Dorothy Kalins Knows What Kind of Person You Are By How You Cook Your Turkey
Editor's note: We could all use a little inspiration and light during these strange days. Enter Best Practices, anyabo sports官网 采访系列我们分享领导者和创意者如何在大流行期间面临前所未有的挑战，同时仍在个人和专业发展。
你曾停下来思考的声音吗your head while simmering tomato sauce? Maybe it's your grandmother or a friend who first guided you through the process. But if you're Dorothy Kalins, legendary magazine and cookbook editor, the distinctive low and raspy voice in that moment is from the late Italian cookbook author Marcella Hazan, reminding her that adding butter will round out the flavors.
Kalins calls the people like Hazan in her life her kitchen whisperers, and she's writtena beautiful new memoir of the same namethat celebrates the lessons they've shared with her. After a storied career editing and co-creating award-winning cookbooks like Gramercy Tavern chef Michael Anthony'sV is for Vegetables,and editing magazines like大都会之家，，，，Garden Design，，，，Saveur,新闻周刊，，，，Kalins has finally turned the lens on herself, exploring a life well-lived in kitchens and on assignments around the world.
正如Kalins所说的那样，充满了关于“烹饪真正食物的人”的故事，最终是关于共同知识的。亚搏电竞在许多方面，回忆录是Kalins在Saveur，，，，the magazine she, Christopher Hirsheimer, and Colman Andrews founded in 1994. During an era when many other food magazines were hawking "pork chops six ways" and "low fat cassoulet",Saveur，，，，which focussed on origin stories about regional foods and the provenance of ingredients, quickly became a must-read for curious home cooks and professional chefs alike. (The magazine's test kitchen on 32nd Street in Manhattan was also where I started my own magazine career in 2008.)
Kalins is known in part for her ability to motivate teams and get the best work out of them. "You're nothing if you can't make the people around you feel like they're excited about what they're doing, and that they're working for something larger than themselves," Kalins says. "I've always been the get-the-smart-people-in-the-room-and-we'll-figure-it-out kind of editor.
最近，我很高兴与Kalins谈论她制作食谱，尊重食材以及哪个厨师的创作过程。坚持结束，以进行奖励速度圆，以根据您的烹饪方式来了解您是什么样的人。
以下采访已被编辑，以清晰度和长度。
I wanted to ask you first about your hands-on role as a producer and as a packager, most recently of books. How do you come to pick a project and what's your process for wrapping your hands and your head around that project? Is it relationship-first?
As you know, I'm a magazine editor. I've been a magazine editor for most of my professional life. So I look at a book as a blank page. It's important [to imagine] the size of it, the heft of it, the feel of it, the look of it. The book comes to me before the writing. The actual tactile experience of that book is important. Should it be big and hefty and authoritative? Or should it be small and easily accessible and useful, and idiomatic in its language? You're designing a communication product, and every one is different. I like to think it's appropriate to the spirit and the integrity of the chef I'm working with.
当您开始编写自己的回忆录时，该过程如何改变？
This was a totally different experience. This was like writing a hundred thousand editor's letters. Because for years when I was editor of大都会，花园设计，and then atSaveur，，，，I wrote a page in front of each magazine. It was meant to be a door opening into the idea and feeling of that issue. It was made for readers to connect. And I think really the books that I've worked on are always focused on the reader. And how does the reader connect with this material.
当我和迈克尔·安东尼（Michael Anthony）正在开发Gramercy Tavern Book时，我们说，this is a book that people are going to use at home.这不仅仅是一个偷窥的经验的at beautiful pictures that they can't realize. So we really went through the intellectual process of boiling down the ideas to the things that could quickly communicate what the signature ideas of Michael Anthony's food is. And one of them is his fresh ingredients. Another is pickling things. Another is quickly sautéing a filet of fish or beef. Another is the saucing of vegetables and how you come to a flavorful sauce. We focused on skills that home cooks could use and could adapt to their own experience. For example, he has a pasta sauce that involves corn, and to make that corn broth rich, he cooked the corncobs after the kernels were taken off the cob. Well, duh, that's the smartest ... I mean, you throw a couple of onions in there and some herbs and you boil it down for 30 minutes, and you've got a very flavorful stock. That was a breakthrough for me.
