Tapas to Tempt

Abby Hitchcock grew up on Long Island’s rural East End, known for its fishing and farming (fresh bay scallops, stripers, flounder, farmstands, and pick-your-own strawberries/pumpkins/apples). From her mother she learned to love simple fresh local fare and from her father, an amateur chef who enjoys preparing American and ethnic feasts, a love of reading menus and preparing exotic fare. But it wasn’t until she attended university in England, where she was placed in a "self-catering flat" (shop, cook and feed yourself) that Abby suddenly found that food was her passion: shopping for it, cooking it, eating it, researching it. She began poking about in the greengrocer’s and butcher’s shops and preparing amazing repasts for her English flat mates (happily eating beans on toast)—a New York brunch or an American Thanksgiving for 12— in her tiny kitchenette. After she earned her degree in botany, she returned to the States and enrolled in Peter Kump’s New York Cooking School (now The Institute of Culinary Education). With her blue ribbon cooking diploma in hand, Abby went on to work at The Tea Box at Takashimaya in New York, at Vong in London and at the BBC’s Good Food Magazine. She has been a private chef, worked at Martha Stewart Living television and run her own catering company. Perhaps it was her Botany degree that led to Abby's love of the science of cooking (why do onions make you tear?) and to her three years as a recipe development chef, which she occasionally still dabbles in. She eventually settled down as part owner, then sole owner, of CAMAJE bistro in Greenwich Village. It has been open for almost 13 years, something of a record in Manhattan.