MINNEAPOLIS — Like many chefs who found themselves without a dining room full of people to cook for in the early months of the pandemic, Gavin Kaysen threw his culinary energy into a new project: cooking classes.
These interactive, livestreamed events came with a basket of ingredients so participants could cook along at home with the James Beard Award-winning chef. The format was relaxed, and Kaysen found that he could be more casual, even jokey, with his viewers than he ever was in a formal dining room. With his kids just off camera, dancing and fooling around, the videos opened up a side of Kaysen he'd rarely shown to strangers — the personal side.
Even after his Minneapolis restaurants, Demi and Spoon and Stable, had reopened, he continued teaching online. It turned out, he was building something.
"We kept doing it, and we kept leaning in to providing directions to people, and it got to the point where it was like, 'OK, now we have 80 recipes that are cataloged, we know that they all work because we tried them with everybody. Why don't we turn this into a cookbook?'" Kaysen said.
Kaysen wasn't the only chef with that idea.
A slate of cookbooks by Minnesota authors has hit shelves this year, with entries from lauded high-end chefs like Kaysen, to TV celebrities such as Justin Sutherland and Molly Yeh, to bloggers and recipe developers. Each of them used their time in pandemic lockdown to put their creative cooking skills on paper — and, in some cases, share more of themselves with the world.
Kaysen's new book, "At Home," is the chef's first. It compiles many of the recipes in his GK At Home series, recordings of which are still available to download online. Though two years have passed since he taught many of those classes, the looser, more candid version of Kaysen — who once chided a viewer who was too slow to cook her potatoes — is still around on its pages, giving readers a further glimpse into his personal life via what he cooks for his wife and children in his Edina home.
The "magic" of letting people peek into his home life "is that people had never really seen that side of me. All they see is what they read or what they hear, and then the three or four minutes I'm at your dinner table, and then you make the presumption of who I am," Kaysen said. "But I'm a dad, I've got a lot of stuff that I do at home, I've got a lot of errands that I need to run, and I love cooking at home — and this is my way of showing you that."
Sutherland had been mulling a book, too, and a publisher reached out at the start of the pandemic. "I figured I'd have some time on my hands so I said yes — which turned out to not be true," he said (he filmed two shows over a two-year period). "But after seven years of recipes from [Handsome] Hog, all my other projects, and, family I figured it was time to put them out there along with the stories."
With many of her bookings going into hibernation at the start of the pandemic, social media marketer and "Weekly Dish" co-host Stephanie Hansen found herself with too much time "prepping and worrying."
But she also found herself caught in the wave of appreciation and rediscovery for home cooking that led to a baby boom of sourdough starters.
During one particular COVID wave, Hansen retreated Up North to her cabin, where she spent four months sharing recipes with her mother-in-law. That time at the cabin became the basis for her "True North Cabin Cookbook: Recipes and Stories From a North Woods Table."
"It was a really good creative outlet," Hansen said. "Which is why I think a lot of chefs and people" wrote cookbooks "during that time, because we weren't doing much else. As a home cook, we were digging back into our pantries and cooking meals every night, and I kind of really enjoyed that part about the pandemic."
For Emily Vikre, testing recipes for her second cookbook was well-suited to social distancing. "The Family Camp Cookbook: Easy, Fun, and Delicious Meals to Enjoy Outdoors," a follow-up to her 2020 book "Camp Cocktails," is all about food that can be cooked and enjoyed outside. "The timing of developing the recipes worked out perfectly, because it was like, Oh, we're just cooking over a fire all the time anyway," said Vikre, the founder of Vikre Distillery in Duluth.
While the idea for her camping series "wasn't specifically because of the pandemic, I also think we can't disentangle it," she said. Her first book became a surprise hit for people who were canceling vacations and choosing instead to commune with nature. "It's really had a lot of continued popularity," she said. She's already considering writing another cookbook for camping, this one about desserts.
Kaysen's cookbook is just the beginning for him, too. His next book will focus on the recipes at his groundbreaking Minneapolis restaurant Spoon and Stable.
But "At Home" will always serve as a time capsule, in a way, for what those first few months of the pandemic were like for a chef who had to scramble to keep his business afloat.
"Ultimately, chefs and restaurateurs are really good problem solvers," Kaysen said. "You come into your restaurant every day, there is a new issue and it's different from the day before. And I believe that when COVID hit, if you were unable to approach all of those obstacles in the same way, it was hard to dig yourself out."
But sharing his recipes was always about more than just diversifying his revenue.
Teaching people to cook — first on video and now in a cookbook — has kept Kaysen connected to his guests, whether or not they ever dine in his restaurant.
