The Kitchen Counter Cooking School

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks by Kathleen Flinn

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book is a small but practical cookbook within a story. Kathleen "stalks" a grocery store patron seeing how and what she buys when she shops. Within a very short period of time, she approaches the woman and volunteers to help her pick out some healthier options for the prepackaged choices she has made. This experience leads to Kathleen's idea of helping others using her Le Cordon Bleu training and food experiences.



The book follows Kathleen as she finds 10 volunteers who allow her to interview them in their homes on their food choices and culinary skills. After a series of informative classes, Kathleen's plan is to go back into these homes to see if the classes inspired change in the lives of the volunteers and what those changes were. The classes focus on basic culinary skills such as knife skills, choosing cuts of meat and how to prepare them, and making sauces, breads, salads, and cakes to name a few. 



As I read this book, I found myself going to my husband and telling him things we should do to improve our cooking skills. I found information that I was not aware of such as the shelf life of dried spices. I also enjoyed some of the flavor recipes she taught her class in the book.



The cookbook portions are scattered throughout the book and are the recipes in most cases that the cooking class used to learn new methods and try new recipes. All of them look delicious and I am anxious to try the Artisan bread recipe in particular.



Overall, I feel the book was a good read. It was very informative and provided some nice recipes to try. It was written in a lighthearted sense of humor and is written for the cooking novice. It definitely made me stop and think about the choices I make to feed my family.



View all my reviews