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| Cheri Giblin photo |
Eleven-year-old Jack Witherspoon is talking about how he acquired a broader taste palate, and ‘twisting up’ the recipes in his astounding new cookbook, Twist It Up, published by Chronicle.
In between, he’s chopping vegetables as expertly as Bobby Flay--whom he’s palled around with--demonstrating the precision and speed that he can also deliver on the tae kwan do mat (he’s a black belt), though, “It’s kind of hard that some of the tools are too big,” Jack says.
I start thinking about what my accomplishments were before hitting puberty. Only a handful of things (and that’s stretching it) come to mind: there was that Senior badge in swimming, five trips to Disney World (a neighborhood record), and the ability to play chopsticks on the piano.
My culinary accomplishments consisted of setting the table and putting Eggo waffles in the toaster for an after-school snack before watching TV, twisting things up by adding Nutella to the waffles— if Lucille Ball was stomping on grapes in I Love Lucy.
But extraordinary circumstances can bring out the extraordinary in people, and it’s more than true with Jack.
His palette-stretching experience began five years ago while in a California hospital recovering from his second battle with leukemia, at the age of six. Faced with days in a hospital bed weakened by chemotherapy, Jack watched Alton Brown make mac n’ cheese from scratch and his perception of food was changed forever.
The Food Network became Jack’s welcome diversion and the catalyst for his obsession with food. Faced with months of treatment for leukemia without school, martial arts or Little League, the one thing Jack could do was cook.
From his family’s Redondo Beach home, Jack tests all his recipes with the help of his mom, Lisa, and welcome taste testers, dad John, and kid brother, Josh. Watching one of his cooking demos, Jack gets as excited about blending spices and the rich, velvety taste of ricotta cheese as any seasoned TV chef. But then you see him stretch up on his tippy toes to peak at his baked ziti bubbling in the oven. “It smells awesome!” Jack grins, using his fingers to mix more ingredients, like any kid would.
It’s a good thing though, when Jack gets excited about eating. Last summer, while making plans to launch his cookbook, a routine exam showed that the leukemia had returned. “It took us by complete surprise because he was the epitome of health,” Jack’s mother told the Chicago Tribune.
Dealing with the disease for the third time, Jack underwent a bone marrow transplant in August, which robbed him of his strength and his appetite, but could very well have saved his life.
I’m making Jack’s stuffed mushroom caps, which Top Chef Fabio Viviani—who’s also a good friend of Jack’s--says is the best appetizer. “He knows food, I am telling you,” Viviani told The Easy Reader. “This kid in the next five years is going to forget more about food than I could ever learn.”
The mushroom concoction looks a bit dreary, so I glance through Jack’s cookbook looking for the ‘twist it up’ suggestion, and realize how appropriate it is that all the recipes are for comfort foods.
Spinach and feta. That’s what Jack recommends. I look for a frozen bag of spinach and pop the mushrooms in the oven. Then I read what Jack wrote on his blog last month:
Part of the proceeds for Jack’s cookbook, Twist It Up go to the Jack Witherspoon Permanent Endowment at Miller Children’s Hospital in Long Beach, California.
