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Journal North: Home | Sports | Opinion | Obits | Entertainment
Monday, June 08, 2009
Group has cooked and dined together for years
By Polly Summar
Journal Staff Writer
It's not completely unusual to hear about a "gourmet club," where friends get together to try out new recipes. But going on six years — and once a month?
Four local waitresses and former waitresses started what they call "the club" in 2003, when they realized they just weren't seeing enough of each other. And because they all share a love of good food and fine dining, they decided to make it more special by getting gussied up a bit, setting a nice table and trying some new dishes.
"I gave them all subscriptions to Bon Appetit one Christmas," said Mary Jane Chavez, a waitress and manager at Steaksmith who also does catering on her own for weddings and parties. Gradually, the group also added Gourmet magazine to the brainstorming process, and now they mix and match recipes from both for their monthly dinners.
Chavez and Evelyn Quintana have been friends since they were girls and met Conny Stahlhut and Penny Sinone more than 20 years ago through various waitressing jobs. Today, Stahlhut waitresses and supervises servers at La Fonda, Quintana teaches second- and third-graders at Carlos Gilbert Elementary, and Sinone cleans houses, serves at private parties, writes and acts in her own one-woman shows.
But it's their "can-do" waitressing spirit that adds the challenge to the monthly dinners: The hostess is expected to organize — and buy — everything herself. "It costs about $200 for seven or eight people," said Chavez, explaining that a few guests are always invited, too. "So each one does it every three months."
Except for Sinone. "I don't cook," she said, laughing about the time she put flower bulbs in a salad because she thought they were gourmet onions.
"But they've even got me making my own salad dressings at home," said Sinone. "I usually make one thing to bring — like the dessert — and last time I made the appetizer, figs with a goat cheese/apricot cheese. The good thing about the club is that it gives you encouragement."
Once a year Sinone hosts the group at her house, buying prepared food from places around town and describing the evening as "gourmet cooking from a Pullman kitchen."
The four get lots of requests to be invited to the monthly dinners, but the women generally exclude men. "We started out inviting some men — Evelyn's husband and a neighbor," said Chavez, "but then it seemed more fun just girls. They didn't like getting dressed up."
And the ladies really like getting dressed up. "To make it special," Quintana said.
Over the years, they've established their own specialties. "Conny does the richest, heaviest foods," said Chavez. "Anything with cheese. She's German. Evelyn does the lightest. I'm in between."
They like to call out favorite dishes they remember. "Conny did a floating island dessert," Sinone sighed.
"And she did artichoke hearts wrapped in prosciutto topped with blue cheese and heavy cream and baked," Chavez said.
Over the years, they've grandfathered in Stahlhut's daughter, Leslie Zapata-Romero, a waitress at Inn of the Anasazi, as an official helper. "The last two years, I've helped my mom host hers," she said. "One day, if I get brave enough, I may host one."
Her mom, Stahlhut, added, "She has all the qualifications, except maybe the props — dinnerware, glassware."
And the foursome really like "the props," too — from colorful plates and heirloom linens to silver and wine goblets.
They usually start their shopping at Whole Foods to find the specialty items and move from there to Trader Joe's and Albertsons. "The produce guy at Albertsons — he'll say, 'Oh, your turn to host the gourmet dinner?' " Quintana said.
At the group's May dinner, the ladies gathered in Quintana's kitchen to pitch in on an Asian-themed dinner. Smidgeon, Quintana's pit bull/Rhodesian ridgeback/boxer, lounged in the center of the action.
First on the preparation schedule were smoked chicken potstickers with a mango chile sauce and fresh greens with snow peas, oranges and red pepper with an orange vinaigrette. The entree was sea scallops on sautéed spinach with hoisin butter sauce. An almond honey cake was dessert.
The women easily mix conversation with kitchen duties.
"What the hell's an orange supreme?" Sinone said.
"It's the meat of an orange without the veins," said Chavez, who has parlayed her love of cooking into some side work doing catering for weddings and parties.
"I'm the official taster, too," said Sinone, sampling a small chunk of orange.
"Evelyn and I have been friends for 31 years," said Chavez. Quintana started working at the Palace Restaurant in her teens and got Chavez a job there as a busser. "We were soul sisters right away."
They met Sinone when they were all working at Tiny's restaurant. "We met Conny at La Fonda 23 years ago," Chavez said.
At the time, Conny's daughters were 5, 7 and 9. "And now they're mothers," said Chavez. "We have seen each other through good and bad boyfriends and husbands."
Sinone steps in with another question about the oranges. "Oh, so in other words, you want everything but the stringy stuff? Why didn't you just say that?"
"I did," Chavez said.
"Mary Jane's the bossy one," Sinone said.
"My grandparents had 13 kids and I was the oldest grandchild raised by them so I had to learn to cook," Chavez said.
They all say the club has changed how they view cooking.
"Recipes are just a guideline," said Stahlhut. "You can either see it as a guideline or a scientific project."
"If they didn't have duck, I'd say, 'What? Whadya mean?' " said Quintana of her early grocery shopping experiences.
"Go shoot it!" Stahlhut added.
"And I want it smoked, too!" said Quintana, who explained she had substituted smoked chicken for the evening's appetizer recipe when the store didn't have smoked duck.
But the conversations sometimes veer off food.
"Sometimes food is almost as good as sex," Sinone said.
"I'm sure there were instances where food was better than sex," Zapata-Romero said.
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