We love the idea that items can have a sort of sense memory or be associated with a specific moment in time. It is something we explored in our Heirloom series—and author Erin Byers Murphy goes deeper into that concept in her cookbook, A Colander, Cake Stand, and My Grandfather’s Iron Skillet. The concept is simple: every cook has a favorite tool, and that tool can tell you a lot about the person using it.
Most of our well-loved recipes have a good story behind them and cooks are some of the best storytellers. Food can tell a story of a person’s past, a family’s past, a region’s past, their present, their values, or the very ingredients they use. That is why cooking for others can be an intimate experience; every element—from the ingredients to the cooking preparation and method, to the utensils and tools used, to the dining experience—has the potential to reveal something essential about the person preparing the meal.
In A Colander, Cake Stand, and My Grandfather’s Iron Skillet, Murphy (a Nashville-based food writer) collects stories from 37 top chefs, including some of our favorite cooks, like Steven Satterfield, Virginia Willis, Ford Fry, Kevin Gillespie, and Tandy Wilson. Each shares a personal story of their favorite tool or utensil, how they acquired it, and why it is so essential to their kitchen. Alongside each story, each chef offers a recipe utilizing his or her tool of choice.
Natalie was honored to be included in this book, and she shares the story of her grandmother’s rolling pin. Over the past 30 years, it has rolled out hundreds of pans of biscuits and been “around the world and back again (a couple of times).” On pages 102 and 103 you will her story and biscuit recipe. Like all the chefs in A Colander, Cake Stand, and My Grandfather’s Iron Skillet, we know you will be inspired to look in your own kitchen and find the tool that embodies your history and has helped to create some of your own signature dishes.