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| Chef Anna Pump selects herbs from her herb garden for her Homegrown recipes |
Kicking off an authentic Homegrown Summer in the Hamptons,
tomorrow, June 22 -- the first day of summer, I will be a guest of
chef Anna Pump at her Loaves & Fishes Cookshop in Bridgehampton for a
booksigning and a tasting, from 3-5pm.
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| Chef Anna Pump & me for Homegrown booksigning |
Pump is a featured chef and grower in my book, The
Hamptons & Long Island Homegrown Cookbook, and she will be
preparing the Zucchini-Pepper Soup recipe from the book.
As an homage to the tasting and to Chef Anna, following is
the complete profile written for the book. Of course it had to be edited down
in order to accommodate the nearly 30 chefs and the growers included in the
Homegerown book but here you can read the full story.
Enjoy!
See you in the Hamptons.
Homegrown Profile
Anna Pump is the proverbial food fairy godmother presiding
over this magical land that is most often referred to simply as “The
Hamptons.”
Simple is the operative word.
That she is an enchanting “Food Goddess” bestowing her
charms of pure and simple ingredients,
elegant and simple entertaining advice and a cosmopolitan and simple approach to enjoying life, you soon get
the idea that Anna’s poised combinations are why her unique and much imitated
style enjoys so much respect simply because it is authentic and, increasingly; rare.
Lest you think she is a creature from a Grimm’s tale, rest
assured Anna Pump is the real thing.
There was no one who helped establish the much-touted
Hamptons lifestyle like she did.
Almost single-handedly she crafted the sophisticated yet
casual approach to dining and entertaining that is sought after by legions of
weekenders and magazine feature spreads, food fans, and the locals.
And she accomplished this by doing what came naturally to
her.
In 1980 Anna started her business in the Hamptons, buying the
business from Susan Costner & Devon Frederics (Devon is now married to Elie
Zabar of New York City, of Zabar’s Deli and gourmet food renown)
The rest is history she says, now looking ahead to the third
decade of summering in Long Island.
She and her daughter operate the Bridgehampton Inn,
described as an elegant bed & breakfast, built in 1795. It’s more like an exquisite visit with a very
well to do relative. All cozy and filled
with stories abundant in every well-appointed room.
Anna is the owner of the Hamptons Specialty Food Shop where
“food is lovingly prepared” in her Sagaponick Cookshop.
There she launched the gourmet take-out food business,
Loaves & Fishes that is today, as she sweetly describes it, “a shack - held together with…I don’t know
what to say.”
She hesitates before it’s agreed that it is love that is the
‘glue’ that holds it all together.
Her grandchildren now work the Shop with her, sweetly and
with authority dispensing sage culinary advice such as “Trust me on this,” as
you are contemplating the chocolate brownie cake.
She makes it look simple.
But as a chef, baker, innkeeper, food and entertainment entrepreneur,
cooking instructor, community food and health activist, not to mention the
author of four cookbooks featuring her brand of entertaining and cooking, Anna
is a force to be reckoned with.
When asked why she wanted to write cookbooks, she says, “I love to cook.”
It was that simple for that pursuit as well.
In fact, the first book came about through a friend whose
wife was an agent.
The overture, such as it was, appears rather chaste. “She invited me to lunch and said, “Anna,
wouldn’t you like to write a cookbook?”
And I said, “Yeah, I do!”
Anna recalled that even at that time, there were already so
many friends and customers who liked her food and wanted to learn how to make
her signature Loaves & Fishes dishes for themselves.
“I have so many good recipes and if you give me some advice,
I can do it,” she noted to the literary agent-friend.
That is how the first book was launched in 1985.
No nonsense. Simple
and delicious served up straightforward.
In 1986 the original Loaves
and Fishes was published.
And making it sound almost effortless or obvious as in
‘anybody could’ve done this,’ she guilelessly offers, “It evolved from there.”
Indeed.
How did this matriarch of all things “Hamptons” come to
preside over such an enchanted land of bounty and beauty?
After all, the tip of Long Island may be one of the farthest
points on the east coast but it would seem to be a world away from her European
roots where she grew up on her family’s farm on the Danish/German border.
Anna and her husband immigrated to
the United States after World War II. “There wasn’t much opportunity near us
and my husband wanted to join his brother who had moved to America,” she
says.
