|
|
CT Mag 97
|
| |
With a passion for fresh, local ingredients and a genius for combining them in interesting and unexpected ways, Carole Peck has spread culinary good news throughout western Connecticut. By Nancy A. Pappas
Several of the deeply creviced walls in the 18th-century cider mill Carole Peck calls home are painted in the disconcerting colors of sherbet. Folk art and collections of various sorts - dog figurines. pottery, miniature stoves and more - fill every horizontal surface, while the vertical ones are covered with vibrant oil paintings and stretched antique textiles. Yet somehow none of this kaleidoscopic carnival clashes with the heavy hewn beams, enormous granite hearth and extra-wide plank floorboards of this historic residence.
Chef Carole Peck is an audacious matchmaker, one who brings the most unlikely elements into harmony. Whether at home or in her popular restaurant, the Good News Cafe in Woodbury, she arranges partnerships that are stunning and surprising. An early summer soup whipped up from leeks, yucca, pineapple, mango and home-pickled peppers took the staff by storm; Peck's own assessment: "1 could have eaten two bowls of it:'
The can't-live-without-it signature dish at Good News is
the wok-seared. Garlic infused shrimp, seasoned with the spices of Thailand but served \\ithrom (in season). peas. two-inch cylinders of grilled green beans. roasted Yukon potato cubes. black olives and nosegays of fresh herbs. Each element is grilled, roasted. seared or steamed separately, an approach thats enormously time-consuming. Longtime restaurateur Paul Manson of New Preston-a former owner of the West Street Grill and Mary Dugan's in Litchfield, as well as Serge in Avon-admits that he's one of the regulars who won't let Peck rotate this off the menu. "She manages to meld ingredients ...in ways that no one else would try," Manson says. "Her food is always interesting and stimulating."
Even seemingly minor elements are considered worthy of a touch of the Peck panache. The freshly baked, slightly soured whole wheat loaves (recollecting the breads of the chefs Ukrainian grandparents) arrive at the table wearing large round papadums, brittle crackers from India, as if they were cockades on a hat. It's safe to say that no one but Peck would insert papadums - rarely seen outside an Indian restaurant - into slashed loaves of European bread.
But Peck was doing pancontinental matchmaking before the word "fusion" hit the culinary radar screens. In fact, she has often been out in front of the pack anticipating where the culinary world was headed next. Such was the case more than 15 years ago. When she began to preach the gospel of seasonal cooking and the purchasing of local agricultural products as she opened an acclaimed French Provencal restaurant in Austin, Texas, or a few years later, when publishers told her that the public wouldn't buy global cuisine cookbooks. But Peck has so much self-confidence, she's never looked back to see whether the others were following,
"She has excellent taste. She knows about food. And she's gutsy, " says Ruth Henderson, proprietor of New Milford's Silo Cooking School and owner (with husband Skitch) of the property in which Peck opened her first Connecticut restaurant. "She takes a risk. combines a few things, and it turns out wonderful! She is so open to the gifts other cultures can offer and she puts them together in a way that is completely her own."
Erica Howat, a classically trained chef who directs the dining facilities at Hartford's prestigious Polytechnic Club, goes even further. "My feeling about her style of cuisine is that it is strong and innovative," Howat says. "She's very artistic, and I think she's probably less concerned about pleasing people than she is about being true to her own creative instincts,"
Imagination and innovation have earned Peck the admiration of the food-loving public, which throngs to Good News every weekend.
Peck was in the first cohort of 28 women to be recruited for the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), then located on the Yale campus in New Haven, in 1970, a time when the student body consisted of roughly 1,000 young men. The reason for the recruitment effort was the construction of a new campus in Hyde Park, N.Y., which meant that there would now be dormitories and other facilities for women. After two years of 11 hour-a-day training, Peck graduated at the top of her class, and was invited to stay on for a prestigious third-year fellowship. Several months later, she was part of an even smaller team enlisted to open the CIA's now- famous student-run French restaurant, the Escoffier Room.
The same sponsor who recommended her for the fellowship, the late CIA president Jacob Rosenthal, helped Peck snag her first postgraduate position, under Clement Granger at a private club in upstate New York. Granger was "simply one of the finest French chefs working in America at that time," Peck says. "I had the opportunity to continue my education, working one-on-one instead of in a classroom setting. I didn't consider myself 'a chef when I got out of school, the way people do today. I considered myself a work-in-progress. I was on the way to becoming a chef."
By accepting the fellowship and then working under Granger, Peck in effect stretched her formal education from two years to four. "My training was intense, it was a regimented culinary upbringing, so I really knew how things were supposed to be done;' she says.
