Deborah Lotterman preparing a meal. (Photos from Lotterman)
Germantown Info Hub is sharing a series of local chef profiles this holiday season, with their stories on how and why they love to cook, their favorite holiday meals, the ways in which community intersects in their cooking practice, and what they feel is the recipe for a thriving community.
Deborah Lotterman moved to Northwest Philadelphia two years ago from Boston. She had two goals: 1) Meet new people in her new city, and 2) connect with a food organization to make some kind of contribution to hunger here.
To her delight, she found the Germantown Community Fridges on Instagram pretty quickly and started cooking for them, stocking them up with soups, brownies, macaroni and cheese, and sandwiches in easy, to-go containers.
While she completed one of her goals, the other — meeting new people — still needed fulfilling. And thus, the idea of DoubleDown Supper Club was born.
She had never hosted a supper club before, but she started testing it out a little over a year ago, inviting everyone she met, from folks who wash her hair at the salon to people she randomly runs into.
Through the club, she gets to test out recipes, cook foods she loves to create, and ask folks who come to the dinners to give a monetary donation to the Germantown Community Fridges.
“Cooking has always, always been my favorite thing to do. And so I need outlets. You know, my kids are grown, so I got to cook for someone. So this has just been so great to both continue to cook for the fridges and contribute there, but also have these fun dinner parties and try new things there.”
She just hosted her 12th supper and has raised almost $3,500 for the fridges in the past year. This last supper club had a menu of green peppercorn chicken liver pâté with pickled grapes and crostini, red wine pear & cardamom cake with buttermilk ice cream, and strawberry tiramisuzettes.
For the community fridges, she made turkey ginger meatballs in coconut broth over rice.
Recently, her favorite experiments have been different cracker recipes, like homemade savory Cheezits, to serve at the start of dinner parties while everyone is talking and getting to know each other.
“Giving food is joyful. So it doesn’t feel selfless at all. In some ways, it feels really selfish because I’m doing what I love to do best, and I don’t have to eat it all. Like, you make that much dessert, you do not want to eat it all. It’s got to go somewhere else,” says Lotterman, with a warm smile.
Lotterman finished culinary school years ago, though she has always loved to cook, even working in restaurants over the years. Though she followed a career in medical advertising, cooking was and is her passion.
Her giving spirit goes back to the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when Lotterman felt an urge to start making food for others. After driving by an encampment outside of a city hospital in Boston, she noticed how many people were out there. She said that the area always had encampments, but it had grown exponentially after the pandemic.
She knew she wanted to make soup for everyone, but needed help with the outreach and training. So, she partnered with a local homeless shelter and began making desserts for their meals.
As Lotterman is Jewish, she loves cooking latkes around the holidays, even throwing a big latke party every year. But she also loves baking Christmas cookies with her family, and on her ex-husband’s side of the family, contributing to antipasto dishes for a modified Seven Fishes dinner on Christmas Eve.
When asked what her recipe for a thriving community is, Lotterman said an openness to the differences everyone brings and sharing our talents make a community thrive.
“We all have different things to bring to the party… I have a passion for cooking. Some people are handy… We need all the talents. And that’s what I think community is, right? It’s not ‘we’re all the same’. Obviously, that’s not the answer. It is diversity. It is different skills and different viewpoints and different talents and different things to share.”
To see Lotterman’s cooking and videos of her DoubleDown Supper Club, check out her Instagram account.
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