At least when it comes to eating habits, Emily and Eddie Garner have distinctly different childhood memories. Emily’s parents were staunch vegetarians for a time, while Eddie’s father was a butcher who made filet for the family on a weekly basis. “My parents were vegetarians before I was born,” says Emily, “but the story goes that when I was three, I went to a friend’s house and I ate a McDonald’s cheeseburger for the first time. I came home saying, ‘Mom, I want a cheeseburger,’ and that was the end of their vegetarianism.”

These days, the co-owners of Bikram Yoga Baltimore, who live in a charming Cape Cod-style home in the Villa Cresta neighborhood of Parkville, are very much in sync when it comes to their eating habits—and their kitchen rituals, too. While Emily does all of the cooking for their household, which includes their boisterous brood of three (Charlie, 8, Marty, 4, and Paige, 3), Eddie says, “I’m always happy to clean and get things down from high shelves.”

“It’s impossible to practice yoga and not feel a greater connection to the world around you.”

Of course, feeding their young family—with their finicky tastes and personal preferences—can be challenging. (Charlie loves a ham and cheese sub, Marty has a serious sweet tooth, and Paige likes spicy salsa.) “We try to eat every night around five,” says Emily, “but just getting them to the table can be like herding cats. The kids hate the ‘d’ word (dinner). If I specifically say what they’re eating, they’re more likely to come running to the table.”

On this winter’s day, as Emily prepares dinner, Paige, Charlie, and their pit bull mix, Lenny, run around the house, and Eddie checks on the cornbread baking in the oven of their cozy, sun-drenched kitchen. On the menu for dinner is a Pinterest find called Tilapia Stew and a recipe for so-called “Yummy Cornbread,” passed down by Emily’s mother.

“My mom doesn’t know where she got this recipe,” says Emily, as she adds a can of creamed corn to the bowl, “but it’s likely an old church-lady situation. It’s cornbread, but it’s doctored up with whole kernels, creamed corn, and sour cream—it’s really halfway between cornbread and corn pudding.” Also on the lineup is a kale salad with pomegranate seeds and pecans. “The trick with kale,” says Emily, “is to massage the chopped greens to soften them before you dress them.”

When they’re not feeding their family, the Garners can most often be found in their equally warm Cockeysville hot yoga studio. “Everything I know about life, I learned in the yoga studio,” says Eddie, smiling. “I’m so much nicer now. It’s impossible to practice yoga and not feel a greater connection to the world around you.”

The students, says Eddie, keep them inspired. “What I love is that the yoga is accessible to anyone,” he explains. “In class, I can have a 17-year-old standing next to an 83-year-old. Or someone who is a quadriplegic in a wheelchair next to someone who wants to lose 100 pounds. I want people to know that everyone can benefit from yoga. I can help reacquaint you with your body and how it moves so that you can find your way out of pain.”

The Garners first discovered yoga when they were living in New York City in 2004. Emily, who studied dance at Butler University in Indiana, was pursuing ballet professionally and working at Starbucks to make ends meet. Eddie, an opera tenor, was working for a company that produced concerts at Carnegie Hall and singing on the side. As struggling artists, the couple happened to buy a book called The Cheap Bastard’s Guide to New York City.

“There were tips, like ‘This place has three free appetizers during happy hour,’” says Emily, laughing. “Or, ‘If you volunteer to sell merchandise here, you can get free tickets to a Broadway show.’” Fortuitously, one of the tips included a pay-what-you-can donation class at a Bikram Yoga studio. “I loved it right away,” recalls Emily. “I called Eddie from the street and said, ‘You need to take class with me.’” Echoes Eddie, “I loved it immediately and knew after one class I wanted to be a teacher.”

But when they’re not in their yoga studio, their favorite spot is their kitchen and great room, the true heart of their home. “I grew up almost always eating at home,” recalls Emily. “Family meals were the time we talked about pretty much anything and everything. So, when all of us are together eating, I feel good knowing my kids will remember Sunday morning pancake breakfasts or whatever it is—it’s a time when, through a meal, we are creating their sense of home.”

Kale and Quinoa Salad

INGREDIENTS

• 1⁄2 cup uncooked red quinoa, rinsed
• 6 cups chopped kale
• 1 cup pomegranate seeds
• 1⁄2 cup dried cranberries
• 1⁄2 cup pecans, chopped

FOR THE DRESSING

• 1⁄4 cup olive oil
• 4 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar
• 2 tsp. Dijon mustard
• 1 Tbsp. honey
  Salt and pepper, to taste

DIRECTIONS

To make the quinoa, add 1 cup of water to a small saucepan and add quinoa. Bring to a boil, cover, and reduce heat and simmer for about
13 minutes. Remove from heat, keeping quinoa covered, and allow it to sit for about five minutes, then fluff quinoa with a fork. Place kale in a large bowl and gently massage to break down fibers. Add quinoa, pomegranate seeds, dried cranberries, and pecans.

To make the dressing, whisk together olive oil, apple cider vinegar, Dijon mustard, honey, salt, and pepper in a small bowl. Pour dressing over the salad and toss together until evenly coated. Top with additional pomegranates, cranberries, and pecans as desired.

Fish Stew

INGREDIENTS

• 6 Tbsp. fresh lime juice
• 2 Tbsp. cumin
• 2 Tbsp. paprika
• 3 tsp. minced garlic
• 1 1⁄2 tsp. salt
• 1 1⁄2 tsp. pepper
• 2 lbs. tilapia (cut into bite-sized pieces, fish can be partially frozen)
• 1 Tbsp. olive oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 3 large bell peppers (sliced into 2-inch strips)
• 14 oz. diced tomatoes, drained
• 14 oz. coconut milk
• Fresh cilantro to taste

DIRECTIONS

Combine the lime juice, cumin, paprika, garlic, salt, and pepper in a large bowl. Add in the tilapia and mix until coated. Cover and place in the refrigerator to marinate for 20 minutes or longer. (You can marinate the night before). Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add onions and cook until they begin to soften, about three minutes. Add bell pepper, tomatoes, and marinated tilapia. Pour coconut milk over ingredients and mix. Cover and simmer about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Just before serving, garnish with cilantro.

Ed and Ann Berlin had been living in the New York area for 35 years, but for Ed, a native Baltimorean (City College, Class of ’66), home beckoned—and both of them were ready for a change. They settled in Baltimore at the end of 2011.

“I was motivated to move back,” says Ed, “but Ann grew up in Salt Lake City, and the fear was that if we moved back, I would have old friends and connections and Ann would come here and wouldn’t have anything to do.”

Enter The Ivy Bookshop, which was up for sale just as they were arriving in Baltimore. Both Ed, a former technology innovator for CitiBank, and Ann, former head of production for academic publisher John Wiley & Sons, were lifelong booklovers. She tended toward non-fiction and the classics. He liked art books, graphic design, and espionage. On a lark one day, Ed went into the bookshop and made up his mind to buy it. “We decided The Ivy couldn’t close,” he says simply.

That being said, they knew the risks. “There was a period in the United States when there were a lot of independent bookstores in individual neighborhoods,” says Ed, “But with the advent of Amazon and 24/7 availability online, the notion of a neighborhood bookstore became uneconomic.” So the Berlins knew that they needed to do something differently if they were going to have a viable business. “We needed to turn it into something more metropolitan,” says Ed. “It required a major commitment to community events—that was the challenge for it to be successful.”

