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Boston Globe
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
For Island Creek's Christine Gibson, the world (or at least the Seaport) is her oyster
I think that a lot of people, when they think about Island Creek, know about the raw bar down in Get Winter Soup Club A six-week series featuring soup recipes and cozy vibes, plus side dishes and toppings, to get us all through the winter. Enter Email Sign Up We'll still have the wonderful oysters, clams, and we're making sure there's some good lobster rolls. Obviously, we'll have caviar hot dogs. I wouldn't say it's a restaurant, per se. It's like a fun outdoor space where you'll be able to have oysters on your lunch break, but you'll also be able to have some fun drinks with everyone post-work on a Friday and be able to have your fill of food. It's going to be a party, which is what we're hoping for: a new, fun, Island Creek party. Advertisement How did you get into this career? Advertisement It started from an early age. My dad was a very big food guy. He had all the 'Joy of Cooking' books and whatnot. From there, I've always just loved culinary. At around 16, I worked at a Cold Stone Creamery, which is not a restaurant, but I loved decorating cakes there. I ended up managing a small spot at a local mall. I went to a community college for a little bit, and I took cooking classes and management classes, but I ended up going to the Culinary Institute of America. I got my bachelor's in hospitality management there and had fully convinced myself I was going to be a chef. But throughout college, I served, because that was an easy way to make money, and I just couldn't stop. I loved the idea of being in control of the guest experience, and hopefully, maybe in some way, making their day. I couldn't see myself not doing that, so I kept doing it. I managed a restaurant down in D.C. for a little bit, and then I moved to Boston, where I started serving and then ended up moving into management again. The siren call of management is hard to ignore in restaurants. Why D.C. — and, then why Boston? You know, I had never been to D.C. prior to moving there. I was just looking for a place that was different from where I was. I don't want to say I'm a political person, but I loved the idea of how affected it was by politics. I just thought that was a really interesting aspect of the space. I also just loved that it's an international city. Unlike a lot of cities, it's more in your face, the amount of culture and differences within the community that everyone celebrates and loves. It was awesome. And I still say, to this day, if I had to pick up and leave, I would just move back to D.C. I loved the community there, and I loved the restaurants there. Advertisement Classically, a boy brought me to Boston, and it ended up being one of the best decisions I ever made. I don't think I came in thinking that I was going to be a lover of oysters. Nowadays, if you ask me about any oysters, I probably will talk your ear off about them. I have no regrets. Participants in a farm tour get a lesson on how to shuck oysters and then eat the ones that are shucked for them. Barry Chin/Globe Staff What's good about the Boston food scene, and where could we improve? I think that Boston is great because it's also a very diverse community. If I had to think of anything that could change, I think that we need to just do that more. There are a lot of wonderful, minority-owned restaurants, and fun, culturally specific restaurants that I think we need to start boosting up more. I think Boston, even before I got here, had the reputation of being a classic steakhouse space. And we have some wonderful steakhouses. I think that the community has done a really great job of trying to boost all of their non-steakhouse restaurants, and I think that we just need to continue to keep doing that. There have been some really wonderful strides in African cuisine, right? If you think of Advertisement Tell me about living in Fitchburg, which is probably a different culinary ecosystem. Where do you eat there? I will say that what brought me out here is probably not the most exciting story. My partner owns a house out here, and it made a lot more sense for me to move in with him, versus him move in with me into my two-bedroom apartment in Somerville. And the water pressure is phenomenal. My favorite place is called Tacos Tequilas. I don't care what anyone says; they have the best tequila selection. They're all incredibly nice, and honestly, that place is also not as busy as it should be, because the food is great, too. We spend a lot of time when I'm