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Mollie Katzen in the Kitchen
The noted cookbook author shares her personal nutrition evolution.
By Phillip Rhodes
for "Cooking Light"
Phillip Rhodes is Cooking Light's associate editor.
Strolling through the farmers' market in Berkeley, California, Mollie
Katzen is easily distracted, rushing over to inspect a bouquet of
radishes one minute, turning to admire the curves of a poblano pepper
the next, then pausing to pick a stray ladybug off a bunch of oak-leaf
lettuce. As she goes from stall to stall, she tosses her purchases into
what she laughingly dubs the "socially conscious Berkeley canvas bag"
she collected from the back seat of her cluttered Volvo station wagon
before we set out.
"Oh, I have to get some of these strawberries for my daughter," she
says, leaning over to inhale their scent. This being Berkeley, they're
the real thing‹organically grown bullet-shaped bites that are
indisputably sweet. In fact, nearly every booth here stocks organic
wares‹from handmade pastas and breads to the jams and preserves. "Well,
they're not made with organic sugar," concedes the booth's owner. Still,
it's impressive.
This is a fitting scene for a woman who's authored seven cookbooks in
which vegetables play a starring role. Katzen has more than five million
books in print, including the hand-lettered and -illustrated vegetarian
bibles The Moosewood Cookbook, which emerged out of her five-year
stint at the collectively owned New York restaurant of the same name;
Enchanted Broccoli Forest; and, most recently, Sunlight Café, a
collection of breakfast recipes published last fall. Health magazine
named her one of the five women who changed the way America eats, and
she has had four cooking series on
public television nationwide since 1995.
Vegetable Heaven
For someone who casts a large shadow in culinary
circles, Katzen is actually quite small in person. She's vibrantly
energetic, full of expressive gestures. In person, she's a lot like the
voice that comes through in her books‹that of a knowledgeable friend
standing next to you in the kitchen, eagerly instructing and
encouraging.
Once her bag brims with fresh vegetables and a loaf of olive bread she
deems "the best in the universe," we climb back into Katzen's wagon for
a drive up the winding streets of Berkeley to her airy, hilltop home.
It's a rambling cottage that's been added on to some half a dozen times,
she explains. After briefly disturbing her husband, Carl, and
11-year-old daughter, Evie, as they watch Saturday morning television,
we settle into the comfortable sky-lit kitchen, where a pricey modern
Sub-Zero fridge is offset by a 1950s-era HotPoint double oven (with a
"roast-right thermometer" feature, complete with printed-on instructions
for chicken, veal, or "Beef: Rare" ). "This is my test kitchen," Katzen
says with a smile as she takes a seat at the built-in kitchen table and
pours the strawberries into a bowl.
Given her focus on vegetables, many people think Katzen is a
standard-bearer for vegetarianism. But she doesn't. "I avoid the
vegetarian label because it leads people astray," she says in a quick,
precise tone. "It leads people to focus on whether or not meat is being
served as the protein for a meal. And it doesn't necessarily lead people
toward healthy eating." For Katzen, vegetables are the central feature
of what she calls "a garden- and orchard-based way of eating. It's
vegetarian, but with a small V," she says. "When vegetarian eating makes
a turn into a statement about meat being bad, a statement against our
natural carnivorous nature as human beings, that's not something I would
ever be on a soapbox about."
Good health is the cause that's actually closest to Katzen's heart.
"Health has always been important to me, but my notion of what that is
has shifted, as knowledge has increased and more studies have been
done," she says. Another factor that influenced her nutritional
awakening has been her association with the Harvard School of Public
Health Nutrition Roundtable, which began in 1998. As she learned more,
she applied that knowledge to her cookbooks, revising previously
published editions to showcase a healthier approach.
"I felt there were excessive amounts of butter in some of the recipes,
which I think came from an insecurity," she says, "When I was young and
wasn't sure whether something tasted good, I'd just throw in more
butter. But I came to understand that I could make my French onion soup
with two tablespoons of butter instead of six. The butter flavor would
still be there, but it wouldn't necessarily be a whole layer floating on
top.
"I learned a lot about making things taste good by adding extra
seasoning, rather than by making it taste good with rich sauces," she
continues. "I thought, 'I can roast a head of garlic and make a garlic
paste to give food a rich flavor; it doesn't always have to be butter or
heavy cream.' I learned different techniques for adding flavor, and
realized there are layers of flavor that can stimulate the palate. And,
as long as the knowledge I was gaining was something anybody could do
anywhere in the country and wasn't just sophisticated, large-city
specific, then I was willing to put it in my book."
Tampering with a past success might give some writers pause. Not Katzen.
