Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
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NORTHSHOREMAG.COM 128 DECEMBER 2019 Belmont-based Crystal King, author of the recently published novel The Chef's Secret, knows the North Shore well. "Many of my ancestors from England and Switzerland settled in Gloucester," says King, who noted that two of them came over on the Mayflower. "My grandmother was born in Gloucester, and I worked in Salem for many years for a software company." A work of historical fiction, The Chef's Secret tells the imagined tale of the real-life Italian Renaissance chef Bartolomeo Scappi, who cooked for several cardinals and popes and in 1570 published an expansive Renaissance Italian cookbook, L'Opera di Bartolomeo Scappi. WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO WRITE THE CHEF'S SECRET? After spending the better part of four to five years writing my first book Feast of Sorrow [a novel based on the real life of the ancient Roman gourmand Apicius], I then spent about three years looking for an agent, and during that time, I was like, "I've got to write something else." While I'd been researching Apicius, I kept running across Scappi and his cookbook, and I kept saying, "I've got to get this book." WHAT SORT OF RESEARCH DID YOU DO? I read lots of source materials. I tried to read books that were set in that time period and lots of court documentation, which told about the lives of the common people and how they might have lived. I've been to Italy every year for the last decade at least once, if not twice. In Rome, I spoke to [tour] guides, art historians, and visited different palazzos, and the Vatican [City]. I also talked with a lot of food historians. WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE MEALS TO COOK? I'm a baker. I don't bake very often, but at Christmas I go nuts. Joe [my husband] does most of the cooking—he's really good at just whipping things up. When I was growing up, we never ate at the table, except at Christmas and Easter. My father was away, my Mom had three young kids, and she gave us mac 'n' cheese and Trix [cereal]. So when I met Joe, he said, "We're going to sit at the table and have a dinner like human beings." I was like, "Really? We're not going to eat in front of the TV or stand up and eat really quickly in the kitchen?" And he said, "No, you're going to sit at the table," and that was a huge shift for me and was the best thing ever. WHAT ARE SOME FAVORITE COOKBOOKS? My favorite one right now is Osteria—1,000 Generous and Simple Recipes from Italy's Best Local Restaurants. Everything we've made out of it has been amazing. Francine Sagan has a cookbook called The Philosopher's Kitchen and one called Shakespeare's Kitchen, so she speaks about two different timeframes that are really important to me. She re-creates dishes from ancient Rome and Greece in the Philosopher's Kitchen and the Renaissance in Shakespeare's Kitchen. PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUG LEVY DEC 2019 C O M M U N I T Y Q & A GETTING TO KNOW THE NORTH SHORE CRYSTAL KING Author INTERVIEW BY VICTORIA ABBOTT RICCARDI FOR FULL INTERVIEW AND RECIPES, VISIT northshoremag.com