Nan Colton is a conjurer. In her remarkable one-woman performances, she conjures up dozens of famous female characters. . . Harriet Beecher Stowe whose book “started” the Civil War. Mina Miller Edison, wife of the inventor. Photographer Berenice Abbott. Or Clio, the Greek muse of history.
In October, she appeared as Agatha Christie, queen of murder mysteries, at the Safety Harbor Library and at the Clearwater Main Library, and as Edith Kermit Roosevelt at Clearwater’s Countryside Library. In November she portrayed the abstract artist Lee Krasner as part of her monthly Coffee Talks (currently online) at St. Petersburg’s Museum of Fine Arts, where she is performing-artist-in-residence. Eight days later, back at the Countryside Library in Clearwater, she was British novelist Virginia Woolf.
How does she accomplish these magical transformations?
Not by putting on a prosthetic nose or faking a posh English accent as Nicole Kidman did in the film The Hours. (Listen to the one recording of Virginia Woolf’s voice, available on YouTube, to hear how far off Kidman was from the genuine article). . . .
Nan Colton, in a black gaucho hat, echoes the photograph of Georgia O’Keeffe that appears on the cover of Jan Castro’s The Life and Art of Georgia O’Keeffe
. . . Colton’s performances are more subtle. She doesn’t try to slavishly imitate accents. Instead with just a studied tone of voice, a few conscious hand gestures and turns of phrases – and some well-chosen props – Colton makes us believe we are looking at Dora Maar, Picasso’s longtime abused muse and mistress waving her cigarette holder, or artist Georgia O’Keeffe in her iconic black gaucho hat, or the regal Catherine the Great with a crown atop her white wig.
“I don’t do impersonations. I do characterizations,” explains Colton who describes herself as a “playwright, director, storyteller, actress and arts educator” on her Solo Productions website. “The audience has to buy into my performance and then a wonderful communication between us occurs.”
Take that online MFA performance. Colton looks nothing like the craggy-faced Krasner. But when I peered at my computer screen, there was the Brooklyn-born Krasner, dressed in a shocking pink jacket, sweeping her hands back and forth, telling me about that day in Paris when she learned that her husband, painter Jackson Pollock, had died in a car crash. . . .
Nan Colton appearing as Lee Krasner in her recent online Coffee Talk at St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Arts where she is the performing-artist-in-residence
. . . It was as if the artist was seated just across from me. She explained that a young woman who was in the car with Pollock when he crashed had also died but that his mistress, the woman they had fought over and caused Krasner to flee to France, had survived. She told me how determined she was to work through her grief, that she had moved into the barn where Pollock had his studio. Painting was how she was working through her grief, she said.
Only when I heard Colton say, “Now I am stepping out of my character,” was the spell broken. For nearly 45 minutes Colton had become Krasner but now the storyteller was talking in her own clipped cadence and lilting accent from her native South Africa. Krasner had disappeared. . . .
Lee Krasner, wearing the shocking pink jacket that inspired Nan Colton’s costume
. . . As part of the post-show’s “questions and answers with the audience” segment, Colton put on a slide-show with photographs of the real Krasner — black-and-white snapshots with the artist posing with Pollock, shots of Krasner painting in her studio. In one, a colored portrait, she’s wearing the shocking pink jacket which had inspired Colton’s choice of costume.
Colton called her talk Re-Echo in honor of the Krasner painting by that name currently on view at the Museum of Fine Arts through February 2022, on loan from the Art Bridges Foundation. Painted in 1957, Re-Echo is part of Krasner’s monumental Earth Green series, 17 paintings that were completed after the death of Pollock in that 1956 crash. . . .
Re-Echo by Lee Krasner, currently on display at St. Petersburg’s Museum of Fine Arts, on loan from the Art Bridges Foundation
. . . Katherine Pill, the MFA’s Curator of Contemporary Art, describes the piece as “a stunning, pivotal work that epitomizes emotive gesture and form” and one that serves as a reminder that “the male-dominated narrative of Abstract Expressionism still crucially needs to be expanded.”
