The Rural We: Miriam Rubin
Freelance food columnist and cookbook editor Miriam Rubin was the first woman to ever work in the kitchens of New York City's famed Four Seasons Restaurant. She went on to become the food editor of Weight Watchers Magazine, and her work has appeared in Prevention, Redbook, Organic Gardening, Woman's Day, and many other publications. Rubin’s first cookbook, Grains, was published in 1995, and her second book, Tomatoes, in 2013. For nine years, she wrote the "Miriam's Garden" column for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. She edited Gil Marks' Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, edited and developed recipes for Matzo Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South, contributed to The Encyclopedia of Appalachia, and developed recipes for “a gazillion other books.” Rubin and her husband, the landscape painter David Lesako, have recently relocated to the Hudson Valley from Southwestern Pennsylvania. She will lead the cooking class Passover with a Twist at HGS Home Chef in Hillsdale on March 28.
I was at the CIA [Culinary Institute of America], where I went to school, and they were looking for a 'girl' to work at the Four Seasons restaurant. I went and interviewed and they hired me. The reason they needed a girl was because Leslie Revsin was trying to get a job at the Waldorf Astoria and she sued them to get it. This was the mid to late ‘70s and there were no women in high-end restaurant kitchens, especially French restaurants. I got the job because the restaurant understood that things were changing and they didn't want to get sued. They didn’t even have women servers at the time.
It was a wonderful place to work, basically an apprenticeship. I learned to butcher, saute, grill, working at all the different stations. They used the best ingredients. My interest in cooking from the garden came from there. It was the ‘70s and we were just learning about these foods. They used fiddlehead ferns and I’d never heard of them before, and I’m sure we didn’t have ramps.
I was there about a year and a half, then I worked in other restaurants for about 10 years, in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Detroit, where I’m from. I worked as executive chef at Redbook and in their test kitchen, where I developed recipes, worked on stories, and styled food photographs.
For the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, I wrote "Miriam’s Garden" — stories about what was coming up in the garden, which horrible varmint was eating my green beans, and recipes for those green beans and many other vegetables. It was one of my favorite things and I’m sorry it’s over and I really miss it. It was important and it mattered, and I think it got people out to their gardens. One of my missions is to get people in front of the stove and out in the garden. I’m hoping to be able to take the material from the column and transform it into a book. Some of the stories still make me cry, but I've got a new garden now and spring planting to look forward to.
This will be the fourth or fifth class I’ve taught at HGS. They’re always about something different. For this class, I’m thinking of Passover like Thanksgiving — you can’t change the basics, like the brisket, but you want to add something fresh and different. For instance, my grandmother made great gefilte fish, but a lot of people don’t like it, so I’m doing pickled salmon with red onions and roasted beet horseradish.
Ginger Tomatoes
Makes 4 side-dish servings
(From Tomatoes: A Savor the South® cookbook by Miriam Rubin.
Copyright ©2013 by Miriam Rubin. Used by permission of the University of North Carolina Press)
Sweet tomatoes and earthy ginger are great partners in this simple dish. It's almost better made with out-of-season cherry and baby plum tomatoes because the homegrown ones can become quite juicy. Serve these in a bowl, maybe with some rice. A touch of honey at the end brings all the flavors together.
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced
2 teaspoons peeled, finely chopped ginger
10-12 small, ripe, sweet tomatoes (1 pound), quartered or halved if very small (about 3 cups)
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
1½ teaspoons honey
2 tablespoons thinly sliced chives (garlic chives are great here) or scallion greens
Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Add the garlic and ginger and cook, stirring, just until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the tomatoes, sprinkle with the salt, and cook, tossing often, until they just start to collapse, 2-4 minutes. Remove from the heat. Add the honey, sprinkle with the chives or scallions, and mix gently with a rubber spatula. The more you stir, the juicier they get.
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