Norman Van Aken is widely known as the father of New World Cuisine. The Midwestern chef found his voice in a Key West kitchen and went on to bring the flavors and sensibilities of the Caribbean to diners and cooks all over America. Now he’s focused on cementing his legacy…
Posts
A Word On Food: Larousse Gastronomique
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…
A Word On Food: The Meat Pickers
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…
A Word On Food: Slow Foods
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…
A Word On Food: Cafeteria Foods
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…
A Word On Food: Last Suppers
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…
A Word On Food: Comfort Foods
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…
Home, Cooking
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,…
A Word On Food: How To Cook These Days
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…
TIME TRAVELING
My cell phone rang. It was our daughter-in-law Lourdes. It was about 8:15 at night. She was driving in Key West with our granddaughter Audrey. They don’t usually call this late. It was quite late for Audrey as she is just 7 ½ years old and would need to be…
A Word On Food: Spice Rubs
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…
An Interview with Norman Van Aken
A kind friend of mine came across this interview I did a few years ago when the cookbook, “My Key West Kitchen” had come out. I wrote that book with our son Justin. Justin was born in Key West in 1980 and resides there now with his loving wife, Lourdes…
The Times We Are In.
A week ago the world was almost normal. Not so anymore. “Ball of Confusion” is the song on the turntable now. It is streaming in our blood too. People are actually considering a world without neighborhood restaurants in our collective future. I say that is impossible. The carnage will be…
A Word On Food: Horseradish
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…
A Word On Food: Shrimp
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…
A Word On Food: Fondues
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…