Colton, who has performed and lectured professionally on stages throughout South Africa, Great Britain and the United States, launched Solo Productions in 1998 when she began her gig as the performing-artist-in-residence at the MFA. The museum commissioned her that year to portray Catherine the Great as part of the MFA’s Russian exhibit. She has offered her one-woman portrayals at the museum’s monthly Coffee Talks ever since. . . .
. . . Expanding her reach to corporate events, libraries, schools, universities and retirement communities, Colton currently has more than 45 characters at the ready, but for an additional fee she will develop a new character and script for clients. One of her completed scripts has yet to be performed. She was all set to go when her show was cancelled due to COVID. “But who knows,” says Colton, “Sarah Bernhardt’s Visit to Tampa Bay may have an appearance sometime in the future. The costume is ready!” . . . .
At the start of Colton’s research, all of her subjects pose “challenges or hurdles” for her to overcome, but who has been the most difficult to develop? “For me, that has been Frida Kahlo,” says Colton. Colton was impressed with Salma Hayek’s Academy Award-nominated portrayal of the Mexican artist in the film Frida (“She is simply marvelous to watch”), but her own immersion into Frida’s dynamics left her exhausted. “At the end of her life Frida was filled with both physical and emotional pain muted by drugs and alcohol,” says Colton, “and this is a very dark place to visit.”
Her most enjoyable character to portray? “The one requested and being portrayed that day,” Colton insists. . . .
Nan Colton has been offering portrayals of famous women in her Coffee Talks at St. Petersburg’s Museum of Fine Arts, where she is the performing-artist-in-residence, since 1998
. . . In her online MFA presentation, Colton urged us to go to the museum and see Re-Echo for ourselves – to stand on a white dot in front of the painting where you can hear a recording of Krasner’s own voice discussing the work. Krasner made the recording as she was preparing for an exhibition and the public unveiling of Re-Echo and the other works in the series.
Listening to Krasner in her own words is mesmerizing. (You can also hear Krasner here in a YouTube segment online entitled In Her Own Words – “I think all painting is biographical,” Krasner entones in her unmistakable Brooklyn accent).
Standing on that white dot, I thought of the voices of all the creative women Colton has brought to life and realized that she adds one more ingredient when she conjures them up in her performances – the power of empathy. Colton really cares about these women and their lives — and it shows.
It is the secret power of all storytellers.
Nan Colton as Virginia Woolf
Nan Colton as Nan Colton This article originally appeared in Arts Coast Journal on December 2, 2021.
The first piece of furniture I ever bought — I was 12 — was a Mission bench. I paid $5 for it, all of my savings at the time. It is made of oak with a red leather seat and a simple design of vertical slats. It still is one of my most prized possessions.
The Mission style is closely associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement, a movement that began in Britain and quickly spread to Europe and America. The movement inspired the Craftsman line of furniture promoted by Gustav Stickley and the Prairie School architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. . . .
The Craftsman magazine, founded by Gustav Stickley, promoted the aesthetics of the American Arts and Crafts movement.
. . . Like Mission aficionados, the Arts and Crafts folk emphasized simple design and natural materials. Stickley’s pieces were handcrafted and my bench was mass produced, but both were rebelling against the ornate Victorian furniture that prevailed at the time (and which filled my childhood home in Wisconsin where both Stickley and Wright had strong ties).
So when I heard — in 2015 — that Tarpon Springs businessman Rodolfo “Rudy” Ciccarello was building a museum at 355 4th St. N. in St. Petersburg to house his American Arts and Crafts collection, I was thrilled.
I pictured a small, modest furniture museum filled with dark oak bookcases, tables, chairs and clocks. . . .
The exterior of the Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement. Image @ MAACM Photo @ Joe Brennan
. . . Now, six years later, I realize my mistake. Ciccarello’s Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement (MAACM), which finally opened to the public last month, can hardly be called a furniture museum — and it certainly will never be described as small and modest. Although there is a whole floor devoted to exquisite hand-crafted furniture — everything from linen presses to pianos — the five-story, 137,000 square foot museum (40,000 devoted to gallery space) offers a lot more than cupboards. . . . . .
