Editor’s note: “The Raging Skillet” has been canceled. Please see gotoetc.org for more.
Like Madonna, New York City-based Chef Rossi only goes by one name. In 2015, she published her memoir that shares the name of her catering company: “The Raging Skillet.” Since then, she says the “book has taken on a life of its own.” The story was brought to life for the stage in 2017. In partnership with the Emerson Theater Collaborative, the author and the play based on her life is coming to Sedona in May.
“On the outside, it’s a story of a girl who embraces punk rock and runs away from home and is shipped off to Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn who try to straighten her out. And escapes and somehow becomes New York’s most famous anti-chef. That’s enough of a story,” says Rossi. “In the inside, it’s really a story about a mother and a daughter. About them exploding as far away from each other as two people can and then coming back to love and embrace each other in this really profound way. I think everyone can relate to it. Maybe not everyone can relate to dyeing their hair pink and running away from home. But everyone can relate to the mother, daughter thing. And men can relate to it too. It’s a love story between a mother and a daughter, in the end.” Audience members also should anticipate a behind-the-scenes look at navigating the world of male-centric professional cooking. “Professional cooking in the 1980s for woman was just about the least friendly place a girl could be. I talk a lot about that in the book, and there’s a lot about it in a play. But you really had to have thick skin and work 10 times harder to hope to get half the money and endure all sorts of sexual abuse and aggravation. The play gives it enough comedy so it’s palatable,” she says.
Beyond her professional journey, there’s an emotional side to this story that Rossi feels is key. Like many, Rossi learned to cook at home. Growing up, her mother would make Hungarian food like goulash and chicken paprikash. But then the family got a microwave. And everything changed. The real cooking stopped. “It was the beginning of my understanding that food could have a soul. It could be three dimensional,” says Rossi. “We were only eating things that were, on the surface, one dimensional. No depth. No love. No nothing.” Until one day Rossi topped some Lender’s bagels with Ragu, cheese and three spices. She popped her creations in the oven, and her family quickly devoured and loved her pizza bagels. And that sparked her life-long love affair with cooking.
“If you give people something good to eat that you cooked, you get this kind of power and appreciation,” says Rossi. As a teenager, she would whip up hors d’oeuvres and snacks for her pals. One of her most popular creations then and now was a Rice Krispies-esque treat featuring melted Snickers bar, potato chips and marshmallows. This bestselling dish is now on her wedding menus. She calls it her Snickers and potato chip casserole. And that’s indicative of her overall philosophy when it comes to food: She likes to have fun. You’ll find childlike humor in her food. And like her culinary creations, her written word has resonated with so many. When asked why this is, she responded: “When in your life have you ever had an opportunity to see a play about a punk rock, Jewish lesbian chef who runs away from home as a teenager, gets sent to live with Hasidic Jews, becomes a bartender, and then ultimately climbs through the ladder of a male-dominated professional cooking world to become a famous anti-chef? All the while being terrorized by her Jewish, Yiddish mama from hell and comes to embrace and love her, even so? You’ve probably never seen anything like that, and you probably never will again.”
On May 5, Rossi will sign her book, “The Raging Skillet” at Decanter Wine Tasting Room in the Village of Oak Creek starting at 4:30 p.m. The play will show on May 7, 8 and 9. On May 10, Rossi and the play’s cast will host a Mother’s Day Special Brunch. Rossi has just finished up her second book “Queen of the Jews” and is working on a screenplay for film adaptation of “The Raging Skillet.” Visit gotoetc.org for more information.
