It is 10 a.m. on Washington Street in Hinsdale, and the smells wafting out the open kitchen door of Madelaine Bullwinkel`s house are definitely not breakfast-like. Instead, the delicious odors are of meats and herbs and vegetables, and they are so strong that they make their way down the sidewalk to the street.
If any of the students in Chez Madelaine`s cooking class have forgotten the address, they can follow their noses.
Most days of the week, this older residence is home for Bullwinkel, her husband, George, and their two children. But on many Fridays from September to April, the kitchen is transformed into a classroom, and neighbors with good senses of smell can walk out their doors and determine the curriculum for the day. On this Friday, the class is devoted to stocks and soups, and Bullwinkel has begun the cooking well before her students arrive for the 10 a.m.-to-2 p.m. class.
The modestly sized, rectangular kitchen is hard pressed to hold all of the people, pots and ingredients. The most eye-catching thing in the room is the Granger range, a huge appliance with six wide burners and a grill. Bullwinkel bought it in 1976 when she remodeled her kitchen. She calls it her ”tractor” and says Julia Child has one similar to it in her kitchen.
”No frills, no high-tech, it`s just flat out powerful,” she said, ”and very easy to control. I knew I was going to be doing a lot of cooking, so I got the Big Momma.”
Usually only six students are accepted for each class, creating waiting lists for many of them. A scheduling error by one student has resulted in seven students this day, six women and a man, mostly middle-aged and with various levels of cooking expertise.
All are perched on stools with recipes and pens in hand, listening and watching as Madelaine begins to whirl from counter to range, sink to counter, demonstrating her love for cooking and teaching, as well as her stamina.
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Madelaine DeHuszar Bullwinkel grew up in Mt. Prospect, in a family that didn`t have a great interest in cooking as much as a great interest in eating, she recalled. She described her mother as a good, basic, fresh-from-scratch cook, nothing fancy.
Her own discovery of the joys of cooking didn`t begin until she graduated from Smith College with a degree in art history in 1965. Bullwinkel turned to the kitchen as a social art as much as anything else and said it offered her a way to interest men, entertain friends and, in general, nurture those people she cared about.
Like bread and butter, Bullwinkel frequently links the words cooking and nurturing. While she enjoys the process of creating in the kitchen, she seems to get equal pleasure from sharing the byproducts.
”That`s the great thing about food,” she said, ”it`s not just the eating but the company. Cooking has a great deal to do with sharing. I`ve done silk screening and drawing and writing, and they`re all very lonely and isolating. Cooking is one creative activity when you can really be together, and that makes it especially attractive for me.”
After getting her master`s degree in art history from the University of Chicago in 1968, Bullwinkel taught in the art and architecture school at the University of Illinois-Chicago for several years. At home, she was undergoing a different sort of education.
Julia Child was her instructor, as Bullwinkel worked her way through Volumes I and II of Child`s ”Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” learning by doing, sometimes over and over.
It`s that ability to watch a souffle fall or a cookie crumble without dissolving into tears yourself that allows one to move on and become a good cook, said Bullwinkel. ”Good cooks have the desire to nurture, they`re organized and they`re able to deal with the failures that all cooks have in a resourceful way,” she said. ”You can`t give up when things don`t turn out. You learn and keep on cooking.”
By the early 1970s, Bullwinkel and her husband, an attorney, were living in Hinsdale with their young son, who`s now an 18-year-old college freshman, and she was getting increasingly hooked on cooking, taking classes from master chefs who passed through Chicago, working her way through cookbooks and developing her own recipes.
In 1977, she decided she wanted to turn her interest into a business. The Chez Madelaine school was born, with some of the first students being neighbors and friends who had tasted Bullwinkel`s cooking and wanted to be able to duplicate it. Word of mouth and a little publicity has turned the home-based school geared toward home cooks, not professional chefs, into a hit.
In 1987, a Tribune panel of 21 Chicago-area food experts selected the top five local teachers for home cooks, and Bullwinkel was one of the five. Partly because of a shortage of non-professional home cooking schools in Du Page County and partly because Bullwinkel has developed a reputation as a good instructor, the classes typically have waiting lists, with fish cookery and grilling being two of the most popular offerings.
For those still languishing on waiting lists, they can get a taste of Bullwinkel`s expertise by subscribing to Madelaine`s Kitchen Secrets, a newsletter she publishes every other month. The issues contain recipes, news items on cooking trends and hints on technical aspects of cooking. One year`s subscription costs $15 (write to Chez Madelaine, 211 N. Washington St., Hinsdale, IL 60521, or phone 1-708-325-4177).
”It`s a way to keep in touch with people I couldn`t fit into my kitchen
(because of the waiting lists),” said Bullwinkel, ”and a way to amplify on some of the questions that come up in classes.”
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By 11:15 a.m. in Friday`s soups class, there are three large pots with brown stock, white stock and fish stock bubbling away on the stove. These won`t be ready until the evening, and the students have all gone home. The brown stock, for example, simmers for about seven hours.
