Mine Don't Tast
Like That!
 Have you ever obtained a recipe, whether from a friend, a chef in your favorite
restaurant, or perhaps, even from this magazine, and after painstakingly following
the directions to the letter, been disappointed that it didn’t taste the
way you had thought it would? If so, take heart. Help is on the way.
Help, in this instance, is long-time Chesterfield resident Gale Barber. By the
end of the year, Barber hopes to have a cookbook on the market designed especially
for those who have faced the situation described above.
“I’m calling it, Mine Don’t Taste Like That,” Barber
says, explaining that, through the years, she has played the role of food detective
in order to discover the “secrets” to ensuring that each dish really
does taste the way you and your guests would like.
She says her husband helped her hone her culinary skills. “He would critique
each dish,” she says. “He told me he did it to make me a better cook.” Gale
Barber didn’t mind the critiquing. “After all, I was cooking to please
him.”
“Over the years,” she explains, “I’ve followed many recipes
that didn’t turn out as I had hoped. I experimented in an effort to discover
the secret to making them taste the way I wanted.” Besides persistence
in the kitchen, Barber says she also has a good memory of the tastes she has
enjoyed.
“Did you ever eat the rum cake at Nick’s House of Seafood?” she
asks, referring to a once very popular Yorktown restaurant. Barber says she kept
experimenting in order to get the taste just right. “I would ask questions
each time we went there,” she says, recalling that after learning the restaurant’s
recipe called for real rum, she almost blew the door off her oven. “I’d
never cooked with alcohol before,” she laughs.
Barber, who was born and raised in Pittsylvania County, near Danville, has over
forty-five years of experimenting in the kitchen for her husband as well as her
two (now grown) children. She says she wants to help others rediscover the lost
art of great cooking. “I love to cook,” she says. “It’s
a warm feeling.” She also loves the aromas of delicious foods. “I
always have something in the oven,” she says. |
