Specialty Of The House: ROWDY HALL, EAST HAMPTON

"As a cook, you don't necessarily take the job home with you," said Ed Lightcap. "As a chef, you take the job home with you. You think about it when you're going home, you think about it when you're driving to work." You even think about it when you're being interviewed, he added, explaining that his mind was still in the kitchen as we talked.

The chef at Rowdy Hall in East Hampton for the past year and a half, Mr. Lightcap got his start, as so many chefs do, as a dishwasher. Raised in Levittown, he was "traveling around to see what was going on" and got a job in a restaurant in Key West. Dishwashing led to cooking and two years later he moved on to Yellowstone National Park, where he worked as a cook at a 700-room hotel in the park. "It was high-volume institutional cooking," he said, but the location was unbeatable.

After Yellowstone, he and his girlfriend, Grace, a Montauk native whom he later married, returned to Long Island. He cooked at various restaurants in Montauk for about four years and eventually decided he wanted more formal training, which he got at the Culinary Institute of America. "You reach a certain point in restaurants where the chef isn't there to teach you," he said. After graduating, Mr. Lightcap decided to return to Montauk, where he had a job lined up at Dave Marcley's new restaurant, Dave's Grill.

"The day I graduated I drove down here and was in the kitchen that night," Mr. Lightcap recalled. He worked at Dave's Grill for five years before moving on to other Montauk restaurants. First it was the Below the Royal Atlantic restaurant, which earned a "very good" in The New York Times while he was operating it. Then he was the chef at Gosman's Topside for a year.

"Then, it was becoming such a seasonal thing. My family was starting. I really needed year-round work." He got a job as a cook at Nick and Toni's, where he worked for three years before being offered the chef's position at Rowdy Hall, which is owned by the same people who own Nick and Toni's. "After three years of being a cook, you need some progression," Mr. Lightcap said. "Rowdy Hall and Nick and Toni's are totally different ball games." Still, the standards at each restaurant are similar. "Everything we do here, it has to be done well. We have real food, everything is made from scratch."

He likes the style of Rowdy Hall's cuisine. "I like to produce food that isn't challenging to the customer - meat loaf, mashed potatoes, familiar food prepared in a creative way," he said. "There are no real surprises, nothing too off the wall. . . . We take the classical preparation and recipe and add a little twist."

Despite a jam-packed schedule, Mr. Lightcap finds time to coach soccer and run Montauk Youth's T-ball program for children in kindergarten through second grade. Both give him a chance to spend more time with his sons, Dustin, 10, Evan, 8, and Terence, 7.

Roasted Butternut Squash And Apple Soup

Ingredients:

3 butternut squash, split lengthwise, seeds removed, skin left on

2 large onions, sliced

4 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, seeded, and cut in quarters

3 large potatoes, peeled and cut in quarters

2 or 3 quarts chicken or vegetable stock

2 cups heavy cream

2 Tbsp. ground cinnamon

1 Tbsp. ground nutmeg

Vegetable oil

Sour cream

Salt

Ground black pepper

Method:

Place cleaned squash on a baking sheet, skin side down. Sprinkle with vegetable oil and season with salt, pepper, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Bake in a 275-degree oven until the squash flesh is mushy. Remove from oven and, when cool enough, scoop out the cooked squash and discard the skin.

In a large, heavy-bottom soup pot sweat sliced onions in vegetable oil until translucent. Add apples, cook five more minutes, and add the potatoes and cooked butternut squash. Add enough stock to cover the ingredients.

Bring to a simmer and allow to cook until potatoes are soft. Remove from heat, cool slightly, and puree until smooth.

When ready to serve, put soup back in the pot, bring to a simmer, add two cups of heavy cream and return to simmer. Add salt and pepper to taste.

A dollop of sour cream flavored with ground cinnamon is a nice garnish for this dish.

Serves about 12.