Parmesan and Fontina Beignets by April Bloomfield

(Part of a weekly series by a group of bloggers, featuring Gourmet Live's 50 Women Game Changers in Food - see end of post for list of bloggers participating & their blogs)

April Bloomfield, at #41 of Gourmet Live's 50 Women Game Changers in Food, is synonymous with New York's 'Gastropub' culture. For April, it's always been about the food. You cannot mess around with the food when you're eating at any of her restaurants. Literally. She won't entertain any changes to dishes you request - it's her way or the highway! Her business partner, Ken Friedman, is believed to store condiments in a special shelf for guests who ask for things like mayo with their burgers. Hey, when you're a famous chef who's earned her chops, you get to dictate how your food goes down. And it's working... because she has TWO Michelin stars under her chef's hat, one for The Spotted Pig and the other for The Breslin, two of the three restaurants she owns with Friedman.

April Bloomfield
Source: Food Network

April was born in Birmingham to a middle-class family with no roots whatsoever in the culinary world. Her mother made steaks that were 'gray' and not something you fondly remember. She fell in love with her granny's cooking though, when she spent a year with her grandparents. April wanted to join the police force, but after she missed the application deadline, she was forced to consider other options. One of her sisters was already enrolled in culinary school and that inspired April to follow. Once she started school at the Birmingham College of Food, Tourism and Creative Studies, she took a great liking to the art and thus began her passion and journey to the top.

After culinary school, she honed her skills further working at Kensington Place, Bibendum and The Brackenbury, eventually securing a spot at the River Cafe. That's where she caught the eye of Jaime Oliver, who urged Mario Batali to check her out during one of his visits here. Batali was sold the first time they met and was impressed with her battle scars in the kitchen. He could see her passion and is supposed to have said this of her, "She's a star. I can tell." That's a pretty massive compliment for someone. He offered her a job and April packed her bags and flew over to America. She spent the summer working at Alice Waters' restaurant, Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, before moving on to eventually set up her own restaurants with Friedman. There are some lovely stories on her life that you can read at The Guardian and The New Yorker. Mind you, they are a bit long, though.

Candied Sweet Potatoes by Elizabeth Andoh

(Part of a weekly series by a group of bloggers, featuring Gourmet Live's 50 Women Game Changers in Food - see end of post for list of bloggers participating & their blogs)

I know I'm not a child, but, I unconsciously went into my own mode of Spring Break - ending up with a Blog Break. I haven't blogged in over a week and somehow it was good to take that break. I did miss blogging and not catching up on a lot of my favorite blogs. I will be getting to all of them this weekend and I apologize for not being there all this while. I did something for my blog during this period though - I bought my own domain name! :D It's not a big deal but it felt like my home got a face lift. And over the next week or so, I'll be tweaking some design stuff too. But next week's going to extremely busy, with Easter coming up and a lot of choir commitments during Holy week, so let's see. It's going to be fun!

Source: The Japan Times

For now, I'm getting back to my blog with the 50 Women Game Changers Series and we have one of the culinary world's leading experts in Japanese cuisine at #41 - Elizabeth Andoh. Though she's not of Japanese heritage, Elizabeth's heart and home have found their place in Japan for over 4 decades now. How she ended up in Japan happens to be a "happy accident" as she puts it. She was born in America, grew up here and studied in New York and the University of Michigan. While she was a student here, she learned of this unclaimed scholarship to Japan and took it thinking it would be interesting. So, in the mid 60s, she landed in Shikoku in rural Japan, where she later met the love of her life. Overcoming the initial cultural shock, she grew to love the place and all of Japanese culture and food. She learnt a lot from the Andoh family during her initial years - Senior Mr Andoh was the one who first took interest in teaching young Elizabeth how to speak Japanese and his wife was an inspiration when it came to food and matters of the kitchen. Her mother-in-law was a vegetarian much like the people born in the late 19th and early 20th century in Japan - Elizabeth later dedicated a book on Kansha cooking, inspired by this. 

Having developed a deep interest in the philosophy and art of Japanese cuisine, Elizabeth enrolled at the Yanagihara School of Traditional Japanese Cuisine in Tokyo. Shortly after, she launched her own culinary arts program in 1972, called A Taste of Culture. The program hosts tasting sessions, market tours, cooking classes and workshops for foreign tourists and expats who are interested to learn the intricacies of Japanese food and cuisine. She has since been the greatest advocate for Japanese cuisine among english speaking chefs and cooks.

Potato and Caraway Cakes by Darina Allen

(Part of a weekly series by a group of bloggers, featuring Gourmet Live's 50 Women Game Changers in Food - see end of post for list of bloggers participating & their blogs)

At #38 this week, we have Darina Allen, a culinary visionary and celebrity in Ireland. She's got two grand founding achievements under her belt - she's the founder of (a) the internationally renowned Ballymaloe Cookery School, Country Cork and (b) the first Farmers Market in Ireland. She still teaches at their family-run school and is actively involved in sourcing and setting up new farmers markets.

Credit: Koster Photography / Source: Cookstr

Her love for all things organic and locally-sourced also manifests itself in the way she runs the school, which is strategically located on a 100-acre organic farm. The emphasis of all teaching and operations at the school is on using the finest quality of home-grown and locally sourced ingredients and making a sustainable use of resources. The farm grows countless varieties of produce and seasonal goods, so students learn with the freshest ingredients possible and also experience first-hand the advantages of supporting your local farmers. 

