Erica
by Diana Cercone
What if I told you I knew a way you could add hours to your life every week? Hours to call your very own. To do with whatever pleases you without the usual pressures or must-do’s. Oh, I’m not talking about getting you a genie in a bottle, although she might seem that way to you. Especially when you come home from a hectic day at the office and can’t face cooking or ordering another night of take-out. Or, maybe, you’re shuttling between picking up your kids from camp with little time to prepare dinner before it’s time for their softball game or swim meet.
So a genie in a bottle—especially one who is an accomplished chef is sounding pretty good right now, huh? O.K., I confess, she’s not really a genie. But when you come home and find Erica Zimmelman has prepared a delicious and nutritional dinner for you and your family you just might think so.
Erica is a personal chef, having started Taste, her personal chef service in Bucks County almost eight years ago. By her calculations, she can easily save you eight to 10 hours a week—if not more—with her service. This she tells me as we sit at one of the tables in the Corner Bakery Cafe in Newtown and chat over cups of freshly brewed coffee.
“My mom made everything from scratch,” she says. And from her earliest memories as a child, Erica says, she was always drawn to cooking, helping her mother and grandmothers in the kitchen. Especially making Christmas cookies. From her Austrian grandmother she learned to perfect 15 different ones, including spritzgebäck, a buttery shortbread cookie, also known as spritz cookies, and linzer kekse or linzer cookies, lovely, little jam-filled decorative butter cookies.
From her Italian grandmother, she says, she learned the art of making a good tomato sauce, including the recipe secrets Italian grandmothers are known to conveniently leave out. For example, Erica says, one of her grandmother’s secrets is to add a pinch of cinnamon to the sauce for lasagna. “But that’s just one of them,” she says with a sweet smile. “You’ll get no others from me.”
Drawing from her family recipes, plus those she had learned later in culinary classes, Erica developed a complete line of menu offerings for her clients. Though she has a repertoire of recipes, she says, each one can be modified and tweaked to suit each of her client’s taste and/or dietary needs.
For example, she has clients that are lactose intolerant but love cream soups. For them, Erica says, she substitutes potatoes, white beans or coconut milk to give the soups the creaminess her clients love without using real dairy cream. Another client requested gluten-free meals, including chicken tenders for her children. The chicken tenders were so delicious, Erica says, the parents loved them as much as the kids did that now the tenders are a staple on the family’s weekly menu. For a Weight Watchers® client, Erica prepares meals that meet the caloric and nutritional requirements on the program’s diet while satisfying her client’s love of food. Each meal is perfectly portioned out, she says. But, really, all the meals Erica prepares combine the right magical mix of calories, nutrition and flavor to produce an exceptionally satisfying and tasty meal.
“I have a good mix of ‘love to cook’ clients with those who if I don’t come, there’s nothing in their refrigerator or freezer,” she says. “And I love cooking for all of them.”
What Erica won’t do is make you junk or fast food, she says. “That’s something they can do on their own.” Not surprising, then, she says, that she mainly cooks for clients Mondays through Thursdays (unless for holidays or dinner parties). Laughing she says, “I think Fridays are national pizza nights. And, that’s O.K. Everyone needs to cheat a little.”
So, if she is so particular about the ingredients she uses, I ask, what products does she use? And, are any local?
Organic products are a given, she says, unless a client prefers not to use them. Even then, she steers away from any on the “Dirty Dozen” list. (These are fruits and vegetables that have the highest use of pesticides. The list includes: strawberries, apples, nectarines, peaches, celery, grapes, cherries, spinach, tomatoes, sweet bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, hot peppers and kale/collard greens.)
In addition, Erica only prepares meals for her clients with antibiotic and hormone-free chicken, grass-fed beef and wild-caught fish. For meats, she says, she turns to McCaffrey’s in Newtown. “The butchers there are great. They know me well and they take really good care of their clients.” And for seafood and fish she heads to Madara’s Seafood in the Newtown Farmers’ Market.
For more local products, Erica turns to Blooming Glen CSA, of which she is a member, and to the Wrightstown Farmer’s Market, Blue Moon Acres and Anchor Run Farm CSA, Tanner’s and the Tubby Olive. For fruits she goes no further than Bucks County’s award-winning Solebury Orchards and Manoff Market Gardens. Ice cream? It’s O-Wow-Cow for her eye-popping and palate-pleasing ice cream sandwiches—always a hit at her catered dinner parties as well as are the cheeses and charcuterie she serves from Ely Farm Products.
So, O.K., but what exactly is a personal chef? How expensive is having Erica prepare meals for you? And do you have to provide all the necessary cookware and utensils needed? Maybe more importantly, do you have to shop for the food and clean up?
