A Celebration of Chefs

Jody Adams is a James Beard Award-winning chef and the owner of the renowned restaurant Rialto, located in Cambridge, MA.

jody_adams.jpgWhat was your favorite childhood food? Was it something your family made and if so do you still make it?

Semolina gnocchi, no contest.  My mother made it for dinner parties with braised short ribs of beef.   My sisters and I fought over the crusty edges that were left behind.  I make semolina gnocchi for my kids and now they fight over the pan. 

It's springtime and we love to do "in season" pieces.  Would you tell us two or three ingredients fresh in the farmer's market in the spring that would inspire a Sunday dinner for you.

You have spring farmer's markets?  Lucky you.  In New England they don’t really kick off until it’s almost summer, but spring greens, radishes, turnips and rhubarb are showing up at Whole Foods and a few CSA's and co-ops.  I like keeping prep, cooking and cleanup simple on Sundays.  Weather permitting, the easiest solution is to get out the grill. Last week my husband rubbed half a butterflied leg of lamb with garlic, rosemary and olive oil, let it sit overnight in the fridge, then grilled it the next day.  A whole fish like branzino or mackerel would have also been a good choice; both were in seafood markets last week.  To go with the lamb I made a salad of thinly-sliced radishes and turnips, pole beans and greens tossed with a smoked bacon vinaigrette.  For dessert we had a homemade rhubarb crostada. 

 

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ciscokid.jpg Who knew from Mexico whilst being brought up in the Monopoly board burbs of Southern New England in the fifties?  It seemed a very distant land – exotic, fantastic – as foreign and far away as California.  The word Mexico called to mind jumping beans, dancing with sombreros,  "Z's" slashed midair,  Cisco and his humble sidekick Pancho galloping away, Pancho Gonzales slamming a tennis serve, Speedy Gonzalez slamming a cat — a lot of really speedy stuff.  It's no wonder I thought the Mexican peoples only ate fast food.

I was growing up in the miraculous new age of instant gratification grub.  Chinese food, pizza, take out burgers, and foods hunted and gathered from pouches and frozen boxes were America's new staples. New sorts of consumables were purchased by my parents weekly. I recall my first corn products off a cob – daffy yellow corn chips crunched hand over fist in front of the television console, lumped into a large category called  "snacks."  Anything one ate away from the dinner table and consumed mindlessly, endlessly, with no silverware, that soiled your fingers and "ruined your appetite" was a "snack."  So when I visited California in seventy-two and experienced Mexican food at a party for the first time,  corn chips dipped in a tasty chartreuse paste, it continued to seem "snack,"  and not to be taken seriously.

 

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tastenationlogo.jpg Being a Wine Afficianado and not really a Foodie, on June 1st I attended my first gourmet eating event Share the Strength’s Taste of the Nation in Culver City, California, which has apparently become a food-lover’s mecca over the last few years. This event occurs over 55 times a year in locations across the U.S., gathering the top chefs in each place to showcase the best the host city has to offer. At this incarnation, the group included Brent Berkowitz (BOA), Tom Colicchio (Craft), Evan Kleiman (Angeli Caffe), Mary Sue Milliken (Border Grill), David Myers (Sona), Remi Lauvand (Citrus) and chefs from about 25 other leading restaurants on the L.A. scene.

None of the restaurants were familiar to me because I choose my dining experiences on cost (under $40 per person), convenience (can’t be more than 2-3 miles away) and what’s on the wine list. If I could get protein from Pinot Noir I would never eat again. Needless to say, I was way out of my element. Thankfully, I went with friends who are Food Network junkies and knew their way around a food festival.

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paul_newman_320.jpgMy twin brother’s name is Paul Newman and when we were growing up in Beverly Hills in the 1960s, because Paul had his own phone line, and because he was listed in the phone directory, we often got calls from fans thinking it was the home of the movie star. When you’re a teenager and you’re desperate for something to feel superior about, this fit the bill quite nicely.

“How could they possibly think he’d be listed?” we’d scoff. 

I never had a crush on Paul Newman, the movie star. He was no David McCallum, that’s for sure.  But I could certainly appreciate what a good actor he was. After seeing him in Slapshot, The Verdict, Absence of Malice, Sometimes A Great Notion and The Hudsucker Proxy (the funniest I’d ever seen him) I was an admirer.

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cheese-store.jpg When you enter the door at the Beverly Hills Cheese Store - the greatest cheese store in the U.S. of A. (419 N. Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills, California 90210), the first friendly face and voice you see and hear on your left will always be that of Cheese Wiz Sebastian Robin Craig working behind the counter like a whirling dervish -  unless he is jetting off to the cheese caves of Roquefort, France for a tasting; or Stockholm, Sweden to compose more jazz (go to iTunes for his latest CD “Volition”); or just kicking back and learning Russian.

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