7 kitchen confessions from people you wouldn’t expect
The most famous kitchen confessions are undoubtedly those of Anthony Bourdain, who gave us a revealing look into the kitchens (or rather: trenches) of top restaurants with his book Kitchen Confidential. All those ingenious plate creations? They’re made by a bunch of swearing, ranting, snorting and boozing lunatics. Now, we at the FavorFlav editorial team are a lot less rock ’n’ roll in the kitchen, but we also have a few things to confess.
Although we tell you how to do things best in the kitchen, provide you with handy kitchen tips and completely useless kitchen hacks, tell you how to treat those expensive knives properly, how best to load a dishwasher, and that sifting flour is really unnecessary and a garlic press is completely redundant, that doesn’t mean we actually practise all of this ourselves too. Because ha, kitchen confession: the truth is just a little different…
Something involving overripe bananas
Sharon: “Remember that quarantine craze, when everyone was baking banana bread? The most outrageous bakes came along, draped with beautiful bananas on top and all that. Well, mine was just from a Koopmans packet. Added some walnuts, a handful of oats… Didn’t tell anyone, and all the self-proclaimed foodies thought it was delicious. One of them even asked me for the recipe. I casually muttered, ‘make sure you use really overripe bananas,’ and wisely kept quiet after that. ‘My’ tomato soup has also been a winner for years now – you can find the ‘recipe’ here.”
Rolling three hundred home-cooked chickpeas out of their skins? What do you think?
Delilah: “There are lots of things I enjoy doing in the kitchen, but rolling three hundred home-cooked chickpeas out of their skins between a kitchen towel to make silky-smooth hummus isn’t one of them. That baking soda trick? It doesn’t work for me either. Sure, the skins come off in the pan of water (not all of them, either), but then you still have to extract three hundred chickpeas from between just as many pieces of skin. I’ll pass. So I often buy store-bought hummus. And to jazz it up for guests, I blend a ready-cooked beetroot into it in the food processor, add a swirl of olive oil and a sprinkling of za’atar in the bowl, and it could very well be that I’m subsequently not entirely clear about whether the whole thing is ‘homemade’ or not…”
Johan’s again, after all
Marcus: “I’m pretty good at making a decent béarnaise sauce by hand. Or at least, that’s what I think. Making the gastrique (reducing the heated vinegar, peppercorns and tarragon in a saucepan); whisking the yolks and then slowly adding the warm melted butter drop by drop. Finishing with tarragon and a squeeze of lemon juice. The right thickness (lovely and silky!), the right flavour (fresh and tangy), the right temperature (lukewarm). I’ve made this sauce of sauces dozens of times – if not more. Preferably à la minute. In the blender (the easy method), or – if I want to impress guests – casually whisking it au bain-marie over the heat in a bowl. And yet, despite all this generous practice, I’m never completely sure it’ll work, and sometimes it still goes wrong. Much to my frustration. The sauce doesn’t bind properly, even after all sorts of tricks. A mystery why (not enough yolk? Whisked too impatiently? Wrong temperature?). So I always keep a spare jar of ready-made béarnaise in the fridge. From my favourite butcher/caterer Johan van Uden. He swears it’s made entirely according to the classic rules. He has a clever trick – which he keeps strictly secret – to make the delicate sauce last longer for retail sale, without using any preservatives or thickeners. And well, it’s a bloody delicious béarnaise. Maybe secretly even better than mine. My children say so very emphatically too when I dare serve my homemade béarnaise with steak frites on Saturday: “Don’t bother, Dad, just get Johan’s again next time.” And it always feels like a defeat when I resort to béarnaise from a jar…”
I ‘make’ it again every week
Adeline: “I’m obsessed with Jumbo’s ready-made fresh pea soup. Although I find the soup-to-smoked-sausage ratio appalling, so I always buy an extra smoked sausage. I really eat it every week, by the way.”
Mashing from a packet
Wieke: “I’m just as happy to use ready-made mashed potatoes as I am to make them myself, and nobody can taste the difference – and yes, I say it is homemade.”
Microwave rice
Lauretta: “Homemade food is always tastier and better than the ready-made version (except for these products). Still, I have to confess that I used to regularly buy precooked rice in tubs that only needed one minute in the microwave. Cooking rice sounds simple, but it was anything but for me. Every time, it was one huge disaster, ending in a soggy mushy porridge that would be better for plastering walls than eating with a homemade (that part is true) curry. After years of practice and these handy tips, I now leave the precooked rice on the shelf. I’m definitely not a rice-cooking master yet, but hey, we’re working on it.‘”
Crispy bacon bits
Sabina: “I’m hugely in favour of vegetarian, sustainable and healthy food, with lots of vegetables and restraint when it comes to animal protein, and all those GroenLinks values. But when it comes down to it, I’d happily put crispy bacon bits on everything.”
Read also:
