The World in My Kitchen (14 page)

Another problem was finding the ingredients for the cooking show. Columbia was not New York. No artichokes, no really fresh vegetables, and the only salad available was iceberg lettuce. For every show, we had to scramble for ingredients. Sometimes they were flown in from New York; other times we appealed to the public.

On one of the shows, we were going to make a watercress soup. The staff was unable to find any. Watercress, I was told, was not available in Columbia. “Impossible,” I said. “Watercress grows everywhere.” So I went on the air, asking people who lived in the suburbs of Columbia and who had a brook in their backyard, to look for wild watercress, describing the small green leaves as clearly as possible. The next day, we had a line of cars and trucks filled with watercress arriving at the studio. We made the soup, and the town of Columbia got hooked on it!

For the last show, the average age of the children was fifteen. I decided that I would teach them how to prepare and roast a goose. We had the usual problem: No geese were available in Columbia. Warren decided that he would order them from New York. A day before filming, we received nine geese. I would roast one and place it in the set’s oven. The next day each child would prepare one. While we prepared the geese and chatted about Christmas presents and what the children ate for their Christmas dinners, (no one had ever eaten or seen a goose before! They ate ham or turkey.) the aroma of the cooked goose wafted through the studio. When we were finished preparing the geese, I went to the oven and removed the cooked goose. Usually, as I set prepared dishes on the table, Warren would scream “cut,” and the children would then grab what they had prepared. This time Warren forgot to say “cut.” As I set the goose on the table, everyone in the studio rushed to the table to get a taste of the goose, fighting with the children. All of that went on the tape!

In September, the show was aired on PBS stations around the country, and
The New York Times
television critic loved it and praised it, calling it a “a very funny show, one that children and parents should watch together.”

I was now quite busy, teaching at Hofstra, running the cooking school, and writing food articles. One day, Alan called me to invite me to lunch with a friend of his who wanted to meet me. Barbara Plummer was, I found out midway through the lunch, the senior editor at Scribner’s. She asked me to talk about my ideas on a cookbook for children. A cookbook for children? I looked at Alan, who looked the other way.
What had he told her? Was I to talk about a book I hadn’t even thought about?
So I invented a book on the spot. Looking up at Barbara, I said, “Yes, I want to write a cookbook for children based on my cooking school. The book would start with desserts and end up with vegetables. I will tell a story about how I learned to cook. The recipes will be simple but real. There will be ‘no mud pies!’, and I think that Jimmy should illustrate the book with line drawings. Children will love them.”

Barbara loved the idea, and a month later I received a contract. I was in a state of panic.
Write a book?
I did not know how and where to begin. I could not type, could not spell, and at that time, there were no computers to help you along. What was I going to do? I called my friend Lorraine Davis. She had been my editor at
Vogue.
Lorraine had assigned me my first story and had remained a staunch supporter. “Very easy,” she said. “Buy a tape recorder, sit down, and talk into the microphone. Then give the tapes for someone to type. Read them, correct the recipes, and send me the manuscript. I will edit it. You are a storyteller, so don’t worry.”

I did not know how I was going to write with the children out of school and needing my constant supervision. It was July, so Elisabeth Fonseca suggested that I send the children to her house in East Hampton, along with Lucy, our new housekeeper. I would come on the weekends and that would allow me time to write all week. Lucy was my gift from the gods. Gladys had stayed with us until the house was finished. She then announced that she was leaving us to get married. We were sad to lose her but happy for her. Now I needed someone who would live-in, look after the children, and help me run the big house. I had heard through friends that there was a family of Colombian women looking for work. Was I interested? I was. So one day Lucy came to our house. Lucy was a tall, round woman with an easy smile and a warm embrace. However, she did not speak a word of English, and my Spanish was elementary, but we understood each other, mixing words of Spanish, French, and Italian.

