Let Them Burn Cake!
Teaching a Royal to Cook in a Week
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Nature or nurture? This age old question is often contemplated, but how does it apply to the skill of cooking? Professional chef and business owner Laura Cochran teams up with author and "Marie Antoinette-descendant" Amalie Jahn for a week in the kitchen trying to answer that very question. Let Them Burn Cake! chronicles their laughable and insightful journey together as chef and apprentice, in a storied cookbook that culminates in a delicious feast worthy of 18th century royalty. |
Amalie's Story
When the Human Genome Project ended in 2003, I don’t know if any of the scientists who mapped the nearly 20,500 genes in the human body would have expected a cookbook to rise from its existence. Thanks in part to genetic sequencing, people can now learn all about their ethnicity and ancestral background with a simple swab of saliva full of their unique DNA. After having my genes tested, it was determined that I shared an ancestral line with none other than Marie Antoinette, the last queen of the original French Monarchy, beheaded in 1793.
When I discovered this new information about myself, I did what any normal person living at the front end of the 21st century does… I Facebooked about it to all my friends. I believe my exact post was something to the effect of “I’m royalty. Feel free to genuflect the next time you see me.”
Now Laura happens to be not only one of my childhood friends, but also one of my closest Facebook friends. She immediately responded to the post with the requisite amount of sarcasm and sensibility to bring me right down off my self-appointed pedestal. The post quickly fell to the bottom of everyone’s newsfeed and my 15 seconds of fame was over. Until the email arrived.
“Maybe the reason you can’t cook is because of your royal lineage!” Laura quipped. “Perhaps I need to teach you to cook.”
In order for you to understand the history behind her sentiments, I need to explain myself more fully. You see, I am a horrible cook. I hate to cook. There’s nothing worse for me than working in the kitchen. It’s just the way it’s always been for me, even as a small child. Perhaps it was the fact that I preferred to spend my free time cutting 2x4s with my father in his basement workshop rather than baking brownies with my mother in the kitchen. Nothing against my mother or the brownies, I just didn’t have any interest in whatever was going on in the room with the oven.
In middle school I tried getting excited when the other kids baked those delicious buttermilk biscuits in Home Economics class, but often found myself dreaming of the following semester when I would be allowed to use the power tools in Woodshop. Let me sand something or drill something, but please don’t ask me to sift, measure, or sauté.
By the time I made it to college, my situation hadn’t improved. It was a good thing I always had access to the cafeteria or otherwise I probably would have starved. I remember making spaghetti and meat sauce with a friend one evening, and by “making” I actually mean watching. After she labored over the noodles and the sauce, I stood gaping in the corner as she instructed me to brown the ground beef. I’d never heard of such a thing. Didn’t the meat just get thrown in at the end? As the sweat beaded down my hairline, I tossed the lump of meat into the frying pan and waited.
“You have to flip it over,” she instructed.
I flipped.
“You have to chop it up,” she barked.
I chopped.
“YOU HAVE TO DRAIN IT FIRST!” she screamed as I dumped the contents of the pan into the sauce.
We ended up eating take-out that night.
I had no idea there was so much draining involved in food preparation. My very first day of work I proudly packed myself a tuna fish sandwich. When I pulled the soggy lump of what should have been my lunch out of the plastic baggie I suddenly realized that perhaps you aren’t supposed to eat all of the water that’s packaged in the can.
These days I have friends who enjoy getting together to eat. A few are even a part of these “supper clubs” and “progressive dinners” where families rotate houses for meals throughout the month. I’ve never been invited to join, perhaps because people know when I attend these sorts of functions, I’m the one arriving with paper plates and a bag of chips. It’s just safer for everyone that way.
They know this about me because my social media posts are always littered with status updates regarding my culinary ineptitude:
“Off to the grocery store to buy cookies for the bake sale after the four alarm fire in my oven this morning.”
“Another day. Another ruined pot.”
“Just cooked my casserole for 30 minutes at 400 degrees… with the plastic lid on.”
“Take-out… it’s what’s for dinner.”
I’d always been convinced that my inability to cook was hardwired, but Laura laughed in the face of adversity.
“I can teach you to cook,” she said. “Just give me a week.”