Rodolfo “Rudy” Ciccarello, pictured here, began his American Arts and Craft collection with the purchase at a Boston auction of a Gustav Stickley’s bookcase
. . . “I became interested in American A&C in the late 1990s,” Ciccarello told the Journal of Antiques & Collectibles in 2016. Ciccarello had grown up around antiques in his family home in Rome, Italy. “The A&C style at once resonated with me and I soon purchased my first Gustav Stickley bookcase at an auction in Boston, Massachusetts. From that auction my passion grew as did the collection. What began as furniture from the movement evolved into all the varied art forms so that now every genre is represented in the collection from pottery to photography to lighting and beyond.”
Indeed. At the MAACM you can peer into a completely reassembled tiled bathroom — the Iris Bathroom, originally installed in an Ohio mansion in 1914. You can walk into a recreation of a wood-paneled Arts and Crafts bedroom, complete a with bed, dressing table and chests of drawers from Stickley’s Craftsman Workshop – plus a dazzling Tiffany lamp encircled with peacock eyes.
There are tiles from a Newport, Rhode Island boathouse and a staircase designed by Louis Sullivan from the Chicago Stock Exchange. . . .
On display in MAACM’s Architects Gallery – furnishings from a Prairie Home built in the early 20th century in Minnesota and Louis Sullivan’s staircase from the Chicago Stock Exchange
. . . Two temporary exhibits are on view. Seventy-five examples of work — from printed books and ephemera to furniture, electric lighting, metalwork and stained glass — by the Roycroft Enterprise, a reformist community of crafters founded in 1895 by Ebert Hubbard. And a photography display called Lenses Embracing the Beautiful that features photographs taken between the 1890s and the 1940s, including Edward Steichen’s portrait of Auguste Rodin in a pose reminiscent of his famous sculpture The Thinker.
There’s a gift shop where every object is something I want to take home and a cafe with signature cocktails.
That gift shop and cafe were eerily empty when I got my first glimpse of the museum last June, thanks to my friend Carolyn Nygren who, as a member, was invited to come with a guest for a sneak preview. On a Monday afternoon last June, we entered the museum’s soaring Grand Atrium where a large group of mostly older, mostly masked folk, awaited their tour. . . .
The objects and the structure that houses them at MAACM — like The Medusa Lamp, designed by Elizabeth Eaton Burton, shown here juxtaposed with museum’s iconic staircase — both reflect the aesthetics of the American Arts and Crafts movement. . . simple design, natural materials, utility of purpose and nature motifs
. . . Whisked into elevators (too few for the eager crowd, many of whom opted to take the stairs), we were treated to a whirlwind walk-through of the museum’s four floors of displays — although not all the galleries were ready yet. A museum curator reviewed for us the history of the Arts and Crafts movement and explained the evolution of the collection from Ciccarello’s purchase of that Stickley bookcase to his establishment in 2004 of the nonprofit Two Red Roses Foundation which has fleshed out the museum’s holdings to over 2,000 objects.
As my eyes took in the dozens and dozens of pieces set on raised platforms or behind glass cases, I found myself looking more and more not at the objects but at the building that houses them. The ultra-modern museum structure, designed by Alfonso Architects, a Tampa-based firm led by Cuban-American architect Alberto Alfonso with apparently considerable input from Ciccarello, is itself a work of art. . . .
The museum’s ovoid looks like a piece of pottery. Image @ MAACM Photo: @ Joe Brennan
. . . The white bulge on the exterior of the building — called an ovoid — looks like a piece of pottery. Inside, the thick-coated white spiral staircase resembles the whorls of a rose in designs by Arts and Crafts pioneer Charles Rennie Mackintosh. And the multi-color stained-glass skylight echoes Frank Lloyd Wright.
From the use of wood on the floor and walls to the natural light flooding into the galleries (some of them with curved walls, thanks to that ovoid), everywhere you turned, there was a nod to the aesthetics of the Arts and Crafts movement.
. . .
MAACM’s spiral staircase is a nod to the roses in designs by Arts and Crafts pioneer Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Image @ MAACM Photo: @ Joe Brennan
. . .
Helen Huntley enumerated the four principles of that aesthetics on my second visit to the museum last month – simplicity of design, honesty of materials, utility of purpose and the incorporation of nature motifs. A colleague from my days at the St. Petersburg Times, Helen, who is a docent at MAACM, had offered to guide me and my friends through the museum, now opened to the public. . . .
