Event: Cooking with Les Dames d'Escoffier

There's nothing like a dame, particularly if the dame cooks good. And no dame cooks as good as Les Dames d'Escoffier, an international group devoted to supporting and mentoring women in the culinary professions. The new cookbook Les Dames have just published was almost enough to make me get off my lazy ass and throw a party: recipes by Lidia Bastianich, Julia Child, Marcella Hazan and Dorie Greenspan include canapes calculated to amuse many bouches. Stuffed calimyna figs with hard apple cider and blue cheese, fresh okra cakes, little walnut and fennel tarts, crusty sausage rolls and a dip called "Rich Man Poor Man" that I've actually been making for years and now learn is classic Italian fagioli e caviali (fava beans and caviar -- I've always used lima beans since favas are so hard to come by.)

Anyhoo, the book is being promoted at a Miami Dames Event on Saturday November 1st, when the South Florida Dames chapter hosts their annual "Farm-Raiser: Fresh Flavors of South Florida." Students and chefs from Johnson & Wales University will be joining the Dames to prepare local delicacies and teach workshops. Tickets are $75 per person and benefit the Chapter's Educational Scholarship Funds for Women in Agriculture and the Culinary Arts. To purchase tickets, please contact Dame Manda Aiken at 305-367-5867 or 305-797-3723, or email aiken_m@bellsouth.net.

-- Gail Shepherd