“A week, huh?” I replied, unconvinced. “I’ll give you a week. Do you think you have what it takes to overcome my pampered, royal genes?”
She scoffed at me. She didn’t know what she was up against. She would, soon enough.
When I discovered this new information about myself, I did what any normal person living at the front end of the 21st century does… I Facebooked about it to all my friends. I believe my exact post was something to the effect of “I’m royalty. Feel free to genuflect the next time you see me.”
Now Laura happens to be not only one of my childhood friends, but also one of my closest Facebook friends. She immediately responded to the post with the requisite amount of sarcasm and sensibility to bring me right down off my self-appointed pedestal. The post quickly fell to the bottom of everyone’s newsfeed and my 15 seconds of fame was over. Until the email arrived.
“Maybe the reason you can’t cook is because of your royal lineage!” Laura quipped. “Perhaps I need to teach you to cook.”
In order for you to understand the history behind her sentiments, I need to explain myself more fully. You see, I am a horrible cook. I hate to cook. There’s nothing worse for me than working in the kitchen. It’s just the way it’s always been for me, even as a small child. Perhaps it was the fact that I preferred to spend my free time cutting 2x4s with my father in his basement workshop rather than baking brownies with my mother in the kitchen. Nothing against my mother or the brownies, I just didn’t have any interest in whatever was going on in the room with the oven.
In middle school I tried getting excited when the other kids baked those delicious buttermilk biscuits in Home Economics class, but often found myself dreaming of the following semester when I would be allowed to use the power tools in Woodshop. Let me sand something or drill something, but please don’t ask me to sift, measure, or sauté.
By the time I made it to college, my situation hadn’t improved. It was a good thing I always had access to the cafeteria or otherwise I probably would have starved. I remember making spaghetti and meat sauce with a friend one evening, and by “making” I actually mean watching. After she labored over the noodles and the sauce, I stood gaping in the corner as she instructed me to brown the ground beef. I’d never heard of such a thing. Didn’t the meat just get thrown in at the end? As the sweat beaded down my hairline, I tossed the lump of meat into the frying pan and waited.
“You have to flip it over,” she instructed.
I flipped.
“You have to chop it up,” she barked.
I chopped.
“YOU HAVE TO DRAIN IT FIRST!” she screamed as I dumped the contents of the pan into the sauce.
We ended up eating take-out that night.
I had no idea there was so much draining involved in food preparation. My very first day of work I proudly packed myself a tuna fish sandwich. When I pulled the soggy lump of what should have been my lunch out of the plastic baggie I suddenly realized that perhaps you aren’t supposed to eat all of the water that’s packaged in the can.
These days I have friends who enjoy getting together to eat. A few are even a part of these “supper clubs” and “progressive dinners” where families rotate houses for meals throughout the month. I’ve never been invited to join, perhaps because people know when I attend these sorts of functions, I’m the one arriving with paper plates and a bag of chips. It’s just safer for everyone that way.
They know this about me because my social media posts are always littered with status updates regarding my culinary ineptitude:
“Off to the grocery store to buy cookies for the bake sale after the four alarm fire in my oven this morning.”
“Another day. Another ruined pot.”
“Just cooked my casserole for 30 minutes at 400 degrees… with the plastic lid on.”
“Take-out… it’s what’s for dinner.”
I’d always been convinced that my inability to cook was hardwired, but Laura laughed in the face of adversity.
“I can teach you to cook,” she said. “Just give me a week.”
“A week, huh?” I replied, unconvinced. “I’ll give you a week. Do you think you have what it takes to overcome my pampered, royal genes?”
She scoffed at me. She didn’t know what she was up against. She would, soon enough.
Laura's Story
“I can’t cook,” Amalie says. “You should teach me,” she says. And so begins a crazy idea that commences with me loading some prized recipes, a Kitchen Aid mixer, and a wilted basil plant into my minivan to drive 500 miles from home to teach an old friend how to cook.
Now, by old friend, I don’t mean to insinuate that the two of us are old as in aged, but merely that we’ve known each other for many years. Funny how that descriptor changes as the next decade mile marker approaches; so whereas we met as children around the age of 11 or 12, and have since bypassed a twenty-year anniversary from our high school graduation, we have definitely decided we are not old, eye crinkles and stray facial hairs be damned. But our story does go back a ways, and were it not for this new-fangled concept of social media, it is likely we would not have crossed paths post high school again.
