Recipes Diverse and Divine

Editor Laura Buckley on All Stirred Up, a cookbook that flares with multicultural flavours

Laura Buckley and Madeleine Greey were at the helm of producing a book, All Stirred Up, that was a labour of love and filled with know how of cuisine extraordinares.
All Stirred Up is a collaborative effort that came out of the Women's Culinary Network (WCN). The WCN, which began in 1990, has over 250 members, from a variety of sectors in the food industry like nutritionists, food stylists and chefs. It is a networking organization that supports and promotes its community, and this book is a good sign of what they do.
This is a cookbook for individuals who like to try new things, for aficionados of authenticity and those people who just love cuisine. A flip through the pages goes from Karen Bekker's Red River Cheddar Walnut Muffins to Antoinette Passalacqua's Veal Piccata Al Marsala.
Many of 66 contributors have prepared a menu that can be tried for a special evening. However, there are also single recipes that can be woven into your already planned meal.
The book brings cuisine down to earth without losing its vibrancy. It provides some ideas behind the contributor's relationship to food and their profession. Laura Buckley says it best that " ...food is so much more than something to fill my tummy."
Tandem had the opportunity to speak to one of the editors of All Stirred Up, Laura Buckley, and look at what has spiced it up.
How did the cookbook develop and your involvement?
I've been a part of the Women's Culinary Network, for about eight or nine years. We have always talked about wanting to do a cookbook, which at first was a small idea. Nettie Cronish [WCN's chair] helped us approach Random House with this proposal. I was on this project from the beginning and basically I said I would love to work as an editor on it.
How were the contributors' chosen?
Well, we knew we wanted the main contributors to give us a menu or a few recipes each. We wanted to get a mixture of well-known names, people we thought were up and coming and names for the future.
Was there a general idea of recipes that was looked for or was it totally up to the contributors?
A lot was up to them. We were looking for something that hung together as a menu or on a seam. We were looking for very straightforward recipes, as well as our members' favourites.
We're you and Madeleine Greey looking at the complexity or simplicity of the recipes?
We were looking at our readers who like to cook, and are interested in the multicultural aspect, because a lot of the recipes are from a wide range of countries because of the people in our membership. In the recipes nothing is too hard, everything is straightforward and easy to get the ingredients.
We want to introduce people to different cultures. But we expect the people cooking would want to know about food and professions within the food industry.
How did the taste-testing process unfold to get the book together?
We definitely wanted our recipes tested. We thought it was very important. Often times we come across great cookbooks, until you finally read the recipes and they don't work. We wanted to make sure that they would work properly. We knew we had a lot of our memberships who were used to doing stuff like that. So we put a call out and got some space mostly at the Incubator Kitchen and once at the Loblaws' President's Choice Test Kitchen. We got a lot of people out and would plan what recipe we would do for that day. We would then do the shopping and everyone cooked, made notes and then we discussed the results. Sometimes we would go back and make some changes to the recipes or some didn't make the cut
At the end of the whole experience, what did you come out with?
It was certainly a labour of love. A long process learning to deal with lots of different contributors and that was a great process. It was learning how to put together different voices in a cohesive way and I think that worked. It enabled us to highlight what we do and what the Woman Culinary Network is all about.

Publication Date: 2003-10-05
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=3205