Food People, Parent Picks: we ask our favorite chefs, food writers, and industry insiders who we interview in our Order Up! Series to share the products, books, and bites they can’t live without.
Earlier this week we talked with Katie Button, the chef and co-founder of Cúrate in Asheville, about the sweet potatoes her kids refuse to eat, the afternoon she served them seven desserts for dinner, and why she wrote her new cookbook Spanish Accent partly so her kids would have their family’s recipes on paper. If you missed it, you can read the whole interview at this link.
Today we’re getting practical. Her pantry, her fridge, the one tool she’d never swap out, the store-bought shortcut she has no guilt about, and the meal she makes when someone in the house has had a hard day. Some of it costs four dollars. One of them is a Vitamix.
Three pantry staples you always have on hand?
Extra-virgin olive oil, anchovy paste, and olives. Those three make a lot of flavor.
And three things always in your fridge?
Cheese, always, a variety of different kinds. Cucumbers, because I love cucumbers. And buttermilk, because I make pancakes pretty often… though that recipe isn’t in the book.
One Spanish pantry ingredient everyone should go get familiar with?
Anchovy paste. It’s all over my book. Take a pot of beans cooked with vegetables and water, then make that same pot with a hint of anchovy paste. It is night and day more delicious, and nobody eating it would have any idea you put it in. It’s also the most affordable way to get anchovies into a dish.
One kitchen tool you use constantly?
There are a few, but I use a microplane almost all the time. It does something I can’t do with a knife, and there’s no swapping in another tool and getting the same result.
The weeknight dinner you make on repeat?
Omelets and pan con tomate (tomato bread). That’s the big repeat one.
A store-bought shortcut you’re not sorry about?
I never make stock at home. I don’t know how people do that. I could never. What I do instead is add things to store-bought stock: anchovies, or a little miso paste, something to build the flavor back up.
A meal both of your kids will eat without a fight?
Honestly? The other day I served them chicken and they both said they don’t really like chicken. Unanimous. So I asked what their favorite meat I make is. The lamb chops? The pork? And they said: chicken nuggets.
I said, chicken nuggets or chicken? And they said, yeah, but breaded. Right. Exactly. So they do love my fried chicken. They’ll take anything I make that’s breaded in some way, shape or form. Croquetas, too.
The comfort meal you make when someone’s had a hard day?
My mom’s chicken soup. It’s in the book. It’s something she makes for me, and when I asked her for the recipe she said, what are you talking about, recipe? It’s just this stuff, and you add it at this time, and then the rice goes in. So I turned it into a recipe.
A kitchen appliance splurge that actually earns its place?
A Vitamix blender. I have yet to find another blender that can do what that thing can do.
A cookbook you actually cook from, besides your own?
I’m constantly opening a lot of different books, but the one I grew up on and have probably cooked from the most over the years is the Dean & DeLuca Cookbook [Amazon]. Every single recipe in that book slams.
You put olive oil in ice cream. So: desert island olive oil pick?
It’s funny, because a lot of the olive oil sold in the United States has an Italian name on the front and is actually from Spain if you read the back. I think Spain produces most of the olive oil in the world, though you’d have to check me on that.
The one I’d pick is Apadrina un Olivo. We use their olive oil at the restaurant now. They’re rejuvenating rural regions in Spain that were being completely abandoned as people moved into the cities. The olive groves had been left untended for years, and the schools were closing because the government couldn’t afford to keep the communities going. So they’re bringing the groves back into production, making olive oil, and returning an economy to those communities, and therefore the schools are growing. It’s incredible. And the olive oil is amazing.
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