My path led to culinary college and a career in food oriented culture. I prepped, I sautéed, I cooked and fried and cleaned hood fans full of grease. I prepared food to order, I prepared food for catered events, I managed staff. I helped maintain a food service budget and dealt with vendors. I sported a uniform of crisp white jacket and black and white checked pants for a number of years. (To this day I feel undressed without an apron in the kitchen.) I took on a customer service position that aided the restaurant industry from the point-of-sale perspective. I married and had children. These people still required that I prepare food for them. My skills were never laid to rest. Ultimately I started my own culinary services business.
Amalie continued her higher education in teaching. I am finding a little speck of irony in the fact that I am now the one teaching. Instructing how to cut an onion. Hovering as she rolls pie crust. Sharing tricks of the trade. Did you know there are three teaspoons in a tablespoon, I’d mention? No, hold on while I write that down, she studiously replies. She also majored in psychology. This experiment was definitely awash with therapy, but more on that later.
Why did I choose to be a chef? I can’t say it was a profession in which I thought I was particularly destined. As we are expected to make a Major Life Decision a mere year or two after obtaining a driver’s license, and yet are not even allowed to vote for the president of the United States at that point in life (at least I wasn’t at the time of my graduation!) OR legally buy alcohol (just sayin’), it’s kind of crazy that I was supposed to know what I wanted to do with The Rest Of My Life. I mean, The Rest Of My Life was anywhere from the next 5 minutes to the next 50 years, so who knew what fate had in store!
At this point in my tender teen years I was beginning to enjoy cooking at home and found that being in the kitchen at the daycare center where I was employed was rather more comfortable than assisting in the class room. I spent my secondary level education earning commendable grades in academic college track classes and fully envisioned attending a four year college and earning a Bachelor’s Degree. However, in my junior year of high school I started to see flaws in that plan. Namely, what did I actually enjoy? And so, I went off to college with the objective of obtaining a degree in… journalism. Well, I think you may know how that plan went. To clarify: That plan didn’t work out. After a year I transferred my college credits and, in a nutshell, earned a degree in Professional Cooking and Baking instead. I cheesed out - is that what you’re thinking? (Culinary pun intended!) Well my friend, let’s look again.
What is cooking? The preparation of food, yes. But what is cooking? Cooking is communal. Cooking is from the heart. Cooking is a life skill. Cooking and the preparation of food embraces every single concept I have been educated upon, both formally and informally. Namely, science, history, math, literature, communications and language arts, visual arts, economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, medicine… what am I leaving out? Entire wars have been fought over commodities such as spices. Food consumes so much of our daily routine! When will I eat? What will I eat? How much of it should I eat?
I love that I can use my academic acuity and my creativity every time I am in the kitchen. I can feed my organizational beast by timing a meal to come out at just the right time. I get to make people happy by showing up at their doors with made-from-scratch desserts I just happened to “whip up.” I make magic when I prepare a soufflé – people are amazed, but I know the science behind the trick. I can take a trip around the world with my senses when I prepare ethnic cuisine. How. Cool. Is all of that?!
Back to the road trip that led to this book’s existence. I needed to investigate what Amalie meant by “I can’t cook.” Was it truly an inability? I mean, I’m no electrician, but I can change a light bulb. How dire can the situation be?
So it is that I arrived in North Carolina armed with a menu of foods to prepare for the week and to give Amalie a crash course in culinary technique so that she could one day in the near future, free from fear of failure and hand-holding, prepare a meal to entertain friends and family without burning or blundering a single item. I created a menu inspired by foods typical of mid-18th century France, some recipes more aristocratic, some more so a nod to the peasant class, along with cooking techniques from the same time period, thinking perhaps it would stir some long dormant culinary desires from the deepest recesses of Amalie’s soul. When I arrived at her doorstep, we hit the ground running.
Do Amalie’s royal ties have anything to do with her inability to cook? Read on as I attempt to teach a royal how to cook in a week.
