Notebooks

These notebooks contain menus and recipes from my early restaurant years. Steno pads gave way to three-ring notebooks, as my arsenal of information grew and I needed tabs to separate "custards" from "doughs,” “sauces” from “stocks.” Most of the ideas and dishes in these notebooks are original, though it’s easy to trace the influence from various kitchen lines and mentors. Examine them chronologically, you’ll see an evolution of tastes and ideas.⁠. They are like stepping stones. 📚
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I used to write in pencil, until I learned how quickly graphite fades. I always wrote in shorthand (AP, XVO, soda, #), and only noted what I hadn’t memorized. Often, I omitted instructions altogether, thinking I'd never forget to puncture the cracker dough before baking or soak the prunes for the rabbit terrine. ⁠🧄 These days, I take notes like a historian, archiving processes and opinions about each thing I make. My recipes fill file folders and boxes. They are more professional, I suppose, but where they are complete, they are also lack context, informed by memory. 🥬

A first piece of advice I give young chefs is to document well—all ideas, all experiments. Credit others, where due. Use pen. 🖋 #thenimblecook
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Troentorp Clogs

Can we talk love? ⁠❤️⁠
Love is this pair of clogs: a big steel-toed, hardwood-soled, metal-studded, five-year-old @troentorpclogs clunker. ⁠
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The toe is bulbous--clown-like--but serious, resilient, conscientious, even. It can withstand a knife puncture and my growing daughter's full weight. ⁠
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Years ago, I swapped out my chef coat for vintage aprons wrapped around cotton tees. But I’ll always keep the clogs. They support my posture and in a real way anchor me to my work. 🌿 #thenimblecook⁠

A Bare Studio

Four years ago, in a frantic search for a kitchen to start recipe testing, I chanced upon this bare studio in Sunset Park. I was sold on the foot-thick old beams, soaring, slatted ceilings, and bank of windows. There was no back splash, floor drain, or vent hood. It had no gas, nor water. It lacked sufficient electric, too. But it was 600 square feet, uncluttered by kid debris. ⁠
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I moved in with my estate sale-salvaged Garland stove ( @welbilt_inc )and cookbook collection. I plastered the huge white walls with recipes, brought in the talented @digitaldottie, @kaysarasaraa, @jess_ziman, and got to work. ⁠
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The space has grown up, as I've settled in. My books have shelves; my mop bucket has wheels. I order trash bags by the case and seamless by the roll. ⁠ ⁠
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Some of my (and your) favorite cookbooks were photographed inside these studio walls. Some of my (and your) favorite chefs have eaten here. My kids’ schools come for field trips. ⁠
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Daily, I hear my neighbors at work—carpenters, set designers, painters, sculptors, a florist. Their music, the occasional drill. It makes me happy, the buzz of things being made. ⁠
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Photo credit: @ben.hanning⁠

Dumplings

Dumplings flower in a pan. They are filled with coriander-spiced ground pork, wine-and-butter-braised leeks, and melty fontina cheese.⁠ Served piping hot, the pork juices, aromatic butter, and salty cheese ooze from the dumplings at each bite.⁠ 🥟⁠
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Unbound, this same filling floods the pan with flavor, turning into a decadent sauce for the freed wrappers. A dish is inverted; one meal makes two. 🍽️#thenimblecook

The Studio

Most studios reserve the window wall for photographers, pushing the stoves (and the cooks) to the far corner of the room. My kitchen was designed with the cook in mind, should she want to stir a pot and stare at the sky. Turns out, photographers like being close to what's happening at the stove, too. Proximity to process. ⁠
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The window provides ventilation, of course. Its deep ledge seats birds and intrepid squirrels. On quiet mornings, when the studio isn't stage set, we leave crumbs for all who show up. ⁠
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Beside photographers, fellow chefs and teachers find this is a productive, welcoming space to work. How lucky I am to share it. ⁠
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Trip to the Grocery Store

A trip to the grocery store takes the better part of the day. ⁠Standing in long lines for city blocks, rearranging my kitchen into sanitation stations, methodically cleansing every little thing. ⁠
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So when I shop, I stock up each time on what feels like a foolish amount of food, but I hope is enough to last two weeks. I buy things in triplicate, including these pretty birds. Three chickens yield a big pot of braised legs, poached breasts for a week's worth of sandwiches, and carcasses and wings for 2 quarts of rich, gelatinous stock. If each bird comes with its liver intact, I'll stretch three lobes to feed four, diced and folded into scrambled eggs. ⁠#thenimblecook

I love grilled polenta

I love grilled polenta, but have no patience for rubber-firm pieces. 🌽⁠
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⁠Instead, I make my polenta extra creamy using my favorite grind from @bobsredmill, adding more water than most and cooking for a good long while. Once cooled and cut, I brush the pieces with olive oil, top with excellent Parmesan cheese, and crisp at very high heat. Warmed, the insides will revert to thick porridge. The finished bites will be crispy and creamy all at once. ⁠#thenimblecook, page 314⁠
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Kitchen Arts and Letters