As soon as the children were settled in Elisabeth’s guest house, I worked full-time for two months and then used every free moment to work on the book through the winter months. Jimmy who was always involved in my work, read the manuscript and drew all the illustrations. He created a cartoon of a boy/girl so that all the children could identify with the main character. By spring the book was finished, and I sent the manuscript to Lorraine. She loved it and went to work editing the book.

Around this time, I met Rita Reinhardt, the widow of the artist Ad Reinhardt. She came to me with a proposition. She was involved with a project called Art Park. Earl Brydges, state senator from Lewiston near Buffalo, had decided to put his town on the map by creating an art park there. The idea was that art should be a performance; it should come out to the open, out of the studio. Artists would go about creating their work in the park in full view of park visitors strolling along. Sometimes the public could even participate in the artist’s work. Would I be interested, the following summer, in joining the group of artists that had been accepted? I would use food as my medium, and people would watch me create recipes. I would have a morning cooking class for children of the area. I would be paid for my work and housed. The list of artists was impressive, so I readily accepted. I was proud to be included as an artist.

The following July, with my son, Thomas, in tow, I drove to Buffalo and then on to Lewiston. The park was located on the Hudson River. It was a 200-acre park with a magnificent view of the gorge just beyond Niagara Falls. Along the pathways of the park were studios for artists. But during that first summer, the artists were working in makeshift studios. I was given a table, a hot plate, and nothing else. Nobody had prepared anything, so I went shopping in Buffalo. I bought everything I thought I would need for the children’s cooking classes. I had read, in
The New York Times
about a month before, of a man who was importing a new gadget that he called “Cuisinart food processor” based on a French restaurant appliance. The electric utensil could mix, cut, shred, and beat.
The New York Times
called it a miracle machine…so I called Cuisinart in Connecticut and suggested that they send me a food processor. In exchange, I would demonstrate the appliance as I prepared food and would distribute pamphlets to the crowd. They agreed, and two days later I received my first food processor. I spent an entire day experimenting with the Cuisinart and found it very useful.

In those first few days of my arrival, I made it a point to meet the artists in residence. There was Catherine Jamison, a very intense young woman whose medium was photography. She printed her photographs on large white sheets that she spread on the grass so that the rays of the sun would be used like a catalyst. She befriended Thomas, who went around for her on his bicycle with a camera strapped to his ankles. Thomas’s pictures of grass, insects, or paths would be developed to form an artistic pattern on those enormous sheets. Not far from where I was working was an artist who was building gigantic plastic forms, encouraging the public to join him in building forms that looked like enormous tinker toys. I met Charles Simmonds, a sculptor who built tiny cities in holes in the walls on the streets of New York. His miniature villages were made of bricks the size of grains of rice. He had a big project at Art Park. He was to build a house made with bags of earth filled with seeds. After rain, the house would sprout; corn and other vegetables would grow. However, in the morning he, like me, was to teach a group of children to make the tiny bricks he used in his art, so they could build their own cities. Neither he nor I, as yet, had any children for our classes. I suggested to the manager of Art Park that he should go on the radio and invite children to join us for a free cooking class and an art class. They would start with me then go on to Charles. It worked, and within days we both had a large group of children. I taught them the basics of cooking and made something they could eat for lunch. We made omelets, crêpes, grated carrot salad, sautéed chicken, rhubarb mousse, etc. While the children tried to cook, Bob Sacha, a young Lewiston photographer, took pictures of the children for the park. The food processor was a great help since in the afternoon I often had 100 people watching me create dishes that they all wanted to taste. In the late afternoon when the park closed, the artists would meet in one of the buildings. I often cooked for them or brought along dishes I had prepared in the afternoon. One day a week I took off with Thomas. We explored Niagara Falls or drove to Canada for dinner. Both Thomas and I had a great time. When we left Art Park, Catherine Jamison handed me a sheet with pictures of Thomas running around, playing, or helping her with her work. I framed the sheet, and to this day, it is hanging in our house.

