Christopher Kimball is an unlikely cooking celebrity. There's none of Anthony Bourdain's swagger, none of Guy Fieri's spiky peroxide hair, no décolletage or apparent Botox. But among serious home cooks, he's got as much star power as any Iron Chef or Food Network host.

As head of Cook's Illustrated magazine and its homespun cousin, Cook's Country, plus America's Test Kitchen television and book publishing arms, he's got his own media empire. A tour for his latest title, "The Cook's Illustrated Cookbook," recently brought him to Portland, and an interview at a quiet corner table in Martinotti's Cafe & Deli. On this day his signature bow tie is missing, but not his plain-spoken New England manner.

The new book -- a tome of nearly 1,000 pages -- is, as with most of what America's Test Kitchen publishes, not sexy, trendy or packed with personality. But as legions of fans will attest, the proof is in the pot de crème.

We asked him about entertaining at home, his strategies for Thanksgiving and his view on food culture. Questions and answers are edited for clarity.

Cook's Illustrated says it tests each recipe an average of 65 times. Is that really necessary?

(My job is) finding the two or three things that can go horribly wrong in a recipe and just make sure people know what they are. Most people don't have success in the kitchen because the recipes are not really engineered to stop people from doing things that will ruin the recipe.



But even with the best recipe, you can't anticipate what readers will do.

Ninety percent of all cooking isn't about what happens in the test kitchen, it's about what happens at home. People 95 percent of the time substitute ingredients, or they leave them out, because they don't plan. I think cookbook writers assume that people follow their recipe, but they don't follow the recipe. They never follow your recipe. I don't follow people's recipes. I'm as disorganized as the next person.

America's Test Kitchen has published scores of cookbooks. Do you have any favorites?

Oddly enough, the slow-cooker book. It's been a big hit and a breakout from what we normally do. (Cooking in a crockpot) is one of those things people think are easy, but you can't just dump it and leave it. You've got to sauté. You've got to do something ahead of time. There are very few recipes where you can just dump a bunch of stuff in it and come back eight hours later to something worth eating. I think the slow-cooker's magic, for me, is it's not necessarily easier, it just forces you to think about dinner a lot earlier than you normally would. It's an organizational tool. By 10 in the morning, dinner (planning) is done. I thought it was kind of a joke 10 years ago, but now I think it's a serious tool.



Any words of wisdom for people who'll be cooking during the holidays?

I think the first thing to do is strip down the menu. Have the turkey, mashed potatoes and one other vegetable. And then forget the salad. Forget the six other sides.

That's the first rule of home cooking: Reduce the number of recipes by 50 percent -- immediately. Nobody ever, ever goes away from a meal saying "Gee, I wish they had more stuff." Never. They'll say, "I wish it had tasted better." But nobody says, "I wish they had five more side dishes."

Every time I've cooked with someone who's really a great cook I'm always struck by how they have one or two things. Julia Child would make an oyster stew and a heated baguette from some bakery in Cambridge, and a bottle of wine.

What about at your house?

I have the same problem: I cook for two days. And then I have all this food and it's like a bad buffet. And then you're stuffed. There's no reason Thanksgiving has to be about abundance. I mean it was originally, for obvious reasons. But they served eel the first Thanksgiving.

How are you cooking your turkey this year?

I think what I really want to do this year is the salt pork method. I'm a huge fan of salt pork. We raise our own pigs. The idea of ... barding the turkey with strips and having that flavor go down into the bird is pretty irresistible. You can use bacon. I like old-fashioned stuff. I'll cook it in my wood cook stove.

Are you encouraged by the way America's food culture is headed?

The restaurant scene has been the most amazing revolution in food ever -- including the French revolution. The local farms are fabulous -- certainly Oregon is one of the states that's way ahead on that. In Portland, in 1985, it was hard to get a good meal. I know in Boston it was impossible. And now the food's fabulous.

What about home cooking?

That's the thing that's lagging behind. I know a lot about what people like to cook at home because we ask our readers all the time, and it hasn't changed that much.

You can spend money and get a great restaurant meal, but a good home-cooked meal takes good ingredients, time and skill. It just doesn't happen overnight. It's a much higher hurdle to get people to cook properly at home.

It seems to me that time is a huge factor. It's hard to put in a long day at work and then come home at 5:30 and cook a meal.

It hinges on having good ingredients, which need very little work to prepare. If you have a great cucumber, you can make in four minutes a cucumber salad ... peel it, seed it, slice it, add a simple vinaigrette. And it's delicious, because the cucumber is delicious, you don't have to do anything to it.

But the typical American supermarket cucumber is tasteless. When you're starting with bad ingredients, it's hard to cook simply.

I think in the days when food really was local and really good, then it was probably easy to cook quickly and simply. But you can't cook quickly and simply with bad ingredients.

Isn't skill a factor too? Fewer and fewer Americans grow up learning to cook from their mother or grandmother.



In America we love diversity, and we love something new. But I don't think that's any way to learn how to cook. People always say, "My grandmother never needed to look at recipes." Well, of course not. Because she had 70, or 50 recipes. She didn't cook 500 recipes. She had a very limited repertoire. I always say if you're learning how to cook, get 25 recipes that represent what you love and mean something to you ... get to know those recipes. Every time you make them there's a little something you learn.

I think repetition's a great tool. It's like music. The great guitarists still practice scales. You have to have the fundamentals down.

Several people have told me that they prefer Cook's Country to Cook's Illustrated. Do you hear that much?

Cook's Country is livelier and more fun. The food's more family oriented. It's less about perfection. I think Cook's Country recipes come from somewhere. They're regional and have a reason for coming into being. I like that. I think recipes should have a story. And the food's more innovative ... like white barbecue sauce with mayonnaise from Alabama.

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