The Country Kitchen

There is no recipe in this book that begins with a stopwatch. A country kitchen runs on the clock of the bread, the slow turn of an onion in butter, the patience of a long afternoon.

Begin with the pot. A heavy copper pot, scarred and warm, is half of every dish that matters here. The other half is salt — and the willingness to taste.

My grandmother said that a good stew is a kind of conversation: you put things in, you listen, you answer. By evening, if you have been honest, supper has more or less cooked itself.