__gilda Lester Recipes

Steps:

• Bring a medium saucepan of salted water to a boil over medium-high heat. Add the lobster tails and boil for 8 to 10 minutes until the shells curl and the lobster meat turns white. Drain, transfer to a cutting board, and cool for 15 minutes. Using kitchen shears or a sharp knife, cut through the top shell lengthwise. Remove the meat and cut into 1/2-inch pieces. Set aside.
• In a medium saucepan, bring the chicken stock to a boil. Keep hot over low heat.
• In a large saucepan, melt 3 tablespoons of butter over medium heat. Cook until the butter begins to foam and then turns brown, about 1 to 1 1/2 minutes. Add the onion and cook, about 3 minutes. Add the rice and stir to coat with the butter. Add the brandy and simmer until the liquid has almost evaporated, about 3 minutes. Add 1/2 cup of stock and stir until almost completely absorbed, about 2 minutes. Continue adding the stock, 1/2 cup at a time, stirring constantly and allowing each addition of stock to absorb before adding the next. Cook until the rice is tender but still firm to the bite, about 20 minutes. Remove from the heat. Stir in the Parmesan cheese, the remaining butter and 2 tablespoons chives. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.
• Transfer the risotto to a large serving bowl. Arrange the lobster meat on top of the risotto and garnish with the remaining chives.

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• Most people hear about Roberta (Bobbie) Sonefeld's Bake-Off® 2000 Contest win and immediately zero in on the $1 million Grand Prize she was awarded for her decadently rich Cream Cheese Brownie Pie. But Bobbie says the richest part of the experience was the Bake-Off® weekend itself, a dazzling trip she and her husband, Steve, have christened their "second honeymoon."The 2000 Bake-Off® Contest took place in the San Francisco Marriott, an opulent hotel in downtown San Francisco. "Neither of us had ever been to the West Coast," recalled Bobbie. "The way Pillsbury treated us was just great: Three gourmet meals a day plus all kinds of tours and sightseeing." An added benefit, said Bobbie, was that "all the activity had a calming effect." When the day of the cooking contest rolled around, "I was used to the idea." Didn't she get nervous? "Well, yes," she admits, "But I didn't get the butterflies bad until the night before. The next morning--once I was done baking and there wasn't anything I could do about it--I was fine. Then I thought, 'Wow, I already feel like a winner, it doesn't matter what happens next.'"What happened next is part of history: Bobbie's Cream Cheese Brownie Pie, entered in the Fast & Fabulous Desserts & Treats category, won the Grand Prize. The Sonefelds' second honeymoon became even more extravagant, as they jetted to New York City for a whirlwind round of television and radio appearances. They also went to Philadelphia to appear on QVC. Bobbie remembers New York as another great restaurant town where she had meals she never even dreamed of two weeks before.After an amazing week traveling the country together, Bobbie and Steve returned home to Hopkins, South Carolina, their full-time jobs and their family. And that's when the trip stopped being a honeymoon, and turned into a homecoming, as Bobbie and Steve returned to the loving arms of their very excited sons.From "Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off® Cookbook." Copyright 2004 General Mills. Used with permission of the publisher, Wiley Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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• "Then young Ted Viveiros's father passed away, his mother went to work and he had to learn to cook. "I made an apple pie--apples, sugar, crust--and it was awful. The apples were undercooked and the crust was really tough." But Ted toughed it out himself, and grew to be an innovative, no-nonsense cook. Doughnut cravings lead most people to a store, but not Ted. He was in the mood for doughnuts one night, so he just made his own. "By the way," he says, "I now make dam good apple pies, and know enough to add cinnamon and butter." Sometimes our early mistakes provide thought to fuel a lifetime of productive, and sometimes tasty, work.From "Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off® Cookbook." Copyright 2004 General Mills. Used with permission of the publisher, Wiley Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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• When Leona Schnuelle captured the Grand Prize in the twelfth Bake-Off® Contest, she suddenly found herself a celebrity in her small town of Crab Orchard, Nebraska. "Everyone seems happier when I arrive, even at the square dances. They say 'Hi, Mrs. Pillsbury!' Even though I miss a do-si-do now and then-they think I can bake a dilly of a bread! And all the fan mail I receive! It's exciting to hear from all the different people with all their different ways of life, yet they all seem so interested in a bread recipe." Especially with a loaf like Dilly Casserole Bread to pique their interest.From "Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off® Cookbook." Copyright 2004 General Mills. Used with permission of the publisher, Wiley Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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• So much of American cooking has international roots, but a sense of what the cooking of indigenous Americans was like can be gleaned from Cape Cod resident Ellen Burr's harvest. "I love to gather wild edibles: bolete mushrooms, dandelion greens, sassafras leaves (to dry for file powder for gumbo). I pick lots of berries--blueberries, strawberries, shad berries, raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries, cranberries, elderberries, rosehips, rum cherries, and English blueberries--for desserts, for freezing, for preserves, and for jellies. I also dig clams, gather oysters and mussels, go crabbing and fish for trout and perch." Although Ellen has devoted so much of her keen attention to native foods, she also turns to foods with an international heritage for inspiration, and comes up with hits like her Dotted Swiss and Spinach Quiche.From "Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off® Cookbook." Copyright 2004 General Mills. Used with permission of the publisher, Wiley Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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• Earlier this century the traditional woman's work really was never done. Each week required a full day of baking, of washing and of ironing. Few would return to those days, but it did leave space for quiet family interaction that many feel is unfortunately missing from modern life. "My grandmother had a hearth oven, which she used to bake bread for the week," Gilda Lester recalls. "I helped her, and she always saved a small piece of dough for a pizza for me. I wouldn't give up those days with my grandmother for anything. I helped start the fire, then when the embers had smoldered for just the right amount of time, we cleared the oven for the loaves of bread. Most of my recipes are in my head. They are things that my grandmother, and then my mother, passed on to me."From "Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off® Cookbook." Copyright 2004 General Mills. Used with permission of the publisher, Wiley Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Steps:

• Part of Pillsbury's reason for starting the Bake-Off® Contest was to celebrate the many unsung heroes of America's kitchens, who hadn't received public credit for the trays of cookies, the platters of cakes and the baskets of bread that issued from their kitchens.Of course, for every Bake-Off® winner, there is still an unpublicized kitchen hero for whom the appreciation of her family is reward enough. Lily Wuebel was lucky enough to have both. When asked what he thought of his wife's $25,000 cake, Peter Wuebel said he'd always loved the cake, and "it's worth a million to me."From "Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off® Cookbook." Copyright 2004 General Mills. Used with permission of the publisher, Wiley Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.