This is our favorite snack finger food in the world. You can carry them anywhere, eat them on the run, stop at a park bench, or sit back and munch them in mid flight to some hastily planned destination. They are one of the healthiest snacks you can make for yourself and your family.
I had a close friend who was Cajun and he once took me to a small village in southern Louisiana where he grew up, not too far from the town of St. Martinville, famous for the statue of Evangeline, the High Priestess of myth and poetic legend among the Cajun and a powerful symbol of the Acadian diaspora. (The real person’s name was Emmeline Labiche, and the truth is better than Romeo and Juliet, but that’s a story for the next cookbook.) I had written about the Cajun people in a novel so I was familiar with their culture, food and society. One reason for my passion for Cajun food is that my mother’s side of the family has roots in the French Canadian community of Acadia and thus are the remnants of the Acadian people, who were cast out of their homes and lands by the English army in 1755 to wander unwanted along the Eastern seaboard of America for decades. They finally found a home in the bayous of Louisiana, so it’s completely understandable that traditionally the Cajuns are a people who wanted to be left in peace.
If you are a lover of classic American chowders, like Boston clam chowder, you will love this rich sumptuous Manhattan style.
The Cajun people of Louisiana have a long, proud and emotionally powerful history and tradition… and they are a strong part of my Mother’s side of the family. She was French-Canadian, and was born within the bloodline of the Acadian people.
For us, this the most savory of all our chowders… combining caramelized salmon with the fresh corn cob kernels. The smoky burnt bits of the salmon are crazy good with the blistered cherry tomatoes and the intensely fruity and umami flavors of the mushrooms… all in a creamy sherry and tarragon sauce.
In our wild savory kitchen, we are always searching for new flavor combos, creating dishes which explode with umami tastes that are unique. This simple little feast is a mashup of different cuisines, like worlds colliding in your mouth.
Black bean sauce is very deep in our memory, a passionately held love affair from all the fabulous meals we enjoyed in the Chinatowns of Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. They were seafood dishes filled with authenticity and gravitas, and packed with Umami. This little feast brings those extraordinary dishes into our own wild savory kitchen.
We love the delicate finessful flavor of halibut, but there was always something slightly missing in its depth of flavor. Without the powerful umami flavors of tuna or swordfish, the rich exquisite oil-rich salmon, or the dense flavorful flakes of snapper, sea bass or mahi mahi, halibut seems to need some umami richness. Usually in restaurants, halibut is drowned in creams or butter to avoid its tendency to dry out. This little feast solves all those problems… with Italian prosciutto!
Over the years, Rebekah and I have probably made this easy evocative feast more than any other. One reason for that is that when I go out fishing on the ocean, I bring back light flaky fish which are perfect for this meal. Whether I catch Vermillion Red Rockfish (two filets are pictured on the black plate pic), or Ling Cod, Red Snapper, Sea Bass, or Halibut, or we buy them at the market, they all are very elegant, and in this meal, exquisite.
We were recently interviewed as a guest on The Storied Recipe and our episode went live today!! Here’s what the host, Becky Hadeed, had to say about the episode and the highlights of our interview… “John and Rebekah are both Emmy-award winning screenwriters. They are parents to 4 children, doting grandparents, and absolutely passionate home cooks. In fact, I think they’re the most passionate home cooks I’ve ever met. John and Rebekah believe feasting together is the path to “creating family”. While Rebekah uses inspiration and solid know-how to use up leftovers in exciting, delicious ways, John takes a meticulously researched approach to his cooking. They combined their gifts, styles, and experiences to self-publish a cookbook titled Our Wild Savory Kitchen. Today, they’re sharing John’s jambalaya recipe, born one magical evening in the Bayou, perfected in long conversations with famed chef Paul Prudhomme, and now enjoyed together by Paul, Rebekah, and their children as a way of celebrating life and, as they say, “creating family”. Highlights •Home cooking is “making family” •How food brought John and Rebekah together and how they catered their own wedding •Memories from a garden •Cooking and the creative/writing process •John and Rebekah’s different approaches to cooking •A magical night in the Bayou followed by magical lunches with famed chef, Paul Prudhomme •A history lesson on Cajuns and Cajun cooking •John and Rebekah’s approach to sourcing the very best and most authentic ingredients You can listen to it several ways: From The Storied Recipe Website: In Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-028-time-in-kitchen-what-we-will-remember-always/id1482179289?i=1000478287502 Or simply search for The Storied Recipe in any podcast player Thanks for listening! John and Rebekah
For a long time, we have been passionate lovers of the fusion cuisine that spreads out from the South of India, across the Malaysian Islands, and is greatly influenced by nearby Thailand and Vietnam. Combining the coconut cream, saffron and warm aromatic spices of Southern India, the lemongrass, Kaffir lime leaves, tomatoes and vermicelli of Malaysia and Thailand, to the pork sausage and umami fish sauce of Vietnam, this amazing feast is one to cherish for your own wild savory kitchen.
