The Lady Pamela

The Lady Pamela is a most impressive yacht. I don’t have any idea how many feet she is or what she draws (I should have asked), but I was told that the water depth at the Sandestin Marina is tricky for her.

When I was a kid, the first time I lived in Destin, I used to crew with my dad in small sailboat races (small boats and small races!), so I have this sense of myself as a sailor, even though it’s been a long time. A very long time. And we were prepared!

While the Lady Pamela is a big boat, even a very big boat, she’s not a house, and the food and equipment we loaded into the galley were a little daunting at first.

But we got it sorted out and set up, and worked the way we work together, smoothly, knowing the food, each other’s strengths and rhythms. We set the food out on time.

Bar Menu

Savory Provencal Palmiers and Cheddar Olives

Buffet Menu

Crab Cakes, Smoked Salmon Tea Sandwiches and Natchez Pies

Sliders, Pulled Pork Quesadillas, You Ain't in Alabama Anymore Sushi

Fennel Smoked Tomato Tartlets and Shrimp & Grits

Dessert Menu

Key Lime Tartlets, Passion Fruit Tartlets

And Kim's World Famous Dulce de Leche Brownies

Beverages

Our Secret Sparkling White Sangria

The day turned out to be too windy for the host and hostess to feel comfortable leaving the dock with so many guests aboard, but it was that sort of fine October day we all look forward to so much here.

We had a fabulous time, especially our fly deck bartender who danced with all the ladies!

The Lady Pamela is beautiful and we can’t wait to cook aboard her again.

Imagination & Curiosity

Last weekend we had a chance to cook out of town and decided to take advantage to stay an extra night and rest our weary bones. We were on St. George Island, in a rented house on the bay. We all took snacks and booze. I took magazines and cookbooks.

People who work with food for a living never really stop working. You have to eat anyway – though in my case, people might say “Really, Kim, less could be more.” But no matter what else is happening in a cook’s life, her culinary curiosity is on, 24/7.

This was my view, my muse, if you will.  

I started Sunday morning, almost with the rise of the sun, and with coffee.

I continued, late into the morning, with a Bloody Mary. It looks like work, pages ripped out of magazines, notes made in little journals, but it’s a kind of hunger that real food doesn’t satisfy. It has to do with creative sparks, concepts, nudges from pictures or words that later turn into suspicions of thoughts, then genuine ideas.

In an interview by Nicole Alpert, published in Food Arts, July/Aug 2010, Nicole asks Julia Child a question:

NA: "Do you ever get tired of cooking?"
JC: "No, never. Food is a boundless resource for the imagination. And the real joy is in the doing. There’s always so much to experiment with, so many ways to explore one’s passions in food.”

 

Michael Batterberry, who along with his wife Ariane, founded both Food & Wine, and Food Arts, and who died in July, 2010, was eulogized in the New York Times on July 29, 2010. Among the many details of his life and exploits, Margalit Fox had this to say about him: “In his work, and in his many appearances on television and the radio, he made clear that his interest lay not merely in food per se, but in food as a mirror of the collective national psyche.”

Some of us regard food as the source of our nourishment, others as the magic carpet of our imagination; the very lucky ones see it as both. What I know, is that it can completely occupy me on a sunny Sunday on St. George Island.

Chores

If you’ve got to drive 279.7 miles to pick up a relative in a distant airport, it might as well be your much-loved sister in New Orleans. That was my task on Monday, September 5th. I started out barreling west, directly into the very blowy path of Tropical Storm Lee. That and the hour-long traffic jam just east of the Mobile tunnel had me arriving at Louis Armstrong International Airport ninety minutes late to pick up my sister, Susan.

We’d had plans to dine at August. We’d had lunch there before, a couple of years ago, a lunch so lovely that we couldn’t find our way afterward to the airport to send her back home, so she had to reschedule her flight and spend the night. I’d told a friend that dinner at August was the plan, and she’s such a good friend that she suggested we dine instead at Emeril’s, where she could absolutely hook us up. Three days notice was all she needed.

But miss August, Chef John Besh, amazing August?

“I know,” she said, pounding on the table “have appetizers at August then your entrée and dessert at Emeril’s!”

There was nothing not to like about this plan; it was bold, self-indulgent and culinarily luxurious, everything I love about New Orleans.

Unfortunately, Lee and  
Mobile traffic dashed our
hopes for making the August reservation,
which left us to drink
bubbly (delivered to
our room gratis as
part of the French
Quarter Fling Package)
from our balcony
overlooking Bourbon
Street.
We had no trouble at
all making our 9:30 p.m.
reservation at Emeril’s.

