I didn’t grow up watching Julia Child on television the way many chefs 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 Girl Scout leader and part of the ‘arts and crafts’ of…
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First Scents
Three scents wake me. Not wake me initially. An alarm did that. These are the wakings of an appetite as they are touched by the brewing coffee, the emanations of ripening mangoes…but the third scent is more subtle than the first two. It comes from the tomato my knife and…
Father’s Day, Rolling Along
The small, neat houses of Little Haiti, the colors of pastel tropical ice creams, A visitor on a 2-wheeled conveyance rolls along. It is Sunday. Father’s Day. Morning. A Triple Blessing. An elderly man in black, stern clothing, ancient Preacher’s cap, graying Fu Manchu marches past the ‘Little Haiti Hardware…
Key West with Justin
It is the ‘Monday morning after’ now. The Cuban coffee swirls in my blood as the Ocean gently rocks the shore of ‘The Southernmost Point’ I passed not an hour ago. We arrived in Key West Saturday to make the final preparations for our “battle” at The Hog’s Breath Saloon….
Pig Paint
One of my best selling dishes of all time is called “The Rhum and Pepper Painted Grouper”. I started making that reduction I named a “paint” in 1985. Essentially a “paint” is a reduction of liquid along with spices, aromatics etc. as well as some sugar of some sort that…
South Beach Wine & Food Festival…This Year It’s Different
As I wake get coffee and look out of our Midtown Condo across Biscayne Bay I ponder the mass of humanity on the Island of Miami Beach in the throes of the 11th Annual South Beach Wine & Food Celebration. I think Emeril has distilled it’s essence about best when…
Valentine’s Feast
Every holiday that we celebrate in America has very specific menus or menu items. We can move through the calendar from the “Hoppin’ John” of New Year’s Day itself to Easter Lamb and Easter Eggs; the heroic barbecues and picnics of the Fourth of July to the Cuban Nochebuena of…
Southern Trios…And Quartets
I was reading from a collection of Eudora Welty’s eternally beautiful, ballad-like short stories after coffee and the normal morning chores. I got hungry. The fridge held a small cargo of odds and ends as it so often does from the recipe testing we do before I go to work….
Trinities
The power of trinity is one that weds the human experience with the divine. In Christian symbolism the use of signs and emblems are used to teach and present religious truths. Words often fail where symbolism succeeds. Three Circles, connected by bands forming an equilateral triangle, symbolize the Holy Trinity….
Christmas Song
Yesterday as we rode in our car coming home from a mad dash to the mall for gifts… a version of this song came on the radio. After listening to it again for the uncountable time, I asked my wife this rhetorical question. “If you were asked your all-time favorite…
Steal Like An Artist, (I stole that)
This morning I got an email from our Chef-de-Cuisine, Jeffrey Brana. Last night I had sent him a ‘sketch’ of a dish I conjured up. ‘A Mexican Reunion’ Crispy Plantain Crusted Chicken Cutlet Oozy Slow Poached Hen Egg Fatty Chorizo Crumble Sharp/Sweet Rouille-like sauce w Pimenton Jeffrey is a very…
Thanksgiving and the Bean Kit
It was a woman. She was the one who gave me the gift. She was not gentle. But she was giving. And so it is on Thanksgiving that I want to pay respects to Betty Howard. She lived in Key West and was the Head, (and only) Breakfast Cook at…
Capote
Last night I watched the award winning movie, “Capote” for a while, trying to rally to watch the football game. I’d seen it before but Philip Seymour Hoffman’s portrayal of the diminutive author is addictive. I reminisced on how the man for whom the movie was centered around and I…
Truck Stop Nirvana
The big rig was somewhere to the west of me lumbering through the distance, marking its effort with the calisthenic, rhythmic moans of its job to haul its freight to some appointed dock elsewhere in America. The pitch of its sound starting with the crunching, metal thudding wrench of the…
Homecoming Part Two
The dawn broke not long after I woke at The Hampton Inn just north of Mundelein, Illinois, our hometown. I looked out over the cloudy vista of dampened fields outside the hotel window. We showered and headed out. The day had come for the re-dedication of Mundelein High. It was…
Our Home Town Celebration
We flew up to our old home town of Mundelein, Illinois yesterday for a weekend of family and friends. The place we went to high school at is celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the school’s opening…NOT my 50th reunion…the school’s. So there will be celebrants coming from across decades to…