Mother knows best: Top chefs on their moms
Even the world's top chefs learned a thing or two from Mom
There's nothing like slaving over a hot stove-let alone a professional kitchen-to make you appreciate your mother. Gourmet's executive chef, Sara Moulton, credits her mom as a big career influence, remembering how the duo cooked their way through Craig Claiborne's New York Times Cookbook when Sara was in junior high. Mediterranean chef extraordinaire Todd English still makes his mother's Gooey Chocolate Cake-known to bring his staff running with gallons of milk in hand. And it turns out everything Italian restaurateur Pino Luongo knows about taste he got from his madre.
These are just a few of the dozens of culinary stars who talk about their moms' cooking and share recipes in Chris Styler's book Mom's Secret Recipe File. In honor of Mother's Day, we're highlighting five chef/mom pairs from the book and including a recipe from each.
Jamie Oliver
Fifteen restaurant, London
Jamie's mum, Sally Oliver, reminisces about Sunday dinners at the family's pub, the Cricketers. "Those dinners were a lot of fun," Sally Oliver recalls. "The kids would always prod my husband to make some sort of speech or toast. You know, 'Lovely to have you all here gathered around the table.' That sort of thing. Well, the kids would egg him on, he'd start to get all emotional, and then the kids would laugh and laugh."
Recipe: Rhubarb Daisy Cake
From Sally Oliver, in honor of the birth of Jamie's second daughter, Daisy.
Nigella Lawson
Author, How to Eat
"My grandmother and I used to cook together on Fridays. I don't know whether this meant it was a preschool exercise or whether we spent those days together during vacations, but I remember being deposited at her house in the morning, walking to the local butcher's...and buying strange delicacies we'd cook together in her big, airy kitchen with its black-and-white checkerboard floor."
Recipe: Liptauer
The deli-counter delicacy of Lawson's childhood.
Anthony Bourdain
Brasserie Les Halles, NYC
"Whether in a restaurant or at home, food, it was made clear, was not to be taken for granted, shoved into one's face like fuel. It was more than that. I have a lot of things to be grateful to my mom for, but that's a big one."
Recipe: Coquilles St.-Jacques
Bourdain associates this dish with his first imaginings of France .
Tom Colicchio
Craft, NYC
"Some of the dishes we ate for the holidays have evolved into dishes I've put on my restaurants' menus. At Gramercy Tavern I combined a version of my grandmother's beet salad and her flaked salt cod salad with a roasted cod fillet. And when I wanted to add a cannelloni dish to Gramercy's menu, I called my mom."
Recipe: Polenta Gratin with Mushroom Bolognese
Inspired by Colicchio's grandmother's polenta gratin.
José Ramón Andrés
Jaleo, Café Atlantico, Zaytinya, all in Washington, D.C.,
"Women's cooking has always had a big influence on me personally. I guess that from the moment we are fed by our mothers, without even knowing it, we are caught in a net that brings us comfort, something we always feel when a special woman cooks for us. It is something unique and personal-it is something we want to keep for ourselves."
Recipe: Beef with Cabrales "Mama Marisa"
The taste of Cabrales always transports Andrés to the region in Spain where he and his mother were born.
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