"I was curious to know how I would make those recipes 15 years after the
fact." In revisiting her recipes, she would flip open an original 1977
edition of Moosewood, read the recipe, then close the book and cook from
feel, writing down everything she did and comparing it with what she'd
done before. "In some cases, it was exactly the same. In other cases, it
was somewhat different. In some cases it was radically different." Her
revised edition was published in 1992. Then she applied the same
principles to the Moosewood's follow-up, Enchanted Broccoli Forest,
reissuing it in 1995 and again in 2000.
For instance, the very first recipe readers encounter in both the new
and original versions of the Moosewood Cookbook is for cream of
asparagus soup. The differences between then and now are striking. The
1970s-era incarnation's creaminess comes from 4 cups of milk and 6
tablespoons of butter. A meager 1/2 teaspoon of dill imparts a light
tang. The current version increases the asparagus (from 1 1/2 pound to 2
pounds), cuts the amount of milk by half (and recommends low-fat),
reduces the butter by 4 1/2 tablespoons, uses more dill, and,
complements it with tarragon. The result: a better soup that's true to
the spirit of the original.
Champion of Breakfast
For Sunlight Café, Katzen took her knowledge of healthful cooking one
step further, changing the nutritional profile of the dishes she
developed. Her work with Harvard introduced her to cutting-edge research
on blood sugar levels. First thing in the morning, after a night-long
fast, those levels are flat and need reviving. The trick, Katzen
discovered, is to raise them the right way. A breakfast of simple,
refined carbohydrates causes blood-sugar levels to spike. And, as she
points out, what goes up must come down; the spike in your blood sugar
level results in midmorning stomach rumblings. However, a well-rounded
breakfast that mixes whole grains with fiber and a bit of protein
carries you until lunch, instead of leaving you hungry again two hours
later.
"As I was writing the book, I thought, 'Maybe I can make those waffles
have a slightly different profile. Maybe I can use some of that soy
protein powder that I sometimes slip into muffins, maybe I can add an
extra egg, maybe I can get a little bran in there.' So I started
creating some higher protein versions of classic coffeecakes, muffins,
and pancakes.
"This is going to sound extreme: Most people think bagels are food.
Bagels aren't really food," she continues. "I know they're delicious,
but, there's nothing in them. People get really focused on the fact that
the bagel doesn't have any fat. It could have 500 calories, and those
calories don't come from protein or fiber. But it's
low fat. People get so focused on what a food does not have and it
drives me nuts. Actually," she says, laughing, "it drives me to nuts
because I believe nuts have a lot of helpful nutrients them."
One look at her clearly demonstrates the effect of practicing what she
preaches. At 51, Katzen doesn't look much different than she did at 31.
Sure, the billowing curls have been tamed into a sleek pageboy, and
there are few more friendly crinkles around the eyes, but she remains
fit and trim, fearlessly wearing camisoles at an age when many women
have given them up.
Each morning, Katzen walks or hikes through the large park that borders
her house. "I need the fresh air‹it's a big part of how I function. It
helps me think, and that's when I get my biggest ideas. They come either
at 4 in the morning and they wake me up or they come while I'm hiking."
She also regularly supplements her cardio workout with weight training
at a gym. Katzen even views her most frequent daily activity, cooking,
as a form of keeping fit. "I spend about 45 minutes every night making
dinner. It's a way to unwind," she says, then pauses to encourage
Eve, who's come into the kitchen to make lunch, to eat some of the
strawberries. "And this might sound odd," she says, "but I also consider
it a form of exercise. I almost feel it's a martial art‹a quiet one,
like Tai Chi. I love the physical feeling of it. To me, it's like
stretching."
Not that Katzen's kitchen time is all about relaxation. "Lots of people
think that my work must always add up to dinner," she says. "But I'm
often in the same boat as my readers." After a day of testing grapefruit
curd tarts, say, she might clap her hand to her forehead at 5:30 p.m.
and exclaim, "Oh! What am I going to cook for dinner?
"I'm not on the culinary scene. I work very hard, and I enjoy it very
much," she says. "But I'd rather be in my home with my family than out
at some party." Which is why incorporating a real-world element of
practicality‹that friendly voice‹to her books is one of her key
concerns. "I'm a service provider. Cookbooks are technical
manuals‹instructions from which people will do things and want to end up
with a result based on your choice of language‹that's the bottom line."
For her next project, she'll broaden her approach again. Katzen is
collaborating with Harvard pediatric endocrinologist David Ludwig, M.D.,
on a book to help parents teach children how to live healthfully in
today's fast-food culture. "David will provide the science," says
Katzen. "I'll provide the recipes, the parent's point of view, and some
of the 'voice.' It'll sound a lot like me." And regardless of whether
it's a time-honored classic like asparagus soup or a recipe for
preventing obesity, her imprimatur remains the same: "I want readers to
feel like a real person's talking to them and that we're in the kitchen
together."
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