“To be in a kitchen, especially if the knife is sharp”

A conversation with Mollie Katzen, part 1

When I started this newsletter, I wanted to make space for other voices to join me here. Approximately once a month, I share a conversation with someone whose work and mind I admire. Today that someone is cookbook author and artist Mollie Katzen, whose books ushered me into adulthood, who met me when I was a fawning nineteen-year-old and had the grace to offer me her gentle attention, and who, nearly twenty-five years later, I feel lucky to call a friend. 

I wrote a newsletter installment in February about our onetime correspondence, but it turns out, my memory of that period was incomplete. I thought that Mollie and I had only exchanged letters once, that I’d been too shy and self-conscious to continue. But after I published the piece, Mollie and I began direct-messaging on Instagram, and she assured me that we’d exchanged more letters than I’d recalled – and in fact, she had saved them. Mollie told me that she was in the midst of a cross-country move from her longtime home in Berkeley to the New York area, where her adult children live, and that she’d unearthed my letters while sorting for the move. She promised to send images of our correspondence after she’d unpacked the boxes, and she was as good as her word.

I was very into my own handwriting

I mean

I had an opportunity this summer to write a short essay for Epicurious about Mollie’s cookbook Still Life with Menu, and its influence on me. The piece went live this week. Back when I got the assignment in June, I knew immediately that I wanted to interview Mollie as ‘research,’ and she agreed to join me on Zoom. We spoke on July 12, 2022. It was our first real conversation, but it felt easy from the start, and we wound up talking for a whopping two hours. Our conversation went far beyond the bounds of my little essay, but Mollie has been kind enough to allow me to transcribe it and share it here.

The conversation was so rich that I hated to cut too much from it, so I’ve instead split it into two installments, both edited for clarity and brevity. What follows is part one of two, and the second installment will run next week. Please note that most book links are affiliate links to Bookshop.org. And to Mollie: thank you.