Besides being a chef and teacher, Darina has written many popular, award-winning cookbooks including Darina Allen's Ballymaloe Cooking School Cookbook (nominated for best international cookbook by the James Beard Foundation) and Irish Traditional Cooking (winner of the Langhe Ceretto Prize in 1996). She's also food-writer and has appeared on many television shows and series as well. Darina was named Cooking Teacher of the Year by the IACP in 2005, and was the recipient of an honorary degree from the University of Ulster in 2003. You can read more about her achievements on her website.

Now, Darina is exactly the kind of chef/cook I love learning about since I just discovered a whole treasure-trove of recipes on her website. It's an interesting mix of Irish and international recipes, which has now been added to my list of go-to sources. I had the toughest time choosing a dish for this week since I literally wanted to make ALL of them. Seriously! I'm going back to the website for more!

Deviled Eggs by Edna Lewis

(Part of a weekly series by a group of bloggers, featuring Gourmet Live's 50 Women Game Changers in Food - see end of post for list of bloggers participating & their blogs)

We have another inspiring story this week as we look back on the life of Edna Lewis, who's at #36 of Gourmet Live's 50 Women Game Changers in Food. Edna is one of the legends of southern cooking. She grew up in Freetown, Virginia, a town founded by freed slaves, one of whom was her grandfather. All the families in Freetown lived on farms and that's where Edna's foundation was established. Every morning, all of them would help harvest crops and vegetables and raise poultry, which was their basic livelihood. At the age of 15, when the great depression struck, Edna left Freetown in search of a better life. She landed in New York and sustained herself through odd jobs. She worked as a seamstress, window dresser and also in the office of the Daily Worker, a communist newspaper. 

Edna loved cooking for her friends and slowly, her cooking started gaining popularity and praise among friends and acquaintances. In 1948, her friend, John Nicholson, an antique dealer, asked her to take on the role of head chef at the restaurant he was opening. The restaurant was a huge success and attracted famous guests like Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner and Truman Capote, who were regulars. She worked at the restaurant, serving up delicious southern food, until 1954.

She went on to travel, teach and write her own cookbooks. Her landmark book, The Taste of Country Cooking, was one of the first cookbooks by an African-American woman to reach a nationwide audience and is credited for starting the interest in genuine Southern cooking. While cooking for one of the festivals in Atlanta, she met Scott Peacock, who was in awe of her and wanted to follow her to learn everything she had to impart. Over the years, they both developed a deep friendship, working on recipes together, and even co-authored the popular cookbook, The Gift of Southern Cooking. Edna passed away in 2006, at the age of 89.

So, to honor her, I picked the recipe of Deviled Eggs, that was a dish Edna and Scott developed. This is a lovely, light appetizer that's both simple and tasty. It's extremely easy to whip up and highly customizable. Once you have the base, you can throw in either cayenne pepper to add a little bit of spice or add a herb to infuse some flavor. This is something ANYONE can make since all it involves is boiling an egg and mixing stuff with it. Unless, of course, the eggs you're working with don't co-operate with you. Like mine did. I use brown eggs that take much longer to cook and I can never figure out the right time to pull them out. So, I may have had to fight with the shell to get it off and it made my job a little harder to hide all the flaws on the outside of the egg white. But, otherwise, it's a fool-proof recipe!

While preparing the eggs, I suddenly thought of mixing things up a bit and utilizing the egg mixture in a couple of different ways. It works beautifully as a cracker topping and I'd nibbled on all of them by the time I cleaned everything up! All you have to do is chop the egg whites into tiny pieces and mix it up along with the yolk mixture (this is perfect especially if you have un-cooperative eggs like mine that come out damaged when you try to take their shells off). Then, spread away on your favorite cracker.

That same egg mixture can be used as a sandwich filling too. This is something familiar to me since my mom makes similar egg sandwiches. So, experiment and have fun with it! The possibilities are endless and limited only by your imagination! 

Deviled Eggs by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock

Ingredients and instructions:

• 1 dozen large eggs
• Fine sea salt
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 2 tablespoons heavy cream
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
• 2 teaspoons snipped chives and chervil (I couldn't find either so I used scallions and they tasted delicious too)

Put the eggs in a large saucepan with water to cover by 2 inches. Add 1 tablespoon of salt and bring to a rolling boil over high heat. Immediately remove the pan from the heat, cover and let stand for 10 minutes. Pour off the hot water and fill the saucepan with cold water. Gently crack the eggs in the water to loosen the shells.

Shell the eggs. Cut a very thin slice from the bottom of each egg so the eggs will stand up. Slice off the top third of each egg and scoop the yolks into a coarse strainer; reserve the whites. Press the egg yolks through the strainer into a bowl. If you're too lazy like me to use a strainer, just mash them with a fork.

Blend in the mayonnaise, cream, sugar and vinegar. Season with salt. Using a teaspoon or a pastry bag fitted with a star tip, generously fill the egg whites. Arrange the eggs on a plate, sprinkle with the chives and chervil and serve.

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Here's a list of the other bloggers participating in this series. Do go over to their blogs to see what yummy dishes they've whipped up. If you'd like to join the group, please get in touch with Mary of One Perfect Bite.

Val - More Than Burnt Toast [] Taryn - Have Kitchen Will Feed [] Susan - The Spice Garden [] Heather - girlichef [] Miranda - Mangoes and Chutney [] Jeanette - Healthy Living [] Mary - One Perfect Bite [] Kathleen - Bake Away with Me [] Sue - The View from Great Island [] Barbara - Movable Feasts [] Linda A - There and Back Again [] Nancy - Picadillo [] Mireya - My Healthy Eating Habits [] Veronica - My Catholic Kitchen [] Annie - Most Lovely Things [] Claudia - Journey of an Italian Cook [] Alyce - More Time at the Table [] Amrita -Beetles Kitchen Escapades