A Celebration of Chefs

Man vs. Food: Watch It!

Once Anthony Bourdain left The Food Network in a trail of acrimonious dust, he started a second television career on The Travel Channel. The show (”No Reservations”) was better (because, among other things, they allowed Anthony to be his acerbic, outrageous self) but he was gone from my life because the Travel Channel was not available from our cable company. We ordered episodes from Netflix, took them out of the library, and once, in a media coup that rivalled the day when my brother and I tuned in what we believed to be “porn”on the TV in the living room by fiddling rabbit ears and vertical hold, we found one episode of “No Reservations” on “On Demand,” and watched it with the fervor and intensity appropriate for a bootleg copy of Tommy and Pamela.

Then, one day, the Travel Channel appeared as I was flipping up towards the Premiums, bearing the portentous channel assignment “123.” (It’s portentous because I can remember it). We fell, that evening, under the spell of a young man named Adam Richman, and a show called “Man v. Food.” We fell hard. It is fabulous beyond all reckoning that we can now see “No Reservations” before the episodes are two years old, and there are a couple of other shows on the channel that we’ve enjoyed, but Richman is a revelation of how a network can combine really smart and really commercially appealing and create something that appeals to a large and diverse audience.

From Hunger

I was recently given a gift of an out of print cookbook called The Molly Goldberg Cookbook. When I first saw it I was amused and when I opened it up, I immediately saw a cabbage recipe I wanted to make. Score! Here was a cookbook that had that “Through The Looking Glass” aspect to it. These were recipes long forgotten, mysterious in their 1950-ness, soon to be resurrected by me!

I had a faint notion of who Molly Goldberg was; however, despite the constant ‘jokes’ in my house about my age I was actually too young to have seen The Goldbergs on TV. It still amazes me that I saw Amos n’ Andy. The premise of this prototype for all subsequent sit-coms was the lives of Jewish immigrants, usually featuring a solvable family or friend-related problem. Molly, in her infinite “Jewish Mama” wisdom would involve herself in these neighborhood and family dramas dispensing invaluable advice.

Made in Maine

At our store, The Green Spot, in Maine, we seek out locally made, unusual products like freshly gathered honey, artisan maple syrup or rare apple cider made with heirloom apples. But my favorite is a handmade butter that is such a treat melted with lobsters, slathered on the breads that we bake or the sugar-and-gold corn picked that morning.

Over the years we have had several butter makers but undeniably Sylvia Holbrook’s was the best. Sylvia had been making butter for 63 years when we found her. She lives in the small hamlet of North New Portland almost 2 hours from our store on a ramshackle farm. She is a pistol – a thin energetic women in her 80’s that has made butter every day of her 63-year career.

The thing that makes Sylvia’s butter so different from all others is that she know the importance of pasturing her cows so they have a diet of fresh grass and hay from her own fields which gives it a depth of flavor like nothing else and as Spring turns into Summer the butter takes on an intense yellow color that glows through the white parchment paper. Her butter is not just lovingly made, it is what fresh is all about!

Celebrating Anne

There are times when I scrutinize my outfit before I leave the house, and find it absurdly, compulsively over-accessorized. It’s then, as I grab my keys and prance out with red sneakers, mismatched bracelets, and a brooch shaped like a turnip, that I’ll find myself thinking of her. Subtlety, in many things, is often advised; but I, heeding Anne of Green Gables, rarely listen. If at a dinner party, after I’ve gone on and on to someone about a book they’ll probably never read, ignoring every attempt they make to escape me, she’ll just appear in my mind. And often, when faced with a moral dilemma, like whether to leave the last bite of pie for the person I’m sharing it with, or to request that my upstairs neighbors stop rollerblading on the hardwood floor, I’ll ask myself:

“What would Anne of Green Gables do?”

Living the Dream

mister chef “Please don’t wake me from this dream!” I said out loud to my husband while eating the brilliant meal in front of me, prepared by my live-in chef. Uh-huh, you heard correctly. My private chef.

Let me take you back five days. I received a late-night email. It was from an old friend, Olivia. She told me her son was here in Los Angeles from London (where they live) and that the minute he arrived, he had a bust-up with his girlfriend. She said that he could use a friendly face. I answered immediately: “Of course, have him call me.”

First call the following day was Oscar, whom I’ve never met. In fact, I have not seen his mother in thirty years. Since he was already in Venice, I asked him to meet me at one of my favorite restaurants, Gjelina on Abbot Kinney. My husband Michael agreed to join us. Oscar, looking lost and forlorn, told us he had planned to take his now ex-girlfriend to Valentine’s dinner here at this same restaurant the following night. We offered our home to Oscar for the rest of his vacation. I didn’t think we would be too intriguing, but later that day he told me that eating lunch with us was the most fun he had had so far in Los Angeles. And when he told us he was a chef, I nearly screamed. Actually, I did, but only internally.

A Celebration of Chefs and Others