When Kozue Morii’s 5-year-old son, Charlie clung to her the first day of kindergarten and wouldn’t let go, she knew she had a problem. “He would not stop crying; he’d hang onto my clothes,” she recalls. “He was so used to being with me at home.” She dug deep into her Japanese roots and began to think of creative ways to “make him smile” by applying her culinary skills from her own childhood.
She decided to make him a bento box lunch, but not just any ordinary bento box. Bento box lunches are single-portion home-packed meals common in Japanese cuisine. They include rice, fish or meat, and pickled or cooked vegetables packed in a box-shaped container.
Instead, Morii whipped up some deep-fried Asian-style meatballs. Topped with mozzarella cheese pieces, a tomato smile and olive eyes, they started to look a lot like one of Charlie’s favorite creatures from PIKMIN, a Japanese Nintendo video game they play together. (Get the recipe here.)

“When I showed him the first lunch I made for him and he saw his favorite PIKMIN character, he looked at me and said “I am so happy;” he didn’t cry at school anymore after that.”
Yellow American cheese, cut into PIKMIN body shapes with nori seaweed eyes and snow pea leaves on a tomato tulip were some other ways she used food to surprise Charlie in his lunch every day.

Baking and Bento Magic

Kozue Morii shows off her bunny curry dish.

A self-taught baker, Morii began selling her goods at college festivals in Kyoto, Japan where she was living. She named her business “tree top forest,” which is the English translation for “Kozue” and began creating such delights as sweet bean buns, a pound cake made with a cookie dough base and her own version of banana bread.
“Japanese people enjoy with their eyes,” Morii says. “They look for what is pretty even in food and like to hear stories about what they are eating. We use the four seasons for inspiration; even candy has meaning with the various shapes representing the seasons and holidays we are celebrating.”
In 2001, she met and married an American and came to the US to live. At first, she had a difficult time finding some of her favorite things such as cocoa cream puffs and Japanese Christmas cake” (a traditional homemade, sponge cake filled with heavy cream and fruit center) at the grocery stores in Durham, NC where she and Mike settled.
Morii reasoned that if she couldn’t purchase these favorites then she’d make them herself, decorating them with various food items such as kiwi, strawberries, blueberries and sometimes adding peanut butter and chocolate ganache to the heavy cream fillings of her homemade cakes.
“When my son Charlie was born,” Morii said, “I had to think of other ways to be creative with my food so that Charlie would get used to eating it. It was different from what other mothers were feeding their children.”

For example, for Charlie’s 3rd birthday Morii created a no-bake sushi cake, an alternative to sugar cakes with layers of frosting like his friends were eating. Made from a Japanese base of sticky rice, she layered the rice cake in lasagna fashion with cooked chicken and mushrooms, a splash of sake and soy sauce and a layer of cooked scrambled eggs that she made with chop sticks. She decorated it like a real birthday cake with fruit and flowers, and Charlie loved it.
Morii’s food artistry has made her a mini celebrity chef in the neighborhood where she lives; parents ask her to teach them how to make the clever lunchtime edibles. “I always have ideas on how to make food fun,” she says. “Fun food makes people happy.”

Save

The post Kozue Morii’s Artful Bento Box Cures Separation Anxiety first appeared on Toque.

“Dinner is not what you do in the evening before something else; dinner is the evening.”__Art Buchwald

Food fit for a king in Saudi Arabia, a big, fat Greek meal in Athens or recipes made from a modern day Julia Child in Columbus, Ohio may be what’s for dinner tonight, tomorrow or as many evenings as you wish–and almost wherever you wish.

Dining in unusual places with strangers is what Eatwith was created to be: a website directory of hosts who cook in their home or a venue of their choice. Users make reservations on the site and choose the venue, menu and host for a particular evening get-together.

With over 60 countries and hundreds of hosts participating, guests can dine while vacationing or traveling for work–anywhere a host has open reservations. Billing itself as “the future of dining,” EatWith has also been compared to ultra successful airbnb, but for meals instead of beds.

