SFABBQ

To Oxford Mississippi and BBQ symposium

The Chef Stalker Stalks Her Chef

I did not exactly cheat to get a day-in-the-kitchen with Norman Van Aken, but I will admit to some subterfuge.  And because my husband had to miss the SoFAB (Southern Food & Beverage Museum) event where this was auctioned, I had carte blanch to bid on this however I wanted.   In my defense, while I didn’t give anyone else a chance to win this lot, I did make certain that SoFAB was richly rewarded.

Norman is one of my true culinary heroes.  And while I admit to having more than a few culinary heroes (I am—after all--@thechefstalker) Norman stands out even within this group.  Award winner (Best Chef Southeast by the James Beard Foundation among many other honors), fabulous chef (foie gras French toast), great mentor to the culinary world (Charlie Trotter at the beginning of Chef Trotter’s career, and the entire class of the Miami Culinary Institute nowadays), wonderful writer (not just cookbooks but book-books, his newest being My Key West Kitchen), and one of my best partners in promoting Florida foods and foodways.

And if a day could make me more chef-stalkerish than I already was, our day with Norman did it.   A description of the day in the next post.  

Q & A with Cook

This is obviously a summer-vacation kitchen, so what are your rules?

We use the slow-cooker up here at least 4 times a week.  That allows us to go out kayaking or biking or tramping and yet come back and have a meal ready.  This is not how I cook at home, but at home I have the highest-end appliances and incredible access to fresh foods.  In Cape Breton while much of our salad is grown in our garden, other fresh, high-end ingredients often just aren't available to us.  So we make much simpler dishes with much simpler techniques.  


Do you eat out more here?

We rarely eat out.  There just aren't that many places to have a good dinner.  But our first night here is always at Mira River Cottages. Good Swiss cooking, with a very comfort feel.  And we try to be around to order the lima bean casserole at the greek restaurant in Sydney on Tuesdays: sounds horrible but tastes sublime.  And, of course, we have to eat at Lick-A-Chick because of the name: seriously, their fried chicken is good and their hamburgers are extremely good although they take 30 minutes to cook.   That said, Cape Breton will probably change in the next few years: they are adding several high-end destination golf-courses, and know they will have to add food amenities in order to support these destination efforts.  

What is the most elegant meal you've served here?

We took Lobster Bootcamp 101 at the Culinary Institute of Canada this year and then came back home the next night and cooked mussels and lobster.  It was fabulous.  But it still didn't beat the lobster dinners we have at the beach with our neighbors during lobster season.  Some of our neighbors are lobstermen and we get the lobsters straight off the boat and then they just plop them into ocean water and cook them over coals until perfectly done.  Can't be replicated at home.  




What was your worst meal?

Several.  In fact, although I am a fairly good cook, most people up here think I am a pretty horrid cook.  The foods are just a little different than we're used to, our appliances are not at our home level, and we were not adjusted to having people come over early (5:30 pm) and eat RIGHT THEN without appetizers (not done here, eh?).  For about a year we were the house no one wanted to come to. Also, we have tried to do charcoal grilling, but after a day in our dark-old-farmhouse-damp cellar charcoal just gives up and won't light.  We don't do it here.  And then, there was even a day when all of our corkscrews quit working.  Absolutely hell.  And once you have the bad reputation as a hostess, you somehow get nervous, screw up, and make the bad expectations come through.  


If you could add one thing to this kitchen, what would it be?

Our 30 raspberry bushes would come back.  Our brussels sprouts would be edible before we leave in Autumn.   There would be no insects to eat our garden greens.  I would swap the electric cooktop for induction and get a downdraft vent.  I would be able to add a dishwasher so my whole day wasn't spent washing dishes.  We would always have wonderful, drinkable water.  And I wish the bats would return.    

Cape Breton Appliances

To open this kitchen we moved the refrigerator to the pantry (entered through the opening to the right of the original refrigerator), built the ovens into a wall, and shifted the cooktop to the new island.  This made sense because there was now enough counterspace for all food preparation, all foods (both room temp, canned  and chilled) were stored together (in the pantry) and the kitchen proper held all the kitchen tools.  The new space became way more chef-friendly, and guest-friendly, than the previous kitchen.  And who cares what the refrigerator looks like if it's in a pantry?  It only matters in the primary kitchen area.

Right now this cottage has no dishwasher. In a cottage that is rarely used, with (evilly bad) well-water, a dishwasher that doesn't break down is a pipe dream. It's counterintuitive, but ice-makers or dishwashers that are rarely used break more frequently that those that are used daily or weekly.  And those that have to deal with bad water will break down even more frequently.  

But while a dishwasher isn't a good addition to this kitchen at this time, it will be a great addition once the cottage is more regularly used.  Dishwashers use much less water than hand-washing, and for a cottage with well water (meaning potentially scarce water resources) a dishwasher could be a well-and-water saver.  So the designer pre-planned for a potential swap out of  a cabinet for a dishwasher:  the cabinets to the right and left of the sink base are both 24" wide with separate side-panels: this means a dishwasher can be easily installed whenever the owners want to do this. For people who have to create their dream-kitchens in stages, this type of planning can  mean the difference between an easy future modification or one that becomes   prohibitively expensive.

Always, always, think ahead.  And always dream about the kitchen you eventually want, not just what you can initially afford.

Cape Breton Christmas Kitchen

Renovation with neon apple green walls 

Neon apple green with red-anodize stained cabinets.  Very Christmas-y but not something that you commonly see. Not something that you’d want to commonly see.  Even the owners of this kitchen—who love this color combination—admit they would never do anything like this in their primary residence where timelessness and understatement rule.

But this is a cottage.  A cottage only visited for a few weeks a year.  A cottage that can therefore be a lot bolder than the house you live in day-to-day. 

They fell in love with the property 6 years ago because it had the serenity of a summer camp, albeit one that has swapped adults for children, down-filled beds for bunks, and fine wine and food for grub.  But with the original colors of the kitchen (first with plaid wallpaper—eek!—and then with many trials of neutrals) the space felt depressing rather than serene.  The neon-apple color lifted the spirits and the energy, and yet—when lights were dimmed—it fell back into that zen feel that was sometimes needed.  

I swear if you were there you'd see what we mean.