On a recent day she prepared a meal of her staple mix of zucchini, tomatoes and other vegetables, and tossed it all in homemade olive oil.
Priscilla, who is the circus dance captain, prepared a meal of her native Brazilian specialties, including battered chicken breasts, cauliflower au gratin, fried yucca cake and, of course, rice and black beans.
For us, he prepared a meal of refined intensity: multicolored heirloom tomato salad with tomato sorbet, tartares of three fish, day-boat scallops with jus de veau and immaculate lamb tenderloin.
In the cramped Montusov manse -- a table, several chairs, a day bed, a chest of drawers, a small television set, and nothing more -- relatives have prepared a meal of hard-boiled eggs, homemade cheese, mashed potatoes, cubes of pig fat and curds.
On this particular evening, Julie Hussey, 34, who left her management consulting job in Hong Kong in 2001, had prepared a meal of appetizers: pâté, cheese, bite-size slices of frittatas with spinach, ricotta and Camembert, and large prunes stuffed with walnuts, Gorgonzola or Camembert all wrapped in Spanish ham.
There was Henri who prepared a meal of aligot, a mixture of cheese, potatoes and heavily seasoned with garlic served with homemade sausage, whose artistry of preparation embellished our already ravenous appetite.
"We're going to kill him," Batali said to me with maniacal glee as he prepared a meal for Wylie Dufresne, the former chef of 71 Clinton, who had ordered a seven-course tasting menu, to which Batali then added a lethal-seeming number of impossible-to-resist extra courses.
Making Indian food isn't my strong suit so I'm having a Punjabi cook from Queens prepare a meal of sarso ka saag (mustard greens), daal (lentils), paneer stir-fry, mixed vegetable curry and raita (yogurt).
The aim is to prepare a meal of up to five courses that diners will "love, hate, scrutinise – and everything else in between", said Kilo's 32-year-old co-founder, Sharon Lee.
Danto gives a grand description of Tiepolo's "delicious drawing at the Morgan of a group of 17 (by my count) Punchinellos preparing a meal of gnocchi and parmesan cheese for a hungry Punchinello sitting disconsolately on his hat, looking as if dinner will never come".
Most fledgling cooks would be cowed by the idea of preparing a meal for Boulud.
