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10 Questions with Chef ... Sara Moulton

Written by Susan Dyer Reynolds, Northside Editor

Monday, 31 October 2005

Most people probably recognize Sara Moulton as the food correspondent for ABC’s Good Morning America or from her shows on the Food Network – Cooking Live ran for six years (about 1,200 shows) and the day it ended her new show, Sara’s Secrets, began and currently airs 7 days a week. Moulton is also an author – her latest cookbook, Secrets of Weeknight Meals, arrived in bookstores nationwide October 18. As with all of Moulton’s projects, the book encourages people to get out of the fast food rut, cook healthy meals at home and dine with family and friends. The new book also encourages people to get out of another sort of rut – making the same recipes over and over – by mixing it up a bit. Breakfast for dinner? Why not? Moulton has also worked for Gourmet magazine since 1984, when she first took a job in the test kitchen. Just four years later Gourmet promoted her to executive chef, a position she still holds. Currently traversing the country on a book tour, Moulton will be at San Francisco’s glorious Ferry Building Wednesday November 9 for the Gourmet Wine Cellar, which promises to be one of the most exciting food and wine events of the year. The evening offers food and wine lovers a chance to sample dishes from the Bay Area’s finest chefs, taste wines and meet winemakers, mingle with the farmers, purveyors and artisans who grow and produce the ingredients, and attend sitdown wine seminars with Gourmet wine and spirits consultant Michael Green. For Moulton’s part, she’ll be demonstrating her recipe for eggs baked in ham with sofrito and signing copies of her book. Who or what was your biggest cooking influence? Julia Child, without a doubt. I worked with her. How did you meet? Because of a hard-boiled egg. I was the chef/manager of a catering company and one day I was peeling a lifetime supply of boiled eggs and I said to one of the workers, “You know what Julia Child says about boiled eggs ... “ and she said that she knew Julia because she was a volunteer for her PBS show. I asked if they needed anyone else, and the next day she told me that she had told Julia all about me and she wanted to hire me. It’s one of those classic cases of being in the right place and the right time – it turned out that the woman who usually worked with Julia couldn’t come until later in the month, so they needed someone at that very moment. We worked as a team – I was doing food styling but we also did recipes. Julia really took me under her wing. She decided I needed more training so she got me an apprenticeship with a chef in France – he turned out to be a dirty old man, but the training was good. In 1981 she was doing Good Morning America and I missed her because we had become friends while working together. I called to ask if we could meet for dinner and she said, “Oh, dear, I’m so busy ... “so I volunteered to come help her at Good Morning America so we could get out of there earlier. And that’s how I landed the Good Morning America job. What is your proudest cooking, food or restaurant moment? Graduating second in my class at the Culinary Institute of America in 1977 – and I missed being number one by 1/10th of a percent. There are so many things I’m proud of, but cooking is a very male-dominated world and it was even more so then. I was so tortured in cooking school – “You can’t do this ...” – so graduating at the top of my class was really significant for me. What is your favorite ingredient? Olive oil. It’s not some big secret, but it’s always on my kitchen counter and I can’t do without it. What is your least favorite ingredient? Supermarket balsamic vinegar – it’s overused. There’s nothing like the aged stuff in the right place, but the supermarket variety has ruined many a salad. If you weren’t a chef, what would you be? An elementary school teacher – I don’t know why I didn’t pursue it. I adore children. Growing up in New York I worked with the school volunteer program and as a tutor – I read every book on why kids fail and how to help them succeed. I think all of that helps me when I teach a cooking class. Education fascinates me. What does being executive chef at Gourmet magazine entail? I’m on the advertising side. I’m the chef of our dining room – we have this really beautiful dining room at Gourmet where we do great meals for our big clients – some food, some wine, and then we talk about advertising. People don’t just come to you and say, “I like your magazine and I’m going to advertise.” So I do demos, some schmoozing – I was just in the Bahamas for four days. Every month we’re forced to come up with new recipes and that helps keep me out of that rut people tend to fall into, cooking the same 10 meals. The job has really evolved since I started in the test kitchen in 1984. If it hadn’t, I don’t think I’d still be here. On your Web site your calendar is jampacked with personal appearances and book signings. How do you balance the traveling, Gourmet, TV shows, and having a family? The book tours are only crazy for a short time. This one only lasts until just before Thanksgiving. When the kids were young it was tough, but I was lucky – I had a great babysitter, a great housecleaner and a great husband. It’s been three years since the live show [on the Food Network] and every night I get to go home at 5 o’clock I’m so happy. I left the restaurant business to spend more time at home. My husband was in the music business for a long time – he was the publicist for a lot of the early rappers like Run-DMC and Will Smith. He also had a record label, and for the past two years he’s been the owner of a hip hop photo gallery called Eyejammie Fine Arts Gallery. We’re both busy, but we still eat dinner together five nights a week. In the early eighties, you founded the New York Women’s Culinary Alliance, an organization devoted to creating opportunities for women in the culinary field. There are some wonderful woman role models – Julia Child, Alice Waters, Joyce Goldstein, you – yet there are still relatively few women executive chefs. Why do you think that is? Well, I think there are some really wonderful women chefs out there. Whenever culinary students ask me where they should start out, I say, “Go West, young ladies!” I think it’s more open, and the male chefs are nicer and more open as well. Here, I think it’s still very European – so many chefs come from France where they’re not as accepting. Once they get a woman in their kitchen and see how good she is, they change their minds. I think it’s a matter of time, but I also think that having children is a huge issue. I am a feminist to the core, but I firmly believe kids need their moms. Some women have found solutions, like Jody Adams of Rialto – her husband is a stay-at-home dad, but there aren’t many of those. The hours are so demanding that, if women want to raise a family, it’s really tough, and I don’t know if that part can ever change. Who’s tougher to work for – chefs in New York or chefs in France? Chefs in France – but chefs in New York are tough too, because so many of them are from France.

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