{"product_id":"home-cooking-isbn-9780307474414","title":"Home Cooking","description":"\u003cb\u003eWeaving together memories, recipes, and wild tales of years spent in the kitchen, the acclaimed author of \u003ci\u003eHappy All the Time \u003c\/i\u003edelivers a beloved cookbook manifesto on the joys of sharing food and entertaining. • With a foreword by Ruth Reichl.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“As much memoir as cookbook and as much about eating as cooking.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom the humble hotplate of her one-room apartment to the crowded kitchens of bustling parties, Colwin regales us with tales of meals gone both magnificently well and disastrously wrong. Hilarious, personal, and full of Colwin’s hard-won expertise, \u003ci\u003eHome Cooking \u003c\/i\u003ewill speak to the heart of any amateur cook, professional chef, or food lover.\u003ci\u003eForeword\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHome Cooking: An Introduction\u003cbr\u003eStarting Out in the Kitchen\u003cbr\u003eThe Low-Tech Person's \u003ci\u003eBatterie de Cuisine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant\u003cbr\u003eHow to Fry Chicken\u003cbr\u003ePotato Salad\u003cbr\u003eFeeding the Fussy\u003cbr\u003eBread Baking Without Agony\u003cbr\u003eFriday Night Supper\u003cbr\u003eHow to Disguise Vegetables\u003cbr\u003eFish\u003cbr\u003eFeeding the Multitudes\u003cbr\u003eChocolate\u003cbr\u003eThe Same Old Thing\u003cbr\u003eRed Peppers\u003cbr\u003eDinner Parties\u003cbr\u003eHow to Avoid Grilling\u003cbr\u003eNursery Food\u003cbr\u003eBitter Greens\u003cbr\u003eSoup\u003cbr\u003eEnglish Food\u003cbr\u003eWithout Salt\u003cbr\u003eStuffing: A Confession\u003cbr\u003eFlank Steak: The Neglected Cut\u003cbr\u003eKitchen Horrors\u003cbr\u003eAbout Salad\u003cbr\u003eRepulsive Dinners: A Memoir\u003cbr\u003eChicken Salad\u003cbr\u003eEasy Cooking for Exhausted People\u003cbr\u003eHow to Give a Party\u003cbr\u003eHow to Make Gingerbread\u003cbr\u003eStuffed Breast of Veal: A Bad Idea\u003cbr\u003eBlack Cake\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eIndex\u003c\/i\u003e“Celebrates a life devoted to food, with chapters on how to cook a meal for several hundred people, how to prepare a gourmet dinner with eggplant in your bathtub, and how to make the best fried chicken in the world.” —\u003ci\u003eSanta Fe New Mexican\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The joy of reading Colwin’s food writing is that she is doing much more than teaching you how to function in front of a stove.... Her brusque kitchen style is really a sly way of urging you to trust the strength of your convictions.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“As much memoir as cookbook and as much about eating as cooking.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Everything food writing should be: funny, profound, inspiring and unaffected.\" —Nigella Lawson\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The one true kitchen friend.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Laurie Colwin's food thoughts are like phone calls from a dear friend.” \u003ci\u003e—The New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“A delightful tribute to food, friends and kitchen memories.... This charmer is as irresistible as homemade shortbread.” —\u003ci\u003eSan Diego Union-Tribune \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“A very funny book. Funny enough to make you giggle out loud.” —\u003ci\u003eNewsday\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[Laurie Colwin] is a home cook, like you and me, whose charm and lack of pretension make her wonderfully human and a welcome companion.” —\u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“I decided to lean back and trust Ms. Colwin when she revealed that ‘I am never on a diet regime I cannot be talked out of.’” —Ann Banks, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Delightful. . . . [Colwin] is funny, and for some reason funny stories about food are as funny as things can get.” —\u003ci\u003eSt. Petersburg Times\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Cozy, unpretentious good sense ... characterizes all her food writing.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“I have in my kitchen a book called \u003ci\u003eHome Cooking. \u003c\/i\u003eAnd, in between following the recipes for Extremely Easy Beef Stew, or Estelle Colwin Snellenberg’s Potato Pancakes, I would frequently sit down on a little stool in my kitchen and read through one of the essays in that book. I never read through \u003ci\u003eThe Joy of Cooking, \u003c\/i\u003eand I can read the \u003ci\u003eSilver Palate Cookbook \u003c\/i\u003estanding up, but I always sat down to read these.” —Anna Quindlen \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Laurie Colwin is both sensible and sensitive when writing about food, and [her] prose makes me laugh, cry and feel hungry all at the same time.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Baltimore Sun \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Reading the essays of Laurie Colwin is a bit like eating comfort food: warm, familiar and good for the soul.” —\u003ci\u003eHartford Courant\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“A warm, personal remembrance of the foods Colwin ate as a child and later served to friends and family.” —\u003ci\u003eSeattle Post-Intelligencer\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“[Colwin] is a beacon of hope. For beginning cooks, \u003ci\u003eHome Cooking\u003c\/i\u003e is a grand consciousness and\/or confidence-raiser.