Chef Débè-Ann Lange-Chen’s culinary journey
Published:Thursday | November 23, 2023 | 12:08 AMShanel Lemmie/Staff Reporter
For over 35 years Chef Débè-Ann Lange-Chen has been sharing her culinary creations with her Jamaican friends, fans and family. Originally from the western end of the twin islands Trinidad & Tobago, Lange-Chen relocated to Jamaica over three decades ago with her now husband to start a life. Though her affection for food has followed her, she says this love affair started much earlier in life.
“I used to cook and sell food from I was 12. I used to do meat pies and sausage rolls for my teachers’ weddings, as appetizers,” she explained.
“What happened is, my cookery teacher recognised that I had a talent for the pastry; and when they would ask her to do it for the wedding and she didn’t have time, she would ask them to ask me. My father was very nervous about it and would say, ‘Lawd God, she going to spoil the people them food,’and he used to panic. But, she was confident that I could do it and little by little it became a thing. So, if you were getting married, your sausage rolls and meat pies were going to be done by Débè. And, it came to the point that I was doing like 400 a weekend. Every weekend after I do my homework, I would be making my meat pies and putting them in the freezer, then on Saturday I would be baking from like 6 o’clock in the morning.”
Building on this natural talent, Lange-Chen says she never imagined spending her life any other way, until her parents’ wishes entered the chat. “I wanted to do it professionally and my parents said no way. I wanted to go to Le Cordon Bleu and they said no way. One wanted a doctor, one wanted a lawyer, and I ended up being an engineer,” she told Food.
Lange-Chen, embodying the epitome of childhood obedience, gave up her culinary ambitions and attended the University of Miami, where she studied electrical engineering, computer science, and business management and organisation.
Though she spent years in school honing the analytical side of her brain, Lange-Chen has never been very far from the kitchen.
“When I came here to Jamaica, I didn’t decide (to start catering), someone decided for me. I had done dinner parties at home and friends of mine said, ‘Bwoy, you should be catering because your food is so good, I’d love to have you do something at my home for me’.”
And so, Cutting Edge Gourmet by Débè-Ann Lange-Chen was born.
While always pouring her principal effort into that endeavour, Lange-Chen also works as a development consultant for several brands.
She explained, “I develop recipes for companies, and developing recipes takes a lot of math; it’s a lot of chemistry. Cooking isn’t just about putting a pot on the fire.”
When asked whether she would ever create her own brick and mortar, with disgust she exclaimed, “I would never own my own restaurant because I hate the repetitiveness of the food. I like the excitement of the events, it’s always something different to look forward to every time. A different venue, a different occasion, different food, different challenges. If you have the same challenge every day, where’s the fun in that?”
“Cooking food, for me, is pleasure. When I spend time in a lab developing a recipe, that’s a challenge, it’s me against everything else to get it right. To get the shelf life what it’s supposed to be, to get the costing to what it supposed to be, and stuff like that. But when I cater for events, where I know the bottom line, I get to prepare whatever I want.”