‘A different way of thinking’
‘America’s Test Kitchen’ behind him, Kimball turns to unfettered, global cooking
FOR more than 30 years, Christopher Kimball taught America the ultimate, vigorously researched paths to blue-ribbon carrot cake, to-die-for roasted chicken and paramount potato salad.
As the longtime editor of Cook’s Illustrated, an outlier in the world of glossy food magazines that spawned the “America’s Test Kitchen” empire of television shows, cookbooks and magazines, Kimball professed a strict, technique-driven approach in the kitchen. If his exacting recipes were followed to the letter, home cooks could bask in the glory of perfect lasagna, beyond-moist roasted pork tenderloin and a quiche whose creamy cus--
tard center could bring a tear to the eye.
But that’s in Kimball’s past now. After a messy separation in 2015 from the media company he created and built into a culinary powerhouse, 65-year-old Kimball has emerged reborn. He sees a new way in the kitchen — one much less tied to the rigors of perfectionism — and a new meal on the American dinner table, one that’s globally influenced, brightly flavored and joyously unfettered.
And with a zealot’s passion, he has taken that vision and created something new, exciting and — dare we say it? — revolutionary. Welcome to Milk Street Kitchen, a multimedia enterprise named for its Boston address that last year began bimonthly publication of Milk Street Magazine, and has come to include Milk Street Radio broadcast and podcast, cooking school and, this month, its first cookbook.
With recipes that reflect the multicultural world we live in, “Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street: The New Home Cooking” embraces global flavors with a fervor that would be unimaginable in Kimball’s Americana kitchen governed by Euro-proper technique. “Milk Street” boldly proclaims that we’re living in a culinary watershed moment when, “like music and fashion, cooking is becoming a mashup of ingredients and technique.”
True, but he goes even further: “Ethnic cooking is dead.” Shocking? The new Milk Street ethos presents an excellent case that there is no ethnic divide within the modern global kitchen. It is simply who we are and what we eat now. And that new realization — articulated through smart, encompassing recipes — is, at least where Kimball acolytes are concerned, game changing.
The Chronicle talked to Kimball about the new cookbook and his Milk Street machine.
Q: Milk Street has arrived at a time when people are embracing and appreciating a new way of looking at food and the food world. How was your timing so on target?
A: My cooking had started to change a few years ago. You know how you notice something and it just starts to multiply? There’s nothing new about other cultures and recipes. For me, what’s new is that there is a different way of thinking about cooking. That was the difference.
Q: You make the point that ethnic cooking is a thing of the past, that we’re simply making dinner as opposed to making an ethnic meal. Explain what that means and why it’s important.
A: I really don’t like the term ethnic. It implies something I disagree with, which is “our food” versus “their food.” When I was learning to cook, ethnic food was some fancy Mexican or Moroccan or Indian recipe. It was sort of Saturday-night cooking. I’d prep Friday night and cook all day Saturday. It wasn’t practical, and it wasn’t authentic. Making a Senegalese dish in Manhattan? You can import some of the principal ideas, but you can’t really import the experience and culture. The idea of “exotic” always bothered me. If you get rid of all that, you have everyone just cooking dinner. You get rid of who owns the food. That’s a much happier, better way of thinking about food other than isolating it by region.
Q: Do you think that the overall foodie realm buys into that?
A: I’m not trying to appeal to a group of people here. I’ve always done what I’m interested in. And I’ve been interested in this style of cooking for some time now. I only can do what I do and enjoy it with some likeminded people. Clearly, though, I think we have struck a nerve. Three years ago, if someone said to me, “You need sumac or za’atar,” I’d be going, “I’m not going to do that, and it’s not in my pantry.” Every time I turn around now, someone’s talking about sumac.
Q: Maybe we’ve already matured in the kitchen and are ready for this next step, especially if we already have kimchi in the fridge and cardamom pods in the cupboard.
A: And if you don’t, you can get it delivered tomorrow.
Q: In the many years you guided Cook’s Illustrated and America’s Test Kitchen, the food was distinctly and proudly American food, especially Cook’s Country dishes. And now with Milk Street, there is a global embrace. Was that jarring to you or a logical progression?
A: Yes, it was a logical change and also — this sounds like marketing hype — I really do think and believe that if you start with big flavors, which most of the world does — chiles, spices, herbs, ginger, fermented sauces — you can get the big flavors quickly. The food I’m cooking now already starts with flavor. It’s hard not to end up with some something tasty when you start with toasted sesame oil and ginger.
Q: Can you still get excited about a chicken pot pie and Sunday roast beef ?
A: I do get excited about apple pie. American pie? Nobody does it better. It’s brilliant. No, I won’t get excited about a roast beef. I will get excited about pot-a-feu (French beef stew). No, I’m probably not going to do a big meat roast anymore, or a chicken pot pie. I’m not doing that anymore because I don’t eat that way.
Q: What do you want the take-away to be from the new cookbook?
A: You can change how you cook. You can change, and you can actually end up with much better results.