Susan was quick to tell the sommelier that we couldn’t possibly have the $240.00 bottle of whatever it was he suggested that might work well with both the steak and the duck, but she wasn’t nearly as steadfast when it came to the $130.00 bottle of Pinot Noir.

Thai BBQ Lamb Ribs with Crunchy Asian Pear Slaw, Toasted Peanuts, and Sesame 

“Cowboy” Ribeye with Crisp Vidalia Onion Rings, Fresh Watercress, Roasted Garlic–Marrow Butter and Sauce Carmouche

Sorghum Smoked Duck Breast with “Dirty” Fregola Sarda, Red Cabbage Choucroute and Truffle Pate

No, we hadn’t done our homework and we weren’t prepared. We’d neither Googled nor Binged, so we opted to share the chocolate soufflé and completely missed out on the Emeril’s Banana Cream Pie with Graham Cracker Crust, Caramel Sauce and Chocolate Shavings. Photo is a little worse for wear, a result of our having tucked into the souffle with more haste than thought.

 Followed by a smooth double espresso.

I think it might have been the
bubbly and our focus on the
food, but we discovered

– at the very end of our meal – 
that we had too much    
wine left to … leave.   
Was it too tacky to ask? 
Could there possibly be …
to-go cups?

“It’s New Orleans, ladies, of course we have to-go cups!”

We snapped a pic of our cups next to Emeril’s Sansevierias while waiting for our taxi.



Lee had left cool air in his wake, and the view from the balcony the next morning was peaceful and clean. But the chores weren’t over and it turned out that there was no way we could leave New Orleans without first making our way down to the river to Café du Monde.














It still didn’t end there. I’d made the mistake of telling my sister about the amazing oysters at the Half Shell Oyster House in downtown Gulfport, Mississippi, so that’s where she forced me to stop for lunch. The first dozen oysters were Charbroiled, with creole seasonings, parmesan and garlic butter, and the second, a mix of Rockefeller, Bienville, Orleans and Charbroiled.

We shared their Cinnamon Roll Bread Pudding for dessert but I already felt put upon by all my chores and refused to snap a pic.

Arriving back in Santa Rosa Beach, I was able to drop Susan with Mom and Dad and my work was done. Burp.

Butter

It will kill you. Yes, I know. But when it’s got to be butter, it’s truly got to be butter.

 Two buttery recipes.

Radis Roses with Butter and Fleur de Sel

The first time I tasted French radis roses was the day I moved to Paris, in March of 2003. I knew that "radis roses" simply meant pink radishes, but there’s a little something romantic in the word rose that elevated the radish from a mere root vegetable. They were served to me with a little cross cut in the root end for the golden Normandy butter, and flaky Fleur de Sel salt. Oh my.






Sole Meunière

Ok, theoretically, the star of the dish is the Dover sole, a lovely, pricey, delicate, firm-fleshed fish, found in the cold waters of northern Europe. And I’m sure there are lots of ways to cook it that don’t involve butter (well, surely there must be!), but there’s something symbiotic, synergistic and deliciously synful about butter and this fish, that explains why it’s such a classic.


Buy your fish from a reputable fishmonger. Otherwise, chances are excellent you’ve paid for flounder.

Salt and pepper your beauty on both sides. Heat a sauté pan over medium high heat then drop in a good knob of butter. A couple of tablespoons or so. When the butter foam subsides, gently lay in the fish, starting from the position closest to you, and moving away, so as not to splatter yourself with hot butter. Quickly brown the fish on both sides but don’t burn the butter.


Remove the fish to the serving plate (carefully) and add more butter to your pan. Watch it go brown. Have a lemon ready to squeeze into the browning butter at the precise moment before brown goes to black. It will sizzle like mad so best not to cook this naked.

Remove the pan from the heat and toss in a tablespoon or so of parsley. Pour the whole of it over your fish and add a little more parsley over the top. You might want to have cooked something to go with it, like parsleyed potatoes or green beans. Or you might have wanted just fish. And wine, of course.

Bon appétit!

Photographs courtesy of Jeff McDowell.

Paradise at the Top of a Mountain

I shouldn’t have doubted our intrepid little rented Peugeot, but I’ve never driven to lunch in first gear before. Our destination was Domaine de Capelongue, a magnificent hotel and restaurant in the Relais & Chateaux group, that’s situated at the very tippy-top of a small town in the Luberon region of Provence called Bonnieux.  The chef, Edouard Loubet, is Michelin-starred and well published (his books are available Amazon.com, though not all are translated into English).

We were early for our 12:30 lunch reservation so we took a few pictures of the whimsical and beguiling entrance.