Perhaps it is not surprising that
they settled in the Garden State, along the Delaware River, near the town of
Stockton. It was the 1960’s and Anna
was a young mother with two small children in a new world.
She describes how her innate
interest in food led her to read gourmet magazines and cookbooks to nourish her
passion for food -- and perhaps to learn
about her adopted country’s culture. Remarkably, she didn’t speak any English
when she moved to America, so all that reading also helped her learn the
language, she commented.
In a mark of culinary valor, it
wasn’t too long before she signed up to study cooking for several sessions.
With James Beard. In New York City.
Without hesitation, she says she
loved the cooking adventure. She
particularly remembers that Chef James Beard was very complimentary to her
because she was “earthy’” in her cooking, as she describes it today. She thought he could see she was someone who
knew how to handle ingredients – how to cook a chicken and how to make stock.
It was an affirmation of her cooking
prowess and her devotion to real, quality ingredients. She adds modestly, “What I learned from him,
I knew already…”
Acknowledging that she was
privileged to study under the tutelage of the influential cooking master, Anna
describes how James Beard would sit in the middle of the kitchen on a large
director’s chair and watch the students cook.
Then he’d walk around and talk to the would-be cooks, dispensing hands-on
training and support.
“And it was so great. “ she
exudes. Anna cites a then-tantalizing
and exotic food introduction that she first made there: couscous. “It was the original – we learned how to make
a big plate of couscous and I can never forget that. It took hours and hours to make and it was
‘Wonderful’ ” she sighs.
Sometime in the late 70’s, a friend who had rented a house
in the Hamptons for the summer and couldn’t use it for two weekends offered it
to Anna and her husband. Anna’s children having grown up by then, the couple
accepted the offer.
That weekend retreat would change their lives.
Her first visit struck her like a clarion call. “It was all so great… it felt so right. I can
never forget that it even ‘smelled great.” We loved the Hamptons right away.”
The reason it felt so very right was that Anna grew up on
her family’s farm located where the Baltic Sea is on one side and the North Sea
on the other. She says there are potato
fields and seagulls overhead - not unlike Long Island.
The area where she grew up was known for its fishing and
farming and in Anna’s way of thinking; it is the geographical twin to the East
End of Long Island.
Stepping out into the fresh, clean, salt air of the Hamptons
felt a lot like being home.
As a child, Anna learned to cook from her Danish mother who
was very inventive. “There was always a lot of cooking going on in our house,”
Anna recalls. “My mother could make
something out of nothing – and everything started from scratch.” She also noted that in the early years after
the war, there was no delicatessen for sandwiches – we had to serve and feed
the farmhands from our kitchen”
The link with Anna’s menus of gourmet take-out food was
fomented early on. Anna dedicated her
first book to her mother: “
In the same way, most of what she knows about gardening she
learned from her mother and father.
Her parents owned and managed a 40-acre small farm that is
still part of the family. Anna’s sister and brother-in-law now run what was
once a sustenance farm for the extended family and many of the Fransberg-area’s
local residents. “We grew everything,” she said about the early years. “There was rye and a lot of potatoes.”
After World War II their big garden fields of produce
contained so many edibles including peas and berries. They also had dairy cattle.
“We supported the local people in the city who couldn’t buy
anything else but would come and pick their own peas and carrots and pay for it
and leave.”
It seems she continues to draw strength from the family
roots. It is a family tradition that
Anna visits her family’s European farm every year.
Anna brought her family’s heritage of cooking and baking and
gardening with her to Long Island.
A hallmark of Anna’s cooking is her
own inventiveness, or in today’s seduction, she cooks seasonally – just like
her mother did.
In addition to learning from her
talented mother and the esteemed James Beard, Anna further studied with
Scotsman Maurice Margette, who ran a nearby cooking school on Shelter
Island. Anna also studied with Ann Maria
Husta who cooked for the Kennedy White House.
In the next breath, Anna claims she
doesn’t consider herself a chef. When
confronted with the evidence she is billed as a Cook and Chef, she demurs. “I am not a chef. I can’t claim that title.” Asked to explain, she says there is a
distinction. “The difference is a cook
doesn’t have a degree. A Chef has formal
education. It has nothing to do with talent or actual preparation – One just
can’t claim the title if you don’t have degree.”
Reminded she has several degrees,
she yields. Anna is so modest at heart…
She reflects how today, so many
people have great ideas about food.
