Recipes for Life (35 page)

A
NOTHER ENDEARING ASPECT
of touring the United States was that in every new city we played, we tried to find time to visit the most popular spots. Sometimes it was museums, or a historical district, or my favorite: famous restaurants. I ate well, gained weight, and savored every minute of it.

By the end of
Legends’
nine-month run, despite all the challenges, I was sad that it was going to be over: I actually loved doing the play. I was very touched that the director, John Bowab, and the producer, Ben Sprecher, thanked me and said that they would love to work with me again.

I still have the gift that the director gave me on opening night, a beautiful hand-painted blue box with an inspiring inscription from Henry David Thoreau: “I have learned . . . that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

Legends
taught me many lessons and gave me great gifts, some surprising, many empowering. In the end, I could be proud of my performance on-and offstage.

When the play came to LA, I was fortunate enough to stay at one of my favorite hotels, the Four Seasons. I had the best soup there I’d ever tasted. I was so excited that I just had to have the recipe. The Four Seasons’ executive chef, Ashley James, was kind enough to give it to me. I hope you love it as much as I do.

4 tablespoons olive oil

1 cup diced onion

½ cup diced celery

½ cup diced carrot

2 teaspoons chopped garlic

2 teaspoons ground cumin

1 teaspoon Sambal chili paste

1 bunch cilantro, finely chopped

3 whole very ripe organic bananas, sliced

1 cup fresh orange juice

4 cups chicken stock

4 sticks of split lemongrass Salt and white pepper to taste

2 cups coconut milk

Heat the oil in a thick-bottomed saucepot over medium-high heat.

Add onion, celery, and carrot; cook until the vegetables are nicely caramelized, add the chopped garlic, toasted cumin, Sambal, chopped cilantro, and then the sliced bananas, cook for a further 2 minutes until the bananas become mushy.

Deglaze the saucepot with the fresh orange juice stirring well, and scraping the bottom of the pot to remove all the flavors. Let the juice reduce by half. Stir in the chicken stock. Tie the split lemongrass with a piece of cotton kitchen string to make a small bundle, and add it with salt and pepper. Simmer and cook 20 minutes.

Remove the lemongrass, then puree all ingredients together with an immersion blender, or food processor. Strain the soup into a clean saucepot, pressing it through a sieve with the back of a spoon. Stir in the coconut cream and bring the soup to a boil. Adjust seasoning if necessary by adding more salt and pepper.

Serve in a cappuccino cup.

A
FTER THE PLAY
, I returned home to a number of stressful situations. Bunky was struggling with macular degeneration and heart issues. Part of me couldn’t come to terms with the fact that I couldn’t
fix
her. My sister Kat was battling cancer (which thank God she beat) but while she was going through it, I felt a helpless desperation for her. It was incredibly hard to see anyone I loved suffering. On top of that, some of my professional and personal relationships had become strained.

It was one thing after another, and things were spinning out of control. My control. I was on an emotional roller coaster that sent my blood pressure up over 200. I’d been remarkably healthy all of my life, so this news further unnerved me. I was put on medication, which made me dis oriented. So I decided to take myself off it. Unfortunately, that only made things worse. One day I was simply trying to pick up one of my cats when I blacked out and fell on my face.

At this point I really wasn’t sure how to put myself back together. It was completely against my nature to take any prescription medication, but I knew I needed help. I reluctantly took what the doctors gave me, which meant one pill led to another, then to another, and soon my stomach went out, then I couldn’t do this, and I couldn’t do that. . . .

The whole fabric of my reality frayed. For the first time in my life, I found myself battling against depression. I fought back. My faith and the knowledge I had from years of studying mind, body, and spiritual connections helped me. And I
would
start to feel better. Until something else would happen and knock me back down. Like when my sister Charlie suddenly needed surgery.

In my heart I knew the drugs were not going to help because I wasn’t fixing what needed fixing. I was just treating a symptom. I was putting a Band-Aid over a problem that wasn’t even close to healing. I didn’t know how to fix so many problems all at once. I didn’t know how to protect everyone. I didn’t know how to be happy unless everyone I cared about was happy.

Finally, I decided I needed to get off everything, so I went to a facility in Northern California that puts you on a doctor-supervised water fast. Within a few days I could tell I’d made the right decision; I was getting some of my clarity back, my life back. It was a healing time for me. I had stepped away from everyone else’s lives so that I had the time to reflect on what I needed to change in mine.

