By Laurie D. Morrissey

Noelle Franey remembers digging clams and fishing for whitebait with her French grandfather, then cooking up their catch for dinner. She remembers picking herbs from "Pepe's" garden on Long Island and learning how to knead dough, fold batter, and cut a pepper just the right way. She also remembers hour-and-a-half-long family meals every night that always included a cheese course. Julia Child and Jacques Pepin were occasional dinner guests.

She didn't realize it at the time, but she was getting the best early training a chef could possibly have. "Pepe" was Pierre Franey, executive chef at New York City's legendary Le Pavillon and co-author of the The New York Times column The 60-Minute Gourmet. The column, developed in collaboration with Craig Claiborne, led to a television series and more than a dozen cookbooks. Noelle's mom is an excellent cook and gardener who made gourmet sandwiches for her daughters' lunchboxes. Aunt Claudia cooks, too. Uncle Jacques is in the wine business.

With food playing such a central role in her family life, it's no surprise that Noelle was drawn to a culinary career. After graduating from Saint Anselm with a B.A. in history, she completed a six-month intensive program at the French Culinary Institute of New York. She is putting her training to use at Belles East, a new restaurant on Long Island—not far from where Pierre Franey entertained his "little French hens" (Noelle and her four sisters) every summer. She has her sights set on working for star chef Jean Georges, whose flagship restaurant is in the Trump Tower. After that, she'd like to work in France for a year or two.

A culinary school certificate or an apprenticeship is a necessity if you want to work in New York, Noelle says. But a bachelor's degree in history?

"It's important to me to have a liberal arts education," she says. "I'm very interested in history, and it's helpful to know about the cultures that regional cooking comes from." To feed her cultural curiosity, Noelle spent a semester in England, where she ate "a lot of bangers and mash" and tended bar at a Cuban restaurant. At Belles East, she cooks New Orleans Cajun style: jambalaya, crawfish cakes, seafood gumbo, and blackened catfish.

Noelle started working in kitchens (other than her mother's and grandfather's) as a teenager. Working for a catering company in Nashua, N.H., she preferred working the grill at weddings to serving the hors d'oeuvres. She worked two semesters at Saint Anselm's Coffee Shop and Pub. No food snob, she ate Eggs Saint A's every morning for two years and loves the Coffee Shop's Italian calzones. But she lived off-campus mainly so she could cook her own dinners and invite friends over for good food, wine, and conversation.

Not surprisingly, Noelle has strong opinions about food. She's a firm believer in using fresh ingredients in season, and preparing food as simply as possible. Pepe taught her to buy whole saffron threads instead of powder, and she would never, ever use preground pepper (although she would use minced garlic from a jar in a pinch). Her "absolute hands-down favorite" thing to make is crepes, because she can cook a batch and have them sugared with fruit in the morning and with sautéed shiitake mushrooms for dinner. And of course, like every good chef, she takes her knives with her everywhere.

A liberal arts education is a main ingredient in the lives of Noelle's twin sisters, too. The recent Saint Anselm grads are headed to nursing school with their history degrees.