Wild Women in the Kitchen: Be a Wild Woman with 101 Rambunctious Recipes & 99 Tasty Tales (Funny Cookbook) - Softcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Nicole Alper is an award-winning journalist with a 20-year career as a travel and food writer. Her work has been published in more than 100 national magazines, including Gourmet. She is a graduate of the California Culinary Academy, certified chef/baker, published cookbook author, and has had the honor of both cooking for and interviewing the late Julia Child.

Lynette Rohrer Shirk is an accomplished chef and cookbook author. She has authored nine books, served as the corporate pastry chef for Williams-Sonoma, and worked in kitchens of some of the best restaurants in the country. Lynette got her first culinary experience in Columbus, Ohio making pizza while attending Ohio State University. She graduated in 1989 with a degree in Classics, moved to San Francisco to attend the California Culinary Academy, and worked in the pastry department at the well-known restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Lynette is a native of Warren, Ohio.

Autumn Stephens was born in a New Mexico mining community whose population began to dwindle shortly after her arrival (though she swears this was mere coincidence) and finally faded from the map altogether. She spent the rest of her childhood in Eugene, Oregon. Initially, she intended to become a psychologist, but when she noticed that her introductory psych classes at Stanford University tended to focus on the behavior of rats rather than that of human beings, she signed up as a Creative Writing major instead. During several subsequent years as an afterhours creative writer; daytime wage slave, Stephens worked as a medical coder, a phone sex script writer, a composer of fraudulent Tarot prognostications, and something called a "special investigator" for the State Bar of California. More than any other experience, however, her stint as an old fashioned legal secretary (among other absurdities, the job involved the daily composition of a heart-healthy salad for a high maintenance male boss) honed the deliciously snide feminist sensibility which informs Stephens' writing today. (Well, okay, growing up more or less concurrently with the women's movement of the 1960s and 1970s helped too.) Stephens is the author of the popular "Wild Women" books published by Conari Press, including Wild Women, Wild Women in the White House, Wild Words for Wild Women, Loose Cannons, Drama Queens, and Out of the Mouths of Babes. Stephens also freelances for magazines, reviews women's writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, and enjoys an entirely attorney free lifestyle. Currently, she lives in Berkeley, California, a city that she would like better were it not for an uncharacteristically restrictive ordinance against raising miniature pigs in one's backyard. Her hobbies are sleeping and reading trashy celebrity magazines.

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The Liberated Danseuse

Isadora Duncan, who revolutionized the dance world in the late 1800s with her spontaneous, flowing style that released the art form from the constraints of classical ballet-was equally free-form in her personal life. She wore loose, flowing gowns while she danced, baring her legs and breasts, shocking stuffy Victorians in Europe and the United States, and setting a trend that would eventually liberate women from corsets and stays. A firm disbeliever in marriage-although she did eventually tie the knot, at age forty-one, with a Russian poet seventeen years her junior-she had two children out of wedlock and many lovers. She also had one of the most dramatic deaths in history. In 1927, at the age of forty-nine, she was strangled to death by her own scarf when it became entangled in the rear wheel of a Bugatti sports car. She was not driving, she was being chauffeured by a car salesman with whom she had become illicitly involved.

As might be expected in one who lived and died so flamboyantly, Isadora had an extravagant palate, often craving the most rare and expensive of foods-asparagus, strawberries, champagne, and caviar. Since she was not able to afford such fare, friends often prepared her favorite delicacies for her, rescuing Isadora from the fate of conventional cuisine.

Asparagus Salad

• 1 pound asparagus
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon Dijon-style mustard
• 1 tablespoon chopped capers
• 2 teaspoons minced shallots
• 4 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
• Salt and pepper to taste

Prepare the asparagus by snapping off the woody ends wherever they naturally break when you apply pressure, and place in a steamer basket. Place in a pan large enough for the asparagus to lie flat, cover, and steam on high for 5 to 10 minutes depending on thickness of spears. Asparagus is done when a sharp knife easily pierces the root end. Submerge the asparagus in an ice bath to stop the cooking and place on to a towel to drain. Refrigerate until cold.

Meanwhile, combine remaining ingredients in a small mixing bowl with a fork or wire whisk. Arrange cold asparagus on serving dish and drizzle the vinaigrette on top. Serves 4.