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Oregonian \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Like a classic dish, [Colwin’s] writing is magic in its simplicity.” —\u003ci\u003eCharlotte Observer \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Wry and funny.” —\u003ci\u003eDallas Morning News \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Charming and humorous.” —\u003ci\u003eUSA Today \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Enthralling, but all too short. The only thing to do [is] reread it. And then turn to her novels.” —\u003ci\u003eBuffalo News \u003c\/i\u003eLAURIE COLWIN is the author of five novels—\u003ci\u003eHappy All the Time\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eFamily Happiness\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eGoodbye Without Leaving\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eA Big Storm Knocked It Over\u003c\/i\u003e;\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eShine On, Bright and Dangerous Object\u003c\/i\u003e—three collections of short stories—\u003ci\u003ePassion and Affect\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eThe Lone Pilgrim\u003c\/i\u003e; and \u003ci\u003eAnother Marvelous Thing\u003c\/i\u003e—and two collections of essays, \u003ci\u003eHome Cooking \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eMore Home Cooking\u003c\/i\u003e. Colwin died in 1992.\u003cb\u003eStarting Out in the Kitchen   \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCooking is like anything else: some people have an inborn talent for it. Some become expert by practicing and some learn from books.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe best way to feel at ease in the kitchen is to learn at someone's knee. Years ago a child (usually a girl) would learn from her parent (usually her mother) by standing on a chair next to the stove and watching intently, or by wandering into the kitchen and begging to help. I was once given an amazing lunch by a young woman whose mother had been unable to boil water but was quite able to employ expensive Chinese help. Everyone should have the good fortune either to be Chinese or to be rich. Either way, you can end up learning how to make homemade won tons and duck stuffed with cherries and fresh lichee nuts.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor those who come to cooking late in life-by this I mean after the age of eighteen-many are the pitfalls in store. For instance, if you ask an experienced cook what dish is foolproof, scrambled eggs is often the answer. But the way toward perfect scrambled eggs is full of lumps. It is no easy thing to make perfect scrambled eggs, although almost anyone can turn' out fairly decent ones, and with a little work, really disgusting ones can be provided.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI was once romantically aligned with a young man who I now realize was crazy, but at the time he seemed . . . romantic. It was on the subject of scrambled eggs that I began to have my first suspicions. He claimed his scrambled eggs resembled one of those asbestos mats you put over the burner to diffuse the flame. I asked him what his method of making them was.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Well,\" he said, \"I mash them together-you know what I mean-and then I add whatever spice is around.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI asked him what was usually around. Mace, he said, and ground thyme. He produced two very old-looking tins. I did not understand why a person would want to have mace in his eggs or ground thyme, which tastes like a kind of bitter, powdered sawdust and is not good for anything unless you need weird green powder for a prop. Well, then what? I wanted to know. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I heat up a little vegetable oil in a pan and go and take a shower. When I come back, I put in the eggs and then I go and shave. By the time I'm finished shaving, they're done.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis should have been enough to make me flee, but love, aside from being blind, is also often deaf. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe loveliest scrambled eggs I have ever had were given to me by a not crazy young man, an Englishman who insisted that scrambled eggs should be made in a double boiler. The result is a cross between a scrambled egg and a savory custard, and if you happen to have about forty minutes of free time some day it is certainly worth the effort. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou scramble the eggs and add a tablespoon of cream. You then put a lump of butter into the top of a double boiler and when it melts, add the eggs. Stir constantly, remembering to have your blood cholesterol checked at the soonest possible moment. Stir as in boiled custard until you feel either that your arm is going to falloff or that you are going to start to scream uncontrollably. It is wise to have someone you adore talking to in the kitchen while you make these eggs, or to be listening to something very compelling on the radio. If you have truly mastered the art of keeping a telephone under your chin without its falling to the floor, a telephone visit always makes the time go faster.