By Erica’s definition, “a personal chef prepares meals for multiple clients at affordable prices which differs from a live-in chef, who works for only one family, often preparing all three meals a day.” And, yes, she shops for all the food necessary to prepare the meal or meals you have chosen. Plus, a personal chef works around your schedule. While you’re at work or at a convenient designated time, Erica is at work in your kitchen preparing a meal for you to enjoy that evening and/or a week’s worth of meals and storing them in your refrigerator or freezer.
Erica brings her own cooking equipment and food containers needed for your menu. Each container is labeled with reheating and serving instructions. The average time Erica is in your kitchen runs between three and five hours, depending on the menu or menus you have chosen.
But why your kitchen? Pennsylvania law requires personal chefs to use their client’s kitchen unless they have access to a commercially licensed kitchen. The only requirement Erica asks of you is that your kitchen be clean, including the sink, and that there is ample storage space in your refrigerator and/or freezer to accommodate the food she is preparing for you that day. And that can be for just that one evening’s meal or for the week.
“Clients love when I come,” Erica says, “not only because they love my food, but they always say I leave their kitchen cleaner than when they left it.”
Erica has a number of weekly clients that she prepares foods for. They range in household sizes from two (a single mom and her daughter) to a family of six (“with four very hungry youngsters”). Before determining if her services are right for you, she says, a “get acquainted and informative” meeting is arranged. It’s here, she says, that menus, including dietary concerns as well as financial costs, are discussed. Erica says she’s confident that she can work within anyone’s budget or accommodate their dietary needs.
Each client, she says, gets their own personally designed menus, customized to meet their needs and preferences. Erica especially focuses on any health concerns you may have or she can design a diet to improve your health.
Along with being a personal chef, Erica also caters dinner parties and teaches cooking classes. Katie Marchese, who with her husband lives in Doylestown, has been one of Erica’s dinner party clients since 2011, as well as one of her cooking class students. “Erica’s food is amazing—totally phenomenally delicious,” she says, “and I like to cook. But having her cater a dinner party frees me up to enjoy my guests.” And Erica is so easy to work with, she says. “Usually I let her choose the menu, but a few times we’ve requested a theme, like a Greek theme,” Katie says. Or one time for a client dinner party, one of her client’s was lactose-free, she says. “Erica handled it beautifully and all the food was great. Plus, she handles my kitchen better than I do.” Husband Phil adds, “Erica’s food is a five-star meal without a five-star price.”
When asked what her favorite thing was about Erica’s cooking classes, Katie didn’t hesitate. “Has to be that Erica doesn’t hold back. She tells you all the secrets and gives you all the tips for each recipe to make them authentic and delicious.” (Sorry, Nona!)
Now Erica was not always a personal chef. Before becoming one she was a successful pharmaceutical market researcher. It was a job she enjoyed but didn’t love. It wasn’t until the day her boss told her that he had hired a personal chef who had made a delicious dinner the previous evening that her eureka moment came. Why not become one? She loved cooking, and she had been taking culinary classes, and loved sharing her love of cooking with others.
On the day she gave notice to leave her job, she says, she already had her first client lined up. Wasn’t long before word spread. Although she does say that there was a start-up learning curve of seven to nine months, she attributes the local business community for helping her get started.
She also says she had the tremendous support and backing of her husband and family. Her business started growing and things were looking extremely up, especially with the birth of their daughter, Mira, now 5. But by the time Mira was 18 months, Erica says she no longer had the strength to carry her up the steps to her bedroom. Shortly after, Erica was diagnosed with lymphoma cancer.
“I met a new client with a bald head,” she says. “And she is still with me today.”
That was five years ago, she says. Today she is cancer-free. “I have an amazing doctor, an amazing husband, amazing family and clients.” All four kept her going, she says. Her clients kept her focused and gave her goals to meet even when she was undergoing chemo therapy. No one, she says, has better clients.
In a way, she says, her cancer has also helped her to be more in tune with clients who have medical issues. “I now understand,” she says. “And understand how important the food you eat is to your health. I’m not a nutritionist, but I do the research. I know what herbs and spices to include or exclude in your diet that are beneficial to you. I’ll work with you and for you.”
And sometimes, she says, when you are going through chemo or another stringent medical regime, you need to cheat a little. To have that “feel-good food”—a piece of chocolate cake, a piece of candy. It’s O.K. to go off one time, she says. “Sometimes you just need comfort.
“I’m really lucky doing what I know. I do what I love for people who love what I do,” she says. “I’m not changing the world, but I think I’m changing the lives of the families I serve. And, most importantly, I’m being a good example for my daughter.”
For more information about Erica and Taste, A Personal Chef Service or her catering and cooking classes, go to www.tastebuckscounty.com. For recipes, visit buckscountymag.com.
Diana Cercone is an area freelance writer who specializes in food, art and travel.
