods with people.
I think that the foodie craze has made us less appreciative of the effort of cooking, as others have said. Cooking well does require time and education. But it also requires an appreciation of taste. Taste buds that have been seared by too much salt and preservatives can't appreciate more subtle flavors. Cutting back on salt was one of the best food choices I've made. I am constantly amazed at how much salt people put on food.
I second the dutch oven -- the single most used pan in my kitchen, for everything from soups, to bread, to braised meats, to roasts....
I love Marcella Hazan -- her Essentials was the fist cookbook we bought after we were married and the lovely recipe for braised chicken has become a staple. Likewise the spinach gnocchi, the methods for risotto and frittata and the marvelous recipes for baked fish. Can barely imagine cooking without it. I especially like the emphasis on a few great quality ingredients, rather than long complicated lists.
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