2 Thin Chefs

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De Laurentiis and Goin cook for different audiences, but both use butter, oil, cheese and chocolate with profligacy. A signature De Laurentiis dish is a homey chicken Tetrazzini made with heavy cream and whole milk; Goin's book offers a tarte au fromage that contains a pound of ricotta inside an all-butter puff pastry, topped with not only lemon cream but also blueberry compote. There's something nearly carnal about all this full-fat food issuing from the kitchens of these gorgeous, tiny women. On a 2004 episode of Everyday Italian, De Laurentiis made two rich stuffed pastas as well as cheese sticks "to sop up all the sauce ... Who doesn't love stuffed shells?" she asked in her sensual TV voice. "Gooey, aromatic cheese wrapped in a luxurious, firm pasta shell." Are we still talking about food here?

Like De Laurentiis, Goin is a slight, lovely woman, although for foodies and fellow chefs, her most alluring feature may be her hands, which are muscular, perdurable, earthy--the hands of a woman who can butcher a side of pig as easily as she can pluck the leaves from a gossamer sprig of thyme. Recently Vogue called her "the culinary world's answer to Audrey Hepburn." I would say she's more Katharine Hepburn, but the point is that both chefs project a sense that you can have your cake and hide it too. But how? Do they not eat their own food?

De Laurentiis' fans pose that question to her constantly. At a recent Q&A with 400 people in San Jose, Calif., the first questioner asked, "How do you stay so slender?" Everyone laughed. "How many of you want to [ask] that same question?" De Laurentiis wondered. At least 50 hands went up.

"Most of it is portion control," she answered. "Yes, I eat my own food. I do. But I don't eat a lot of it. And as you see in watching Everyday Italian, I take those little salad plates--you know, appetizer-sized plates--and that's the amount of food I eat ... And I eat multiple meals throughout the day. And I do work out--a novelty, I know. And it's also--my mother's tiny--it's also partly genetics."

That's not quite the full story. De Laurentiis exercises three days a week with Joseph Rivera, a Taekwondo black belt whose other clients have included a Playboy cover model. She also regularly walks along the beach near her Pacific Palisades, Calif., home for as long as two hours, which she admits can get "really freakin' boring."

("Why don't you run?" I ask. "It would be much more efficient."

"Um, I have larger breasts than some," she says with a smile that hovers between Hollywood pride and knowing self-deprecation. "And running is not good for them.")