Ray Gillespie and me

Last Saturday, Raymond Gillespie, chef at Salumeria Italiana in the North End, and I sacrificed a perfect beach day to demonstrate Rubio Aged Balsamic at Shubie’s in Marblehead. Here we are (Ray is the cute one on the left).

Most of the customers were busy gathering provisions for boating excursions (lots of chips, takeout, beer, and cheeses). But plenty stopped by to sample Rubio over ice cream — even the skeptics were won over– straight up, and in a cocktail with vodka, bitters and soda water. Shubie’s is a beautiful store, and we had fun talking to people, changing their views about vinegar. Of course, there were some who’d recently been to Italy or were already customers of the North End store. Those we didn’t have to convince.

When the Highland Park Scotch tasting started in late afternoon (hard to compete with free Scotch), we packed up our recipes and brochures, and shopped for wine and French cheeses — a little cross-cultural exchange is always good in food.

Saturday evening I get an email from Gordon Hamersley. Would I like to blog about the Chefs Stand for Haiti dinner at Rialto the next night? This was not a difficult decision — the cause is so stellar, the chefs are so fantastic, the idea is so fun — no contest. So Sunday June 6, I drive through torrential rain to Rialto. There, the kitchen is full of some of the best and most celebrated chefs in Boston — Gordon, of course, and Jody Adams of Rialto, Frank McClelland of L’Espalier, Ken Oringer of Clio and Toro, Jamie Bissonette of Toro and Coppa, Barry Maiden of Hungry Mother, Steven Brand and Susan Regis of Upstairs on the Square, Tim and Nancy Cushman of O Ya, Dante deMagistris of Dante and Il Casale, Louis DiBicarra of Sel de la Terre, Joanne Chang of Flour and Myers & Chang, Andy Husbands of Tremont 647 and Sister Sorel, Rich Valente of Legal Sea Foods, Peter Davis   of Henrietta’s Table, Patricia Yeo of Ginger Park, and Ron Abel and Nookie Postal  of Fenway Park.

The mood is jovial, the banter quick, the connections those close and vital ones that bind chefs together no matter how short the time or strong the competition. Jody Adams explains it best: “We didn’t quite expect them all to say yes,” she says. She, Gordon and Andy were contacted in the winter after the devastating earthquake in Haiti by Billy Shore of Share Our Strength and by Partners in Health. “Could the chefs help.” Chefs and restaurants are known for their charitable work. But this query was unusual because of the urgency and the dedication of those involved. And the response was immediate. So a winter tragedy led to an early summer feast.

Susan Regis works

The kitchen was humming with chefs working quickly against a tight deadline to feed 91 guests who had paid $1,000 a plate. But the conversation flowed, showing the tight bonds that bind Boston’s chef community. And the appetizers were gorgeous. Regis and Brand worked to on boudin blanc with topped with rhubarb from a friend’s Marblehead garden and garlic crisps. Maiden prepared hoe cakes to go with lamb crepinettes with a pistou of basil and black walnuts. Yeo fried foie gras and short rib dumplings to be served with a spicy chili sauce. Davis finished house-smoked duck with a rhubarb chutney on pumpkin bread. DeMagistris patiently pressed 200 servings of veal tonnato paninis, an irresistible Italianate version of grilled cheese.

There was urban gardening: Bissonnette’s green pea and sheep’s milk ricotta with lardo was garnished with sweet cicely from his garden next to Toro in the South End. And rural farming: All the greens for the dinner to follow (by the Rialto team) was from McClelland’s Hamilton farm. And he also provided beautiful French breakfast radishes with sweet butter and salt.

French breakfast radishes

Hamersley passed out succulent lamb chops with an apriot jam. Cushman stirred a spicy Thai tomato and chanterelle soup, musing that at O Ya, he might have added lobster. Oringer composes a delicate oyster Royale (oyster cream with coconut milk, sake, and thyme) on shrimp toasts. Abell passes around lobster rolls, quickly snapped up by the chefs “Only the Red Sox could afford lobster,” one quips.

As the chefs worked, guests begin to filter in, eager to meet them. “This is so much fun in here,” says one as the stainless-steel restaurant kitchen began to resemble a house party.

In Rialto’s bar, Jim Ansara, formerly of Shawmut Construction who has been working in Haiti as well as raising money, talks proudly of a Partners in Health teaching hospital that’s about to begin in construction. “This would be challenging here,” he says. In devastated Haiti, “it’s really challenging.”

