Her goal is to empower people to confidently swap out ingredients without feeling like they’re missing out on the intention of the dish. There’s no need to make a special run to the grocery store for an ingredient you may never use again, and there’s no need to overlook a similar product you have on hand. “If COVID has taught us anything, it’s that what’s in our pantries is a gift,” Howard says. “And we really need to be able to make complete use of it.”
Her other mantra throughout the book is to meal prep, but do it right. Instead of making a dish whose quality will decline dramatically by the next day or one that has limited pairing potentials, make some of her flavor heroes instead. Then use those to accent a variety of recipes, many of which are ready in 30 minutes or less.
This means taking a different approach in the grocery store. She recommends simply buying a flexible array of staples. Howard’s shopping list always includes ground turkey, whole chicken, pork chops or steak, broccoli, cabbage, spinach, romaine lettuce, dried beans, and white and brown rice. “I don’t even think at the grocery store,” she says. “It’s just about getting the things that we always get.”
Her cooking routine is equally important. Though she admits to using a plethora of pans and bowls to make a single dish at her restaurants, she takes great pains to cook in just one pan at home, if possible. “A lot of the recipes in this book are me roasting a chicken on top of cauliflower or on top of a big slice of crusty bread or on top of rice or grits,” she says. “That’s a means to make dinner in just one pan and also not waste everything that chicken has to give as it roasts.”
The other chief difference in the way she cooks in the opposing environments: no “mise en place,” which refers to having all the ingredients laid out and prepped before one starts cooking. Instead of taking that approach at home, where her twins are running around and the counter space may be taken up by other projects, she forgoes this meticulousness and simply keeps the ingredients she uses most often within easy reach. Always on hand are kosher salt, olive oil, bacon fat, grapeseed oil, a peppermill and hot sauce.
In a desire to further streamline her culinary workspace, she recently went through all her cabinets to rid herself of the equipment she hadn’t used within the previous six months. The placement of the trash can was a longtime problem, since it was right in the center of the work area. When one of the kids popped by to drop off trash, whatever Howard was doing ground to a halt. So that got moved. “I don’t think we should be afraid of change in the way we function in our kitchens,” she says.
These small shifts will have a meaningful impact on her day-to-day happiness in the kitchen, but she doesn’t plan on making sweeping reforms for 2021. “I try not to place so much emphasis on New Year’s resolutions, because I’ve never been successful,” Howard admits. “I’m looking for the next year to be better than the last.”
For those people who like such resolutions, she recommends keeping them simple. “We need to pick things that will work and that we can actually do, rather than saying, ‘I’m going to cook dinner for my family five nights a week, and we’re going to sit down and stare at each other while we’re eating,’” Howard says. “I think we could make a promise to ourselves that’s actually possible.”
After all, who knows what this fresh year will bring in the months to come. Nothing’s for certain, except for one thing: Vivian Howard is going to keep pushing forward and keep pushing herself.