Helen Huntley, a MAACM docent, begins her tour of the museum in front of a modern recreation by Motawi Tileworks of a circa 1910 stained glass window (also on display) illustrating the William Morris poem that inspired the name of the Two Red Roses Foundation
. . . She began our tour in front of two images of a woman looking up at a Moon and two roses – a small, backlit, stained glass window, made around 1910 – and a larger modern recreation of that window in tile made in 2015 by Motawi Tileworks. The original window, illustrating a 1858 poem entitled “Two Red Roses Across the Moon” by British Arts and Crafts pioneer William Morris, was found in a private home in St. Petersburg. The window and the poem were the inspirations behind Ciccarello’s naming his nonprofit foundation Two Red Roses, Helen explained. . . .
A typical Craftsman bedroom on display at MAACM
. . . She also answered a question that she said she knew was on a lot of our minds – How did Ciccarello make all his money? Answer, pharmaceuticals. Beginning with a $15,000 investment, Ciccarello, once a consultant pharmacist at the Jack Eckerd Corporation, grew his company, Florida Infusion Services, into the second largest national specialty pharmaceutical distributor in the U.S.
For our tour — each docent fashions their own — Helen told us that she would be concentrating on only a few of the more than 800 objects currently on display at the museum, so that we could take a deep dive into each one of them. . . .
The Rookwood Ship Mural hangs in the Grand Atrium at MAACM
. . . First stop – The Rookwood Pottery Ship Mural. Made up of 600 tiles depicting ships in a calm harbor, the mural was designed in 1914, but had never been assembled and installed. In fact, the tiles ended up being separated into two lots. Ciccarello bought one in 2004 and the second lot in 2012. Reuniting and restoring the tiles turned into an eight-year-long project.
How had I missed this massive work hanging over the admissions desk in the museum’s Grand Atrium on my first visit? I never looked up, I guess. Now we were looking down into that atrium at the mural from the second floor. . . .
On the second floor of MAACM, Mary Corbett views the Rookwood Ship Mural, composed of more than 600 tiles, which spans more than 50 feet span across the wall of the museum’s Grand Atrium below
. . . The mural is about 50 feet long, smaller than the original mural which was designed to be 70 feet long. During restoration some sections had to be left out because too many tiles were missing or damaged. One set of tiles was left out because it showed only half of a ship and could not be incorporated seamlessly into the final work.
Helen steered us to that section hanging on a wall just around the corner from where we had been viewing the larger piece. She invited us to examine the tiles up close, pointing to the sign next to them – “Please Touch.” (How often do you see that in a museum?) So we did, running our hands over the raised piping depicting the ship’s rigging and other textures. The tile decorators created those ridges by squeezing colors from a tube like a cake decorator, Helen said. . . .
Invited by a sign that reads “Please Touch,” Carolyn Nygren takes a close-up look at a section of MAACM’s Rookwood Ship Mural available for hands-on examination
. . . Next, she directed us to the Architects Gallery, also on the second floor, instructing us to look thoroughly at a tall Prairie School floor clock, asking us what we saw. “It’s made of oak,” one in our party observed, “and it appears to have been stained.” Yes, Helen pointed out, in keeping with the Arts and Crafts “honesty of materials,” it would never have been painted. “See, you can still see the wood’s grain,” she said.
She noted the clock’s trapezoid form and urged us to find that form repeated in the table and chairs set in front of it, also made of oak. All of the pieces were originally designed to complement a Prairie House built in the early 20th century in Minnesota, but the owners eventually got tired of the design and redecorated. Luckily they stored the pieces in a barn on the property where they remained untouched until they were auctioned off in the 1980s and later bought by Ciccarello. . . .
A Tiffany lamp decorated with the eyes of peacocks on display in the bedroom installation at MAACM
. . . On the third floor we visited the Lighting Gallery, filled with a dazzling array of lamps, chandeliers and lanterns made of glass, copper, wood and ceramics. Electricity was just being introduced to homes in the early 20th century.