Hamersley's lamb chops

As the guests take their seats, and begin to look at the Rialto menu of a light summer vegetable antipasto and organic chicken, nibbling on breads brought out in huge wooden baskets, Adams introduces the chefs. Then she gives a benediction of sorts, the reason that chefs came together to help others in a time of ongoing need.

Quoting Gandhi, she says: “There are people so hungry that they cannot see God except in the form of bread.”

Breaking bread together to help those in need: It’s a beautiful thing.

NEXT: An auction followed the dinner. Find out about the dream venues and the chef matchups, plus how much money was raised!

Chefs laugh in Rialto kitchen

My husband, who first dismisses the trendy — Twitter, any music after 1970, any clothing past UnderArmour — and then embraces it with a passion, has discovered food blogging.

 It started with his new phone — a Droid. He began taking photos of dishes I made. Then he started taking photos at restaurants. Now, you can’t stop him. I think it’s embarrassing (not to mention the food gets cold) but restaurant personnel are so used to blogging that flashes going off at every table don’t even cause a ripple in the staff’s attention.

I must admit, his photos are pretty good. Here is his photo of bibimbap at the H-Mart food court in Burlington.

Delicious bibimbap

He’s now way into Twitter, and sometimes he’ll listen to music past the heyday of rock n’roll.

But will I ever get to eat a meal in peace?  And, by the way, will he ever get over his UnderArmour fascination?

See you in the next decade, a restaurateur emailed me, and I had to stop and think: “Oh, yes, tomorrow’s not just the new year but the 20teens.”

The last day of the year is always a time for remembering what we liked about the last, but I think looking ahead is more appropriate for a brand new 10 years. So what do I want?

1. That food safety comes to the forefront of American attention. Those stories about ammonia-treated processed (or as one insider calls it “pink slime”) beef sold for school lunches because it can reduce costs by pennies even if e coli and samonella might be present are truly horrifying. And disgraceful for a country rich with agricultural resources.

2. That farmers, including vegetable farmers, be recognized and rewarded fairly for what they do.

3. That independent, gimmick-free restaurants do well by feeding us well.

4. That obesity become a past-tense problem.

5. That hunger be diminishes, if not wiped out.

6. That we eat wisely and well.

For those of us working in the world of food, the subject of hunger is vexing. That some seek out the most luxurious and rarest in comestibles, others consume much, too much, and yet so many never have enough to eat seems unreconcilable.

Boston area restaurateurs and chefs are famously known for being charitable to hunger-related causes. But even the waves of donations — from benefits for Greater Boston Food Bank  to Share Our Strength to local groups such as My Brothers’ Table  in Lynn — are a drop in the bucket. This year, especially the need far outstrips the giving.

So what can we personally do about hunger? I have no set answer, no panacea for the ills of the world. Only the beginning of  a gift list.

Heifer International and pig gift

 Yesterday, I went online and bought my parents, who spent their younger years giving as much as they could to their extended families, community, church, and those in far away places, a pig. Well, not really a live, squealing pig Fed-exed to them, but $120 to Heifer International. This will pay for a family in a developing country to have a pig that can feed and provide for them. Oh, and I dropped a couple of dollars into a Salvation Army bucket (my mother rang a bell for years at Christmas time).

Next week, I’ll decide how much I can give to My Brother’s Table, which feeds and cares for homeless in Lynn. After that, I’ll consider my New Year’s Resolutions — what will the next year bring and what I can do — from helping to find restaurateurs willing to participate in charitable events to volunteering to putting up some money. 

It’s only a little, a drop in the bucket of need, and certainly miniscule compared to what others give.  But it’s my drop into the bucket of hunger.

By now, everyone who’s anyone in the food world has opined on the closing of Gourmet. It’s sad, true. But that’s almost more from an historical perspective — 69 years is a pretty impressive run — than its current standing in the world of food. In this Twitter-Food Network-Chowhound era, did anyone wait breathlessly for the latest issue of Gourmet — or any other magazine?

What I’ll miss: Barry Estabrook’s pieces on the politics of food, especially one tracing  the e coli outbreak in spinach and its results.  And the travel articles (unfortunately few of late).

What I won’t miss: Although Gourmet always looked stylish, the design changes veered so wildly that beyond the pretty cover, it was hard to tell sometimes what you were looking at. And I particularly disliked the photographs of farmers over the last years who seemed to be purposedly “dirtied up” to match somebody’s notion of agricultural reality (this is done elsewhere and it’s sooo annoying. As though everyone  in rural areas neglects to wash their hands or faces when a photographer shows up.)

And the A-Z redesign with copious recipes recently looked like a last-ditch panic — which I guess it was.