Back in New York, the book
Cooking with Colette
was ready to go into print. The production people asked for a picture of me and kids cooking. I remembered that Bob Sacha had taken many pictures of us, so I asked him for one. He sent me a great photo of me looking on as a child tries to separate an egg. I wanted to use the picture for the cover of the book, but we needed signed consent forms to use it. Bob Sacha did not know who the little girl was. Hundreds of children had come to my stand in Art Park. How was I going to find her? Jimmy had a brilliant idea. We called the chief of police of Lewiston and asked for his help. We sent him the picture. Unfortunately, the police chief did not know who the girl was, but he sent it on to the local newspapers. The caption under the photograph in the local newspaper read, “Who Is This Mystery Child?” Within a few days, the little girl was found, and we were able to use her photo for the book.

Soon after
Cooking with Colette
was published, I received a telephone call from New American Library. The publisher had heard from Cuisinart that I had experimented with their food processor. Could I write a book about food processors, writing an evaluation of the best available, and develop a few recipes? By this time, I had switched from teaching at Hofstra University to St. Ann’s School, a private school in Brooklyn that my own children attended. I was so busy with schoolwork that I asked a journalist friend, Jill Harris Herman, to help. I would test the food processors, take notes, and then she would write the evaluations while I developed recipes. My kitchen began to resemble an appliance store as I got inspired by the food processors, discovering that I could quickly prepare complicated dishes that, in the past, I had hesitated to prepare. Jill went to work, and Jimmy made line drawings of the processors and dishes. Within six months, we had a food processor cookbook and guide.

Meanwhile, Jill and I discovered that there were other well-known food writers writing food processor books, and I worried about the competition. Our book was called
A Mostly French Food Processor Cookbook,
and in the fall of 1977, the book came out with five others on the same subject! I was very scared, but thankfully the reviews were glowing.
The New York Times
called our book, “Outstanding…. Adventurous and inspired.” We had a bestseller, and the book had to go back to press within one month. The publisher and I were very surprised by its success. Happily for me, it went into several printings. We sold over 100,000 copies within a year. I was interviewed on radio and television programs such as
Good Morning America.

Although my articles, the cooking school, and
Cooking with Colette
had earned me a certain reputation in the food world, the success of this book opened new doors for me. My life was no longer the same. I started to meet other food writers and food critics. I was asked to lunches that, to my regret, I could rarely attend as I was still teaching; but my opinions on food and restaurants were sought out by people in the food world. I met Craig Claiborne, the esteemed restaurant critic of
The New York Times
who liked to come to dinner. He always brought interesting friends. Sometimes, I would see one of the dishes I had served him appear in his Saturday column. Once, at one of the dinners, he brought the stars of the famed TV show
Upstairs, Downstairs.
My children were in awe of these actors and hung in the staircase all during dinner, trying to catch glimpses of their favorite actors. The following Saturday, Craig wrote a profile of me, with the recipes for all the dishes I had served at dinner that night.

I also met Pierre Franey, who wrote a weekly column for
The New York Times.
When I met Gael Greene, she was a young food writer for
New York
magazine. We struck a friendship then. She often would call me to ask about new restaurants I had found in Chinatown. She was very generous and would always cite me as her source and give me credit. Sometimes I wrote articles for Dorothy Kalins of
Metropolitan Home,
and many others.

I also began to meet chefs and was often invited to the opening of new restaurants. In New York, I met Andre Soltner of Lutece; Barry Wines of The Quilted Giraffe, who, like me, loved Japanese and Chinese cuisines; Larry Forgione at River Café, whose American Cuisine taught me a lot; but it was with Alice Waters and Jeremiah Towers of Chez Panisse with whom I really identified. Alice believed in home grown ingredients, fresh and seasonal. She also brought California’s attention to miniature vegetables, French string beans, local fish, and meats. For me they related to the way I actually cooked; they were the future in cooking. They also seemed to relate to what was happening in Europe, especially in France.