When that training was combined with the speed she first acquired as a 15-year-old Howard Johnson's breakfast cook and the self-confidence she developed along the way, Peck had the tools to begin her Connecticut ventures.
But why leave the nation's culinary meccas when your star is rising? After moving from highly regarded clubs and restaurants across the South to opening Cafe Greco, one of Manhattan's early Mediterranean magnets, "Carole might have been expected to spend her time working up from a two-star to a three-star restaurant in New York," points out her husband, painter Bernard Jarrier.
"But she took a path that really has shown that she did not need to compete every minute. She made a move that brought her closer to the land."
Peck agrees. "In New York, you would get out of work at 12 or 1, and getting back to the apartment could be as stressful as the entire day had been. I didn't feel that I had to compete with- in that world to be a valid chef."
Connecticut had beckoned since 1973; living in Pawling, N. Y., she would drive through the northwest hills on her way to the old Mayflower Inn. "I was sure we could find the kind of property we wanted up in Connecticut," she says, so she and Jarrier set out on a series of drive-and-dream explorations. Heading up Route 202 in New Milford, they spotted a white farmhouse that sits at the edge of Skitch and Ruth Henderson's property.
Soon the conductor and the cooking-school proprietor had become more than landlords to the two newcomers. "We really feel like we are Carole's godparents," says Ruth Henderson. "We were so proud of the way she made this community her own, and made that restaurant her own."
From 1988 through 1992, Carole Peck's Restaurant garnered spectacular reviews and a steady following, both among locals (full-time and weekenders) and those willing to make a 40- minute detour off the interstate to find fine food. Arriving straight from Manhattan, Peck found (not surprisingly) that Connecticut customers were more conservative, less adventure- some than their New York counterparts. "But tasting leads to trusting," Peck says, so she completely reconfigured the offerings every week. "I really wanted to move people toward more adventurous food," she adds, "but in very small incremental steps."
Peck immediately began establishing contacts in the farming community, starting with Jim Dougherty of The Egg & I Farm, a pork producer just up the road from the restaurant. Herbs and greens, berries and tree fruit, honey and maple syrup, venison, beef, lamb and poultry Peck tried to purchase everything from family farms within a 75- to IOO-mile radius. "She left no stone unturned to find the best local products, well before it was popular to deal with local farmers and purveyors," recalls Ruth Henderson. "She was so determined to find out everything about local foods that she unearthed all sorts of things, some that we did not even know, and we'd been here for decades. It had to be fresh, it had to be special, and it had to come from the closest source possible."
Peck is a zealot on this topic. "Even in my cooking classes," she says, "I talk to people about how important it is to choose the best, and most local, the most closely connected food." For Peck this is a philosophy. not just the latest novelty. "Sustainable agriculture makes sense to me. I came up during the '60s, when people were starting to talk about ecology," she explains. "It's all about the land and the love of the land. It's about building an interrelated community of customers and suppliers and workers. I know that I am keeping some farmers in business just because I consistently use their produce. And I love opening my doors some mornings and finding the guy who picks fiddle heads, or the ones who hunt for wild mushrooms. I don't hear from them from one year to the next, but I know they'll be there when the season is right,"
Peck admits that she is sometimes loyal to a fault, but she thinks of her business transactions as opportunities to further relationships. "People know that I'm committed: I've had purveyors that I started with back in New York, even before I came to Connecticut. Of course, I'm approached all the time to switch suppliers. But I have a meat-delivery fellow who comes up from New York, and he will stop in Chinatown for a couple of things I need, just as a favor to me. I know he's really watching out for me and you don't find that every day."
Peck's idea of building a community extends to her employees as well. Her pastry chef from 1988 to 1995, Mary Perna, has spent 18 years in professional kitchens and has never encountered a boss like Peck, whom she describes as joyful, exciting, enthusiastic, and quick to praise those "who do a job well.
"All of us who work with Carole become really close," she says. "I think that happens when a chef sets an atmosphere where you can be yourself and lose some of those snooty attitudes that so many people in this business have, She encourages and teaches, but never in an obvious way. Most people, when they're managed well, believe that they've done the job completely on their own. That's the way Carole works. And she is not intimidated or afraid of other people who have talent. So anybody who is anybody who lives in commuting distance of a Carole Peck restaurant wants to work for her...
