KEN IGE / KIGE@STARBULLETIN.COM
Pan-Seared Quail and Foie Gras on Brioche Crouton with Grilled Figs will be chef Beverly Gannon's contribution to Monday's Flix and Food dinner. Also cooking that night will be Hawaii chefs Holly Hadsell-El Hajji, Abigail Langlas, Karen Molina, Amy Ferguson-Ota and Linda Yamada, all members of Le Dames d' Escoffier, an organization of women in the culinary profession. Nancy Oakes of Boulevard in San Francisco will join them.
With one of Heather Ho's dessert creations, it wasn't a specific dish that captured the imagination, it was her mastery of flavor.
That's what Nancy Oakes, chef/owner of Boulevard Restaurant, remembers most of the young pastry chef who worked for her for two years.
"What was incredible about Heather's desserts was not the particular dessert, it was how much flavor they all had, an extra amount in each bite," Oakes says. A few bites was worth several of an ordinary sweet. "I really don't know how she did it."
Ho, a Punahou School graduate, died on Sept. 11, 2001, in the terror attack on the World Trade Center. She had been executive pastry chef at Windows on the World, atop the north tower.
Oakes joins the local chapter of Les Dames d'Escoffier in paying tribute to Ho at a dinner, "Flix and Food," Monday at the Pacific Club. The sold-out event will raise funds to establish a culinary library in Ho's name.
Oakes said Ho was famous for her Lemon Icebox Cake and Peppermint Patty Cake. "She took twists on different things and packed them with so many flavors and so much intensity. Not necessarily sweetness, but working on the basis of great cuisine: something salty, something sweet, something crunchy, something creamy. ... You never got bored eating one of her desserts."
Monday's dinner will feature six Hawaii chefs and Oakes presenting a five-course meal with wine pairings -- plus appetizers and dessert, which takes the total up to seven dishes. All the chefs are women, in keeping with the aims of Le Dames d' Escoffier, an organization of women in the food, fine-beverage and hospitality industries.
Oakes can speak to many of those professional concerns; before becoming a chef, she worked for a decade "front of the house" as a restaurant manager. But when she opened her first restaurant, L'Avenue in 1988, "for some reason I decided it would be better if I cooked."
A self-taught chef, Oakes says she found a physical aspect the most challenging: the long hours on her feet.
"You work very hard under a lot of pressure," she says.
"When I first started to cook I didn't think you could be that tired."
In 1993 she opened Boulevard, which has become an award-winning Bay-area restaurant. In 2001, Oakes won the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef in California, one of few women to claim the honor.
Oakes says she was at first reluctant to join a professional organization defined by gender -- "I had to be dragged into Women Chefs and Restaurateurs" -- but now sees the point.
"I did put up a bit of an argument that at some point can't we just all be looked at as culinary professionals? Why does it have to be one way or another?"
But groups such as Le Dames serve an important function for their members: allowing networking, she says.
"Most business occurs through some sort of networking and that's what it is, a networking organization. Men network on the golf course and other places like that, but women really aren't part of that. It's good that we're in touch with each other."
Donations for the Heather Ho culinary library may be sent to Les Dames d'Escoffier, P.O. Box 61827, Honolulu 96839
Click for online
calendars and events.
