Suffolk chef's desserts are so good, she disqualified herself from a contest

By Theresa Curry

Correspondent

As most of us gather up a few essentials for our Memorial Day picnics, consider the pressure on the guests at Clay Ellen's yearly barbecue, where a very competitive crowd submits side dishes and desserts for review, and prizes are awarded for the best in each category. The annual event, which has a run of more than 25 years, also includes volleyball, horseshoes, croquet, even a karaoke competition.

Ellen himself provides the pork barbecue, tended for hours in his Norfolk backyard. Neighbor Star Stoneman usually wins the dessert award for her fruit-topped miniature cheesecakes. Aunt Vortelle Pinkard used to win every year with her extra-cheesy macaroni and cheese, but she disqualified herself after winning the "side dish" prize many years in a row. In her late 80s now, and with failing sight, she still brings the macaroni and cheese, but doesn't enter it into the competition. "She uses a full two blocks of cheese," said Barbara Gaskins, Clay Ellen's sister and this week's Everyday Chef.

Gaskins, who coordinates, plans and cooks for the event, has disqualified herself from the competition, too. "In my opinion, this is a good thing, because she would win all the prizes," said Gaskins' co-worker Linda Waters.

Waters said Gaskins is known for her cooking, and shares baked goods, candy and other delicacies with friends and family.

Baking is Gaskins' hobby, taught her by Pinkard. "My Aunt Vortelle taught me to bake, and my mother - Nancy Ellen - taught me to fish," Gaskins recalled. Both childhood lessons took: Gaskins is a champion bassmaster in the women's tour, and she has a brand new Triton bass boat to prove it, a prize from the February tournament.

Aunt Vortelle loved desserts and had specialties like old-fashioned pound cake, a cake made from crushed vanilla wafers, coconut and pecans ("Her family was from Georgia and they put pecans in everything," Gaskins said); and what she called a "pig cake," pretty much the only dish that used a boxed cake mix. At Christmas she went all out, with homemade Christmas cookies and all kinds of candy.

Although Gaskins says she spent several years as a teenager grabbing meals on the run, her holiday memories inspired her when she was raising her son Braxton, now 33. She recalled her love of the holiday preparations going on in Aunt Vortelle's kitchen and made dozens of homemade peanut butter cups, chocolate-covered salted peanuts, caramels, and pretzels dipped in white chocolate. "No hard candies," she said. "I

like to concentrate on things with chocolate at Christmastime."

When Gaskins isn't beating eggs or fishing for bass, you can find her at the Portsmouth Marine Terminal operating a crane. She's a longshoreman who learned her trade as a Hustler driver moving cargo on the Norfolk side of the tunnel. When she moved to Suffolk, she realized she'd be better off working at the other side, and became a crane operator, one of two women with that job at the Portsmouth terminal.

She makes a good team with her husband, John Kleinknecht. "I make desserts, but he literally cooks every day," she said. Kleinknecht's specialty is vegetables, and lately he has been flavoring them with chicken broth instead of fat. "He'll make blackened tuna or marinate chicken," she said.

The move to Suffolk allowed the couple to be in a more rural setting, one where Gaskins can put a cake in the oven in her kitchen and step out the door to pursue her other passion: "I can literally fish every day," she said.

Theresa Curry, flavor@pilotonline.com