Several people including Peck her-self mention that her staff turnover is lower than the industry average. and her pay. slightly above what others in the region are paying. "I've always taken care of the people who've, worked for me in the kitchens:' she says, "because I think it's a good investment. and also I want people to know that they can get ahead in the restaurant business:'
The staff turned the fine local products into meals that garnered Carole Peck's so much favorable attention, the business outgrew the New Milford location ("'I had moved into every square inch of available space, even the closets"). She sold the business and concentrated on catering for a time, while looking around for another property. The site of the present G, W. Tavern in Washington Depot was considered, "but it was really no larger than what I had just left:' Peck says.
After more than a year, she and her husband began renovating a rather nondescript building in Woodbury, which opened as the Good News Cafe early in 1994. With vintage radios lining one room, colorful movers' quilts at the windows and an ever-changing selection of paintings and sculptures (indoors and out), the restaurant reflected the Peck- Jarrier interest in collecting. seeking innovative decorative materials and showcasing the work of visual artists.
And in fact, she was almost one of those visual artists herself.
Without a couple of setbacks, customers might never have tried Peck's pasta with spinach and lemon "meatballs," or swooned over her intensely flavored seafood salad. She grew up in Newburgh, N.Y. as Carole Pidhorodecky, a young woman whose medium was clay, not calamari. Based on the quality of her portfolio, she had actually been accepted at a university where she planned to study pottery. "But my father put his foot down:' she says. "There was no way he was going to pay for me to go to school to make pots:'
In the meantime, Peck's after-school job had become more and more consuming. "When I was 15, I was hired at Howard Johnson's. I was too young to wait tables, because you were supposed to be able to bring liquor to the tables. So I wound up in the kitchen:'
This was more culinary athleticism than art: The idea was to work as quickly as possible while maintaining accuracy. She remembers mornings when she would cook $600 worth of eggs, sausages and bacon-at a time when a full break- fast was $1.19. "1 loved that pressure-it really worked for me:' Peck recalls. "And it has given me the speed I need in my business. I see so many people coming through now who have the skill and the creative juice, but they don't have the speed and they don't handle deadline pressure real well:'
Her parents' kitchen table held an interesting mixture of the esoteric and the mundane. There was blood sausage, tongue and liverwurst - often tucked into Peck's lunchbox - thanks to her Ukrainian grandparents. "But my mother wasn't a great cook." Peck says. "I think the menu varied every other week: we were on a cycle just like a hospital. When we moved from canned peas to flash-frozen, it was revolutionary!"
Fortunately young Carole encountered snowpeas as well as frozen peas. as the family set off regularly on culinary treks. At least twice a month, for example, they headed for Chinatown or the Lower East Side. "So I guess I \vas exposed to more than some people of my generation:' she says,
Her path as a chef was by no means well-blazed, however, Entering the Culinary Institute of America as one of 28 women in a class of 1,000 didn't particularly intimidate Peck-always some- what of a rebel-but the first six months were incredibly hard. "I didn't know if I really wanted this grind. It didn't seem clear that this was the right field for me:' she says. "But after that first six months, something just clicked. Somehow I know I had found my true medium."
While Peck was fully convinced that she had found her calling, the leaders in the culinary field were not necessarily convinced that she and other women of her generation were right for this career. Peck doesn't feel she has been significantly hampered by sexism, but she has encountered some blatant discrimination. While she gives tremendous credit to Jacob Rosenthal, CIA president from 1965- I 974 and a big promoter of women, she also points out that when she was offered the chance to open the Escoffier Room, "of course they put me in the pantry." The differentiated treatment continued for the next several years: "My boyfriend and I would go apply for a job that we knew was open. He would be offered the better position and I would be offered less money, a less responsible job. and we had graduated together:' Years later, Peck asked her husband to participate in an experiment. "1 called about a job and they said it \\"as filled. But I had Bernard call, with his deep voice and French accent, and they told him, "Come right in, 'It happens a lot less now but people still do discriminate."
Perhaps discrimination, Connecticut's recession and other obstacles haven't held her back, Peck says, because of the resilience that comes from stubborn adherence to an ideal. "I'm one of those people that, if I believe in something, I will stick to it without swerving," she says.
This woman of passions finds that she still loves her profession and still loves food. "I think that some chefs lose that, and it just becomes a profession and a job. My love of food is total," she says. "On my day off from the restaurant, we either go out to other restaurants or we entertain, We plan vacations around where we are going to eat, what are we going to eat."
