Clockwise from left: The shih family in Taiwan in 1937, with Joan in front; Joan shih weds Kenneth Carducci in Rochester, n.Y., in 1960; Joan, far left, her daughter suzanne, Joan’s mother, Joan’s daughter elizabeth, and Joan’s father in Maryland in 1966.


science career on hold to stay at home with her daughters, opened a cooking school eventually located in her base- ment. She ran the Chinese Cookery as a one-woman show: teaching, managing the finances and working late to clean up, because students often hung around to talk into the night. Her example gave her daughters the confidence to open their own businesses in optometry and software, Elizabeth said. When Carducci’s husband, who


died in 1988, encouraged Elizabeth to accept a full scholarship to the Univer- sity of Maryland instead of going to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carducci said she would pay the MIT tuition out of her cooking school earn- ings. And she did. “That’s again the ‘don’t tell me it


can’t be done,’ ” Suzanne said. With her children at college, Joan


returned to full-time work at the Na- tional Institutes of Health before retiring in 2000 to devote herself to teaching.


She offered eight levels of instruction, limiting class size to about half-dozen students. Stephen Kerpelman, now a stu- dent at the Culinary Institute of America, said Carducci’s classes were “very intri- cate, compared to other courses.” “She was a pretty exacting lady,” said


Abraham Przygoda. “She watched over you to make sure you did it right.” His friend David Erickson, a Crofton engi- neer, agreed. “If it wasn’t good, it would have to be redone,” he said. But Przygoda, a Vienna software en-


gineer, remembered Carducci for being as playful and fun as she was precise. She took him and other students danc- ing at the Hollywood Ballroom in Silver Spring, organized Chinese New Year banquets and teased him about enjoy- ing the social aspects of her classes as much as the cooking instruction. When Carducci put her mind to writ-


ing a cookbook, she decided to publish it herself, which allowed her to organize it as a very close reflection of her cooking


school classes. “The Art of the Chinese Cookery” came out in 2001 and sold several thousand copies. Joan also mar- keted it to libraries around the country, so it would reach people who couldn’t af- ford it. “Indomitable,” Elizabeth said, was


one way people described her moth- er, who made red, a Chinese symbol of good luck, her signature color. When the 76-year-old Joan died unexpectedly on Jan. 23 of what her daughters think was a heart attack or stroke, they chose to bury her in a red dress. The cherry tree remains in the front


yard of Carducci’s home, a living remind- er of her spirit that is complicating her daughters’ decisions about the house. But Elizabeth has potted a cut-


ting from the tree. And it seems to be flourishing.


Becky Krystal is a member of the Food and Travel staffs. She can be reached at krystalr@washpost.com.


december 26, 2010 | The WashingTon PosT Magazine 31


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