These days when most people label someone as a home cook, instead of a culinary professional, they tend to imagine someone along the lines of Rachael Ray or Paula Deen. And while those two TV personalities have done a lot to get people interested in food, there is another side to home cooking. A whole world of serious, dedicated, and adventurous home cooks are putting down the can opener, stepping away from the bags of pre-washed lettuce and trying to recreate the elegance, art, and skill of haute cuisine at home.
We recently got the opportunity to ask some questions of one such cook, Carol Blymire of French Laundry at Home. Carol’s blog, which was a two-category winner in Well Fed Network’s 2007 Food Blog Awards, chronicles her journey as she cooks every recipe in Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry Cookbook. Carol brings a warm, self-deprecating, and generally hilarious sensibility to the project that will make you giggle and smile. She’s also a fellow Washingtonian, and was gracious enough to answer our questions about the blog, cooking, and her favorite food spots here in the city.
You work in PR and make sure to state quite clearly on the site that you are not a professional chef. That said, when did your interest in cooking first start?
Yes, I am a PR and media consultant, and have never worked in food service, nor have I had any culinary training. Well, there was that one knife skills class six years ago at Sur La Table, but I only took it because the instructor was cute. As for my interest in food and cooking, I was born and raised in the Amish country in Pennsylvania (although I’m not Amish), so I grew up knowing where my food came from — we always bought from roadside farm stands and our county farmer’s market. My grandparents were great cooks and my mom made sure we had a nice dinner every night. That said, there are no memorable, defining moments of us stirring pots side by side or anything. I really became more interested in and aware of food and how much I enjoyed cooking in my late 20s — about 10 years ago. I was working for Discovery Channel at the time and traveling to places like Morocco, Egypt, Singapore, and Hong Kong — I think those trips are what really made me want to know more about food and take more risks when cooking at home.
Photo by biskuit