not working cooking at home. My partner has a 13-year-old, so we focus a lot on trying to make sure we're cooking at home. But, on the occasional date night, we end up at Tacos Tequilas, just because I cannot emphasize how much I love a mezcal margarita on my day off. What's your favorite spot in Boston? Oh, gosh, that is so hard. It depends on the day. I mean, classically, I love going to Bar Mezzana. You can't go wrong with the crudos there, and the pasta dishes. Colin [Lynch] is a phenomenal chef. I still have yet to make it over to Temple Records. And then there's a spot in Quincy that I keep getting told about: Lê Madeline. That's probably at the top of my list. Advertisement Let's talk about oysters for novices. I was out with a friend a couple of weeks ago who had never had an oyster before, and watching her try to eat an oyster was perplexing and funny. Why do you think some people are intimidated by oysters? People get really nervous about the texture if they've never had an oyster. And I get that. Even when I first started eating oysters, I was like, 'OK; it's a little different.' Adding a little bit of cocktail sauce does help, although you definitely won't taste the wonderful, salty, briny aspects of an oyster. When you add cocktail sauce, it does help with the texture. So if you're just getting into it, try it with a little bit of cocktail sauce. Once you're used to it, start trying with just a lemon. And you don't have to chew. I think it's important to chew, but some people just swallow it down without chewing, and that's OK, too. But once you get used to it, the amount of flavor and wonderfulness that you get from chewing it, the vegetal notes, the creamy notes — just work your way through it. Any oyster faux pas? Oh, my goodness. I try really hard not to judge. I try to keep this a judgment-free zone. But what ends up happening sometimes is there are those people who put their thumb on top of the oyster while it's in the shell and then dump the liquid out and put a bunch of cocktail sauce on it. Oh my God: It's such a faux pas for me. I'm like: 'You just dumped out the best part of that oyster — all the liquid!' Advertisement I don't want the haters coming for me. But don't dump the liquid out, guys. Just eat the oyster in all its wonderfulness. What do you do when you're not working with oysters? I'm a Big Sister. My Little Sister is 16 and going to high school. And she is actually really into hospitality, which is great. She's big into crafting and really loves ballet. We went for the first time to see 'Swan Lake,' and it was life-changing for her. She loved it so much. I signed up in the pandemic. When it comes down to it, I'm actually being impacted. She's such a joyful, wonderful human. She really makes me take a step back and just appreciate the life that we have. It's the best decision I ever made. She's awesome. I'm so very lucky for her to be a part of my life. You have a long commute. How do you spend your time in the car? You know, it depends on the time of year. I actually go to BU; I'm trying to get my master's degree in gastronomy. I try to listen to podcasts or audiobooks that are related to the class I'm taking at that time. When I'm not taking a class, I do listen to a couple podcasts. Amy Poehler just came out with the 'Good Hang' podcast. I love her. I listen to the [America's Test Kitchen] 'Proof' podcast, because I am a food nerd. And I do listen to some books. I'm into the romantasy book vibe. Please don't judge me too hard on that. Interview was edited and condensed. Kara Baskin can be reached at
Los Angeles Times
24-04-2025
- General
- Los Angeles Times
Readers reflect on their most treasured cookbooks and recipes
What priceless items would you grab when fleeing disaster? It's a sobering question that thousands of Angelenos were forced to answer when wildfires erupted across the region in January. That experience made us curious about our own emotional attachment to cookbooks and the titles that have had the most impact on our cooking. Our Food writers — and a handful of local chefs and culinary figures — recently rounded up 62 cookbooks that we can't live without, spanning memoirs, out-of-print pamphlets, collector's items and forthcoming releases. We also invited L.A. Times readers to share the cookbooks they cherish most, including the recipes that they can't get enough of. Here are some of their responses: 'I also lost my cookbook collection in the Palisades fire. My daughters posted a picture of my cookbooks on their Instagram and cookbooks started arriving from all over the country,' wrote Amy Lebenzon. Lebenzon names 'Plenty' and 'Plenty More' by Yotam Ottolenghi as two favorites, and in particular Ottolenghi's Chickpea and Tomato Bread Soup, Barley and Pomegranate salad and Cabbage and Kohlrabi Salad recipes. Barbara Thompson's top five cookbooks and recipes include: Blueberry Lemon Verbena Galette from 'Pie School' by Kate Lebo; Croissant Bread Pudding from 'Barefoot Contessa' by Ina Garten; general recipe instructions in 'How to Cook Everything' by Mark Bittman; Creamed Corn and Magic Carrots from 'The Los Angeles Times California Cookbook' by Betsy Balsley; and 'Nordstrom Entertaining at Home Cookbook' by John Clem. 