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Home from Paris and Le Cordon Bleu, author Kathleen Flinn is wondering what to do with her life. She really has no interest in owning a restaurant and is getting tired of people asking her when she’s going to open one (and on a similar line, when are she and her husband going to have a baby…). Then, in a grocery store, inspiration hits: she sees a woman whose grocery cart is full of processed foods, and the reason? Because she doesn’t feel she can cook. It’s intimidating. She doesn’t know how. It’s too hard. Thus, the Project is born: Flinn finds nine volunteers all who are generally insecure about cooking, and persuades them to come in for a series of lessons on cooking basics. Flinn’s goal: to give them the skills and confidence to cook and turn away from fast food and processed food.
I’ll tell you straight up: I learned a lot from Kitchen Counter Cooking School. A lot. And that was listening to the audio version. I need to go out and purchase the book, so I can have it as a reference in my kitchen. She really does go over all the basics: knife skills, chicken, meat, vegetables, braising, roasting, soup, salad, vinaigrette … it’s all in there. And Flinn is a good teacher. I’m sure her nine volunteers learned a lot from the classes, but she was able to convey what was taught — in addition to a couple of diversions, including Rome and some fancy dinner parties to raise money for the Project — through her words in a way that engaged and interested me. I ended up thinking about this as a practical Michael Pollan: while he spouts ideals (good ones, granted), Flinn actually gives people the tools to use in putting those ideals — eating real food, cooking with real ingredients — to use.
It’s the best kind of food book: useful, interesting, yummy-sounding with dozens of good recipes that are easy to use. Hopefully, it’ll do for you what it did for me: inspire you to cook.
Rated: Mild for a couple of instances of mild swearing.
Click here to purchase your copy of Kitchen Counter Cooking School on Amazon.
Sounds terrific! I love to cook and am dismayed at how much processed food is available when all I want are raw materials so I can cook something much healthier and tastier. But I’m blessed to be able to cook. Many people nowadays never had the chance to learn. So kudos to Flinn! I hope she has a webcast or something similar that she can use to help more people.