I've been thinking about cooking role models a lot these days. A role model is a different thing than an idol, or a hero. An idol may have a desirable, glamorous life that we eye appreciatively but never actually emulate. A hero may blaze the way forward, teaching and encouraging. But a role model is a person who offers, often unwittingly, an accessible pattern of living and cooking. A role model shows us the good life as we want to live it. Who's that person for you, when comes to cooking and the kitchen?
I may cast an appreciative eye at Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson and their effortlessly beautiful (and well-styled) cooking and food endeavors. They certainly inspire me, in sweet (and often expensive) ways, but their books and cooking fall somewhere in between eye candy and special occasion inspiration.
I admire Martha Stewart for building a far-flung empire while still giving every impression of knowing exactly what she's talking about when it comes to Swiss buttercream and buckets of peonies, and I of course offer Julia Child all my respect for coming to her career as a mature woman having already found success elsewhere. Her integrity, humor, and sheer dedication are inspirations to every one of us who wants to master the craft of learning and teaching people about food.
But these aren't people who necessarily kick me out of my chair to skip the take-out and actually put three ingredients together after a long day of, you know, writing about food and talking about food and strategizing what pieces of food media the internet would like to have on a plate today.
Two different people come to mind, when I think of role models. The first is Laurie Colwin, the writer whose essays were among my first inspirations to really care about cooking. I think that I have a similar relationship to her writing as many of her other fans: She feels real, accessible, yet bracing. Her writing shows that yes, you can use your leftovers or make soup out of almost nothing, but it can be interesting instead of dreary. Food can be simple — it should be about comfort and nourishment. If I have a sisterly voice in my head, half-scolding me to just cook something and get on with it, it's Colwin's.
The other role model that comes to mind (and I'm sorry if this sounds a bit sentimental, but it's really, really true) is our readers — a composite sort of person, I suppose! I think about the What's Cooking threads I put up every Friday afternoon, and how dozens of you answer back with things like "I also might try to make some soup and freeze it for lunches this week." (Margi83301) Or, "I'm making the easiest dinner possible: grilled cheese sandwiches, canned tomato soup (jazzed up with sherry and a pinch of curry), and --- wait for it --- sweet potato oven fries." (Elsa Macbebekin)
This makes me think about simplicity, and ditching the tyranny of the need to be original. Just get cooking, stay simple, heat up the pan, and cook the soup. That's what I need from a role model — the encouragement to just keep going and feed myself and my household every day.
What about you? Who is your role model? Who do you look to for daily inspiration in cooking?
Related: Cooking Inspiration: Where Do You Find Your Recipes?
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My mom!! Talk to her everyday and she comes up with ideas for my menu, though she may never taste it:). Thousands of miles away, yet when she hears my pressure cooker sound, she tells me to check he flame on gas... Love you Ma!!!!
Someone beat to me to it, but mine is honestly my mom. She is Vietnamese and when she married my dad (who is from India) she basically had to learn an entirely new style of cooking from scratch, and to this day she is still the best cook I know. She's creative and extremely thrifty and has never made anything I dislike.
Pierre Franey. He was un-Food Network like.
I don't have a specific role model but after living with instant boxed food my whole life, my heroic boyfriend taught me how to cook. That said, I also have an affinity for chefs. When I have a perfectly made rustic meal at a restaurant, I think of the faceless chef who made it for me and how I wish I could thank them in person. I should name specifically the chefs at Moxy in NH, The Helmund in Cambridge and (I did get to meet this chef, what a cool guy) L'Espalier in Boston.
Ina Garten. Save her luxury home and lifestyle in the Hamptons, she doesn't take cooking or life too seriously and truly emotes the values of friends and family. Plus, she's extremely intelligent and incredibly warm--wonderful characteristics of a modern woman and role model :)
Ditto for Ina Garten. I love how she makes basic every day things with quality real ingredients. And doesn't make it too fussy or expensive either. She's not exactly low fat/calorie which is the lifestyle I embrace but I cook enough now to know how to substitute certain things to make it leaner (and what's not worth it taste-wise).
I also admire Irma Rombauer who wrote Joy of Cooking. I got her cookbook as a gift from my not-yet-inlaws when I was learning how to cook 20 years ago. Coming from the Midwest where so much of my cooking was based on processed foods, this cookbook really showed me the way. I consult it all the time.
I'm not sure that I have a role model either, but certainly many that I admire and that can inspire me at various times. I enjoy watching people like Ina Garten and Nigella Lawson as I think their style, humor, and easiness in the kitchen is lovely to watch and they come from a more genuine place with their cooking then most of the other network stars. I love to read about food and cooking, and mostly enjoy the food stories. Reading stories by or about Julia Child, MFK FIsher, Elizabeth David, and Judith Jones give me great joy. And I echo the author's comments about being inspired by the comments on this site. It's a nice community of passionate folks and viewing what they all have planned for the weekend meals makes it feel as though you are among friends.
