"America's Test Kitchen" cooking guru comes to Seattle, touting two new tomes

Culinary sleuth. Rabbit hunter. Motorcycle enthusiast. Bow-tie lover. Christopher Kimball is one fascinating man indeed.

Kimball is founder, editor and publisher of "Cook's Illustrated" and "Cook's Country Magazine." He also hosts "America's Test Kitchen," a PBS cooking show that emphasizes finding the best cooking methods, equipment and ingredients through trial and error.

We caught up with him by phone recently as he prepared to embark on his latest book tour, which brings him to the Northwest next week. He's promoting two tomes: "The Cook's Country Cookbook," a collection of regional cooking and heirloom recipes from around the nation, and "The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book."

Q: Is there really an "American" cuisine?

A: It's all these recipes that came from other places that somehow got adapted to the local climate and taste and ended up being a cuisine, which had nothing in common when they came here but, because of the ingredients and tools at their disposal, now do have something in common.

Here in this country, people are much more apt to throw things out and substitute ingredients. American cooking is very practical, and that's what's fun about it. It's gotta work. I don't think you can say that for a lot of other cuisines. I think they're much more tied to history and tradition.

Q: What would you find in an American cook's pantry?

A: The things I think of are cornmeal — we didn't have wheat flour for 100 or so odd years. I think cake and pastry flours, certainly in the South for all that baking. Molasses, maple syrup, brown sugar. Those are all things we use a lot. Beef is huge, and certainly potatoes. Cider and cider vinegars. I think all cultures do this, but our culture to a larger extent was really about preserving food, so that's when you get into the hams and the salt pork and the bacon and succotash and corned beef.

Q: A lot of cultures have their signature desserts. What are ours?

A: We seem to be a cake nation. No one used to make cakes. There were yeasted cakes in England, but they [Americans] didn't have leaveners, so sponge cakes were the next thing. They called them pies, like Boston cream pies. Then baking soda comes along, and baking powder, and then you started having the basic layer cake. We started making daisy cake and black-eyed susan cake and devil's-food cake. The American layer cake: That just didn't exist in anyplace else in the world.

Q: We're becoming a nation that's not super-confident in the kitchen. Do you think anyone can cook?

A: Yes, if they're willing to follow a recipe. We based our entire business on learning what people do with recipes. They're going to do all sorts of things, they never follow them. I think if you actually sat down and said, "I'm going to follow this recipe" and have all your ingredients ahead of time and you have an oven thermometer so you know your oven is basically the right temperature and all that stuff. I think people view recipes as a mild suggestion as to how someone might make this dish rather than instructions.

I get cocky, too: "Oh, I'll just change this." I'm just as bad as my readers. But anybody can cook if they really want to.

Q: Why bow ties?

A: I was in a test-kitchen environment, and a tie's just not gonna work out too well for you. A friend of mine, my best friend in the early '80s, always wore a bow tie. He was a lawyer. So maybe force of personality? All of the sudden I woke up one day and ties looked stupid to me. My father told me he used to wear bow ties, so maybe it's a genetic thing.

Karen Gaudette: 206-515-5618

or kgaudette@seattletimes.com