Seven years later, not only has the bookstore found success—with roughly 26,000 to 28,000 titles in its inventory—but authors from all over the country, including Michael Downs and Doris Kearns Goodwin, come there to read from their latest works. On the heels of their success, the Berlins joined chef Spike Gjerde in opening Bird in Hand, a bookstore cafe near the Johns Hopkins campus. “Baltimore likes home teams,” says Ed. “And Baltimore treats us like the home team the way they do the Orioles and Johns Hopkins and lacrosse. We are local merchants wearing our Baltimore hearts on our sleeves.”

Equally Baltimore is the fact that the Berlins live in a charming 1905 Roland Park home they believe was once the headmaster’s house of the original Roland Park Country School on St. Paul’s Street. “When you walk out of the house, the front walkway goes right to what would have been the front door of the school,” explains Ed.

There’s still plenty of learning taking place under the slate-shingled roof. Not surprisingly, the house is brimming with books, including many for the Berlins’ 5-year-old granddaughter, Isobel, who lives with them. There’s also a wonderful collection of 20th-century art. “Most people go to an art gallery and just look at the pictures, Ed actually buys them,” says Ann. “But what I love most is that everything here has a memory for us.”

There are plenty of food memories, too. “My family is from Texas, so my mom made the world’s best fried chicken and the world’s best chili,” says Ann. “We’d go down to visit my grandparents and it was black-eyed peas and the vegetables were cooked to death in salt pork.” While Ann does the cooking, she tends toward a utilitarian approach. “I’m always looking for things that are fast, including recipes from Pierre Franey’s 60-Minute Gourmet, like this recipe for shrimp in Indian sauce in which I like to substitute chicken.” Her cranberry pecan salad, improvised from a friend’s recipe, is similarly quick to assemble.

For Ed, family meal time was nothing if not predictable when he was growing up in Baltimore. “We had the same food every Monday, we had the same food every Tuesday,” he says, laughing. “Thursday was deep-fried chicken, Friday was meatballs and spaghetti, Saturday was food from Attman’s. Unfortunately, Tuesday was liver night and Wednesday was potluck—it was like being in the army, but the food was better.”

As in life, Jamie Campbell and Drury Bynum are completely complementary in the kitchen. He’s the residential bartender; she handles the cooking. (“I always say that we have a food and beverage program here,” laughs Bynum.) She bought him a Breville espresso machine for his birthday; he purchased a set of Global knives for hers. And each appreciates the other’s talents. “Jamie can turn a sandwich into a banquet,” he adds. Says Campbell, “When I met him, I was at a party at his house and he’d made lasagna. I was like, ‘He’s hunky, and he’s artsy, and he made this big thing of lasagna’—he lit up the room.” 

In their professional lives, the duo—who founded Shine Creative, a video-production company specializing in documentary-style storytelling for food, beverage, and travel brands—are equally simpatico. Campbell is Shine’s executive producer, while Bynum is the director. (They’ve even used their kitchen for shoots, including a Jack Daniel’s video series aimed at encouraging women to drink whiskey.)

In their downtime, the couple’s favorite pastime is entertaining friends and family in their art-filled 1936 Guilford home—“a hodgepodge of our past and present,” says Campbell. “We used to get grumpy about dirty dishes,” she says. “Now, I just feel grateful for them—dirty dishes mean we’ve had friends over. We love sitting around listening to music and eating and drinking in our yard.” Cracks Bynum: “When people come here, we try to get them drunk, then make them sleep over. It’s just fun having a full house.”

“I always say that we have a food and beverage program here,” laughs Bynum.

Bynum’s Winter in Tulum cocktail was inspired by a trip to the celebrated sea-to-table spot Hartwood in Tulum, Mexico. “We had the most amazing spicy margarita there, and we were like, ‘We’re going to figure out how to make this,’” he says. “I love smoky. I love spicy. I love mezcal. I’ve tried to make up drinks before and it’s
really hard, but this one just kind of fell together.” 

For her part, Campbell was exposed to a wide range of cuisines in her parents’ Annandale, Virginia, kitchen. “My dad was all about the pantry raid,” she explains, “so I learned to work with what’s on hand. My mom made a lot of Korean food and always had a rice cooker going. She’d be cutting squid in the sink, which made me not afraid of touching food.”

And that includes these recipes for salad and roasted chicken. “The salad is pretty free-form,” says Campbell, “but I combine handfuls of chopped, mixed greens.” 

The chicken, adapted from Gwyneth Paltrow’s It’s All Good cookbook, has more of a science to it. “I found a recipe that demystified and simplified the dish,” says Campbell. “The key is high heat and triple basting. Some people find cooking a whole bird intimidating. This chicken takes like an hour-and-a-half to cook, and it’s perfect every single time.” 

At-Home Recipes

Entertaining at home is a favorite pastime for Jamie Campbell and Drury Bynum. “This is a great last-minute meal you can throw together if company is coming over,” says Campbell. Get the party started with the recipes below.

Super Crispy Roasted Chicken

Ingredients

• 1 4-pound chicken, 
• washed and driedcoarse sea saltfreshly ground 
• black pepper2 tablespoons 
• extra-virgin olive oil½ small yellow 
• onion, peeled½ lemonpaprika (optional)

Directions

Preheat oven to 425º F.
Sprinkle a generous amount of salt and pepper inside the cavity then rub entire bird with olive oil. Sprinkle salt and pepper on the underside of the chicken and place, breast-side up, in a roasting dish.
 Stuff cavity with onion and lemon and sprinkle top with salt, pepper, and paprika. Roast for 1½ hours, basting every half hour with juices that accumulate in the pan. (Do not baste prior to taking out of oven—you want skin to stay crispy.) The chicken thigh should register 165 Fahrenheit on a digital thermometer, at the very least.  Let chicken rest for at least 10 minutes before carving. 

Mixed Greens
with Anchovy-Dijon Vinaigrette

Ingredients (Greens)

• chopped mixed greens
• chopped radicchio
  or red cabbage
• watermelon radish
• microgreens

Ingredients
(Vinaigrette)

• 8 anchovies,
  roughly chopped
• juice of one lemon
• 1 garlic bulb, minced
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1 tablespoon white
  wine vinegar
• ¾ cup olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste 

Directions

Combine all ingredients except olive oil and salt and pepper in a blender or food processor. Blend until smooth.
 Slowly drizzle olive oil while still blending to emulsify. Once combined, add salt and pepper to taste.
  Store vinaigrette in refrigerator for up to five days. Toss with mixed greens, grated Parmesan, sea salt, and roasted pepitas. 

Winter in
Tulum Cocktail

Ingredients

• 2 ounces Espolon
  Reposado tequila
• ¼ mezcal
• ¾ ounce campari
• ¾ ounce sweet
  vermouth
• ½ ounce Shrub & Co. Grapefruit Shrub
• 2 dashes Bittermens Hellfire Habañero Shrub
• 1 dash Bittermens Hopped Grapefruit Bitters

Directions

Stir with ice. Strain and serve over ice with orange peel garnish. 