While my mother never taught me to cook, I did watch her as a child and was fascinated by the cooking process. I picked up on it on my own, but owe her the inspiration of getting me started.
My mom, and my dad's mom. They are/were both good cooks, but what I emulate is how they managed to crank out healthy, balanced, beautiful meals day after day after day after day after day after day after...
Celebrity chefs and gorgeous cookbooks are fun. But my job is to get good food on the table for my family again and again and again. That is not always particularly fun or inspiring. I'm grateful to have watched people do it for DECADES and see that it can be lighthearted, sometimes a chore, sometimes thankless, sometimes gets an ovation, and sometimes falls apart and the pizza place gets a phone call.
My first employers, they have a great bed and breakfast, cooked using CSA produce and had such an ease in the kitchen while cooking. They could just look at the sparse fridge and make an amazing meal, always had little tricks that I still use. Those two taught me all the basics and more on cooking for two to one hundred people.
This is more "kitchen and life" than "daily kitchen practice," though I am informed by her attention to technique and her sense of humor every time I put on my apron, but: Julia Child! She started her life's work later, speaking no French when she arrived in France, and in general went places that she was not expected (or perhaps "allowed") to go. A true patron saint of my cooking and my life, working hard on something she loved (without fear of failure or of being judged) and taking up (literal and figurative) space in a place, in a time, when many women didn't or couldn't. Total icon, total DIY, total punk rock.
http://roothogordie.tumblr.com/post/5525781286/look-at-this-marvelous-woman-just-look-at-her#notes
Ina Garten, Deb Perelman, Mark Bittman, Julia Child, and the ladies from Canal House. I appreciate the drama of a finely crafted meal and the simplicity behind high quality and fresh ingredients. I don't mind the extra effort as long as I believe it'll be worth it in the end. It's the pride of having cooked as much as you could from scratch.
Jacques Pepin. And Laurie Colwin lit my fire too.
I had to choose one person I would go back to my childhood and say my mom. I will be blunt and tell you that she is not a great cook. But she made me feel that I belonged in the kitchen and she let me cook whatever and whenever I wanted. Being confident in the kitchen has given me a better life, and it's inspiring me to instill the same confidence in those of the next generation.
Also, the reason I keep coming back to thekitchn is that it is so full of inspiration and knowledge!
Deb Perelman. I can't get over how she mixes her life and her food so seamlessly...it's almost like she's an actual wife and mother and human being who doesn't do everything perfectly the first time.
Can't imagine why I find her relatable, or why she's a role model for me.
Ina has made cooking feel accessible to me. Martha has inspired. I have shelves of cookbooks but Joy of Cooking gets used the most. MFK Fisher taught me how food can be magic. It's such a process and path for me, different people at different times. The cooks of the Internet routinely get me cooking, especially Deb Perelman. Paula Wolfert, Mark Bittman and Jamie Oliver have contributed. I'm not sure I can pick just one.
Elizabeth David was the first. Then, Roy Andries De Groot. Madeleine Kamman, and last to come into my view, but near the top in my heart, Alice Waters.
I have learned so much from all of them. They make food the heart of life, and they write well enough to make it real for you too. Wish I could send them all flowers!
I actually disagree with the original posters comment about Nigella Lawson. I've read through most of her cookbooks and I think a lot of her recipes are in the attainable range for everyday cooking. She's not a classically trained chef and I think that comes across in her books and recipes.
Others I really look up to - Deb from SK, David Lebovitz, Ina Garten
35 years ago, when I was still in high school, I took some continuing ed cooking classes with my mom (who never learned to cook from her mom). The class was taught by a woman named Gloria Henry, a short, busy Caribbean woman who specialized in French food. She opened up the world of flavors to me and I will be eternally grateful. When I graduated from high school she gave me a 12" cast iron skillet which I use still and I think about her every time I pull it out.
Grandmom! I try to learn every single traditional recipe which most of the people don't know now. Those recipes will survive at list one more generation with me.
My great grandmother made three meals from scratch every day with a truly limited budget for her family while working part time at the local school doing the same thing. I did not know her long enough to pick up many secrets, but I always try to carry her spirit of making do, joyfully in the kitchen.
Ina Garten, my Aunt Rhonda (AMAZING cook), my Great Aunt Florence and my college roommate Claire. I have amazing memories of making homemade fruit rollups, and learning how to make pizza dough with my Aunt Rhonda as a child. With my Great Aunt, I remember getting to wear an apron and help the "big girls" make dinner for the farmhands. My college roommate taught me how to bake and to cook without a recipe. Ina helps me relax after a busy day and how to value my time with friends and food.
