Mediterranean Women Stay Slim, Too: Eating to Be Sexy, Fit, and Fabulous! (37 page)

√ My Path to Primo

Before I go on about freshness, as I tend to do, let me tell you a little bit about how I became a chef. I pretty much always worked in the food service industry. In high school, my first job was at a pizzeria. It seemed a natural fit because I was so used to being around food all the time. I continued to work in restaurants during college, then I got a job at a seafood restaurant in Long Island. The chef had graduated from the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, New York, and I can’t tell
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you how much I wanted to work in that kitchen. But at that restaurant at that time, there weren’t any women in the kitchen.

The chef wasn’t about to put his reputation on the line by letting untrained me into the inner sanctum of his restaurant, but he told me I should check out the Culinary Institute. If I went to school, he implied, maybe he would hire me. I took this to mean that maybe cooking professionally was something I could do.

So off I went to the Culinary Institute. From that point on, I just fell in love with cooking. I would become a chef, and I knew it. I became very serious and dedicated in school, putting all my energy into learning as much as I could. My favorite part was working in the restaurant at the end of the program, a sort of apprenticeship. Finally, there I was, working in a restaurant kitchen—not the one I’d originally tried to enter but a restaurant kitchen nevertheless. The learning didn’t end with school.

Every time I travel or even go to a restaurant, I learn something. That’s one of the reasons I love food so much. The learning is endless. You never get bored.

I’ve worked in a lot of restaurants since then, in West Virginia, New York City with Larry Forgione, Miami, and in California at Chez Panisse with Alice Waters, where I really matured as a chef, developing an individual style based on seasonality and freshness, using ingredients from local growers.

This is still a big priority for me personally and for Primo, and it really has become a part of my soul. I took this lesson with me when I worked and cooked in Denver, when I traveled to Europe to cook for private families, and even when I went to Japan to help open a restaurant. By the time I was hired at Old Chatham Sheepherding Company Inn in the beautiful Hudson Valley (New York), I felt I had truly come full circle back to my roots, embracing a true calling.

Old Chatham Sheepherding Company is the largest sheep dairy farm in America, with more than a thousand sheep. They
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milk the sheep and make wonderful cheese. When I was hired, the farm had an old house on the property, and they wanted to open a bed-and-breakfast. They said they were looking for a chef, but I didn’t want to be limited to cooking breakfast, so I talked them into having a restaurant along with the inn. My partner, Price, and I ran it for four and a half years. I was the chef and Price was the pastry chef. We had an innkeeper, we put in a garden, and we cooked from the garden and had lambs and pigs on the premises for use in the kitchen. We had a big budget and it was a great experience, but we knew all along that what we really wanted was to open our own restaurant. We got all kinds of accolades for the work we did and the food we cooked. But Price and I had our eyes on Maine.

The beauty of the Maine coast really drew us there. Price’s parents owned property in Rockland. Finding a 125-year-old Victorian house just outside of town on four lovely acres seemed to be a good sign. That was in 1999. The house was stuffy, with layers of wall coverings and heavy carpet. We didn’t have a lot of money, so we decided to do all the renovation ourselves. We stripped the house to its bare bones, then let it breathe—a metaphor for the way I like to prepare food. It took eight months, but the house became fresh. It was open and alive again.

And we’ve been here ever since. Freshness is our mantra at Primo and the guiding principle behind everything we do. I change Primo’s menu every single day to feature what I can get right here, right now. Only our field green salad, which we call Lucy’s Salad after our head grower, Lucy Yanz, and our seasonal pizza, remain on the menu, although they change in composition according to the season. Primo’s menu is ultimately seasonal with a Mediterranean flavor. I grow most of the ingredients we use right here on Primo’s grounds. During parts of the year, the restaurant is almost totally self-sustaining.

