'Smitten Kitchen' Takes The Fuss Out Of Cooking
Think of the smallest kitchen you can imagine, and then take away a few square feet. That's Deb Perelman's New York kitchen. It's so small that the blogger, and now author, literally has to wedge herself between the stove and the refrigerator to cook.
Perelman insists you don't need a big or gourmet kitchen to make good food — and she's done a good job of proving it. Since 2006, she's blogged about cooking on her website, Smitten Kitchen, where she tracks down and tests the best recipes for food she thinks pretty much anyone can make, then snaps a picture of the final product and posts it. Her recipes, photos and funny posts attract some 8 million views a month, and now they can also be found in The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook.
"I hear people say, 'I have a tiny kitchen and I don't think I can cook the stuff that you cook in it,' " she says. "They may not realize that my kitchen's tiny , and I'm like, 'Uh-uh, you can't use that excuse with me. You're going to have to find another one.' "
By now, Perelman has discovered that the key to cooking in such a small space is staying organized.
"You just need to clear the decks of what you have. I don't have any canisters out on the counter, I do have some seasonings, and I pretty much make sure it's completely clear when I get started," she says. "When you go to a restaurant and they have amazing food, all those line cooks, they do not have more space than this. They just have a little station and they know how to manage it. They do prep work and they put it in little bowls around and they have one cutting board and they have one knife and they get their work done in a small space."