March 2010
Culinary WHIRLED / CHEF
Kitchen Confidential
Behind the scenes with one of Pittsburgh’s best-loved caterers.
By Victoria Bradley | Photography by Megan Wylie
Hanging out in Rania Harris’s catering kitchen in her Mt. Lebanon store is an electrifying experience. Half a dozen red-aproned helpers scurry around, snatching up ingredients and tools for the celebrated cook. (“Maddie, bring me a blender. Okay, that’s not a blender — that’s a mixer — a blender’s the one you make margaritas with!” … “Debbie! Can I have a KitchenNet cutting board? A colorful one. I need one really quickly. Thank you!”)
The slicker-than-olive-oil production is important for a caterer who does more than 80 weddings a year. “Sometimes five in one weekend,” she says. “I’m not home very much. Last night, I got home at nine o’clock, and my husband was still up, waiting for dinner. But he’ll eat anything that I put in front of him; he’s the easiest man to please.”
She chats more about her husband, about her big, gorgeous Mt. Lebanon garden, and about her late dog, Sam, who, according to her stories, ate better than I do.
Until today.
Harris dunks the thickest, pinkest piece of sashimi-grade tuna I’ve ever seen into a bowl of cracked pepper, dredges it on both sides, and tongs it onto the grill. It sizzles loud and, in 10 seconds, the room smells like a barbecue on the beach. We cough as the pepper burns and fills our lungs.
She scored the handsome hunk of tuna from Penn Avenue Fish Company, in the Strip District. “From Henry,” she says, and I can tell they’re friends.
While the fish sears, Harris assembles the salad like a deconstructed bouquet, starting with a leafy pile of field greens. She spoons hard cooked eggs in a heap on the side of the plate and then makes another little mound of kalamata olives (my favorite), pausing to pop one in her mouth. A few potato halves nestle in next to a handful of bright red cherry tomatoes that get a salty splash when Harris adds the anchovies. She fingers a bunch of haricots verts, shuffles them into order, and then tucks them onto the plate, too. Then, she endows the whole thing with a confetti toss of capers.
Rania is the exclusive product and appliance tester for KitchenNet.com, a huge online resource of every gadget a gourmet could ever ask for. The Sewickley company also produces her weekly segment on KDKA-TV’s Pittsburgh Today Live. She’s popular at the station: Rania also has a weekly gig cooking up yummy tailgating food on The Hines Ward Show, which will begin airing again in September.
“After the show, the crew comes over to the kitchen set to sample what she’s made,” says Pittsburgh Today Live Producer Jill Neely. “It’s like a party. We’re all hanging out in the kitchen, sampling her recipes, talking about what’s coming up next week — or her grandbabies.”
The tuna has been browning for all of two minutes when she pulls it off the griddle and slices into its spicy hull, exposing again its pink insides. “Isn’t that gorgeous?” she says. “Keep it really rare.”
I lance into the mélange, freshly dressed with Harris’s own mustard balsamic vinaigrette, and pronounce it perfect: The fleshy tuna plays nicely with the crunch of the green beans, and the capers pop in sync with the teeny tomatoes, while the anchovies swathe the greens with their savory sauce.
Rania says it’s a dish that it fits into her new meal plan; she changed her life two years ago, switching to lighter fare.
“It was an epiphany for me and an evolution for the business,” she says. “It was June 21, 2007, my anniversary. I had come home from eating a huge meal, and I looked in the mirror, and it looked like I was expecting a baby. And that’s when I decided that I was going to change my life. I lost 30 pounds.”
Her brides — and everyone else — appreciate her love of grilling.
“You won’t get a fried dish from me,” Harris says. “You won’t get heavy sauces. I’m really very pure when it comes to food. Very simple.”
Even for a party of 300, everything’s cooked to order.
“We will never take a cooked meal to the venue in a warming unit, and then put one of those little lids on it. Never. We grill to order. The vegetables are raw, the tuna is raw, and the filet mignon is raw. I absolutely refuse to do prepared foods here and then take them there. I think that’s terrible.”
She whips up a quick and healthy side in Maddie’s (margarita) blender: sweet pea avocado soup, with a dollop of fat free sour cream and a quick pour of chicken stock mixed in. Harris decants her cold soup into a fancy glass and nudges it toward me. “Now that’s a lot,” she says. “I like you; I usually don’t serve that much.”
I take one viscous sip and smile. It’s summer sweet, and cool enough to choose it over a milkshake on a porch swing.
Rania also caters a slew of charity events. This year, she was on deck for Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s Skates and Plates, where the Pittsburgh Penguins served the guests. When Harris was calling out orders in that kitchen, she embarrassingly pronounced the players’ names wrong. But they got her back. “They were running around in their underwear!” she says, blushing. “They had to change into their tuxedos in an adjoining room, and they didn’t care that anyone was there. And they don’t even wear boxers! They just wear little white shorts — not that I peeked!”
And that sounds kind of delicious, too.
Rania’s Catering, 100 Central Square, Mt. Lebanon. 412.531.2222. KitchenNet.com, 505 North Drive, Sewickley. 877.707.3377. 412.324.1177. KDKA.
Rania’s KitchenNet.com picks!
Tuna salad
“I really love the entire line of Chantal bakeware and cookware and it has become the only cook andbakeware that I use. The Emile Henry line is absolutely stunning, and I use it all the time atKDKA, when doing my show. Clearly, I could not live without my CuisinArt seven-quart mixer or my 11-cup food processor. As for fun kitchen gadgets, the garlic twist is amazing. We just got in new mandolins and I think they are always an item that people love to own. If the house was burning down and I had to pick one thing to carry out (other than my husband…), it would be my Shun knives.”
Chantal cookware
Shun knives
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