Someone’s in the kitchen with Harry

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Our first meal with Harry Kaiserian wasn’t at his Castine home. It was at the house of mutual neighbors who invited several families for a winter’s feast. Harry had been announced as the top cook for the evening. The hosts would also be in the kitchen, as would Harry’s wife, Berna.

But this was Harry’s night, and the fact that he wasn’t in his own kitchen (which was, in fact, under construction) was imperceptible because of the familiarity and pride beaming from the cooking area.

After cocktails and oysters, we were all called to the table – a long one that sat a dozen people comfortably. Conversation was thick and noisy by the time Harry, a substantial but graceful man, waltzed into the room holding a platter of Beef Wellington as if it were, indeed, his dance partner. We guests went silent in admiration for the perfectly browned pastry, and we sniffed ravenously toward the dark, juicy aromas. Our mouths watered with anticipation for the velvety treasures beneath that sheath of flaky dough.

Then “oohs” and “ahs” rose and were soon followed by wineglasses. “A toast to Harry!” we all agreed. In that moment, the only thing more impressive than the Beef Wellington was Harry Kaiserian’s smile.

That’s when I knew Harry and I had something rich and undeniable in common. We both love food. I mean love food. It’s not about finding the best restaurant – although who’s not interested in that? It’s not about knowing the latest trend in food magazines – although reading about food is a weakness we both covet.

It’s about being in the kitchen – your kitchen, my kitchen, Harry’s kitchen – and appreciating nearly every morsel of food and every drop of drink because it is shared with family and friends, because it is nourishing and sustaining and delicious.

I admit, I may be afflicted with a small case of gluttony, if a small case of such a thing is possible. As for Harry – well, Harry has been cooking for friends for more than 50 years. He’s not a glutton. He’s a gourmand, and has been one since he was a boy back in Asbury Park, where his father, an Armenian immigrant from Turkey, ran a diner on the New Jersey shore for many years. In a scene that could have been lifted from a Neil Simon play, Harry and his family lived in an apartment above the restaurant. His first food memory is of cleaning a crate of strawberries, and he still has the menu from the first time he ate at a fine dining restaurant. He was 15.

So Harry was always thinking about food, always around food, always around people eating.

During 26 years in the U.S. Navy, Harry made a point of showing up at kitchens around the world. He developed a taste and penchant for ethnic foods and cooking techniques from Italy, Greece, Korea, China and India. Even when he couldn’t speak the language, he got the skinny on local food. No matter where Harry and Berna landed, they adopted culinary habits. And Harry, who is a master collector, kept notes, filed recipes.

“I really believe in my heart that everybody has within them a recipe,” said Harry one recent night when I had invited myself to dinner at his and Berna’s house. “But the world doesn’t need another recipe. They’re all written. Just because you add kumquats doesn’t make it a different recipe.”

Since the world doesn’t need another recipe, Harry decided to collect as many of the old ones he could get his hands on. That led to a new cookbook, “The Best of K’s Kwisine,” released late last year by Penobscot Books and based on a food column Harry has written since 1987. He likes to say the column is syndicated because it appears in three coastal weeklies: the Castine Patriot, The Weekly Packet, and Island Ad-Vantages. The column typically presents a recipe Harry has congenially cribbed – and sometimes painstakingly coaxed – from neighbors, family, friends and, one would guess, complete strangers.

Each dish is introduced by Harry, with an explanation of how he came by it or a tidbit about his relationship with the contributor. It reads like a who’s who: Chick Blum’s Beef Brisket, Sandra Reed’s Fruit Dip, Dick Falk’s Famous Bread Pudding, Lars Rost’s Best Ever Baked Stuffed Lobster. The night I ate with the Kaiserians recently, Harry prepared K’s Minestrone, Bouche Forestiere, and Blueberry Tart du Castine.

“My real goal was that I wanted something I could give my kids, my nieces and nephews and their kids,” said Harry about the book. “It goes back to the fact that I had two aunts who were fantastic cooks and they died before they ever wrote anything down. I wanted some way of leaving that behind for them – as well as for the community. A lot of these recipes don’t appear anywhere else.”

