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editor’s note: Today’s special post is by Betty Kilpatrick, who is the mother of one of my best friends. Kristen. If you read this site, you will see Kristen’s amazing work; he is the photographer behind my favorite films over the years. We like to talk about food together, and our conversations often focus on what her mother, Betty, is cooking at her home in Fort Worth. I’ve been overwhelmed with descriptions of homemade cheeses and baked breads for years and I’ve been thrilled with the way Kristen speaks so proudly and lovingly about her mother’s creations.
In honor of Mother’s Day weekend — and the fact that Kristen has been in the kitchen with her mother in her forties — I asked the couple to share this Lemon Ricotta Poundcake I recently saw. Kristen Instagram. Read an inspiring story that tells Betty what strip cooking means to her, along with photos of her daughter. And of course, the recipe is at the bottom, which I will do in the coming years.
I know you will find this article as meaningful and unique as I am. From Betty:
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the phrase “it catches more than you teach”. It’s true that passionate cooking and home cooking are true, something that has been passed down from generation to generation in my family. When I was growing up, I was lucky enough to be close to my grandparents – spending the summer working (but actually playing) on their little farm. The only option on the farm life was striped cooking. Grandma, a Czech working woman, loved the treatment until the day she died. My brother, David, and I crawled into the kitchen for anything we bought in the store … our findings were scarce. It’s something we used to joke about. When everything comes pre-prepared, pre-chopped, or pre-cooked, it seems silly to work on tasks like this.
But as I grew older, I realized that the benefits of failed cooking far outweigh lost time. Scratch cooking gives us that time together, the concept of work and achievement, and a deep connection to the land that sustains us.
For Grandma, that meant butter, cheese, milk, cream, bread, eggs, vegetables (whether fresh or canned from the previous harvest) and pickles came from her humble kitchen. Her freezer was full of meat processed from her grandmother’s raised cattle, she knew the exact place to find the turkey hidden in the woods, and in true Czech fashion, it was always there new candy for his grandchildren. David and I were happy to take this last one, stepping on each warm kolache that came our way. My mother went through this passion on her farm days and today many traditions continue. As I write this, I am looking forward to the summer garden. I realized that I would like to inherit my grandmother’s responsibility to preserve overgrowth. To this day, seeing a green garden with orange pumpkin flowers reminds me of my grandmother and connects me to her heritage.
On the farm, mixing in the kitchen was never considered negative — it was accepted as part of the process. The process resulted in the most delicious treats. We knew that for chickens it could be thrown in the trash stored in the corner or composted to grow next year. In the days of COVID, in times of tragedy and heartbreak, I hold on to that idea.
Although the kitchen mess is not compared to the current state of the world, I know that this mess will be used for next season’s growth. This mess, too, though painful beyond imagination, has been used to gather people.
I haven’t come across a single person who doesn’t have a silver cover among all of this.
For me this season has given me extra time to get back to cheese making, to get to the local farms with the freshest raw milk and to get important updates to the “girls” (also known as the cows I now know them). The lining has been two months since my eldest daughter, Kristen, was isolated in our ranch, allowing more generations to spend in the kitchen. After making raw milk and subsequent Gouda production, we found ourselves with an extra liter of milk begging to be turned into fresh ricotta. Remember “If you give the mouse a cookie?” Book Well, if you give Czech women fresh homemade ricotta, they will certainly find a way to use it in a sweet and spring way. Kristen added candied lemon slices to my lemon-grilled cake recipe by suggesting candied lemon slices and I have to say that this cake came to be completely new. You’ll see. As far as I know you’re curious, the rest of the recipe went with blueberry pancakes the next morning.
While I would do anything I could to get rid of so much pain during that time, I’m doing what I know how to do: make a pound of lemon cake with lemons.
Go find Betty Louren’s lemon-ricotta cake recipe …
This post was originally posted on May 8, 2020 and has been updated ever since.
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