The Kitchen Whisperers: Cooking With the Wisdom of Our Friends

A beautifully written tribute to the people who teach us to cook and guide our hands in the kitchen, by a founding editor of Saveur.

The cooking lessons that stick with us, returning to us every time we make a particular dish, are the ones we absorb as we spend time with good cooks in the kitchen. Dorothy Kalins, the founding editor-in-chief of Saveur magazine, calls them our Kitchen Whisperers, people who consciously or not, pass on to us their cooking wisdom. Our Kitchen Whisperers help make us the cooks we become.

Dorothy's prolific career in food media means many of her Kitchen Whisperers happen to be some of the best chefs around (though many are fellow home cooks, too). As her cooks, she recalls their voices: Marcella Hazan warns her against valuing looks over flavor; Christopher Hirsheimer advises that sometimes water is better than stock or wine to add liquid to a dish; a beloved Southern cook memorably notes that not everyone who asks for a biscuit is hungry for food.

Woven through the text are many narrative recipes, from Dorothy's mother's meat loaf to Michael Anthony's advice on how to pickle anything. The Kitchen Whisperers will inspire you to identify and cherish the food mentors in your own life, just as it will urge you to seek them out.