Kitchen Work Home Cooking Issue 9, Winter 2024
EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK
From soup to nuts—from the conception of the colors, textures, smells, and flavors of a plate of food, through the procuring of ingredients, the preparation of a mise en place, and the culmination of merging complementary threads to the amalgam of a sumptuous whole—the gifts of making food are not only too precious to ignore; they are the very staff of life on this planet.
– Matt Straus –
ISSUE 9 | EXCERPTS
THE CROQUE MONSIEUR, IN GRIEF AND JOY
I don’t remember exactly what happened with the sandwich contest. But I do recall how my first croque monsieur tasted, how the uncured pork provided a salty counterpoint to the creamy, nutty Gruyère. The crunch of the sourdough, coupled with the subtly sweet dash of nutmeg, transported me from my six hundred-square-foot apartment, which felt more and more suffocating as hours turned into days, weeks into months.
- Josh Martin -
__________
VLITA
Deep in a shoebox, among concert and ferry tickets, I find a photo of myself lifting a tangle of amaranth greens onto a plate on a balcony in Athens. Ella must have taken it on her cheap film camera. I look younger than I can believe I’ve ever been. The angle of the camera hides the other dishes on the table, but there is a gilt-head bream, tsipoura, baked with those generous scarred Mediterranean tomatoes you have to clean like fish to rid of their fibrous ribs.
- Jago Furnas -
__________
REGARDING FAILURES IN THE KITCHEN
Nothing like that of Francois Vatel,
the infamous pastry chef and maître d’
managing the Château of Chantilly
when Louis XIV showed up with
little notice and a thousand friends,
and Vatel was expected to orchestrate
a feast to make the gods groan for
human tongues, only for the massive
fish delivery to be hopelessly missing,
- Greg Emilio -
__________
LAMINATIONS OF GRIEF
Throughout my dad’s illness, cooking proved a meaningful distraction, forcing my attention to shift from disease to the task of transforming vegetables, and reminded me of what brings me joy. One of the pleasures of a CSA box is relinquishing control, to the farmers who grow the food and pack the boxes, who determine which produce items will be on our tables each week.
- Clare Michaud -
__________
THE CLAM DEALER
After a half hour or so of conversation, I casually ask about the status of the clams, which results in more animated phone calls and reassurance that the clams are very close. Our chat continues, meandering, without a hint of impatience on their part. Even the guys from the salumeria join in, though they had been ready to close after bundling up my purchases.
- Leigh Biddlecome -
__________
MASCULINE & FEMININE IN THE KITCHEN
What do I mean by masculine cooking? It seems to me that there are many masculine ways to cook, the most important of which might be the conception of cooking a meal as an impressive, one-off event. It starts with the plan to cook a big meal, one that may require hours of preparation. It is not the type of cooking most people can do every day.
- Cornelia Sheppard Dawson -
__________
TWO UGLY KNUCKLES
Prior to Darius moving in with us, the closest I came to cooking from a book had been following the South Beach Diet and Five Factor. Then, a teenager with a taste for soul food and questionable eating habits arrived.
- Tim Halbur -
__________
PEELER
Peeling potatoes has been my mother’s job since she was young,
her small, square fingers flying
in perfect arches along the slick sides
of each starchy gift from the earth.
- Katie Wills Evans -
__________
BRÚITÍN
You gave me once the responsibility of a salt-cracked island;
Asked me to peel off muddy skin, and hitch out nodes of darkness.
You sat me next to the turf fire to work;
Its ancient spell ensconced me in tradition, and my small young hands
Felt the weight of the task you had given me.
- Ba Seoighe -
__________
TO EAT ALONE
Sometimes I eat in the bath. It started when I worked in restaurants and would come home ravenous at 1am. Spaghetti boils in about the same time it takes to fill my bathtub, so that’s what I did. Then I’d steep in the scalding water with a bowl of pasta half-floating on my chest. The spaghetti itself is not transgressive—De Cecco, butter, olive oil, parmesan, pepper—but I can’t make it if anyone else in the house is awake.
- Molly Pepper Steemson -
__________
SEVEN COURSES AFTER FOUR YEARS
Food was always an important part of our clique. Most of us were friends from a freshman year group chat, which we created to organize a weekly ramen trip to San Francisco’s Japantown during our double lunch period. Sophomore year, those of us who took MUNI would walk a few stops to get a snack in the Castro on Fridays.
- Athena Cheris -
__________
IN YOUR HANDS
mother—
feigning reluctance
to make a dish
that takes a lot of hand,
hinting that i ask for too much…
- J.H. Gho -
__________
THE ROAST REBORN
After my grandmother’s death, while my grandfather was still alive, we allowed the tradition of roast dinners to wane, reserving them for Christmas and Easter alone. My grandmother's were traditional roasts; Yorkshire pudding went only with beef, mint sauce with lamb, and applesauce with pork.
- Violet Smart -
__________
BERLIN KITCHEN
It was soothing to enter a space of steam and spice. The kitchen helped me to understand the rest of my apartment. After a fresh coffee and a warm bun with butter and cheese, it was the base from which I could conjure the strength to venture into the living room to hang art on the walls, or the bedroom to organize books.
- Emma Maar -