Finding Confidence in Carrots: An Interview with Bee Wilson

Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and many of us have cooking on our minds. Whether you’re a seasoned cook who looks forward to preparing the big meal every year or you feel totally out of your depth in the kitchen, Bee Wilson is here to provide culinary inspiration, tips and tricks, and a compulsively readable collection of recipes and stories. Store manager Cat Bock had the chance to chat with Bee ahead of Turkey Day about her newest cookbook, The Secret of Cooking! Check out the interview, then grab a copy for the cook (or cook-to-be!) in your life.

Cat Bock: The Secret of Cooking is so conversational and personal. I loved reading your thoughts on each of the recipes and concepts, as well as the way the book progresses in terms of how involved the recipes are as you read through it. How did you decide on the format you would use for this cookbook?

Bee Wilson | Photo by Charlotte Griffiths

Bee Wilson: Thank you so much! This makes me so happy to hear because I really wanted the reader to feel that we were having a conversation in the kitchen. I decided quite early on that I wasn’t going to follow the conventional format of appetisers, entrees, side dishes and so on because I wanted to highlight the ways in which cooking has to be tailored to different moments and stages of life. We need different kinds of recipes whether we are cooking alone, in a hurry, for kids or at times when we are flat-out exhausted. No matter what the recipe, the secret of cooking is always the person who cooks. I had a lot of fun thinking up the chapter titles because I really wanted them to reflect the overlooked aspects of cooking — for example ‘What No One Tells You About Cooking’ addresses the fact that so much of cooking is really about washing dishes, and ‘Treat cooking as a remedy (because it is)’ is about the ways that cooking can make everyday life better in small, subtle ways, whether it’s finding a new and delicious way to make eggs or making a series of salad recipes which will taste great but also make you feel healthier.

CB: I began reading and cooking from this book when I was trying to get out of a rut in the kitchen — months of not trying anything new and not feeling very inspired. What are some of your favorite things about home cooking that keep you interested and motivated as you move through different phases of life?

BW: I have a few different approaches to getting out of a cooking rut. It slightly depends on why you are in the rut. If the rut is caused (as it often is in families) by the frustrations of cooking for picky eaters, meals after meal, then part of the answer could be trying to expand the range of foods your child eats – I have some suggestions for this in the book. On the other hand, I know that lots of us get demotivated when cooking for one. If this is the case, I would focus on making things with lovely flavours which can be flung together in one tray or one pot so easily that it is almost as if someone else did the cooking. I have two recipes in the book – one for a spiced paneer jalfrezi and one for chicken with fennel and citrus – which kick start me back into enjoying cooking for myself again at times when I lose inspiration.

Another way is just to embrace the rut and to find ways to make dishes which take almost no time so that you don’t resent the process so much. I rely on the recipes in the book for ‘universal sauces’ for moments like this. I make a series of different sauces – a red curry, a green curry, a sauce that tastes like French fish soup though it’s also great with root vegetables and legumes and a yellow laksa sauce and stash them in the freezer for nights when I am feeling uninspired or tired or both. Half the work of dinner is already done. You just take any of the sauces and add whatever you have in the fridge, ranging from chicken or fish or tofu to just a few random vegetables from the salad drawer.

CB: You cook so widely across culinary traditions and cultures. Is there anything you haven’t made yet that you are excited to try? And what are you currently loving to cook?

BW: Thank you! There are so many dishes I yearn to try. I would love to make a Turkish lahmacun – a kind of pizza-like flatbread topped with minced meat, herbs and vegetables. I’ve eaten it once in Istanbul but never cooked it. One of the dishes I am cooking on repeat at the moment is the Ixta Belfrage recipe for oyster mushroom noodles with caraway onions from her book Mezcla – so comforting.

CB: If you had to prepare a meal for any one person or group of people, who would it be and why? What would you make for them?

BW: My mother died a year ago and I find I am missing her more and more. It’s obviously impossible but if I could, I would like to cook her the ‘chicken stew for tired people’ in the book, which was inspired by the stews she made for me when I was growing up, flecked with parsley with lots of vegetables and white wine. And I’d follow it with the vegan pear and ginger cake in the book which I first made thinking of her because she was obsessed with pears.

CB: What is your advice to anyone just learning to cook at home?

BW: This sounds very obvious but just cook! And cut yourself some slack, which is the title of the first chapter. And trust yourself. Most of our fears about cooking are about feeling that we can’t do it or that there is some mystery which others understand and we don’t. But the way we learn about cooking is just by doing it and figuring out what we like and don’t like. I have a section called Teach Yourself To Cook With A Carrot, my thinking being that you can teach yourself a lot of basic knife skills and cooking techniques just with a bag of carrots – so cheap and accessible – and then you have the confidence to cook with other ingredients.

CB: And our favorite question to ask: What is your favorite thing about indie bookstores?

BW: I‘ve spent a lot of time in indie bookstores since I was a child and they always feel to me like a kind of magical and protected space where you can escape into other worlds.

The Secret of Cooking is on our shelves now! Get your copy today.