Amy Thielen’s Newest Cookbook, ‘Company,’ Inspires Kitchen Confidence

Your career is a study in opposites: You’ve worked for some of the world’s best chefs, but your books help make cooking more approachable. How have those fine dining experiences shaped your day-to-day cooking?

It’s been a while since I was in those kitchens, but when I was in, I was in very deep. I worked for a lot of really great chefs. We had very high standards, and I think that is really my takeaway: My standards are very high for the details and the products and how you store the products. Let’s say it’s tomatoes. When I pick one up, put it on the counter, turn it over, watch it ripen. Those are the details that make OK or mediocre food into really something memorable and extraordinary. Also, working in kitchens you learn how to use your knives and keep your space really clean, which I also learned from my mother. The other thing I took away from fine dining in my training is the ability to season progressively [as needed].

What do you want people to feel when they cook from Company?

We were talking about pleasure in cooking, but I also want people to feel confident. I want them to feel like it’s a fun thing to do and that it’s a joy to feed other people. I want them to feel relaxed in the knowledge that, as I write in the introduction, everything tastes better at somebody else’s house. [You can] go easy on yourself and have a good time.

Do you have any advice for people who are trying to eat more seasonally or want to support local farmers?

Every place is different, but at this point many urban centers have some sort of a farmers market. I know it’s sometimes more difficult when you don’t live out in the country, but I see people out here [in my area] who don’t grow stuff themselves. I have way too large of a garden because I really enjoy it, but I also like to go to the farmers market in town. One thing that’s always a good deal is to load up on stuff when it’s in season and there's a surplus. When I lived in Brooklyn, at the end of the season they’d be selling the potatoes very cheaply. And I would just buy a bunch of them and then store them in my fridge, where they lasted for months.

It sounds like learning how to properly store ingredients is an important skill to have in the kitchen.

W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Cook With Amy

Thielen shared two recipes from Company: The Radically Casual Art of Cooking for Others for AARP members to try:

Fun House Baked Potatoes

These open-faced buttery baked potatoes paired with onions and bay leaves are crisped to perfection and great for serving a big group.

Mei’s Ginger-Glazed Baby Back Ribs

Caramelized pork ribs are poached in a light soy brine and can be scaled up to feed an actual throng —​ graduation parties, reunions, what-​have-​you.

Yeah, and it saves you money. There’s a lot of hidden thrift in this book of big, luxurious dinner parties.

Your first book, The New Midwestern Table, was so popular. Will fans find Midwestern fare in this book?

There’s a lot. … Midwestern cooking kind of infuses what I do here, so the spirit of everything is very Midwestern. I would say yes, the people who liked that first book are going to really like this book. I really think about recipes when I develop them, and I tried to bring some practice to it, some thoughtfulness, some sort of history. And a lot of my fans are those kinds of nerds, too.

The book has a lot of teachable moments, aside from the nuts and bolts of each recipe. Why did you choose that approach?

I wrote the methods in a conversational voice. They are specific, but they’re also evocative and full of visual and sensory cues, because I feel like that is a better way to communicate doneness or how long you cook something, by giving [notes about what it should] look like. Sometimes the numbers and timers and probes — those things cause us to question our intuition and our good sense. Writing this way is how I would communicate to my son or anybody else I was trying to teach to cook.

What are three ingredient staples that you always have on hand?

Lemons, preferably Meyer lemons. They’re just so much sweeter [than other lemons]. Another thing I use a lot is dried red chilies that I buy at the Asian market. They’re semi-hot, and I add those to a lot of different sauces and soups and things. I find that one or two of those gives it kind of this nice haunting pepper flavor that ground black pepper can’t match. I also use a lot of bay leaves, either fresh or dried. And when I do the dried ones, I buy them from a good place like Penzeys Spices.