Interview with Eli and Max Sussman, Co-Author of Freshman in the Kitchen
by Blanca on 05/05/09 at 7:04 am
Max and Eli Sussman: Co-Authors of Freshman in the Kitchen
Anyone who has gone to college is well acquainted with what used to be the Freshmen 15 and has now turned to the Freshman (or woman) 20. It’s those extra pounds that come on due to late night study sessions, sometimes a little binge drinking and the oh so fabulous meals made up of creamy chicken ramen, ready made stuffing, delivered pizza and dining hall murder burgers. Lucky for the new class of Freshmen (as well as anyone who wants to learn to make a quick and delicious meal on a budget and on a time constraint, Max and Eli Sussman have authored the cookbook Freshman in the Kitchen: From Clueless Cook to Creative Chef to make the culinary college experience a little more delicious, healthy and quick.
Max and Eli grew up in Huntington Woods, MI and shared the cooking experience with their parents from a very young age. Growing up in a house with no microwave and mom who made home cooked meals from scratch 5 nights a week transformed the brothers into adventurous eaters who love to work with food.
Both brothers have worked multiple food jobs since high school including food courts (who in High School has not had a food court job), diners (I did that), catering companies, high end restaurants, private chefing and they even helmed their childhood summer camp kitchen for 2 summers (that sounds tough). Max is currently the head chef at eve-the restaurant in Ann Arbor, MI. Eli works as radio promotions manager for an advertising agency in Santa Monica, CA. Here’s what Eli and Max had to say when we spoke to them last week.
How did the college experience affect your culinary style?
Eli: College was crazy and fun and flew by. I worked at Lou and Harry’s a diner that was always insanely busy and packed with college kids. To cook there was a wild, busy and really hectic environment. Sometimes we’d be just buried 40 tickets deep and have servers yelling into the kitchen and everyone’s still having the best time. There was a lot of comraderie in the kitchen and amongst all the servers. Cooking there made me want to open my own Deli one day.
Max: Over the years I lived with a lot with people who really liked to cook, so at my house we were always doing potlucks, BBQ’s and I worked at a bunch of different restaurants while in college that spaned a lot of ethnicities and styles. So it was a cool way to get a introduction to working with so many different kinds of foods.
Eli: The main thing that college helped us do in regards to the cookbook was help define the audience. We had the best test group possible right at our fingertips just by asking our friends what they liked to cook and what they would want out of a cookbook. So basically just by listening to our friends and watching the kids who came to our restaurants we learned a huge amount about how to write a cookbook geared toward that group.
What did you notice about eating trends at college?
Eli 
eople in college are busy and usually broke, so they tend to eat food that’s filling and cheap. Usually that’s fast food and fried pre-packaged frozen meals. I worked at a Greek-American style diner in college and so many people came in day after day and ordered the same thing. Not only were they spending a ton of money, but they were not branching out and trying anything new. We really are trying to change that with our cookbook. We want people to try new foods and cook for themselves and their friends. I think it’s typical for a college student to have already defined what they like and not venture too far from that. So if we can convince people to try a new type of food and cook it for themselves, we definitely feel like we’ve succeeded with our cookbook.
How did you come to write a cookbook, is this something you saw yourself doing when you were younger?
Max: We started getting the initial idea when we were working together at our childhood summer camp in Western Michigan. But at that point it was more just an idea of ”that would be cool to do.” We didn’t start writing it until several years later.
Eli: At our camp, Max was in charge and I was sort of the assistant chef. Max had this idea to ditch frozen foods for the entire summer which is crazy because it takes a long time to cook for 150 people. So instead of chicken nuggets and fish sticks, we cooked almost entirely from scratch three times a day. No powders, no mixes…And we tried a bunch of different ethnic meals and the kids actually went crazy for a lot of this new stuff they had never tried.
Max: So senior year we were looking back on that summer and we were talking how we felt like we had really accomplished something cool, turning these kids onto these new foods. We looked around and realized there was no true cookbook for the novice cook to help them learn how to cook so we started writing the book concept and developing recipes as we both finished up college.
Where did you and your brother get cooking experience?
Eli: Between us we’ve cooked in a vegan place, our childhood summer camp, the Detroit Zoo food court, for catering companies,as private chefs for parties and in homes, as a chef at a fishing resort in Chile,in diners and at high end restaurants. So we definitely have a wide array of experiences in the kitchen. Each job gives you something to draw on whether it’s plating, time management, cooking for big numbers, just cranking food out, or dealing with personalities. And every job provides at least one “I hope that never happens again” disaster story and at least one ”I cant believe that happened” hilarious story.
Freshman in the Kitchen is not your everyday cookbook, what topics do you cover in the book and why did you decide to include these topics?
Max: We start off the cookbook by explaining how to set up your kitchen properly and how to grocery shop. We thought that for a novice cook, they might not know that olive oil is a kitchen essential or that an 8-inch chef’s knife and tongs are the most essential tools. We wanted to prepare people for the recipes before they even got to the recipes. We also touch on buying organics and locally which are issues that people are getting more interested in because they want to know where their food comes from and try to support local growers when they can.