Dinner with New Friends

Founded in Tel Aviv in 2012, the young site has expanded into countries such as the US, Japan, Brazil and Italy. According to co-founder Guy Michlin, the desire to build EatWith came to him after a trip to Greece. His family was, by chance, invited into the home of a local family for dinner. Michlin and his family got to enjoy truly authentic Greek food (which he says “bore no resemblance” to that which they’d been served in restaurants) and it was the first time his host family had ever had anyone from Israel around their table. It was a “magical experience” for everyone involved.

An average EatWith dinner in the United States costs about $50. The meal price covers little more than the cost of food, plus a 15% company service charge. Interested hosts, chefs and guests can go to www.eatwith.com and fill out a host application.

The company has a strict vetting process for its host applicants: an EatWith employee will visit the person’s home to test for food quality, presentation, cleanliness, and safety. Guests can also post reviews online, good or bad.

Diners can also peruse the site to make menu and venue choices, reserve a seat, eat like kings, and make new friends.

Save

The post EatWith Makes Meal Sharing a Fun New Pastime first appeared on Toque.

Familiar foods with healthier ingredients and reduced sodium is a positive start to improving kids’ menus. (Photo: Las Canarias & Ostra)

By Laurie Wiegler

In the 1960’s, the healthy part of a “kid’s” meal at a restaurant was the cherry in our Shirley Temples.
And who doesn’t remember slathering cold butter on her crackers as the waiter brought us mini steaks and fries, followed by chocolate pudding with a whipped cream topper. Even dentists gave us a lollipop after a teeth cleaning!
But the world has certainly changed – and not a bite too soon when it comes to curbing America’s child obesity epidemic.

The Fat Fight

According to the Centers for Disease Control, children are mirroring their older role models when it comes to excess weight. For sadly, the obesity rate “has more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents in the past 30 years.”
Further, the link between poverty and higher obesity rates is clearly delineated – largely because food deserts, where lower-income families cannot find fresh fruits and vegetables, remain a striking problem in the U.S.

However, the restaurant industry and schools nationwide are stepping up; and believe it or not, McDonald’s is leading the charge. H.G. Parsa, professor at the Fritz Knoebel School of Hospitality at University of Denver, has been studying trends in healthier kids dining for years. He says it all began under the golden arches.
“McDonald’s is a trendsetter,” he says. “People follow the lead of McDonalds, who was the first to introduce chicken nuggets, and the first to introduce a kids’ menu. Then when they introduced a healthy kids menu (in 2012), others followed.”
It’s a message that has permeated beyond the coasts, where people typically think of slimmer waistlines and trends.
And this is key, because according to the CDC, in 2013 by the time kids got to high school in Texas, for example, the obesity rate was 16 percent.
This is one reason the state is making inroads to reverse its bigger-is-better reputation.

Chicken fingers made with organic chicken and lighter panko breadcrumbs are on the kids’ menu at Las Canarias and Ostra, two acclaimed restaurants in San Antonio.

“We use organic Texas chicken in our chicken fingers,” says San Antonio’s Omni La Mansión del Rio’s Shane Bruns, who’s making them with Asian panko, a crustless-based twist on the western breadcrumb. “It makes it lighter, and the not-so-heavy breading gives a crunchier taste.” Bruns is a former chef, and healthy food advocate, having worked in some of the country’s finest restaurants. He currently serves as the head of F&B at La Mansion del Rio and Mokara Hotel & Spa – which are home to Las Canarias and Ostra, two of the city’s most acclaimed dining establishments.
Bruns, a Colorodan who studied the culinary arts in San Francisco, is a big believer in the farm-to-table concept, which he’s brought with him to Texas. He also is able to explain why, for example, choosing hormone-free organic milk is key to keeping kids from growing too large, too fast.
He also knows not everything can be organic, or perfectly sourced, or low-fat when it comes to serving kids at restaurants.
“We try to balance what we think kids will eat or want to eat, with health-conscious parents wanting their kids to be a little healthier,” he says.
So he’ll whip up a PB&J, but uses honey whole wheat bread, organic peanut butter or almond butter, and a fresh fruit spread sans preservatives or high fructose corn syrup.

