As I eagerly look forward to the next season of Top Chef Masters, I think of the questions often asked at the finale. including first food memory, what made you decide to become a chef, first restaurant dish and future goals.
I’m changing it up as a home cook and neighborhood food maven (several neighborhoods and families consult me regularly) who went to one real cooking school and one in Italy that was the best educational vacation I’ve ever had.
In this dialogue, I am both questioner and commenter and as this is my blog I am not confined to one dish or answer. If you like it, try thinking about what brought you to cooking.
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What are your first food memories?
Being bored with Mom’s food even though she cooked a square meal every night with a homemade dessert, preferring them to go out and having the babysitter heat up one of those newfangled TV dinners that we always had to place on the garage steps for 15 minutes to cool mid-winter.
Going out to eat for the first time, German as my father spoke only German in his home growing up and his mother taught my mother to cook. Italian because I had my first real spaghetti and meatballs and tried pizza for the first time and realized there was a world out there worth checking out. We were in a small village, no Thai or Indian restaurants (still none decades later) but it was wonderful!
What made you want to make cooking a priority?
Eating, of course! Every Saturday my sister and I spent time at the library and I finally found Betty Crocker’s Boys and Girls Cookbook and amassed late fees of $.31 which prompted the library ladies to call my mother. Three weeks later I had it, new, for my 8th birthday. We held grand themed birthday parties for our little brother, the first was king and queen with the castle cake, the second a pirate adventure. We made tagboard/construction paper costumes and everything.
Then we started cooking dinner a couple of nights a week when our mother was at school. In college I learned that if I did all the cooking and made shopping lists, I’d never have to shop or clean up or do dishes. The shopping thing didn’t work well. I was cooking for 12 (many were daily guests) and needed to get 50# of potatoes and they came back with canned potatoes their first trip. From then on I supervised weekly shopping and budget. I rolled the cart and they filled it up while I counted the $$$.
I dedicated this blog to my aunts and my mother. My aunts are superb cooks, and my mother became one partially because of them, and because Aunt J started giving her Gourmet magazine for 30 years and Mom was willing to try new things, like souffles, and chicken and peach salad. They all started me on this journey that is now joined by my husband’s family and their traditions.
Why did you quit a successful career and spend your life savings on cooking school?
I couldn’t stand the rat race anymore and knew that in my late twenties I wouldn’t have another chance. I picked a good school that didn’t require me to spend two years gaining an Associates Degree in other subjects (I already had a B.A.) and dove right in. I learned so much, worked hard and it was the best time in school I’ve ever had.
Afterwards there was a great apprenticeship with gardens and ruby chard and fishmongers with fresh salmon and chanterelle purveyors, organic produce and great people. Then work back home was cans and cans and nowhere to wash hands wearing the coat and pants of the 300 lb. chef who’d been fired, and I spent two shifts scraping dried cheese off washed and dried french onion soup bowls while adjusting the rope I’d brought to hold up those huge pants. I worked nights and interviewed days then broke my finger coming from an interview (got the job) and couldn’t use my knives for six weeks.
I took a temporary job working for my dad in another business and kept it, determined not to work in any kitchen but my own. The wonderful restaurant at which I apprenticed was contacted for a reference and called me immediately trying to get me back. Alas, that part of the country is very expensive to live in and I couldn’t do it on $6/hr. It is a place I will bring my husband to visit and potentially a place to retire.
What are you doing now?
Cooking for my husband, family and friends and providing fresh or frozen raw balanced food for the dog. I enjoy seeking new ideas and food combinations and trying them. I’ve actually taught a couple of cooking classes but don’t teach dishes, but techniques so it takes time to come up with a curriculum, then recipes and once one gets a “job” doing a class, I lose way more money in terms of time than they pay.
What is your culinary future?
Keep learning, every day. Travel to learn other cultures and foods. Teach a younger generation to appreciate food and where it comes from. Garden, a knot garden for herbs and a raised bed garden for veggies.
Everything happens for a reason.
Cooking with Dee 