As a former chef, I often field phone calls and e-mails from distressed family and friends asking for cooking advice. Sometimes there’s a note of apology accompanying the phone call, as if it might be an inconvenience for me, but this is never the case. Like most chefs I know, I’m flattered that anyone would turn to me for advice and am always happy to help. What I do hate is when I hear the words “Ooh, you’re a chef, I could never cook for you; I’d be too nervous.” My response is “Sure you can, and please do!”

Watching my friend Sherry in the kitchen of her South Berwick home recently, I was reminded how much I love it when friends cook for me.  Most often when I end up at Sherry’s for dinner, it’s by accident. I’ll call to say hello, and my “what’cha doin’?” will be followed by her “I just bought these gorgeous mangoes,” and an hour later I’ll be sitting at her kitchen table as she cubes the juicy mangoes and tosses them into the pickled relish she’s making with salted cucumbers, ginger and hot peppers. One night she’ll make a curried chicken stew, redolent of ginger and toasted cumin, the fragrance of jasmine rice wafting in the background, while another meal might feature seared-salmon sushi with an avocado and papaya salad or crispy-fried tempeh with a corn and sticky-rice hash.

Sherry’s cooking, like Sherry herself, is easy to be around but never boring. She moves through her kitchen gracefully and without drama, but as she calmly minces ginger or tosses chopped onions into a hot skillet, she’ll tell a lively tale about the cad she was dating who just broke up with her on her answering machine, or about the fishing trip on which her daughter Lina, 11, inadvertently caught a four-foot shark. Sherry cooks dinner almost every night for herself and Lina, who splits time between mom’s and dad’s houses and rarely turns her nose up at anything her mother makes. No matter what Sherry’s making or how low the bank account might be, she’s always willing to share, and I’m seldom the only lucky friend at the table.

My friend Mark is also a great cook. I don’t remember what Mark was cooking the first time I showed up for dinner, but it probably involved cilantro and hot chiles. Mark grew up in San Diego, and by the time he was 16 he was driving down to Ensenada, Mexico (about 100 miles south of the border) with his buddies to drink 25-cent beers. Mark remembers the endless row of taco shacks that lined the wharf, and he remembers the fish tacos he and his friends would devour as they hopped from bar to bar. Living in Dover with wife Michelle and daughters Noa, 9, and Olivia, 6, he started trying to replicate the tacos a few years back when he was overcome by an intense longing for the boyhood treats. He says that the most important part isn’t what’s inside the tacos (they were 10 percent filling and 90 percent shell, he says), but what’s alongside.

Standing at the chopping block in the center of his kitchen, knife flailing and voice booming, he looks a little like Captain Ahab in an apron. Noa and Olivia saunter in and ask for a handful of Cheese Nips. “You want what?” he demands, glowering down at them in mock rage. “I’m making homemade tortillas, and you want Cheese Nips?” The girls glower back in equally-mock defiance, knowing full well that a handful of crackers will soon be forthcoming. Later, we all sit down to dinner (at least one or two friends from their tight-knit neighborhood seem always to be at the table as well) and dig in to freshly griddled corn tortillas, batter fried fish (“whatever’s cheap and white,” says Mark), and sides of fiery mango salsa, creamy guacamole, tangy tomatillo sauce, and thinly sliced jalapenos that Michelle, who’s from Alabama, refers to as “fixins.”

Then there’s Betsy. Betsy doesn’t think she’s a good cook because spaghetti with red sauce is a staple of her repertoire and because she usually cooks from a recipe. But the red sauce is made just the way her full-blooded Italian mother taught her to make it, and when you sit down to a plate of the perfectly toothsome pasta tossed with the slow-simmered, basil-scented sauce, you feel like you’re in Italy. Betsy, a full-blooded Italian herself, also serves the red sauce over creamy polenta in a classic presentation in which piping hot polenta is mixed with fried Italian sausage and poured into the center of a giant wooden plank. The sauce is ladled over the polenta, and aged Parmesan is shaved over the top. Guests gather around the plank, help themselves to platefuls of the soulful concoction, and are transported.