In that gallery we focused on three lamps designed by Elizabeth Eaton Burton (a fourth is on display on the second floor next to the Two Red Roses signage). One, called the Medusa lamp, was encircled with abalone shells and supported by a copper base. Did Burton choose the name because it looked like a jellyfish which often are called Medusas after the mythological Greek figure? Or perhaps the name was inspired by the tangle of cords under the lamp’s shell, resembling the snakes in Medusa’s head. Helen left it to us to speculate. . . .
The three-handled mug called a tyg designed by Roberta Beverly Kennon is more brightly glazed than her other pieces in MAACM’s display of Newcombe Pottery
. . . In the Ceramics Gallery on the fourth floor, we stopped to admire another Arts and Crafts object designed by a woman – a large mug with three handles, called a tyg, displayed among other examples of Newcombe pottery. This tyg, designed by Roberta Beverly Kennon, was more brightly glazed than Kennon’s other pieces in the vitrine. It featured three motifs of a rising sun. . . .
Mary Corbett stops and admires pieces of Newcombe pottery on a tour of MAACM led by docent Helen Huntley, also pictured here
. . . Helen had us “try out” the mug by pantomiming how we would pass it along to each other at a beer hall. Newcombe pottery was produced in a women’s college (now part of Tulane University) in New Orleans. Men did the throwing while women decorated the pieces (and placed their initials on them, in this case the notorious RBK). . . .
The reassembled Iris Bathroom, originally built for a home in a suburb of Cleveland, now on display at MAACM
. . . Before moving on to the final piece Helen had chosen for us, we all took a peek at the 2,000 green tiles in the Iris Bathroom decorated with water lilies and irises and the 19 floor tiles depicting sailing ships salvaged from Arthur Curtiss James’ Rhode Island boathouse (both supplied by the Grueby Faience and Tile Company of Boston). . . .
The tiles from the floor of Arthur Curtiss James’ Rhode Island boathouse, supplied by the Grueby Faience and Tile Company of Boston, depict the owner’s own yacht, The Aloha, surrounded by 18 sailing ships from maritime history
. . . Our final stop on the tour was on the fifth floor to view the pianos on display there. The most impressive was a piano built at Stickley’s Craftsman workshop in Eastwood, New York and assumed to be designed by architect Harvey Ellis. Ellis, who worked at the Craftsman workshop for only seven months before his death in 1904, had a big influence on Stickley furniture, introducing decorative touches, like the inlay work that flanks either side of this piano’s front. . . .
A piano built at the Stickley’s Craftsman Workshop in Eastwood, New York, attributed to architect Harvey Ellis known for his decorative touches like the inlays that flank the cabinet’s front
. . . Finally, we all headed to MAACM’s cafe for a cup of coffee. Unlike my first visit, it was filled with visitors, including Ciccarello himself who was deep in conversation at the table next to ours. Ciccarello lives in Tarpon Springs, but Helen told us that she often spots the hands-on entrepreneur at the museum. “I once saw him behind the counter in the cafe teaching someone how to work the coffee machine,” Helen laughed.
When I returned home, I found this quote by Gustav Stickley on the Internet. . .
“When a man’s home is born out of his heart and developed through his labor and perfected through his sense of beauty, it is the very cornerstone of life.”
Substitute the word “home” with “museum” and the quote perfectly describes Rudy Ciccarello and his collection.
*****
To my blog subscribers who don't live in St. Petersburg: I hope you get to see this unique museum soon. This article originally appeared in Arts Coast Journal.
Thanksgiving, the ultimate food holiday, takes a lot of effort to pull it off. For years my husband and I were lucky to celebrate it with two chefs: Tom Valeo, a childhood friend of mine, and Karen Pryslopski, a Florida friend whom I introduced to Tom. They weren't professional chefs, mind you, but the meals they made were better than any restaurant meal I ever had.
This year will be our first Thanksgiving without them both. In February Karen died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage after an apparent fall (Tom died of cancer in 2015).Tom used to say, "Don't be a slave to the calendar."This year we are following his advice.
This year we are skipping Thanksgiving. Well, opting out of preparing the traditional Thanksgiving feast, that is.Thursday we are taking it easy. No heavy cooking.