School’s Out, Nutrition’s Not

Another passionate promoter of healthier kids’ eating is Riverside, California’s Kirsten Roloson, assistant director of nutrition services for the school district. She’s been instrumental in bringing healthier options to students. “About 65 percent of our produce is grown locally; we are fortunate,” says Roloson.

Children from the aforementioned food deserts are not only being exposed to, but partaking enthusiastically of choices at salad bars at 30 elementary schools and “produce markets” at six lower-income schools.
She talked about a boy who couldn’t believe he got seconds at the salad bar.
“I’m just so happy it’s all-you can eat because now I don’t have to worry about dinner,’” he said. “Sometimes I don’t get dinner at home.”
Roloson is rightly proud of how the district is helping boys like him eat healthier, not just with the salads but now through a meal program that means a healthy breakfast and supper, too.

Guidelines Help Balance Food Choices

Nationwide measures – from the government’s Healthy Schools program to the Kids LiveWell program employed by several dozen restaurants in partnership with the National Restaurant Association – are helping parents improve their kids’ dining choices.
For example, at 140 restaurant brands nationwide – from Denny’s to Boston Market to On the Border Mexican Grill & Cantina – kids are eating healthier thanks to the five-year-old Kids LiveWell program, which promotes low-calorie, nutritionally balanced meals.

Brian Campbell, R&D director for On the Border restaurants, developed the kids’ lower-calorie “build your own mini taco” concept.

It’s a partnership with the National Restaurant Association through the 25-year-old Healthy Dining, which employs dietitians to choose lean proteins, fruits, vegetables, whole grains and low-fat dairy that will become kid-friendly creations.
On the Border’s director of culinary R&D, Brian Campbell, bubbles over when discussing the brand’s under-400-calorie options such as Build Your Own Mini Tacos.
“What kid wouldn’t love being ‘the chef’ and building their own tacos just exactly the way they want them?” he asks. “It’s like having permission to play with your food.”

The post Child Obesity Tackled by Restaurants and Schools first appeared on Toque.

Millions of people are ordering boxed dinners and meal services to the tune of $5 billion in sales and growing. The growth and variety of these services is dizzying but basically it boils down to this: recipes, ingredients, and delivery. All you add is cooking and cleanup.

After that it gets interesting. Competitors looking for their piece of the pie offer trimmings such as menus for special diets, recipes created by celebrity chefs, weekly menus designed to cut food waste, biodegradable packaging, etc. All of them promise an easy time in the kitchen and a meal that’s much more homemade than takeout.

Promising families more time together in the kitchen preparing fresh, healthy and tasty recipes they’d never even dream of making, we decided to take a closer look at this phenomenon. The following companies are not the biggest but they reflect the emerging opportunity (and the challenges) of this potentially huge disruption in how we feed ourselves at home.

Chef’d

California-based, Chef’d, a non-subscription meal service distinguishes itself by offering menus that are developed by known and emerging chefs. The company just signed with Weight Watchers (which just signed with Oprah Winfrey) to create what might be the most powerful food alliance in the weight loss sector.

Last year Weight Watchers partnered with Chef’d founder/CEO Kyle Ransford so that busy consumers could order meal ingredients online, including through their mobile devices. The agreement with Weight Watchers lets shoppers order the Weight Watchers meals through either company’s website (service is by invitation and not yet available at press time).

With more than 100 recipes and 60 partners, from famous celebrity chefs, food authors and bloggers, Chef’d features fresh, pre-portioned ingredients for two or four diners that can be ordered and shipped in one to two days. Each order includes a step-by-step recipe card with visuals and nutritional information, as well as suggestions for beer or wine pairing. It also includes tips for children to take part in cooking. Dishes are available at every skill level. New recipes are added every month in categories that range from gourmet to gluten-free. Prices range from $9 to $17 per serving.

