This book started when Ithai showed up at a barbecue in Chris’s backyard and jumped in to help cook. We’d met before through mutual friends, but it was once we got into the kitchen together that things clicked. We shared a passion for making good food happen and feeding our friends, but in a laid-back way. After that night, if there was a party we went to, we’d end up being the guys in the kitchen. We’d get in there with no agenda—we cooked with whatever was handy and riffed off each other’s ideas. We’d experiment with new flavor combinations or try out something we’d read in a book, always wanting to learn more.
The kitchen was just where we’d rather be, but it always turned out that was where the real gathering was anyway. Our friends weren’t sitting around the table waiting for food—they were helping prep or clean or just hanging out with us. There was no “Dinner will be served at eight o’clock.” It was more like “Okay, open another bottle of wine because we forgot to put the burgers on.” It was delicious, fun, simple, and it couldn’t have been more relaxing.
These days, Chris spends most of his time on tour with his band, but whenever he comes back, one of the first things that happens is we start up the grill—no matter what time of year—and get all our friends together. It’s a great excuse to cook up a big cut of meat and reconnect. Aside from turning out some tasty things for dinner, we really like how happy our food makes people—especially when we put out great classic dishes or childhood favorites like rib eye steaks or roast chicken but do them up with a little something extra, like potatoes roasted with duck fat or kale salad with brown-butter pine nuts.
Every step of the way, our friends have come along for the ride, which is what makes every meal that much more special. They show up at our impromptu dinners, let us take over their kitchens, are eager recipe testers, and contribute to our gatherings plenty of booze, records, firewood, desserts, and good conversation. More than the food, that’s what getting together is all about. So many of us have moved away from the families we grew up with. But it’s our friends who become a family of a different kind. Bringing everyone together to share a meal, stories, laugh, complain about work or the subway, or just generally put folks’ day behind them is what we consider a truly family affair.
That’s why we wrote this book. It’s a cookbook, yes, of twenty big dinners’ worth of recipes, our favorite techniques, and points of inspiration, but it’s really about giving you the ideas and tools to make these kinds of gatherings happen for you and your friends.
We can’t tell you how many times we’ve been cooking and someone has said, “I could never do that.” Or how many times one of us has asked a friend to do some cutting, cleaning, or check on what’s happening on the stove and gotten a totally freaked-out look in response. Simple things like cutting up an onion or blanching some green beans seemed intimidating. Or worse, we’d watch friends run back and forth between a cookbook and the stove, too stressed by a recipe to enjoy what they were doing or spend time with the people around them.
So we set out to change that.
Instead of taking over the kitchen to make dinner, we invite everyone to help. We don’t want to cook for our friends—we want to cook with them. We want to get our friends to drop all the hang-ups they have about making something good to eat. And to do that we would show them what we’ve both learned through a lot of cooking: That great meals happen when you get rid of the idea that they have to come from a fancy chef or restaurant or strict recipe. That cooking can be easy and easygoing. That blanching is really just a fancy word for “cook for a few seconds in salted, boiling water.” That in the time it takes to peel the plastic off the top of a tub of dip, they could grill some zucchini, hit it with a little olive oil and salt, and serve that instead. Or poach an egg. Or make a vinaigrette for a simple salad. That simplicity is what’s impressive, not flipping out over ridiculously complicated dishes. That no one said dinner has to start and end at the table (or even make it to the table). That another beer / cocktail / bottle of wine goes a long way in erasing any culinary miscalculations. And most important, at the end of the day, that it’s just making something to eat.
So how do you cook great food and have a good time doing it? For us, it starts with nailing the basics—learning how to prepare ingredients, understanding how they taste, and thinking about how each ingredient will ultimately turn into something you want to eat. All you need are a few techniques in your repertoire, some high-quality ingredients in your pantry, and maybe a few friends to help shuck, peel, dice, or babysit the action on the stove. From there, it’s really just about dancing a little more in the kitchen.
Look, we’re not chefs. We don’t run restaurants and we’re not in a professional kitchen working dinner service every night. We do all this stuff at home, which is why we believe that you can do the same. Neither of us pretends to have some golden key to culinary excellence, but what we do have is experience. We’ve been able to learn from our mistakes, and now we’re passing that on so you don’t have to get there the hard way. We’ve also picked up really great ways to get the most out of what we’re cooking, and the simplest, most straightforward methods to do it. But our goal isn’t only to get you cooking the perfect steak (which you will) or knowing how to make your own pickled vegetables (yes, even that)—we’re going to help you trust your own instincts so you can just get in the kitchen and jam.
I swear, my mom could smell when I was cutting an onion wrong. I first learned about cooking by hanging out in the kitchen with her, an amazing cook who learned from her mom.
