Recently my work was written about on a site named, “Tasting Table”. The author didn’t interview me. We have come to a place in time when this is more the case than ever. I’m not hard to locate online so that is perplexing to me. As you will see and…
Category: Food Culture
Food, Fishing, & Florida
Join The New York Times’ food editor Sam Sifton and chef Norman Van Aken in a rollicking exchange of ideas about South Florida’s culinary bounty and the environmental issues implicit in how we harvest and serve our food. Registration See Invitation…
A Conversation: Janet Dulin Jones and Norman Van Aken
“The joy of the food is evident in a taped moment he shows me on a video camera monitor. A fish merchant brought in a 100 lb. crab. Norman’s enthusiastic and lively staff are gathered in the kitchen as the huge crab is held up by a fish merchant. …
Cooking Kahala Fish on a Blackstone Griddle
Hi All! I’m looking forward to you watching me and my friend Chef Nate Lippy of Blackstone Griddles cook some Kahala Fish with Brazilian inspirations! Let me know what you would like us to cook next time he and I are doing one of these videos!…
The Fishmonger & The Sea
I had the great fortune to meet a fishmonger named Kelly Probst a few years ago. He had started a fishing business and it was clear that he was going about it in a way that spoke very clearly to what I look for in any raw product. If you…
Coconut Grove Arts Festival via ‘The New Times’
Note: Thanks to The New Times and to Chris Malone for this article. Coconut Grove Arts Festival Recruits Emily Estefan and Norman Van Aken for This Year’s Programming CHRIS MALONE | FEBRUARY 6, 2020 | 8:00AM For decades, Coconut Grove has been a community rooted in camaraderie. The waterfront neighborhood is the oldest inhabited…
Looking For the Pope
It all began with a conversation in an espresso house in New Orleans with my two great friends Charlie Trotter and Emeril Lagasse. They said, “You must go see “The Pope” with us”. I knew they didn’t mean the Holy Pontiff in Rome .. they meant Chef Frédy Girardet in…
Pan Con Podcast, An Excerpt
A few weeks ago I sat down for an interview for a podcast named “Pan Con Podcast”. The person that the show stars is Chef Mike Beltran of Ariete Restaurant, (as well as a few other fine places in town). I first came to know Michael when he came to…
Heading East … and Back
THE ASIAN CONNECTION AND ITS REVERBERATIONS One of the most intriguing elements in this evolving cuisine has come from the cooking of the people who came to the New World from Asia and of how the products of the New World have caused culinary reverberations throughout their countries. There are…
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…
“Who Let the Cool Chefs Write Cookbooks”. TASTE by Andrew Friedman
To my great surprise I was offered the chance to write a cookbook in 1987. A vice-president for Ballantine Books, (a division of Random House) by the name of Risa Kessler came down to Key West for a getaway from Manhattan where she lived and worked. Fate (or providence) shined…
Books & Books, A Florida Treasure
I am very happy to read this New York Times article about Mitchell Kaplan and his beautiful bookstores, “Books & Books”. I have admired them from the small original one in Coral Gables to the others from Miami Beach to Key West and beyond. I’m also very happy that on…
Barbecue Season Is Here!
In Chicago in 1956 one of the welders at Weber Brothers Metal Works named George Stephen, made a grill by cutting a metal buoy in half. The Weber folks were already making grills. They’d begun to do that in 1952. But George Stephen made his with said buoy and a…