A year of home cooking staples

And some lessons from Laurie Colwin

I reread Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking the other day, a masterful collection of personal essays on how to be yourself in the kitchen. It includes gems such as this one:

My sister, who is in most other ways a perfectly normal person, is so addicted to chocolate that she routinely compromises her expensive dental work by eating something that I believe is called Rose Shaeffer’s Chocolate Lace. This particular confection is made by covering a Jackson Pollock–looking lattice of sticky, filling-and-bridgework-pulling toffee with chocolate. My sister believes that milk chocolate is for twinks and wimps. She eats bittersweet chocolate by the pound and still remains thin.

Colwin has a collection of mantras that have aged well since the book was first published in 1988. That it’s better to be a reliable, consistent and relaxed cook than a fancy or ambitious one. That salads should take seconds to put together. And that room temperature food is often totally fine.

Each essay in Home Cooking ends in a recipe. They’re mostly skippable. The appeal of the book is Colwin’s warm, opinionated voice and guiding hand. In an essay titled Easy Cooking for Exhausted People she writes:

Three meals a day seven days a week, even if you love to cook, is enough to get a person down, especially if the person has anything else to do such as pick a child up from school, write a novel, have time for such necessities as shopping, to say nothing of keeping up with friends and an occasional conversation with one’s mate. Therefore it is smart to have under your belt a few really easy things that virtually cook themselves. What you want is an enormous return on a small investment. Almost the only situation in which this is possible is cooking.

I spent my 20s attempting enormous returns on enormous investment. Stupidly complicated or overzealous cooking tasks, particularly for someone with little knowledge or experience. Hunts for the best versions of everything. A dedicated eye on the latest trends during an impossible time in food media.

I’ve had a much more enjoyable time cooking in my 30s. This was the year I embraced Colwin’s recommendation of kitchen staples. Many of these dishes are cribbed from restaurants or cookbooks, slight riffs on simple inspirations I know always deliver and make people happy. I’ve come to enjoy the repetition and consistency. The focus on pleasing rather than impressing. If you’re stuck in a cooking swirl — spurred by a search for something new and better, or paralysis on where to start at all — I suggest forming your own library like this one. Think about what you liked most at your favorite meals. Hone in on the replicable components and start building from there.

My home cooking staples

• A basic, acidic salad improved by candied nuts and good cheese.

• The Estela endive salad or the Altro Paradiso fennel salad.

• Toast spread with whipped ricotta and a variety of toppings from there. Anchovies are good. So are dates or fried leeks.

• Ludo’s omelet or a riff on the Veracruz breakfast tacos.

• The La Buvette beans.

• Mushrooms, always seared hard with olive oil and then sautéed with garlic, thyme and butter.

• Steamed artichokes with a compound butter.

• Fried rice with whatever is in the fridge and the Night + Market stir fry sauce. (I also like to quickly cook a heavier green in that same sauce).

• Simply prepared proteins. If it’s meat, it’s dry brined overnight with salt and pepper then finished with lemon and Maldon. I’ve realized I don’t like a complicated spice mix or a wet brine. I’d rather top with a bunch of herbs and add more interesting flavor through a sauce.

• Oftentimes that sauce is a piccata. It can go on chicken, swordfish, pork chops, whatever. I’m incapable of getting tired of that garlic, lemon, caper, butter, wine combo.

• I do still usually try out a new dessert if I’m hosting. Last night I made

  Nicola Lamb
  ’s panna cotta with burnt white chocolate and soy from her wonderful cookbook Sift. It was great. But I’ve also started serving roasted hazelnuts and a good cheese after all the savory food is gone. (Thanks,
  Nick Curtola
  ). And there’s now always a pint of Salt & Straw ice cream ready to be topped with some flaky salt and aged sherry (a Bar Le Cote special).

And if you’re worried about what happens after years of cooking mostly the same way, Colwin closes an essay on staple-based meals with this note:

After you have cooked your party dinner six or seven times, you will be able to do it in your sleep, but your friends will be bored. You will then have to go in search of new friends who have never had creamed spinach with jalapeño peppers, or you will have to find something new to feed your old friends. In either case, you will be helping to keep the wheels of society spinning in an effortless and graceful way, and no one will ever know how antisocial you really are.

The 2024 Bangers Only post drops next week. I’m on a wild movie sprint to close out the year with a complete top 10 list. All We Imagine As Light … will not make the cut.

2023: Bangers only