We were seated on the terrace with flutes of champagne, a simple crudité with anchoiade (a classic Provencal dip of anchovies, garlic and olive oil) and wispy black truffle crackers, perched in narrowly carved indentations in a fat, black stone. The view over the grounds and the valley distracted us briefly from the food and drink but not long enough for me to get a picture of either! The landscape remained in spite of my gluttony and soothed us into quiet contemplation.



The cravings of my stomach over reason persisted through the amuse-bouche of a wedge of the local cavaillon melon in a light sauce of wine scented with very classy balsamic vinegar. Which is why I don’t have a picture of that either!

Happily my dining companions reminded me of my responsibilities so I was able to capture the first course before having completely consumed it. I’d had a hard time understanding this course when explained to me by our server because I just didn’t understand sunflower as food. I get the seeds of course, but sunflower?

It turns out that sunflower heart has a texture very similar to that of an artichoke and is amazing. It was served in a wild celery vinaigrette with sautéed girolle mushrooms and slices upon slices of black truffle. Once the plates had been set in front of us, our server circled the table, shaving off more of the truffle until we felt cocooned by the heady aroma. We repeatedly caught the same scent throughout our meal as other diners were regaled with their own perfumed clouds.

[The baseball sized truffles for this course were kept in a pedestalled cake plate under a clear glass dome on a nearby table. Something came over me as our first course plates were being removed and I asked the very young server if they weren’t afraid somebody would steal them. He appeared shocked only giggled his answer.]

The second course of smoked rack of lamb was presented to us for inspection from a heavy black cauldron opened dramatically at the table. Smoke of fresh Herbes de Provence from their gardens billowed around us and we sat back in quiet and confident anticipation. We were each served three of the chops in an impossibly delicate jus along with a cauldron of potato gratin reported to be from Chef Loubet’s grandmother’s repertoire. We were told to stir it thoroughly as to incorporate the wild leeks and herbs from the bottom of the little enameled casserole.

We didn’t feel the dessert quite lived up to the standards set by the rest of the meal though a smoky cappuccino cream served in a glass domed bowl sustained the smoke and perfume theme of the meal. The mignardises (tiny bite-sized sweets) made up for whatever the dessert had been lacking and I was able to get a picture before we inhaled them.

Coffee was served to us in the at a table for four in the garden. We chose this spot in the sun, under a statue of a wrought iron man contemplating the valley below. The coffee arrived with little shot glasses of chocolate ganache with small kabobs of local fraises des bois (teeny and intensely flavored strawberries) and raspberries.

 

We might have sat there forever as serenely as the wrought iron figure above us had we not remembered suddenly our 5:00 p.m. deadline at Europecar back in Aix-en-Provence.

The next morning I walked up the twisty Aix street to the marketplace for lunchtime provisions, and came across these beauties offered for sale at a vegetable stand. I sat for a moment with a coffee and contemplated the adventure that is travel and the joys of discovery.

The Garden of Eden

It’s still spring. It will still be spring when the sweaty nights begin to feel like summer but, for the time being, it’s spring and feels like spring. Since we work outside most of the time, that’s a pretty important distinction.

There were bugs, yes, noseeums and mosquitoes but the family had thoughtfully provided an array of bug killing options so they didn’t trouble us much.






It was perfectly still when we arrived; our chit-chat, laughter and lifting-grunting the only sounds. Well, there were birds. And we were alone: before the wedding coordinators, the florists, the musicians, the photographers, the caricature artist… the guests.

It picked up, the musicians began to strum and sing, the florists prettied up the place, the wedding coordinator organized, guests trickled in, fires were lit, steak and grouper sizzled on the grill, the sun set, liquor was poured and the party was on.

But for a short time, this little corner of paradise had been all our own.

Thanks to H&M Tent and Party Rentals, Christina Gillon, Fete Events, Nouveau Flowers

No, you can't eat it!

Fresh Gulf Shrimp

Every once in a while we get 
to do something completely 
different, something more like
play than work.

The Classic Canape'

And such was the case when we were invited by Southern Bride Magazine to provide food props for a photo shoot last month at Seaside.

I asked a bunch of questions and they said blue was good. I agreed, of course, blue's good, but it doesn't appear naturally in food very often and - according to people who should know - it isn't a color that does much to excite the palate.

Well, it turned out that it didn't all have to be blue and that was a relief.

And at the end they asked if they could eat the food. "Good grief, no! It's for pretty, not tummies.

Well, ok, you can eat the blueberry trifle!










Some photos provided courtesty of Jeff McDowell.