Kathy Skutecki has worked for chef Gale Gand. She has worked for Vosges. She just spent three weeks in India. She blogs at Stresscake: Exploring the bake and release theory.
Kathy and I met briefly a couple of years ago when I was preparing for a pie contest. (We agreed: Pies are hard.) We spent more time together this summer when we both worked at the farmers market.
I had never been to Kathy's apartment before I invited myself over to waffle, which means I had never seen her kitchen.
Her kitchen is beautiful. Beautiful not because it's big — though it's not bad for a one-bedroom apartment. And beautiful not because it's perfect — I'm sure there are things she would change.
But everything about that kitchen makes you want to cook.
I got lost looking at the shelves, spun around and got lost again — all without moving from where I stood.
If it were my kitchen, I would probably want to spend all day there.
She showed me her jam cabinet – stacks of mason jars made full by the mania of too much summer fruit. I am similarly afflicted.
The kitchen made me want to start cooking; the dining room made me want to start eating. Well, the dining room and the waffled aloo parantha — a potato-filled flat bread from India that is, surprisingly enough, more typically cooked on a griddle or in a skillet.
I watched as Kathy rolled the dough thin, placed a tiny mound of filling in the center, gathered the thin rounds in pleats, then flattened the assemblage again before placing it in the waffle iron.
Soon, it smelled like lunch. She dressed the waffled aloo parantha with a bright green sauce and served it with a dal.
We dug in and swapped stories. For dessert, she produced a peach pie warm from the oven.
I looked over her cookbooks. She pulled some off the shelf and we flipped through the pages. I pawed through the stacks of cookie cutters. I picked up a few of the gelatin molds.
We conspired about further waffling. Kathy had some brilliant ideas, not the least of which was this one. She sent me home with leftovers, which were gone by that evening.
Kathy was kind enough to share the recipe for waffled aloo parantha. That's the next post.
