Cynthia’s career in the culinary arts is illustrious indeed -
- she has studied here in Seattle and in France (her home away from home); authored & coauthored several cookbooks on local products & cuisine; written for numerous publications, including local & national newspapers & magazines; judged food contests; written product reviews for Amazon’s online kitchen retail section; and spoken at numerous food conventions for the IACP & other organizations. It truly poses the question, “is there anything Cynthia hasn’t done?” Last Thursday was a glorious, sunny Seattle day with just enough of a breeze to blow the sailboats through the harbor, and I sat down with Cynthia to sip airy lattes and ask her just that.
KM: How did you get started in this industry?
CN: “I think it’s as simple as the fact that I just loved food growing up. My mom wasn’t a super-gourmet cook, but she was a great cook and we liked to cook a lot of fun stuff. My older sister and I would cook on the weekends – we would make brownies or dinner for the family, and I always loved it. We would go to garage sales when I was in high school and I would buy a year or two-worth of Bon Appetit Magazine, take them home, go through them, and dream of cooking. I just loved it. And my mom and I, for church fund-raisers, would donate dinner – we would come to your home and cook you a curry dinner. So we did stuff like that when I was a kid, and it was always fun.”
“The funny thing is, is that I originally assumed it was just going to be a hobby. I mean, it seemed like a hobby, for fun – you have fun, the people [cooking] with you have fun, and you have a good meal together.” Thinking she needed a 'real career,' Cynthia graduated from the University of Puget Sound in math & French, but realized she didn’t want a career in the sciences.
“I studied... in France on two different occasions, and that made me nuts for French culture and food, of course. During my first trip we spent a whole month in Paris, and I did a pilgrimage to Le Cordon Bleu - one of the afternoon demos that are opened to the public. I just got smitten, and I knew that someday I would go back and go to cooking school. And again, I thought that this was just going to make me a better hobby-cook.”
After graduation, Cynthia worked for Susan Herrmann Loomis, a freelance food writer who needed part-time assistance with her first cookbook. Cynthia still needed to figure out what to do with her life, and Susan encouraged her to go to La Varenne cooking school in France. “I wasn’t about to spend fifty thousand dollars on my hobby, but found a work-study/stagiaire program. I was accepted for that, and it completely changed my life.”
Cynthia stayed in France nearly two years after culinary graduation, working for the school and making important contacts. She worked closely with Anne Willan, the founder of La Varenne, a master chef and prolific cookbook author. “I got this phenomenal, kind of accidental, on-the-job training in the world of cookbook writing - and that got completely under my skin... I never would have identified that as something I wanted to do if I was home in Seattle cooking all the time. I thought the pinnacle was writing an article for Gourmet [Magazine] now and again. The whole cookbook thing became something that I clearly wanted to do.”
KM: How does the proliferation of food blogs and internet publishing influence your career?
CM: In terms of the internet in general, it’s phenomenally changed what it’s like to do the work I do, in terms of research and finding sources for things. Sometimes I sit at my desk and just marvel at how hard what I’m doing would have been fifteen years ago. It would take ten times longer to do every article because you would be at the library, going through card files. It’s great to have the web.
...I do have some favorite sites that I go to pretty frequently just to see what the word on the street is about food - e-gullet and chowhound. I look particularly at the Pacific Northwest boards just to see what the scuttlebutt is about new restaurant openings, initial impressions, or whatever it might be. I love to see like when someone from Chicago posts on the Seattle board and asks where they need to go for the best seafood in town. I know what my opinion is, but I’m always really curious to see what other people think of as the best seafood in Seattle. It’s kind of like eavesdropping on food conversations. I think that’s fascinating, because that way, likewise, instead of just reading what’s in the newspaper, published in traditional sources, you get opinions. You can either read or post your own opinions in that forum, and that just makes idea sharing that much better. As long as you don’t take it too incredibly seriously, I think it adds an overall perspective on how people feel about food.
