Cooking Up Success–Family Style By Amanda Miller Fresh off their appearance on Peacock’s newest series, Top Chef Family Style, New Orleans aunt and nephew duo and our cover models, Kaj Friis-Hecht and Liz Thorpe, sat down with us to discuss their journeys to culinary success, competing on the show, and what’s next for them.
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Tell me about yourselves and how you both ended up in the culinary world. Kaj: I started cooking about six years ago, like really cooking. My dad used to own a
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restaurant in San Francisco, and the bar manager, who is also a chef, coincidentally moved down to New Orleans and they started their own restaurant. I started cooking with them on the weekends, and I would watch the Food Network, including Top Chef, Master Chef, and all these different shows. The media really got me into cooking. Liz: I got into cooking because Kaj was like, “Hey, want to come cook with me on a TV show?” I really didn’t think I was going to be doing that much cooking. I thought I was going to be like his sous chef. Then we got there, and it was like, “Oh, we’re doing it.” My work does happen to be in the world of food. That’s totally coincidental. I got into a career in food, and cheese is my area of expertise. I fell in love with cooking as a recreational activity and as a hobby, and when I was in my early 20s, I was sort of like, well, I could do a job that I hate, or I could try to figure out a job that allows me to do something that I’m genuinely passionate about. And I became very passionate about cheese, specifically.
What goes through your head when you’re thinking about what to make? Kaj: If it’s something new that I haven’t made before, I’ll go on Google and look up
a recipe just to see the basics of how to make it. For example, in the fourth episode, when we won an elimination challenge, we made this boeuf bourguignon dish. I don’t have a pressure cooker and I don’t have the patience to wait hours for food, so we looked up the basics online. You can really just put your own spin on everything as
long as you have the essentials down.
Prior to the show, had you ever partnered up to create dishes? Kaj: We met one time before the show. Liz: Yeah, like a week before when we found out we were going, we were like, “Well,
shoot, we better get together and cook something!” But no, not in the regular course of events. We don’t cook together at all. That’s been a big part of our journey on the show. All these people who were there really knew one another very intimately, and I think in every case, except for maybe one or two, live in the same house. There’s so many layers to it, because you have whatever the challenge is, but it’s also, in our case, really getting to figure one another out and how we’re going to work together. I love to cook, but I’m a recipe follower. I want someone to give me my marching orders and then I’ll march, and Kaj’s like, “Oh yeah, we’ll just make it up,” and I was very uncomfortable with that, because I was like, “No, no, I don’t want to make it up and forget something.” That whole journey of challenging yourself to do it differently from how you would do it alone, that was all a big part of what was actually going on.
What are your favorite dishes to make? Kaj: That’s the hardest question ever asked. I really enjoy cooking proteins,
specifically red meats a lot. I think that’s what I’m really the best at. It’s another one of those things where, as long as you know how to perfectly cook a steak, there are so many things you can do with it. There are different sauces, sides, and garnishes that can go with the steak. Liz: What I’m best at cooking is the food that I know my family is going to be most excited about. I’m in a place in my life right now where it’s super frustrating to spend a lot of time and energy cooking, and then have two out of the three people I’m cooking for be like, “I don’t like it.” I have a six year old and an eight year old, so it’s kind of boring to cook the same stuff over and over, but it’s also gratifying, because