Julia Child, hands down, for all the same reasons Nora Rocket said above. What an inspiration for living and cooking!
My dad was a professional chef for a hof brau. After a 8 hour day cooking for others 6 days a week, he'd come home and cook for his family...7 days a week. He introduced us to many types of dishes, including medium rare roast beefs, roasted chickens, stews, potatoes and eggs of all kinds. Not only did he teach me the basics, but to appreciate and enjoy home cooked meals with my friends and family. Learning how to cook is a lifetime skill to be treasured and shared. I thank my dad.
My French mother-in-law. Her art in life is her table. From her I have learned to have a core set of mastered dishes, to make recipes with few ingredients and no complex techniques, to offer a number of humble dishes in sequence at each meal, and to present each one on a beloved dish dusted with parsley bits. And to devote a morning here and there to cooking dishes for freezing - her freezer is such a source of satisfaction to her. And to seek out producers of food at their farms and figure out the best ingredients at the store; the absorbing glee she has with stocking her garage full of excellent foodstuffs is fascinating, and she's always curious about new foods and trends.
Her world war experience makes her use everything; like soup from radish leaves. It's not my favorite, but it is interesting watching the precision lines she runs her kitchen on, each foodstuff carefully used, everything carefully clean, the legacy of being young when food was sparse and there was no refrigeration.
I emulate her in my kitchen. She has far surpassed my mother on what she has taught me about cooking and attitude. I've rarely studied anyone the way I do her in the kitchen, it's one of the big gifts in my life for sure. (And now I know I'm not a natural good cook myself, no more false pride there!)
Julia Child, of course! She was a pioneer in her day and I just looooove her anything-goes approach to cooking. She never took herself too seriously, which is something I would accuse many modern famous cooks/chefs of being. She'd drop things, burn things, and serve ugly food. It was very honest.
My Mother tops the list. Others are, a former boss (I worked at a B&B for 5 years), Christopher Kimball from ATK, Laurie Colwin, Ruth Reichl, Ina Garten, and Martha Stewart, Lynne Rosetto-Kasper, and the amazingly warm and wonderful Dorie Greenspan.
I disagree with your assessment of Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson - "their books and cooking fall somewhere in between eye candy and special occasion inspiration." Here in the UK, these two were among the first to move away from fussy, dinner party cooking towards simpler, everyday food. Jamie Oliver's recipes are mostly inspired by rustic Italian cuisine, and you can't get any simpler or easier than that. Nigella, in particular, demonstrates that you do not need to be a trained chef to appreciate and cook fine food, although I suspect she plays up her clumsiness for the camera, which some may find annoying, but for me it's quite endearing and reassuring. Now there is a proliferation of programmes where celebrity chefs travel the globe to find out how people cook for their families in their own homes all over the world. Home cooking has obviously become fashionable, but those two were pioneers in their own way. And anyone who can shame the British government into improving the quality of school meals is a hero in my book! Aside from those two celebrity chefs, I am in awe of all of my friends who cook - every one of them is an expert in at least one style of cooking.
If you had asked me a few years ago, I would've said either my mother or my grandmother.
Unfortunately, a few nights ago I had my grandmother's cooking and I remembered that she likes to cook the flavor out of every piece of meat she cooks. :-/ My mother is better but she's a far better baker than chef and I find myself being a lot more adventurous in terms of things like spices and technique than they are.
Who opened my eyes to better cooking techniques? Well, the one and only Alton Brown. I think my mother taught me the "how" to cook but Alton Brown taught me the "why" to cook. I don't eat a lot of his recipes but Good Eats got me in the kitchen.
A family friend of ours, a lady who I call my aunt, has always been an idol of mine regarding entertaining and cooking. Actually wrote a little something about her a few weeks ago, unintentionally brought tears to her eyes! I didn't realize that vocalizing my admiration would affect her so strongly :)
Shameless self-promotion here: http://apalatetranscribed.wordpress.com/2012/11/17/janina/
I think Graham Kerr was the first person I saw on television who actually made things from scratch. My mother was an "open a can" cook. I also like Rachael Ray ... her food is very approachable and my attention span is only 30 minutes apparently. She opened my eyes to a new of new foods.
I've been exploring my British roots through food, so Nigella Lawson and Delia Smith are definite role models. I also like Alton Brown, since it was watching Good Eats that got me to think about the scientific aspect of cooking.
I look up to Jamie Oliver. I love his relaxed style of cooking and foods. And I also have a soft spot for Nigella. Her food is approachable and just the sort of foods I always want to eat.
Julia Child and Jeff Smith growing up, Alton Brown for the science in cooking, and Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen for sweets. And Anthony Bourdain for *writing* about food, which is my dream.