There are plenty of people who like to curl up with a cookbook, much like others do with a thriller or romance novel. They find the stories among the recipes just as engrossing.
No doubt these cookbook readers will find much to love about The Kitchen Whisperers: Cooking with the Wisdom of Our Friends by Dorothy Kalins (William Morrow, 2021, $26.99). Technically, it’s not a cookbook because there are no recipes (well, there is one for buttermilk biscuits tucked into a narrative about the late cook and author Lola Mae Autry of Tennessee), but I defy anyone to come away without a tidbit or even something more profound that will make them a better cook. Or at least a new and deeper appreciation for the cooks in their lives.
Kalins is an award-winning magazine writer and editor and founder of Saveur magazine, and as such has circulated among the nation’s culinary glitterati for years. She features many of them in the book; they are the kitchen whisperers referred to in the title. Many of the names will jump out at readers: Julia Child and Jacques Pepin are maybe the biggest, catapulted to fame by immense talent and TV shows. There are others, though, from the cookbook, publishing, and restaurant worlds who are towering personalities in our culinary landscape: food journalist Craig Claiborne, cookbook author Marion Cunningham, food photographer Christopher Hirsheimer, radio host and editor Francis Lam, restaurateur Danny Meyer, and more.
From each of them, Kalins learned something and we get a behind-the-scenes look at those lessons and relationships. If you didn’t already think being a food editor/writer is one of the greatest jobs on the planet, you will by the time you finish this book. We get to ride on Kalins’s shoulders as she dines at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, at a falafel kiosk in a Tel Aviv suburb, and in the kitchen of her own mother. She is a good writer, too, and the sentence “Shakshuka is made of stories” has me dreaming of the Israeli egg dish that is having a moment now. But I love the sentence for how it applies to so many foods: gumbo, mac-n-cheese, apple pie. Plug in another dish and the stories still tumble out.
I was most taken by the chapter on Marcella Hazan, the famed Italian cookbook author and teacher. Hazan, who died in 2013, lived the last years of her life in Longboat Key, near Sarasota. I had the good fortune of interviewing her twice in her home and found Kalins’s experience with the famously outspoken and direct Hazan on target. She repeats a famous quote: “Marcella minces garlic; she does not mince words.”
I smiled remembering Hazan recounting a story about teaching a cooking class in New York when one of the young students asked if whatever they were making could be frozen. “Frozen? Why would you want to do that? Make the food and eat it.” She didn’t mince; no doubt the student winced.
What comes through in every story is Kalins’s love of food and the people who invited her into their worlds, sharing their expertise and authenticity. She is as generous with her experiences as they were to her with their kitchen wisdom.
Get your jammies on early and curl up.