“We’ve come so far. Everyone is now so interested and so knowledgeable.
Even if they don’t cook themselves, they read cookbooks. They travel. People are very inventive.”
She is adamant that the homegrown
focus is not a trend at all. “It’s here
to stay.” She thinks it’s very important
that we persist with farm to table initiatives and make the fresh natural foods
available for the population as a whole and not have low cost be the factor
that leads to purchasing processed foods.
“We must make organic and farm raised costs more affordable. We need to come to come to a level where people who don’t have a lot of money can afford it,” she explains. “If we could eat just fresh foods, it would be wonderful.”
“We must make organic and farm raised costs more affordable. We need to come to come to a level where people who don’t have a lot of money can afford it,” she explains. “If we could eat just fresh foods, it would be wonderful.”
And if this Hamptons food doyenne
has anything to say about it, they will.
“I just sent an email about this
topic to the Slow Food Movement,” she says as ideas come tumbling forth. “We need to do something local to create
small groups in town to go into schools or invite them in to help teach them
how to cook fresh food. For example, tell them how to get bones from the
butcher -- which costs nothing – and
that they can make a great stock. Then
they can just throw in some vegetables and… But people don’t know how to do
this anymore.” She concedes.
She points out that people are more
connected to food when one gardens and knows where their food comes from.
She relates a funny story about
being removed from one’s food legacy, describing a woman who worked for
her. “A city girl all her life, she was
a pretty good cook. She was making cornbread
-- and Anna’s recipe features buttermilk, she hastens to add. The young cook comes to her and says, “Anna
we can’t use buttermilk, it’s sour!”
Anna said she had to tell her, “Well it IS sour! “
Anna said she always knew she’d have the Cookshop and the
take-out food business that is now referred to as “gourmet.”
Yet, she didn’t know quite where to start. So in 1979, her first summer in the
Hamptons, she ended up working for Ina Garten, now known as the “Barefoot
Contessa.”
At that time, Ina had a little shop in West Hampton Beach on
Main Street.
Anna remembers the interview with Ina was “kinda
different.”
Anna called Ina about the position and Ina asked her to cook
something for her.
In turn, Anna invited Ina to her house for lunch.
What kind of meal would steal the Barefoot Contessa’s
heart?
When asked, Anna remembered she made a simple and delicious
meal of frittata and green salad and fresh French bread. And for dessert she whipped up her cur de
crème. This signature recipe is in
Anna’s cookbook as well as Ina’s, who credits Anna accordingly. Ina also wrote the forward to Anna’s most
recent cookbook, “Summer on a Platter.
Anna also appears regularly as a guest on the Food Network’s Barefoot
Contessa.
“We have been best friends ever since” she declared
proudly.
Anna stirs the same deep-seated
loyalty with her customers. “Most have been with me over all the years. Every season, they come back into the shop
with a hug. They are glad I’m open again,”
she radiates. “They are almost like
family now. We have wonderful relationships
and as people get older, if they sell their house on the beach and move to a
small town like Sag Harbor, for example, the new couple comes in to meet
me. I sort of come with the house!” She quickly adds that the older couples still
visit.
Anna and the Cookshop are part of
the local culture – she is a recognized and much-loved icon of the Hamptons
folklore.
Looking back, she remembers when she first opened the store,
there was a farmer who came and wanted to sell her eggs. And she has been buying eggs from him ever
since. And there is a beekeeper in Sag
Harbor that delivers fresh honey to her.
A lot of that kind of original charm continues to this day. It’s a way of life preserved that is dear to
Anna.
She also enjoys walking to some of the
farmers, while some of them also bring fresh food directly to her.
Just down the road from her is Pikes Farm in
Sagaponick, for example. She walks there
on Monday morning and buys her tomatoes lettuce, corn, beans; running a tab
with farmer Jim Pike. He delivers to
Cookshop on Wednesdays and both Saturday and Sunday every weekend in the
summer.
“He grows wonderful produce. He has the highest quality,” she claims
happily.
She relies on Pikes to grow the basics for her. And on occasion, she will bring seeds to
Pikes, asking them to grow a new vegetable or a variety, as she did when she
first brought leeks to the area.
It seems curious now but at the time she moved to Long
Island, no one even knew what leeks were, she said. By the same token, she had never seen an
eggplant in her life until she arrived in the Hamptons. “So you see, there is a lot of back and
forth. An exchange of ideas. We all learn from each other here,” she added.
