A Celebration of Chefs and Others

I was with friends last night for an Italiam-themed potluck meal. My firend, Bobbie, brought a dessert she found in one of Michael Chiarello's cookbooks. Rosemary Sand Cake with Summer Berries is a light, lemony cake flecked with bits of fresh rosemary.

I used to watch Chiarello's Food Network show every Saturday. I love his casual style and his down-to-earth approach to food preparation and entertaining. And he just seems like such a nice guy.

He often made use of fresh herbs in the dishes he prepared on his show. For this cake, he chose rosemary.

The recipe calls for potato starch. It has a silky texture, similar to cornstarch and gives the cake a fine delicate texture. Bobbie found potato starch at our local natural food co-op, but I think many grocery stores carry it. It's probably on the shelf with other baking ingredients.

Shortbread is simply the most delicious biscuit ever conceived by mankind (though I suspect womankind had more to do with it!).

It would be blasphemy to call shortbread a "cookie". It is, truly, a BISCUIT!

As with all simple things, it is NOT easy to make, so I suggest you try this out on yourself or the family before you present it at afternoon tea to strangers.

Here is my Mother's recipe (I can not refer to that sainted lady and not capitalize - sorry, America!)

Working for a food magazine, your life pretty much revolves around eating and drinking. Not as much as people might think, but more than the average person in America. I am more of an oenophile than a foodie, but I know great food when I taste it. It’s food that lingers in your imagination for days after the experience and that you just can’t seem to stop telling other people about. Flavors that come right back to you, when you think about THAT bite and how surprisingly delicious it was. It doesn’t have to be fancy to be memorable, but true culinary genius is, like most talents, not a common thing - the theme of this sweet and sumptuous little film.

Sure it has big backers behind the scenes - anyone heard of Oprah and Spielberg? - but the story of a young Indian chef on his path of culinary self-discovery is simple, funny and heartfelt and will leave you hungry for more. Forced by tragedy to leave India, Hassan Kadam and his family find themselves in the small village of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val in the south of France. The locals don’t know what to make of the family and they certainly are not necessarily lining up to enjoy their Indian cuisine, but the family refuses to give up and slowly begins to make headway in the village.

Though he has no formal training Hassan, who learned everything he knows about taste and spices from his mother, is made the chef of the family restaurant, Maison Mumbai. The family’s loud and ethnic presence makes their direct neighbor Madame Mallory, the chef/owner of a Michelin-starred restaurant Le Saule Pleureur, very, very unhappy. What ensues for the first half of the film is a comic War of the Roses with both sides trying to make the others’ lives miserable, while gaining business for themselves.

Many years ago I met Chloe, we never knew much about her or how old she was but the one thing that we did know was that she was French and very fussy about her food, specifically her cheeses. Chloe would arrive at the strike of 9 in the morning just as our store was opening for the first of the days baguettes and then off to the cheese case she would run. If you had a wild unexpected racy little french cheese she would relax and tell you a story. If not, she would get a slice of Conte and retreat with her hot baguette till the next week.

Over the years we learned that she was a war bride and had been relocated to a very small town in Maine. She had a lackluster relationship with her husband, bore one son who moved away after high school to become an engineer in Connecticut and he was very busy and visited rarely. She was pencil thin with the most gorgeous out of place red hair, she could be very tender or she could cut glass with her disapproving stare. After many years she started bringing us a “very small” jar of apricot jam in the early summer. With no fanfare she would just reach into her oversized pocketbook and take out a tissue wrapped jar after she had checked out, hand it to my sister or me and leave with any further communication. The thank you’s would have to wait till next weeks visit.