Spring 2002

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Feature

Beautiful Soup HRTA students cook lovely food for credit

by Claire Hopley ’78G

"'GET A BLOWTORCH,' HE SAID" - Author Claire Hopely, right, with HRTA chef-instructor Linda Kinney, reminiscing in Claire's kitchen about the day UMass students rose to the challenges posed by a very picky food stylist. (photos by Ben Barnhart) WHEN I SIGNED A CONTRACT to write a book on New England cooking, I knew it would include color photographs, but I didn’t think about how they were going to get taken. Rather vaguely, I supposed we’d get round to them after I’d met my January 2001 deadline. So I was startled when photographer Peter Johannes called to say he’d be traveling from Maine to Florida in October, and would swing by Amherst for a two-day photo shoot. October? Two days? If I was going to meet that deadline, I needed every minute for writing. How was I going to cook 40 picture-perfect dishes and spend two whole days photographing them? “You can’t do it on your own,” Jean Rousseau of Berkshire House, my publisher for New England Cooking: Seasons and Celebrations, told me. “Take my word for it: Find someone professional to help.” As a UMass alumna, it didn’t take me long to think of HRTA – pronounced “Herta” on campus – the 460-student, 20-faculty hotel, restaurant and travel administration department. I knew HRTA students cook lovely food. And because I sometimes teach, I knew that classes love real-life projects. Maybe, I thought, HRTA students would work on the photo shoot for credit. Luck was on my side. HRTA 457, the Catering and Banquet Management class taught by chef-instructor and alumna Linda Kinney ’96G, is a capstone course giving seniors a chance to try out all of their skills. Each semester the class takes on three functions: one a reception for the annual HRTA Career Day, another perhaps a scholarship dinner, the third possibly a buffet or a fundraiser. The three slots usually fill up fast. As of that September, however, Kinney had only two events scheduled. “I needed another function quickly,” she says. “The semester was beginning.” So we had a match. And we had six weeks to prepare. But we didn’t really have a book. I’d only written about half – the half that focuses on spring and summer foods. Therefore one challenge was to anticipate what we’d want to picture from as-yet unwritten sections, as well from completed chapters. We also had to find locations. And then we had to think how to present the food. I badly wanted to use serving pieces made in New England. As for other props, “Have as much variety as possible,” advised Peter, the photographer, by e-mail, “to make it look as if we didn’t shoot everything in one day. “Different vases, flowers, tablecloths, napkins, placemats all help,” wrote Peter. “I’d also like some slate placemats and some pewter pieces.” And, he added confidently, “We will need fresh parsley, lemons, cherry tomatoes, red onions, and fresh garlic.” Most significantly, of course, we did have to think about cooking. For each HRTA 457 “function,” Kinney appoints several student managers who devise the menu, organize a trial kitchen, and test each recipe until they get a perfect version. Then they create a specification sheet identifying quantities, serving dishes, and garnishes. From this they build a food order and a labor schedule for the big day. It’s lots of planning, and throughout the run-up to this event, student managers Cindie Nielson and Stacy Nichols, both HRTA’01, met regularly with Kinney, myself, and my research and creative assistant Michele Melchionda ’88. We chose the dishes by looking for variety: some summery dishes, some wintry ones, some with fish, some with meat, some vegetarian. Since one theme of the book is celebration, we picked some holiday foods. Since another theme is the culinary contributions of the region’s immigrants, Cindie suggested a corned beef St. Patrick’s Day dinner in honor of her Irish ancestors. AND SO IT WENT. MY son runs the Boston Marathon, so I wanted some dishes from the pasta supper that precedes the race. Everyone agreed we must have chocolate, so we chose a fudge brownie tart garnished with raspberries and mint leaves, plus a cheesecake with Pollack-like drizzles of melted Toblerone. Now we turned to props. I satisfied my yen for regional artifacts by borrowing a silver Revere bowl from Lunt’s of Greenfield, blue and yellow baking dishes from Bennington Potters, and an elegant glass bowl and square plate of delicate green from Simon Pearce of Windsor, Vermont. Peter brought down pottery from Maine. Linda unveiled her stash of table cloths: “I pick up remnants with interesting designs,” she says. “They come in really useful for banquets.” Michele focused on flowers and foliage, aiming, she says, “for different textures and colors – like a painter’s palette – so Peter can choose what he needs.” Then we brainstormed presentation. We felt we simply must have a real pumpkin for the Pumpkin-Peanut Soup. For the trifle based on an early American recipe, the Revere bowl was perfect. Michele loved the square plate, choosing it for the Duck Breast with Blueberry Lavender Sauce. For the Rosy Floating Island, I wanted candles: “This