Sara Moulton

Television host and author, Sara’s Weeknight Meals and Sara
Moulton’s Everyday Family Dinners
New York, New York

In 1975, Sara Moulton attended the Culinary Institute of America.

The ratio of men to women was six to one; and out of a class of

452, Moulton graduated second. “I showed those assholes,” she

tells me in her New York City apartment, a devilish grin on her

face.

On television, where she inspired me to start cooking in the

first place, Moulton comes across as a gentle, nurturing, mothering

type. (And, indeed, she is the mother of two twentysomethings.)

But in real life, Moulton is irreverent (she has a wicked sense of

humor), and, more important, she’s a force to be reckoned with in

the kitchen. That becomes abundantly clear when I arrive and she

stands, in a samurai-like pose, steeling her knife. “Hold your arm

out like this,” she says, dragging her knife back and forth across

the steel. The rapid-fire slashing sounds make her seem like a

character straight out of Kill Bill.

I’m here to learn how Moulton filters her classic French training

through the sensibility of the everyday, average American home

cook—something for which she’s famous. The answer, I learn

from watching her in action, is to be practical.