The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn Read Free Book Online

sure that I’m going to be doing everything wrong,” she said, a tinge of defeat in her voice. She literally wrung her hands. Mike kept the camera low, out of her face, and joked with her to keep her talking as she gave us a tour of her comfortably modern apartment dominated by obviously inherited antique furniture, dark yet luminous with a patina developed through many decades of careful polishing. Trish wanted to feel like she belonged in the kitchen. “I want to feel at ease. I want to feel like I can make meals for my friends who are good cooks.” She pounded her fist into her palm. “I want to like cooking!”
    Trish grew up outside Washington, D.C., in what she describes as a “fairly typical” 1950s suburban family. Her grandmother played an important role in their lives. She taught Trish and her siblings to bake, read “old-fashioned” cookbooks, and lent a formal but friendly note to the family dinners and conversations. In Trish’s house, dinner was served at six o’clock sharp on a table set with silver and china. Despite her grandmother’s baking prowess, her mother wasn’t much of a cook; she relied on The Compleat I Hate to Cook Book . Dinners starred a meat, supported by some kind of potato and at least one canned or frozen vegetable cooked to the point of gray. Her mother’s star turn was fried chicken.
    â€œI remember some truly awful stuff, such as spaghetti sauce made from tomato soup!” Trish said, laughing. “I guess I was kind of a picky eater. I loved the mahogany furniture, the chandelier, the silver and china, but I never cared about eating.”
    Trish’s cabinets and fridge offered a striking contrast to Sabra’s, with baking supplies, cans of beans, tomatoes, tuna, salmon, and chicken, boxes of organic soup and broth, jars of pasta sauce, salsa, pickles, jams, salad dressings, and artichokes, oils and vinegars, dry pasta, spices and herbs. “For a meal, we usually open a can, a box, or a jar,” she said. But most of it was real food, just preserved. She had the same kinds of stuff in her cupboard that I had in mine at home.
    She climbed on a stool and pulled down three flat silver boxes. As she opened one, a strong smell of curry mingled with cinnamon escaped. Inside she kept carefully marked small flat disks filled with spices and dried herbs. “I got these storage things somewhere years ago,” she said. She shrugged while looking at them. “I wish that I knew how to use all these spices better.” She closed the box and put it back up on the shelf.
    â€œI guess I can cook, but I’m not very pleased with the results. I’ve never learned to cut or chop things properly. Lots of times I try a new recipe but the results are disappointing. It’s hard to get enthusiastic about cooking a meal that’s going to take more than thirty minutes to make and it doesn’t usually turn out well.”
    When I asked about recipes, Trish took us over to her well-ordered bookcase. She pulled out volume after volume of excruciatingly organized recipes, categorized and neatly maintained in a series of white binders, another marvel of organization. I gazed in wonder. A protective plastic sheath housed each clipping. As a Gemini and a creative type who can barely keep track of bills, I could never imagine having done such a thing.
    She pulled out a binder labeled “Entrees.” She flipped through it. “Yeah, this turned out sort of bland. And this one, I did something wrong, the chicken was tough.” She flipped a few more pages. “Oh, this one, it came out all right. I was kind of surprised.”
    As I looked through the recipes she’d clipped from magazines, I recognized the names of a couple of food writer friends, including the dish she referred to as bland. I later talked to the author about it. “Oh, I know the recipe she’s talking about,” she said with a