Talent, Appetites in Full Bloom as Celebrities Cook

A lot of women have spent the past quarter of a century or so fighting their way out of the kitchen, but at Saturday’s “Celebrities Cook for the UCSD Cancer Center” at the Sheraton Harbor Island, a double sextet of them suggested that they never feel quite so at home as when they are home, home at the range.

The Champagne Ballroom, the perennial site of the “Celebrities Cook” gala, again rang to the toothsome tattoo of whisks beating against metal bowls when gala founder and four-time chairman Anne Otterson pulled out the ninth version of the fund-raiser, this time styled “A Feast of Flowers.”

The name presaged not a banquet of posies--although there was one Bud in the attendance of 500 and dinner plates were garnished with a blossom or two--but rather celebrated, according to the program, “the flowering achievements of many distinguished women.” Among the distinguished whose talents bloomed Saturday were six professional chefs who supervise the kitchens at leading restaurants here and in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and six local women designated “celebrated hostesses.”

All 12 of these women, aided to greater or lesser degrees by sous chefs, toiled and troubled at elegantly decorated cooking stations arranged at either end of the room. Real stoves put out real heat--and so did hungry guests clamoring for seconds of the nibbles each cooking team offered--but nary a coiffure melted, and, though some dresses were ruffled, tempers never were.

“A Feast of Flowers” produced net proceeds of more than $200,000 for the cancer center, a figure that center board President David Rubel said brings the total earned by “Celebrities Cook” to about $1.5 million.

“The women who put this party together every year have done, all by themselves, much more than they may realize.” said Rubel. “When you multiply the money they’ve raised over the years at ‘Celebrities Cook’ by all the matching grants we receive, this party has raised $15 million for the cancer center.”

Otterson wrote the basic menu for Celebrities Cook in 1982 and changed it only slightly this year. As before, the evening opened with a two-hour tasting at the booths and continued with a rather lavish dinner and dancing to the Bill Coleman Band. As a change from years gone by, the event did not include a panel of celebrity judges or a competition among the cooks.

“I’ve chaired four out of nine ‘Celebrities Cook,’ and this is my swan song,” Otterson said. “But it’s been worth it all these years because we don’t raise money just for research, but for patient benefits, too. We like to say that our proceeds go ‘from the laboratory bench to the bedside.’ ”

At their booths around the room, the professional chefs looked only slightly more harried than in their own kitchens. La Jolla’s Cindy Black offered up slivers of silky grilled eggplant; Evan Kleiman of Angeli Caffe in Los Angeles also served eggplant, and Tracy Pikhart Ritter of Escondido’s Golden Door dished up spiced chicken with lemon couscous .

Other pros were Joyce Goldstein of San Francisco’s Square One and Anne Rosensweig of Arcadia in New York, but the busiest booth was that of San Franciscan Barbara Tropp, who cooked up hundreds of the curried spring rolls she invented at her China Moon Cafe.

Guests armed with forks and small plates circled the room constantly, but the crowds were often thickest at the booth where hostess Sally Thornton and sous chef Martha Culbertson handed out wedges of a cake of layered corn crepes and crisp duck.

“It’s a regular feeding frenzy here,” said one guest as she went back for seconds. The business was also brisk at Linda Hahn’s sopa de tortilla kitchen, at Isabelle Wasserman’s piroshki booth and at the booth where Dorene Whitney offered canapes topped with olive tapenade .

Hostess Lee Goldberg stopped drizzling sauteed oysters with cucumber sauce just long enough to point her ladle coyly at a guest and say, “Of course I made this myself--with John Baylin’s help.” Caterer Baylin then directed her attention to yet another tray oysters in need of sauce and Goldberg went back to work.

Dixie Unruh, a previous “Celebrities Cook” contestant, returned as a hostess and brought along 500 bruschetta canapes topped with a spicy tomato mixture. Hoisting a blushing Roma tomato in the palm of her hand, Unruh said: “This is what I call the ‘Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!’ I won the battle, but I had to peel 250 of these tomatoes, and I don’t know if I can ever face another one.” Her husband, Ken Unruh, served as sous chef.

Most guests took an indulgent attitude toward these snacks and found the seated dinner in some ways redundant, although, as befitted a cooking party, it was elegantly done and consisted of smoked salmon in a crisp, flower-shaped pastry cup, beef filet stuffed with ratatouille, and a light marjolaine cake.

In keeping with the “Feast of Flowers” theme, the table centerpieces were brilliant topiaries of spring flowers rising from white planter boxes.

Key committee posts were held by Lyn Heller, Judee Feinberg, Lynne Schulnik, Suzie Eisenman, Minna Melton, Nancy Chase, Pam Wischkaemper, Shirley Rubel, Joany Mosher, Barbara McColl, Shirley Gillespie, Alyson Goudy, Corrine Gruenwald, Audrey Geisel, Marie Olesen and Jeanne Jones.

Among those attending were Sheri and Ben Kelts, Peggy and Peter Preuss, Charmaine and Maurice Kaplan, Mary and Bruce Hazard, the Douglas Pauls, Howard Birndorf, Dottie and David Garfield, the Michael Stringers, the Richard Levis, the John Sutherlands, Barbara Bloom, Bobbie and Blaine Quick, Lael and Jay Kovtun, Jody and Earle Honnen and Bebe and Marvin Zigman.