No matter how high the tree I had climbed at the park or how much I might have wanted to stay out with friends, I always came home in time for dinner. I was always there to help my mom cook—preparing vegetables and meat by her specific requests. When I did it wrong, she’d always notice and would patiently ask me to do it again, telling me why we were cutting things up a certain way and how different cuts cooked at different rates, which is why you wanted everything to be the same size. No kid likes to be corrected, but with Mom in the kitchen, it never felt like I had to follow too many rules; it felt like learning how to do it right. Maybe not the first time, but sometimes by my second try—which is how it works when learning how to cook. She and I would also talk about the differences among all kinds of oils, vinegars, and salts and why we would use certain ingredients at certain times and their role in building the flavor of a dish. Over time, I learned how all these things tasted and how to use them when I was cooking.
Like any person really trying to improve at something, I would lie awake in bed, digesting all that I learned and tried, consumed with how I would change my approach the next time we cooked. One of the first more-involved dishes I was trusted to make on my own was chili when I was around ten years old. I was pretty decent at following recipes, but I wanted to elaborate. Because I loved spicy food, I found everything spicy in the cupboard and added at will: cayenne pepper, chili powder, crushed red pepper, hot sauce, every bottle that had a drawing of flames. You can probably guess what happened—the chili was inedibly spicy. I learned that making food too spicy meant flavor took a backseat to heat. So the next time I made chili, I took note of each spice I added as I included it. And eventually, the food I cooked got better and better each time I gave it a go.
I’ve frequently been told that you really understand why people play golf once you play your first “good game,” and I believe making food is no different. The first thing you make that you really love to eat—even if it’s as simple as a nicely dressed salad or a plate of nachos (which actually was my first “good game” dish at ten years old)—is all it takes to fall in love with cooking. Well, after a few good games, I was hooked. My mom and I would cook together for two whole days when our family hosted Thanksgiving. I’m proud to say that my entire extended family will still attest that the best food on any given holiday was at our house. By the time I was fifteen, I was sometimes given the responsibility of being the sole cook for my family’s dinners. As I got a little older, I translated the same passion into learning in professional kitchens and, most of all, hosting dinner parties for my friends.
These days, I spend most of my time on the road playing music, and cooking isn’t something I can do as often as I like, which is to say as often as humanly possible. Finding something decent to eat in the first place can be a challenge. When I wake up in a new town every morning, walking out of the bus bleary-eyed and not sure what street I’m on or even where the venue or my bandmates are, food isn’t usually my first priority of the day—it’s finding a clean shower, for starters. But the one thing I miss the most while I’m away, more than any other comfort of home, is having friends over to eat. Going grocery shopping. And when I get back, I hit the farmers’ market, get inspired about what’s in season, and that’s when I know I’ve truly arrived home. I know it may sound silly to be excited about grocery shopping, but for me it’s the beginning of the creative process I love so much. You can express a lot in the food you are cooking, whether that be to provide comfort or excitement. Sometimes it’s fun to make an evening into more of a dinner party “event,” or sometimes you just need to eat—fun in its own right since you need to work within culinary limits, yet still satisfy. It also reminds me of how much my mom loved cooking for us. I know that’s why I find it so valuable to eat delicious food with close friends and family. I think music and cooking are a lot alike in that way for me—both tend to mean the most when shared. I enjoy every minute of taking way too long to get everything done because it just means everyone gets to hang out longer. There’s often no rush for me to get dinner ready because it’s not merely about the food we’re going to eat but also about the time spent making it in good company, listening to records, drinking some wine, and catching up on each other’s lives between bites. Few things in life are as satisfying and simple.
Oh man, I used to make some of the worst food when I was a kid. My parents would go out for the night and I would try to cook something for my brother and me. An ambitious kid in a kitchen is not a pretty sight, and there were definitely nights when my brother went to sleep hungry. I think he still has nightmares from the time I tried to make a stir-fry. I thought all there was to it was grabbing everything in the fridge, stirring it together, and throwing some soy sauce on it. I was wrong. Really, really wrong. But over time, I got better.
My grandfather used to say, “There are two kinds of people in this world: those who eat to live and those who live to eat.” It’s fair to say I have always been the latter—and it’s what first drew me to cooking. I realized quickly that if you make something good, you get to eat it, too. And being in the kitchen is pretty awesome. Ever since those terrible stir-fry dinners, I’ve loved getting lost in the rhythm of the kitchen. To this day, it’s my version of running around in the mud—messy and satisfying. It’s a place where I can just grab a beer, listen to a good album, and allow whatever’s going on around me to recede.
For a couple of years, I was lucky enough to work professionally in some really good kitchens, surrounded by amazing cooks and chefs. One night, after service, we were all hanging out at the restaurant’s bar when our chef, Peter Serpico, told us to go downstairs and grab some of the extra prime rib that was in the walk-in. But instead of doing some complex prep to it for guests the next day, we made steak and eggs for ourselves while we drank beers until four in the morning. It was a cool reminder not to take food too seriously: Here we were, working in one of the country’s top kitchens, getting more excited about glorified diner food than some crazy reduction. It also made me realize how incredible it was to cook alongside and learn from guys like Serpico and Sean Grey, two of the best cooks in the city, and how easy it felt to come together at the table when the pressure of service was off.
