WAAC Culture Corner: A Mother’s Love for May
A Mother’s Love
Welcome back to the Westport Local Press’s Westport Arts Advisory Committee’s “Culture Corner.” Each month, the WAAC will scour our 33.45 square miles and highlight one of the many artists – visual, written, performance, and other – who call Westport home. These artists create a spectrum of color that shines over town like the rainbows often seen over the Saugatuck, so we have made “color” our theme.
This month, we offer up a bouquet of pink to mothers everywhere and shine our spotlight on one in particular this month of May. We feature Cecily Gans, chef and long-time culinary instructor at Staples High School, not only for her artistic creativity, but also because of the special relationship she and her daughter Leila share around food.
Taken at Brasserie Suffren, Paris. “When you look at the next table and realize you need an oyster course.”
When I asked how chefs qualify as artists, Chef Gans quoted Apicius, the first century Roman gourmand (sciencedirect.com), “we eat with our eyes.” We see food before we eat it, and to appear appetizing, it must, she says “have consistent visual appeal and symmetry.” We read recipes before we even prepare ingredients, and in print and on television, food still has immense appeal even though we cannot taste it. Her background stood her in good stead for this artistic approach to food. Her parents both graduated from the RISD, and she received an education in drama and the visual arts prior to studying culinary arts. In culinary school, she says she “drew her plates,” to see how the food would look, noting the importance of that creative visual element. “Food,” she says, “is an art first.”
At home, her grandmother, the first female instructor at the Culinary Institute of America, influenced her the most. Hours in the kitchen with her imparted the importance of mixing ingredients – like paints or notes or words – beautifully, in correct proportion, to create appealing, delicious dishes.
Her daughter, Leila, now 12, introduced a new level of love of cooking (and of course love in general). Chef Gans made all of Leila’s baby food, and brought her often to the Westport Farmers’ Market, where she sits on the board. She inculcated Leila with a deep appreciation for food from a young age; they cook together and share exotic meals on their travels. “I treat her like an adult when it comes to food.” Her Facebook feed features photos of them sharing many culinary adventures around the globe, including escargot and raw oysters in Paris. Their love of the food and each other is evident in every photo.
First Matzo Ball Soup made with Grandma Feisty.Leila had the gift of sharing a kitchen with her great grandmother, too, until she died recently at the age of 103. One of Chef Gans’ favorite memories around food is the time she, her mother, grandmother, and Leila all made matzoh ball soup together in a multigenerational gastronomical love fest. Although her grandmother is gone, her lessons and love, including many of her cookbooks, stay with Chef Gans. She often revisits these, among her over 1,000 cookbooks, to re-inspire her. While extravagant feasts overseas titillate them both, she views sitting down together for a family meal such an important expression of the art and love inherent in cooking.
When asked how she would celebrate Mother’s Day this year, she said that she and Leila would cook “a really nice meal for my mother; we are all really close.” The way, it seems, to everyone’s heart, is through this culinary art. Chef Gans and her daughter Leila live that axiom every day.