KM: Who influenced you at the beginning of your career?
CN: Susan Herrmann Loomis - (UW journalism school graduate, newspaper and magazine freelance writer, cookbook author). Not only for the work training that I got working on her first cookbook, but then also her advice to go to France. I mean, I wouldn’t be doing anything that I’m doing right now if I hadn’t had that advice. And granted, I already had the La Varenne application at home, but I didn’t know about the stagiaire option.
Anne Willan is an enormous mentor. She is very involved in the IACP, and I see her at least every year at that conference, and sometimes in between, if she’s in town or I’m somewhere that she is. But she still continues to be a source of inspiration and a great mentor.
I got to work with Patricia Wells in Paris, which was a huge benefit to my understanding of the world of writing. She’s a huge personality and authority, an amazing writer with an amazing career to feed off of. And the goofy thing is, when I was in college, I did take one journalism class. And this crusty, old – he kind of looked like a foreign war correspondent, like a real journalism guy – and he had been one of Patricia Wells’ [professors] when she got her masters in journalism. And he said, ‘If you love food, you should write to Patricia Wells.’ Of course, I already knew who she was. So I wrote this goofy fan letter, and I don’t even want to think what I wrote, but she wrote back the nicest note and said, 'whatever you do, don’t give up on your dream and it will happen.' And not even ten years later, I got to work for her in Paris, and that blew me away! When things like that happen in your career you feel like you’re doing the right thing.
Indirectly... a phenomenal inspiration is MFK Fisher, the writer. I’ve been reading her since high school. It’s good just to read again and remind yourself what the craft of writing is all about.
KM: Who influences you now?
CN: I love chefs. I feed off of their energy and creativity - particularly ones in the area because, obviously, I get to see them more often and watch them develop in their restaurants... That fascinates me to just see how they develop their own personality, what kind of things they [put on their] menu, and what their passions are.
KM: Where do you get inspiration?
CN: I love going to the farmer’s market. I think there’s a lot to be said for going back to that European tradition of buying direct from the grower. Also, some of the inspiration comes from the chefs too.
When I look at a bunch of recipes that I’ve written, sometimes it’s hard to figure out exactly where the inspiration came from, idea-wise. Some things are a twist on a classic, like Bouillabaisse, or they’re a family favorite that has some personal connection or a little bit of nostalgia. I guess I’m pretty nostalgic whether it’s about comfort/retro foods in general or foods that I remembered growing up. [For instance,] I like a particular kind of rice pudding, since that’s the way my mom made it.
KM: Whom do you read?
CN: Patricia Wells, certainly. I like reading James Beard. I have a number of James Beard’s books from all different eras, from his original 40s cocktail books from when he was living the high life in New York to picnic books. I just like his take, it’s very straight forward, a little elite, but that’s okay. I think it was kind of interesting that someone had the whole New York thing, but was still rooted in the Northwest. He made Northwest foods somehow seem a little more elegant when he created these menus around them.
I do like the classics. MFK Fisher is just such an amazing writer. A.J. Liebling is more of a travel writer, but his stories about Paris are really fun.
KM: Are you into the wine scene as well as food?
CN: Wine, I love and appreciate, and I love telling that Washington State story. But I’m not an expert at all, so I’m not in a position to write about wine like folks who just inherently and intrinsically know it so well. But I have a great passion for it, so it will come up in stories. I do write a lot about spirits and cocktails. I’m actually a contributing editor to a national beverage magazine called Cheers, so I have a great interest in cocktail culture. I’ve written for them about the Seattle bar scene. There was a while I was doing seasonal cocktails features, so I would write about Fall cocktails and what people all around the country were doing. I’ll be doing one soon on upscale bar food. So that whole culture I really like. Again, I’m kind of a nostalgic, I guess, because I like the classics. I like Martinis and Manhattans. If it’s got something blue or green or orange in it, I’m not going to want it. If it’s hip and mod and colorful and 'Red Bull,' no way – just not going to happen. I think people overlook cocktails as being not very substantial as a gastronomic theme, but when you look at them like food, they have every right to be. Because you look at the ingredients: it’s the quality of ingredients you choose, it’s seasonality, it’s the craft – and there’s definitely a craft to making a good cocktail. So I like to try to apply some of the food writing tenets to cocktails and try to help people appreciate what makes a really good cocktail and why Makers Mark is different than Wild Turkey... It really comes down to ingredients, just like it is in cooking.
