Recipe for a Delicious Life: Discover the Perfect Blend of Food & Music to Stimulate

Chapter Two

The Kitchen Is the Heart of Your Home

AN ESSENTIAL PART of healthy eating is using the right ingredients, of course. But it doesn’t start there. For me, the foundation is not what foods you work with, but where and how you work with them.

I have been fortunate during my career to have enjoyed free access to some of the most amazing kitchens in the world, from multi-million-dollar celebrity homes fitted out with every piece of equipment and gadget available to the best of luxury hotels.

But I have learned that’s not enough if you want to nourish people with your food. You can have the finest setting, but if the atmosphere of the kitchen isn’t right you won’t be able to serve from your heart. It’s like having a high-performance car and trying to run it on cheap gas.

I believe the kitchen is the most important room in a home—it’s the engine that drives everywhere and everything else. And I’m not just saying that because I’m a chef.

Have you noticed how people love to gather in the kitchen, whether they are eating or not? Think of parties you’ve been to. How often was it the place where guests tended to gravitate? With all those people there, you might expect to have found some wonderful treats being handed out, but often there was nothing but people standing around talking. So why in the kitchen?

It’s because the kitchen plays a unique role within the home and in our lives. In Relish: An Adventure in Food, Style, and Everyday Fun, Daphne Oz, co-host of ABC’s The Chew, writes, “The kitchen is the most basic source of creativity in a home.” I agree. It’s also our source of survival and nourishment. It’s like the heart of the home, producing sustenance that circulates throughout the rest of our lives.

I had sensed that from when I was a little girl. Even though I hadn’t enjoyed much of what my mother had prepared while in the kitchen, I had been drawn to the place because it was the hub of the home. I’d offer to help clean the dishes so I could be around there.

When I was growing up in Israel it was well known that the former Prime Minister, Golda Meir, Israel’s only woman leader, used to hold her cabinet meetings in the kitchen of her official residence. She apparently felt she could get more done there.

Just as a body can only be as healthy as the heart that beats within it, so a healthy kitchen is essential to a life-giving home. But what is a healthy kitchen? Most people understand the importance of cleanliness, but only think about it on a very superficial level: wipe the counters and shelves, disinfect the sink, self-clean the oven and you’re ready to go, right?

Those are all good things, but they are only dealing with the surface.

We’ve all been places where we just know the past lingers, haven’t we? We sense something in the air—maybe great love, or perhaps immense sadness. That feeling is never more true than when we are in a kitchen, where we do a lot of our living, and it isn’t always pretty. We laugh and cry, we bicker and make up. Most kitchens may have vents to extract bad odors, but the bad vibes can remain.

Most kitchens may have vents to extract bad odors, but the bad vibes can remain.

I don’t believe in ghosts, but I am sure that sometimes we can sense the residual energy of people that stagnates and collects in places. That’s why one person’s home might feel comfortable while another’s home, though it is nicely furnished, might have you itching to escape. It’s not because of the drapes, carpets, and color scheme; it’s the energy in the air.

The Worst Toxins

We hear a lot in the news about global warming and other effects of toxicity on our living. But there’s nothing more noxious than human toxicity. While it’s true that all objects possess and project energy we’re capable of feeling, without a doubt the most dominant energy is that of people.

Working in a contaminated kitchen is like preparing food beside someone working with poisonous chemicals. You have clean food in a dirty environment. Why put your heart into making wonderfully nutritious food, when all the time it’s being tainted by stale and negative energy?

As a society, we are more aware of the dangerous toxins being released in our world through industries. But we are less conscious that we are releasing toxins through individuals, too—poisonous emotions such as hate, rage, envy and, perhaps the biggest one of all, indifference.

When I walk into someone’s kitchen for the first time, I can immediately learn quite a bit about them—probably more than some would want me to know. I can read the space like a detective searching for clues at the scene of a crime. Messy silverware drawers usually mean they aren’t very organized. Old food left in the refrigerator or cupboards suggests stagnation and neglect. Dishes piled in the sink expose a tendency toward procrastination.