Betsy’s shrimp and grits might come from the back of a grits box (she uses the famous recipe created by the late, legendary southern chef Bill Neal), but the plump shrimp sautéed with bits of crispy bacon and served over southern-style grits—cheesy and infused with scallions and plenty of cracked pepper—taste every bit as sweet as they would in an original creation. Betsy’s enthusiasm for her beloved recipes is half the fun, and her loyalty to them is impressive. “No way am I going to make it with polenta,” she’ll exclaim in horror, responding to my suggestion that she just make the grits with yellow cornmeal when she discovers that her box of stone-ground white grits is almost empty.

Betsy loves to talk about food, and often her friends will be treated to a mouthwatering description of a newly discovered recipe. “I can’t wait to make this for you guys,” she’ll say, thumbing through the latest copy of Saveur or Bon Appetit. Then she’ll go on to describe the artichoke and fava stew she just read about, or the orzo pilaf with toasted pistachios and coarsely chopped olives that she wants to serve with grilled swordfish.

Not all of the meals I’ve enjoyed at the hands of friends and family are this decadent, but they don’t have to be. A tuna sandwich or a bowl of Campbell’s soup can be a feast when shared with a friend (especially if it’s tomato soup, and there are grilled-cheese sandwiches to go with it), and most of the chefs I know feel the exact same way. The sentiment I hear most often from chef friends is, “I don’t care if it’s Kraft Macaroni and Cheese or meatloaf—I love it when anyone cooks for me.”  When it comes to a home-cooked meal, chefs are the most grateful dinner guests on the planet. So don’t just call the chef with a question when you’re making dinner. Call the chef with an invitation to dinner. And don’t worry, they’ll love it.


Mark’s fish tacos
(recipes by Mark Holt-Shannon, as told to Paula Sullivan)

homemade tortillas
Take masa harina (fine-ground corn flour) and mix it with water and a little salt (a standard ratio is 2 cups masa harina, 1 cup warm water, and a pinch of salt) to form a dough. Knead it for a few minutes, then shape it into little golf-ball-sized balls and press it, either in a tortilla press, if you have one, or between the bottoms of two pans lined with plastic wrap. Then griddle-fry them in a lightly oiled pan, just to cook them through. Technically, they should stay soft, but you can kind of fold them over and griddle-fry them until they hold their shape, like a taco shell.

batter-fried fish
Take any cheap white fish, as long as it’s fresh, and cut it into big chunks. Dip it into your favorite fritter batter and fry it an inch of oil until golden, about 2 minutes per side. Shark works really well, too.  

basic fritter batter
adapted from “Cooking A to Z”
1 cup flour
1 Tbsp. sugar
pinch salt
2 eggs, separated
1 cup beer
2 Tbsp. oil

In a medium bowl, sift flour, sugar and salt. Set aside. In a blender or food processor, combine egg yolks, beer and oil until smooth. Add dry ingredients and process briefly, just until smooth. Transfer the mixture to the bowl that the dry ingredients were in. In a clean bowl, beat egg whites to soft peaks. Fold into batter. Pat fish dry before dipping into batter and frying.

tomatillo sauce (salsa verde)
Take six or eight tomatillos (husk removed) and throw them on a cookie sheet (unoiled) and toss them into a “wicked hot” oven (450-500 degrees) for 10 or 15 minutes, until the skin starts to wrinkle or char. Then set them aside to cool. Don’t bother to peel them. Just throw them into the food processor with a big handful of chopped cilantro, a few minced hot peppers (poblano is a favorite), some lemon or lime juice, and a little salt and pepper. If it’s really thick, add a little broth, just to thin it a little.

fruit salsa
Mango is great in a fruit salsa, but strawberries or peaches are good, too. Use a couple of cups of chopped fruit, a couple of cups of chopped tomato, and maybe a cup of chopped roasted peppers. Then toss in the usual suspects—minced cilantro, minced jalapeno, sliced scallions, minced red onion, lemon or lime juice, and, if it needs it, a little sugar—and mix it up. You can pulse it a few times in the food processor, but keep it pretty chunky.