Cooking Something Up Together

Women of all generations and ages have shared one very special and constantlover—food. This sweet-talking seducer lures women out of bed for many a late-nightrendezvous, causing us to bask in the unforgiving light of therefrigerator as we eagerly devour leftovers. This tempter offers itself in ever-changingand enthusiastic forms—the sensuousness of a chocolate torte, theboldness of a ripe strawberry, or the inventiveness of a white corn soufflé—and,through its metamorphosis, succeeds in keeping us faithful, our affectionsunwavering, even sometimes bordering on obsession.

My obsession began very early. My mother Jeanne-Berenice is French, and thoughshe was orphaned in World War II and never had anyone to teach her how to cook,one could say she was genetically predisposed to being a great chef. The scentof Boeuf Bourguignonne would waft through our house on a regular basis. Whenother children were bringing bologna sandwiches to school, my mother supplied mewith a Tupperware container of Coq au Vin and a slice of Quatre Quart (a Frenchpound cake, the recipe for which you will find later in the book).

I suppose the cooking gene was passed on, and in my early twenties, Itemporarily left school to pursue my interest in cooking. I went to theCalifornia Culinary Academy in San Francisco, where I had the distinct pleasureof meeting Lynette Rohrer, now the Executive Pastry Chef of Star's, in PaloAlto. Though Lynette never finished the Academy, she went on to work in the mostdistinguished restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area: Postrio, Chez Panisse,Bisou, Masa's, and now Star's. We lived together during cooking school, and myfondest memory of Lynette displaying her skills was when she, during a fairlywild party, approached me and several friends in the hot tub to offer up a finedisplay of caramelized Spam triangles, elegantly nestled in a silver servingdish.

That is undoubtedly a charming quality in a chef: though one's skills in thekitchen may be extraordinary, there is no reason to be a food snob. In fact, oneevening she and I were dining at Masa's (her employee discount made the mealonly exorbitantly, not unconscionably, expensive), and after a meal that couldonly be described as a religious experience, dessert arrived. The chef, knowingLynette's predilection for junk food, put together a phenomenal array oftwinkies sliced on the bias, ho-ho's swimming in crème anglaise, red zingersresting on a pool of red raspberry puree, all beautifully garnished with abrunoise of red and black licorice, gracefully scattered on the plate. Sheeagerly gobbled it up.

Until all too recently women's love affair with food was considered illicit ifit dared to cross the boundary into the professional kitchen. Thanks to manydedicated wild women, our gender now openly displays and profits from thisliaison. From being head chefs in some of the finest restaurants, to hosting andproducing gourmet cooking shows, to even the tyrannical homemaking of MarthaStewart, women have dared to take what we were once expected to do at home, andturn these daily tasks of food preparation into an extraordinary and oftenlucrative art form.

Wild Women in the Kitchen looks at some of these pioneers, as well as at womenwho were trendsetters in food fads and food production, and those who werefamous gourmands. It takes you on a journey, an unpredictable exploration, offamous women and their relationships to food. Some have made a life of cooking;others (of different notoriety) simply have an unexpected favorite recipe. Whatthey all have in common is a fervent love of food.

Wild Women in the Kitchen offers recipes that can service the gourmet and thescavenger; elegant foods that require preparation and thought, and others thatcan satisfy an instant hunger. You can host a romantic dinner for two with aPassion Fruit Lobster Appetizer, Artichoke Heart Timbale, and Chocolate Fondue,or you can gather a group of friends for a night of Penne Pesto Pasta Salad andhomebrewed beer.

Lynette and I have enjoyed testing and contributing recipes for this one-of-akind cookbook and hope you will find it enjoyable too. And in the words of avery well-known wild gourmet who really liked her sherry, "Bon Appetit!"

–Nicole Alper

A Taste of Things to Come

There are strong women who can be moved to tears by the burnished purple beautyof an eggplant, the subtle upward arc of a banana, as promising as a new moon ora smile. There are plain-living women who believe that there is poetry in mashedpotatoes, yet would sooner eat their old-fashioned argyles than a forkful ofarugula. There are iron-willed women who revel in secret fantasies about thatproverbial pie in the sky, the kind that exerts no gravitational pull on thehips. There are sunny-side-up women who make tequila sunrises when life givesthem lemons. There are down-to-earth women who never forget to count theirblessings—or to ask for second helpings. Tastes vary; what is universal is theprimal pleasure we take in feeding our faces—and in the process, our souls.

For most of us, our introduction to inspirational dining was also ourintroduction to dining, period. A heady mixture of Mom—our own privateOmnipotent Goddess/Feeding Machine—and warm milk, that punchy post-natal noshsparked not only our passion for consuming, but our consuming passion for themost fascinating woman in our lives.

Eventually, of course, our interests expanded to include activities (earning aliving, for example) other than chowing down and gazing adoringly at ourparental unit. Yet according to a rather robust, apple-cheeked painter I onceknew, we hedonistic human beings actually dreamed up the adult diversions ofart, literature, and music only because we couldn't spend every waking momenteating or making love. (Between meals of one sort or another, Ms. Freud liked todabble in watercolors.)

I suspect, however, that something both more and less substantial than eitherthe mechanics of the human body (which, contrary to the impression one mightpick up from the current crop of fashion magazines, really does require theregular consumption of food) or the infantile whims of the id, thathollowlegged, bottomless pit of the psyche, drives us to eat and drink. True,the ascetic Joan of Arc, as we learn later in these pages, liked to get a littlebombed before doing battle: under duress, France's famous virgin warrior woulddunk a chunk of broth-soaked bread in a cup of wine and call it dinner. (Today,we call it French onion soup.) And even the decorous afternoon tea—that mostrestrained and ritualized of meals—was the brainchild of a lady with an appetitetoo lusty to tolerate the wait for a fashionably late dinner.

Yet as savvy take-out queens, mavens of fine cuisine, and the chef at yourneighborhood bistro all know, the contemplation and consumption of certain foodsoften transcends purely physiological ends,...