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View ProfilesPublished March 12, 2024 at 2:05 p.m. | Updated March 13, 2024 at 10:15 a.m.
Catharine Noel began a recent conversation with one of her abundant chuckles. When asked her age, she replied with good humor, "I'm pretty dang old." The New Haven resident turns 70 in July. Whether that's old depends on one's perspective, but it is pretty old to be working in a professional kitchen, where the physical rigors of standing for hours and slicing, dicing, kneading and rolling take a toll.
Noel, who has worked as a chef and culinary school instructor since the mid-'90s, is still at it — albeit on her own terms.
On February 14, 2022, Noel cold-emailed the Swift House Inn in Middlebury to ask about the need for kitchen prep help. "She started, 'Allow me to introduce myself...'" inn co-owner Serena Kim recalled. "It literally felt like manna from heaven."
Kim explained that the inn needs fresh breakfast pastries daily to serve to overnight guests and the public — a task that had been handled by the breakfast team or outsourced to other local bakers.
Noel was a perfect fit for that job. "Her pastries are so good, so classic. They're just what you'd expect from a Vermont inn," Kim said. Once Kim and her husband, Matthew Robinson, got to know Noel, they "were so charmed by her personality," Kim said, that they also asked her to teach occasional baking classes.
The chef works three days a week baking muffins and scones and hand-making batches of multilayered, butter-rich laminated dough for croissants, pains au chocolat and kouign amanns.
That last flaky, buttery, richly bronzed pastry from Brittany, France, is Noel's favorite. "I love the caramelization, and I love to see the lamination before you put it in your mouth," the chef said. "I love those layers. They're magical."
Sitting on the screened porch of the home she shares with two housemates, three cats, eight chickens and a cavalier King Charles spaniel named Cassie, Noel spoke with Seven Days about how she landed on cooking as a second career, her addictive personality and why scones get a bad rap.
Can you share an early food memory?
Here we have Debbie Jenkins, who pushed me down on the cobblestones. She was a bully, but then we became really good friends. We were living in the Bronx at the Highbridge projects. She invited me to her house and gave me a piece of yellow cake with chocolate frosting. I thought it was the most magical thing I'd ever tasted. I learned that it came from a box, but it was still very good.
The projects in the late '50s, early '60s were a melting pot. We lived on the 11th floor. There were probably 12 apartments on that floor, and everybody had their own smell, wafting out of their [kitchens]. And I thought, Oh, my God, what is that? Oh, my goodness, what is that? I was just mesmerized.
What smells were coming from your home?
For special-occasion parties, my mom always put a giant pot of pig feet on, which stunk like crazy. This was Southern flavor. My mom was from Raleigh, N.C., where Black people ate pig feet. That's part of the soul food. I didn't eat it. It was rubber and lots of fat, lots of skin, lots of gristle — all the things that I don't like.
How did you end up becoming a chef?
I was a counselor for emotionally disturbed adolescents and [their] families for 17 years in Minneapolis. I got so burnt out. I had one of those moments you have in your life and you go, OK, what's next? And I thought, Well, you always liked food. Why don't you go back to school and learn how to cook properly?
I went to Hennepin Technical College in Eden Prairie, Minn., working three jobs and going to school at the same time. I loved every single bit of it, except for carving — carving ice blocks for a presentation at a table at a banquet. My swan looked like a seal with a bloated belly. [Chuckles.]
I knew that I wanted to work in a small restaurant. There was a bistro in Minneapolis ... I was there for 13 years. It was called Lucia's. Lucia [Watson] was the Alice Waters of Minneapolis. She went to France to learn how to cook. Lucia taught me a lot about execution. I learned a lot about cooking cleanly. She would always say, "No, that's too muddy. That's not clean enough."
And then you launched your own farm-to-table business?
I'd had it with Minneapolis, so I decided to buy a farm in River Falls [Wis.]. It was a hobby farm. When I first saw it, my jaw just dropped, and I said, "I got to make this my home." The ruralness of it. The beauty of it.
I was working at Lucia's, driving back and forth to Minneapolis every day, 80 miles a day. I didn't mind it at all, because once I came home, I knew I would be home to my Shangri-la. I developed all my flower gardens and a wonderful, huge vegetable garden.
Then I thought, I want this place to be shared, and there could be so much done here. I want to have a commercial kitchen on my property. I want to start a business. I called it the Roost. By then, I was teaching at Le Cordon Bleu. My interview for that job was how to make scones.
We will definitely come back to that.
On Friday after school, we would start prepping for the Saturday farmers market, and we did pizza Sundays at the farm. I had built a wood-fired pizza oven. I invited other chefs to come out, and we would put on hoop-house dinners.
I was probably no more than a year into it when I lost my job at the Cordon Bleu because they closed their doors. By that time, I was very, very tired. I did CSAs, too: I grew, harvested, cleaned, packaged and delivered to 12 clients. I made the decision to sell everything. I had to find homes for over 100 chickens.
I decided I wanted to be closer to my sister in Harlem. But I would never go live in New York City, so I stayed with a cousin for a bit in upstate New York and then decided to visit a friend who had moved to Maine.
What did you do there?
I got sober. [In River Falls], I would come home and have a glass of wine. That glass of wine turned into two, and that two glasses of wine turned into a bottle. And then I thought, Oh, I got a problem.
I have an addictive personality. How do you think I ended up with 100 chickens? [Chuckles.] I went to AA, but I was so resistant to it. Once I moved to Maine, I said, I can't do this. I don't want to do this. I knew I had to stop. I went back to AA, and I've been sober ever since.
How'd you end up in Vermont?
My neighbor in Maine would come over every morning and bring us the newspaper — in her nightgown and her boots. One day, she says, "Catharine, would you like to be a companion to my daughter-in-law's father?"
I had free time. I was retired. My immediate question to her was "Is he racist?" In this society, this I know: Elderly people can be very racist, and they have no idea how racist they are. I will never put myself in that position.
George and I became best of friends. He was funny and articulate. He had been a professor at Middlebury College, but he got Parkinson's. We did that for about a year, and then he wanted to move back to Vermont.
What brought you to the Swift House Inn?
After George passed in 2021, I didn't want to just sit around all day. A friend said, "You should bake at one of those inns." Me being at the Swift House is like ["Newhart"]. It's surreal.
I don't need to be working, but I love it. It keeps me moving. It keeps me alive. It keeps me wondering. It keeps me searching for new recipes. It keeps me playing with food.
Back to the much-maligned scone. Why do you think people don't like scones?
Because typically they're dry and hard as a rock. I use the recipe that I used at Lucia's. It's a cream scone, and it's the only way to go. I'm not professing that I make scones like they do in England, because I don't like the scones in England. Sorry, too dry. I want my scones to be nice and soft and delicate.
This interview was edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Yield: 8 scones
At the Swift House Inn, Catharine Noel makes blueberry scones, but her personal favorite is candied ginger. Her trick for crafting a tender scone is to let time do some of the work of absorbing the cream. When pulling the dough together, she advises, "Use delicate, open fingers and do not overmix."
Swift House Inn, 25 Stewart Lane, Middlebury, 388-9925, swifthouseinn.com. Breakfast and dinner are open to the public; reservations recommended. Baking classes are private and must be booked ahead.
The original print version of this article was headlined "Well Baked | A multilayered career leads a seasoned chef to Middlebury's Swift House Inn"
Tags: Grilling the Chef, Middlebury, Catharine Noel, pastries, Cream Scones, recipe, Swift House Inn
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