“In summer we “Do” summer food,” she
exclaims matter-of-factly. It follows
then that she’d provide seasonal food for a variety of reasons including family
and cultural traditions, pride of Long Island’s farming and fishing bounty, and
her culinary artistry.
At Cookshop, she changes her gourmet
take-out menu recipes every week and posts the entire listings online.
Inspired by the unending variety of
fresh homegrown ingredients, Anna has thousands of recipes in her repertoire
she can refer to. And while she likes making summer foods for her family of
Hamptons customers, she makes whatever marks the season or holiday.
“I always start with the ingredients
– whatever is fresh. For instance, in
spring ramps are so easy to broil or grill.”
In the colder months, there is a world of stews and casseroles, and
casoulettes to explore.
When fall arrives she loves to
switch the menu to roasted eggplant, stew, beef bourguignon, and warm lentils
with vegetables. “I just love that time
of year -- going from cold to warm food,“ she sighs contentedly.
In the autumn, she’ll makes
rutabagas at home, bring them to the Shop, and people will buy them. “I curry them or stew them. People just don’t know what to do with them.”
She grows and works with winter vegetables such as the rutabagas, as well as
root celery, parsnips, and makes an amazing carrot puree. The emphasis on an expanded palette of
ingredients allows her to give people the opportunity to experience another way
of thinking about life – to spend time with family and enjoy the meal
together. “And stews and casseroles can
do that.” She thinks her next cookbook
will be on this very subject: winter food. It’s not all tomatoes and goat
cheese…
And just like Mother’s home-cooked
specialties that hold a special place in our memories, she explains that she
has Favorites that her customers would be disappointed if she didn’t make
available for them. “The must-haves I will always make, for example, are a
pasta salad and a chicken salad -- without mayonnaise. “
“Anna’s way” is what keeps her
Hamptons family coming back. She says
she learned over time there is to be no modification when it comes to her
culinary offerings. When she first opened, she cooked a split pea with ham
soup. A customer suggested there was
too little salt; and the next customer admonished there was too much salt!
So she learned to do what she wants
and what she knows is best. “I just do
it my way. I do exactly what I think I should do,” she said pointedly.
At this point in her career, her
inspiration is her wellspring of experience.
She draws from within, knowing exactly what she thinks is good.
Anna had long conducted cooking classes too but she doesn’t
do them anymore; it’s always a lot of work and she now focuses on her business
and testing her recipes for the store and her cookbooks that now number four:
“Loaves & Fishes,” “Loaves and Fishes Party Cookbook,” “Country Weekend
Entertaining” and “Summer on a Platter. “
However her chef and daughter
continue to teach food enthusiasts, including teens, how to employ the alchemy
of fresh local food and traditional cooking techniques to transform the
ingredients into delicious meals.
One of the remarkable things that make the Hamptons such a
sweet spot according to Anna is its proximity to the water and air. The beaches
remain very pristine. There are no commercial entities allowed on the beaches
in the Saganopick and Southampton area she explains. “People like the ruralness
of the area – not only the great beaches but also the local farms and the farm
stands and access to the just-picked fruits and vegetables and artisanal
cheeses. “It’s real here,” she
adds.
Anna is real too, and has remained so, amidst a wave of
celebrity.
“The Hamptons is exceptionally beautiful,” she further
rhapsodizes.
In early spring, Anna described how she’d just picked some
ornamental pear tree branches for a bouquet to put in the store. She is equally
romantic and enthusiastic about her flowering cherries and chives. She narrates how her garden herbs of oregano,
thyme, and lemon balm are “Eight inches tall already. I have a whole row of
that and the sage is coming back.”
Anna Pump’s Herb Planting List:
“Here is my list of herbs: lots
of basil, 40 plants for salads, garnish and pesto.
Also lemon thyme, English thyme,
rosemary, sage, mint, lemon balm, curly and flat leave parsley.
About 12 fresh oregano plants and
lots of chives -- very important all
of them. I love going out back
and picking the herbs for my cooking.
There is an enchanting, delicate
balance to be found in Anna’s Hamptons:
sophisticated and rural, charming and simple.
And utterly unforgettable.
Loaves & Fishes Cookshop
2422 Montauk Highway, Bridgehampton,
NY
631-537-6066