During those twenty-one days, I saw that it was
my perspective
of how life had to be that was making me unhappy. I couldn’t change what was happening around me, but I had the power to change how I reacted to it. My suffering wouldn’t change theirs. It was a recipe for disaster. I was looking outside myself for the answers, instead of inside. I finally saw that I would have some peace if I just saw things as they were and accepted them.

It was time to take off my rose-colored glasses and see all the colors of life, the sweet and the sad. I now understood that I could survive and hold my own joy, no matter what the people I love might be going through in their lives.

It has been one of my greatest gifts.

H
ELL’S KITCHEN
WAS
really heaven to me. In retrospect, I see how outrageous my decision was to fly to London to do a cooking show I knew nothing about. Somehow I couldn’t say no, so I knew it was going to be an unforgettable ride. How exciting that at sixty-six I was doing things I never would have taken on when I was younger!

Long before the invitation to do
Hell’s Kitchen
, I had read an article in one of my food magazines about Marco Pierre White and was fascinated by his life. He was the youngest English chef to ever receive three Michelin stars. When he reached the pinnacle of his success he walked away from it all for the next seven years.

When I learned that Marco was coming back to do
Hell’s Kitchen
, I was thrilled. Over the years, I’d paid a lot of money to take cooking lessons, and now they were offering to fly me to London (a city I love), and not only was Marco going to teach us, but three other world-class chefs as well: Mario Batali, Raymond Blanc, and Jean-Christophe Novelli.

With all my heart, I wanted to do it, although I didn’t really understand what it would entail, since I haven’t watched a lot of reality television. Plus, this was a British production, which I knew even less about. I just knew that I wanted the experience.

They had booked me at my favorite hotel in London, The Dorchester, so I just assumed that I would go in to work every day, then return each night to the hotel—not torture by anyone’s standards.

Shortly before I was scheduled to leave, we learned that I’d actually only be staying one night at The Dorchester. After that, I’d be living on
the set, literally locked in with the other eight celebrity contestants for at least the first week. Beyond that, it would depend on whether the chef “sacked” you or, if by some miracle, you made it to the second week.

We also learned that we wouldn’t be able to communicate with anyone on the outside: no visitors, cell phones, TV, books, magazines. Just cooking 24–7.

So, off I went to begin life in
Hell’s Kitchen
, and, God, am I glad I did. It was more wonderful than I could have ever imagined, despite the fact that it was a reality show designed to create as much drama among all the contestants as possible. Having just come off so much real-life drama of my own, my goal was to experience as much joy and fun as I could, while doing what I love.

It turned out that I was the only American in this wonderful assortment of amazing talents, including a famous soccer player, a rapper, a model, a talk show host, a businessman, an actor, and a comedian.

My family in
Hell.
Left to right: Anthea Turner, Grant Bovey, Danielle Bux, me, Adrian Edmondson, Jody Latham, Niomi McLean-Daley, Bruce Grobbelaar, Marco Pierre White.

The first night, the eight of us had dinner while they began filming us, and I decided to see if anyone else was in the mood to just have fun. I was delighted that everyone felt the same way. Of course, there did end up being some drama. It was impossible to avoid. Also, this wasn’t a set for a cooking school. They had built an actual restaurant, which each night would fill up with people, some famous, all expecting a meal prepared by a three-star Michelin chef and his staff, comprised primarily of the eight of us. But for the most part, we all really did get along incredibly well and we were all genuinely sad when one person had to be sent home by Marco or got voted off by the viewing audience.

We were building friendships and really starting to care for one another. Whenever I’d have trouble, because of the language barrier (don’t laugh—the combination of slang or heavy accents left me completely confused), everyone would laugh, but someone would always step in and help. If one of us failed at our cooking assignment, another covered as best we could for them. Finding myself with these terrific, caring people was a blessing. Each of them was a treasure. On top of all that, I was learning so much about cooking and the passion and dedication it takes to be a great chef.

We had been living cooking, night and day, for over a week when they asked us to catch an eel with our bare hands out of a tank on the set and bring it into the kitchen area in a net. I knew the minute they gave us the challenge what they were going to ask us to do. Sure enough, as we entered the kitchens, we could see areas with huge meat cleavers set out for us.