Connecting the dots between food and our larger world was the greatest service of Gourmet. That blurred sometimes when the fattest issues seemed to only trumpet the excesses of restaurant extravagance or the thinnest only comfort food. But by knitting together travel, food memory, the restaurant world, and food politics, Gourmet could make a statement and do it stylishly. 

I’ll keep as many issues of Gourmet as I have room for — I’ve saved holiday issues for ideas and recipes for decades, and often refer or find old issues when I travel. In a Food Network magazine era, that information and that style unfortunately won’t be matched.

I talked today to Ron Cardoos of Green Harbor Associates, recently back from the American Cheese Society event  in Austin, Texas. He raved about the event — more than 1,300 cheeses to taste. And we marveled at the success of Shy Brothers Farm Hannahbells which won a medal along with many Vermont successes. But one milestone we discussed was the beautiful Cabot clothbound cheddar, which I tasted just the night before on my friend Judy Mattera back patio. This cheddar rivals any of the British greats, and tastes as much like ordinary cheddar as Kraft singles tastes like aged Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Cabot clothbound cheeses aging

Ron said that now Grafton Cheese was getting into the act, with the Kehler brothers of Jasper Hill Farms and their affineur (cave aging) program as the midwife.

I say “Bring it on.” If the big companies join in the with the smaller outfits to improve cheese in America, we’ll all be better off. America’s dairies and agricultural can support good cheese — and American consumers are ready, I think, to buy into that. If France is impossible to govern (as Charles deGaulle said) because it has 246 cheeses, think how many the US might produce? Cheese for all, and all for cheese!

The dining room of Blue Hill New York

Embellishing their rep as the coolest couple, the Obamas not only went to dinner and a show the other night in New York, but chose to eat at Blue Hill. Dan Barber’s dedication to organic, sustainably-raised and  local food is well-known, and having the President and First Lady at your table will only burnish that.

But it seems a tease that in this restaurant-obsessed country we don’t  know what they ate. I bet even the Republicans fulminating about how inappropriate the Obamas’ date was would like to know?  Will Dan tell all?

Grandma Doll's rhubarb pie

Yesterday I made my grandmother’s rhubarb pie. Grandma Doll was a shy woman, well-known in our small Western Kansas community for her cooking and baking. Like many shy people, she was possessed of a steely will and uncompromising standards. When she baked, the eggs had to be days from the hen, the butter had to be fresh, the rhubarb from her garden patch. Bigger projects, like her chicken and noodles, called for more drastic measures such as fattening the chickens from her parents’ farm in a pen in the yard, butchering them, plucking them (I got to help with that) and making the noodles by hand. Nothing was too much trouble, but the point was freshness, not gourmet cooking (not that she would have known what that was).

So when I wanted to bring a pie to friends’ house for dinner, I found the little card entitled “From the kitchen of Dora Doll.”  The pie starts with eggs whipped with sugar which lightens the rhubarb and cuts its tartness. And a lattice top makes the pie pretty. And as I read to the end of the recipe, I realized that Grandma had carefully noted the recipe’s origin. She had adapted it from Mrs. W.H. Webb of Lyons, Kan., whose recipe had run in a local paper.

Much of today’s world would baffle my grandmother, who died in the late 1980s. But the new appreciation for eating locally and knowing the source of ingredients would have seemed no more than common sense to Grandma, a locavore before her time.

It’s beem a tough couple of weeks for the pig. For a couple of years now, the pig has been the darling of gourmands and the talk of chefdom. Pig cheeks, fatback, lardo, trotters, Berkshire black pigs, head cheese — a veritable litany of culinary piggy obsessions.

Now we’re in the midst of hysteria about swine flu, and no matter how many authorities (CDC, medical writers, etc) say that eating pork does not give you swine flu, the questions keep coming. Then, a National Institutes of Health-AARP  decade-long study came out this week, saying that overconsumption of red meat can hurt your health and shorten your life span. (Yes, I know the National Pork Board calls pork “the other white meat” but the USDA and nutritionists count it as red because of its fat and cholesterol content.)

Still, we can learn from the pig. As Jane Brody of the New York Times points out, the study is not saying don’t eat any red meat. Just cut back to a hot dog every once in a while or a burger a week. Vary your diet, eat more fish, fruit and vegetables, throw in some lentils and beans plus some whole grains. As any farmer knows, pigs eat anything and everything. No mono diet for them. So though we wouldn’t want to shovel in the feed like they do, porcine variety could be a good thing. In other words, maybe we should eat like a pig.