Blanton’s is a complex, smooth bourbon with strong vanilla and caramel aromas, smoky wood and cocoa notes, a smooth, honeyed palate, and rich black tea on the finish, with spicebox notes both on the nose and throughout the palate.

Most of us that have been conscious of our environmental decisions for many years can cite multiple “aha” moments, and three of my most significant own recent “aha” moments have come via my association with Chef’s Collaborative and relate to sustainable seafood, from the Gulf Coast Shrimp industry to the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fishermen’s Shareholders Alliance and the importance of supporting good players in bad industries, to the plight of the Menhaden.

Most recently I’ve experienced an “aha” moment surrounding the concept of “trash fish,” and yet again the inspiration is Chef’s Collaborative. I first heard the term used a little bit differently – “garbage fish” many years back and the cook who used the term to refer to some monkfish (since over-fished and now recovering) got dressed down hard for referring to food as garbage. Yet, the term persists as many fish species are not regarded as marketable (even lobster, a long, long time ago was mostly used to feed the labor) even though they are packed with nutrition not to mention delicious. Personally I’d love to see humanity’s history and experience with the ocean inform us to the ends that we begin to value everything the ocean can give us, and not just a few “hot” species. Over the years we’ve seen once-abundant U.S. cod stocks plummet, and many other once-disregarded species such as Patagonian toothfish a.k.a. Chilean sea bass, redfish, monkfish, and skate rise to popularity and then suffer overfishing.

Fortunately, improved marine surveillance technology combined with the expertise and vigilance of non-governmental organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, Ocean Conservancy, Monterrey Bay Aquarium, and Shedd Aquarium, these species of fish were able to be saved before they suffered the ultimate fate, and improved monitoring together with cooperative fishing communities has seen their fisheries become more sustainable, though the work is just beginning.

We can learn from our experience with lobster in particular, but also oysters, that what was once shunned by tastemakers can one day become the ultimate delicacy when a new tastemaker is making the calls. What can we learn from this? That one cook’s trash is another cook’s treasure. When we can look at all species of fish as desirable and marketable, we open up many possibilities for enjoyment, and also spread our growing appetite for fish over far more species, taking pressure off those that face special challenges, whether it’s a long reproductive cycle, slow growth rate, or overfishing due to consumer popularity.

Lobster, erstwhile “trash fish” fit only for the poor

May 20, with sponsors Monterrey Bay Aquarium and Shedd Aquarium, we are hosting a special “Trash Fish” dinner as a benefit for Chef’s Collaborative. I have been humbled by the group of chefs working to make this dinner happen:

Bruce Sherman, North Pond
Paul Kahan, Blackbird, Avec, Publican, Big Star
Erling Wu Bower, Avec
Sarah Stegner, Prairie Grass Cafe
George Bumbaris, Prairie Grass Cafe
Patrick Sheerin, Trenchermen
Michael Sheerin, Trenchermen
Paul Virant, Vie, Perennial Virant
Laura Piper, Trattoria No. 10
Paul Fehribach, Big Jones

Tickets can be purchased at Chef’s Collaborative’s web site here, with all revenues going to benefit Chef’s Collaborative’s work to increase environmental awareness in our industry. It’s a goal of Chef’s Collaborative to make sustainability second nature to chefs everywhere, and our oceans are as precious a resource as we have. Working together, we will set out seven courses of lesser-known, underutilized species you may never have seen on a menu before, much less tasted. We’ll show you that not only are these fish not trash, but they are delicious in their own right and worthy of discovery. Just as lobster was once seen as garbage to feed the help and is now enjoyed as one of the oceans’ greatest delights, you will see that fish such as bonita, triggerfish, speckled sea trout, and even Asian carp and smelt can sing like a siren.

If we are successful, this dinner will be the beginning of the end of the term “trash fish” and begin a new chapter in our relationship with the seas, in which we view every gift of the ocean for what they are – delicious and nutritious food upon which civilization can stand anew, in which species such as bluefin tuna, red snapper, and yellowtail can take a break from runaway demand as we learn to cook and enjoy our abundant stocks of fish such as the ones we are preparing for dinner.

Take a look again at that roster of chefs. I’m humbled that these proven badasses are eager to share this story with you, but I’m not surprised. These chefs care and time and again, they’ve put their precious time and resources on the line to make a difference. Please join us as we plot a new course for the future of seafood.

This one is especially dear to our hearts, because while they bring their own refreshing spins to such classic dishes as hoppin’ john and she crab soup, you’ll read about historic dishes of Charleston as they bring new life to lost classics like chewy and crunchy groundnut cake, salsify oysters, and the 19th-century standby, syllabub. We thought this was a great fit for our cooking here at Big Jones because their approach gives proper nod to history and heritage, while never being shy to break new ground, always in a way that seems perfectly natural. In this dinner, you’ll get to sample some of their New Charleston style in kumquat sparklers and collard green sandwiches, while also experiencing some ancient Charleston gastronomy in their adaptations of dishes such as peanut and oyster stew and syllabub, a dish I’ve been dying to serve at Big Jones for years.

