"Heartland’ author cooks at JCCC April 5

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. – Food writer and cookbook author Judith Fertig will highlight and demonstrate the joys of Midwestern cooking April 5 at Johnson County Community College.

Fertig, who recently wrote the cookbook/food anthology “Heartland: The Cookbook,” will appear at 7 p.m. in Polsky Theater in the Carlsen Center for a lecture, cooking demonstration and tasting.

She’ll demonstrate how a wheat plant becomes bread by grinding the wheat in flour, using the flour to make dough and making the dough into bread, coffee cake or cinnamon rolls, all while on stage. She’ll also show how to top a flatbread with local fare like smoked goat cheese, garden vegetables and barbequed brisket.

Tickets for the lecture, demonstration and tasting are $20 for general admission and $5 for JCCC students.

For those interested in meeting Fertig and buying “Heartland: The Cookbook,” a 5:30-6:45 p.m. reception and book signing will be located in Carlsen Center lobby. Tickets for this event are $40 and include the tasting, demonstration and lecture but not the cost of the book. Buy your tickets at www.jccc.edu/foundationonline or call 913-469-3835.

Fertig appears as part of the Visiting Chef Series supported in part by a gift from David G. Meyers and the JCCC Kansas Studies Institute. Students in the JCCC hospitality management program will help prepare the tasting.

In “Heartland: The Cookbook,” Fertig shares the historical, agricultural and cultural influences on food in this region. In her presentation, she’ll share some of her favorite Kansas City recipes, the place she now calls home.

Fertig grew up in Ohio in the “canned Spam and marshmallow fluff era” of culinary history, she explained.

“I grew up in a time when Americans were big into processed food. The more processed, the better at that point,” she said.

Her introduction to another world of food occurred thanks to Julia Child. Her mother fell in love with French cooking thanks to Child’s

show – “the first real cooking show on TV,” Fertig said. Her mother started taking cooking classes in Cincinnati while Judith was in college. So Judith lived in two worlds: minute-steak dinners in college and fine French cooking back home with her mom.

Trained at the Cordon Bleu in London and at La Varenne École de Cuisine when it was still in Paris, Fertig now is working on “I Love Cinnamon Rolls” and “The Back in the Swing Cookbook,” both for Kansas City’s Andrews McMeel Publishing.

She also writes for food and lifestyle magazines such as Bon Appetit, Cooking Light, Fine Cooking, Saveur, Food & Wine and Better Homes and Gardens.

For more information, call the JCCC Foundation at 913-469-3835.