As many of you know I have lived a good portion of my life in Key West. Though a fishing paradise, my primary interaction with fish is to cook them. I like to think I do it with reverence. When I learned that it was considered ill mannered if not…

When I was a boy we lived in a sylvan place in Northern Illinois. A town not far from our was named “Half Day”. It was given that name in that it took half of a day to ride there from Chicago by horseback. Our town was Diamond Lake due…

We were in France on vacation some years ago. The people of Cannes were sauntering down the boulevard, many in bright scarves on an Easter Sunday afternoon … holding or walking their tiny dogs. The dogs almost seem like accessories to a wardrobe…like a scarf or a jaunty chapeau. Not…

My first knowledge of a book with this stately title was spoken about in reverentially hushed tones by the chefs cooking around me. I had not yet become aware that cookbooks could change my life. I had cooked for 6 or 7 years before that thunderbolt struck my noggin. I…

It seems to me that the greatest flavors can only be obtained by the most menial jobs. When we start off cooking in the restaurant life … we ‘grunt cooks’ are given those jobs. In time we move up to other chores that are less monotonous from those on the…

Scientist and author Alan Lightman was born and grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. His father Richard Lightman was a movie theater owner. His mother Jeanne Garretson was a dance teacher and Braille typist. Early on, Lightman demonstrated an interest in both the sciences and the arts. A few years ago…

Hearing that word many of us might be thinking of our high school days and dishes like “macaroni wiggle” and “Neptune’s surprise”, prepared by women in nurses smocks, hair nets and white stockings with lines running down the back. Women of Slavic, Polish and Scandinavian ancestry, at least in my…

You have probably seen the images on television. I hope you have not had to live them. It is of a magnitude of heartbreak that humans should not have to bear. If there is one thing we’d need more than food or water at the end and that is human…

Mr. Sam Sifton is the newly appointed cultural and lifestyle editor of the New York Times. Precedent to that he was the founding editor of New York Times Cooking. He also is a friend. We met over a mutual love of food. He has been kind to include me in…

If you could read my words versus listening to them you would see that there is a comma between home and cooking. That is what have been doing. We have been home … cooking. And also ordering from our neighborhood restaurants that are valiantly struggling to keep the fires burning,…

Wise sentences for these times are needed more than ever. One of the sentences I’m enjoying is, “You are not stuck at home, you are safe at home”. Of course some aren’t. Some are in hospitals. Some are buried. For the majority of us we are home as we’ve been…

If you like the idea of memorable flavors … flavors with musical reverb, resonance and improved texture, let me suggest that spice rubs should be in your repertoire. I think most people associate spice rubs with grilling and barbecue. And that is a great place to focus on because they…

We returned to Key West to do a ‘pop up dinner’ recently. The venue is pretty spectacular. It takes me back to my first years in Key West when the shrimp boats were still anchored in the ‘Land’s End Marina’ behind what became The Half Shell Raw Bar. This time…

The best cinematic illustration of the culinary opportunities that lie in shrimp was in the movie “Forest Gump” starring the beloved Tom Hanks as the lead actor.  The legion list of ways one could prepare shrimp occurs when the character ‘Bubba’ goes on and on and on about all the…

Those of you who listen to my show know I’m from the Midwest originally.  The north country above Chicago.  In the colder months a dish like fondue would not have been uncommon nor unwelcome while sitting around watching football while the snow flies outside. Several years back I was asked…