Why I Started chef lizzie

I’ve always believed food tells a story. Sometimes it’s about where we came from. Sometimes it’s about the people we love, the places we’ve been, or a meal we’ll never forget.

Once a month or so, I’ll share one of those stories with you, along with a little of what I’m cooking, learning and loving along the way.

For my first one, I wanted to start with a story that explains a lot about why I cook. It starts with a quiche.

I love quiche. My favorite is quiche Lorraine—the salty bacon, Swiss cheese, soft custard and that moment when your fork slips through the filling and hits the flaky crust.

And for more than ten years, I couldn’t make one. Not because I didn’t know how. Because of a birthday tea party.

Growing up, my mom and grandmother threw me a tea party every year for my birthday. I wore a sparkly dress, sipped tea with my pinky in the air and giggled as my grandfather played the butler and bowed to me.

For my tenth birthday, I was in my grandmother’s kitchen helping make the food. And then my mom’s phone rang and everything stopped. A short time later, I was sitting in a hospital learning that my oldest brother, Brendan, had died.

Brendan and I had our own language around food. He was my protector and someone who believed there was no hour too late for a culinary breakthrough.

One night he appeared at my bedroom door. “Lizzie! I know it’s midnight, but you have to wake up.”

He was holding scrambled eggs with ketchup on the side. “I just made the most perfect scrambled eggs.”

I don’t remember how they tasted. I remember the look of absolute pride on his face as I took the first bite.

That’s the funny thing about food memories. Sometimes you forget what something tasted like and remember everything else.

After Brendan died, it took years before I could eat quiche again. But I couldn’t make one.

Food eventually became one of the ways I found my way back to Brendan. I made our grandmother’s meatballs he loved, Reuben Dip, and eventually recipes of my own. I could almost picture him beside me in the kitchen, stealing chicken scampi before it was ready.

Cooking let me make new memories without giving up the old ones.

Eventually, I went to culinary school at Johnson & Wales. Freshman year, I had to make quiche. I followed the recipe, measured everything and treated it like an exercise because that’s what I needed it to be.

I didn’t make one again for years. Then, while studying abroad in Florence, I spent a weekend in London. My friends suggested afternoon tea.

My stomach dropped. But I went. Before tea, we wandered into a tea shop where I saw a little girl running toward a display of teapots. The same kind we’d used at my childhood birthday parties. I waited for the sadness. But it didn’t come. For the first time, those tea-party memories made me smile.

When I came home for Christmas, my mom and I sat down to plan our menu. Recipes and family cookbooks covered the counter. I wrote down quiche. “I’m ready to make one,” I told her.

On Christmas morning, I pulled it from the oven. The crust was golden and the cheese was bubbling. It was the first quiche I’d made at home since I was ten. The recipe was different. I was different.

But somehow, it still tasted the same.

Food doesn’t just remind us of people. Sometimes it gives us a way back to them. We get to make new memories without losing the old ones. That’s what quiche taught me.

Food helped me find my way through grief. Somewhere along the way, it also became the work I wanted to spend my life doing.

It’s why I believe so deeply that food is never just food.

There’s always a story at the table.

FROM MY KITCHEN

This fall brings two new beginnings for me. I’ll be back at Johnson & Wales, this time on the other side of the classroom, teaching the next generation of culinary students.

I’m also getting ready to officially launch Chef Lizzie.

It’s a private-chef business built around the same thing that brought me to the kitchen in the first place: good food and the people we share it with.

I can’t wait to show you what I’ve been working on.

Until next month,

Lizzie

Chef Lizzie
Meals worth staying in for.