Eli: this cookbook is meant to demystify cooking and be as un-intimidating as possible. So we make a point of answering simple questions like how to boil perfect pasta or how to efficiently grocery shop because it’s things I’ve seen roommates and friends struggle with. They get to college and they’ve never cooked or shopped for themselves. I had a roommate in college who had to cut back his fast food budget and he asked me to go with him to the grocery store because he’d never gone and he was 22. He was legit scared to go by himself.
How did you structure the book to make it easy to understand?
Max: The book begins with simple recipes that use no heat so in the first chapter would be the recipe for guacamole.  Basically the point is to get people into the kitchen to make a dish. So making a cream cheese spread by combining only two ingredients may not seem like a recipe, but its a great starting point for the novice. From there, each recipe and each following chapter builds in difficulty. So we have a chapter on grilling, a vegetarian chapter and a chapter with recipes that will impress your friends and family with more difficult dishes. So you use the book to start from a novice and then at the end it culminates in a chapter of 3 course themed meals. And then like any good meal, we finish up with desert chapter. So the book takes you from clueless cook to creative chef.
Eli: and when we were brainstorming about the look and feel for the book, we realized that so many people our age use a computer all day long and that on web pages, its easy to navigate because there are icons that are in the same place every time that you become accustomed to. So the book designer did an awesome job creating little icons that allow you to quickly glance at the page and see the relevant info and decide quickly if you want to give that dish a shot. We also made sure it had a spiral binding so you can fold it back because we found that cookbooks that lie open flat take up a lot of counter space which someone in college or a new small apartment might not have. So it was not only about the ease of the recipe instructions, but also about the look and feel to make it as functional as possible.
What are the things that a college freshman should have in order to properly eat for those four years of college?
Max: the main essentials would be to always have olive oil, soy sauce, fresh garlic, salt, pepper and a few other dried spices based on your personal preferences. .  If you have a place to cook in your dorm (which I know a lot places now have communal kitchens) you can make easy pasta dishes, sautee vegetables, make a fast stir fry without too much mess or difficulty.
Eli: In addition to those things it’s essential to always have bread and potatoes. You can make a million different sandwiches which are easy to take on the run to class and you can make a baked potato, mashed potatoes or potato skins in the microwave (and you can find these recipes in our cookbook!)
What can a freshman keep in that tiny little fridge that will allow him or her to make a great meal every day of the week?
Eli: Cooked chicken breasts, shredded cheese and some veggies have incredibly diverse in thier uses. So if you have a tomato, green pepper, cucumber, head of lettuce, an onion, some celery and carrots you’ve got everything you need to make awesome pastas,  stir fry, sandwiches, salads, mexican stuff like quesadillas or nachos. And if you have rice and potatoes, the options just keep expanding.
Are there more cookbooks in your future?
Max: We have definitely been working on recipes and have some ideas for a follow up but as of right now we are really focusing on making sure people know about Freshman in the Kitchen.
Say I’m a freshman and I’m trying to impress a date with my cooking prowess, can you share a recipe that will never fail me?
Eli : I personally love the chicken with artichokes and sundried tomatoes. It’s delicious every and it’s really a simple dish and it comes out looking fantastic every time.
Who’s the better cook, you or your brother?
Eli: I’ll be the first to admit Max is the much better overall cook. He works full time as the head chef at Eve, one of the best restaurants in Michigan so he’s constantly cooking lots of high end dishes and he works with a lot of product I’m not using on a daily basis. I definitely don’t cook scallops every day like he does and his creativity is sometimes crazy. I’ll go to him when I’m making something for my LA supper club and ask him for advice on how to work out a flavor profile for a dish and he’ll suggest things that I dont even think of.  I’m probably faster than Max in a diner setting where you’ve gotta crank food out fast and not worry about plating and presentation. I’m not sure if Max could turn that high end part of his brain off.  I know I could take him to school on omelettes or during a breakfast rush. But that basically just plays into how well we collaborate. We are both really good at certain aspects of food and when we both bring our stuff to the table, together we kick ass.
We’d like to thank the guys for taking the time to chat with us and for being so generous that they are giving away copies of their book for our May contest. To enter just add a recipe to
FriendsEAT (you can do this on the site, the
Facebook Food App or the
MySpace Food App) that is quick, easy, healthy and cheap, make sure to title it “Freshman in the Kitchen” plus the recipe name (for example Freshman in the Kitchen Curried Lentils”). We will pick our favorites and five winners will receive a copy of the book. Need some inspiration? Check out the
Official Freshman in the Kitchen website or one of the mouthwatering recipes the guys shared with us on the site:
![]()
Related Posts
- Interview with Emily Davidson: Author of 101 Tips: Eating Healthy, Naturally
- Julia Child’s Kitchen – the most famous Kitchen in Washington, D.C.
- Interview with Chef Yukihiro Sato
- Interview with Chef Roberto Patriarca of Spina in NYC
- Interview with Chef Sam Freund of One if by Land in NYC
Tags:
Binge Drinking,
Camp Kitchen,
Catering Companies,
Chefing,
College Experience,
College Kids,
Comraderie,
Creamy Chicken,
Creative Chef,
Culinary College,
Culinary Style,
Delicious Meal,
Dining Hall,
Fabulous Meals,
Food Courts,
Head Chef,
Hectic Environment,
Homecooked Meals,
Huntington Woods,
Max Sussman,
Radio Promotions,
Santa Monica Ca,
Stove Top,
Study Sessions,
Time Constraint
