COOKING SCHOOL SECRETS Copia's Culinary Chief Shares Tips for the Real World in New Book By L. Pierce Carson Napa Valley Register Tuesday, April 26, 2005 Anything but a chore, cooking should be simple, easy, convenient and, hopefully, fun. That's the message one gets when talking with Linda Carucci, the relatively new curator of food at Copia: The American Center for Wine, Food & the Arts. Carucci knows her way around the kitchen as she's not only a professional chef but a teacher, culinary consultant and, now, an author. Her peers in the International Association of Culinary Professionals voted her Cooking Teacher of the Year a couple of years ago. Reflecting on the vast number of classes she's taught in recent years, Carucci has put her thoughts into a new cookbook, "Cooking School Secrets for Real World Cooks," just published by Chronicle Books. Copia's culinary chief wrote her first cookbook "because my students asked for a reliable kitchen go-to guide with more than just recipes," she confides. A native of Hartford, Conn., Carucci was raised in Massachusetts. She often resorts to stories of those impressionable years when talking about how she decided to make the culinary arts a career. "My first apprenticeship was cooking at my grandmother's side in the kitchen of my family's five-room ranch house in Massachusetts," Carucci writes in her cookbook debut. "We made linguine aglio e olio and pizza fritt' at the pink electric stove, and pulled loaves of soft, dense grandma bread from the pink oven. Can you guess what my mother's favorite color was?" The easy-going cooking teacher recalls that her grandmother made bread once a week and her memorable ravioli once a summer. "'I'll only make the ravioli if you promise to roll out the dough,'" she'd tease. When it came time to pull the big, wooden ravioli board out from under my parents' double bed, there was no way anyone could possibly grab the rolling pin out of her hands. She was on a mission, and, to her way of thinking, no one else was capable of rolling the dough as thin as she could. "I was happy to sit and watch her work the smooth, delicate dough, treating her ravioli with more tenderness than she did her husband. She let me mix up the rigott' and eggs with our flimsy whisk, and grate the Romano cheese with the old metal Mouli that made an indentation in the side of my hand where I gripped it tight the way she showed me." Now with the release of her first literary effort, Carucci recalls in the introduction that "these early influences shaped my palate as well as my patience. "I grew up eating simple, robust Italian-American food, and I just assumed everyone else did, too. In my house, it was a foregone conclusion that it takes time to cook. "Few activities -- outside of working hard (it was New England, after all) -- were more important than food. Even when my mother got home late from work, she still managed to whip up a satisfying pot of chili in the pressure cooker. "I know some people find cooking to be a chore (sorry, but I must confess to feeling that way myself about rolling out a pie crust), but for me it's always been something I just lose myself in. The pleasure I get from cooking is as satisfying as eating great food." With this new cookbook, its author is "on a mission to allay new cooks' apprehensions and answer experienced cooks' most vexing questions." The book kicks off with a basics of cooking section where the most appropriate equipment for each dish is discussed, followed by a section on cooking methods and then instructions on how to cut, chop, dice, julienne and chiffonade. Seasonings are addressed, along with pointers on creative cooking and menu planning. On Saturday, a book launch party is scheduled all day long at Copia, starting with a cooking demonstration at 10:30 a.m. (with a second one at 3:15 p.m.), followed by book signings throughout the afternoon, and a panel discussion with some of Carucci's recipe tasters at 1. "I did something really distinctive -- maybe something some might say is crazy -- in having 116 recipe testers from all over the United States," Carucci says about putting her new book together. "Some were family, others were students, friends and friends of friends. "It became a social exercise. I would get e-mails from all over the country. They informed me and helped shape the writing and I got to feel that I was still teaching. I have to admit the most difficult recipe tester was my mother. A lot of them will be here for the book launch on Saturday at Copia." Carucci said the biggest compliment about her first cookbook came from her husband. "After looking through it and reading some of the recipes, he told me that it sounded like I was talking to him. And that's what I intended -- to put a cookbook together that's accessible to both reader and cook." Copia is the only place where Carucci's book can be purchased at the moment. It will be stocked in bookstore shelves next month. Pre-orders are also being taken on Amazon.com. Back to In The News