The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How A Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks by Kathleen Flinn
304 pages
Published September 2011 by Penguin Group
Source: the publisher

When Kathleen Flinn returned to Seattle from studying at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, the premier cooking school in the world, she had no idea what she was going to do with that education. Then a chance encounter in the grocery store set her on a mission to teach every day women how to cook for themselves and their families. Thus was born the Kitchen Counter Cooking School.

Flinn invited a group of volunteers to weekly cooking lessons, learning everything from how to properly use a knife to how to cook all kinds of meet. Along the way the women learned to hone their taste buds, experiment with spices, and even to make bread. They gained confidence in their skills in the kitchen, learned how easy and fast it can be to make meals from scratch and discovered how much healthier it is to avoid prepackaged foods.

Following on the heels of Four Kitchens and Julie and Julia, I was pleasantly surprised by how much this book reinforced the ideas I had learned in those books. Even more surprising for me, was how much this book made me rethink the way I cook. I may not quite packaged foods altogether (c'mon, some of them taste so good!), but I'm certainly thinking about how I can do more from scratch using fewer canned and boxed goods. The book has wonderful recipes but the reason it will stay in my kitchen, where it will be handy, is for all of the helpful hints. I had no idea I should be cooking down my cream in my cream sauces.There were some industry-related revelations (for me, at least) in the book as well. Did you know that Hershey's used to the biggest manufacturer of pasta in the U.S.?

This is one of those books that I won't be lending, just recommending!