Your Starter Kitchen: The Definitive Beginner’s Guide to Stocking, Organizing, and Cooking in Your Kitchen.
By Lisa Chernick
Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table, talking to cookbook authors.
Lisa Chernick: I'm Lisa Chernick and my new book is called Your Starter Kitchen.
Suzy Chase: For more Cookery by the Book you can follow me on Instagram. If you enjoy this podcast, please be sure to share it with a friend. I'm always looking for new people to enjoy Cookery by the Book. So, you are an executive food editor at Weight Watchers, a James Beard book awards judge, a two time James Beard book awards nominee, you spent more than 20 years as a food writer and editor, including work at Epicurious and Food Arts Magazine. By the way, I miss Food Arts so much. It was a glorious magazine.
Lisa Chernick: I agree. I miss it too. Even when I wasn't part of the team officially, I always felt like I was part of that team. They were great people. I love the magazine. I miss it a lot.
Suzy Chase: Okay. We need to talk about bringing it back, but we'll talk about your book first.
Lisa Chernick: Okay. I like that.
Suzy Chase: So tell us about how this book is based on your experience as an American, who lived in Italy and trained in the French culinary tradition?
Lisa Chernick: Well, the book is really a collection of experiences that I've accumulated, as you said, from living in Italy from going to culinary school, which just happened to be a French training program. And, you know, I think more than anything, it was an opportunity for me to share all of the knowledge about what makes my kitchen run well and some of the things that maybe I thought could be improved upon that I wanted to share with other people, everything that I think really a cook needs, and it all kind of had the opportunity to come together in one place and I just thought that that was a great thing. And in terms of the particular types of cooking that are near and dear to my heart, it really just, I think is my good fortune just because I was in graduate school when I was in Italy and I came to really value a lot of the ingredients and a lot of the cooking sensibilities that Italians have. They're very good about portion control, sort of just this innate easy going way of, you know, a little bit of everything because it tastes so fantastic seems to satisfy. I'm a huge fan and supporter of using great olive oil. I love pasta. I love great cheeses, good tomatoes, olives, capers, a lot of the things that were sort of in the Italian, pantry and fresh ingredients and it just sort of informs a lot of what I do. I think it's just because my time that I was, I was very open to learning, happened to be when I was over in Italy so I picked up a lot there. And then cooking school kind of filled in the rest.
Suzy Chase: I love that you call this book a journey, it concentrates on items you need and pantry staples that you should have on hand in three different phases of having a kitchen. Talk a little bit about the three phases.
Lisa Chernick: Well, the first phase was really meant to be helpful for someone in that very first kitchen that you might be pulling together away from the kitchen you grew up in, chances are you're going to have roommates and chances are you're going to be starting out with pretty much nothing. Whatever, few things you might've been able to swipe from your parents house and that's about it. So I wanted to kind of jump in right there and help people see what they really need and also avoid the sort of quantity over quality trap that I think happens a lot of the time when you're doing a kitchen for the very first time. You know, you think you need a lot of things and some of them you probably do, but a lot of them, you probably don't. And I wanted to have all of that written down in one place. I mean, I wish that I would've had that written down in one place. When I think back to my first apartment, it kind of makes me laugh some of the crazy, ridiculous things that we all thought we needed to have. It's also important with the roommate situation. If you're going into a kitchen together, if each of the roommates can sort of use some of their resources to buy one really nice thing and bring that into the kitchen, you know, really good knife. And nice sauce pan whatever the item might be. That's a high quality item. They can bring that along with them through their whole cooking lifetime. And then you don't have to have an argument about who gets stuck with the crummy chip plates at the end, and who gets to have the nice knife. If each of the roommates has their one thing, it'll be theirs forever. And I also wanted to teach some easy, simple stuff in that first kitchen, like how to make a vinaigrette, how to make eggs for yourself a frittata that you could eat for breakfast, or you could have for dinner, just things that make you feel taken care of. And then the second phase is for people who are a little further along, you know, maybe it's your first place of your own. That's truly yours. Maybe you bought a place or maybe you're getting married or moving in with someone. And, and maybe if you're lucky you even have the power of a registry behind it. And you're looking to figure out what to put on that registry. And so I wanted to kind of touch on what I felt was important at that point. And the third phase is really that chance to whether it's because you have more space or more resources financially or both that you can kind of really splash out and fill it with things that would be really wonderful without being just cluttery or unnecessary. I tried to touch on all of the elements in each of those three and give recipes and techniques too.
