Editor in chief
Lou Bertillon
Lou Bertillon cooked professionally for twelve years before she stopped, and now she cooks at home, on her own time, and writes about both.
Beats
Published in Open Burner
Drinks
The House Amaro: A Bottle of Averna and the End of the Meal
Lou Bertillon keeps a bottle of Averna on the kitchen counter year-round. After most weeknight dinners, she pours an ounce into a small glass and calls the meal closed.
Pantry
A Mustard Jar Rotation
Lou Bertillon keeps four mustards in her refrigerator door and uses each of them differently. Here is how the rotation works.
Bread & Baking
Focaccia on a Hot Afternoon
Lou Bertillon does not bake bread in July, except for this one. Olive oil, rosemary, a kitchen with the windows open, and forty-five minutes of patience.
Slow Cooking
A Shoulder of Lamb and a Bottle of Wine
On a wet Saturday in May, Lou Bertillon braised a four-pound lamb shoulder in a bottle of Cahors for seven hours. She did almost nothing while it cooked, and ate it that evening with her brother and a loaf of yesterday's bread.
Kitchen Notes
The Tuesday Dinner Rule
A six-month log of weeknight cooking that revealed a small, useful pattern: dinner gets easier when you stop trying to make it special.
Weeknight
The Weeknight Frittata and the End of the Vegetable Drawer
Lou Bertillon makes a frittata on the Tuesday before market day, when the crisper is bare and the eggs in the door are looking at her — eight eggs, a hot pan, and the courage to leave it alone.
Tools
The Wooden Spoon as the Truest Cooking Tool
Lou Bertillon's beech spoon was bought in a Vermont hardware store for two dollars in 1999. It has stirred more food than any other tool in her kitchen.
Bread & Baking
A Saturday Morning Buttermilk Biscuit
Lou Bertillon's biscuit recipe, taught to her by a line cook from Tennessee in 2011, takes twenty-two minutes from cold butter to hot oven.
Kitchen Notes
Cooking Through a Grief
A reader writes about the months after her father's death, and the small dinners that held the days together.
Preserving
Dried Tomatoes in Late August
The dehydrator runs for fourteen hours on the back porch in Brooklyn while Lou Bertillon writes a magazine in the next room. By Labor Day she has six jars.
Pantry
Canned Anchovies as a Household Staple
Lou Bertillon argues that the small tin of anchovies is the most useful object in the pantry, and explains how to use it without anyone noticing.
Drinks
The Negroni for One, on a Tuesday in May
Lou Bertillon makes a single negroni most weeknights. She keeps the bottles where she can see them and does not measure anymore.
Weeknight
A Thirty-Minute Lemon-Anchovy Pasta for the Last Tuesday in April
Lou Bertillon walks through the weeknight pasta she has cooked, by her own count, forty-three times since January — a pound of spaghetti, six anchovies, one lemon, and the patience to finish it in the pan.
Slow Cooking
A Six-Hour Pork Shoulder on a Sunday
Lou Bertillon rubs a five-pound shoulder on Saturday night and slides it into a 285-degree oven at nine the next morning. By three in the afternoon, the kitchen is doing the work for her.
Kitchen Notes
Cooking in a 36-Square-Foot Kitchen in Crown Heights
A year of dinners cooked in a Brooklyn galley the size of a closet, where the cutting board lives on the stove and the colander hangs from a nail above the sink.