looks very pretty in the middle of the table with Candles round it,” notes the 18th century recipe. Peter warned that candles present challenges, and he was right. It took ages to shoot that picture. But it is one of the prettiest in the book: a rose-flavored custard, much favored by New Englanders of yesteryear, showered with rose petals and lit by candles in twisty candlesticks. The candles came from Yankee Candle in South Deerfield, which also promised the use of their store as a location for Christmas pictures. The Lord Jeffrey Inn loaned their restaurant, the Windowed Hearth, for Thanksgiving photographs. The other pictures would be taken in Skinner Hall. So with props and location problems solved, HRTA students worked at the university while I cooked at home. We were ready. Or thought we were. The big day in mid-October began with Peter setting up a gigantic array of equipment in Skinner. The students had brought in some of the 20 dishes they’d worked on the day before, and were starting on more. They knew exactly when to bring them out because they had a plan. The duck dish made by class member Dionne Stennett would be first. “No,” said Peter. “Let’s start with the pasta.” That sounded simple enough, since Dionne and classmate Kevin Raposo had already made a Chili Pasta Bake and Spaghetti with Olives and Bay. But Peter wanted something livelier than the plain tablecloth we had chosen to complement the spatter-patterned baking dishes. He wanted cuter bay leaves in the spaghetti. He wanted the Pasta Bake dish to look full, so he had Stacy elevate the pasta by sliding measuring cups under it. And he wanted the dish to look like as if it had just emerged bubbling from the oven. “Get a blowtorch,” he directed, “and burn some of the cheese a little bit.” We tweaked for three hours before Peter got what he wanted. “Our production schedule went right out the window,” said Stacy later. We waited while tiny details were adjusted, and despite huge boxes of props, still had to run out for things: an oil spray to add sheen to meat; a teasel for the background of the brownie tart. Everyone felt frustrated. Kevin had to delay his North Atlantic Seafood Stew, while Dionne worried that the meringues she had poached for the Rosy Floating Island would collapse. It was a relief when it was time to assemble the dessert, because it gave us a chance to throw things – if not plates or frying pans, at least handfuls of decorative rose petals. BUT TEDIOUS AND NERVE-WRACKING AS it was, the waiting was also educational. The degree of fine-tuning and sheer amount of time required by food photography startled everyone. “Peter worked nonstop,” said student Jill De Cisero ’01. “He looked at things totally differently, but he made us understand why he was taking a certain shot, and we learned to think differently too.” Nancy Roux agreed. “I look at cookbooks in a totally new way now,” she says, “because I realize what everyone goes through to get a picture.” Nancy also realized the primacy of visual effect. Linda had suggested they redo the pastry for the Raspberry Meringue Pie, but as it turned out, said Nancy, “I didn’t have to bother because it was going to be covered by berries. It’s only the final appearance that counts.” Jill concurred. “We’re taught the importance of taste and repeating recipes to get them right,” she observed. “But this time looks were paramount.” She also compared the small quantities required by the photo shoot to the Thanksgiving buffet for 60 that the class prepared a few weeks later. “That was harder because of timing: you have to get everything out together,” she said. “But the photo shoot was a lot more pressure. Three of us were making different sorts of pancakes and we really worried about getting them to look perfect!” Working with photographers and writers was new to everyone, inspiring Cindie to reflect on the unsuspected number of specialties in the industry she was training for. “And we had to work with people we didn’t know, it made us look at how we get along with people,” she said. “That helps us predict how we might react as managers in future stressful situations.” Stacy said the stress of the photo shoot was “a bonding experience” for the class. Linda Kinney agreed: “The rapport the students developed really helped when they worked on later events,” she said. It really helped the next day, too, when several students showed up voluntarily at 7 a.m. on a chill morning at Yankee Candle in Deerfield to watch Peter shoot Christmas pictures, then move on to the Lord Jeff for a dozen more shots: a trifle in a sunny window, an Easter ham with asparagus, and a Thanksgiving table set before the inn’s beautiful fireplace. Cindie Nielson cooked on both of the days that produced the beautiful food pictured in New England Cooking: Seasons and Celebrations. The experience was unique, she said. “Usually, food is instantly gratifying,” said Cindie. “As preparers, we know the effort put into it, but then it’s eaten before anyone understands what is behind each dish. With this project, we have the bonus of a tangible, visual memory – the cookbook.”

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Beautiful Soup

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