'All my cookbooks burned in the Palisades fire,' wrote Janet Davis. 'I've replaced my two (1976 and 1998) copies of 'Joy of Cooking,' a couple of Sunset magazine cookbooks and 'The Vegetarian Epicure Book 2' by Anna Thomas.' Davis adds that, 'My entire Thanksgiving dinner is bookmarked in the 1998 edition of 'Joy of Cooking': Cranberry Sauce, Yams with Apples, Creamed Onions, Spinach Salad, Gravy. The 1976 edition has the better split pea soup recipe; my family is waiting for a batch.' 'When my house burned down,' wrote Kim Janssen, senior director of content strategy here at The Times, 'the one personal possession I saved — beyond a small overnight bag of clothes — was a cookbook my mum handmade for me when my wife and I bought our first place in Chicago a decade ago. When she died last year, I scanned it and made a bunch of copies to give to folks at her funeral. I keep it in the kitchen and cook from it often. I love that she made a handwritten index and included oven temps inside the cover.' Amateur baker Jim Potter, who lost his house in the Eaton fire, told us about his five essential bread books: 'The Perfect Loaf: The Craft and Science of Sourdough Breads, Sweets, and More' by Maurizio Leo, 'a home baker who left his job as a software engineer to devote himself to bread. Leo maintained the Perfect Loaf website for many years before producing this indispensable book. The pictures, clear instructions, a smattering of scientific explanation and helpful recipe timelines showcase Leo's exacting analytical mind and his life's passion for baking. 'Trained as a chemical engineer, Melissa Weller changed careers after baking every recipe in Nancy Silverton's foundational 'Breads From the La Brea Bakery.' Her subsequent training, and her experience as head baker, not least at Per Se, shows in the precision of her recipes in 'A Good Bake.' She has the last challah recipe you'll need and the best morning glory buns you could ask for. 'My first bread book was 'Tartine' by Chad Robertson. And here is the great irony: The recipes in this book and its sequels are deeply unclear and practically impossible to follow. Yet somehow 'Tartine' taught me and countless others how to make beautiful bread — and to fall in love with baking. I will be forever grateful. 'Jeffrey Hamelman, the chief baker at King Arthur, approaches his job with reverence. In 'Bread,' he writes, 'I believe that, in the lives of many bakers, an immense inner dignity develops from the daily immersion in the labor of the bake.' This is the first book I turn to when I want a recipe for a particular bread such as one made with spelt or einkorn. Hamelman always has it and with useful tips. Someday I will succeed with one of his three-state rye breads. 'Apollonia Poilâne has the best origin story of any bread book author — who can compete with her running the best bakery in Paris while a freshman at Harvard? Along with Peter Reinhart and Éric Kayser, Poilâne validates using sourdough and commercial yeast together. In 'Poilâne: The Secrets of the World-Famous Bread Bakery,' she has a recipe for rye and currant bread, which I make as rolls (90 to 100 grams each). Crusty on the outside, soft, studded with currants within, nourishing and just sweet enough, they're my most requested bread. After the fire, those rolls, as much as anything, assured us life would resume, even without the house we loved so much.' The cookbooks and recipes that Katie Lipsitt can't live without are: Minestrone Soup, Tomato Sauce and Meatballs from 'Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking' by Marcella Hazan; Buttermilk Chicken from 'Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat; 'all the pizzas' from 'The River Cafe Cookbook' by Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers; vegetable and salad dishes from 'Nothing Fancy' by Alison Roman; and Turkey Zucchini Meatballs with Yogurt from 'Jerusalem' by Yotam Ottolenghi. 