Boston Globe Reprint
This
11-year-old is a truly gifted cook
Author: Ann Cortissoz
BOSTON GLOBE STAFF
Date: December 6, 2006
CONCORD -
Chloe Rosen has been cooking for about eight
years. She has cooked her way through many books, has taken
classes, has watched hour upon hour of cooking shows on TV,
and has restaurant kitchen experience. Despite all this
passion, however, Chloe isn't certain she'll have a
career in food. But she has plenty of time to figure that
out. She's 11.
Chloe can't remember exactly when she started cooking,
but, she says, "There's a picture of me making a chocolate
cake when I was 3."
Today, in
her family's airy, bright kitchen, she's putting the
finishing touches on French onion soup, which has a crusty
top of bread and cheese. A casserole of noodles, bechamel
sauce, and Gruyere is in the oven. Freshly baked
profiteroles, the cream puffs, will be topped later with
chocolate sauce. And a chocolate souffle is in the works.
This is all for lunch.
She's
tweaked these recipes, adding touches such as red onions to
the soup to sweeten it and honey to the chocolate sauce. The
recipes come from all kinds of books, TV shows, and
magazines. As for how often she tries new dishes, Chloe
responds, "Like every day."
Family
and friends are all enthusiastic about the girl's
accomplishments. "Look at this," says mom Addie Rosen,
with a bit of exasperation. She opens a drawer brimming with
gadgets, including a cherry pitter and a lemon zester. "All
of these are things people gave Chloe as presents."
Chloe pulls out another gift, a hand-me-down KitchenAid
mixer from one of her mother's friends, and expertly inserts
the beaters before starting the souffle.
When Rosen and her husband, Joel, realized that their
daughter had real talent in the kitchen, they made a
decision to let it evolve but not become stage parents.
"We've never pushed her," says her mother, with a
combination of pride and bemusement as her pixie-like
pig-tailed younger daughter moves around the kitchen in a
whirlwind of activity. "She has just always been interested
in cooking."
Addie
Rosen, who also likes to cook, used to lift Chloe
up on the kitchen counter when she was very young so the
girl could watch her mom put recipes together. "Maybe that's
how it all started," Rosen says. (I knew Addie
Rosen in college, but had not seen her in more than 20
years before writing this story.)
Rosen
taught Chloe some basic skills several years ago, but
now mom acts more as a chauffeur and an assistant, driving
Chloe to various cooking-related activities or
reaching for things in the kitchen that 4-foot-7 Chloe
is too short to get to. The dynamic is apparent: Chloe
gives directions with assurance as she puts the finishing
touches on the onion soup. "Mom, make sure the oven is on
375," Chloe directs. Then: "Could you take the
profiterole dough out of the refrigerator?"
When
she's not cooking, Chloe is at Meadowbrook School.
After school, the sixth-grader plays soccer, lacrosse, and
basketball. She often bakes and cooks for school functions,
for her friends, and for her sister, Aliza, who is 15.
Except
when she's talking about cooking, Chloe is a bit
quiet and shy. But she becomes animated and precise as she
describes how she made the bechamel sauce for the noodle
casserole. "First I put butter in a pan and melted it and
then put flour in and made a roux," she says. Other
sophisticated cooking words - like piccata and gratineed -
pepper her speech.
Chloe likes author and TV cook Ina Garten, known as the
Barefoot Contessa, from whom she learned such tips as
leaving egg whites at room temperature before beating, and
adding cream of tartar to the bowl. Other favorites include
Giada De Laurentiis and Alton Brown. And though she's
soft-spoken, she has strong opinions. When her mother
reminds her that she also likes to watch Rachael Ray, Chloe responds, "But I don't like her recipes."
While
other girls her age might be reading teen magazines, Chloe is devouring the latest issues of Gourmet and Bon
Appetit. She has subscriptions to both, and also looks over
the Baker's Catalogue from King Arthur.
And
instead of going to soccer camp over the summer, Chloe
went to cooking camp for one week at Create-a-Cook in
Newton. "I learned how to chop and peel," says Chloe.
Then she corrects herself. "Well, it wasn't really learning,
but perfecting."
Because
Chloe is always looking for new opportunities to
cook, her father asked the owner of a favorite restaurant
near her grandparents' home in New Jersey if she could spend
some time in the kitchen there.
When
she walked into the kitchen at Bay Ave. Trattoria in
Highlands, N.J., this summer, "She showed no fear," says
chef and owner Joe Romanowski. Romanowski, who also teaches
at a local cooking school, says, "For how old she is, she's
very much into [cooking]. You can see the desire."
In
October, Chloe's mother asked an acquaintance who
tests recipes for Cook's Country magazine if Chloe
could visit her at work in the publication's Brookline-based
kitchens, the same ones used for the public television show
"America's Test Kitchen." The magazine is an offshoot of
Cook's Illustrated.
When
she met Chloe, Diane Unger, an editor and recipe
tester, was a bit taken aback, she says. "I was expecting
someone older." But Chloe helped with a biscuit
recipe and "she did everything perfectly," says Unger. "We
have interns who don't do as well."
When
Unger asked the girl to do the mise en place (measure all
the ingredients), Chloe knew exactly what to do. "She
wasn't intimidated at all," says the editor.
Chloe might not be sure she's going to have a career in
cooking, but she probably has a job waiting for her if she
wants it. After watching her in his kitchen, restaurateur
Romanowski says, "If she were older, I'd hire her in a
minute."
