A Conversation with Betty Fussell
by Cheri Sicard
Page 2

Cheri Sicard: Something I found really interesting about I Hear America Cooking is how much the way we cook and what we eat has changed in so short a time. Things we take for granted were just unheard of even twenty or thirty years ago.

Betty Fussell: Unheard of in most people's mother's lifetime and certainly unheard of in their grandmother's lifetime.

Cheri Sicard: It's kind of when I started this website...I actually overheard some kids speaking and one of them didn't know you couldn't make a cake that didn't come out of a box. Betty Fussell: Yes. A friend of my daughter, I think she was still in high school, called up in a panic one night and said, 'Betty, what do you do for mayonnaise when you have run out of mayonnaise?'

Cheri Sicard: You lived for a while in England as well. What do you think of British cuisine?

 

"What I love really is just to improvise out of the icebox. I love to look inside and see what's there and see what I can do to make something. If you are only cooking for yourself, it's a one-shot in any case. It's a moment of improvisation that is all the more precious for being unrepeatable. That I really love."

Betty Fussell: Well, British cuisine has certainly improved since the 1950s when we spent a lot of time there. British cuisine has, in it's restaurants, always been mostly French. That is, the good stuff has always come from across the channel and been imported into England. People like Escoffier and The Ritz, that's French cuisine. The cache has always been French and still is, like the Roux Brothers in England. It's very hard to get good British cooking in restaurants. There's always been good 18th-century-based cuisine in country houses -- the good, simple beef and vegetables. And there's a lot of traditional homespun dishes like summer pudding. There's a kind of out-of-the garden freshness to good British food in the summer.

Cheri Sicard: We learned in reading My Kitchen Wars that you were a famous hostess, but what do you typically cook when it's just for you?

Betty Fussell: Just for me in New York City, and the place matters because I step out my door and I've got three great markets within a few blocks: Jefferson's and Balducci's and a discount one called Gourmet Garage.

Cheri Sicard: Gourmet Garage?

Betty Fussell: Yes. They are a chain now. I think they have three outlets in the City. You can get so much good produce now, but it doesn't compare to California because you really have a different system. In New York there are no good supermarkets, so you have to go to good specialty stores. Everything is available, all you have to do is pay for it. I limit my exotic component or my costly component. What I love really is just to improvise out of the icebox. I still call it icebox. I know other people call it refrigerator. I love to look inside and see what's there and see what I can do to make something. If you are only cooking for yourself, it's a one-shot in any case. It's a moment of improvisation that is all the more precious for being unrepeatable. That I really love.

Cheri Sicard: I really love the book My Kitchen Wars. It's a really brave book, brutally honest. You lay your soul bare against the backdrop of your life's culinary experiences. How long did you have to think about this project before you decided to actually write it?

Betty Fussell: Well, I separated from my husband in 1980 and I think I was divorced by 1985, so I had a good long time. I took a good long time. I went through many drafts and I even tried hard to work this as a novel at one point, very early on, in order to avoid some of the obvious problems of a non-fiction memoir, where at least a couple of names have to be named. It didn't work. I don't have the novel voice. I have a memoir voice, I have a first-person voice.

Cheri Sicard: It's a wonderful memoir. It almost reads like a novel though.

Betty Fussell: Through the help of my wonderful editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Becky Saletan. We cut the manuscript mercilessly, which I really approved, because I wanted somebody to sit down and read it in one sitting.

Cheri Sicard: I did.

Betty Fussell: Well I am glad.

Cheri Sicard: Readers of My Kitchen Wars travel through quite an evolution with you. What is your next adventure?

Betty Fussell: I am going to do the equivalent of a sequel to "Kitchen Wars." It's going to be the idea of home alone, and since every year an increasing number of people, for one reason or another in America, live alone, I am going to kind of see how that's working and feeling -- some of its variety, some of its joys and some of its pain.

Cheri Sicard: That's a great topic and I know you will do it justice. Please let us know when it comes out. Thank you so much for talking with us today.

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For Page 1 of this interview, click here.

To read an excerpt from My Kitchen Wars by Betty Fussell, click here.

To return to the Betty Fussell Celebrity Chef page and share some of Betty's American Regional Cuisine recipes, click here.