Though she hails from Wilton, Connecticut, and has only lived in Charm City since 2012, Sue-Jean Chun, who cofounded the local small-batch food fest, The Emporiyum, is one of Baltimore’s biggest boosters. 

“People in Baltimore have this crazy Baltimore pride,” she says. “I love how Baltimore feels like a small town with a real sense of community. This city is amazing, and I love the crabs.”  

As the child of hard-working immigrant parents who ran a family dry-cleaning business, Chun and her siblings were schooled early in Korean-kitchen basics. “I watched my mom cook, and I can remember helping her out in middle school,” says Chun, “but when my older sister started driving, we were in charge of everything, from grocery shopping to cooking.” 

That was no easy feat for such a complicated cuisine. “Korean food is all based on side dishes,” says Chun. “My mom would carve out several days a week to make several side dishes. Every night, there’s a main entree like a roasted fish or Korean barbecue and beef—usually a sliced short rib you’d marinate and eat it as a lettuce wrap with lettuce and rice and sauces. But on top of those dishes you’d always have the kimchee—one or two kimchees such as steamed sautéed garlic spinach and bean sprouts. There were always a lot of dishes.” 

Chun learned to cook beyond kimchee while attending Middlebury College, where she worked as the co-head chef at the school’s student-run restaurant. “There was no budget,” she recalls. “We could order whatever we wanted, and since I’d never had the ingredients to cook solid American and French dishes, for me, it was a total blast.”  

In those college years, Chun—who now, along with overseeing The Emporiyum, does publicity for big-name restaurant groups (Foreman Wolf) and mid-Atlantic chefs (Erik Bruner-Yang)—took quite seriously the task of feeding some 88 starving students every Friday night. 

“My goal is to encourage Josephine to be an adventurous, studied eater,” says Chun.

“The menus could range between shrimp and grits on some nights to a three- to five-course night with duck breast and glazed cherries,” says Chun, who also has enjoyed stints as a publicist for Kwiat Diamonds and L’Oreal Paris.  “We even did a lobster night. Working there was my first real food job.”

And though she enjoyed branching out, the married mother of 19-month-old Josephine likes keeping the Korean kitchen of her childhood alive. “I crave Korean food every day,” she says. “We eat it three or four times a week. My go-to’s right now are vegetable fried rice, whether with chicken or shrimp or some sort of protein. Whatever I cook, I embrace each season and try to keep the food wholesome and clean.”

Another staple is Chun’s recipe for spicy sweet-potato soup. “This is a soup I make for the whole family,” she says. Chun’s version is a little East-meets-West. “This is a riff on a dish Koreans love to do using kobucha squash,” she says. “My mom uses acorn squash or butternut squash. They make something called hobakjuk, which translates to ‘squash porridge.’ I grew up eating this. I add sweet-rice powder at the end, and it gets really thick—almost porridge-y oatmeal. This is a more Americanized version with sweet potatoes.” 

Feeding Josephine, says Chun, has helped her and her husband, Paul, become more conscious about what they eat. “We eat healthier because of her,” she says. 

While Chun says that seeing her daughter eat the soup that she ate with her own mom is a point of pride, her ultimate goal is for Josephine to have an eclectic palate. Says Chun, “My goal is to encourage Josephine to be an adventurous, studied eater who can appreciate all types of food.”

Spicy Sweet-Potato Soup

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 large onion, diced
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/4 teaspoon gochugaru (may substitute with crushed red pepper if need be)
• Coarse sea salt
• Ground black pepper
• 2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and diced
• 1 large apple, peeled and diced
• 6 cups vegetable stock

Optional toppings: shrimp, chicken, granola, cooked vegetables, freshly grated cheese

Directions 

Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat.
  Sweat the onions, garlic, gochugaru, a heavy pinch of salt and a turn of freshly ground black pepper. Cook and stir frequently until softened, about 6 minutes. 
 Add the sweet potatoes and apples. Stir to combine. Add the stock to the pot and turn up heat to high. Get soup to a boil and then lower the heat and simmer until potatoes are tender, about
30 minutes. 

Turn off heat and
let cool.  Carefully purée the soup in a powerful blender or use a hand blender. If you want that restaurant-quality, smooth texture, pass the soup through a fine sieve or mesh strainer. 
 Optional: Top with shrimp, chicken, granola, cooked vegetables, or freshly grated cheese. 

Juliet Ames has mastered turning lemons into lemonade—or, in this case, broken dishes into art. The 37-year-old Baltimore artist is the owner of The Broken Plate Pendant Co., a business in which she re-purposes dishware into jewelry and other one-of-a-kind pieces.

“When I break a plate, I don’t get upset, because at least I can make money from it,” cracks Ames, while sitting on the sofa of her 1926 bungalow with her 9-year-old son, Nolan. Ames, who graduated in 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary craft from Towson University, learned to turn trash into treasure while making a mosaic mailbox for her Govans home. “The shards were all so pretty that I couldn’t bear to throw them away,” she recalls, “so I made a necklace from them. At the time, I was working for the Howard County Arts Council and when I wore my necklace to work, everyone asked me if they could buy one.”

In the summer of 2006, Ames left her job to start The Broken Plate. She sells her wares in stores across the country, as well as locally, including Trohv in Hampden and JoRetro in Havre de Grace. Much of her business comes from custom work. (She also has famous fans, including Martha Stewart and Mario Batali.)

Recycling heirlooms has also helped Ames realize the power of the plates. “When you think about holidays and family celebrations, they are often over conversations you had while eating on those plates,” she says. “People get really attached to their plates and they take on a special meaning.”

For many, in fact, Ames’ art offers a piece of the past. “One of my customer’s moms had died in California and she had all her china shipped to Maryland,” she says. “When it got here, the entire box was completely smashed.” The woman searched the internet for information on how to fix a broken plate. Instead, she found Ames. “I made 20 pieces for the entire family, including a set of cuff links,” she says. “It made them feel so much better to give these pieces another life.”

Ames hasn’t always gone for broke, however. In the cobalt blue kitchen of her home, she has stacks of mix-and-match china on which she serves homemade sushi, roast chicken, and other dishes to Nolan and her partner, Jason Morrison. “I’ve always cooked, but after I had my son, I was stuck to the couch breast-feeding,” says Ames. “I got totally obsessed with The Food Network and cookbooks and food magazines. I couldn’t break plates with a new child, so this was a new outlet. Cooking was creative and allowed me to feed my family.”

Much like her artwork, Ames takes a mix-and-match approach in the kitchen. “I scroll through Pinterest all day long,” she explains, “and then mash all those things together. This recipe started as enchiladas, but then made it into shells because it was more fun.”

Clearly, her efforts are appreciated. Nolan, who reviews restaurants on YouTube (his moniker is “food dude”), is a big fan. “Her cooking is amazing,” says the pint-size critic. “The thing that makes her food so yummy is how well everything goes together. If the kitchen walls could talk, they would say, ‘Oh my God. It smells so delicious here.’”