Now, by old friend, I don’t mean to insinuate that the two of us are old as in aged, but merely that we’ve known each other for many years. Funny how that descriptor changes as the next decade mile marker approaches; so whereas we met as children around the age of 11 or 12, and have since bypassed a twenty-year anniversary from our high school graduation, we have definitely decided we are not old, eye crinkles and stray facial hairs be damned. But our story does go back a ways, and were it not for this new-fangled concept of social media, it is likely we would not have crossed paths post high school again.
My path led to culinary college and a career in food oriented culture. I prepped, I sautéed, I cooked and fried and cleaned hood fans full of grease. I prepared food to order, I prepared food for catered events, I managed staff. I helped maintain a food service budget and dealt with vendors. I sported a uniform of crisp white jacket and black and white checked pants for a number of years. (To this day I feel undressed without an apron in the kitchen.) I took on a customer service position that aided the restaurant industry from the point-of-sale perspective. I married and had children. These people still required that I prepare food for them. My skills were never laid to rest. Ultimately I started my own culinary services business.
Amalie continued her higher education in teaching. I am finding a little speck of irony in the fact that I am now the one teaching. Instructing how to cut an onion. Hovering as she rolls pie crust. Sharing tricks of the trade. Did you know there are three teaspoons in a tablespoon, I’d mention? No, hold on while I write that down, she studiously replies. She also majored in psychology. This experiment was definitely awash with therapy, but more on that later.
Why did I choose to be a chef? I can’t say it was a profession in which I thought I was particularly destined. As we are expected to make a Major Life Decision a mere year or two after obtaining a driver’s license, and yet are not even allowed to vote for the president of the United States at that point in life (at least I wasn’t at the time of my graduation!) OR legally buy alcohol (just sayin’), it’s kind of crazy that I was supposed to know what I wanted to do with The Rest Of My Life. I mean, The Rest Of My Life was anywhere from the next 5 minutes to the next 50 years, so who knew what fate had in store!
At this point in my tender teen years I was beginning to enjoy cooking at home and found that being in the kitchen at the daycare center where I was employed was rather more comfortable than assisting in the class room. I spent my secondary level education earning commendable grades in academic college track classes and fully envisioned attending a four year college and earning a Bachelor’s Degree. However, in my junior year of high school I started to see flaws in that plan. Namely, what did I actually enjoy? And so, I went off to college with the objective of obtaining a degree in… journalism. Well, I think you may know how that plan went. To clarify: That plan didn’t work out. After a year I transferred my college credits and, in a nutshell, earned a degree in Professional Cooking and Baking instead. I cheesed out - is that what you’re thinking? (Culinary pun intended!) Well my friend, let’s look again.
What is cooking? The preparation of food, yes. But what is cooking? Cooking is communal. Cooking is from the heart. Cooking is a life skill. Cooking and the preparation of food embraces every single concept I have been educated upon, both formally and informally. Namely, science, history, math, literature, communications and language arts, visual arts, economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, medicine… what am I leaving out? Entire wars have been fought over commodities such as spices. Food consumes so much of our daily routine! When will I eat? What will I eat? How much of it should I eat?
I love that I can use my academic acuity and my creativity every time I am in the kitchen. I can feed my organizational beast by timing a meal to come out at just the right time. I get to make people happy by showing up at their doors with made-from-scratch desserts I just happened to “whip up.” I make magic when I prepare a soufflé – people are amazed, but I know the science behind the trick. I can take a trip around the world with my senses when I prepare ethnic cuisine. How. Cool. Is all of that?!
Back to the road trip that led to this book’s existence. I needed to investigate what Amalie meant by “I can’t cook.” Was it truly an inability? I mean, I’m no electrician, but I can change a light bulb. How dire can the situation be?
So it is that I arrived in North Carolina armed with a menu of foods to prepare for the week and to give Amalie a crash course in culinary technique so that she could one day in the near future, free from fear of failure and hand-holding, prepare a meal to entertain friends and family without burning or blundering a single item. I created a menu inspired by foods typical of mid-18th century France, some recipes more aristocratic, some more so a nod to the peasant class, along with cooking techniques from the same time period, thinking perhaps it would stir some long dormant culinary desires from the deepest recesses of Amalie’s soul. When I arrived at her doorstep, we hit the ground running.
Do Amalie’s royal ties have anything to do with her inability to cook? Read on as I attempt to teach a royal how to cook in a week.