Why are you so seduced by the way real people cook real food?
Because I think, as opposed to being in a restaurant, when we're in our kitchens, no matter how much we know, it's between us and the refrigerator and what are we putting on the table? So, we're real cooks. No matter our skill level, we're still trying to figure it out. What do I have? What can I work with? How can I do this quickly and painlessly? How can I make it delicious? Those are the things that go through a home cook's mind, I think.
I guess the defining idea ofThe Kitchen Whisperers是我们所有人都在脑海中，无论是否有意，他们都会在整理一顿饭的过程中与我们交谈的声音。当我开始写这本书时，无论我与谁交谈，他们都与这个想法有关。我得到了读过这本书的人的有趣笔记，他们说：“哦，是的，这让我想起了我的叔叔，他以前这样做的方式。”我认为这可以丰富我们的生活，因为基本上我们每个人都在厨房里做晚餐。
I started writing my list of Kitchen Whisperers as I was reading the book. I've always considered myself a culinary mutt, taking inspiration from different places and sort of Frankensteining things together. But your book made me step back and think, wow, what a gift. What a gift this career of editing is. And actually starting to take the time to think about who those voices are and where I learned this and where I learned that.
Good.
Danny Meyer wrote something that I was really taken with. In the forward ofKitchen Whisperershe saidthat when you cook for others, you don't let your guests see the amount of effort that went into what you prepared. And it made me think also about your writing and editing. The reader doesn't need you to show them the work. Do you draw a parallel between the kitchen and the keyboard?
好吧，这很有趣。我从来没有真正考虑过。我认为给您的客人有一定的体验，只有一定的谦虚和一定的联系。这与你无关。这是关于你的。对我来说，这就是做我们做的事情的乐趣，无论是制作书籍还是杂志还是生产晚餐。我希望人们进入我家时感觉到的最后一件事是，认为我努力工作以实现这一目标。然后，当然，在过去的两年中，桌子上有很少的宝贵。但是我们开始在桌子周围再次有几个人，这真是太好了。
I've heard from multiple people that you've worked with that you've got a tremendous ability to motivate people and get the best out of them. That they truly want to do a good job, not just on the project, but for you. How did you cultivate this skill?
Well, I was an editor-in-chief for 25 years, and you are as well, and you know that you're nothing if you can't make the people around you feel excited about what they're doing, and like they're working for something larger than themselves. I've never been an authoritarian, top-down, my-way-or-the-highway kind of editor. I've always been the get-the-smart-people-in-the-room-and-we'll-figure-it-out-kind of editor. I've been lucky enough to have projects where I work with very small teams. It's always, "Okay, how are we going to solve this problem? How are we going to do this? What's the right thing to do for the project?" And it makes people feel part of a team. And it's real because you are a part of the team. And everybody has a little different corner of the sofa to keep up in the air.
That's why I think that in certain creative fields, you have to be together. This Zoom-esque way of relating to people, it works. It's fine, but you don't have time for that off-the-wall bit of craziness that leads to something really good. So when I work on a book project, I define the team and it's a small team, usually the chef or chefs and a photographer. Not even necessarily an assistant, and no food stylist, ever. The chef knows what he or she wants that food to look like. And an art director, because I love the idea of seeing the page before you've even made the photograph. It's just parity—we're all the same. We're lying on the floor, trying to move the props around as you do when you're setting up a photograph. And it's always: "how does this best communicate and how will it look on the page?"
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I think what happens often is that chefs are misled by production teams that come in with their own aesthetic. And all of a sudden you have something that doesn't feel authentic. And I think that's the driving force behind all the books that I've ever done, and it was aSaveurimpulse. It's nothing new. It's something that we did. Go to the place, find the way it's done. Shoot it, write about it, capture it, don't make it up.
Don't give me a low fat cassoulet.