The worst kitchen in Hollywood I ever worked in belonged to a major entertainment executive who lived in a sprawling multi-million-dollar mansion. It was decorated with the most extravagant, plush furniture and window treatments, with “extras” that featured a built-in bowling alley, and a fifty-person staff.

While this may sound inviting, the kitchen might as well have been a morgue. It occupied a huge space—as big as some houses. If you wanted to get in shape, you could roller skate back and forth from one end to the other and get a good workout. Like the rest of the house, every appliance and tool in the kitchen was of the high-priced variety, but that didn’t help. The area was cold, without character, and totally lifeless. A dead zone.

It seemed like whoever had created this kitchen had no intention of using it. When they brought me in to cook, I could barely function. Two assistants stood over me while I tried to prepare a meal. They wouldn’t let me bring anything. As soon as I asked where a certain ingredient might be found, they scurried away to retrieve it for me. The moment I put down a knife, they’d scoop it up for washing.

You’d think with so much help that I would have loved working there. But I couldn’t stop looking at my watch. When would it be time to go home? How much longer did I have to stay?

This was very strange for me because I always loved cooking. Usually I enjoyed myself so much that I forgot about time and lost myself in the act of food preparation. This kitchen made me continuously aware of time and my desire to leave.

After cooking a few dinners there I refused to go back. Though I was giving up good money, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. Later I learned that although the cooking position paid top dollar, they could never keep it filled. I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t stand to prepare meals in that kitchen.

Nor am I alone in recognizing the importance of a positive environment when preparing food. In Relish, Oz writes a good kitchen is essential for her “to feel inspired to prepare the foods that will keep me and mine feeling happy and energized all week long.”

One of the celebrity kitchens I most enjoyed working in was that of actor Pierce Brosnan and his wife, Keely Shaye Smith. Overlooking the beautiful Pacific Ocean, the space invited you in and pulsated with life. It wasn’t just because it was well-appointed. There was such a harmonious feeling, as if a symphony was going on and you were sitting right in the middle of it. I liked being there so much that I didn’t want to go home at the end of the day.

Considering the working conditions, it was no surprise that Pierce and Keely loved the food I prepared for them in their kitchen. They told me all the time how great what I prepared for them tasted. Pierce especially enjoyed my roasted squash soup with apples, and Keely asked my advice for a cookbook she was working on. They were lovely, down-to-earth people, and their kind and generous nature permeated their kitchen with a welcoming atmosphere.

Clearing the Air

Another time, I was hired to cook for a famous movie actress. I was looking forward to working with her, but when I walked into her kitchen the energy was so chaotic that I could barely focus. My thoughts were scattered. A meal that would typically take an hour to prepare required twice the time.

I discovered she never cooked for herself on a regular basis. She was always on the run, grabbing a quick bite here or there. Her kitchen was more like a pit-stop at a race track than a place for nourishment and refreshment. This hectic energy hung in the air. No wonder I felt so scattered.

I told her I needed to harmonize her kitchen if I was going to keep working there. I explained this was sort of like a spring-cleaning, clearing out the “cobwebs” of the past and refreshing the space.

It was a practice that had been born in a cave, believe it or not. Let me explain.

One of the first things you learn when you are on the road with a rock band is to be flexible. With a different venue almost every day, you never know quite what circumstances you will have to deal with.

Before I set out on a European tour with The Kelly Family, I had designed my own state-of-the-art mobile kitchen. It traveled in a set of flight cases, like their band instruments, and was better equipped than many restaurants. Regardless of where I found myself on our travels, I knew I had the equipment in hand that I would need to prepare the band’s daily meals.

But even this preparedness was tested when we arrived in Pula, a resort town on the Croatian coast, across the Adriatic Sea from Italy. Pula was beautiful, like an undiscovered paradise. The sea was the bluest I’d ever seen. And, oh my, the fresh fruit: juicy watermelon, fresh and crisp as an apple, and plump figs as big as my fist. Coming from Israel, the land of such amazing fruits, I was impressed. I thought we had arrived at the Garden of Eden, only better because it had beautiful beaches too.

