Why hello there, and welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophe, where one man stumbles into madness because he never gives himself enough time. I’m your Sleepy Psycho, Jon O’Guin, and welcome back to our Chef Spotlight series, which we have not done in…years? Months? Does time still exist? (As much as it ever did, and the answer is “years”.)

Basically, this is where I want to talk about a Chef in a more holistic fashion, rather than just focusing on one aspect of their work, like a specific cookbook or project. Last time, we highlighted Massimo Bottura, head chef of the number 1 restaurant in the world (at the time), and a man who is wildly involved in various charitable projects. This week, we’re moving much closer to home: J Kenji López Alt.

1 - The man himself, wrought from Sausage Buns, Cheese, and Starch. .png

The Man, The Myth, The Wurstmaker.

A resident of the Bay Area, Kenji is a chef with a great pedigree as what you could call a “chef of the pen”, or, in dad-pun terms, a “nom” de plume: He is not famous for having many restaurants, or TV shows, but rather for his extensive career in food writing. He worked for Cooks Country and America’s Test Kitchen, as well as writing extensively for SeriousEats, where he writes the “Food Lab”, a column so central to his path as a Chef that he took the Column’s name for his first cookbook.

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“With Science” is an unusual clause in cooking, but an exciting one.

That Cookbook was VERY well received, winning a James Beard award (which, if Michelin Stars are the “Oscars” of food (very prestigious, but fairly narrow and fraught with controversy and think-pieces about whether they do more harm than good), the James Beard Awards are cooking’s Golden Globes (far more accessible, and covering a lot more of the ground of the field, while suffering under the idea of “I mean, you’re good, but not “Oscar/Michelin” good”)) and two awards by the International Association of Culinary Professionals. (to continue our slowly dissolving metaphor, the cookbook equivalent of the Screen Actor’s Guild Awards: much more niche to the Industry, but still very well respected) And let me tell you: as far as I’m concerned, it deserves the praise. The book is…nigh on the platonic IDEAL of what a cookbook should be, in my opinion. And to explain how/why, I want to walk you through a very rough summation of pages 314-322 of the book.

Page 314 presents the idea/theme: “A New Way to Cook Tenderloin Steaks”. It starts by laying out the problem: due to the lower fat content of tenderloin, it is very unforgiving: a matter of seconds is the difference between rare and medium. Then, over the next page and a half, Kenji explains how he tried different approaches, and found a system that works for him…sometimes. He acknowledges that the method IS longer, and that if you don’t have the time for it, to use another, earlier recipe that will work just as well, with just a little more risk. Page 316 presents the formal recipe that he derived from the previous two pages of discussion. Page 317 is a step-by-step instruction on how to trim a whole beef tenderloin, both A: if you want to make individual steaks, buying a whole tenderloin and trimming it youself will save you a lot of money, and B: his recipe actually calls for roasting the tenderloin as a unit, and THEN cutting it into steaks and searing, so if you trim at home, you get to keep the beef scraps. It is, in essence, what our “Loin Me Tender” post would be if it was much more HELPFUL and a lot less whiny/pug-based.

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I defend the former by noting that April 2017 was the month my father was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer, and the latter by noting that “with fewer pugs” is almost universally synonymous with “worse”.

Pages 318 through 322 then discuss pan sauces and Bearnaise sauce, because the recipe on 316 says to serve the steaks with pan sauce, Bearnaise, Compound butter (which is on page 326), or just some Dijon mustard.

So if you think “Maybe I’ll make some steaks this weekend”, and start on page 314, by 319 you’ll have learned: a recipe that provides more reliable results for cooking tenderloin and an explanation for why, a referral to a recipe that will do it faster but with a little more risk, a guide for how to save some money by buying a whole tenderloin and trimming it to what you need, and a recipe for a pan sauce, with an explanation as to how pan sauces work, and their value in reclaiming beef fond, sorry, “tasty-brown-gunk-on-the-bottom-of-the-pan”. (It’s a technical term)

And that’s not my joke there: That’s IN the cookbook. Because Kenji does bring a fun dynamic of nerdy humor to the text. When discussing the value of beer-battering fish, he explains: “Fish is extremely delicate, while frying is horribly violent. Dropping a hunk of fish into a pot of hot oil is like throwing an Ewok into a cage match with a Terminator: it doesn’t stand a rat’s chance in Hell.” That’s a GREAT line. And while I could continue to gush over the cookbook, and its bright, clean explanations with evidence and charts, I’m not going to, because this Is not a cookbook review, because I actually have yet to cook anything from it.