To be clear, cooking has never been my forte. My grandmother, my mother and all three of my sisters were/are great cooks. I never inherited the gene. For as long as I can remember I have relied on the kindness of cooking friends and family to make my Thanksgiving dinners memorable. For the Thanksgivings with Tom and Karen, my husband would contribute mashed sweet potatoes, Tom would make what he called pumpkin pie shooters (served in miniature foil pans) and Karen, who was the best cook of us all, would whip up a slew of sides dishes. Me? I "cooked" a pre-cooked Publix turkey.
"You will never love to cook," my friend Nancy Paradis, another friend of mine who was a fantastic cook, once told me with her characteristic frankness, "but I'll teach you how to do a few meals and that's all you'll need." We started with a shrimp dish. Just cook the shrimp until you hear them sizzle, she instructed. When she saw the panicked look on my face, she laughed: "You don't know what sizzle means, do you?" I didn't. After that shaky first lesson, Nancy compiled a folder of easy recipes for me that she entitled "Margo's Kitchen Adventures." Nancy died in 2008. Every time I make Greek Pasta and Shrimp Salad, I think of her.
Last August when Sheila Cowley, my editor at Arts Coast Journal, asked if I would be interested in doing a story on a cooking class at a museum in Dunedin, the irony wasn't lost on me, but I immediately said yes. Who better to write about a cooking class than someone with a history of cooking phobia? I called up my friend Anthea and invited her to come with me. I owed her. She recently had given me the recipe for the meal she had cooked for my birthday party: Chicken Poppyseed (affectionately referred to as Chicken Shit in her family), a dish made with sour cream, cream of chicken soup, Ritz crackers, butter and, of course, chicken and poppyseeds. So easy to make even I could do it.
The museum cooking class was a smashing success (see the account below which originally appeared in Arts Coast Journal in September) -- even though I will never be able to duplicate the complicated meal we created that night. On the other hand, I have made Anthea's Chicken Shit several times with great success.
Thanksgiving may be a cooking holiday but, it's not only about food. Even though I'm passing on the turkey this year, I will be offering up a special thanks to all those, living and dead, who have cooked for me in my life and/or shared easy recipes.
Art for Eating's Sake: Cooking Class in Dunedin
At the Dunedin Fine Art Center, some masterpieces are not on the walls. They are on the table. The kitchen table, that is.
For the past three years, DFAC has been offering dozens of cooking classes with such mouth-watering titles as Paris Summer Bistro, Taste of Thailand and Flavors of Sicily in its state-of-the-art kitchen classroom. Students create chef d’oeuvres — and then get to devour them.
As Marcella Hazan, the Italian-born cookbook writer who died in Longboat Key at age 89 in 2013 once said, “Cooking is an art, but you eat it too.”
Chef Craig Tinling poses in the Dunedin Fine Arts Center teaching kitchen while Arts Coast writer Margo Hammond in DFAC’s blue apron takes her place at one of the five cooking stations. (Photo by Anthea Penrose)
Anthea Penrose brought her own apron for the DFLAC cooking class. Given to her by her grandchildren, it’s labeled Guggy (their nickname for her). (Photo by sous chef Alina Berja)
In August, I attended a class called New Orleans French Quarter and although I will never be mistaken for a culinary artiste, I made a meal fit for a king (or queen) — with the help of cooking instructor Chef Craig Tinling who earned his culinary degree in his hometown of Winnipeg in Canada. In registering for the course (cost $65 per person), I was required to sign up with at least one other person with whom I would feel comfortable working in close quarters. My friend Anthea Penrose (who has been in my COVID bubble since the beginning of the pandemic) agreed to become my cooking accomplice.
She and I arrived at DFAC 10 minutes before the 6:30 p.m. class, as instructed. After we had our temperatures checked at the front door, we were directed to the second floor. There, in a 1,400-square-foot teaching kitchen, Tinling and his assistant Alina Berje greeted us with aprons and two glasses for the BYO wine we had been encouraged to bring along (Anthea chose a Pinot Noir, I contributed a light Cab). Tinling then led us to a stainless-steel cooking station. The class was full – 10 students were paired two by two at the kitchen’s five stations. While Anthea and I were first timers, Linda Shutt Atkins and David Atkins of Dunedin, occupying the station next to us, admitted they were confirmed recidivists.