It was a pretty rough wake-up call when I left the professional cook route and started making food in my apartment again. I went from a playground stocked with an endless supply of tools and ingredients to what felt like cooking with an Easy-Bake oven. After spending sixteen hours a day nursing dishes from start to finish, using truly great ingredients, I was getting home after sixteen hours on a photo shoot and just needing something to eat.
The funny thing, though, is that going back to being a home cook forced me to become a better cook. I began to simplify things as much as possible, focusing more on technique and finding good ingredients that never required much messing with anyway. When you’re trained to make everything you need from scratch instead of buying it, but then find yourself without a team of cooks surrounding you, you learn to simplify what you think you need. And the limited space and equipment forced me to become more efficient. I had two knives and a cast-iron pan, and it worked.
I had the same epiphany about simplicity when we started writing this book. The more I tried to shove recipes into rigid times, measurements, and temperatures, the worse the food was. I’ve always just felt my way through cooking, going by intuition instead of always looking at a clock or thermometer. The recipes in this book are my way of getting back to the kind of cooking I fell in love with all over again after leaving the restaurant world. It’s the kind of food that doesn’t need strict rules and guidelines to be good. It’s the opposite—it gets better with a little more love and a little more dancing.
I also realized how much more I’d rather cook with people than for them, especially if someone’s asked me to teach them how to cook. It’s the best, most enjoyable way to make good food and learn a few things in the process. Instead of getting wrapped up in a recipe or stuck on learning “perfect” technique, it’s a chance to kick back and actually hang out. And the food is so much better that way, too. There’s nothing wrong with aspiring to re-create restaurant food at home. But what people don’t realize is that when making those kinds of dishes, you’re doing the work of ten people. Whole teams of professional cooks dedicate their lives to making that kind of food. It’s so much more enjoyable when we stop trying to cook like the people who are getting paid to do it all day, every day. And I’ve found that the home-cooked meal that people often long for is rarely about the actual dish. It’s about the people and the time we get to spend together.
We want you to tear this book apart—write in the margins, cross things out, change things around. There’s no way we could possibly know what kind of ingredients you like or how you’ll season them or who you’re going to be eating them with. These twenty dinners’ worth of recipes, from a simple night in to an elaborate gathering for friends, are things that we personally like, but it’s cool to tailor a dish or a menu to your taste—take a dish from one menu and serve it with one from another or borrow a component from one dish and put it on another. Whether or not you like fennel, that’s your call. And honestly, it’d be crazy to spend all day going to six different places to find celery root; just use parsnip or turnips instead.
While both of us dig into cookbooks for inspiration and reference, we think it’s possible to rely on recipes a little too much. Cooking isn’t about following directions to the letter; it’s about building a foundation of basics and trusting yourself to use them. The key is to understand reasons behind things like getting a good sear on a piece of meat or using a particular flour to pan-fry fish or why some ingredients taste better together than others. Then you’re on your way to getting amped, experimenting, and having way more of a good time than you would with your face all up in a book.
Our recipes aren’t meant to be mandates as much as guidelines. We’ll include specific measurements to give you a place to start, but most of the time we’re not big fans of having to portion everything out to the eighth of a teaspoon (except in baking recipes, where precision is more important). And beyond a few simple “rules,” often there’s no one right way to do something—only the way that’s right for you.
Really, we’re just trying to set you up with the confidence to try new things, to know what you like, and to trust yourself. And if it doesn’t come out exactly as you hoped the first time, that’s fine. Chances are it didn’t for us either. But no worries, it only gets better the more you try—and it just gives you an excuse to have your friends over again.
PLATING
You’ll notice that we don’t serve all our dishes family-style. That’s because when you arrange food in front of guests you’re essentially suggesting to them how you want them to eat it. It’s a weird thing, but if you put everything in separate piles, most people end up eating each component separately and missing out on how the dishes mix with one another. Here’s another way to think about it: You toss a salad before serving it, right? See, you’re plating and you didn’t even realize it.
You can plate food so that people will taste every flavor and component without even thinking about it. It’s nothing fancy or complicated—it’s as simple as putting your cauliflower puree underneath your duck breast instead of next to it. That way someone eating the dish will get a little of everything with each bite.
We’re not really dessert guys. When we do want something sweet, it will usually be simple like a bowl of cherries or a scoop of ice cream with some sea salt on top (both of which make appearances in this book). But we recognize the importance—and tastiness—of finishing a meal right, so we called on our friend Lillie O’Brien to be our guest pastry chef for this book.
After leaving Australia for a brief cooking stint in Japan, she found her way to St. John Bread and Wine, one of London’s top eateries. Working as a pastry chef, she found a passion for concocting deliciously atypical jams, which ultimately turned into her successful business, London Borough of Jam.
In her baking, Lillie embraces seasonal flavors, pairing the unexpected—peach and fennel blossom, fig and Earl Grey. And her desserts embrace the same simplicity in approach as we strive for with our menus, which is perfect if you’ve ever been a little bit afraid of baking.