Sunday, March 28*, 10:00 am
Members $50, guests $60

*Please note: this workshop is being held on Sunday.

“If my mother had had a copy of The Mensch Chef,” New York Eats author and television personality Ed Levine wrote on the jacket of Mitchell Davis’s latest book, “we would have eaten a lot better at my house.” Well, if you want to ensure that you eat really well at your house this Passover, sign up for this workshop right away.

Davis’s now-annual Passover Baking Workshop will surely one day be incorporated into the Haggadah as one of the miracles of the Passover story. It wasn’t enough that Jews had to endure 40 years parched in the desert, but when they finally got out, they had to endure 4,000 years parched from dessert. Sawdust-like sponge cake. Leaden macaroons. Dayenou? Phooey. Davis will show you how to bake all sorts of moist, delicate, and delicious things, both savory and sweet, sans leavening.

Born in New Jersey and raised in Toronto, Davis settled on a culinary career at an early age. His mother couldn’t keep him out of the kitchen when he was five years old, and by the time he was 15, he had started a catering company and a prepared-soup business—(chicken), you should have to ask? Four years in the Hotel School at Cornell University, a stage at La Tour d’Argent, and six months cooking in Italy readied him for a career cooking and writing about food. Upon his return from la bella Italia, Davis was editor-in-chief of Art Culinaire for two years. He joined The James Beard Foundation as director of publications in 1993.

His first book, Cook Something, encouraged Generation X to stop slacking and start cooking. His second book, Foie Gras...A Passion, co-authored with Foundation Angel Michael Ginor, was a tribute to the world’s favorite fat. But it’s Davis’s celebration of Jewish cooking that really made critics sit up and laugh. “While I always knew that Jewish food could be so fattening, I never realized that it could be so funny,” wrote Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the international best-selling author of Kosher Sex. If you think his writing is funny, you should see him in person!

Davis is busy at work—at least that’s what he tells his editor—on his fourth book, a comprehensive tome tentatively titled Kitchen Sense. (He’s got a lot of it.) It’s due out from Clarkson Potter in 2005. Since the deadline for that one is fast approaching, this may be the last time you will see him in public for a while. Don’t miss it.