Celebrating women chefs and opening the kitchen doors for more of them: at one of 80 benefit dinners across the country. Now, let’s encourage more women winemakers.
Wine, Women and Food
The remarkable thing about prominent women chefs is that they are no longer remarkable. Not too long ago, articles about women cooking professionally would dutifully point out how far they have come. Now, their accomplishments are discussed matter-of-factly in the context of food, not gender.
This was made bounteously clear on a recent Saturday night when I attended a celebration of women chefs at the Ross School. It was one of eighty benefit dinners across the country on that same evening, all hosted by a professional organization called Women Chefs and Restaurateurs to raise money for scholarships and other programming. Ann Cooper, Executive Chef of the Ross School and a former president of WCR, organized a very ambitious and distinctive dinner. Sterling Vineyards, a large and respected Napa Valley winery, supplied a selection of wines for all of the national dinners.
(It occurs to me that women winemakers or sommeliers have not reached quite the same acceptance level or prominence as women chefs, but it is clearly only a matter of time. I look forward to reporting on a similar event for women in the world of wine in the not too distant future.)
Passed hors d’oeuvres included a gravlax and goat cheese tart, made with wild salmon and cured in the Ross School kitchen. (The kitchen and dining room at the Ross School bear only a vanishing resemblance to what we generally think of as a school lunchroom.) The accompanying wine, Sterling’s Napa Valley sauvignon blanc 2002, was a fine sipping wine, and with its firm acidity and ripe, fresh fruit quality, paired well with all the hors d’oeuvres, strong enough for wild rice cakes with duck confit, crisp enough for vegetable summer rolls, and zesty enough for the wood-fired mushroom and arugula pizza.
Ordinarily I would not pair a typical California chardonnay, with its heavy oak undertones, with raw oysters, but a dollop of frozen ginger mignonette on the oyster made all the difference when I tasted the Vintner’s Collection chardonnay 2002, a simple and pleasant wine with appealing body and concentration. The same wine was a natural choice for seared sea scallops with mushroom ravioli.
A salad of grilled quail with Parmesan croutons was matched with Vintner’s Collection Central Coast Shiraz 2002. It was an interesting wine, not at all like the Australian shirazes we are used to, but with delicate and silky fruit, light tannin, and a slightly herbaceous taste. Cabernet sauvignon 2000—with a lushly exemplary cab flavor—was served with a rich dish of braised beef ribs with creamy polenta and red wine sauce. It was a classic and perfect marriage. I continued sipping this with dessert, a bittersweet chocolate cake with orange rind candied there on the premises.
Retail prices for the Sterling wines, when I checked, turned out to be surprisingly moderate. Vintner’s Selections sell for $12, sauvignon blanc for $13, and the cabernet sauvignon for $25. The best local source is Franey’s Wine & Spirits on Springs Fireplace Road.
The event was titled “Menus with Meaning” referring to the philanthropy. Judging from the variety of people attending the Ross School event, our menu must have had many different meanings. Perhaps because of the season, it was more locals and old-timers than the usual summer benefit party crowd and the well-heeled foodies you might expect. I spotted among the crowd Lauren Jarrett of EECO Farm, the artist Bill King, Betty Fox, whose son attends the school, Joe Guerrara, proprietor of Citarella, Jola Maracario, who attends cooking classes there, and Helen Lowry, a neighbor from the very old days on Gerard Drive—a highly diverse group with at least this one common interest.
Food and wine events like this are increasingly part of our East End culture and yet another reason for us to be proud to live here. That it benefits a cause like scholarships for young women is particularly gratifying. Ann Cooper, the Ross School Café Team, Sterling Vineyards, and of course Women Chefs and Restaurateurs have earned my respect and support, not to mention my craving to eat like this more often.
