Karen Cathey taught me the key to making perfect risotto. After you've sauteed the chopped onions and garlic for about 3 or 4 minutes (in olive oil, not butter, because butter burns too quickly), add the risotto and about a half cup of chicken broth. After a couple of minutes, add another half cup. Wait, then add another. And then another. Stir constantly.
This is opposed to dumping the 4 cups of broth in all at once. That doesn't give the risotto time to absorb all the chicken-y goodness of the broth. It robs the dish of its full flavor potential.
It's a simple bit of advice that made all the difference in the world. And I remembered it last Sunday when I was making butternut squash risotto for a dinner party of 10 people. Along with the squash, I made an eggplant casserole with tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms and parmesan, tomato/avocado/mango salad with sundried tomato basil vinaigrette, and chicken breasts sauteed in lemon, garlic, tarragon and butter, and garnished with roasted red peppers and green olives. It was my "personal best" menu so far in Nairobi, and I was chopping, sauteeing, peeling and grating literally until the first guest knocked on the door.
It's a good thing I didn't know at the time that Karen Cathey had died on July 6th. Of colon cancer. Just like that other gourmet guru in my life, my sister Julie. Because the way I felt last night when I got the news, I'd have been far too sad to play hostess with the most-est.
I met Karen in the summer of 1998, when she was a PR consultant for a couple of DC restaurants and I was doing some freelance travel writing. Just like with my friend Simone, I basically went to that lunch meeting with her hoping to get the basic information and move on to the next assignment. Just like with Simone, Karen and I clicked.
We bonded over our love of food, and cooking, and our innate sense that we were both Princesses in a previous life. I think her view must have been informed by having spent her early years in India, where her father was in the foreign service. She managed to retain an appreciation for the exotic that made it easy to envision herself surrounded by luxury, having her every need catered to.
On the other hand, I was intimately familiar with poverty and lack, so when I was able to provide for myself, I was determined to treat myself like royalty, even if nobody else did. So we could relate. And when we met, we were both in our late 30's, single, and probably both bore the faint whiff of desperation when interacting with men. Many a night and many a bottle of really good red wine were spent bemoaning our fates and berating our dates.
Our favorite lament was, "Don't they realize how truly FABULOUS we are?" And with her Virginia drawl, nobody could say "fabulous" like Karen could.
But our bottom line was food, pure and simple and complex and gloriously delicious. Next to my friend Simone, Karen had the most incredible connections and contacts in the Metro DC dining world, so I got invited to many stellar culinary events through her. I even sat next to Jacques Pepin at one of those dinners, and allowed myself to believe that his patented French flirtation was sincere. I learned to love gorgonzola at an amazing cheese industry event with Karen. I hoovered chocolate mousse until I gave myself a bellyache at another event. I learned how to make a divine cherry reduction for foie gras at another.
Speaking of foie gras, it was through one of Karen's connections that I gave Julie an extremely coveted Christmas present one year, a nice bloc of that demonized delicacy. Personally, I am not without sympathy for the poor birds who must endure the agonies of involuntary gorging so that we humans can revel in the tastiness of their innards. But just like I say about pigs, "If the good Lord hadn't meant us to eat 'em, She wouldn't have made 'em taste so freakin' delicious." Julie made that foie gras last for months, and got huge kick out of creating different sauces and ways of cooking it.
Anyway, I wish I could say that Karen and I were in contact throughout her illness. The truth is that a few years earlier, I had allowed a misunderstanding and a perceived slight to come between us, and we stopped communicating. Eventually, I learned Karen had had a heart attack, and that while she was in the hospital, doctors had diagnosed colon cancer.
I absolutely, totally, and completely cravenly shut down after hearing the dreaded "double C's." I just couldn't deal with it. I had seen what colon cancer can do. Besides, I (ir)rationalized, I was heading to Nairobi, and there was no time to try and connect with her.
So I guess now there's only time to measure and chop and peel and saute and bake and simmer and stew and sift through the meaning of life. Remember when I said dying at 50 was unutterably cruel? Well, dying at 47 is even crueler. Like me, Karen was 47, but she lived her life to the fullest. And somehow, I'm managing to draw a great deal of comfort imagining her and Julie stuffing themselves with foie gras up in the clouds, while the angels hover around hatin' about how fabulous those two are.
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