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We make our own vinegar, we grow our own organic herbs, we have a tea garden, and we have huge vegetable and flower gardens on the grounds. Lucy nurtures them all. We also have two greenhouses where we grow winter greens all year, and one greenhouse stays warm in the dead of winter even though it is unheated. Price makes his own sourdough starter, which he feeds three times a day to keep it alive for the most wonderful bread filled with energy and life. We even raise pigs and buy local chickens for use in the restaurant. We butcher on the premises, make our own stock, and use only the seafood we can get right here from the waters off the coast.

√ A New Way to Eat

Sometimes, the food I serve at Primo is a hard sell for Americans. It’s really a whole new way for many people to eat. People love chicken, but they aren’t sure they want to try rabbit. They love halibut but are hesitant about wolffish, even though this local delicacy is delicious. The wolffish in Maine eat the lobster and crab in the local water, so their meat is white and sweet, yet much less expensive than lobster or halibut. Wolffish live 5,000

feet deep in the water, where it is supercold, so they have an incredibly clean taste. Also, wolffish is not overcooked like halibut and cod. Everyone who tries this fish loves it. But many people don’t like to try anything new. That’s one habit that everyone should break! Healthy eating must include variety.

People often ask me about how I stay so thin as a chef. I taste food all day long, but that is part of the key to my way of eating.

I’m very conscious of everything I eat. I pay attention to my food because food is so important to me—because I love food so much. I don’t mindlessly shove food into my mouth, because that would be such a terrible waste not only of food but of my own essential vitality. I would miss out on the goodness.

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In the morning, I usually eat a little yogurt or granola. I drink tea all day long, and I eat a lot of vegetables, nuts, and fruits, the bulk of my diet. I have balance in my diet. I really work for that because of the way it makes me feel and because that is how I have learned to eat. When I eat protein such as fish or meat, I have a small portion, maybe 4 ounces, not a 12-ounce steak. Because I am always tasting, tasting, tasting, I have a lot of little meals throughout the day.

Research backs up this approach to eating. A recent study compared two groups of people eating the same number of calories every day. One group ate all the calories in two meals. The other ate the same number of calories but in five little meals. After twelve weeks, the group eating twice per day lost weight, but evaluations revealed it was primarily muscle weight. The group eating more meals also lost weight, and it was almost entirely weight from fat! When you are trying to keep your metabolism up and your body burning fat throughout the day, little tastes are definitely the way to go. It’s the body’s natural way to snack rather than stuff.

Sure, sometimes I get really hungry. But when I do, I don’t grab chips or those Twinkies I used to think I wanted so badly.

I make a beautiful salad or crunch some fresh vegetables from the garden outside the door, or I snack on a handful of nuts. Let me give you an example of some of the things I might snack on—Mediterranean classic tastes that are most assuredly
not
junk food but are perfectly wonderful as snack food. These are simple to make, easy to eat, and convenient to have with you when you get hungry.

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Spicy Walnuts

M a k e s 1 p o u n d

√These spicy walnuts really wake up the palate. You don’t need too many, but a handful of nuts each day has been linked to good heart health. Exercising Mediterranean restraint, enjoy a few of these meaty, spicy nuts as a prelude to your family dinner or when you have hunger pangs between meals.

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 teaspoons ground cumin

1⁄2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

3 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons prepared Cajun seasoning

1 pound raw walnuts, large pieces

(or combine 1/2 teaspoon each

Salt to taste

minced garlic, coriander, hot

paprika, and onion powder)

1.
In a medium saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter until it foams. Add the cayenne pepper, Cajun seasoning, cumin, and sugar, and mix well.

2.
Add the walnuts and toss until toasted and just starting to darken in color, about 5 minutes. Spread the walnuts on a cooling rack over a tray or baking sheet to cool. Dust with salt and serve. Store remaining nuts in an airtight container up to 3

weeks.