“Our company is designed to use up any perishable food by week’s end, leaving zero food waste.”__Payman Nejati, Handpick/Smart Groceries

Handpick/Smart Groceries

Handpick/Smart Groceries founded by Payman Nejati, in San Francisco is a creative dinner concept that combines the service of grocery shopping with a variety of 5 themed meal choices: Asian, Meat Lovers, Vegetarian, Gluten-Free, or Seafood. Each kit contains 12-15 ingredients along with 3 recipes and cooking instructions packed in a refrigerated box delivered to your door.

“The service,” Nejati says, “which is available through Handpick’s mobile app, aims to bring affordable meals by offering consumers the ability to shop, cook and eat healthy meals while keeping food spending to a minimum.” Targeting a wider audience on a cross-income scale Handpick/Smart Grocery is a more affordable and sustainable way to cook. Recipes are searched and selected by using social media research and market data to identify food trends. Users have access to the company’s searchable food data base with more than 250 million recipes.

The service promises more time outside of the grocery store and fun times inside the kitchen. It’s a money saving way to cook without shopping. Customers can also customize their grocery bundles based on diet and food restrictions.

“Our company is designed to use up any perishable food by week’s end, leaving zero food waste”, Nejati explains. “Moreover, customers can use our mobile app in case they change their minds and want to prepare something else with ingredients left over in their food bundle.”

No subscription necessary, Handpick Smart Groceries are affordable meal kits (starting at about $6.00 per meal) and for every box sold, Handpick will donate a meal to a food bank in the U.S.
www.handpick.com

Model Meals

Ever wonder what high-fashion models eat or if they even eat at all?
After a lifetime of dieting, Danika Brysha, plus size model decided to try a new diet called WHOLE 30.

Think of it as a short-term, 30 day nutritional reset, designed to help you put an end to unhealthy cravings by avoiding sugar, grains and other foods that compromise your immune system.

Danika set out to challenge herself on the diet while blogging about her experiences and sharing recipes of the food she was making and eating. As a result, Model Meals emerged from her tiny kitchen in Manhattan’s West Village, where she turned to friend and mentor, chef Cathy McKnight to gain professional insight on how to create more recipes from scratch using only natural and identifiable ingredients. She began cooking for friends and then friends of friends.

After a move from New York to California, and a dream to create a business where customers can order “clean, non-processed food” so that all people could experience the same positive shift in the clarity and energy she was experiencing, Model Meals flourished.

Located in Los Angeles and Orange counties, seasonal, weekly items are chosen by the customer from an extensive menu and ordered by midnight on Tuesday for a Sunday delivery.

Clear-topped containers with labeled ingredients and cooking instructions for the partially cooked items, arrive in a stylish carrying case packed with dry ice.
Meals often include exotic ingredients such as sesame, coconut, and avocado oils accompanied by tamarind, curry, ginger, and lemongrass giving customers exciting flavor pairings to accompany fish, chicken, and other proteins. The portions are generous and so is the company; add-on menu items such as bone broth, known for its benefits of burning fat and saturating blood cells with nutrition are now being offered and all proceeds are donated to the Max Love Project, helping families fighting childhood cancers and life-threatening conditions.

Model Meal packages can be ordered for one week or for one month’s worth of food. Prices start at $158.00 per week.

The Purple Carrot

For the “flexitarian,” an individual who eats plant based diets with occasional meat, The Purple Carrot, a boxed dinner service founded by Andrew Levitt, CEO, is a mindful dinner choice.

“We’re not preaching veganism at all,” Levitt says. “I look at it as a great opportunity to make a real difference in the world by teaching people how to eat a plant-based diet that is good for health, good for the environment and good for animal welfare.”

This pay as you go, non-subscription based plan allows its customers to order 2 out of 4 vegan dinner options for the week ahead complete with pre-measured ingredients from recipes created and tested by cookbook author and former New York Times columnist, Mark Bittman.

