Not too long after I became serious about cooking … and the passion gripped me tightly .. I’ve twisted and wrestled around with food composition ideas while still in the requisite lunacy of dreams. Sometimes something useful comes out of the nocturnal pageant. Yet often it is a mishmash, so…
Posts
A Word On Food: Candy Bars
Our mother was proud of us as she watched us like little ducks following in some ancient rite of passage as we went to our first swimming lessons at Happy Hollow on Diamond Lake in the late days of May or early June. Truth was that the lake was still…
St Jude Children’s Research Hospital Fund Raiser Big Success!
Pop-up dinner party guests raise $105,000 for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital By KARI BARNETT South Florida Sun Sentinel Nov 21, 2019 | 10:08 AM Chef Jason Smith and sommelier Fareida Rajkumar listen to chef Norman Van Aken during the St. Jude Pop Up Dinner Party presented by The Morgan…
Coconut Grove Arts Festival 2020
COMMUNITY LEADERS JOIN FORCES TO SUPPORT THE ARTS Two legends in South Florida’s restaurant scene have joined forces to announce a new partnership that will showcase the culinary talents of three nationally known celebrity chefs at the 57th edition of the Coconut Grove Arts Festival next February. Monty Trainer, president…
A Word On Food; Jamison Farm
I mostly talk about food here. And I will be doing that with this show. But it is impossible to speak about food without remembering the farms that make it available to us. The poet, philosopher and farmer Wendell Berry put it so well when he wrote, “Eating is an…
Robbin Haas. In Memoriam
“Robbin Haas has passed away”. Those were the words that woke me yesterday. They woke me with sadness. Especially for his family. But also for the South Florida food and restaurant community that Robbin joined us in and helped propel forward ever since his arrival here. When I met Robbin…
A Word On Food: Saffron
When I was becoming more of a chef than I line cook I was beginning to take on the tasks of writing my own menus. I was living in Key West at that juncture of my life. Key West was a great place to buy certain plants…. but unlike a…
BROTHS
The world of cookery has its roots. So many times we look up above the place where a bush or a tree stands seen and obviously morphing. But without the nurturing world below… that provides succor to that organism we enjoy… this would not occur. I save the bones from…
A Word On Food: Duck
A man was in the restaurant for lunch just the other day and enjoyed his meal very much, but wanted to know why no restaurants serve duck anymore. Well I had to fight back a smile because just the very night before we had cooked a charity fund raising dinner…
A Word On Food: Goat
We got to our dentist and the normal teeth cleaning session. The sweet and amusing, Cuban lady that attends to us asked me right after she finished if I wanted a ‘Cuban coffee’…. I said, “Sure. A cortadito por favore”. She tipped back and laughed heartily. She is like that….
A Word On Food: Gas Station Grub
The intoxicating smell of fried chicken could be detected from the moment our car tires ran over that hose that rings a bell when you pull in to a gas station just about anywhere. Once fueled I walked into pay … but by that time I’d been seduced and needed…
A Word On Food: Burnt Ends
We got out of the car and paid the meter. A blues guitar in the form and sweaty passion of Tab Benoit seethed out of the porch speakers of the Taurus Beer and Whiskey House. The song was ‘Cherry Tree Blues’. The lyrics are … memorable. If music were weather…
A Word On Food: The Story of Otto
About a year before my great friend and chosen brother Charlie Trotter passed on he began saving me his weekend collection of the New York Times Book Reviews. Charlie loved books … and he knew I did as well. It was one of the most common topics of our shared…
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…
A Word On Food: Nana’s Hands
I came home from the store. I had bought a chicken that had been cooked on a rotisserie and was still nearly molten hot. I put away our other groceries and automatically set up a little area by the kitchen sink, which looks out over our yard. I wanted to…
A Word On Food; P.B. & J’s
True confession. When I was going to grade school in Diamond Lake, Illinois, I ate a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich every, single, day in our school lunchroom. By 7th grade it had become more of an act of completion. Some kids wanted perfect attendance. My goal was a perfect…