Making book on dining out

Wednesday, January 11, 2006 By PAT CAHILL pcahill@repub.com

In 1994, Springfield native Carol Colitti Levine gave up her job as an international banker in San Francisco, said goodbye to her British nanny, and moved with her physician husband and young son back to Western Massachusetts.

Levine wanted her child to grow up near relatives. But the transition wasn't easy for her. After years of "making hundred-million-dollar deals," she had gone from having a chauffeur to being one.

She decided to write a book about food. Levine loved to eat, she loved to cook, and she was surprised to learn that Northampton, where she was living, had become a "dining mecca."

The result is "Table's Edge," a self-published book whose first half is about the founders and owners of Northampton's restaurants, and whose second half consists of 39 of their favorite recipes.

The book costs $25, with "20 to 25 percent" going to the Hatfield-based Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, where Levine is serving on the development committee.

"I've always been a restaurant-hopper," says Levine, who has dined at "the best restaurants in Boston, Chicago, New York, Washington and Amsterdam." She has even considered owning a restaurant herself.

She had never written a book before. She enlisted a life coach, an editor, a designer and a printer. And she got to work interviewing and writing about the people behind Northampton's restaurants.

They include Egil Braathen and Mansour Ghalibaf of Wiggins Tavern, Roger Kirwood, Jim Wolff and Fred Gohr of Fitzwilly's, Danny Constance of the former Beardsley's, Gail and Dan Yacuzzo of Eastside Grill, Linda Schwartz of the former Curtis & Schwartz, and Claudio Guerra of Spoleto, Pizzeria Paradiso, Del Raye Bar and Grill and Spoleto Express.

Also John Sielski of Green Street Café, Dane Boryto and Liz Ferro of Circa, Martin Carrera of La Veracruzana, Alka and Omi Kanoujia of India House, Clara Li and Ken Cheung of The Great Wall, and Tony Bishop of Mulino's, Brasserie 40A and Bishop's Lounge.

Levine is the granddaughter of Joseph Colitti, who founded Joseph's Clothiers in Springfield in 1918. She graduated from Minnechaug Regional High School in Wilbraham and in 1975 from Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, where she majored in Spanish.

She taught at Longmeadow High School before embarking on a multilingual career in finance in New York and later San Francisco.

Since moving to Northampton, Levine was lured back to the big leagues of international finance for four years, but retired in 1999. Like running a restaurant, she says, constant travel is less glamorous and more exhausting than it looks.

Here are two recipes from "Table's Edge." The first is from Brasserie:

Mango Ketchup

(Serves 6-8)

1 ounce fresh ginger, minced

2 cups fresh orange juice

1/2 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed

5/8 cup onion, diced

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice

2 fresh mangoes, skinned, seeded, diced

In a medium saucepan, over medium heat, combine the ginger, orange juice, and brown sugar. Add the onions and the lemon juice and stir in; continue heating until the liquid is reduced by half. Add the mangoes and bring to a boil. Sauce should be thick. Serve hot with crabcakes, chicken or fish.

The next recipe is from Wiggins Tavern:

Crab Cakes

(Makes 12)

1/4 pounds crab meat

1/4 yellow onion or 2 shallots, very finely diced

1/4 green bell pepper, finely diced

1/4 red bell pepper finely diced

1 tablespoon fresh dill weed, chopped

1-1/2 lemons, approximately 3/4 cup juice

2 teaspons paprika

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/2 cup horseradish

3 cups plain packaged breadcrumbs

Salt and black pepper to taste

1 cup mayonnaise

Vegetable oil

Butter or vegetable cooking spray

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. In a large mixing bowl combine crab meat, onions, red and green peppers, dill, lemon juice, paprika and cayenne pepper. Toss together with hands or fork until loosely combined.

Add horseradish, breadcrumbs, salt and pepper. Mix again, making sure every ingredient is equally distributed throughout.

Next, fold in the mayonnaise so that the mixture is moist enough to form round cakes that stay together well. Make 3-ounce-size cakes, pressing down in the middle, and pressing in at the sides, about 1/2- 3/4-inch thick. Make sure you have 12 crabcakes when you are done.

In a large skillet, brown the cakes in stages in vegetable oil on medium-high heat, so that they don't touch each other and are golden brown on both sides - about one minute per side. Set aside on paper towels as you continue the browning of all 12 cakes.

Place the 12 cakes evenly a greased 10- by 15-inch (or larger) baking sheet so that they are not touching. Bake at 400 degrees for 3 to 5 minutes, so that they are warmed through to the middle.

Serve immediately with any of your favorite sauces. (Mango Ketchup, for example.)

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