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This steak looks fantastic, but on the other hand, I haven’t really been in a “Steak” mood for the last…7ish months, you know?

No, I’ve been getting more invested in Kenji’s cooking for a completely different reason: Kenji’s Cooking Show.

You Too Can YouTube

If you haven’t been paying super-close attention, let me tell you, I have been on a TEAR through Kenji’s content. I discovered him in April, and since then, September was the ONLY month where I didn’t reference him at least once. That feels odd to say out loud, but I promise you, it is mostly because of the amazing Catapult effect of his ‘cooking show’; if you’ve forgotten, (or are new) “Catapult effect” is the term I use to describe how much a cookbook makes me WANT TO COOK the things in it. How much it inspires grocery purchases and recipe attempts. And Kenji’s Cooking Show has an amazing catapult effect, because the simplicity of its production inspires so much confidence. The show motivated me to finally hunt down another mortar and pestle, and to buy his cookbook, and to make SEVERAL recipes: The Pork shoulder I made in August, the Spanish Tortilla, the Egg Fold, and the Baba Ghanoush were all inspired by videos he’s made.

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Still an amazing paradigm changer. Eat more egg folds.

For context: “Kenji’s Cooking Show” is the recent title he put on a series of videos he’s been uploading to Youtube, where, mostly, he just makes a meal for his family while wearing a Go-Pro (at least I assume it’s a Go-Pro. I’m not very interested in Camera tech, so if he explained exactly what it was at some point, I probably tuned it out) and explaining the steps and the background behind his decisions in the recipe, with little bit of flair (the details of a specific knife or pan, the person he got the recipe from, etc) . It’s very minimally edited, and mostly just consists of a top-down view of the recipe as it’s made, with a couple jumps for time. (ie, If a recipe roasts for 30 minutes, we don’t just hang out with Kenji for the whole time)

It’s a very wholesome kind of experience: Kenji almost always gives a little piece of whatever he’s cooked to at least one of his two dogs, he sometimes has to pause the video to help his daughter with something in the other room, and it just serves as what FEELS like a very authentic and achievable experience.

Dogs are not well-known for their artifice.

It was what inspired me to make Monday’s Keema Matar, technically. I say “technically” because it actually made such an impactful inspiration that I kind of FORGOT that’s why I wanted to make it: he makes the recipe in MAY, and it immediately went on a “Oh, that looked really cool and pretty simple, I should make it!” and it sat on my to-do list for long enough that the association faded. That fade was probably helped by a couple little cooking details that would have made his specific recipe a little harder for me to pull off: Kenji has a gas stove, while I have an electric one, meaning he can cook in a wok more easily, which is how he makes this recipe. He also used a whole beefsteak tomato grated for his tomato component, which would have been great if I had remembered to make the dish during the summer, but October in Washington isn’t the best time for fresh tomatoes. Thus, he inspired me to make the dish, and then I went and used someone else’s recipe.

Which I think he’d be happy about. Kenji has a lot of a “do what works for you” comments sprinkled throughout his videos. In his version of Keema Matar, he notes that the recipe HE’S using calls for clarified butter/ghee, and that he’s just not using it, because he doesn’t care if the butter browns for this specific recipe.

That’s what really makes Kenji’s videos click for me: there’s a degree of consideration, of thoughtfulness, to his work that I found very comforting and inspiring through 2020. Both on the technical side (explaining other options to an ingredient or a process) and in more general terms: He doesn’t show his daughter on camera because he doesn’t want her to have to deal with videos of her as a child still being on the internet when she’s a teen or adult. He frequently partnered with the companies that make the tools he uses to help support them during the pandemic. He started using the sign off “Guys, gals, and non-binary pals”. His restaurant worked to create meal kits for people during the stay-at-home orders.

I definitely recommend his cookbook, his Youtube videos, and, if you have kids, he put out a book/cookbook for children this year titled “Every Night is Pizza Night”, where a young girl who loves pizza is forced to ask “Pizza is, of course, the best food…But then why do people eat other foods?”

A true scientific and philosophical question.

So I wanted to spotlight him and his work today, in honor of making me interested in Keema Matar, and all the content he’s provided this year to people wanting some stability and simply presented recipes they can feel like they can make. It’s a masterclass in making foods accessible, a goal we always strive for here.

MONDAY: IN HONOR OF HALLOWEEN, JON FACES ONE OF HIS CULINARY FEARS, AND WE HAVE A FRY-GHTENING TIME, MAKING THREE DIFFERENT FRY-BASED DISHES

THURSDAY: JON…DOESN’T KNOW. LET HIM GET BACK TO YOU MONDAY.