”It`s a long job but everyone on the block will want to eat at your house,” says Bullwinkel. ”And your family will love you. You`ll have a lot to show for your investment.”
The students have not been sitting still while Bullwinkel chops and talks. She wants them to learn by doing.
”I need a volunteer to skim the fat off the fish stock,” she says.
”Who wants to put the bouquet garni (herbs and seasonings wrapped in cheesecloth) together?” she asks.
A wary student steps forward. ”I haven`t been this close to a stove in a long time,” says student Judy, presumably joking, as she steps forward to help stir a simmering pot.
”Sounds like my wife,” says student Rick, who later admits his wife is actually a pretty good cook when she has the time.
Bullwinkel has saved time Friday by cooking ahead. She pulls finished stocks from her refrigerator so she can move onto the next step, cooking three types of soup. This is one of the busier classes she teaches, and at one point all six gas burners are blazing. Between the talk about food, she fits in discussions of the best knives to buy and her favored heavy pots and where to get good ingredients.
”Some of the people who work in produce (at the supermarket) hide when they see me coming,” says Bullwinkel, who frequently asks employees to look in the back for fresher fruits or vegetables, instead of what`s been sitting out all day.
By 11:30 the soups are all in some stage of cooking and there`s a lull in the action, so Bullwinkel fills it with a quick pastry lesson, making a quick and easy creamy apple tart.
As she kneads the dough, she says, ”This is a great way to work out your aggressions about things, like the fact that your husband has a secretary and you don`t.”
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Bullwinkel is trying something new this school year. She has taken on an apprentice, Maureen Micek, from Oak Brook. Micek helps the classes run smoothly by preparing ingredients and clearing the dirty dishes and utensils. She also does some of the pre-class shopping with Bullwinkel and has private time with her to learn about the bookkeeping of a cooking school.
Micek had heard about Bullwinkel through several cooking stores in Du Page County and began taking classes a few years ago.
”She covered the basics, plus she was in tune with people,” said Micek. ”It`s hard when you`re teaching someone who has never been near a stove and someone with a lot of experience, but she makes it fun for everyone.
”If you don`t know something, she never makes you feel embarrassed. If someone says something wrong, she`ll say, well, that (way) is okay but how about trying it this way.
”Sometimes she tries to give you a lot of ideas in a short period of time. All of a sudden, a light will go on in your head at the end of the class.”
Bullwinkel said she taught bread making in her first classes and later developed her own preserve recipes to go with the breads. In 1984,
Contemporary Books published her ”Gourmet Preserves Chez Madelaine.”
”It`s considered a good reference book,” said Linda Calafiore, director of the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago, which trains people who want to be professional chefs. ”When I think of jams and preserves, I think of Madelaine and her book. I also associate her with fresh ingredients.”
Fresh as in straight from the garden. Bullwinkel also is known for her herb garden in her backyard, some of which moves inside to a large window box in the winter. She has lectured for years to groups like the Garden Clubs of Illinois on cooking with fresh herbs.
Bullwinkel`s roots remain in French cooking, although she has modified that somewhat to keep up with the health and fat consciousness of cooking in the 1980s. ”Although the techniques I use probably could be said to be French,” she said, ”I`ve cut back a lot on cream and butter.” She does not, however, use margarine.
Bullwinkel said her own cooking for her family is simple and homey, with a lot of grilling and pasta cooking.
Her husband, George, doesn`t have any particular favorites: ”I like everything she makes. Just as styles change from year to year in fashion, in music, they change in food and Madelaine always is on top of it.”
George said he doesn`t mind the inconvenience of losing his kitchen to a cooking school once a week, and any bother is outweighed by all the leftovers. ”It does impact on my life, of course,” said George. ”For one thing, it`s really fun to watch your spouse do something she loves to do and make a business of it. She has always loved teaching. It deals with people in a very positive, creative way.”
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It`s 12:45 p.m. in the Bullwinkel kitchen, and finally the class can begin to taste what`s been bubbling in those pots. First finished is the double consomme, deep brown and aromatic, passed out in little paper cups.
”There`s something so pleasing about soups,” says Bullwinkel. ”It really soothes you.”
By 1 p.m., the gooey, cheesy onion soup is ready to be eaten in the kitchen. ”It`s out of this world,” says one student.
”It`s been compared to the onion soup in Montreal,” says Bullwinkel,
”which is probably the nicest compliment you can get.”
Next the group moves into the dining room for large bowls of mushroom soup. ”It`s definitely not Campbell`s,” said one student. Rich red snapper soup follows, and finally the apple tart.
By 2 p.m., the cooking and eating is over, and everyone`s relaxing in the dining room. ”I usually lie down for an hour, at least, after this class,”
says a weary Bullwinkel.
But there`s still work to be done, by both students and teacher. The least appealing aspect of cooking, the clean up, awaits Maureen and Madelaine in the delicious smelling kitchen on Washington Street, and experimenting with their new knowledge and recipes awaits the students in their own home kitchens in the weeks ahead.