The recipes in Harry’s book reflect his easy, lively approach to cooking and combining flavors. He doesn’t hesitate to use pre-made or processed ingredients because, for one thing, he has learned to improvise during the long Maine winters, when the best fresh fruits and vegetables are not always available. “You are what you eat,” he says. “More importantly, you eat what you got.” As with many of us, he also longs for the fresh produce and locally grown jewels of summer.

In fact, the newspaper column began when a local sheep farmer asked Harry to help business by making suggestions on ways to cook lamb. Since then, Harry has published more than 600 recipes.

Truly, Harry is steeped in a gourmand’s life. He and Berna and several couples in their Castine neighborhood get together once a week or so for formalized dinners. Each member of the lineup prepares a dish, or they all gather to prepare an ambitious dish together. The Beef Wellington night was a variation of that event, a kind of upscale potluck.

“Harry and Berna have always liked to cook a lot, and we’ve always liked to cook a lot, and we have evenings here where we just stand around the kitchen and cook,” said Peggy Rogers, one of Harry’s foodie friends in Castine and a classmate in a weekly Italian lesson. “Last week, we had the most divine squid. It was the best I’ve ever eaten anywhere in the world.”

It turns out that the Kaiserians and the other two couples they consort with can legitimately make statements about world food because they are well-traveled and have lived in other countries. Last year, they went to Italy together, rented a villa in the middle of a vineyard, and took cooking classes in a kitchen of an Italian chef whose restaurant is highly rated.

“Our whole intent was to immerse ourselves in Italian cuisine,” Harry told me. “The idea was to do the local thing.”

“Local” may be the secret of Harry’s love affair with food. When he’s in Italy, which he and his friends will be again this spring, Italy is local. When he’s in Castine, that’s local. The kitchen cupboard within an arm’s reach is local. Wherever there’s food, Harry finds a way to make it his local mission among friends.

“Other than his cooking ability, Harry is a wonderful person,” said Gladys Kuli, another of the diehard cooks in Harry’s circle. “Harry has a gift for getting people to talk. He is widely read and traveled and has a way of inspiring conversation.”

As with anyone who knows the Kaiserians, Gladys spoke of the importance of Berna to Harry’s cooking. Harry and Berna will both tell you that Berna could cook pot roast and roast duck when they married 38 years ago. Now, the Kaiserians spend a lot of time together in the kitchen – a brand new one with two convection ovens, an island, smart and useful cabinetry and lots of equipment. The resulting collaborative meals aren’t always complicated or fancy, but they are hardy and heartfelt and often include happy guests.

“If we had met the Kulis and Kaiserians in the middle of New York City, we’d be doing the same thing,” said Peggy Rogers. “We all have a consuming passion for food. We all contribute and each person has his own talents. Harry’s is comfort food. And his book is about down-home country food. I sat down and read it like a book. Of course, I knew all the people in it and was there for some of the meals. But it has Harry’s personality stamped all over it. With a church cookbook, you have 8,000 stamps. But in Harry’s book, even the recipes that are from others have his signature on it. It’s Harry.”

On the last pages of “K’s Kwisine” – in an afterthought compendium called “whimsey” – Harry has written a tiny blurb: “It always amazes me that ‘love’ is never listed among the ingredients of a recipe. It is the thing that, more often than not, makes the difference between a good meal and a great meal.”

That, more than anything, is so Harry.

“This is what I love about cooking,” said Harry, who sometimes holds cooking classes for cadets at Maine Maritime Academy. “I love to bring people together. This is my art. I don’t paint. I don’t sing. I don’t take pictures. My art for me is what I put on the table. You say where do you go in Castine in the winter? We create our own thing. That’s what I love about these recipes. Everything is here. If I want to do it, I can.”

And did. Can I tell you that the meal Harry and Berna served the night I showed up was salutable and satisfying kwisine. The kind that makes a long winter’s night just a little warmer and richer. I hear the three couples are getting together Thursday for an evening of making lobster ravioli. I can already see Harry standing there in his chef’s apron, pasta flour on his hands, that puckish smile on his face. And are those the aromas of lobster wafting up the street?

“The Best of K’s Kwisine” is available at The Compass Rose Bookstore and Maine Maritime Academy Bookstore in Castine. It is also available in the offices of the Castine Patriot, The Weekly Packet in Blue Hill and Island Ad-Vantages in Stonington.