Why Martha Stewart Refused to Do a Client’s Dishes

Do you regard washing dishes as penance or therapy? Do you use an automatic dishwasher, or do you fill the sink with hot soapy water? Do you use a brush or a sponge? Is it best to soak dirty dishes, and, above all, when do you do them?

I recently asked those questions of a number of well-known cooks, chefs, writers and cookbook authors who love to cook and eat and who regularly produce mountains of dirty dishes.

M.F.K. Fisher waited until morning

M. F. K. Fisher, the brilliant American food writer, dislikes allowing dirty dishes to interfere with good conversation. “When I’m alone I don’t mind doing dishes at all,” she said, “but never after dinner at night. In fact, I don’t even like it when other people do them then. I think it’s a time for relaxing and talking. Of course this is painful for some people, and once when my sister-in-law was with us in Switzerland, I could see it was essential to her state of mind to do the dishes before she went to bed, so I let her.”

Not surprisingly, she had a story to tell. “About dishwashers,” Fisher said, “I have used one since 1969, and I admit that it’s great when there are many people around. I got one on the advice or command or something of a very dear friend. She and her father-in-law and husband came for lunch and stayed for three days, mainly because the two men were famous wine people so that everybody in St. Helena not only wanted to meet them but also wanted them to taste the rare bottles they brought. Both my own girls had left home (involuntary servants as they were sometimes called), and my friends and I washed and dried 107 glasses at least twice a day for the three days they spent with me.

And the last thing my friends said to me, in a heartfelt aside as they went out the door, was, ‘For God’s sake, get a dishwasher.’ So I went right downtown and bought one, and I still use it for wineglasses and often for general use.”

Julia Child put dishes away wet

Julia Child, whose cookbooks and television programs taught Americans not to be afraid of French cooking techniques, “can’t stand to come down to a dirty anything in the morning. I always wash the dishes and clean the kitchen and living room at night. When we lived in Norway, we had a special cupboard above the sink. It had slots all along the bottom, and you put the dishes away while they were still wet. It’s a system I grew to like, and I have a similar one at home. It’s more hygienic to let the dishes air-dry.”

Craig Claiborne didn’t trust anyone

For large quantities of dirty dishes, Child uses an automatic dishwasher, as most food professionals do. Craig Claiborne, cookbook author and former food editor of the New York Times, has two: a professional three-minute-cycle unit for heavy-duty jobs such as pots and pans and a household model. When it comes to buying kitchen equipment, Claiborne’s rule is, “If it won’t fit into my dishwasher, I don’t want it.”

The veteran journalist doesn’t like anyone else to wash dishes in his home. “They stack the dishes in the dishwasher improperly. They put the little plates and the big plates all in the wrong direction and pile everything into a big mess. They put in crystal, and it breaks and falls to the bottom of the machine. Then I need a repairman to come and fix it.”

He is equally opposed to having anyone else unload his dishwasher. “They put away the glasses in the wrong place and misplace the utensils. They put the lids in the sieve drawer and the sieve in the lid drawer, and I can’t find a sieve or a lid when I need one.”

James Beard broke his Baccarat crystal

The late James Beard, the great American cookbook author, may not have known how to use an automatic dishwasher himself, but he knew a good housekeeper when he saw one. Clay Triplette, who was Beard’s first assistant, kept the house and the dishes spick-and-span for more than 30 years. It was his job to load the dishwasher and to wash the fine china and crystal by hand.

One evening he had to leave before a party was over; the next morning when he returned, Beard said, “Clay, I followed your directions and washed all the dirty dishes and glasses in the dishwasher last night.” Downstairs, Triplette found an appliance full of shattered Baccarat crystal — the stems of the glasses were too long for the machine, and when Beard closed the door on them, everything was crushed.

That’s not the only reason some wine connoisseurs and bartenders scoff at using a dishwasher. I recently watched a bartender wash and polish two dozen glasses faster than you could load a dishwasher. One at a time, he dipped them into hot soapy water and twisted them over a brush and then rinsed them in clean hot water. Using a lint-free cotton towel, he gave each a quick wipe (not enough to dry them) and placed them upside down on a clean dry towel. One more wipe, this time a quick twirl of a fresh towel, polished the glasses to an impeccably clean sparkle.

Julie Sahni scrubbed off the Teflon

Of course, there are places in the world where automatic dishwashers are not as ubiquitous as they are here, and in some it is culture and tradition that prescribes the dish-washing ritual. Julie Sahni, a chef and the author of Indian cookbooks, reports that “Indians in general, in the South and West, unless they belong to a vegetarian commune, cook their own food in freshly scrubbed pots before they have completely dried. No one else is allowed to touch their pots. We are incredibly proud of our pots and pans. I have my great-great-great-grandmother’s on my father’s side. They are trimmed in silver and gold and set with jewels. They have a beautiful patina. In India we use a coconut husk and fine ashes to clean the pots and pans.”

