It all started with a carrot cake recipe in the L.A. Times Cookbook. I was 14 and the recipe looked good (except for the raisins, and the pineapple, and the sluice of raspberry jam smeared over the cream cheese frosting). So I made it...without the raisins, or the pineapple, or the jam. It turned out delicious.
Then a few months later a friend had a birthday and I wanted to do something special. I remembered that that cake had turned out well, so I decided to make it again. Only I didn't have walnuts, so I decided to use hazelnuts instead. My 14-year old klutzy self was afraid that I would cut myself if I took a knife to them, so I put the nuts in a blender and pressed chop. What remained when I shut the machine off was a course dust that I've since learned to call nut flour. Not what I expected, but into the batter it went. I didn't have oil, so I melted some butter. I set the cake to bake and turned my attention to the frosting. I didn't have cream cheese. At this point I figured I was done and my cake beyond salvage, but my mother (a formidable cook and baker) showed me how to make a Viennese butter cream. Hello elegance. When I finished assembling the cake, the pastry on the kitchen table looked like something from a European bakery. It tasted light and toasty and creamy and all sorts of good. I was pretty much hooked on baking.
By the time I graduated college I had reworked that cake recipe into everything from a chocolate walnut torte with white chocolate mouse and fresh raspberries to a banana rum cake with cinnamon buttercream frosting. My roommate joked that one day I would make three changes to the recipe and end up with a meat loaf. She nick named me "the queen of substitution." And even though I lived in New York City, the take-out capital of the world, a slim wallet and force of habit conspired to have me cooking for myself and others pretty much every day of the week.
A habit of asking "I wonder how to do that?" combined with a low budget will turn up some pretty inventive combinations and some fabulous feasts of daring-do. One week, with $3 left in my pocket to cover dinner for four days until I got paid, I invented a stew of sweet potatoes, yellow lentils, ginger, and rosemary. On a camping trip, I consented to cook a traditional roast beef dinner over an open fire. I had to call up the recipes from memory and I misjudged the the flour to liquid ratio on the Yorkshire pudding. The combination of milk, eggs, flour and beef drippings, came off as more of a baked dumpling than the traditional puff of pudding. It wasn't the texture I was going for, but it tasted good, soaked up gravy pretty well and I got points for hutzpah. A working gas line and three candles helped me cook up a hot bacon and egg breakfast (including bread toasted on a fork over a gas burner) for the doormen who spent the night of the 2003 blackout carrying our elderly tenants upstairs and manning the lobby in my New York apartment building. That Christmas I made those same doormen each a gingerbread reindeer with their name on it. I think they liked it better than some of the cash tips they got. Good food, made with care just makes people smile.
Beyond cooking this became the way I approached getting a job, falling in love, making a home:
Make it solid. Make it beautiful. Make it yours.
And when ever you can, make it to share.
I've lived in New York City acting, directing, hosting parties, and building feasts for over a decade. I currently reside in Jersey City, NJ with my musician husband where I grow and cook food, and strive for celebration daily. Years spent teaching friends to cook, creating birthday cakes based on their personality profiles, and inventing cocktails to mark special occasions, taught me that improvisation is a way of life. Most people think improvisation is making it up, but truly improv is taking what you know and applying it to what could be. It usually results in something unique and often something special. Let's figure out how we can take what you know and make something special together.
Yvonne