Food Culture

Why I Wrote ‘My Florida Kitchen’

WHY I WROTE, ‘MY FLORIDA KITCHEN’ I wrote my sixth cookbook, “My Florida Kitchen” because I felt it was time for an update on our rapidly changing state. The last cookbook written on the whole of Florida was an excellent book written by Caroline Stuart and Jeanne Voltz titled “The Florida Cookbook”….

Food Culture

Why I Wrote ‘My Florida Kitchen’

Turntable

“Remember When”, Alan Jackson

There are certain songs that make you fall in love with your life partner all over again… If you are very lucky. And this song is certainly one of ‘those songs’ that will release that emotion. It is his patience and strength that I find in his voice that makes ‘Remember When’…

Press

Interview, D’Artagnan, “Center Of The Plate”

Courtesy: Center of the Plate

At D’Artagnan we proudly work with chefs across the country, providing them with quality ingredients to express their creativity in the kitchen. Some we have decades-long relationships with, and others are new to the family. The chef we interviewed for this blog post falls in the former camp. Chef Norman Van Aken is…

Memories and Musings

Meeting Julia Child, (The First Time)

I didn’t grow up watching Julia Child on television the way many people of my generation did. My television hours were not inclined toward any aspects of cooking, though we did cook in our home. My mother was a both a restaurant worker and also (for a time) a Girl Scout leader….

Press

Edward Lee’s “Buttermilk Graffiti” in the L.A. Times; A Review by Amy Scattergood

Courtesy: LA Times

To be candid I love Edward Lee. I came to know him after he came to know me. That happens when there is a generational divide sometimes. But something drew us together and in places like Atlanta, Napa Valley, Orlando, New York City and Miami we have had the chance to experience…

Memories and Musings

My Kitchen Meditations: “On Knives”

My Kitchen Meditations ‘On Knives’ I went to bed after a long day of cutting. I thought back on the previous 24 hours as I hulled and then evenly sliced Florida strawberries in the ascending morning light using a Japanese knife its creator might have envisioned for other tasks. My knives are an…

Press

AD LIB In “The Miami New Times”

Courtesy: The Miami New Times

“One would be hard-pressed these days to find a restaurant that can’t, in some way, be called fusion. In Miami alone, Richard Hales smashes together Korean food and burger-shack fare at Sakaya Kitchen, while Phuc Yea’s Cesar Zapata cooks Viet-Cajun cuisine and has done so since long before it was featured in…

A Word on Food™Series

A Word On Food: Won Tons

Listen on WLRN

Who does not love won tons? These ethereal purse like morsels of food first appeared in the Pearl River Delta port of Guangzhou during the Tang Dynasty around 618-907 A.D. Then they followed the Cantonese diaspora, drifting east to Hong Kong. If you are not yet familiar, but do know more about...

Daddy’s Coffee

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When I was a young child our home was a solid, two story, wooden structure perched on a sloping, gentle hill near a lake in Northern Illinois. We had all four seasons and we had them in full measure in that geography. Equal to them was my father. His nature and strength...

Morels

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Spring is the prime time of year when the wild mushrooms known as morels are shooting up in one more example of Mother Nature’s urging, beckoning, tantalizing and delivering magic. And though we are now past that month there are dried versions that can still be very nice. When the cold mantle...

Chopped Steak

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When I was about six years of age our paternal grandmother we grandkids all called, “Gra” took me to a fancy restaurant in the city of Chicago. I was excited by the menu. I ordered the Sirloin Steak Haché. I was absolutely crestfallen when what arrived looked like a damn hamburger …....

Spring Rolls

Listen on WLRN

We opened a cooking school in the Wynwood Arts part of Miami. Many people assume it is a school for professional types that are seeking a degree in cuisine. Nope. That is not what sparked me into seeking a way to do this. I have never been a student at a culinary...

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@NormanVanAken

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#fusion #newworldcuisine

“If the map of the world were a tablecloth, and I could choose a place at that table, I would sit at the Southern tip of Florida, at the nexus of North America and the Caribbean. My plate would touch Cuba, the Florida Keys, the Yucatan, the West Indies, the Bahamas, and South America. And, if time could tell, I would listen to the tales of voyagers, discoverers, traders and mystics who, in searching for “the Indies”, the Great Kahn and the riches of China, discovered something much more valuable and enduring, A New World of Culinary Treasures. Almost instantly, the cuisines of the Old World began to merge with foods of the new one; This evolutionary and inexorable fusion lies at the heart of New World Cuisine.”

— Norman Van Aken, July, 1993