In the Kitchen With Rosie Daley and Oprah

Mustard potatoes (no butter or cheese!)

Sometime in the early ’90s, a few years after the successful debut of her nationally syndicated talk show, Oprah Winfrey wanted to lose weight. Oprah Winfrey is a woman undeterred by any obstacle, perceived or otherwise, and did what any woman with the means to do so would in her situation: she went to a spa, tasted the food and hired the chef that made it to work for her. That woman was Rosie Daley, a former chef at the Cal-a-Vie Health Spa, just outside of San Diego.

I’ve never set foot in a spa, though the idea seems nice, but the Cal-a-Vie looks just like what I’d imagine a spa to be. Sumptuous linens, good robes, hikes through the scrubby brush, followed by virtuous meals of carrot-ginger soup eaten with a golden spoon. There is lemon water at a spa, in heavy crystal pitchers that never sweat. Spa food, on the other hand, connotes bland, tasteless dross — grapefruit halves for breakfast and sensible tuna salad that tastes nothing like the delicious, mayo-laden version of your childhood.

In 2016, when you can get a kale salad at Panera and BuzzFeed kicks off every year with a Clean Eating Challenge, packaged like a fun thing to try, aimed in part at getting the kids to put down the Takis and pick up an apple, “In the Kitchen With Rosie: Oprah’s Favorite Recipes” feels anachronistic at best. Clean eating as a concept is now a part of the cultural DNA. At least one person you know is eating paleo or is getting really into probiotics. As a country, we are slowly becoming more and more conscious of the food we put into our bodies, and that’s fine.

But, in 1994, when “In the Kitchen With Rosie: Oprah’s Favorite Recipes” was published, health food wasn’t the norm. It was sawdusty carob cookies and bins of bulk dried food and veggie burgers made from a mix. Healthy food tasted bad — it tasted healthful! — and therefore no one wanted to eat it. Oprah and Rosie worked together. Oprah lost an awful lot of weight, publicly discussing her weight struggles with the transparency and the openness that has made her an icon, and it was all thanks to Rosie.

The narrative that Oprah sets forth in the intro to the cookbook feels familiar. Writing about her past relationship to the food of her childhood — fried catfish, collard greens, cornbread — she says, “Back then food meant security and comfort. Food meant love. It didn’t matter what you ate, just that you had enough.” To be hungry is a terrible thing; to be able to eat anything at all and have enough to go around and to feel full is akin to wealth, a paltry substitution for actual money, but functioning on a similar level. In 1994 and now, Oprah is no longer poor. She can eat what she wants, healthy or not, and have it taste fantastic.

Oprah and Rosie no longer work together, for reasons that Oprah probably knows and keeps to herself. According to this highly informative forum from 2002, Rosie disappeared from Oprah’s life around the same time, replaced instead by one Art Smith, an avuncular Southern gentleman, who cooked for Oprah until 2007. I’m not sure who cooks for Oprah these days, though her Instagram leads me to believe that in this era of her life, Oprah does it herself.

None of the recipes in the book are too off from what you’d find on blogs like Skinny Taste or Love and Lemons. There’s an emphasis on fresh vegetables and fruit and what feels like a dated concern about fats. Flours for the gluten intolerant set are largely absent, but there is a notable absence of bread, despite Oprah’s well-documented passion for carbs. I wasn’t sure if any of the food in this book would actually taste good. Healthy eating, like going to the gym and not picking at my face while I watch TV, is something that I think about only after I’ve done its direct opposite. A meal of tacos from the taco truck washed down by a horchata could easily be a salad, if I wasn’t lazy. This mental roadblock is my own and I am actively working on it.

Daley’s recipes rely heavily on vegetable purees and evaporated skim milk for heft without the calories. There is an entire section devoted to “un-fried” favorites like catfish, chicken, and crab cakes, all baked in an oven with liberal amounts of seasoning. It’s not hard to imagine Oprah eating any of this because Oprah has made herself so accessible as a public figure that I feel like I wouldn’t slump in a dead faint if I met her, unlike say, Beyoncé.

I made the mustard potatoes because I had most of the ingredients and I wanted to challenge Daley’s prediction that that the result would not miss either butter or cheese. To me, potatoes are nothing more than a vehicle for butter, cheese or perhaps a curry mayo and I won’t be swayed otherwise. But, Oprah’s personal chef did not lead me astray. Coated in Dijon mustard, cayenne pepper, cumin and paprika, then baked in the oven for 45 minutes until they resembled not baby potatoes but spherical dinosaur poops, the results were delicious.

Because I am not a heathen, I made a salad and some chicken thighs rubbed in the same mustard and slapped in the oven alongside. The meal was good. The potatoes did not need sour cream or butter or even a sprinkling of the Mexican cheese blend I found in my refrigerator. While hot and out of the oven, eaten in front of the TV, they were fantastic. Consumed cold, with my bare hands, standing up in the kitchen at 2:30p.m. this afternoon, they were even better.

Roasted Mustard Potatoes
Light vegetable oil cooking spray (I used olive oil and a paper towel because who still has cooking spray??)
4 tablespoons Dijon-style mustard
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
16 baby red potatoes

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Spray a roasting pan 3 times to coat with the vegetable oil. Put the mustard, paprika, cumin, chili powder and cayenne pepper in a large bowl. Whisk to blend. Prick the potatoes several times with the tines of a fork and add them to the bowl. Toss to coat the potatoes evenly. Pour the coated potatoes into the prepared roasting pan, leving a little space between them. Bake for about 45 minutes to 1 hour, until the potatoes are fork tender.