Roasted Butternut Squash and Chorizo Stuffed Shells

Ingredients

1 butternut squash, cubed (about 5 cups)

1 pint crimini mushrooms, chopped

1 small onion, chopped

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 teaspoon cumin

Salt and pepper to taste

1 pound ground chorizo (omit for vegetarian recipe)

1 15-ounce can beans, drained

½ cup sour cream, plus a few teaspoons for garnish

1 15-ounce can enchilada sauce

1 pound box jumbo shells

½ cup cheddar

Optional: jalapeño and cilantro for garnish

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place squash, mushrooms, and onion on a baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with cumin, salt and pepper, and roast for about 30 minutes. Let cool. Boil water, cook shells just shy of al dente, run under cold water, and set aside. Brown the chorizo in a skillet. In a bowl, combine roasted vegetables, cooked chorizo, black beans, and sour cream. Coat bottom of pan with cooking spray and ½ can of enchilada sauce. Stuff shells with veggie and chorizo mixture and place in pan. Drizzle top of shells with remaining sauce. Top with cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes or until brown and bubbly. Top with a dollop of sour cream, jalapeño, and cilantro.

Before becoming one of the top sake sommeliers in the United States, Tiffany Dawn Soto was not exactly a fan of the fermented, Japanese rice wine. “I didn’t think much of sake,” she says, while standing in the kitchen of her Ellicott City home. “I had the same associations everyone else did—hot battery acid, bad sushi at 3 in the morning, sake bombs—all those horrible terms that I now loathe and spend my life trying to undo.”

It was while studying advertising and philosophy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2005 that Soto first discovered real sake. “I signed up for a wine class, so I could drink before my sorority meetings,” she cracks. “And there were a lot of Japanese students in the class, who were always asking about sake.” Her interest was piqued when she discovered that there were few resources for those seeking to learn more about the beverage that’s beloved in the Land of the Rising Sun. “There were all these Italian specialists and all these German specialists, so many French and Champagne specialists,” says Soto, 34, “but when I went into it, no one was specializing in sake.”

So she learned all she could about the fermented wine, eventually landing consulting gigs at Pabu and Azumi in the Four Seasons Hotel Baltimore and developing sake training programs at hot spots such as Umi in Atlanta and Tao in New York City. On average, she racks up close to $1 million in sake sales annually in the United States.

“I had the same associations everyone did with sake. Hot battery acid, bad sushi, sake bombs.”

Soto not only enjoys drinking sake, but cooking with it, as well. “You can marinate anything in it,” she says, “and make it taste good.” This recipe for sake shrimp was inspired, in part, by Martha Stewart. “In 2007, right when I was coming up in the field, she had this recipe for sake butter to dip lobster into, and I use that in my recipe to make a drizzle over the veggies, shrimp, and rice,” she says.

Growing up with dozens of foster children in her home, Soto learned to cook for the crew at an early age. “My mom can cook in the most we-ate-like-the-Duggars-way,” she says. “But we also lived with my grandmother, and she was an amazing cook.” When her grandmother was hospitalized after a heart attack, Soto recalls, “My grandfather said to me, ‘If anything ever happens to your grandmother, no one is going to take care of the family—as the oldest, you’re going to learn how to cook.’”

Clearly, she has. As she whirls around her kitchen, chopping vegetables and sautéing shrimp, Soto triples the portion, so that when she’s on the road for work, her attorney husband Ryan Cianci and two daughters will still be well-fed. “It’s ridiculous how much Tupperware I have,” she says. “At any given moment, there are probably 20 meals in my kitchen freezer and 40 in the basement freezers right now. I make a lot of pasta, rice dishes, and curries. It helps me be okay with not being here all the time. Basically, I’m still cooking like the Duggars.”

Recipe: Sake-Steamed Shrimp

Ingredients

• 1 ½ cups good-quality sake
• 1 pound jumbo shrimp
• 4 cups fresh vegetables (haricots verts, julienned carrots, snap peas, broccoli)
• Kosher salt
• Coarse black pepper
• 2 tablespoons canola oil
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 cups Nishiki brand
• rice, cooked
• Sesame seeds

For Martha Stewart’s Sake Butter:

• 9 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled and cut into large pieces
• 2 tablespoons peeled julienned ginger
• 1 tablespoon minced shallots
• ½ cup plus 1 teaspoon good-quality sake
• 1 tablespoon heavy cream
• ½ teaspoon fresh lime juice
• Coarse salt

Directions:
Pour 1 cup of sake over the shrimp in a medium bowl. Refrigerate. Allow to absorb for 1 hour. Add vegetables to a wok over medium-high heat. Pour in ½ cup of sake and ½ cup of water. Cover. Steam until vegetables are tender. Drain. Set aside.While vegetables are steaming, drain shrimp and pat dry. Season with salt and pepper. Once vegetables have been set aside, increase heat of wok to high, and add canola oil. Add shrimp and garlic and cook until cooked through, about 4 minutes. Remove from heat. Place rice on plate. Top with vegetables and shrimp. Drizzle with sake butter. Sprinkle with sesame seeds. Serves 4.

For Martha Stewart’s Sake Butter:
Heat 1 tablespoon butter in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Add ginger and shallots. Stir 2 minutes. Add ½ cup sake and bring to a boil; cook until reduced by ⅔, about 3 minutes. Add heavy cream, bring to a boil; cook until reduced by half, about 2 minutes. Add remaining butter in batches, whisking constantly. Once mixture is thick, remove from heat. Whisk in remaining teaspoon of sake and lime juice; season with salt.

Sean Flanigan first started baking pies back in 2002 while styling hair on the set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “I would bake pies and bring them to the hair and makeup trailer,” says Flanigan. “Then it became a Sunday hobby. I got sick of baking cakes, so I turned to pies. I became known as ‘The Pie Guy.’”

These days, The Pie Guy and House of Cards hair department head (who won an Emmy for his top-notch tress work on Mad Men) dazzles the cast and crew with his creations. “They all love my pies,” says Flanigan. “I post photos on Instagram of the pies I’ve made on Sunday, and they’re like, ‘Can’t wait to have a slice tomorrow.’”

Flanigan says that the key is the crust. “It’s a science,” he says. “I’ve tried so many different ones, but I always go back to my grandmother’s recipe that uses butter and good leaf lard [the highest grade of lard], which I buy at Parts & Labor.” For the fillings, however, Flanigan enjoys experimentation. “I love going to the JFX farmers’ market and using what’s in season. I’ve even made a concord grape pie.”

Growing up in Los Angeles, Flanigan learned to bake as a boy. “I grew up in the kitchen with my grandmothers and family cooking all around me,” he says. “On Sundays, we always had the big family meal. My great-grandmother was the baker, and I grew up peeling apples and making butter tarts. I’m a natural caretaker, and part of the caretaking for me is enjoying the food and the company.”

“I got sick of baking cakes. I turned to pies and became known as ‘The Pie Guy.’”

On House of Cards, Flanigan oversees the hair department, but mostly cares for the hair of lead actors Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright. “Robin is notorious for cutting her hair,” he says. “We keep the scissors hidden away from her. Sometimes she’ll come back with her hair too short after the end of a season, and I’ll have to lay in all the fake hair to match the storyline.”

While the L.A. native travels frequently for work (including grooming Spacey for the upcoming film Elvis & Nixon), he now considers Baltimore his home. Four years ago, after living in a rental property in Harbor East, he decided to invest in a Hampden rowhome with a generous yard. “I fell in love with the seasons,” says Flanigan. “I love the quirkiness of the city and the fact that when I travel, my neighbors watch my house. Wherever my work takes me, I’ll always have this place.”

