Food News

10.20.04

There, that's better!

The Curry Question. A story I heard a few years ago sums it up best. A husband says to his wife, "Honey, I love the way you bake ham. But why do you cut the end off? That is my most favorite part. My mother cooks it this way, she replies. It's tradition. Later she calls her mother. Mom, why do we cut the end of the ham? The mother does not know. She calls her mother-in-law, from whom she learned the recipe. Why do we cut the ends off, Mama? Ah, that, says the 100-year-old mother-in-law. When I first cooked a ham, I didn't have a pan big enough."

Check Please! Coming to a food obsessed city near you.

Do you really know your agent? Caggiano -- who owns Biba restaurant in midtown Sacramento and once had a cooking show on cable's The Learning Channel -- learned of the advances only when her publisher contacted her in July about two books for which it had paid advances of $106,250 and $143,750, the suit says. It was, Caggiano alleges, the first she heard about the advances or the negotiations for two new cookbooks.

Martin Yan can cook, when he has the time.

By any scorecard, Cunningham is one of the most influential women in the restaurant business. For nearly a decade, her desk has been shoved next to the washer and dryer she shares with chef Thomas Keller in their Yountville house. Laura Cunningham, a blue-eyed former California high school volleyball star with three degrees from UC Berkeley, is so disarmingly modest that she feels perfectly content leading the service revolution from her old desk in the sunny washroom.

$970 Million bid for Mondavi Winery.