Each station was equipped with a cooktop with two burners and a large countertop workspace laden with the ingredients, already cut and measured out, that we would be using for our cooking lesson – cups of oil, flour and spices. Bowls of crushed tomatoes, chicken broth, slices of Andouille sausage and bite-size chicken pieces. Onions, celery and green peppers (dubbed the “Holy Trinity of Cajun cooking”) along with garlic and fresh okra.
Some of the ingredients — already chopped and measured — set out for the New Orleans French Quarter cooking class at DFAC (Photo by Anthea Penrose)
As we broke open our wine, Chef Craig, who also gives cooking classes at Casa di Mazzaro’s in St. Petersburg, outlined the meal we were about to create – Chicken and Andouille Sausage Gumbo over Red Beans and Rice. A butter lettuce salad tossed with crusty lardons and a home-made vinaigrette and topped with a poached egg. And, for dessert, beignets, those puffed pastries smothered in confectioner’s sugar that I have been dreaming about ever since I first encountered them at the Cafe du Monde in downtown New Orleans.
But first, Alina brought us hot French bread and seasoned butter to enjoy with our wine. “I make it different every time,” says Tinling when someone asked him for the butter recipe. This time he mixed a pound of “salted, pricey” butter with lemon juice, zest, cayenne, Dijon mustard, honey and black pepper.
Stirring the Chicken and Andouille Sausage Gumbo (Photo by Anthea Penrose)
We started by making the roux for the gumbo, mixing flour and oil in a heated pan. Tinling urged us to keep the heat up, stirring the sauce until it was the color of milk chocolate. “Like this color,” he explains, pointing to the room’s brown-paneled walls. When we eventually added the prepared gumbo ingredients, he told us to keep on stirring the gumbo as we tackled the rest of the meal.
For the rice and beans dish, Chef Craig taught us how to chop celery without cutting our fingers off – hold down the stalk by curling your hand into a bear claw, making sure you tuck in your fingernails. With the other hand, grip the chef’s knife with your middle, ring and pinkie fingers, pinching the blade near the handle with your thumb and index finger. Then cut the celery with a gentle rocking motion. He also suggested first sautéing the trinity of vegetables and then adding the garlic to prevent the cloves from burning.
Red Beans and Rice ready to serve (Photo by Anthea Penrose)
As we grilled the lardons (which I learned are cubes of salt-cured pork) until they were crisp and mixed the ingredients for the vinaigrette, the chef taught us the best way to poach an egg – break an egg into a small dish. Slide the egg into a saucepan of simmering water and distilled vinegar, pushing the egg white around the yolk with a slotted spoon forming an oval shape. Let the egg cook for 2-4 minutes depending on desired firmness and then transfer the poached egg to a bowl of warm water. When ready to serve, lift the egg from the water with a slotted spoon, draining off any excess water.
Butter Lettuce Salad tossed with home-made vinaigrette and crusty lardons and topped with a poached egg (Photo by Anthea Penrose)
For the beignets, Alina brought us a ball of prepared dough which we rolled out to a quarter of an inch thick and cut into squares. Then we were invited to drop our squares into a vat of oil heated to 350 degrees F on a stove in the back of the room. When the batter puffed up and was golden brown, we transferred the pastries with a slotted spoon to one of the paper bags filled with powdered sugar lined up on an adjoining table.
Confession – in the spirit of the infamous bumper sticker “Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first,” I convinced Anthea to join me in immediately gobbling up more than one of the piping hot beignets, now covered in powdered sugar, before they cooled off. I knew they would never taste as good as at that moment.
Cutting the rolled dough for the beignets (Photo by Anthea Penrose)
Before the pandemic, the DFAC class would have ended with a group dinner around a common table. Instead, we stuck to CDC guidelines for indoor dining and returned to our stations to savor the results of our labors with our cooking partners. We poured the gumbo over the rice and beans, plated the tossed salad and finished off a few more beignets.
As we left, Alina handed out printed recipes so we could try all these dishes at home. Would we? Alas, a team of assistants to do the shopping, chopping and measuring beforehand and cleaning up afterwards was not included.
Students at the five cooking stations listen attentively to Chef Craig in the DFAC teaching kitchen (Photo by Anthea Penrose)