这是一个很好的transition toSaveur.That was my first magazine job, running the test kitchen from 2008 to 2011. And you were the founding editor in 1994 and left in 2001. We also have a lot of Saveur DNA among our editorial team at亚搏电竞食品和美酒亚搏电竞，渴望总是讲一个更深入的故事。与我谈论1994年的那些早期创业时代，尤其是在美国和美国食材厨师以及食品媒体中发生的事情的背景下。亚搏电竞
Basically, we tried to tell people what authenticity was. We did a cover story in the first year on saffron.Chefs were so interested inSaveurand in what it delivered, because [as] they said to me, 'We didn't have the time to learn about these things in culinary school when we were learning our knife skills. We were not learning the provenance of ingredients.' And we were really interested in that because inevitably, when you go down the rabbit hole of an ingredient, you find out things about the culture that are so interesting. And nobody was doing stories like that. That really interested us.
我在关于科尔曼关于卡苏莱特的东西的书中写了。您知道，如果您要做一个辣椒，那就做一个真正的cassoulet。使用真实的tarbais豆，使用一起生活的成分并共同协调。否则不要吃。不要给我一个“低脂辣椒”，这实际上是一个杂志封面上的贴合，当我们推出Saveur时。如果它太胖，太重或太重，那么做其他事情。但是不要做低脂的辣椒。而且不要用猪排做六种方式，因为那不是我们感兴趣的。另一件事是拍摄食物的想法，使它看起来像是在家庭厨房里煮熟的。亚搏电竞那也是新的。 To not over-light something. It should look like it came from somebody's grandmother's kitchen.
Kitchen Whisperersis, to me at least, a book about shared knowledge. Whose voice was in your kitchen last night?
Man. So last night, the voice was, 'Use what you got, girl,' because I had gone to the market on the weekend, and I still had some fresh tomatoes, and I had some peppers, and I had some fennel, and I had some ricotta. It was really a reductive process. It wasn't somebody saying to me, "Make this," or ... It was just, there's a shaped voice, a chorus in my kitchen to say, "Use what you have well." And I've heard that from so many different people. I can't attribute it to one person.
So I mixed up some ricotta with basil and made a little layer. I sliced some fennel and put the ricotta over that. And then I put some fresh tomatoes over that. And I had some long Jimmy Nardello peppers, so I put them in. And then I just put some tomato sauce on the top with some mozzarella, andI baked it. It was a non-lasagna lasagna, basically, there was no pasta in it. But it was delicious. It was a vegetable tian. I don't know who that [Kitchen Whisperer] is. That's not one human being. It's just the sensibility of a lot of people saying to me,尊重您的食材，崇拜您的食材。
There's a chapter in the book called The Cook and the Garden. And there's a wonderful farmer on Long Island named Patty Gentry, who I write about a little bit. And Patty always said, "You just have to do so little to these vegetables." Patty talks to me in my kitchen. She was a chef for 25 years before she became a farmer. And she always says, "Don't fuss. I don't even take the leaves off thyme anymore. Just toss a stalk." She said, "When I was a chef, we were taught to de leaf thyme sprigs, but it doesn't matter. Just throw it in, use it."
Call it the Hippocratic oath of vegetables, do no harm.
首先没有伤害，对吗？
In the same vein, I'm thinking about cooks who I watched and learned from. I always end up looking at their hands. You know, somebody like David Tanis. I remember an old Saveur story, where he was in his little Paris kitchen chopping vegetables. And you just look at the hands.
Christopher and I did that story. Yep. After we'd leftSaveur，我们之所以回去，是因为我们想看看大卫知道的。
Who are the cooks in your mind who have those most knowing hands?
David Tanis' chapter is called "Cooking with your Hands." And there is nothing that he can't treat beautifully. But so does Christopher, she has a care as if she's dealing with baby animals. I mean, there's a gentleness and a respect. But I think all the people I've been lucky to work with, all the professional cooks, are that way. That's one thing I revere about them, that they honor their ingredients and they do things that are very deep, but they're not necessarily complicated, if you get what I mean?
You've also worked with some chefs who've turned out to be human beings who have hurt and disappointed others. You referenced one of them in the book when you're talking about gumbo. And I assume that to be John Besh, I think you called him a "former sunshine man" without naming him. How do you move on from these collaborators and also maintain trust in other chefs moving forward and how do you separate your legacy from theirs?
