Remembering Ellen Brown, USA TODAY's founding food editor

The Providence Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network, has lost a long-time contributor. Journalism has lost a trailblazer. And I have lost a friend.

Ellen Brown, who penned The Journal's Cost-Buster Cooking Column for seven years, died unexpectedly last week after a surgical procedure.

The first story I wrote about her appeared in 2009 with a headline, not written by me, that called her "a seasoned writer and chef."

But I always thought of Ellen as saucy. And indefatigable.

At my last count, she had penned 43 cookbooks. Can you imagine? They covered everything from how to make ice cream, something she taught me to do, to one-pot cooking and even gluten-free baking.

She cooked the way other people breathe, constantly and with ease.

Ellen didn't head to the kitchen just for her books or columns, either. In her Providence home, she would host dinner parties and parlor tailgate gatherings with ease. She'd take her act on the road to cook Passover dinners for her family in her sister's New York kitchen.

She also held elegant events, as a French wine enthusiast for the Providence Chapter of the Commanderie de Bordeaux. She was Regént from 2016 to 2020 and program chair and an executive committee member for more than 10 years.

It was our conversations I most enjoyed. She would make me laugh with tales about the antics of her beloved cats.

"We had another round of bathtub wrestling last night," she famously said one day with both anger and amusement in her voice.

Ellen was a voracious reader of the news and kept me up to date on trends I should watch. Like me, she was a sports fan and enjoyed both the lead-up and recap of big games. We also had small kitchens in common, an irony not lost on either of us.

I treasured my monthly shopping trips with her as she gathered the ingredients for eight dishes, a month's worth of Cost-Buster columns. During these trips she always imparted helpful hints about ingredients and wisdom.

"Don't start any shopping trip in the produce department," she'd say. Save it for the end so your fresh greens don't dry out. I think of her words every time I enter a grocery store through the produce department.

If Ellen made cooking look easy, she made journalism seem like a breeze.

In 1981, USA TODAY founder (and former Gannett chairman) Al Neuharth arrived at the Cincinnati Enquirer, then Gannett’s largest paper.

"He pointed to people and said, ‘You, you, you and you. Pack up, you’re moving to Washington.'"

These would be the editors and reporters who would launch the ground-breaking newspaper. They included Brown, who was named the food editor. In Cincinnati, she covered the local food scene. At USA TODAY, she was expected to write stories that would appeal to readers from coast to coast.

What a time to have such an assignment.

The New American Cuisine, an upscale contemporary style of cooking among a few restaurant chefs, was still a whisper on the lips of those in the know. Chefs like Wolfgang Puck in Los Angeles; Marcel Desaulniers (a Woonsocket, Rhode Island native) in Williamsburg, Virginia; and Lydia Shire and Jasper White in Boston were making exciting dishes, embracing their ethnic roots and training while creating a new American cuisine that would lead to today’s world of celebrity chefs.

Brown was there reporting from the front lines of the new movement, spending time with Paul Prudhomme in the Louisiana bayou, and Patrick O’Connell at the Inn at Little Washington in Virginia. She also did down-home things like eat Buffalo wings at the Anchor Bar where they were first served.

USA TODAY wasn’t just a national publication; it was then a newspaper in brief. Stories were kept short and sweet. Brown found herself with interviews, information and quotes, leftovers from her meetings with these up-and-coming chefs.

"I had all these great notes," she said. So she put them to good use, and in 1985, published her first book, "Cooking with New American Chefs," which featured these now famous chefs.

In addition to the cookbooks, she was the artistic director for the Great Chefs TV series, which was the first to take cameras inside restaurant kitchens. That was before anyone dreamed of a Food Network, she used to say.

I told you she was saucy.

RIP my friend.

gciampa@providencejournal.com

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: USA TODAY's founding food editor Ellen Brown dies in Providence