KM: What is your favorite food and cocktail pairing?
CN: I’m sure it would have something to do with a very, very good Gin Martini, because that’s my absolute favorite. And it would be Hendrick’s Gin, just to be specific. A very high quality, heavy botanical – I mean, the flavor profile that you get in an average gin is just ramped up with really high quality ingredients. As for what I would have with that? I’m thinking Oysters Rockefeller. I like half-shell oysters a little bit, but not as much as I do baked oysters. So again, that would be just a throw-back, retro thing, Rockefellers and Martinis.
KM: Where do you see yourself in five years?
CN: I wish I knew. I’ve been working really hard in a lot of arenas to try to figure that out. As a freelance writer, you work wherever you can just to keep busy. Now I’m working hard to keep a focus, and getting rid of projects without growth potential – projects that might be interesting, but wouldn’t necessarily want to be doing them in five years. I love cookbooks, of course... I’d like to [scale down to] one book a year. Many of my cookbooks have a Northwest theme, so it would be nice to do some books that have a little more national interest and coverage. I’m also working on developing a little more travel writing in my life, because travel and food, of course, are a perfect marriage. And not just general travel stuff, I want to write stuff that has to do with food or food traditions.
And to be honest, to get where I am now, I was working six or seven-day weeks; I felt that I had to be working all the time or I wasn’t being a good writer. Now that I’ve gotten to a point where I’m comfortable in my skin, [I feel] I don’t have to work constantly to be truly productive. I’m hoping to enjoy a little more time off, weekends and what not, just to get a little more balance overall. But that’s the trick to being a freelancer, you feel like you have to say yes to everything and be busy every minute. So I feel like I’m in a transition... like I’m graduating from one part, the big foundation years of my writing career, to a point where I can be a little more focused and make some specific choices about what I want to do, and identify things that I find more satisfying.
KM: What advice do you have for someone just starting out & trying to get published?
CN: “One thing about this world, that is both a benefit and a challenge, is that it’s not structured and there is no particular one way to make it happen, unlike many careers that have specific paths. Meeting people, for sure, is great; trying to connect with people that do what you do. Informational interviews, I find really beneficial.” Toward the beginning of her career, Cynthia did an informational interview with Sasquatch Publishing. They hired her to review restaurants for their Best Places Guidebook, which consequently lead to her first cookbook, Northwest Best Places Cookbook, because she had already created that relationship.
Joining associations, I think, are really valid. In Seattle, that might be Women Chefs and Restaurateurs, which may not necessarily be packed with food writers and publishers, but just for meeting people. When you let folks know what you want to do in life, maybe when they meet someone else, they’ll say well so-and-so is interested in writing recipes, or whatever it might be.
Any opportunity you have to get published, even if it's a neighborhood newspaper or a local farmer’s market newsletter – anywhere there might be some opportunity to get experience of any kind... You have to develop a voice and a style of writing; it’s not just good English composition. Magazines and papers really want people who can tell a story in a creative way. ...Get experience,... and then you can start taking the baby steps up to other publications. It can be so frustrating if someone makes a decision to be a food writer and then they pitch Food and Wine Magazine, right into the prime time of publishing. You have to not only have developed that voice, but also have clips that you can show them, because they’ll want to see what you can produce. Then maybe... in five or ten years, you’ll have the opportunity to write for these other publications.
But I love it. I wouldn’t give this up for anything, and I can’t imagine having a day job again,.. knock on wood!
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