Around the House of Cards set, Flanigan also has become known for his house parties. Several years back, he and then-co-worker Sakina Jaffrey (who played the White House chief of staff), the youngest daughter of renowned cookbook author Madhur Jaffrey, threw an Indian food feast at Flanigan’s home. “Sakina came here with all the spices, and we cooked a full Indian meal over two days,” he says. “Kevin and Michael Kelly and the hair and makeup and costume departments were here, too. I’m creating memories here—that’s what having a home is all about.”

Recipe: Bourbon Ginger Pie

Crust

• ½ cup whole milk
• 1 tablespoon apple-cider vinegar
• 3 cups flour
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1½ teaspoons salt
• 1½ sticks cold butter
• ¼ cup cold leaf lard

In a small bowl, mix milk and vinegar and refrigerate. In another bowl, add flour, cornstarch, sugar, and salt, and quickly cut fats into mixture using a pastry cutter.
Once mixed, work in half of milk mixture. Mix. Add remainder of milk mixture. Blind-bake crust (a crust that has been prebaked and weighted with rice or uncooked beans) at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Yields: dough for one 9-inch pie crust.

Filling

• 1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
• ½ cup real maple syrup (grade B, if possible)
• 3 large eggs, slightly beaten, plus egg mixed with water
  for wash
• 2-3 tablespoons high-quality bourbon
• 2 teaspoons fresh grated ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1½ cups pecan pieces
• ¼ cup finely chopped crystalized ginger

In a medium bowl, whisk together first seven ingredients. Brush edges of blind-baked crust with egg wash. Add pecans and crystallized ginger.Mix all ingredients and pour into cooked crust.bBake again for 30 to 40 minutes or until center is just set. Cool at least an hour before slicing.

*Adapted from Allison Kave’s First Prize Pies

While on an annual pilgrimage to India four-and-a-half years ago, Kim Manfredi, the owner of Charm City Yoga, received a cryptic call from her husband, Chris. “He said, ‘I have something to show you when you get back,’” she recalls. That something turned out to be a two-bedroom apartment at Silo Point with 360-degree views of the city. “When I walked into this unit, I was like, ‘I can do this,’” Manfredi says of the Locust Point digs. “From here, you can see almost the entire city. I can see the sunrise from the bedroom and the sunset from the dining room—living here is like being outside.”

And while Manfredi enjoys every aspect of the apartment, from the neutral tones to a collection of Buddhas acquired from her world travels, the state-of-the-art kitchen overlooking the Key Bridge and Under Armour campus is the biggest draw. “I’m Italian on both sides,” says Manfredi. “Cooking is part of who I am.”

With food and family at the fore, Manfredi, who lived in Homeland prior, says, “I never thought of not cooking. Even when there was nothing else, you could always make pasta with olive oil, garlic, Parmesan cheese, and parsley, and everything was sautéed in olive oil and garlic.” Though cooking has always come naturally, Manfredi changed her approach to nutrition after starting yoga. “Cooking is integral to my life,” she says. “But being a yogi has made me aware of eating as a conscious process.”

It was a catastrophic accident that led Manfredi to yoga. “On July 4, after my freshman year at University of Maryland, I fell out of a third-story window,” she recalls. “I had broken my back and, when I hit the ground, I was aware that I had the choice to live or to die. I spent 30 days at Shock Trauma.” In a hospital bed with four broken vertebrae and a total of seven fused together along two titanium rods, Manfredi wasn’t sure she would ever walk again. To cope with her partial paralysis, she learned to meditate. “It was unbelievably healing,” she remembers. At the time of the accident, Manfredi was pursuing an engineering degree. After it, she dropped out of Maryland and pursued painting at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). “I had been trying to be my dad,” admits Manfredi. “I realized that I could be my own person. I call the accident ‘the portal to the rest of my life.’”

These days, free rein also rules in the yogi’s kitchen. Most nights, Manfredi, who follows a mostly vegetarian diet, concocts vegetable-centric meals. “I cook every kind of vegetable,” she says. “I sauté green beans or asparagus, depending on what’s in season. I love roasting big pans of sweet potatoes and squash if it’s winter. In summer, I make them into cold soups.”

This recipe for whole-wheat pasta is a favorite. “I use pasta like a condiment,” explains Manfredi. “Veggies are the focus. They are dense in nutrients and a low-calorie goodness—full of fiber, folate, vitamins A, C, E, and K. Basically, they are health in a bright green coat.”

Recipe: Whole-Wheat Pasta with Asparagus, Sun-Dried Tomatoes, and Lemon Zest

Ingredients

• Extra-virgin olive oil
• Crushed red hot pepper
• or Sriracha, to taste
• 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
• 4-ounce jar of sun-dried tomatoes packed in olive oil
• 1-2 bunches of asparagus, cut into 2-inch pieces
• 1½ cups of cooked
• whole-wheat pasta
• Sea salt to taste
• Zest of 1 lemon
• Optional: Parmigiano-Reggiano

Directions

In a hot pan, sauté the olive oil, hot pepper, and garlic to add flavor to oil. Be careful not to burn the garlic.

Add sun-dried tomatoes. Cook on high until they begin to caramelize a bit.

Add asparagus to pan and, depending on thickness, cook for 1 to 5 minutes, moving them in the pan with a wooden spoon. Cook quickly. To retain bright green color and crispness, do not cover.

When the asparagus is cooked, add cooked pasta to pan, mixing well for 1 minute. Top with zest of 1 lemon. Serves 2.

Tip: Make sure the pasta is a bit undercooked; the heat of the sauce will continue to cook the grain.

Virginia Byrnes is the first to admit that her diet has gone to the dogs. As the owner of Dogma—Life, With Your Pet, Brynes credits canines, as well as her rescue pups Oscar and Gladys, with inspiring her to eat healthfully.

“I feed my dogs the raw diet,” explains Byrnes. “It’s how they eat in nature—real meat, fruit, and vegetables. When I saw how beneficial it was for them to eat a biologically appropriate diet, I decided that maybe I should eat that way, too. Learning how to feed them has totally changed the way I eat.”

Two years ago, Byrnes started following a mostly Paleo-style diet. “I don’t eat any grains,” she says, “and I don’t eat processed foods or anything with more than two or three ingredients on the label. And when it comes to meat, I try to eat only grass-fed meat.” Her new way of eating, she says, has not only helped her shed a few unwanted pounds but it has also had a positive impact on her overall health. “I just feel better,” she says, “and I’m off all my arthritis medication.”

Canines were also a source of inspiration when the lifelong dog lover decided to start her own pet store business in 2006. While Byrnes has enjoyed myriad professional opportunities, including working in the film business (where she helped style the set of John Waters’s Cry-Baby) and even owning a mesquite grill restaurant, Dogma has (literally) been her pet project.

Byrnes’s new way of eating has had a positive impact on her overall health.

“When I was in set design, we would go location scouting and we’d always go to these great houses with all this really cool stuff,” recalls Byrnes. “The homes were beautiful, but when it came to the dogs, there would always be this bad-looking crate and an old towel for them. I was like, ‘Why can’t they have pretty things, too?’ And that’s how I got the idea for this venture.”