'I have my grandmother's copy of 'The Settlement Cook Book' and my mother's 'Joy of Cooking,' which I treasure. (The notes written inside are wonderful.) My favorite cookbook is 'San Francisco à La Carte,' which was published by the Junior League in the 1970s. And just to be a little silly, I have my original 'Betty Crocker Cookbook for Boys and Girls.' I used that cookbook to teach myself how to cook when I was a child in the 1950s,' wrote Margot Tobias. Heidi Haaland calls these five cookbooks 'Mandatory rereading, particularly during times of stress': 'Christmas Memories Cookbook' by editors Connie Colom, Lynn Anderson and Lois Klee with illustrator Lynn Anderson and a roster of '80s chefs and writers; 'The Country Kitchen Cook Book' by Edward Harris Heth; 'Pure & Simple: An InCircle Cookbook,' published by Nieman Marcus; 'Holiday Gifts From a Country Kitchen' by Mary Reynolds Smith; and 'A Child's Christmas Cookbook' by the Denver Museum of Art. 'When I was 18, I went to France to care for four children as an au pair. The family lived in Alsace. The mother was an American woman named Carol and married to a French man. She had a copy of 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' and taught me to cook from it. I still have my original copy that I purchased once I was back home in California. It's been my cooking bible for over 40 years. While I was in Alsace I picked up a book I still use, 'Petit Recueil de la Gastronomie Alsacienne' by Jeanne Hertzog. Carol and I often prepared Alsatian dishes like Choucroute Garnie. This little book allowed me to make many of these dishes once I was back in the States. Another book I treasure is 'Laurel's Kitchen: A Handbook for Vegetarian Cookery and Nutrition,'' wrote Charles Thompson. DeeAnn Wong refers most often to 'Burma' by Naomi Duguid for its Japanese Pickled Cucumbers, Tomato and Spinach Salad, Eggplant Salad and Egg Curry recipes; and 'Jerusalem' by Yotam Ottolenghi for Roasted chicken with Ouzo and Clementines. According to Beth Glazener, 'I use a ton of recipes that come from various magazines, cookbooks and the recipe repository on America's Test Kitchen, Cook's Country and Cook's Illustrated websites. I happen to use a bunch from 'Baking Illustrated,' like Banana Bread, Sugar Cookies, American Sandwich Bread, Whole Wheat Bread, Buttermilk Biscuits, Thick and Chewy Gingerbread Cookies, Yellow Layer Cake, Rich Chocolate Cream Frosting, Ham and Asparagus Quiche, Molasses Spice Cookies, Maple Syrup Pecan Pie and Brown Sugar and Bourbon Whipped Cream (it's to die for on top of the pecan pie).' Barbara Felsinger's go-to title is 'The Moosewood Cookbook' by Mollie Katzen. The Pea Soup, Spinach Ricotta Pie, Rebaked Stuffed Potatoes and Gazpacho are her favorite recipes. Anne Whitacre wrote that, 'I cooked my way through a 1973 edition of 'The Seasonal Kitchen: A Return to Fresh Foods' by Perla Meyers in my 20s and 30s and still return to it for recipes that are ranked easy, medium or hard and in three ranges of cost, especially Coquilles Saint-Jacques Printanier, Blueberries in Lemon Mousse; Salmon Steaks Suedoise and, of course, Spaghettini Primavera.' The most loved titles from The Times' former cartoonist for restaurant reviews, Donna Barstow, include, 'An early edition of 'Joy of Cooking' from my grandmother that's falling apart. The original chocolate mousse recipe is written as if it's perfectly normal to crave such a decadent dish, with no guilt implied. And 'The Cake Bible' by Rose Levy Beranbaum, because in the preface, she explains that she fell in love with her husband when he said he weighed science ingredients the same way she did with cake recipes! Can't resist a good love story! Plus, she invented a new way to combine ingredients: flour with butter versus sugar with butter makes a richer cake.' 'My journey into appreciating the literary qualities of cookbooks came from my own work as an author. When I finished a draft of my first book, I had spent hours and hours in libraries doing research and, as some relief, wanted to start a project that involved more physicality. We had just welcomed our second son into our family, so I also wanted a project to do at home. Thus, I cooked up the idea of working my way through an entire cookbook and landed on Alice Waters' 'Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook.' I did it over the course of several years. This project pushed me into some complex lessons that remain with me to this day, namely, to think simply about the ingredients and build a meal up from their purity. That exemplified her approach, even if her first cookbook sometimes deviated from that mission. Journeying on to more of her cookbooks, and some of those by her collegial chefs, led me to understand her original vision,' wrote Tom Kemper.