The food is fresh, non-GMO (genetically modified), often organic and is shipped right to your door. Menu items such as caramelized onion crepes with warm spinach and mushroom salad are easy to prepare and can be accompanied by your own choice of protein for any family member who eats meat.
It’s a great way to become acquainted with the uncommon ingredients and flavors of vegan dishes without having to know how to cook them.
The buying plan is not only flexible but reasonable; $68.00 feeds 2 people three times a week and $74.00 feeds 4 people twice a week.
www.thepurplecarrot.com

With only three clicks on your phone, the familiar ring of the age old question “What’s for dinner?” is being answered in a completely different way. The only question left is, when will we be able to order a 5 star, Michelin Award winning Chef delivered in a box – ready to cook dinner?
That day may be nearer than you think.

Save

The post Home Cooking From a Box first appeared on Toque.

Southern families wouldn’t dream of missing their black-eyed peas on January 1. But where did this tradition come from?

Believe it or not, the custom is over 1,500 years old and hails from Jewish tradition when black-eyed peas were eaten on their new year, Rosh Hashanah. Possibly, Sephardic Jews who emigrated to Georgia, brought the custom with them. And during the Civil War, residents of Vicksburg, Miss. thought they’d run out of food but discovered they had some black-eyed peas — so thereafter, the light brown beauties were considered lucky.

Eating the peas symbolizes good fortune, too, because the dried beans – which is what they actually are – look like coins and when they swell it mimics expanding wealth. Most folk consider eating black-eyed peas a sign of humility, and traditionally this was the food of the common man.

Other New Year’s Day food traditions include eating collard greens, which look like money, indicating economic fortune; in Japan, herring roe is consumed for fertility; and in Sweden a variety of fish dishes, black-eyed peas, and at midnight twelve grapes are consumed for luck. The Swedes, like the Norwegians, hide an almond in rice pudding – the one who finds it is guaranteed good luck all year.

The post New Year Food Superstitions and Traditions first appeared on Toque.

COP21 will bring together world leaders, including presidents Obama and Hollande as well as over 140 other heads of state, as delegates meet in plenary sessions and seek to solve climate change quandaries. Some events, particularly the main marches, were shuttered for security reasons.

Keeping temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius is crucial. Where the food industry is concerned, global warming means disrupted food and water supplies, rising prices, starvation, sickness, and death. The time has never been more pressing to eat seasonally, locally, and with sustainability in mind.

The post U.N. Climate Talks: What They Mean for Food first appeared on Toque.

In a recent interview with People magazine, he shared that, “My team wrote all the recipes and menus and made sure it represented the way a chef and a kitchen would have really worked.”

In terms of mentoring Cooper, his “thinking” was to make sure the actor – whose Adam Jones is a head chef from London striving to receive his third Michelin star and set up shop in Paris – moved, directed the kitchen, and dressed a plate correctly. Cooper has also been quoted as saying all the cooking we see in the film he actually did.

Wareing raved that the star, who once worked as a prep chef at an Italian restaurant in his home state of New Jersey, is a natural. “He’d watch me dress a plate and copy it almost identically.”

The post Bradley Cooper “a natural” in Burnt first appeared on Toque.

Executive Chef Richard Papier opened Arana in New Orleans’ Garden District about a year ago. He is holding a bottle of Kai tequila (Day of the Dead), one of their many varieties. (Photo © Kent Hardouin)

By Laurie Wiegler

Over 1,800 people died as a result of Hurricane Katrina. Many more fled the city prior to the floods, including Richard Papier. Ten years later, he finally came back.

“I didn’t know if my home was OK. I was sitting at a computer watching the governor on TV talking about the city,” recalls Richard Papier of New Orleans. Although his home was in the Garden District, far from the Lower 9th Ward, he didn’t realize it had been spared from the floods.

Papier had had to flee, along with thousands of others, days before Hurricane Katrina slammed into Southeastern Louisiana in late August 2005. He left for North Carolina, but not as quickly as he planned. Traffic was snarled. Power lines were down.