Byrnes is equally thoughtful as she reminisces about being raised as the youngest of six in Roland Park. “When I was growing up, we sat down to the dining-room table every night,” says Byrnes. “My mother always had a meat, a starch, and a vegetable on the plate. The meals were fairly simple, but she also made things like kidney stew and things that were adventurous at the time.” Early exposure helped Byrnes develop a palate. “One of my earliest memories is me sitting on top of the wooden raw bar at the North Avenue Market eating oysters with my dad at the age of probably five or six,” she says, smiling.

In addition to thinking about nutrition and taste, Byrnes carefully considers how food looks on a plate. “I love color,” she says. “This dish is easy on the eyes. It came from a friend of mine who got it from Alice Waters’s Chez Panisse Café Cookbook.” This prettily plated dish sums up her cooking philosophy. “I read somewhere that the first taste is with the eyes,” says Byrnes. “To me, those are words to live by.”

Confetti Tuna

• 2 pounds tuna steaks (1½ inch thick, center cut)
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons coriander seed
• 1 tablespoon fennel seed
• Kosher salt
• Freshly cracked pepper
• 1 fennel bulb, thinly sliced
• 8-10 radishes, thinly sliced
• Cilantro, coarsely chopped, for garnish

For vinaigrette:

• 3 shallots, finely diced
• Juice of one-half lemon
• Kosher salt
• 3 tablespoons Champagne vinegar
• ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil

Directions

Rub tuna with olive oil. In a mortar, crush the coriander and fennel seeds until their fragrance is released. Sprinkle over tuna with salt and pepper—pressing seasonings gently into the flesh. Chill for several hours.

Heat an iron skillet until very hot. Sear tuna for about a minute on each side. Set aside to cool to room temperature.

Slice tuna into even slices and arrange on plate. Add fennel and radishes.

In a small bowl, add shallots, lemon juice, a pinch of salt and Champagne vinegar. Let rest for 10 minutes. Slowly, whisk in olive oil. Drizzle vinaigrette over dish.

Scatter cilantro for a playful, confetti-like effect!

As an only child whose mother was allergic to seafood, WJZ-TV meteorologist and weekend morning anchor Tim Williams ate mostly meat. “My mom didn’t cook seafood very much, because she couldn’t eat it,” says Williams. “We were a meat-and-potatoes household—the one exception is that I had relatives who taught me how to eat crabs.” These days, the Owings Mills-based journalist has expanded his culinary horizons, though he tends to favor Southern cuisine. “I love jambalayas and gumbos and things like that,” he says. “I think it stems from being indecisive when I look at a menu. If I get jambalaya or paella that has shrimp and chicken and pork and beef, I don’t have to decide.”

Through the years, Williams has taken an equally eclectic approach to his professional life. Although he has worked at WJZ for 20 years now, he never set his sights on going into the broadcast business. Williams once considered a career in fashion (even getting accepted to New York’s venerable Fashion Institute of Technology), but instead graduated from Towson University with a degree in communications. “I worked as a telemarketer for MCI, because they were across the street from Towson and recruiting,” he says.

While Williams worked his way up the corporate ladder, the refrain from his customers was always the same. “Based on my voice, people would always ask, ‘Have you ever done radio or television?'” By 1991, Williams went back to school to pursue journalism at the Broadcasting Institute of Maryland (while supporting himself and his high-school-sweetheart wife, Sandra, selling cars). His first big break came as a nightside reporter for Hagerstown’s WHAG-TV. “At the time, they had hired this guy with Robert Redford good looks, and they put him on the air and took him off the air in the same week,” says Williams, laughing at the memory. “He couldn’t read a teleprompter, and he broke into a sweat on the air. He would be reading and, with a shaky hand, he’d stop for a drink of coffee. A week-and-a-half later, he was fired—and they made me the 11 o’clock anchor.”

“Here, you get hurricanes, but also tornadoes, and blizzards—it’s like boot camp for weather people.”

From Hagerstown, Williams made his way to Jacksonville, FL, (where he was nominated for a regional Emmy for his coverage of the hunt for a giant monitor lizard). Then, in 1995, he found his way back to Baltimore as a general-assignment nightside reporter, occasionally filling in for veteran weathermen Bob Turk and Marty Bass. “I was one of the first black weathermen in Baltimore,” says Williams proudly. “And when I got my meteorology degree in 2006, I was one of the first black meteorologists in the city.”

As a native Marylander, Williams points out that forecasting in the Old Line State is not for novices. “If you’re in the South, it’s always hot,” he says. “If you’re in the northern part of the U.S., it’s always cold; if you’re in the west, it never changes, but in Maryland, you have mountains, and it can be 70 degrees here, but 40 degrees on the other side—and the ocean and bay complicate everything. Here, you get tropical storms, but also hurricanes, and tornadoes, and blizzards, and every doggone thing—it’s like a boot camp for weather people!”

While Williams weathers the storms at work, at home with his wife, Sandra, and son, T.J., one of his favorite pasttimes is settling down to a hot, stick-to-the-ribs meal. “My favorite meal of the year is Thanksgiving,” he says. “I can eat stuffing, turkey, gravy, and, yes, butternut squash soup, year-round.”

Butternut Squash Soup with Granny Smith Apples

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 medium yellow onion, chopped
• 1 carrot, chopped
• 1 butternut squash; peeled, seeded, and chopped
• 1 Granny Smith apple; peeled, cored, and chopped
• 3 cups chicken broth
• 1 cup water
• ½ teaspoon cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon maple syrup
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Fresh parsley, chopped, for garnish

Directions

In a large pot, melt butter on medium heat. Add onions and carrot and sauté for five minutes. Add the squash, apple, broth, and water to pot. Bring to a boil.

Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes, until squash and carrots have softened. Using a blender, purée the soup, in batches. Add cinnamon, syrup, and salt and pepper. Garnish with parsley. Makes 4 to 6 servings.

When Roswell Encina turned the Big 4-0, he decided to celebrate by writing a bucket list. “I didn’t want to be one of those people who writes one at 70,” says Encina, Encoh Pratt Free Library’s director of communications. “I wanted to be able to do the things that were on it. So I wrote one while I was still relatively young.” Two items he’s already crossed off the list: meet a president (he’s visited 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue twice); and learn to ski. (His first attempt led to a sprained ankle on the bunny slopes at Liberty Mountain Resort.) And one still to go: work as a balloon handler at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. (“I need to befriend someone at Macy’s sometime soon,” he cracks. “That’s the only way to do it. You have to have a connection.”)

Given his sense of joie de vivre and past record of accomplishment (graduation from high school at 16 and college at 19), the young-at-heart Encina can certainly say—bucket list or not—he’s packed a lot into his 44 years. “My life has been a good ride,” he says, “but I’m far from done.”

As an only child born to a father who served in the U.S. Navy, Encina grew up in the Philippines, but dreamed of one day working as a broadcast journalist in the United States. “When I was younger, I’d watch Bryant Gumbel on Today,” he says, “and I’d say, ‘I want to do that.’”

