David Kinch knows his way around a professional kitchen. His restaurant Manresa won an impressive three Michelin stars. He was featured on PBS’s Mind of a Chef, and he’s won a James Beard award. This man knows great food.
But he puts all that aside on the weekends. If you work in a restaurant, your weekend is Monday and Tuesday, and it’s on Tuesday nights that Kinch invites family and friends over to share in a homemade meal in his home. Called the Pink Palace, Kinch’s home is filled with art and books and a half-completed jigsaw puzzle and music. Lots and lots of music.
Although in many ways, At Home in the Kitchen is a cookbook filled with recipes that have specific measurements for each ingredient and cooking times and temperatures, Kinch emphasizes that one of the best tools you can bring into the kitchen is simply your attention. These dishes aren’t overly fussy, just simple ingredients cooked well. But only you can say when the potatoes are cooked to perfection in your oven. You’re the one in charge of how caramelized your onions get. And as any home cook knows, you have to pay attention to the butter in the pan, because once it’s gone past brown to burnt, you have to start over.
Each of these recipes also comes with a musical suggestion. So if you’re planning to prepare a bunch of small plates to set out for the guests as they arrive and pick out something to drink, you can keep in mind that the Roasted Red Pepper & Onion Salad with Mozzarella and Basil pairs well with Gene Pitney’s “A Town without Pity.” Or the Smoky Eggplant “Caviar” goes well with Patti Smith’s “Soul Kitchen.” Kinch’s Salmon Rillettes pairs with Patsy Cline’s “Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray,” and Ike & Tina Turner’s “I Love What You Do to Me” is perfect for the Savory Strawberry Biscuits.
There are recipes for salads and soups, pastas and rice. And what relaxed California cookbook would be complete without a chapter of All-Day Eggs and 2 A.M. Dinners? Because sometimes you need a SAvory & Sweet Omelet Souffle (“There’s a Light” by Shirley Ann Lee or a slice of Toasted Baguette with Dark Chocolate, Olive Oil & Sea Salt (The Rolling Stones, “Worried about You”).
Sprinkled liberally throughout the recipes are tips for perfecting techniques to help you make the most of your ingredients. There are asides on how to shuck oysters, how to poach eggs, how to make gnocchi. If there is something you need to know to help you cook with confidence and extra flavor, Kinch has included it.
But when you ask him about his favorite recipe to make for guests, his answer comes quickly: Roast Chicken. Personally, it’s my favorite too, but before this I didn’t realize how well it paired with “Listen Here” by Eddie Harris.
As you flip through At Home in the Kitchen, the recipes seem to go on and on. Fish and seafood, meats and vegetables, and of course, desserts and drinks. There is a Day-After Meyer Lemon Tart (“Hanging on the Telephone” by Blondie), a Negroni, Three Ways (“Prodigal Son” by the Rolling Stones), and even A Nice Cup of Coffee (“Teenage Kicks” by The Undertones) to round out the day spent with those you love most.
The book is cowritten by Devin Fuller, who has cooked her way up the ranks at Manresa and has spent many a Tuesday at the Pink Palace. She was the one who made Kinch quantify his recipes, trying to make them as precise and repeatable as possible. I have never met either of these chefs, but I would not be surprised to find out that she was the one who worked to bring these Tuesday night family meals to life in these pages.
I really loved flipping through the pages of At Home in the Kitchen. It’s obviously a cookbook—there are lots and lots of recipes and cooking techniques. But it also feels a little like you just get to hang out with cool people, watching a professionally trained chef make magic in the kitchen while he offers up tips about how to upgrade your usual grilled cheese sandwich or what kind of wine to cook with or how to build a cheese course.
Honestly, I wish I could spend a Tuesday sitting in a quiet corner of Kinch’s Pink Palace, watching the cooking and the eating and the laughing, letting the music roll over me, just soaking it all in, maybe working on that jigsaw puzzle in between bites. It sounds enchanting. For now, reading this cookbook and trying out some of the recipes is the closest I can come. Especially since I know if I pull out a jigsaw puzzle, my cat will try to eat the pieces.
A copy of At Home in the Kitchen was provided by Ten Speed Press for an unbiased review, with many thanks.
