Georgian A Publication of George School, Newtown, Pennsylvania Volume 75 • Number 3 • Fall 2003
From Stage to Stove By Diana Cutshall
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n a restaurant,” says Katherine Alford ’75, “there’s a performance that happens every night. You prepare, dress for the part, show off your skills, and then do it again the next night.” An honors graduate of Pomona College in Claremont, CA, where she majored in theater, Katherine moved from California to New York in the early 1980s. “I was prepared for Broadway,” she says with a laugh, “but not to spend all my time looking for work.” To keep herself busy, she enrolled in the New York Restaurant School and graduated at the top of her class. “I always had a fantasy of owning my own restaurant,” she says. “I thought there was something very magical about food.” Today, with more than 20 years of cooking experience, Katherine oversees the test kitchen for the Food Network. Her myriad responsibilities include directing two recipe testers and developers, coordinating special projects and writing the weekly Scripps wire service column, “From Food Network Kitchens.” “Testing recipes takes a lot of attention to detail,” says Katherine. “You start with a recipe and think of a way you want to make it better. Then you figure out how to get from point A to point B. I always tell young chefs to taste what’s in their heads and encourage them to come up with fresh ideas.” The challenge is getting from point A to point B. Katherine says she has tested recipes as many as 40 times before being satisfied with the end result. Most recipes, according to Katherine, are tested at least three times and as many as 20.
Katherine’s passion for cooking along with her beliefs that people learn more from their mistakes than their successes and that one should take chances when eating or preparing new foods, make her perfectly suited to supervise the test kitchen. “There are so many things that factor into fine tuning a recipe. Such factors as whether someone uses a gas or electric stove and the quality of ingredients being used play a role, so there is a lot of trouble-shooting involved. In the end, a recipe should be a set of instructions that anyone can use successfully,” explains Katherine. Katherine, who starts taste testing when she walks in the test kitchen door around 5:30 a.m., has found she ends up tasting more of the bad. “There is always someone running up to me asking me to taste something and tell them what’s wrong with it,” Katherine says with a smile. “You seem to eat a lot, which isn’t bad when the food is good. Testing recipes is really problem solving: tasting foods and determining how to tweak the recipes. I don’t mind though, we really do have very dynamic cooks.” Deciding whether or not a recipe receives a passing grade ultimately falls to Katherine, who says she has to like the end result. But because food is such a subjective thing, Katherine says as many as 10 people are involved. “I love what I’m doing,” emphasized Katherine, who began her career in New York at the trendy Commissary restaurant, where she would eventually become the sous-chef. “All the experiences of my life continued on page 3
Katherine Alford ’75 oversees the Food Network test kitchen.
“In the end, a recipe should be a set of instructions that anyone can use successfully.”
Inside this georgian George School Grad Helping Students
Ordinary Cupcakes Become Extraordinary Desserts
Master chef offers students entrée into
Couple creates taste sensation.
culinary careers.
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