The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Co oks - Hardcover

Flinn, Kathleen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670023000 ISBN 13: 9780670023004

Publisher: Viking, 2011

Synopsis

The author of The Sharper Your Knife tells the inspiring story of how she helped nine others find their inner cook.

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School is essentially "What Not to Wear" meets Michael Pollan.   Inspired by a supermarket encounter with a woman loading up on processed foods, Le Cordon Blue graduate Kathleen Flinn decided to use her recent culinary training to help a group of nine culinary novitiates find their inner cook.  These students invited Kathleen into their kitchens where she took inventory of each person's refrigerator, cabinets and eating habits.  After kitchen "makeovers" and a series of basic lessons where they learned to wield knives, trust their taste and improve their food choices, the women found a common missing ingredient--confidence.  In this new book, Flinn follows these women's journeys and includes practical, healthy tips to boost readers' culinary confidence, strategies to get the most from their grocery dollar and simple recipes to get readers cooking.   

About this title

From the Author:

"I feel there is a disconnect in this country when it comes to food and cooking. On one hand, there's a culture of hero worship around celebrity chefs that fuels cooking-as-a-spectator-sport on television. At the same time, marketers worked for decades to convince people that cooking themselves isn't worth their time, and that even simple dishes fall outside their grasp. All this explains why one woman in the book told me, 'I'm ashamed to admit it, but I've eaten Tuna Helper while watching Gordon Ramsey.' It's a funny line about a serious problem. The rise of convenience food and decline of home cooking are inextricably correlated to the surge of obesity and diabetes. If people think they can't cook, they put themselves at the mercy of companies whose interests are primarily financial to feed them instead. I believe in the power of home cooking and one of my life's mission is to help people find their way off the couch and into the kitchen.

From the Inside Flap:

After attending the famed Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, writer Kathleen Flinn returned home unsure of what to do with her culinary degree -- until the day she stumbled upon a stranger in a local supermarket. When she saw the woman's cart stacked with boxes of ultraprocessed products, Flinn's "chefternal" instinct took over. As she convinced the woman to replace the packages with fresh, real food, Flinn started to wonder whether she had found a new calling.
Inspired by this chance encounter, Flinn gathered a group of volunteers who felt intimated by cooking. Flinn investigated items inside their pantries, catalogued the contents of their fridges and freezers, inquired what they bought and threw away, and sampled what they routinely prepared. She enlisted the aid of a feast of culinary professionals including a Top Chef contestant, a Seattle graduate to offer classes on fundamentals from chopping and braising to preparing vinaigrette and conducting comparative tastings of everyday staples such as salt and canned tomatoes. In each class, she explored simple, smart strategies for supermarket savings while teaching her recruits how to choose and cook food that's delicious, healthier and better for the planet.

The students varied in age and circumstances, from a twenty-two-year-old living in the fast food lane, a pair of thirty-something women with young children and singles in their forties -- all a mix of suburban, urban and rural dwellers from the affluent to food-stamp users.
Yet all of them found a common missing ingredients in their lives: confidence in the kitchen and confidence in themselves. Even the oldest volunteer noted that at age sixty-one, "Something changed in me... It is remarkable that I can still learn something, that I can still surprise myself." 

In this transformational follow-up to her bestselling culinary memoir, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry, Flinn teaches everything from knife skills to limiting food waste. Told in Flinn's touching, funny and engaging voice, The Kitchen Counter Cooking School delivers an entertaining, valuable experience for culinary novices and seasoned cooks alike.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0670023000
• ISBN 13: 9780670023004
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304