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The resulting eggs are satiny and creamy and do not need anything at all, although if your palate is jaded, these eggs can be made with cheese. I would recommend this dish, known to me as English Scrambled Eggs (although no one else I have ever met in England has ever heard of them), only to supervised beginners.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOr take beef stew, that favorite of brownie and girl scout leaders for cooking projects. People are always messing it up, mostly men. A good cook I know was given something really awful by a fellow. It was stew all right, but the meat had the texture of jerky. She was curious and, after almost breaking a tooth, asked how he had achieved this strange leatherlike substance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The recipe said to saute until brown,\" said the fellow. \"So I did.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"And how long did you do it for?\" she asked.   \"Oh, an hour or so,\" he replied.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy own husband confessed to me that he was flummoxed by the instruction “Add liquid to cover.\" The result was a kind of gray water-rather like the gray-green, greasy Limpopo River in \"The Elephant's Child\" by Rudyard Kipling.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eSo much for the idea that if you can read you can cook.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLet's say you have never cooked a thing in your life but have made the mad, foolhardy gesture of inviting someone to dinner. Many years ago I worked with a girl whose fiance did not know that she was unable to cook. They had a very proper courtship-separate apartments, theater dates and so on. Once a week he came for dinner and she could be heard on the telephone confabulating with a place called Casserole Kitchen, or Casserole Cottage, which sent over a homely looking something or other and you sent back the empty pot. Years later I read her marriage announcement in the Times and wondered if Casserole Bungalow was still around or if she had learned to cook. More interesting, had she ever confessed to her husband?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOf course now that there is a fancy takeout shop on every corner, not knowing how to cook is no longer so problematic. My cousin's wife, a hardworking and elegant person, claimed for years that she did not apply heat to food, but she knew how to shop and, what is more, she knew where. Brunch at my cousin's is the only meal I have ever had at which everyone gets as much smoked salmon as they want.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e My cousin's wife is an interesting case in point. She is an Italophile and decided that since she ought to learn to cook, Italian food was what she wanted to learn. She started rather simply with a combination of cooking and shopping. That is, she would apply heat to one dish and buy the rest. Little by little she has expanded her repertoire and it is now possible to get an amazingly good four-course dinner at her house. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne of her first attempts was lasagna, something notoriously difficult to concoct. Hers was a success, but she was in a state of nerves, which gives backbone to my theory that novices go for the elaborate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe novice cook goes to the kitchen armed with a chinoise and a copy of Edwardian Glamour Cooking Without Tears in order to produce a lobster bisque made of pounded lobster shells, or invites a loved one for a dinner that begins with seviche and ends with a fruit souffle.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe fact is, those nice simple things-a grilled steak or lamb chops, boiled potatoes, and steamed string beans are quite formidable enough. The steak is either raw or grilled into shoe leather. The potatoes turn out crunchy in the center, never a good thing in a boiled potato, or mushy. The string beans are either underdone or they are overdone and have turned a limp olive green. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo what is the novice, quivering with anxiety and expecting some nice person to turn up hungry in a number of hours, to do? The novice should try some fairly easy dish that requires long cooking. The novice should consult several recipes and read them over a few times until he or she has gotten the parts straight in his or her mind. And the novice should call up the best cook he or she knows and listen to what that person says. And then the novice should stick to it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI had a friend whose experience in the kitchen centered around opening cans of Irish potatoes and putting a hamburger into a pan while the frozen French-cut string beans were boiling. She got engaged to a very sociable fellow who liked to entertain, and she needed a party dish. I gave her my tried and true recipe for chili (which I got from the best cook I know) and explained every detail carefully. This is why a friend beats a cookbook hands down: you can't cross examine a cookbook.