Everything's better in the kitchen...

Get your mind out of the gutter—this is a letter about hot oil, hyperbole, and how to royally ruin a Sunday roast

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My Yorkshire puddings flopped yesterday and I don’t think I’ll ever get over it. 

Me? Dramatic? 

Never. 

It might have been hubris, a bit of complacency, or possibly a case of mixed up mental math temperature conversions, but for the first time in the better part of a decade, they simply didn’t rise.

The kitchen went smoky. My face turned red. Leo removed the detector from the ceiling. The potatoes over crisped in all the commotion. Everyone fanned my humiliation out the windows with assorted dish towels. And the big game I talked about my ‘perfect puds’ started to give my mouth a sort of itchy feeling…probably allergies. 

At the end of the day, worse things have happened. They tasted fine, the test batch rose to the occasion, and had I not said anything, the seven Americans at the table would have been none the wiser. But at least it all happened here. 

Here in this kitchen that I so often return to in my most olfactory of anecdotes and memories. The kitchen where I forgot to blanche the bok choy two years ago (Sorry, Graham) and where I perfected my leeks and peppercorn sauce the week before last. This place that runs like clockwork…if you bought a very temperamental clock. Staccato in the morning, leisurely in the hours after, sloth-like before lunch, a dead sprint when preparing it, and with a waltz-like tempo during dinner. The watering hole of Upper Exbury. 

What gets me through a bad day is the knowledge that at the end of it, I’ll get to be in the kitchen. At the end of a good day, it’s just an added treat. 

This shouldn’t come as breaking news, seeing as, for most of my life, I’ve seen the kitchen as a sort of place of worship. Not in the—this is where the grown ups store the cookies and I pray to the Altar of Chocolate Chips type way. No, it’s more religious than that. If a church, a mosque, and a synagogue are where you’re meant to feel at peace—the place you go for grounding and clarity, community, camaraderie, comfort, and a long sought after sense of control but resignation in the same breath, then no place is holier than the room where dehydrated pebbles can magically turn into protein sources and two threads of an expensive flower can turn a whole dish orange. If a temple is a place to cry and repent or celebrate and release, then for me, my cathedral is the room where the food is made. It’s that simple.

The kitchen is my flow state playground. No thoughts, just swanning about, playing games of roulette with salt, fat, acid, and heat, praying to the ghosts of Julia Child and Anthony Bourdain that whatever’s gone into the pot comes out marginally better after an hour or so. 

Interstitial: I’ve been thinking of more fun, thoughtful but still generally universal, ideas for hostess gifts because flowers can sometimes feel overdone (though, who can have too many flowers, really) and unless you’re getting Trader Joe’s medleys or bodega carnations, can get a bit spenny. As someone who magnetically is incapable of passing a used bookstore without stopping in, picking up a vintage cookbook, coffee table book, or classic, is a great way to mix it up. They’re often cheaper than a bouquet and so easy to personalize for your host or stock up on so they’re wrapped and ready to go the next time you’re in a pinch. I found my first edition of Mastering the Art of French Cooking at Housing Works and it’s one of my most prized tomes.

This one is different though. In this kitchen the sense of peace is magnified tenfold by the ever evolving cast of characters. There’s always someone at the table by the window. Buried in a book, remixing the stove’s simmering with the pecking of computer keys, or dropping “eight letters across, first letter R, blank, blank, A, blank, blank, blank, blank, “Pasta that is arranged neatly, I go on art spree” into the void. We keep each other company. Sometimes silently. Other times in booming laughs, sous chef instructions, wrongly remembered lyrics, and smoke alarms. Everyone needs to eat, so the heart of the home stays beating. 

(Cryptic crossword answer revealed at the end)

It’s really the most natural gathering place. Not everyone will love what’s playing in the TV room. Bedrooms are quiet sanctuaries. Bathrooms are private. But the kitchen—the kitchen smells like butter and garlic. There are snacks and sounds and bustling activity. If you want a job there’s always something that needs chopping. If you’re more of a “supervisor,” then there are stools to watch from and delegate, a whole pit from which to conduct your orchestra of do-ers while you “direct.” 

The same way a good church provides so much more than just a room to kneel during mass, the kitchen does more than simply satiate hunger. It nourishes with community and stories and family and music and laughter. It sets the stage for all of life’s little intimate moments. Crying over algebra homework while eating carrot sticks. Playing games with family during the holidays, mugs of tea in hand and a plate of cookies in the middle. The hard conversations and the even harder fits of laughter. The predictable rhythm of chopping vegetables and the omnipresent hum of sauces simmering. Heirloom pots and pans passed down through generations. Inside jokes. The childhood concoctions you’d whip up with your cousins that somehow all tasted exactly the same type of horrible. Grandmother cooking lessons. Midnight snacking. Dance parties while scream-singing ABBA into ladles. And maybe the occasional evening spent Serena and Nate style on the tile floor…I suppose, in that situation, they’re not quite as holy as a church, but hey, you might be left seeing god.

Answer: Rigatoni