"It goes back to why I got into cooking," he said. "No matter what you're doing, the power of food and bringing people together is wholesome. And COVID exemplified how much we missed it."
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CRISPY CHICKEN THIGHS WITH ROASTED FALL VEGETABLES
Serves 2 or 3.
From "At Home" by Gavin Kaysen.
For the chicken:
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
6 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (about 1 1/2 pounds)
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
2 teaspoons fine sea salt, divided
2 tablespoons avocado oil or canola oil
6 sage leaves
For the vegetables:
2 medium shallots, cut into rounds
1 medium fennel bulb, cut into 1/2-inch wedges
Fine sea salt
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 acorn squash — peeled, halved, seeded, and cut into 3/4-inch-thick half-moons
2 Haralson apples, cored and cut into wedges
1 cup chicken stock, preferably homemade
For serving:
Lemon wedge
Flaky sea salt
Directions
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.
Prep the chicken: In a small skillet, toast the coriander seeds, fennel seeds and pepper flakes over medium heat until fragrant, 2 to 3 minutes. Transfer to a mortar and pestle and gently crush, or transfer to a sheet pan or cutting board and gently crush with the bottom of a saucepan.
In a large bowl, combine the chicken thighs, lemon zest, and crushed spices. Season with 1 teaspoon of the salt and toss to combine, thoroughly massaging the spice mixture into the chicken.
Heat a large ovenproof skillet over high heat (or place a roasting pan across two burners on your stove) and add the avocado oil. Season the chicken all over with the remaining 1 teaspoon salt. Give the thighs plenty of room, cooking them in batches if necessary. Place the chicken skin-side down in the pan and sear until golden brown, 2 to 3 minutes. You'll know it's ready when the skin easily releases from the pan. Flip the chicken and cook until the other side is browned, 2 to 3 minutes longer. Transfer the chicken, skin-side up, to a sheet pan and let rest.
Cook the vegetables: Without cleaning out the pan, add the shallots, fennel and a pinch of salt. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are softened, about 4 minutes. Add the garlic, squash and apples and cook, stirring, until the vegetables begin to soften, 2 to 3 minutes longer.
Place the chicken, skin-side up, on top of the vegetables. Add the chicken stock. Bring the liquid to a gentle simmer, then transfer to the oven and roast until the skin is crispy and the chicken is cooked through, the juices should run clear when you cut into the chicken, or the thickest part of the thighs reaches 160 degrees on an instant-read thermometer, 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from the oven, scatter the sage leaves on top, and let rest 5 minutes before serving.
Arrange the vegetables on a serving platter and top with the chicken thighs. Squeeze the lemon wedge over the chicken and sprinkle with flaky salt.
HOT MAC 'N' CHEESE
Serves 8 to 10.
"There is probably no more polarizing dish in traditional soul food culture than mac and cheese," writes Justin Sutherland in "Northern Soul." "If this recipe doesn't heal old wounds — or, worse yet, opens them up and causes new ones — just remember, you didn't get it from me." Sutherland serves this in his Handsome Hog restaurant.
2 pounds macaroni pasta
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, divided
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
4 cups whole milk
3/4 teaspoon onion powder
3/4 teaspoon black garlic powder, preferably, or garlic powder
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 2/3 pounds shredded Velveeta cheese
2 1/4 cups sour cream
2 1/3 cups cottage cheese
1 1/2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
8 to 12 ounces Hot Cheetos, crushed
Directions
Cook the macaroni according to the package directions.
To prepare the sauce, slowly melt 1/2 cup of the butter in a large, heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat. Whisk in the flour, stirring frequently to make a golden roux. Slowly pour in the milk, stirring constantly until a smooth béchamel sauce has been achieved.
Add the onion powder, garlic powder and black pepper. When the sauce comes to a simmer, add the Velveeta, one handful at a time, allowing each handful to melt into the sauce before adding more.
Reduce the heat to low and stir in the sour cream and cottage cheese in a similar fashion, allowing each batch to melt into the sauce before adding more. When the sauce is smooth, remove it from the heat and stir in the remaining 1/2 cup of butter and the cayenne pepper.
Drain the cooked macaroni and divide it among individual bowls. Pour the sauce over the pasta, top with about 1 ounce of Cheetos, and serve.
MAPLE OLD-FASHIONED
Serves 1.
"My husband, Kurt, stumbled upon this recipe after never seeming to have simple syrup on the island and getting tired of making it himself," writes Stephanie Hansen in "True North Cabin Cookbook."
2 ounces bourbon
1/2 ounces pure maple syrup
2 dashes Angostura bitters
2 dashes orange bitters
Orange peel and cherry, for garnish
Directions
Stir bourbon, syrup and bitters in a rocks glass. Add ice. Garnish with orange peel and cherry.
