In the galley-style kitchen, Portobello mushrooms are lined up on cookie sheets next to slices of tomato, green pepper, cheese and ham. A young woman with a chef’s flair is at the stove stirring a white sauce. The table is set with pink place mats, and a chocolate-colored Labrador retriever is greeting every guest at the door.
It’s a rainy school night, and a meeting of Chefs at USF is about to begin.
Students enter the apartment where University of South Florida roommates Ashley Lackey and Ilda Gjonaj have everything in place for cooking a delicious meal. Lackey, the club’s president, and Gjonaj are working in tandem to host the meeting. Lackey asks everyone to put toppings of their choice on the large mushrooms that are about to go in the oven, and Gjonaj remains in charge of making pasta Alfredo.
“I’m looking forward to home-cooked food,” said Megan Lesh, “and getting away from the everyday routine of having most of my meals out.”
The club meets several times a year to prepare and share tasty cuisine or bake desserts and enjoy the friendship cooking brings.
Lindsay Impemba said she likes getting new recipes.
Jason Richardson said when he cooks he likes to “wing it” with whatever ingredients are available.
“I’m Italian, born and raised in Italy,” Gjonaj said. “In Italy, we love cooking.”
She said her grandmother began teaching her to cook when she was five years old.
Lackey said she started cooking in high school “and just loved it.”
Marissa Chaiser said that she joined the club “to eat.”
Gjonaj, Impemba and Lackey are vegetarians. Lackey said there are always choices for club members that do not eat meat. The evening’s meal was a good example: the pasta Alfredo was a vegetarian dish, and ham could easily be removed from the mushroom dish.
The club has been on a baking spree, making sugar cookies, chocolate cupcakes and crunchy granola bars at recent meetings. They baked red velvet and “lady bug” cookies on Valentine’s Day.
Lesh said last Halloween they made rice crispy treats, marshmallow men, and — her favorite that night — a bowl of punch with a “frozen hand” in it.
Lackey provides the ingredients for the recipes and has the meetings at her apartment to make it easy for the others. She lives close to the USF campus, where the Bull Runner, the university’s transit system, makes a stop. Lackey said up to about 15 members attend the meetings, and she is thinking about ways to include students from USF St. Petersburg, where her sister, Katie Lackey, is a junior majoring in business management.
“Some meetings could be near the St. Petersburg campus, or they might want to start their own club,” Lackey said. “And maybe the two clubs could occasionally meet together.”
The club has the beginnings of a “Chefs at USF Cookbook.” Lackey said she is figuring out the best way to publicize the club’s favorite recipes.
Someone helps herself to a second serving of pasta Alfredo. All but one of the baked Portobello mushrooms are gone. Bruce, the chocolate lab, is using his charm in an attempt to secure a table scrap, but gets nice pats on the head instead. The rain has stopped, and it’s time to get some homework done, make a late-night trip to the grocery store, or get some sleep. There is talk about the next get-together on the way out.
The age-old pleasures of cooking side-by-side, dining in with friends and trading recipes are not forgotten at USF.
Photos by Nancy McCann.
