Get Serious About Cooking With Professor & Cookbook Author Cammie Kim Lin
MY NAME
Cammie Kim Lin
MY HOME BASE
Brooklyn
MY BIZ
I’m the co-author of (Serious) New Cook: Recipes, Tips & Techniques. I wrote the book with my sister, Leah Su Quiroga, who is a former Chez Panisse head chef. We wrote it with older teens and 20-somethings in mind, but it’s been getting lots of love from new-ish cooks of any age. It was recently selected as a finalist for an IACP Cookbook Award in the Children, Youth, and Family category.
WHAT I’m KNOWN FOR
I’m first and foremost an educator, as well as a writer and serious home cook. I’m a professor at New York University where I teach first-year writing, food writing, and critical service learning. I’m that professor who always brings food to class and I’m involved with all the food-related activities on campus, like supervising a student food pantry, hosting food studies talks, organizing dumpling making parties, and being the resident turkey carver.
Check out Cammie’s book
What sets my book apart
It doesn’t make any assumptions about prior cooking knowledge. It assumes the reader is interested in great food, but does not assume they know exactly what it means to whip egg whites to soft peaks, why you might want to macerate an onion, or how important it is to pre-season a roast. In other words, it doesn’t simply instruct, it teaches—so you don’t just learn how to make recipes, you really learn to cook. It’s also very multicultural, which reflects our families, and the recipes range from super quick and simple to more involved and sophisticated.
HOW i’m doing these days
Great! I’m on summer break right now, so I’m really savoring the opportunity to slow down before things get busy again.
HOW THE BOMBESQUAD CAN SUPPORT ME
Help spread the word about (Serious) New Cook! Recommend it to friends with young people in their lives (or partners who could use a boost in the kitchen). If you’re on social media, please follow, share, and repost for us @seriousnewcook. And if you check out the book and like it, please leave a review online. That would help tons.
Snaps from (Serious) New Cook. Photos by Molly DeCoudreaux.
my SECRET SKILL
If there was a Googling competition, I’m pretty sure I’d come out on top.
my MOTTO
Taste and adjust—repeatedly! Seriously. It applies both in and out of the kitchen.
MY MOST LOVED COOKBOOKS
Tamar Adler’s An Everlasting Meal, which is as much a book-book as a cookbook. And now she even has a cookbook version of it! Both are terrific.
Some of Cammie’s fave books
ESSENTIAL KITCHEN TOOLS
My 15-inch Lodge cast-iron skillet. That sucker is HUGE, and I have used it almost every day for the last 15 years. It easily fits a few servings of pancakes, a huge batch of meatballs, even four grilled cheese sandwiches, all at once. And since I don’t cook anything wet on it, it stays perfectly nonstick.
pantry staple
Short grain white rice. Whatever Korean brand has the most recent polished-on date stamped on the bag at H-Mart.
Co-authors and sisters, Leah Su Quiroga and Cammie Kim Lin
squad Shoutout
My sister, Leah Su Quiroga, is the most brilliant chef. It was such a joy working together and figuring out how to translate many of her stellar recipes, along with our collective family recipes, into a language for a new generation of cooks. And Molly DeCoudreaux, our food photographer, is just all-around incredible. To create this book—as moms during the pandemic, no less!—was no small feat, and I think we pulled it off with aplomb, if I do say so myself.