In 1998, a newspaper assignment brought my son and me to the French Culinary Institute in SoHo for lunch and a tour. I was bowled over by the scale of the kitchens—mixers so big they had to sit on the floor, and gleaming counters so long they could never possibly become crowded. And then there was the look on my son’s face—he was 14—when he was presented first with a perfect rare steak, innocent of sauce and heaped around with crisp frites, and then with a meringue swan.

I'd just spent two years on a book that tanked, and I was taking out my frustration by chopping tomatoes and rolling pie dough at 2 in the morning, so my family agreed it made sense for me to pursue cooking professionally. My then-husband underwrote the cost of the six-month course in classical French cuisine, the FCI’s boot camp, and I haven't stopped whisking since the day I earned my toque.

I’ve made desserts at the happening Chelsea restaurant Lot 61; scrubbed in as private chef for several families; developed and tested recipes; hosted lessons given by the cookbook author and teacher Anna Teresa Callen; and stirred up lobster chowder and berry cobblers for the happy few at the Eastern Frontier writers' and artists' residency on Norton Island, paradise on earth in Down East Maine.

With the help of the world's greatest floating crew--Serena Hui, Adam Gale, Sam Sherman, Vanessa Kinzer, Max Bosworth, Sherri Duprey, and Kent Mockler--I cater under the rubric Between Books She Cooks: cocktail parties, special-occasion dinners, gallery receptions, and other frolics. Although I like to think I honor my alma mater, I also cook as I did for my family over the decades, with the emphasis on local, fresh, organic, amusing food, aiming to conjure happiness. Some days that means an unapologetic use of butter and sugar; other days I throw myself into creating vegan brownies and gluten-free breads; low-salt and no-fat soups; and even Passover-style sandwich rolls, miraculously fluffy.

Between cooks, two of my current writing projects are all about food. A cookbook tentatively titled Two and a Half begins with the notion that all culinary measurements are best expressed as two of this and one-half of that. Party Math, subtitled “the how much and how many of entertaining,” counts everything from ice cubes for cocktail parties to pizza slices for teen slumber parties.