“Trying to get out of town was crazy. We had to drive to Baton Rouge just to get out of town… Both sides of the interstate were being used, yet even so, what usually took 45 minutes to an hour took about five hours. We couldn’t find a gas station, either.”

Back to New Orleans

But while it’s clear why a chef would flee New Orleans pre-Katrina, it’s less clear why he’d return.

Yet, like most New Orleanians, there’s really no place like home. Anyone who’s spent time in the Big Easy – beyond the commercialized uber-publicized bead-strewn bacchanalia that is Bourbon Street – knows it’s as warm as its gulf breezes, as uplifting as a Hurricane cocktail at Pat O’Brien’s.

Born and raised just outside NOLA, Papier spent his youth coming into the city to buy records or CDs, and frequent cafes and bars. Seeing his hometown clobbered by Mother Nature and the subsequent collapse of the levees just reinforced his resolve to return to the home he loves.

Anyone who’s spent time in the Big Easy – beyond the commercialized uber-publicized bead-strewn bacchanalia that is Bourbon Street – knows it’s as warm as its gulf breezes, as uplifting as a Hurricane cocktail at Pat O’Brien’s.

For here, he had gotten his start working for some of the city’s top chefs such as Emeril Lagasse, Susan Spicer, and Neal Swidler. Yet, it was his tutelage under the chef he considers a mentor, Guillermo Peters from Mexico City, that ingrained his passion for Yucatan-style cooking.

So now, three years after leaving New Orleans, he’d return. But to what?

An Idea Germinates

The young chef – he was in his thirties at the time – didn’t immediately figure on helping to open a restaurant. Rather, he knocked around in various jobs including food styling for the film industry – specifically, staging food for films like the Thanksgiving scene in “The Butler.”

“Say, everyone’s around this perfectly cooked turkey. But it’s the middle of March and they need a giant 23-pound turkey! [At the most] Walmart would probably have a 21-pounder.”

Executive Chef Richard Papier cooks up carne asada with grilled vegetables. (Photo © Kent Hardouin)

So he says he went out and bought it, but had to shellac it while frozen and cover it in wood varnish and paint on black spots to effect the perfect Norman Rockwellian look the film required. He also worked on “21 Jump Street” with Channing Tatum and Jonah hill, a Stallone-DeNiro comedy, and others.

“If you are a celebrity, people – other than the tourists – won’t bother you here,” Papier says.

Yet as glamorous as all this sounds, it wasn’t quite a fit for his true passion: creating a fabulous Yucatan restaurant in his beloved Garden District.

For those unfamiliar with the city, this is where celebs like Anne Rice, Sandra Bullock and the Archie Manning family have their gorgeous historic homes, many of them mansions, near the St. Charles street car line.

Open for Business

A Mexican restaurant in New Orleans, though? Papier acknowledges that it’s not the first type of cuisine one thinks of in this wash of jambalaya, crawfish and beignets. But the city’s history includes a strong connection to the early Spanish settlers, as well as the French, and it’s just a small leap from tapas to paella.

The bar is a draw for clientele at the taqueria, who can join a special “society” or just try a bevvy of tequilas. (Photo © Kent Hardouin)

So he took the plunge, and a year ago helped open Araña Taqueria y Cantina in the Garden District. Popular dishes include what Papier calls “one of the better Chicken Moles in town.” Also, they make something called a “Queso Fundido” which he explains is sort of a twist on uh, Velveeta in a shell?

“But instead of being liquefied with Velveeta we use Oaxaca cheese and put it on the flat top so it gets doubly crispy and brown, like a burrito shell with cheese,” he says. Then he adds chorizo, and completes this magical “street food.”

A closeup of the Queso Fundido with chorizo that’s been whipped up by Executive Chef Richard Papier. (Photo © Katie Sikora Photography)

“We’re definitely doing Mexican street food,” Papier says. “We’ll also do some fan favorites. People come here know Mexican food from Mexican restaurants, so we’ve started doing fajitas, for example.”

The menu is rounded out with muy delicioso “Baja Fish,” “Yucatan Nachos,” “Pibil” (pulled pork, pickled onion), and mucho, mucho mas. It’s all dizzyingly delicious – and decidedly different.