The couple recently spent three weeks traveling in Italy and Spain, eating, celebrating and letting off steam after Peck completed her first cookbook, The Buffet Book. Published by Viking Books this summer, it was co-written with writer/editor Carolyn Hart Bryant, and photographed by Alex McLean in the Litchfield County homes of the many friends Peck has made since moving from Manhattan nine years ago. Never one to shrink from a challenge, she is already negotiating for another book contract, though she admits that the buffet manuscript was the most difficult task she has ever completed. "One of my problems was, I never like to let well enough alone:' Peck says. "But at some point, I had to stop changing menus and improving recipes. I had to just let go."
By contrast, she is anticipating that television will not be as challenging a medium. In June, she shot a pilot for a cooking show that will emphasize choosing product and mastering technique, rather than illustrating a recipe. "You're not going to see a lot of overhead shots while I stir some pre measured spice into a pot," she says. "This show will have information and personality."
Peck's view of the nation's dining scene is cautiously optimistic. Although she rails against "the McDonaldization of pristine, indigenous cultures," she also says that improvements in communication and transportation have vastly expanded America's table.
"I think there's more product recognition, and it increases every year," Peck says. "The American people know what creme brl1lee is, they're familiar with a Caesar salad, they know more about a wider variety of dishes.
"Also, I think people go out much more than they used to, and for all kinds of meals. A few decades back, people
went to a restaurant for a very important occasion, or because they simply couldn't cook - they were on the road, or they were at work and needed a lunch. Now eating out with your husband or your family is a perfectly acceptable alternative to cooking."
Peck and Jarrier - who almost never dine at home without guests-are celebrating the 20th anniversary of their meeting (a mutual friend introduced them at the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and the 10th anniversary of their marriage. "Maybe this year, we'll do a party and inaugurate the deck," Peck says, referring to the enormous expanse that Jarrier has just completed looking out over woodlands and a pond the couple had dug for the property.
They share this bucolic setting with a beloved, deaf St. Bernard, but no little Peck-Jarrier offspring. "The profession was way too hard to even envision having kids, and I grew up in the era of 'no population growth,'" says Peck. "I had that whole mindset, that we didn't really need any more people on this planet. "Besides, for me the preparation of food was nurturing enough," she adds. "I have a very spiritual connection to the food I serve, the people I serve it to, and the people who prepare it with me. Food is good for your body and soul."
Peck does not entirely reject the possibility of building a new life in a large metropolitan area at some time in the future, but she knows it would be more difficult. Meanwhile, the nation's arbiters of good taste seek her out - even though she doesn't have a New York or San Francisco address. In 1992, she was one of just five chefs chosen from an applicant pool of more than 900 to prepare Julia Child's 80th birthday dinner. Two years later, it was off to the James Beard House in Manhattan, to prepare a strawberry festival meal. As CIA classmate Nick Malgieri, director of the pastry program at Peter Kump's New York School of Culinary Arts, says, "Carole doesn't need to be seen as having stepped 'out of the loop: just because she moved out of Manhattan. Her food would hold up here, and her New York weekender customers know that." Those second home in Connecticut folks account for a healthy third of Peck's customers, she reckons: as she made plans for opening Good News, she took into account the fact that "people who are weekending up here do not want to put on a tie!" To secure the next segment of her customer base, Peck says, "I wanted to appeal to the very local locals, who maybe never tried anything more exotic than meatloaf. They needed to trust that I they would find basic, recognizable dishes on the menu." The last third of Peck's customers are once in a while visitors, people who are out antiquing in Southbury and Woodbury, or travelling to Boston or the Berkshires.
Whereas Carole Peck's in New Milford was known as a special occasion destination, she wanted Good News to "be a place that had more fun in the atmosphere, offered a much healthier kind of cooking and reflected the fact that the '90s were a more frugal time in Connecticut." Keeping costs down requires a creative approach to some of the "classic truths" of the restaurant business. For example, Peck's interest in fresh, local products and her abhorrence of mass production means that her food costs run high. To keep prices down. she doesn't bother with linens: that shaves at least a dollar off each meal she serves.
The fact that she can do this and get away with it-at a restaurant that's serving carefully crafted food is but one example of the move toward more casual but more idiosyncratically intriguing dining that's been building over the past several decades. "These days 1 basically cook what 1 feel like eating:' says Peck. "I'm not bound by any preconceived notion of what a good restaurant should serve, or how it should look. I follow the seasons and my personal interests:'
In her residence, her relationships, her restaurant, Peck's life resonates with spirituality, sensuality, intellect and that sense of enlightened self-interest. Her home overflows with antiques and artwork, books, friends and (perhaps most significantly) opinions. Classmate Malgieri describes Peck as "ever adventurous and ever the adventuress." Those lucky enough to be along on Peck's adventures find that it is, indeed, Good News.
|
|