Atlantic
08-03-2025
- General
- Atlantic
Kosher Salt Is Actually Just Big Salt
When I was a child, in the 1990s, there was only one kind of salt; we called it 'salt.' It came in a blue cylindrical container—you probably know the one—and we dumped it into pasta water and decanted it into shakers. I didn't know that any other kind existed, and the women who taught me to cook didn't seem to, either: Joy of Cooking, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and Moosewood Cookbook all call, simply, for 'salt' in their recipes. But about a decade ago, I started buying coarse kosher salt instead of the fine, uniform, iodized table salt I'd grown up with. I do not remember why. As my friends grew up and started building their own pantries, many of them also made kosher salt their default. These days, The New York Times calls explicitly for kosher salt in nearly all of its recipes, as does Bon Appétit. Two of the most influential cookbooks of the past decade, The Food Lab, by J. Kenji López-Alt, and Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, by Samin Nosrat, both devote paragraphs to the benefits of kosher over table salt. It is now 'the lingua franca of restaurant kitchens'—as Mark Bitterman, who has written four books about cooking with salt, put it—and a cheffy shibboleth in home kitchens, too. You can find Diamond Crystal, the coolest brand, in the background of the famously verisimilitudinous restaurant show The Bear, and on cooking influencers' beautiful countertops; in 2023, when Trader Joe's started carrying it, chef Reddit exploded in enthusiastic all caps. Pretty much everyone eats salt, every day, and it's different now. Yet even kosher salt's most fervent converts may not entirely understand how it's different. Kosher salt, like all salt, is NaCl—sodium ions electrostatically bound with chloride ions and arranged in a crystal formation. Unlike certain specialty salts, it doesn't have unique properties by virtue of its provenance; it's not collected from the coast of France or mined from a mountain in Pakistan. Kosher salt is just big salt. It's also more expensive than table salt. You might assume that this is because it has been manufactured according to a stringent set of religious rules. But much iodized table salt is kosher—that is, prepared in adherence with Jewish dietary law—and what we call 'kosher salt' isn't categorically kosher: If you're feeling pedantic, the right term would be 'koshering salt,' because its oversize, craggy crystals are best for drawing the blood out of animals during kosher slaughter. America's great salt swap began in the 1980s, when farmers'-market culture and the health-food movement helped American chefs acquaint themselves with specialty ingredients, Bitterman told me: Himalayan pink salt; 'bad-ass, real good' fleur de sel from France. But by and large, chefs settled on kosher as their go-to. They did this for a reason so unbelievably basic that I laughed out loud when I first heard it: Kosher salt is easier to pick up. 'Table salt is too hard to pinch,' Adam Ragusea, a food YouTuber, told me. 'I mean, just try it. Anyone who's reading, just try it. Just pick it up … It's a pain in the ass, and it's messy.' Kosher salt is simply better for the way chefs tend to season their food, which is frequently, and without measuring, by eye and by feel. No one wants to be fiddling with a teaspoon on the line at a busy restaurant during the dinner rush. 'You can really feel it sort of touching your fingers, and leaving your fingers,' Chris Morocco, the food director at Bon Appétit and Epicurious, told me, whereas finer salt 'has a tendency to want to slip away.' Kosher salt's migration to home kitchens started in the late '90s, when the Food Network became a cultural force. Its big crystals suddenly had an added benefit: They look great being pinched out of a saltcellar and flung around on television, or at least better than table salt does being juddered out of a shaker. (Ina Garten, one of the network's early celebrities, has described Diamond Crystal kosher salt as 'always perfect.') As television turned chefs into celebrities, their fans began trying to emulate them at home. At the same time, recipes, like the rest of media, were moving online, and their tone was changing. Older cookbooks, Morocco told me, assumed a lot of knowledge on the part of their readers: 'Recipe language was very terse. They were not really holding your hand too much.' Online, recipe writers had unlimited space, a broader potential audience, and a business imperative to build a relationship with their readers. So their guidance became chattier and more descriptive, designed for a home cook who was eager to learn—and who could hold recipe developers more immediately accountable, yelling about bland soup or bad bakes in the comments section. 