Food Network viewers recognize her from the absorbing "Heartland Table" series, and discerning cookbook readers are more than familiar with the Minnesota author through her James Beard award-winning "The New Midwestern Table."
But for those who think they know Amy Thielen, think again.
She is rectifying that situation with an evocative and enlightening new memoir. "Give a Girl a Knife" (Clarkson Potter, $26) takes readers deep into her own urban-rural divide.
First, she illuminates the long winters she spent cooking in the New York City kitchens of top chefs David Bouley, Daniel Boulud and Jean-Georges Vongerichten. Then she turns to summers in the woods just outside her hometown, living in a rustic, off-the-grid house built by Aaron Spangler, her artist husband and fellow native of Park Rapids, Minn.
What a contrast: 80-hour weeks in high-pressure, peak-experience restaurant kitchens, and summers growing and preserving vegetables and fruits — and cooking with no running water or electricity — while slowly but surely discovering and embracing her family's culinary roots, a branch of which is the famed Thielen Meats in Pierz, Minn.
We talked with Thielen about the military appeal of commercial kitchens, the joys of pepper-shaped tomatoes and the forgotten beauties locked within the concept of "making do."
Q: Why a memoir?
A: I was trying to figure out what kind of narrative this book would take. The "homecoming" narrative was embedded into essays in the cookbook. Writing this book really did help me figure out all the unanswered and unresolved things about coming back home. What drew me back here, so strongly? I found those answers while I was writing the book. Those issues naturally arose from that, and then I thought, "Do I dare write a memoir at 40?" I'm 42 now. It's not an autobiography, it's not a beginning-to-end narrative. Memoirs usually concentrate on a discrete story.
Q: You wrote that "cooking saved me," but you also refer to it as "the affliction." Is there a contradiction there?
A: In those early years in New York, I was really in search of motivation. I've always been a procrastinator, and I'm a little bit undisciplined. Cooking is like the military, structure-wise, but at the same time it's very creative. You have to use all of your senses; they're on call. It's also like the theater. No one else is going to do your part if you're sick. The show must go on. I believed in the system and the authority and the structure of it all. I think I'm on the ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder] spectrum. I have a hard time finishing things, and I need structure, and cooking solved that for me. When I started cooking, time did slow down, and I could really concentrate.
Q: One of my favorite lines in the book is when an Austrian sous chef tells you, "Good cooking is potatoes and onions." How was that meaningful for you?
A: That was such a turning point for me. It really clicked with me, because that's the moment when I realized that food isn't stratified by class. Good taste can be anywhere, and you can make anything great, and beautiful, as long as you give it love, and attention and knowledge. That's when I realized that the food that I grew up with was good. I started to see a path back, a way to explore some of the things that I'd grown up with.
Q: You wrote about the concept of "making do," that it isn't rooted in Depression-era deprivation cooking. Can you tell me about that?
A: I remember the moment when I realized that making do was a lot more beautiful than it sounded. We were living in the country, and I was surrounded by all of these good raw materials, and I was building this amazing pantry and storehouse. When you're marooned in the woods, you make what's on hand, and that's beautiful and wonderful. It's making food that tastes where you are, and it's way superior to what you can buy in the store.
Q: How did you do it, logging six-day workweeks for $500 in hot, windowless New York City kitchens?
A: I was young. I was only in my late 20s and early 30s, and it was all very exciting. Things were working out for Aaron, too, and we both just got caught up in that adrenaline. It felt very normal, but, yes, there is a part of that world that is fairly unsustainable. I also had a lot of hustle, and I didn't complain, which is why people would say, "Are there more Minnesotans we can hire?" I like to relax, but to just sit? Let's not waste time. Give me some peas to shell.
Q: Why is professional cooking such a male-dominated universe?
A: It has changed a lot. The New York City of today isn't what it was 10 or 15 years ago. But it comes down to making this decision: Would you rather have a restaurant job, or be the mother of a young child? As a parent, whether you're a man or a woman, that's the decision.
Q: Bacon, and your love of it, comes up a few times in the book. How do you cook it?
A: Slowly, with devotion. It's funny: I would give packages of Thielen's bacon to friends in New York City, and of course I would describe how they should fry it. And they would all say, "Yeah, I know how to fry bacon." Did I really tell that person that? Looking back, yeah, I did.
Q: I particularly enjoyed reading about your garden. What is it with you and Opalka tomatoes?
A: They're my favorites; they're my winners. Opalkas have a good balance of sugar and acid, and they're meaty and juicy. They blanch so beautifully, and they leave that upper layer of flavor that's right beneath the skin. Eastern European tomatoes do well in Minnesota. It's the climate. I'm always looking for tomatoes that can be grown in Siberia.
Q: The book doesn't include your cookbook, or TV show. It ends several years before, outside your Park Rapids supermarket of choice. Why?
A: I felt that people already know that story. But I also really liked where the book ends. I wrote that part first. It's that first winter when we're back, and I'm pushing Hank [her now 10-year-old son] across a frozen grocery store parking lot. I felt really hopeful about my life, and it doesn't make sense that I would be hopeful, because it's a bleak scene. But I felt hope in the face of that bleak scene. It felt like moving back was the right thing to do, and that moment just stuck with me. I knew it was the end of the book. I started the book in fine-dining New York City kitchens, and I ended in the J&B Foods parking lot.