We love wild Sockeye salmon for its intense flavors and deep orange-red color. Happily, with this Yakitori feast, Sockeye filets are just the right size for pineapple planks and the wonderful full flavor stands up well to the intense umami flavors of the Yakitori sauce. And the bright crisp tropical flavor of the pineapple is a perfect contrasting flavor sensation to the salmon and the intense Japanese sauce, causing a delicious tension in the taste. With the pineapple salsa piled on top, it’s a really delightful feast.
This unique and gorgeous dish is one of the top fish meals we have ever had in our lives. That covers a lot of ground and many years of cooking and a life lived fishing on the ocean. The story begins with a restaurant in Hanoi that is legendary. It serves only one dish… this dish… Cha Ca La Vong, which is Turmeric Fish with Dill.
Beginning in the late 1800s, the commercial fishing fleet out of San Francisco’s North Beach and Fisherman’s Wharf was dominated by Italian fisherman, usually from the port city of Genoa. But some boats were manned by a mix of fisherman from many other nations. Working side by side with the Italians were Portuguese from Lisbon, Mexicans from Baja, Spaniards from Barcelona, Frenchmen from Marseille, Chinese fisherman who had been in the city for many years fishing for shrimp, and there were even some highly skilled long range seafarers from Basque. Cioppino became so popular among the families in the bay area that it began to be served as street food for laborers along the wharf and by 1906, after the devastating earthquake, it was served in several restaurants in town. It is a classic San Francisco feast and always eaten with the wildly popular local crusty sourdough bread.
For this classic Americana feast, we use chunks of Blue Crab or our local Dungeness Crab, juicy red bell peppers, Dijon or Cajun mustard, capers, Italian parsley, and aromatic herbs and spices with a Cajun twist. These babies are Umami Bomb! And perfect for all family gatherings, weekend events and holidays. This is one of our most popular dishes. And everyone who loves crab cakes eventually gets to the big question… which are the best ones in America? For us, it comes down to two candidates… Commander’s Palace in New Orleans… and some dive we stumbled into along the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. They are very different but both were so incredible that the memory of them is indelible.
Paella is the signature meal of Spain, a national pride, and yet almost no one fully agrees on what it is or how is should be made. It is a controversial meal for many reasons… starting with the simple fact that it is a huge shallow pan loaded down with complex and expensive ingredients which completely vary from home to home, town to town, restaurant to restaurant, and from region to region in Spain. Paella in Madrid is very different from that in Seville. But at the same time, like Bouillabaisse from France, Paella is a classic meal so identified with the soul of the country that it naturally comes laden with emotion, memory, tradition, pride, and a sensory longing for the authenticity of the time and place of one’s upbringing.
Along the coasts of Spain and Morocco, when home cooks put a big bowl of seafood on the table for a family feast, this is one of their classics. This sauce is based on our own preserved Meyer lemons along with the natural juices of the seafood, the smoky chorizo, virgin olive oil, garlic, fresh herbs like Italian parsley and cilantro, garden fresh tomatoes and the magic of saffron. Serve with crusty bread to soak up all this umami goodness and with harissa on the side. Sometimes we steam the mussels we gather on the coastal tidal pools north of Santa Cruz in two copper Cataplana pots, which are made in Portugal. They are wonderful devices… hand hammered copper pots by Portuguese artisans. They have a tin lining inside and are held together like a clam shell with metal hinges, and they sit directly on the flame. The history of the Cataplana is obscure, which is excellent news for me because, as a dramatist, I can tell a good story about the legendary Cataplana that feels true to the time and place it was first recorded… which is the Algarve region of Portugal… and best of all, no one knows if I made it all up or not.
The impression most Americans have of Mexican cuisine comes from the innumerable restaurants that serve the ubiquitous food often referred to as Tex/Mex, popularized from along the borders of Texas and Arizona… hearty and filling fast food like refried beans, tacos, burritos, and the melted cheese-smothering enchiladas. But a long ways from this food in both style and miles are regions in Mexico where the cuisine is light and elegant, haunting and sophisticated, with vivid fresh flavors in salsas with aromatic herbs and spices. There is still a focus on chilies, but there are at least fifteen to choose from, all subtly different from each other, from the fresh chilies like habaneros, serranos, and poblanos and the game changing smoked and dried jalapeños called Chipotle, to the aromatic and haunting dried chiles like ancho (dried poblano), guajillo and negro. There are restaurants in Mexico City that rival those in LA or New York, but for me, the epicenter of this cuisine is the region of Yucatan and the port city of Veracruz. I find this cuisine to be exuberant and startling, like a new found love.
This feast comes from the heart of the North Country pines… northern Minnesota, the place where I did my real growing up, from boy to man, hunting and fishing in the wilds. This iconic feast, legendary among the native peoples who live there, is the essence of wildness. When you prepare the ingredients, and then feast on it, you can almost hear the cry of the loons out on the lake, in the dusk… and again at first light, as you ease your boat into the lily pads, casting for large mouth bass and northern pike. It is so deep in my heart that every scrap of my DNA cries out to be there again, one day.