'Salt to taste,' which had for decades been a standard instruction in most savory recipes, gave way to specific measurements. But different salts have different densities, meaning a teaspoon of one brand can be recipe-ruiningly saltier than that of another. So recipe developers needed to be able to recommend a standard salt. Being chefs, they already liked kosher. In 2011, Bon Appétit, which was then becoming a major resource for Millennials teaching themselves how to cook, adopted Diamond Crystal as its house salt. This is all a little funny. Restaurant chefs started using kosher precisely because it was easy to use without measuring—now home cooks are measuring it out by the teaspoon. And a movement that espoused seeking the ideal ingredients for every dish resulted in widespread adoption of a one-size-fits-all salt. In doing so, modern cooking has inadvertently all but abandoned one of the most significant public-health advances in history. A few years ago, a 6-year-old girl showed up at a medical clinic in Providence, Rhode Island, her neck so swollen that it looked like she'd swallowed a grapefruit whole. After a series of tests, doctors figured it out: She was iodine-deficient. Her thyroid—the butterfly-shaped gland that is responsible for just about everything the body does, and which requires iodine to function—had swelled in an attempt to capture any microgram of iodine it could from her bloodstream. For centuries, thyroid dysfunction was endemic; millions of people around the world suffered from slow heartbeats, weakness, muscle fatigue, sluggish metabolism, and brain fog. When, in 1924, American manufacturers introduced artificially iodized salts, it was a miracle, right there on the shelf in the grocery store. Within a few years, the thyroids of the developed world were working again. Recently, however, doctors have started reporting more cases of iodine-deficient hypothyroidism—and our salt preferences may be at least partially to blame. Kosher salt, as you have probably guessed, does not contain iodine. Neither do most ultraprocessed foods, the main vehicle by which most people in this not-exactly-sodium-deficient country take in salt. Iodine deficiency can be serious, but is eminently treatable. (Pregnant women should be particularly attentive to their iodine levels, the UCLA endocrinologist Angela Leung told me, because deficiency can result in birth defects.) The 21st-century rise in hypothyroidism might therefore be less a cause for alarm than a chance to rethink our contemporary salt orthodoxy. Kosher's dominance, to hear Bitterman tell it, 'doesn't come out of magic or merit—it's cookbook writers and chef culture, a weird confluence of circumstances brainwashing everyone at the same time.' What's great for chefs may not be great for home cooks. Kosher salt isn't inherently better, and in some cases may be worse. I've now spent hours on the phone with salt connoisseurs—at one point, Bitterman earnestly described a certain type as 'luscious' and 'warm'—and have come around to the view that we should all be more open to using different salts for different purposes, in the same way that well-outfitted cooks might keep different types of olive oil on hand. Flaky fleur de sel is great for finishing dishes; flavored salt is perfect on popcorn. And for everyday cooking, iodized table salt is just as good as kosher—preferable, even, if you're worried about your iodine levels. Sure, all the recipes now call for kosher salt, but a solution exists: Ignore the instructions and season intuitively. Like a real chef would.
