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Meet Marie!

 

Meet Marie Simmons at Copia’s Edible Garden Festival

 

Sunday August 24

 

Demo, Tasting, and Book Signing

All About Figs

Fig Quesadillas Tasting

Meyer Food Forum

2 PM and 4 PM

 

Fig Heaven: 70 Recipes for the World’s Most Luscious Fruit

 

500 First Street

Napa California

 

It is always fun for me to return to Copia. I worked there as the Culinary Programs Manager a few ago and will never forget the many great people I met while I was there. The gardens were my favorite haunt during my time there. In the summer I especially loved the fig trees. There are two sturdy Black Mission trees that kept my classes supplied on a regular basis, one lovely and more delicate green fig tree with especially sweet, juicy fruit. But my one true love was a small fig tree planted in a large pot. The figs it bore were shaped like large tear drops covered with a dusty violet skin. I think the variety is called Celeste. At any rate going back to Copia, walking through the pretty garden, seeing old friends, and making new ones will be great fun. I hope you can join me.

 

Details:http://www.copia.org/2008-edible-gardens-festival or call 1 707.259.1600 or 1 800 51 COPIA.

 

Marie’s teaching at Rancho La Puerta in Tecate, Mexico

September 27-October 4, 2008

 

Click here for details

 

 

 

“To make the perfect meatball you need the love. Without the love it’s just a ball of meat.”

Marie—the mother on the TV sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond”

 

For me, cooking is like breathing. It comes naturally, intuitively, without a moment’s hesitation.

 

I cook because I love everything about it: The process; the ingredients, the aromas; the taste…..and the ultimate experience of sharing food lovingly cooked and prepared.

 

That’s where you come in.

 

This website allows me to share almost a lifetime of cooking. It all began in my grandmother’s and mother’s kitchen many years ago. Their influence inspired me to study foods and nutrition in college with the goal of working in magazine test kitchens as a career. Ultimately I became a cookbook author and food writer with over 30 years of experience. During this time I’ve been researching food, eating— both around the world and down the road— and cooking—always cooking. It seems no matter what my destination or my intention, my journey always leads me to the kitchen. It’s there that I am obviously the happiest.

 

The result is that I’ve published thousands of recipes, written hundreds of features and columns for magazines and newspapers, and authored numerous cookbooks.

 

Here I intend to share the best of what I’ve produced and much of the newer stuff I’m now working on. I hope that for you, logging on to this website is akin to having me at your side either in the kitchen or— better yet— sitting down at the table and enjoying a meal—if not in the flesh, then certainly through a cyber connection—together.

 

 

 

 

 

My new book for

Sur La Table

 

 

News Bites

I’ve been on the road the last two months teaching cooking classes and making media appearances to help promote my latest cookbook, Things Cooks Love: Implements, Ingredients, Recipes. The massive cookbook was commissioned by Sur La Table, the trusted cookware authority, and contains detailed descriptions of over 60 pieces of cookware, each accompanied by two luscious recipes. In it you will find everything from the basics like Dutch ovens and roasting pans to exotics like the Portuguese

cataplana and the Moroccan couscoussièr.

 

For the tour I taught classes at select Sur La Table locations in the DC area, Chicago, Kirkland WA, Portland OR, Southern California, San Francisco Bay Area, and Texas. In many of these cities I met with food editors of local newspapers, magazines, and websites, chatted on radio about the book, and made television appearances. While in Southern California I stopped by colleague, friend, and cookbook author and Orange Country Register food editor Cathy Thomas’ house where she films cooking segments for the paper’s website. To view the website please click on this link (or paste into your browser):  www.ocregister.com/food

 

 

In Cathy’s kitchen I smoked prosciutto wrapped shrimp quickly and easily in a stovetop smoker. I selected this piece of cookware for the book because I had never used one before. I originally approached this new (to me) piece of cookware with some skepticism. But the first time I used it I was hooked. The set up is simple and all the recipes I tested turned out terrific. I demonstrated the shrimp in all the classes I taught throughout the country and everyone said that they loved them.

 

Click here for the Smoked Proscuitto Wrapped Shrimp recipe. In the recipe head note I give alternatives for those of you who don’t own a stovetop smoker and suggestions for other foods that can be smoked. If the stovetop smoker is a piece of cookware you think you might enjoy owning (they’re not expensive) take a look at the website www.surlatable.com.

 

 

From Nana’s Kitchen to Becoming a Cookbook Author 

 

When people hear I’m a cookbook author, they often ask, “How does one go about writing a cookbook?” And my answer is always, “Page, by page.”

 

I wasn’t born knowing how to write a cookbook, but I was groomed for the task by being born into a family of avid cooks. My fondest childhood memories are not of dolls and games, but of Saturdays spent in my grandmother’s –affectionately known as Nana—kitchen rolling out cookie dough, shaping fresh pasta, or peeling apples for pie.  

I studied foods and nutrition in college, but being a cookbook author was not in my game plan. My first job, right out of college, was as a test kitchen editor at Woman’s Day magazine. Ultimately I became the food editor of Cuisine magazine. When Cuisine ceased publication and I began my freelance food writing career, it didn’t occur to me to write a cookbook, even then. But an editor from my magazine days, now working for a publisher, called to say she had an in house idea for a pasta cookbook and it needed a writer. The subject happened to be close to my heart. Little did I know at the time that her call would be the push I needed to find my life’s work. 

I must have asked the editor the very same question that people ask me, because she is the one who advised me, “Page by page.” 

Of course, it’s true that one writes one page at a time, but the advantage of writing a cookbook is that most of those pages are filled with recipes. And so I cook, so I can write, because without the cooking, those pages would be blank. 

For me the process of writing a cookbook is purely organic. It is necessary for me to touch the food if I am going to write about it. It’s as if I need to stand in the kitchen and roll out the cookie dough, shape the fresh pasta, or peel those apples for pie before I can find the words to fill the pages that will someday be bound together into a book.  

One might say that writing cookbooks has made it possible for me to recreate a lifetime of Saturdays in Nana’s kitchen

 

Advice for would-be cookbook authors: 

Most cookbooks take a minimum 6 months to a year of daily work to complete.

Love your subject, otherwise after months, or in some cases years, of testing Find inspiration for recipe ideas in the market, by talking to friends, reading menus, reading books on food, tapping into your own memory.

Make a list of recipes and ideas for recipes and test your way through the list, day by day

The best way to organize is to write a rough draft of each recipe before going into the kitchen

Take the recipe into the kitchen and keep careful notes of amounts (weigh and measure everything), cooking times, size of pots, utensils used, etc.

Avoid testing fatigue by only testing 2 or 3 recipes a day.

So you won’t forget anything make sure to write a clean, final, version of the recipes you’ve tested at the end of the day

Keep your work organized. I like to organize by chapters, or if chapters haven’t been decided yet, by menu courses.

Use your friends and neighbors as tasters. Encourage them to be honest in their evaluations.

Retest each recipe at least once, but preferably twice.

Hire a recipe tester or recruit friends to re-test your recipes, especially baking recipes

Set aside one day of the week to research subjects, edit recipes, write head notes or side bars.