I went to @kalnyc (Kitchen Arts and Letters) to sign my cookbook for first time, in April, last year. Totally unprepared for the task, I bolstered my signature with earnest, possibly excessive thanks. A friend thought I could right linguistic wrongs with art. I tried this, drawing a whisk, very badly, in Sharpie.⁠ 🖊
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Since then, I’ve developed a knack for book signing, first settling on a preferred page (the one with the radish), then on a brief message marking the occasion when a book sets course for a new home. ⁠🥬
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This photo is from my most recent event, at a senior living community in Delaware (more on that FANTASTIC day later)⁠.⁠ A special thanks to Barbara Weikel and Karen Cofino for the warm welcome! 📚 #thenimblecook .
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Captain Noah Clean Plate Award

In commemoration of my latest career milestone, I was given a token of my very first: a framed Captain Noah Clean Plate Award. ⁠
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Captain Noah (and his magical ark) was a fixture on our local TV station. My mom had sent away for the award; I was maybe four. My dad framed it. It hung in our basement next to a day camp plaque for “Mermaid of the Day” and an original collage of string and glitter. ⁠
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The Clean Plate Award now lives in my studio. My mom brought it to Brooklyn for #thenimblecook launch last April. I hung it between press clippings and a hand-drawn note from my daughter’s fourth grade class. I prefer map pins to frames, so the award stands out somewhat grandly among the papers, whose edges curl with kitchen steam.⁠
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My Mom's Carrot Cake

This is my mom's carrot cake, unfrosted. She has been making it since before I was born. When I was young, this cake launched my mom's career as stealth pastry chef to some of Philadelphia's best restaurants. She would deliver her desserts in "borrowed" plastic postal tubs, quietly handing them off to porters during each restaurant's pre-service rush. ⁠
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Between cake layers is an addictive pecan filling. Classic cream cheese frosting is slathered on top. The cake (my mom cautions) needs no "fancy" spices. Like my mom, it is steadfast and extraordinary. 🥕 #purplekalekitchenworks

Round the Table

Each class at Purple Kale Kitchenworks starts and ends around a table. It's where we taste, ask questions, and exchange ideas. The kitchen spreads wide beyond, but students’ proximity to one another makes it easy to pour stocks to sip, pass salt to sample, and share a sharpening steel. 🧂⠀

The Stalks

The stalks, outer ribs, and ends of parsley, fennel, celery, and onion, minced finely, cook in an instant to a Quick Spring Stock. Once-vibrant vegetables become muted at the barest simmer; then the stock is done. Off heat, you add minced garlic to steep, and a pinch of salt.⁠
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Shelve root and mushroom stocks until the fall. For asparagus, green beans, fresh peas, and young lettuce you need a "young" stock that does not tether you too long to the stove. ⁠
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#thenimblecook page 68⁠

Little leeks

Little leeks have arrived, full of jollity, bantering like old friends. Actually, they are the otherwise confined and isolated, inner part of tough, extra large leek leaves, reunited for a brief moment, before leeks retire for spring. ⁠
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Blanched in salted water, the little leeks are just sturdy enough to stir a Bloody Mary, but turn tender like steamed asparagus.⁠
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The apple, an eager sidekick, for perspective. 🍎⁠

Corn stalks

Corn stalks, some just inches tall, break New England soil starting late June. They know nothing of our current pandemic. Planted mere inches apart, twelve stalks of corn crowd into 6 square feet.⁠ 🌽⁠
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With an eater's anticipation, I wait for the stalks to convert the intensifying summer sun into sweet kernels for unsurpassable corn. I like eating it raw, the kernels shaved off the cob, or the whole cob boiled only for a minute, until sun-yellow. Here, it is grilled briefly over a live flame, charring enough to become a little chewy. That’s when the salt sticks best. ☀️⁠

Purple Kale Kitchen Works

Ten years ago, I'm elbow-deep in greens as I mull over names for a new venture I've begun: a new way to teach a new way to cook.⁠ ⁠
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"Kitchenworks" is a start. The word recognizes my love of lasting, no-frills kitchen equipment, as well as a commitment to practical, enduring culinary instruction. I search for a modifier, stumbling upon an alliteration called out by the greens in front of me: "kale Kitchen," "kitchen kale."⁠ I tack on “purple” to extend and enforce the rhythm. It is also my favorite color. ⁠
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I don’t foresee that aligning with a vegetable will project that I don’t cook or eat meat. And I can’t predict that an outlier green will become an unflattering meme for a whole socio-economic class. ⁠Simply, I’m tickled at the sound of the words strung together. ⁠
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I’ll learn that others are, too. And with that, a business is born🌿 ⁠#purplekalekitchenworks⁠
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