For the allure of Araña far surpasses the draw of Tex Mex joints peppering the Gulf. Besides food specialties, their standout is a tequila bar that even includes a “society” replete with one’s own “passport” to try one of their dozens of tequilas.

“I think that food is like fashion, it changes very often,” he says. “People are tired of doing the big fine dining [thing] and big show for food, so they like to go someplace small and intimate and try something they’ve never had before.”

The response to the taqueria? It’s been muy bueno!

“We don’t have a huge Mexican community here in New Orleans – ours is mainly Honduran. People who know what real Mexican food is, not Tex Mex, are really happy to see it,” says Papier. “It’s definitely a chef-inspired restaurant, but not at high prices.”

The post 10 Years After Katrina, a Chef Comes Home first appeared on Toque.

Home isn’t the only place where families bond around the kitchen table. So do firefighters at work. Generally, crews assigned to shifts that extend over consecutive days and nights, spend a lot of time together on the job. Eating around the kitchen table, (yes, fire stations have kitchens as well as dormitories) is a tradition that nurtures a family of its own.

Unlike most families at home, however, fire stations do not have one person responsible for the cooking; usually each firefighter rotates cooking for the “family.” And when you are together for extended periods, on call for strenuous duty, sandwiches and leftovers are not enough–you need hearty meals! Some firefighters are already good cooks when they join the department; others learn on the job.

Food for Flight

Some cooks use gourmet recipes for such meals as pasta salads, chilis, potato soup, casseroles and stews; others may cook without, based on their individual experience. The menu must be practical, influenced in part by the unpredictable fire call, which can be sounded at any time. Everything is stopped, the stove is turned off and the firefighters get into gear and rush to their duty. The cooks know that some foods such as rice and pasta may not hold well on the stove for extended periods of time; others such as stews and soups do. This is likely why chili is often associated with firemen: cheap, filling and hard to mess up.

Usually, the cook announces the night before what he plans to cook for the next day. If for some reason a firefighter can’t eat it (i.e. food allergy) he can ask to be counted out. The cook then shops for the food and the cost will be divided by the crew. (The fire department does not assume the cost of meals—the firefighters pay for them.)

Mealtime is informal. The firefighters line up in the kitchen and help themselves from the pots. They may not always remember to compliment the cook but he knows it was a success when he looks around the table at the empty plates. And he breathes a sigh of relief knowing that his job is done. The cook never does the dishes. His duties are finished when dinner is ready.

Breakfast Is Best

According to retired Lt. Richard Silvestro, of the Fairfield, Connecticut, Fire Department, the best meal of all is Sunday breakfast, providing there is no fire call, because, generally, there are no drills and less turmoil. The firefighters enjoy a more leisurely meal which could include bacon and eggs, pancakes or even more gourmet meals, such as eggs Florentine or a Swiss omelet depending on who is doing the cooking that day.

Often breakfast is the most relaxing and happily anticipated meal for fireman, as it’s less likely to be interrupted. (Photo © Guzzle & Nosh/flickr)

In 2006 Hallmark Channel featured a movie For the Love of Grace in which a disillusioned author and a widowed firefighter are brought together by fate. (He spots a fire in her apartment while walking home). She is inspired to write a firehouse cookbook based on his cooking experience in the firehouse.
This recipe for Philadelphia Fuego Chili is from the
For the Love of Grace Gourmet Firehouse Cookbook

The post Firehouse Cooking first appeared on Toque.

Prudhomme, a Louisiana native and youngest of 13 children, grew up around Cajun cooking and often helped his mom in the kitchen. Southern ingredients, flavors, and the kick of French, Spanish and African spices, brought Prudhomme’s culinary talents to the attention of the world. Over the years he has owned several restaurants including K-Pauls Louisiana Kitchen, written many cookbooks, and launched a line of his own blended spices in 1983.

The post Paul Prudhomme, Louisiana Legend, Dies at 75 first appeared on Toque.