Review: The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn

Published: September 2011, Viking Adult, 285 pages

Source: Borrowed from the library

Description: The author of The Sharper Your Knife tells the inspiring story of how she helped nine others find their inner cook.

After graduating from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, writer Kathleen Flinn returned with no idea what to do next, until one day at a supermarket she watched a woman loading her cart with ultraprocessed foods. Flinn's "chefternal" instinct kicked in: she persuaded the stranger to reload with fresh foods, offering her simple recipes for healthy, easy meals.

The Kitchen Counter Cooking School includes practical, healthy tips that boost readers' culinary self-confidence, and strategies to get the most from their grocery dollar, and simple recipes that get readers cooking.

My Review: I must admit that I didn't know much about cooking when I got married. I also didn't really feel that I had time to learn--I was going to school and working full time and I thought the best solution was boxed meals and freezer foods. I started to cook more from scratch as the years went on and it's amazing how much we prefer that type of food now.

I thought this was a fantastic book in teaching someone some of the basics. I even learned a few tips and tricks that I hadn't thought of or didn't know. The section on knives and dicing was especially helpful to me, as was the chapter "What's in the Box?" 

The author gathered a group of 9 women and they met regularly to learn different cooking skills. I loved how these were real woman and I loved watching the changes that occurred in their skills and lives because of these tips. I loved the way the story was told--it didn't read like a non-fiction book to me, even though it was. 

This is a great read for anyone who wants to make improvements in their cooking.

About the Author:

Kathleen Flinn is the author of The New York Times bestseller The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry, a memoir with recipes about her experiences at the famed Le Cordon Bleu in Paris.

Her second book, The Kitchen Counter Cooking School, tells the story of an unusual project in which Flinn delved into the lives of nine culinary novices and tried to figure out what lessons they could learn to become fearless home cooks. That book earned universally positive reviews from People magazine, the Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews and Amazon.com readers.

Flinn offers unique guides for book clubs for each book: a menu guide for The Sharper Your Knife and a unique activities guide for The Kitchen Counter Cooking School.