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Olive Sampler

If you don’t like olives, you may have never tried the really good kind from the Mediterranean. I don’t mean those green, pimiento-stuffed “Spanish” olives (really from California) that are better off in somebody’s martini. I mean small French picholines or niçoise olives, plump kalamata olives from Greece, Spanish Arbequina olives, salt-cured olives from North Africa . . . and that’s just the beginning. Olives have such an intense flavor that you only need a few to feel like you’ve really tasted something. Fortunately, most grocery store delis offer a variety of good Mediterranean olives.

The best way to get to know olives is to try them. Pick up a jar of assorted olives the next time you are at the market, or get several small containers of different kinds. Be careful of the pits! Most Mediterranean olives still have them, but they are easy to remove. Just whack the olive with the flat side of a chef’s knife, then pop out the pit with your fingers. Each type of olive has its unique taste, texture, and color. Learn to appreciate olives, and you’ll have a new ingredient to incorporate into your cooking. You’ll also have a quick snack to wake up your palate.

Some people may worry about the high fat content of olives, but this is no more of a concern than the fat content of olive oil.

Olives are part of the Mediterranean diet that results in better health and lower weight: Mediterranean olives have such intense flavor that just a few are satisfying. Plus, they contain the same heart-healthy oil as olive oil ( you’ll learn all about this in chapter 4), so eating olives is just one more way to make olive oil the primary source of fat in your diet. Snacking on a few olives is like snacking on a handful of nuts: they are filling and satisfying. So enjoy those savory olives!

Another way to enjoy olives is to add them to a salad. Combine fresh greens, a handful of olives, a handful of fresh al-Where I Come From

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monds, some chopped fresh tomatoes, a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil, and freshly squeezed lemon juice. That should take care of your hunger pangs.

Cheese Sampler

Cheese is another great snack for satisfying your hunger, but you don’t need a lot of it. Forget bland American cheese (or worse yet, “cheese food”!). Mediterranean cheese is often made from sheep’s milk or goat’s milk, and any store with a respectable gourmet cheese section will offer at least a few good-quality cheeses from the Mediterranean. Some are for cooking, such as creamy ricotta; others are for grating, such as Parmesan, pecorino, and Romano. Today there are great American cheese makers producing Mediterranean-quality cheeses. Buy locally!

You can also enjoy cheese out of hand or on a salad, a toasted pita wedge, or a thin slice of baguette. Try Greek feta, French Roquefort or Camembert, Italian Gorgonzola, Spanish Manchego—these are just a few of the hundreds of Mediterranean cheeses available. Many American dairies and artisanal cheese makers produce beautiful, delicious fresh cheese from sheep’s milk and goat’s milk, including my favorite (and former employer), Old Chatham Sheepherding Company. Look for American-made artisinal versions of your favorite cheese styles.

Ask the person at the cheese or deli counter what’s new, what’s good, what to try. If you always have at least two different wedges of high-quality cheese in your house, you’ll never go hungry.

Fruit Mélange

What could be sweeter than a perfectly ripe piece of fruit? In the Mediterranean, fruit is dessert, but it is also something to eat when you need a snack between meals. Eating a ripe piece
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of fruit is an event in itself in the sensual Mediterranean, where the firm, ripe flesh, the flowing juice, and the round curve of a perfect fruit suggest pure pleasure. We often refrigerate our fruits, which hinders the juiciness somewhat and impedes flavor, all to be able to keep the fruit around longer. Fruit should be kept on the counter and eaten when it can barely hold its juices any longer. What luxury. Certainly you are perfectly fulfilled after eating a snack like that! Don’t you feel just a little more Mediterranean already?

√ Stepping into the Mediterranean Spirit

Whenever I visit Sicily, I am struck by how similar it is to Maine. Both look out over the sea. Both are a little old-fashioned yet in so being, they become almost progressive. In big cities, everybody is striving to imitate the old ways. Sicily is still steeped in the old ways that Americans want to reclaim so desperately.

In Sicily, people really do go to the market every day. You can wander through the stands and stalls and meet a little, old Sicilian lady standing on the side of the street filleting anchovies. You can ask to take her picture, and she is so happy to pose for you and smile. In Sicily, people love what they do.