That tradition did not adequately prepare Sahni for her introduction to American cookware when she moved to this country about two decades ago after getting married. “The first day I cried,” she told me. “On the second day my husband gave me a black pan, which I found strange. At that time I didn’t know what Teflon was, and I spent the day scouring off that black surface. I scrubbed and scrubbed until it was sparkling bright. Now we can laugh about it, but at the time I thought it was a badly neglected pot in need of scrubbing.”

Florence Lin preserved her woks’ seasoning

Florence Lin, cookbook author and teacher of Chinese cooking, prefers the old-fashioned way of dealing with the task. “In my classes at the China Institute, we have no dishwasher,” she said. “We have two big sinks. One we fill with hot soapy water and the other, with very hot clean water. Dishes are put into the sudsy water and scrubbed and then dipped into the clean water to rinse before they drip-dry on a rack. The hot rinse water speeds up the drying.”

“Our woks,” she continued, “are very well seasoned. We use them a lot, and we clean them right after we use them. Sometimes we soak them or use a little soap, but we never use steel wool on them because it would ruin their seasoned surface. We use those little green scrubby things.”

Paula Wolfert minimized the dirty dishes

Paula Wolfert, culinary explorer and author of Paula Wolfert’s World of Food, has for years done her dishes herself in New York, but when she lived in Morocco, she told me, she was fortunate enough to have maids to do them. “However,” she added, “you don’t use many dishes when you cook and serve Moroccan food. Only big pots and platters and lots of linen napkins. You don’t drink when you eat couscous or you’d blow up, and since you eat with your fingers, there are no dirty glasses or silverware — only messy dinner plates and the pot and platters. Unless you are very experienced at eating with your fingers, there will be lots of dirty napkins and a dirty tablecloth.”

Paul Prudhomme found the funk

Even celebrated restaurant chefs must do dishes once in a while. Paul Prudhomme has washed a lot of pots and pans in his life. When he was growing up in Louisiana, his large family rotated the dishwashing chores. “The most fun was having towel fights,” he recalled. “Have you ever been snapped with a wet dish towel? You don’t forget that for a while.”

You might think that the need to deal with dirty dishes diminishes as fame increases, but Prudhomme told this story about his early bachelor days as celebrity chef: “When I was just becoming well known, a national food magazine featured my portrait on the cover along with a story and my recipes. I was glowing with the publicity and hurried home with the magazine, radiant with happiness, only to face the music — a sinkful of dirty dishes with all sorts of fuzzy things growing on them. I quickly came back to reality.”

Martha Stewart lined the sink with towels

Martha Stewart, the best-selling cookbook author, is also a busy caterer and often works with other people’s china, crystal and silver. “I once catered a party for 30 people for a client who wanted to set the table with her own antique Flora Danica. The plates alone must have been worth $2,000 apiece. In a case like that I make the client wash her own dishes.”

Stewart does have a tip for anyone washing expensive china and crystal: “Line the bottom and side of the sink with terry cloth towels so if something slips it won’t break.”

Jim Fobel followed a strict dishwashing order

I, too, have washed my fair share of dirty dishes. My mother taught me to do them the way her mother taught her. The kitchen sink was filled with hot soapy water, and the glasses were washed first, using a dishcloth. They were rinsed under hot tap water and put into a drain for a moment and then dried with a towel and put away. The order of things is important to this school of dishwashing thought. The cups and saucers were washed next, followed by the dinner plates, serving pieces and then the flatware. Finally, the pots and pans were scrubbed before the plug was pulled from the kitchen sink (we really did have plugs in those days). I always liked to wash the cast-iron skillet because it got just a quick brushing under running water and was then put on a burner to dry.

Some things are obvious when it comes to washing dishes. Don’t put greasy pots and pans in with other dishes, or you will have a bigger mess than when you started. And do them last after everything else is clean and grease-free. One way to get rid of oil or grease in a pot is to squirt it with a liberal dose of detergent, then add very hot tap water or even boiling water. Since plastic attracts grease, I always squeeze some detergent into plastic bowls or containers and scrub them with a brush before adding any water.

Diana Kennedy harnessed the sun

My friend Diana Kennedy, the authority on authentic Mexican cooking, lives in an energy-efficient home in Zitacuaro and wastes nothing when it comes to food or energy. For washing dishes, she told me, “I fill a big tub with water and let it heat in the strong Mexican sun before adding soap and scrubbing the dishes. It’s very efficient.” And her dishes, pots and pans are impeccable.

There are other less popular ways of dealing with dirty dishes. One bachelor I know puts his in the shower and runs scalding hot water over them.

Of course, you can always throw them out when too many accumulate. Although such an approach may appeal to all of us on occasion, it has drawbacks other than the expense involved. A cupboard filled with sparkling dishes not only delights us with the feeling of a job well done but starts us thinking of all the wonderful things we can cook that will make the plates deliciously dirty all over again.