Variety is the spice in Chef Judi’s kitchen.
It’s been that way since she was 5, standing on a stool in her mother’s kitchen, armed with oregano and garlic salt.
“She watched Julia Child and the Galloping Gourmet and Jacques Pepin years before it was cool to be a foodie.”
The words are from the forward of the chef’s new cookbook, “Reflections & Recipes of Chef Judi.” Find it at many area bookstores.
No longer needing to stand on a chair, the statuesque grown-up, 6-foot tall Judi Gallagher, culinary director for ABC7 in Sarasota, is not only living her dream but sharing it with the rest of us.
In her on-camera moments, she shares recipes, cooking hints and talks about area restaurants and other culinary topics.
“I loved the ceremony of food,” she said.
She still does. She appreciates the presentation as much as the taste, realizing like most top chefs that those things go hand in hand.
“My mother thought I should be a dietitian,” she said.
At her high school’s college night she discovered Johnson and Wales University at Providence, Rhode Island. It was close to Boston and New York and also to her friends at Connecticut College and Brown. All that plus cooking classes — what could be better for someone with such a passion?
Dressed in starched chef whites and steel-toed shoes, the would-be chef attended classes by day, cooked meals in the dorm at night (even at a culinary school, college food left something to be desired she said) and then worked in a diner on Saturday nights to earn the money for her dormitory creations.
After graduation, she worked as an intern with several of her college instructors at the college-owned restaurant before heading out on her own. As women chefs were not yet in vogue, she got to clean the dirtiest pans and prepare salads and desserts while the men wore the tall chef hats and created the entrees.
Marriage and a move to Glouscester, Massachusetts, offered the first taste of culinary success. She and her husband opened the Main Street Café, which was an instant hit.
“We were known for our soups and our brunch,” she said.
They would serve brunch to 400 to 600 diners. The cafe offered nine varieties of homemade muffins plus peach and blueberry cobbler among other tasty treats.
Several of these recipes, including one for her cream of mushroom soup, are featured in the cookbook. With such ingredients as four kinds of mushrooms and truffle butter, it is a good thing today’s grocers stock such once hard-to-find items.
Presentation is as important as the finest ingredients to this chef. She appreciates the artful blending of colorful food with colorful dishes. Consider that sometimes the term “colorful” refers to the use of a canning jar to serve a tasty lemon custard pudding topped with a blueberry sauce. Use a plain wooden cutting board to serve a flatbread “pizza” featuring thinly sliced grilled rare steak, herb cream cheese with arugula salad and blistered tomatoes.
This chef does more than simply fill bellies, run a consulting business and be a great wife and mother. She also has spent hours out in the community helping individuals and businesses. In 2008, she was a “She Knows Where She’s Going” honoree of Girls Inc. Her award reads, in part:
“Judi spices up our television and radio airwaves as well as writes for several local publications. She does this all while generously seasoning the culinary world with her consulting business for high-end restaurant clientele like Beach Bistro, Fleming’s, Roy’s, Venture Hotels and others.”
Yet all was not sugar and cream
Despite her childhood passions and role models, a top education and the birth of her son, Eric, while her first restaurant was drawing crowds, rain clouds were gathering. Lightening struck from out of the blue when her first husband and the family bank accounts vanished at the same time.
Chef Judi had $5 in her wallet, her beloved son, Eric, and her wonderful mother. Her mother stocked her freezer, filled her oil tank, gave her three days to wallow in grief and the courage to do what she needed to do to look out for her son and herself.
With money borrowed from her mother, she baked oatmeal cookies — lots of oatmeal cookies. She took them to a local gourmet store. Her next venture, Just Desserts was born. Baking by day, bartending at night and sleeping occasionally, with the help of a live-in sitter, her business began to grow, including Legal Seafoods and DeLucas Markets as major customers.
Chef Judi turned her life around, repaid her mother, met Paul Gallagher who proved to be the husband and father she and her son, Eric, deserved. It was time to follow the sun to Sarasota where her career would blossom even as she dealt with the loss first of her sister and then the mother who had inspired her, saved her and even now, years after her passing, seems to watch over the little girl on the stool who truly does know where she is going.
After her mother’s passing she worked for Ophelia’s by the Bay, began to write for some local magazines and since then has written about restaurants and hotels all over Europe and elsewhere. She did a food segment at a local television station. Eventually she was seen by local weather guru John Scalzi at ABC7 in Sarasota and “overnight” became its culinary director.
“I love every single moment,” Chef Judi wrote in her cook book. “Any day that someone stops me and shares enjoyment of the cooking shows or patronizes a restaurant or event based on my recommendations, I am so happy.”
“Reflections & Recipes of Chef Judi” is as much a fine cook book as a bitter-sweet autobiography of a well-known and much admired chef.
However, there is one thing missing — the recipe for her oatmeal raisin cookies.
“Only Eric, my son, will get that recipe.”
“Reflections & Recipes of Chef Judi” by Judi Gallagher, 108 pages, ISBN: 978-1-5462-4211-6. $22.9.5 Available at Barnes and Noble in Sarasota, Bookstore1, Southern Steer Butchers, Geiers, Creekside Traders and Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.
*This article first appeared in the Venice Gondolier Sun