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe day after the dinner party she called to say that the chili was kind of weird.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Weird?\" I said. \"How could it be weird?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Well,\" she said, \"as I was putting it together this guy called. He lives in Nebraska and I used to go out with him. He told me that he always put some cinnamon and turmeric in his chili, so I did.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy lessons in cooking came from my mother, a wonderful cook who makes, among other things, a savory, never-fail straightforward beef stew. As you gather courage, after cooking it a dozen times, you can begin to experiment and refine your technique. In no time at all you will be making true daube cooked between two sheets of pork rind with a calf's foot thrown in, but that is for later. This is for now.   \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eExtremely Easy Old-Fashioned Beef Stew \u003c\/b\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e1. For two people I suggest two and a half pounds of stewing beef, which will provide leftovers. Have the butcher cut the beef into cubes. After a while you will do this yourself to get the exact size you want.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e2. Put one cup of white flour into a paper bag with two tablespoons of paprika and three or four twists of the pepper grinder. Shake gently. Beef stew does not require salt.   \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e3. Put half the cubes in the bag, shake, remove with your hands or a slotted spoon, and then add the rest and shake. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e4. Heat about 1\/4 cup of olive oil in a skillet, turn down the flame, and fry the meat gently until the flour begins to turn color. It does not have to be evenly done. The true purpose of this is to add color and depth to the sauce.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e5. Put half the meat into a deep casserole and sprinkle with two cloves of chopped garlic. Add one carrot scraped and cut into chunks, one onion quartered (one quarter stuck with two cloves), and one medium Idaho potato peeled or unpeeled, as you like, also cut in chunks. Add the rest of the browned meat, another carrot, onion, potato and another clove of chopped garlic.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e6. Into the skillet pour one cup of red wine, stir in one four-ounce can of tomato sauce and two tablespoons of tomato paste. Cook down, stirring all the time (about four minutes), take off the fire and pour over the meat.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e7. Cover the casserole and cook at 300 degrees for at least three hours. You can put this in the oven and go about your business. Cook for the last fifteen minutes with the cover off.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou serve this with noodles, for which you follow the directions on the package. You can serve these noodles with butter, or with olive oil, or with grated cheese and chopped scallion. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs to the rest of the meal, it is simply too draining for a first-timer to provide everything. A salad requires only a bunch of watercress, some oil and vinegar, salt and pepper. If you have your heart set on baking a cake, invite friends in for dessert only and forget dinner. Step by step is the motto here. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd as every cook knows, and every cook was once a novice of some sort or another, you can always experiment on yourself and your loved ones.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKeep in mind that you should always apologize and never explain and that if the ultimate in horror takes place, there is one sure remedy. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOnce upon a time some old friends of my husband's came for dinner. I had never met these people, and I had also never cooked those dry, filled tortellini you find in packages in Italian food shops. I have come to realize that these are meant for soup-or they ought to be--but I cooked a large pot of them and we all sat down. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is a strange feeling to have pasta first crunch and then stick to your teeth, no matter how nice the sauce is. My husband and I exchanged glances. His friends, it was clear, had smoked a considerable amount of marijuana before coming to us, but even they noticed that something was funny.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Hey,\" said one of these friends, \"wouldn't it be groovy if we could dump this whatever it is in the garbage and go out for dinner?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo that is what we did. If all else fails, eat out, and while you are smiling through your tears, remember that novices usually make the same terrible mistake only once.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300211839205,"sku":"NP9780307474414","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307474414.jpg?v=1767729156","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/home-cooking-isbn-9780307474414","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}