Suzy Chase: What are the gadgets we shouldn't be buying. And what's a gadget that you bought in your first kitchen that you shouldn't have bought.
Lisa Chernick: I have a cherry pitter that I bought that is still with me since forever. And I don't have the heart to get rid of it because it was kind of nice, I think when I bought it and it's not that big so I feel kind of like, well, it doesn't take up that much space, but this cherry pitter, if I use it once every few years, it's a miracle. It should be paying rent. It's like taking up space in the drawer and it has been there forever. And it does virtually nothing just don't buy it to begin with.
Suzy Chase: What are some tips for a more seasoned cook.
Lisa Chernick: For the more seasoned cooks, I feel like one of the main things that you come to discover is that planning is as important or even maybe more important than the execution that French term mise en place, which is like everything in its place, the more you cook, the more you realize how much of a difference it makes to be organized before you start. And also now that we're all cooking so much more than we used to because we're home so much, I think also planning meals, that's a job, that's a real effort and you have to do it in order for things to really work well in your home kitchen. I was thinking about the holidays and I was thinking about how Thanksgiving is kind of the ultimate expression of that, of that planning and being ready for something the list-making for Thanksgiving. It kind of begins in October and you know, it's like, what are the dishes going to be? What's the menu, who's coming and then sort of breaking it all down into what to, by when, so that you're never feeling overwhelmed. And I have a little section about this in the book. It's a big undertaking and it can be so much fun. It's my favorite holiday because I love cooking all of those dishes and the challenge of timing. It all. It's, it's really fun.
Suzy Chase: What is one item that makes your kitchen your own?
Lisa Chernick: Good knives, sheet pans and several pairs of tongs.
Suzy Chase: And a cherry pitter.
Lisa Chernick: And a cherry pitter that just stares at you making you feel like a dope, yeah. A good sharp knife is much less dangerous than a dull one. A well sharpened knife is just going to glide through the food and you're going to be fine. Y.
Suzy Chase: You have a whole section dedicated to kids in the kitchen. Talk a little bit about the kids essential collection.
Lisa Chernick: Having the right pantry items and what you need on hand to do some easy baking with kids and to do some cookie decorating and the kinds of things that really feel magical to kids. That's really not that hard to do. It's not a lot of stuff you need to keep on hand. It's just a fairly tight list and I have it in the book and I think it's just really nice to be able to be ready. And let me say, on the topic of cookies, one of the recipes in my book, is a pan cookie, which is essentially just like a bar cookie recipe. I came to love that recipe so much because I think kids love making cookies to the point where they love adding ingredients and stirring and making the dough and that's all the glamorous part. And then they kind of burn out and kind of leave. And then the parents find themselves rolling out four dozen chocolate chip cookies, thinking like, how did I get myself into this? Why aren't the kids doing this part? And the kids are sort of done. And so the bar cookie slash pan cookie is the best answer. You let them make the dough, put it in the pan and then when it's all done, the bar cookies are out on the platter. And everybody's happy.
Suzy Chase: Now for my segment called Last Night's Dinner where I ask you what you had last night for dinner.
Lisa Chernick: Well, I love this. This is such a great segment. And my last night dinner was really hilarious. So I would be delighted to share this with you. It was sort of the crown jewel in my weird Italian Jewish mashup series. If I could call it that, where I used leftover brisket from Rosh Hashanah from the Jewish new year. And I turned it into my pasta sauce that I had with pappardelle. And the funny thing was there was also leftover kugel and I was kind of contemplating how to bring that into the picture, but I just sort of felt that they really needed to be separate. We sort of had to just move that one over to the side. And I made this really nice salad with arugula that had some of the dressing, but it was a beautiful apple cider vinegar and mustard vinaigrette. There were apples and there were some roasted brussels sprouts and there was a little bit of cheese in there. What else did I have in there? Oh, some toasted rye bread croutons that I made myself and that was really yummy.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?
Lisa Chernick: My Instagram is Lisa dot Chernik and my website is LisaChernik.com. And you can keep track of me in either of those places.
Suzy Chase: This book is the reality check for our kitchen that we need. Thank you so much, Lisa, for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.
Lisa Chernick: Thank you so much for having me. I loved talking to you.
Outro: Subscribe over on CookerybytheBook.com and thanks for listening to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book.
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