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Out of the Frying Pan is an empowering memoir that traces Gillian Clarks rise from a beginner to a top chef. But managing a kitchen also taught her about parenting. With a wealth of experience and wisdom, and a healthy dash of humor, Gillian now shares her lifes recipes, from the solutions she cooked up for parenting challenges to her favorite culinary creations. In the prime of her life, Gillian Clark abandoned the corporate world to pursue her passion---making mouthwatering food with fresh, homegrown ingredients. When she became a single parent with two young daughters, though, Gillian had to reconsider her dreams. Moving to the country and running a small, artisanal farm were put on the back burner---supporting her family had to come first. But Gillians drive to make delicious food was relentless. She finished her culinary degree, survived the tedious prep work of her first cooking job and the difficulty of training during the day and raising two girls at night, and confronted the challenges of working her way up from the bottom in a profession where only the strongest survive. Beating intense odds, Gillian is now head chef and proprietor of the successful and popular Colorado Kitchen, which is ranked among the top 100 restaurants in Washington, D.C. This puts her simple cafe in the company of the citys finest dining establishments. Touching and joyful, Out of the Frying Pan rivals any parenting book and is also chock-full of more than forty delicious recipes, from her first soup of the day to her familys Sunday brunch waffles---even the pink medicine placebo she whipped up for one of her daughters. Her inspirational advice on how she raised herdaughters while never giving up her dream is a gem for parents and foodies alike and will fit at just about any table. Its hard enough for a woman to find work in a restaurant kitchen, but when you throw in two young kids and single-mom status, Id call it near impossible. Not so for Gillian Clark. Its a great story that should be particularly inspiring to any young person starting out in the industry, with or without children. And she tosses in some of her famous home-cooked recipes as a bonus.--Sara Moulton, executive chef at Gourmet magazine, host of Food Networks Saras Secrets, and food editor at Good Morning America Clarks enthusiasm for drawing people to the table is engaging. Colorado Kitchen now often has a line around the block, and Clark thrives on being her own boss. The emphasis on family adds a personal dimension to this memoir about both comfort food and commitment to success.--Publishers Weekly Gillian Clark is a nationally known chef who runs the popular Washington, D.C., restaurant Colorado Kitchen. She is a commentator for NPRs Weekend All Things Considered and has been featured on the Food Network as well as in The Washington Post and The New York Times, Chapter 1 They say the experience of your first cooking job never leaves you. Outside of the culinary school sanctuary is where the real learning begins. In the first kitchen the new cook has to learn to turn the craft perfected in the classroom into the job. It is in this first workplace where passion has to produce a paycheck. The lessons learned there, the processes, the tools gathered to help make it through the night, resonate louder than the classroom note taking. The habits of the first kitchen are forever imbedded in your culinary vision. Are plates clean and centered, garnished with sprigs of chervil? Or are they busy with bAnd#226;tonnets and brunoise? My first kitchen was at the Prince Michel Vineyard restaurantAnd#8212;a restaurant attached to a well-known winery about forty minutes north of Charlottesville, Virginia. It was spanking clean, enormous, and air-conditioned. The plates were generous fifteen-inch rounds with three-inch pink rims trimmed with gold, and served as a canvas for talented Chef Alain Lecomte and the visiting chefs from Michelin-starred restaurants in town for special events. Bright red steamed lobster glistened with drawn butter. We used the tip of a paring knife to balance three beads of caviar around a sprig of chervil for the salmon canapAnd#233;. The food came together on the plate with order, focus, and precision. Duck breast rested, then was sliced paper thin and fanned alternately with paper-thin slices of peach. Chef Alain Lecomte taught me that food was beautiful. I watched him as he examined a purveyorAnd#8217;s seaweed-covered lobster, swollen-eyed fish with gaping mouths, or scrawny, wrinkled squab. He picked out the diamonds in the rough. Then heAnd#8217;d teach me to painstakingly eviscerate and clean them for him. Chef Lecomte could simmer the flavor and collagen out of a fifty-pound box of veal bones. With yolks, wine, butter, or this bone-fortified water, he would make a sauce to send that fish or squab into the dining room and make believers out of everyone. We could almost hear the dining room erupt in applause when, after the dessert course, Chef wiped the sweat off his face, buttoned the top button of his coat, and pushed open the swinging doors that led out of the kitchen. For the most part, I was turning vegetables and doing other prep work. I carved carrots, potatoes, and zucchini into eight-sided bullets that not only cooked at the same rate but gave plates a fussed-over look. My first few attempts looked more messed up than fussed over. Even when I thought IAnd#8217;d carved a decent pound or two of potatoes and carrots, Chef would examine the bucketful of my labors. After regarding them very seriously, plunging his hands into the water and letting potatoes and carrots fall through his fingers, he would walk over to the stove and empty the entire contents into a big pot of boiling water. My clumsily carved vegetables disintegrated into what was to become the soup du jour. After a few weeks I was good enough at turning to be awarded the task of sectioning citrus fruit. Until I got this right, the chef used my knife to make a point of showing me how to separate the peel from the flesh of an orange. If his orange came out perfectly round and skinless and mine did not, it wasnAnd#8217;t because of faulty equipment. Chef, who was French, would mumble And#8220;Tziz naht ze knife,And#8221; as he held the blade close, examining it from tip to riveted handle. When service began I was usually a nervous wreck. I tended the convection oven and responded with a start when the timer rang. One busy Saturday night I had no idea that the towel I used to grab the baked-to-order lime soufflAnd#233; from the convection oven was damp. And#8220;Guilliaahhnn,And#8221; Chef was shouting, And#8220;the soufflAnd#233;, put it here, hurry, hurry.And#8221; Stea