Soroff On
Melissa Clark
The New York Times food writer tells us about bogus reality shows, fussy food and why roast chicken is boring.
Photo Credit: Matthew Benson
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Food writer and cookbook author Melissa Clark was born and raised in New York. She earned her MFA from Columbia, worked as a professional chef and caterer, and is now a columnist for The New York Times. She has written 32 cookbooks, and has collaborated on books with chefs like Daniel Boulud and White House pastry chef Bill Yosses. The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen, which she coauthored with Peter Berley, won both a James Beard award and a Julia Child Cookbook award. Her most recent, Cook This Now, is a compendium of seasonally driven comfort food dishes. She lives in Brooklyn.
One thing that’ll make you avoid a restaurant?
If I see chicken mixed with pasta, I’m out the door. Something about that combination you know is going to be vile. In Italy, they don’t take chicken and mix it with pasta. So that’s one big clue that sends me screaming.
I read Down and Out in Paris and London when I worked in a restaurant. Makes you feel good about certain hygiene standards that have been implemented since it was written.
People think chefs do all sorts of nasty things to their food but they don’t… purposefully.
Fussy food. I can’t stand having to line things up in a straight line or anything precise. Makes my skin crawl. If the whole recipe depends on measuring something exactly or I have to use some obscure tool, forget it.
Caesar salad is a good one, because they usually suck. A lot of people judge a restaurant based on its roast chicken, but I never order roast chicken. It’s the most boring thing on the menu. So I guess I judge them on the simpler things. The bread basket. The first thing that comes. The quality of the butter. If they didn’t care enough to mold the butter into a little dish, you know they don’t really care about much.
No! Martha’s great! She’s taught me a lot, and I continue to learn from her.
It’s all food porn. They all use the same lighting and camera angles. And that’s fine. What gets me is the reality cooking shows, which are completely fake and completely staged. The annoying part is that if the chef wins, it actually ups his or her status, and that is completely bogus.
Waterbug on a stick. Maggots. Oh, a deep-fried tarantula! I ate that at the Explorers Club, and it was a little like soft-shell crab.
Really, really good olive oil, and there’s this Turkish pepper you can buy at spice stores. It’s the most delicious, fruity spice, and it’s not hard to find. It’s called Urfa or Aleppo, and, along with olive oil, it fixes anything you messed up.
Yes. That’s another secret weapon. Bacon, too.
A good flaky sea salt. I carry it in my purse at all times.
Jerusalem artichokes I’m seeing everywhere, and I can’t stand them.
Your hands.
I just got one of those really fancy meat thermometers, like the ones the health inspectors use, and I’ve been measuring the temperature of everything. How hot is my tap water? Now I know.
People like me. They love good food, don’t have a lot of time and don’t want to fuss.
At least another 32. A girl’s gotta make a living. [Laughs] Do you know how hard it is to make a living writing cookbooks, especially living in New York?
Absolutely not. There are sexy chefs, but there’s nothing intrinsically sexy about the profession. I don’t even think firefighters are intrinsically sexy.
No. Whether it’s a chocolate truffle, or a raw oyster with a mignonette, or shaving a white truffle directly onto someone’s tongue, you’re not going to get anywhere until you get to know them as a person. The food itself isn’t sexy. It’s the fact that you’re making the effort.
I love sea urchin. It’s delicious. White truffles, too. But not in the same dish.
I work at it. Don’t you hate the people who deny it?
I think he would be if I ever let him in the kitchen.
I love expanding one’s horizons when it comes to cooking and food, but I’ll admit I got into a bit of trouble when I tried the nose-to-tail thing. I ended up with a pair of hairy pig feet.
I don’t think anything is intrinsically hard, but when you’re not familiar with it, it’s off-putting. I’m not that familiar with Malaysian ingredients, so I’m sort of like, “What do you do with those dried shrimp?” So it’s the ingredients, I think, more than technique, per se.
A knowledgeable writer.
One of the greatest pleasures I’ve ever had cooking was the time I made Paula Deen an arugula salad. She made me deep-fried bacon, and I made her an arugula salad.
My husband won’t be home, so I’ll be having dinner by myself, and on nights when I’m alone, I eat a bunch of cheese. One of my favorite meals is just a great salad and some wonderful cheeses. That totally does it for me.
