When Rodrigo del Canto, Fernando Ayala and Miguel Angel Martin spend time together, it’s not to discuss who may replace Marv Albert as the announcer for NBC’s coverage of the National Basketball Association or whether the Green Bay Packers will repeat as Super Bowl champs.
What’s on these men’s minds is which fish looks freshest in the market, which seasonal vegetables are the most tempting and which wines should be served with particular dishes.
The men, none professional chefs and each born outside the U.S., have shopped, cooked and eaten together for the last three years in a loosely staged ’90s version of a gourmet club.
Gourmet cooking clubs began to proliferate in this country more than 30 years ago, after Julia Child made French cooking accessible for home cooks.
“Many home cooks came out of the 1950s enamored with what was called `can-opener epicure.’ They made fancy food from sauce in a can or bottle,” explains Barbara Haber, curator of books at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College. “Child was the first, along with Craig Claiborne, who awakened people to elaborate cooking,” Haber says.
Instead of following the earlier church-derived potluck supper, which instructed each person to bring a dish, friends gathered to show off new culinary talents and recipes, share preparations, consume results and generally have a great time. (“Potluck” originally meant “Come home with me and we’ll have the luck of the pot,” Haber says.)
Many clubs developed elaborate formulas with regular time schedules (perhaps once a month or every other month), a theme (foods of Provence or a Hawaiian luau), recipe assignments and elaborate rules (the host prepares the main dish, the choice of wines rotates among members and those who don’t cook clean up).
While clubs proliferated in the ’60s and ’70s, many died in the ’80s when careers consumed time formerly set aside for leisurely cooking. But some survived. Many of those that did and the new ones that have started up recently reflect greater spontaneity.
In the case of del Canto, Ayala and Martin, they prepare dishes that reflect their native lands as well as the countries where each has lived, studied, traveled and eagerly experienced new tastes and techniques.
Del Canto, principal architect in the Macondo Corp., is from Chile. He first became interested in cooking because “I was an impoverished student who had to learn to do something magical with a ketchup bottle.” He studied and lived in South Carolina, where he cooked with a French professor from Vietnam and an African-American chef. They taught him their traditions. He continued his studies and work in Italy, where he became familiar with that country’s many regional variations.
Ayala, the consul of Chile, learned to cook while a student because he hated the fast food that fit his budget. He found others from different countries who shared his interest. Together they cooked an international dinner once a month. When his work took him to Ecuador, Yugoslavia, South Korea and Sweden, he added to his recipe bank. Now divorced, he often finds that he cooks for himself and friends.
Martin, who hails from Santander, Spain, is executive director of the Instituto Cervantes, Spain’s cultural center in Chicago. He earned to cook at home from his parents. His prior job for the International Tennis Federation took him to Africa, the Middle East and South America, where he assimilated new cooking traditions.
“I like to research history and when you do, you find that cuisine made the human being. The Spanish ships that set sail for America were looking for spices to preserve food and expand taste options,” says Martin, who is also a lawyer.
The men’s gatherings take place spontaneously every few weeks or months when del Canto, their leader, summons them for another cooking adventure in the remodeled, professionally equipped kitchen of his Lincoln Park home.
First the men head out early on a Saturday or Sunday morning to shop together, usually at a farmers market on Armitage Avenue or at a Whole Foods grocery store. At both places they look for the freshest and most unusual items. They pool a set amount of money and decide at the stores what to make, usually inspired by one main ingredient they have spied.
The men bring their ingredients back to del Canto’s house, where they are often joined by other male friends who bring ingredients and their culinary imaginations. Then begins “organized chaos,” as del Canto’s wife describes the ensuing hubbub.
All the men cook by improvisation, inspired by recipes from memory or ones that have piqued their interest at restaurants and during their travels. In a few hours, the kitchen’s granite countertops become covered with dozens of ingredients, pots and pans, paring knives and bottles of wine as the men turn the setting into a culinary laboratory.
A recent collaborative dinner included a fresh lettuce and pomegranate salad; a celery salad with avocado, nuts and a lime dressing; a beef stew with sherry and garlic; bell peppers filled with a tuna mixture topped by a golden layer of bechamel sauce (see recipes, p. 42); and several desserts.
“Nothing is terribly complicated, and many of the dishes sound similar in their ingredients to American recipes, but one or two items or a method make them just enough different,” del Canto says.
With everyone busy with a task or helping to clean up as work progresses, del Canto explains, no one is in charge.
“We once had someone with us who wanted assistants, not partners, so he wasn’t for us,” he says. “You really get to know someone when you share cooking–in the same way that you get to know someone when you play golf. You have to learn to control yourself and your temper.”
His partners say his description of a democracy is not 100 percent accurate.
“He really tells us what to do and is the boss,” injects Michael Kurzman, executive vice-president of the Lurie Co., a real estate firm, who had prepared a delicately seasoned potato dish for this day. His host disagrees laughing, as he buzzes back and forth like a whirling dervish: “That’s not true. If someone was in charge, everything would be a lot easier.”
But their get-togethers are not all about work. They take frequent breaks to enjoy wine and “munchies,” as del Canto calls their snacks, and to engage in heated political discussions.
“For Hispanic people, cooking is a social event,” says Martin.
Children wander in and out, with the older ones helping and the younger ones impatient for the meal.
“I’ve taught my older daughter, Catalina, how to hold a knife and cut and to respect kitchen equipment in the same way a doctor respects his surgical tools,” del Canto says.
What does Catalina, who has just come into the room with some friends, think?
“He likes to cook when there are a thousand people around,” says the 9-year-old.
“I don’t know where she would get such an idea,” her father says, quickly surveying the group that keeps growing as more friends arrive to work, taste, critique and set the table.
“I don’t cook at all, but I help clean up,” says Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Chicago, who is among the stragglers showing up at the propitious time when the meal is almost complete.
Del Canto explains: “I have fond memories of big Sunday lunches with several generations, so if anybody has family or friends visiting, they’re, of course, invited.”
The chefs form a conga line to carry the dishes up to a rooftop deck where they will dine on an unseasonably warm fall afternoon. They sit down at several tables, because the setting cannot accommodate the one large table that del Canto prefers and can arrange indoors.
“To sit at one table, feel comfortable and share our labors is the most wonderful way to connect,” he says.
For Martin, it’s also the truest way to get to know others.
“In Spain, we sit down and talk for hours and hours,” he says. “Cooking involves much more than feeding yourself.”
When the meal is finished, children may go to sleep, the women may go home or stay, but the partners continue, finishing other dishes that take longer or preparing some new ones that they’ll eat later, after they drink more wine, smoke good Cuban cigars, laugh and continue their political debates.
“Discussions of politics always make you hungry,” del Canto says. The others look ready for a good siesta.