I don't know. I would say with great difficulty. I think that when you have the kind of relationship that I have with the chefs with whom I produced books, you become invested in their lives, in their story, in their background. My job as an editor always is to try to pull out the things from them that they have to say. And when you get that intimately involved with a co-creator, you have to believe it yourself. And of course I did believe that. And I think it's with great difficulty that you move on from that.
We deal with it almost on a monthly basis now. I feel like part of the job now is crisis management.
Absolutely.
You tell a story, and then, you find out that there were all these alleged victims of this person. And it just happens more and more now.
Mike Solomonov, he's very clear about his history. He had a bad history with drugs and he overcame it. And he never pretends that isn't part of who he is, but having overcome it, having then begun all these other restaurants and places and ideas that come out of the best part of him makes [his story] all [the] more poignant.
我在Marcella Hazan的厨房里看着您和科尔曼·安德鲁斯的照片，您有笔记本。而且我认为这是我在大流行期间错过的事情之一就是能够在别人的厨房里。在年轻的厨师正在从Tiktok和YouTube学习并真正对烹饪感兴趣的时候，您认为在数字媒体中丢失了什么？
Well, I think everything's lost, of course, but I have a son, Lincoln, who's 28 years old and who completely ignores these thousands of books I have in my office, and will go immediately online to get a recipe. And he knows how to handle himself in the kitchen. He's pretty good at it, he only wants to make what he wants to make, and he makes hard things. And he's totally TikTok and totally online. And if it's not online, he's not interested. And I would imagine that it's tough for you because your readers are at both ends, right?
I mean, they want your information and that's why you have such robust online content. And yet they want to get up in bed with your magazine and learn how to make that dough. I love that. That feeds me. Sometimes, if I think I don't have any time, I use recipes that I download immediately and just do it. But I don't think it feeds you in the same way. But I think younger people would disagree with that. I mean, Lincoln has 10,000 TikTok followers for his cat videos. So go figure. My son.
How long will words on paper matter?
What's the one question I should be asking you right now that I have not?
Well, the thing that I was feeling when I got up in bed with your last couple of issues, I thought, "How long will words on paper matter?" And that worries me. I mean, there's something about reading a recipe and reading the food story like the ode to Faugeres in亚搏电竞食品和美酒亚搏电竞'sSeptember issue. That idea of place, and Steve Hoffman is a wonderful writer, isn't he?
And I just thought, are people going to read those stories this way .... And be fed by them? Will they continue to be? And you're in a better place than I am to answer those questions. I'm sure there's a ton of pressure for you to develop all these other ways of storytelling. I think it can be interesting. It can be challenging. How do you be authentic in that way? But words on paper to me are threatened.
Okay, time for a speed round. You wrote: "You tell me how you cook your turkey, and I'll tell you who you are." I know you're a salt and tangerine flavored roast turkey kind of human. So I thought we could do a weird and different kind of a speed round to close this out. I'm going to name a few different techniques of cooking turkey and you tell me how that correlates with a person who would be doing that technique.
Okay.
What's the first personality that comes to mind when I say turkey confit?
You're a chef. You hate Thanksgiving. But you prize flavor.
Love it. Fried turkey?
So you're Southern, you'd walk out to your backyard and you've got this thing you've been doing forever in this big, old wash tub, over a fire. And you fry your turkey. You're a good old boy.
颤音？
哦，那是另一回事。您只是想与鸟的想法作斗争，然后将其变成其他东西。而且您还必须炫耀您可以做到这一点。
Spatchcock？
我想您正在寻找一种简单的出路。或者，我与许多厨师交谈，他们曾发誓，因为他们说您可以很漂亮地雕刻它，而且在盘子上看起来很棒，然后将切片放在周围它。因此，演示对您非常重要。
Stuffing your turkey before roasting it?
I mean, we grew up that way. We grew up stuffing once frozen turkeys with the pop up tab things. I did at least. But I think that the health people, the health police say don't do that.
Last one, turkey in an Instant Pot?
Oh, you're definitely a millennial.
