Obituary: Jane Citron / Wrote and taught about cooking for 28 years
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Jane Citron, a leader of culinary arts in Pittsburgh and beyond, died yesterday of colon cancer. She was 73.
During her 28-year career as a professional cook and food writer, Mrs. Citron dined in and wrote about many of the world's finest restaurants on her extensive travels throughout Europe, Asia, Africa and the United States. One chef on the French Riviera, in fact, held her in such esteem that he named a dish after her.
Mrs. Citron taught cooking classes in her Squirrel Hill home. She could write with panache about topics as basic and yet essential as preparing and grilling a succulent burger.
And when, after finally winning a few moments to speak with Thomas Keller -- the celebrity chef whose French Laundry, Per Se and other restaurants have revolutionized the way chefs cook and Americans eat, from Napa Valley to New York City -- she didn't use it to promote herself, said Keith Martin, a lamb farmer in Greene County.
"You know what Jane did? She used that opportunity to introduce me to Thomas Keller," said Mr. Martin, who owns Elysian Fields Lamb with his wife, Mary. "Her whole mission was not to get an exclusive with Thomas Keller, to scoop it. Her whole mission was to say, 'There's this guy back in Pittsburgh you have to talk to, Thomas.' She was an exceptional talent for the area, and her passion for the culinary arts was surpassed only by her capacity to be a friend."
Mr. Martin, whose farm now sells lamb to high-end restaurants around the country, was just one of the hundreds of people who came to know Ms. Citron professionally -- and often, personally -- through her cooking, teaching, traveling and writing. In addition to teaching cooking classes, mostly on the cuisines of France, Italy and California, beginning in the late 1970s, Mrs. Citron also wrote free-lance stories for The Pittsburgh Press and later, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, for nearly three decades.
She also initiated and wrote the column "A La Carte" for the Pittsburgh Sunday Magazine and served as food editor of Pittsburgh Magazine from 1992 to 1999, winning a Community Contribution Award from the magazine and WQED Multimedia in June 2005.
Mrs. Citron's culinary training began in her mother's kitchen in their family home on Beechwood Boulevard in Squirrel Hill, and continued after she graduated from Allderdice High School, then the University of Pittsburgh in 1954. She soon became a young wife and mother herself, raising her family in the home on Squirrel Hill Avenue where she and her parents had moved when she was a teenager.
But while her mother had taught her to prepare traditional Jewish cuisine, Mrs. Citron's tastes quickly branched out. While living with her husband, Carl, in San Francisco during his stint in the Army from 1955 to 1957, Mrs. Citron found herself inspired by California's wealth of fresh, local produce, said her daughter-in-law, Susan Citron.
She was also deeply influenced by classic French and other European cuisines -- a tendency fed by the trips she and her husband began taking to Rome, Greece and especially the south of France in the late 1970s. There, she and her husband would rent a house for a month in the summer, enjoying the sun and the sea and eating at some of the finest restaurants on the Riviera.
It was Mrs. Citron's lack of pretension, however, that enabled her to dive into conversations with the chefs that ran those restaurants, and often, come away from those discussions as their friend.
"She was not imposing, and she had the same passions they had -- she was fascinated by anything to do with the world of food," said Susan Citron. "And because she was enamoured of their whole world, they became enamoured of her."
Mrs. Citron was just as down-to-earth at home, in class and out, and usually could be found wearing jeans and a sweatshirt while she cooked. She tested each recipe two, if not three, times, and was particular about shopping in the Strip District and at local farmer's markets to get the best possible ingredients, according to her family members.
She also was a great "scratch" cook with a vast knowledge of and dedication to home cooking, said former Post-Gazette food editor Suzanne Martinson.
Mrs. Citron is survived by her husband, Carl, and her sons, Stanley, Alan and Rodger.
A service will be held at Rodef Shalom, Shadyside, at 11 a.m. Monday. Visitation will be from 9 to 11 a.m. preceding the service. Burial will be private.
First Published December 16, 2006 12:00 am
