20 SAVEUR.COM
MATT TAYLOR-GROSSEAT THE WOR LD
steaming-hot water, wring
it out hard with both hands
so that it no longer drips,
then stretch the cloth fl at
on the countertop and lay
your hand on it, middle
fi nger pointing toward a
corner, that corner fl ipped
back up over your fi ngers
like a toboggan. This way,
when you wipe (and if you
haven’t seen this demon-
strated, let me tell you, it’s
a goddamned miracle), the
corner of the cloth stays
up over your hand. “With a
fl at expanse of cloth, you
can pick up crumbs,” myHOW TO CLEAN A
COUNTERTOP
When I was 9 years old,
my mom taught me how to
wipe the countertop in the
following very specifi c way:
You soak the washcloth inmom stressed. Her face,
hanging above the shiny
surface, was smooth and
contented. Not joyous, not
sad, but what you might call
Placid Wiping Face. Uncon-
sciously I absorbed the look
of spine-tingling satisfac-
tion she gave the gleaming
countertop and knew it
contained something even
greater: hope for tomor-
row and its many projects.
If you’re despondent about
the future, you don’t wipe
like that.BUTTER RULES
THE MIDWEST. ALWAYS
My mom’s butter dish was
always there in the cen-
ter of the kitchen, a prima
donna presiding over all.
I remember charting the
two sticks’ diminishment
through the day: going,
going, gone...then mirac-
ulously replenished. Even
throughout the fatphobic
eighties, never once was an
ounce of guilt attached to
its use. Just as my grandma
did, my mom made a proud
acchh noise in her throat—
automatic dismissal of any
imaginary detractors—as
she scooped it up in huge,
glossy lumps. Where oth-
ers used milk or stock to
moisten, she used butter:
on dry mashed potatoes,
on top of lasagna, on left-
over braised beef. Nothing
went into the microwave
for reheating without
a dollop of the yellow
pomade schmeared on top.
My mom’s dish of room-
temperature butter was
more than a mere cook-
ing fat, it was an ointment,
fi lling, spackle, emotional
salve, as essential to com-
bating the deep Minnesota
winter as lotion.THE POWER OF
HOTDISH
One summer after a trip
to France, we reunited
to make the food for my
brother Bob’s fi rstborn’s
baptismal party. How we
could return from an eating
tour like that (a gastro-
naut’s blowout by anyone’s
standards) and come
to stand in my mother’s
apartment kitchen in St.
Paul stirring a vat of diced
chicken and canned water
chestnuts glued together
with murky, industrial,
carrageenan-rich canned
“soup,” the essential fi xa-
tive in the Midwestern
hotdish, is a total puz-
zler. And yet, here we are.
I have pinned my knee into
a yellow-fl owered vinyl
chair for leverage, because
dragging a spoon through
this quantity of chicken-
chunk mixture is as hard
as rowing a boat into the
wind. I am amazed by the
sounds coming out of it.
Pleef! it gasses, making
the very same sound your
sweaty lower back does
when it disengages from a
hot vinyl seatback. Like an
elementary-school kid, I
burst out laughing and say,
“What did this thing eat?”
But now my mom is crush-
ing bags of crispy kettle
chips and then raking them
over the surface of the hot-
dish so that they will brown
into an even gold crown
across the top, and I have
to admit, it is impossible
not to pinch off a chip, its
bottom soaked in a salty,
sticky, implausibly deli-
cious cream. What we are
making is one gigantic,
addictive dip. It’ll take the
two of us to pull this sucker
out of the oven. 1
2
3
Mind Her Elders
In her new book, Amy Thielen
meditates on the everyday
wisdom of her Midwestern mother“I love my mom w ith an almost scar y fi erceness,”
writes Amy Thielen in her funny, straight-shooting
memoir Give a Girl a Knife (Clarkson Potter, May
2017). In it, the James Beard Award winner, cook-
book author, and saveur contributor traces her
path from small-tow n Minnesota to the cutthroat
lines of Manhattan’s fi nest restaurants—where
she worked under Daniel Boulud, Jean-Georges
Vongerichten, and David Bouley—and back again.
Throughout, she recalls lessons from Karen, her
no-nonsense Midwestern mother, who helped guide
her along the way. Here, three kernels of inherited
w isdom from the book that ever y cook should k now.