After earning a degree in marketing management at De La Salle University in Manila in 1989, Encina moved to the Mid-Atlantic to be near a relative and to study journalism at Salisbury University. (Along the way, he also worked in the marketing department at Sam’s Club.) After completing his degree, the job offers rolled in. “I always said that the only state I wouldn’t go to was Alabama, and what came calling . . .” he says, laughing.

While in Huntsville, AL (where he became best friends with Adam May, now of Al Jazeera and Derek Valcourt, now of WJZ-TV), he quickly moved up the career ladder as a reporter, eventually decamping to Memphis, TN, where, in addition to covering politics as a general assignment reporter, he became a certifiedbarbecue judge. (“Most of it is about presentation and tang,” he explains.)

“It’s amazing how Filipino food has flown under the radar compared to other Asian foods.”

Following a lead from May and Valcourt, Encina moved to Baltimore in the hopes of freelancing at local news affiliates, but ultimately wound up working at the Pratt. Explains the well-read Encina, who counts Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay as his favorite book, “This, as Jane Pauley has said, is my second act. This is my life reinvented.”

These days, Encina lives in Fells Point in an adorable apartment he shares with his pound pup, Olivia, as well as occasional dinner guests for whom he’s fond of whipping up Filipino food, osso buco, and dishes from Ina Garten’s The Barefoot Contessa. “It’s amazing how Filipino food has flown under the radar compared to other Asian foods,” says Encina. “I’ve been reading Filipino cuisine may be the next big restaurant trend. Restaurants with acclaimed chefs are opening in New York City and in California. Plus, one of the previous Top Chef contestants specialized in it.”

Baking is another story, however. “I don’t like baking,” he says. “I’m impatient. I’m good at putting on some spices and herbs and shoving things in the oven.”

Encina’s chicken adobo—the unofficial national food of the Philippines—requires a stovetop only, but it’s a dish close to his heart. “My father died last November,” says Encina, “and when he died, something changed in me. We went back to the Philippines to bury his ashes, and I hadn’t been there in 19 years. I’m embracing my heritage more now. This recipe represents a symbolic turn in my life.”

Chicken Adobo 

Ingredients

• 4 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 head garlic, pounded
• 2 1⁄2 pounds chicken, cut into serving pieces
• 1⁄4 cup cooking oil
• 1 cup water
• 3 pieces of dried
• bay leaves
• 1⁄2 teaspoon whole
• peppercorns
• 2 tablespoons
• white vinegar
• 1⁄2 tablespoon of sugar
• Salt for seasoning
• 1⁄2 teaspoon fresh
• thyme, chopped

Directions

1. In a bowl, combine soy sauce, garlic, and chicken. Marinate for three hours.
2. Heat cooking oil in a large pan.
3. When oil is warm, add chicken and cook all sides for about five minutes.
4. Pour in remaining marinade and add water. Bring to a boil.
5. Add dried bay leaves and peppercorns. Simmer for 30 minutes or until chicken is tender.
6. Add vinegar. Stir and cook for additional 10 minutes.
7. Add sugar and salt. Stir and turn off heat.
8. Place chicken in serving dish and sprinkle with thyme. Serve with rice. 

Much like her meticulously researched historical novels, author Sujata Massey carefully curates the family meals and lists them on a small chalkboard hanging from a wall of her kitchen. “Usually, I try to plan my menus on Sunday,” says Massey, who lives in a late 19th-century Tuxedo Park home with her husband, Anthony, and children Pia, 16, and Neel, 13. “Tonight, they’re going to have coriander chicken. 

They’re going to have couscous. And they’re going to have ratatouille,” she says, pointing to the handwritten “specials” on the board. “The kids like it better when they’re not surprised. There’s usually one night when it’s blank, and then they can suggest something.”

Also appearing on the chalkboard: Moroccan meatloaf, pork tacos, and crab-cake mac and cheese. It seems there is not a pedestrian dish served in Massey’s charming, renovated kitchen, with cabinets, countertops, and a Kitchen Aid oven purchased from Second Chance. 

“Not that my kids would like everything I make,” she says with a gentle laugh, “but we wouldn’t have tuna casserole for dinner. It just wouldn’t fly.”

Foods from around the globe were an integral part of Massey’s upbringing. She was born in England to parents from India and Germany, but raised in the United States. (California, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota are all places she’s called home.) “My parents met in England in the late ’50s,” says Massey, a former reporter for The Evening Sun and a graduate of The Johns Hopkins University. “My father was not that thrilled with my mother’s German cuisine, except for the desserts. They did a lot of international cooking together, not just Indian food.” Cooking was a way of life for her family, she recalls. “I remember my parents making pita bread from scratch,” she says, “and they made fun things like empanadas. There was always a lot of cooking.”

Massey and her two sisters were schooled in the culinary arts as well. “By the age of 10, we were each responsible for one night a week of cooking,” she explains. “When I went to college, I went with Craig Claiborne’s The New York Times International Cook Book—that was our family’s bible, not the Joy of Cooking. I did a lot of his French and Greek dishes. I loved Indian food, but didn’t start cooking that until college.”

Today, the writer continues her family’s culinary traditions in her kitchen (her latest novel, The Sleeping Dictionary, even includes recipes for mustard shrimp and rice made with cardamom and cinnamon), devising dishes such as the one for cilantro chicken below. “It’s like a gateway dish of Indian cooking because you don’t need to purchase Indian spices for it,” says Massey. “You can get all the ingredients at the Waverly Farmers’ Market, and you can eat it with Mexican, Mediterranean, or Indian foods.”

Massey also finds cooking to be the perfect balance to a writer’s more sedentary life of laboring over a laptop. “It’s a really good physical release after sitting and writing for hours,” she says. “It’s a form of movement for me and intellectual freedom.” There is also a complementary relationship between what she whips up for her family and what she creates on the page. “I tie a lot of the things I make to what I’m thinking about and reading and doing,” she says. “Right now, I’m writing about South India, so I’ve gotten interested in cooking South Indian food. Last week, I made a soup called sambar—it’s easy, healthy, spicy, and low-calorie. Cooking unites me with what I’m writing.”

Cilantro Chicken Bake

Serves 6 to 8

Ingredients

• 1 (5-pound) chicken, cut into serving pieces with bone intact but skin removed

  For marinade:

• 2 cups plain Greek yogurt (low-fat or full-fat)
• 1 large bunch cilantro, washed well with leaves trimmed to make about 3 cups
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 small onion, coarsely chopped
• 1 tablespoon canola or vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 2 tablespoons
• Black pepper

Directions

1. Combine all marinade ingredients in food processor or blender to make a thick, pale-green purée.
2. In a separate dish, add chicken pieces to the marinade. Cover and refrigerate from three to 24 hours.
3. On cooking day, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line metal 9-inch-x-14-inch pan with foil.
4. Bake chicken covered for 30 minutes, and then broil the pieces five to seven minutes per side until chicken starts to slightly char.
5. Serve pieces on a platter surrounded by lemon wedges and garnished with fresh cilantro.

With leather bracelets from India adorning each ankle, Maria Broom
sits at her kitchen table as she talks about her 64 years of
gallivanting across the globe. “I’ve been to the continent of Africa at
least eight times,” says the Windsor Mill resident. “I’ve been to India
four times. I’ve been to Czechoslovakia and Poland four times, and I
spent a year in Germany, a year in Hawaii, a year in Tennessee, and a
year in L.A.” Her brief time as a flight attendant actually spurred her
interest in cooking. But all roads have returned her to Baltimore. “I
always come back here,” she says.

