Women chefs on QE2
Women Chefs & Restaurateurs (WCR) was founded in the USA in 1993 by eight women chefs who wanted "to promote the education and advancement of women in the restaurant industry and the betterment of the industry as a whole".
In under four years, the organisation has enrolled more than 1,600 members who range from executive chefs to culinary students, and from line cooks to businesses that support the goals and mission of the organisation. Newsletters, conferences, scholarships, seminars, job banks and special events are all regularly organised by the WCR, and one of last year's highlights was a culinary summit aboard the QE2, when eight leading US women chefs joined the liner on a transatlantic crossing to display their skills to an appreciative audience.
The group presented menus in all five of the QE2's restaurants and gave demonstrations of their art to packed audiences, which included not only passengers but the ship's culinary complement.
One of those taking part in the summit was RoxSand Scocos, chef-owner of the 150-seat RoxSand Restaurant & Bar in Phoenix, Arizona. The restaurant is known for its freshly baked pastries, bread and desserts, but the menu she chose to present on the QE2 was most notable for exhibiting spicy Middle Eastern and Indian overtones.
The menu consisted of hot and spicy soup with crab, Asian pear and fig slaw with pear juice, encrusted wild king salmon with Israeli couscous, Mogul lamb chops with curried lamb jus, crispy Indian pancake, mint and cilantro chutney and haricots verts. To finish off, there was a coconut ice-cream with mango soup and ginger tuile.
Scocos's Mogul lamb won particular acclaim and it is this dish which she has chosen to share with Chef (see panel opposite).
Scocos's New York-based compatriot, Katy Sparks, is executive chef at the 60-seat Quilty's restaurant in New York City. This venue specialises in seafood, a fact reflected in Sparks's choice of a peppered yellowfin tuna dish as the third-course offering on her QE2 menu.
As with the other dishes she chose to cook, Sparks's tuna, while being simple, exhibited the degree of sophistication expected by New York diners. Her full on-board menu was: chilled sweet corn soup with crispy shiitakes and coriander; composed salad of grilled figs, aged goats' cheese and prosciutto in cardamom vinaigrette; peppered yellowfin tuna with a papaya ginger relish, sautéd spinach and lotus chips; cumin-roasted loin of lamb with chanterelles, new potatoes and Côtes de Provence sauce; and bittersweet chocolate cake with port-soaked cherries and sweet cream.
Gale Gand and her husband Rick Tramonto, whose culinary career includes a two-year stint running the kitchens of the Stapleford Park hotel in Melton Mowbray, are chef-owners of two adjoining Chicago restaurants - Brasserie T and the Vanilla Bean Bakery. Brasserie T has a definite European touch. Its food is down-to-earth country cooking based on hearty dishes from France, Italy and the USA, such as steamed mussels with garlic, shallots, fennel, white wine and cream. The Vanilla Bean Bakery specialises in old-style hand-made bread making - artisan bread such as sourdough is a feature - in a huge imported Italian ceramic oven.
The rule of thumb at both restaurants is to produce food that both Gand and Tramonto would want to eat "every day" so it was no surprise that Gand's QE2 demonstration menu was distinctly rustic. First course was roasted garlic soup, and this was followed by artichoke and potato salad with corn bread and goats' cheese; porcini-crusted sea bass with barley ragoñt; rabbit fricassée; and a blueberry bread and butter pudding.
Diane Forley is another New York-based chef. She is chef-proprietor of the 60-seat Verbena restaurant and has been likened by New York Magazine to legendary US chef Alice Waters, who is famous for her classically simple use of quality produce.
The menu that Forley demonstrated on board Cunard's flagship reflected her interest in Gallic classics (she graduated from university with a thesis on French gastronomy), and kicked off with a chilled salad of sea scallops with avocado, cilantro and citrus juices, followed by a second course of bouillon of truffled mushrooms with toasted angel hair pasta and fines herbs. Third course was sautéd halibut with green Swiss chard, haricots verts and semolina grain in tomato cumin seed coulis, while the main dish was a whole boneless quail with celery root and leeks in broth flavoured with foie gras.
Forley's meal was rounded off with parfait of fromage blanc with fresh strawberries and lemon verbena.