Then the tour manager showed me where my kitchen was going to be set up. My heart hit the floor. I’d gone from paradise to hell.

The concert was to take place in Pula’s ancient Roman amphitheater. Now this was a fantastic place to put on a show, for sure. But as the site of cruel gladiator games, steeped in two thousand years of violent history, it was hardly an ideal cooking environment.

Heightening the challenging nature of my task was the space I was given in which to set up my mobile kitchen—in an actual cave at the back of the venue.

While the roadies unloaded my kitchen gear, I was pulling my hair out wondering what to do. Tours run on a tight schedule, and I did not have much time to make the most of this challenging situation.

The cave was so small that my kitchen equipment barely fit in it. The ceiling was low, while some cement tiles covered the floor. A coat of paint had been applied to the walls in a half-hearted attempt to brighten things up. Stuffy and airless, it wasn’t dirty and it wasn’t clean. It was characterless and unwelcoming. I could feel everything that had happened there—the conflict, the violence.

The whole place brought out almost an allergic reaction in me. I kept walking in and out, but I didn’t want to unpack the kitchen equipment. I looked at my watch and knew I had to get started. I needed to shop at the local market and then a meal to prepare for the band before showtime.

I decided I would have to transform the cave myself. Quickly I headed to the market with the personal assistant assigned to me, someone who spoke the language and knew the currency. I bought some watermelon and figs to fortify myself and other fresh fruit and vegetables for cooking. Then I paid for flowers, candles, and incense.

Back at the cave, I set out my flowers, lit my candles, and burned the incense. I threw salt into each of the corners as a symbolic cleansing. Next I reached for my African drum. I traveled with it because I liked to play after work to relax. I had never formally learned to play a musical instrument, but my years of soaking in classical music had somehow given me a sense and a feel for rhythm.

As a child, I’d wandered into an empty music room at the end of the school day, one time, and sat at the piano picking out notes and simple melodies by ear. Swept up in the wonder of creating even elementary music, I lost all track of time before realizing I would be late getting home and rushing back to ask Mom if I could have piano lessons.

I swallowed my disappointment when she said no. But that sense of yearning to not just savor music, but somehow become part of it, never went away. I found myself instinctively tapping out rhythms to whatever I was listening to, like you would on a drum. Years later, I’d realize that the piano, of course, was also a percussion instrument.

Looking back, I sometimes wonder if I had been encouraged more as a child, whether I might have pursued music more seriously. As it was, music was just something that I needed in my life in some way, as I developed my gifts in the kitchen. As I got older, I taught myself to play the harmonica and I also learned to play the drums. My nephew, who is a talented musician, always comments on my natural sense of rhythm when he lets me play around on his drum set. With his help, I had picked out the African drum that became part of my traveling equipment.

Pulling it out in that Pula cave, I hit it very hard. I wanted to take out my frustrations about my makeshift kitchen, but then I found something magical starting to happen. It was like a cork popping out of a champagne bottle. Something in that cave gave way.

The unwelcoming energy dissolved and a sweet feeling came over the place—calm and inviting. I felt comfortable, like I wanted to stay there, like I was at home. Before I hadn’t wanted to stay in the cave; now I didn’t want to leave. I played some lively Balkan folk music on my portable CD player, opened my equipment cases, and got to work.

A funny thing happened. People started finding reasons to come into the cave and see me. They began bringing me CDs to play, asking me questions, checking to see how I was doing—any excuse to be in there with me, it seemed.

This was a cramped space, however, and I needed to get a lot done in a short period of time. I had to kick people out just to work. As soon as I shooed one person away, someone else came in. The cave that I couldn’t stand to walk into had become the place to gather.

Even The Kelly Family band members came in, which surprised me. Normally, they were busy with soundchecks or resting before going on stage. During the tour I’d become very close with all the family, and I loved cooking for them, but to be sure to have their food ready in time I had to kick them out too.