Broom’s peripatetic career path has had many incarnations—including roles on The Wire and Homicide: Life on the Street,
a four-year stint as a WJZ consumer reporter (working alongside an
ingénue named Oprah Winfrey), and as an accomplished storyteller who
performs locally. But her primary passion is dance, which she currently
teaches at the Baltimore School for the Arts.

A trip to see Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo at the Lyric at
age six gave her direction. “I remember thinking, ‘Those are my
people,’” she says. “‘That’s where I need to be.’”

Broom studied dance while at Morgan State University and won a
Fulbright scholarship to Germany in the early ’70s. When her studies
ended, she had a change of heart about dancing. World travel beckoned,
especially after she watched a flight attendant give instructions in
different languages while en route back home.

“I thought, ‘I can do that—I can do it in French, I can do it in
German, and if I hear it enough, I can do it in Spanish,’” she says.

When she got home, she headed to New York and interviewed with Pan
Am. They offered her a job based in Miami. But she got more than she
bargained for.

“In those days, there were real meals being served, and you had to
cook,” she says, laughing at the memory. “We actually had to preheat
these ovens and ask the people in first class, ‘How would you like your
steak? Rare or medium rare,’ and thenyou had to remember that the person
in 3F wanted it well-done. It was the perfect job for a year.”

These days, Broom is happy to be back on terra firma in her
own country kitchen, where she loves to put together a meal. “I am an
intuitive cook,” says Broom, who enjoys making stir-fry. “When I became a
vegetarian in 1976, so much of it was trial and error. I went through a
lot of tofu in those early years.”

While her life has led her in many directions, Broom finds it’s a
small world after all. “The older adults know me from my
consumer-reporter days, the middle-aged adults know me from teaching
their children, and now the younger adults know me as Miss Maria who
comes to their classroom and performs,” she says. “I feel like the
village’s favorite daughter!”

Miss Maria’s Veggie Stir-Fry

INGREDIENTS

• 2 tablespoons ghee (clarified butter)
• 1 medium organic sweet onion, diced
• 1 medium organic red pepper, seeded and sliced thinly
• 2 cups organic broccoli florets
• 1 cup organic portobella or shiitake mushrooms, cut into large dice
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 2 teaspoons curry
• 2 teaspoons maple syrup
• 3 cups organic brown basmati rice, cooked according to package directions

DIRECTIONS

• In a large skillet, add 1 tablespoon ghee, and melt on low-medium heat.
• Add onion, and sauté for 10 minutes or until translucent.
• Add peppers and broccoli florets, and sauté for two to three minutes.
• Add mushrooms and garlic and sauté with other vegetables for an additional two minutes.
• In a small saucepan, melt remaining tablespoon of ghee over low-medium heat.
• Add cumin, curry, and maple syrup, and stir until sauce forms a paste.
• Add paste to vegetables.
• Stir. Serve over rice. Serves 4.

Even in the calm and comfort of her own Pikesville kitchen, Diane
Macklin is in perpetual motion. She makes coffee with her new single-cup
Keurig brewer, throws open the doors of a cabinet to show off her
Indian spices, rifles through a recipe notebook to share her favorite
dishes, and quickly pulls items out of her refrigerator.

She has no qualms about showing off the homemade, basil-infused
vodka, which she proceeds to serve (at least on this weekday) well
before noon. “I’m on my fourth cup of coffee,” explains Macklin, more
commonly known as “Downtown Diane.” “That’s why I’m so revved up.”

But truth be told, the diminutive dynamo (“barely 5 feet,” she
giggles) is always on the go. She’s an entertainment, food, and travel
reporter, who dishes on hot happenings in and around Baltimore on her
website downtowndiane.net (she has more than 4,900 followers on Twitter)
and does a gig with 105.7 radio on the Norris & Davis Show.

When she isn’t out and about, though, she can most often be found in
her homey kitchen, whipping up cauliflower curry stew for her daughter,
Jessica, 20, and meatloaf for her husband, Larry, and son, Josh, 18.

Preparing family holiday favorites, such as apple kugel (see recipe),
is also part of her repertoire. “I found this recipe on a cooking
website a few years ago,” says Macklin. “I wanted something to add to
the Passover table that was a little bit sweet. Since you can’t eat
noodles on Passover, I decided to substitute farfel [broken pieces of
matzo] for noodles. It’s not your typical kugel, but my guests have
always loved it.”

Macklin’s sunlit kitchen—stocked with cookbooks (Roy Yamaguchi,
Rachael Ray, and Gertrude’s John Shields among them), a wine rack, and
ample seating for family and friends—is the hub and the heart of the
home. “I’ve thought about redoing this kitchen,” she says, “but I love
the light and the white, and I really use this kitchen. I have a friend
with a two-million-dollar house who doesn’t know how to turn on her
oven, and I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me?’”

The all-white kitchen is also a perfect backdrop for the colorful
Macklin who was named funniest girl at both Pikesville Middle and
Pikesville High schools. “I am the only girl in the family, and I have
two brothers,” says Macklin. “I was always around my brothers’ friends
and had to be outgoing.”

Radio personality Steve Rouse can attest to her persona. “Diane is a
cross between Joan Rivers and Mother Teresa,” says Rouse, who helped her
get started in radio. “Pretty crazy and very giving and caring, all at
the same time.”

Macklin has always been a foodie. “Ever since high school, I’ve
worked for almost every restaurant in Baltimore,” she says. “At various
times, I worked at Lee’s Ice Cream, Sizzler (“I quit after the first
night because they told me to clean the dining room,” she says,
laughing.), Miller’s Deli, and York Steak House. “My favorite was
Lee’s,” says Macklin. “I still make an amazing milkshake because of
working there.”

As a mass communications major at Towson University, Macklin interned
with radio and TV personality Eddie Applefeld, who was then marketing
director of Lexington Market. “I was in charge of leading the school
groups and teaching them about the different types of foods sold there,
including tripe and pig’s feet,” says Macklin, who went on to become a
marketing director for a Baltimore-area Domino’s Pizza franchise at age
23.

Although Macklin takes frequent cooking classes (at Roy’s and Chef’s
Expressions, for example), her own taste buds have been her greatest
guide.

“The secret to being a good cook,” says Macklin, “is putting your own
touch on a recipe. If something calls for a certain amount of an
ingredient, do it according to your own taste. That’s key. In the
kitchen, you have to be fearless.”

Passover Apple Kugel

INGREDIENTS

• 2 cups matzo farfel
• 4-6 apples (preferably Granny Smith), peeled and diced
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3 tablespoons margarine, melted
• Cinnamon

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Fill a medium-sized pot half full of
water and bring to boil. Add farfel and cover. After five minutes, when
farfel has softened, drain.

In a separate bowl, mix remaining ingredients, adding cinnamon to
taste. (She likes to add cinnamon to the mixture and then sprinkle more
on top before baking as well.)

Add the drained farfel to the mixture. Mix well and pour into a baking dish. Bake for one hour.

Serves 8 to 10.