Matt Lee and Ted Lee’s cookbooks are especially useful for home cooks because their experience is almost entirely cooking from home – they’re not restaurant people and that’s a good thing, because they understand the peculiar challenges of home cooking. After attending their first Cookbook Boot Camp, I can attest that their recipes are some of the most carefully written and tested, edited and retested, recipes out there. You can count on their recipes working. More important, you can count on their recipes being delicious.

You can purchase their cookbook on Amazon, or even better, check out their catalog including their other cookbooks and special Southern delectables from their Boiled Peanut Catalog at mattandtedlee.com. We also will have books for sale at the dinner, and Matt and Ted will be signing. You can purchase a book during the cocktail reception or bring your copy in for signing.

I’ve written many times about The Southern Foodways Alliance, and could not be more excited to be working with Matt and Ted on a benefit for one of my absolute favorite organizations. 50% of your ticket price goes to The Southern Foodways Alliance to continue their work to document, study, and celebrate the diverse food cultures of the changing American South. As they state in their mission statement in which we join, “We set a common table where black and white, rich and poor — all who gather — may consider our history and our future in a spirit of reconciliation.”

I grew up in a family which still cooked at home and came together at the dinner table every evening, which was a time to hang up our differences (and with six kids in our family, there were many differences!) and take repast and nourishment while pondering our day as one family. Perhaps it’s this concept of food not only as sustenance but as a common bond of trust and reconciliation in my own family that led me to adopt the Southern Foodways Alliance as family – at SFA events this spirit is very much alive; in fact it is central to SFA’s mission.

Please join our family for an evening of great food and drink, meet two of our favorite food authors, and enjoy something special that pervades every SFA event – great company. According to tradition, seating will be at communal tables, though service will be plated.

Thursday April 18, 2013

6:00 Cocktail Reception and Book Signing

Kumquat Champagne Sparklers

Rock & Rye Cocktails

Collard Green Tea Sandwiches on Sally Lunn

Shad Roe Spread on Buttered Toast

Henry’s Cheese Spread on Savory Benne Wafers

7:00 Dinner

Peanut and Oyster Stew

Pickled Shrimp with Fennel Nestled in Butter Lettuce

Deviled Crab

Smothered Pork Chop with Hoppin’ John and Brussels Sprouts with Benne and Bacon

Grapefruit Chess Pie

Syllabub and Macaroons for the Table

Lowcountry Limoncello

Paired wines TBA

$100 per person includes tax, gratuity, and a $50 donation to Southern Foodways Alliance

For reservations, call 773-275-5725

Smoky, crisp, and smooth, this bourbon is the namesake of the Baptist minister who first aged whiskey in charred oak barrels in Kentucky in the late 18th century. Best enjoyed neat. Cigar box and honey aromas dominate, with vanilla, tea, and hints of charcoal. This classic bourbon is a great discovery as a moderately priced tipple with the hallmarks of a well-aged whiskey.

Elijah Craig 12 Year

With our next whiskey dinner being on the 6^th of March it only seemed appropriate to choose a whiskey that has direct ties to the neighborhood.  The first batch of Ravenswood Rye was distilled at Koval Distillery before moving to their current home in Three Oaks, Michigan.

Being local and organic, the wheat in the bottle is sourced from Michigan while the rye comes from Minnesota. Located in an old maple factory of a staunch prohibitionist, they sourced refurbished local Midwest products to help build their distillery. Distillers of an outstanding gin, as well as bourbon and blended whiskeys, we look forward to showcasing Ravenswood Rye this month.

Being a young rye whiskey, the raciness of the grain comes through on the nose with nice baking spice characteristics from the rye while the wheat gives those softer cereal grain aromas. On the palate there is a nice weight to the whiskey with hints of vanilla and underlying tones of fruit giving it a softness and making it a very smooth sipping whiskey. The finish is long and mellow with subtle hints of mocha and winter spices.  This is hands-down one of our favorite new ryes on the market especially since they take the time to source local and organic ingredients and make their whiskey instead of buying barrels and relabeling like a lot of the ryes on the market.

We look forward to seeing you all month to try Ravenswood Rye, or better yet come to our spirits dinner on March 6^th and try multiple products from a true craft distiller. Cheers and keep drinking whiskey.

I’d argue that the most powerful aspect of Edna Lewis’ legacy is how fluently her cooking transcends race – her foundation was 100% grounded in the African American experience, but as you might gather from the title of her signature literary work The Taste of Country Cooking, that experience is larger than race – her cooking was about her personal experience growing up in a small African American agricultural community in the Virginia Piedmont, it’s an American experience, it’s human. For me personally, the book was as important for what it didn’t say as what it did – throughout its pages I was able to live, vicariously, a bygone American way of life, and what dumbfounded me and still does to this day is how eloquently this one single work puts the lie to every racist misconception of not just African American cooking, but of the intelligence and industry of folks of African descent.

Over the years, many forward thinking African Americans have turned their backs on soul food, believing it to be the product of evolved slave kitchen cooking and the labors of poverty, and since I haven’t walked a mile in their shoes, I cannot understand and certainly not judge that particular viewpoint and recognize it as a logical conclusion of thoughtful, intelligent people, while many African Americans continue to embrace it as their heritage, for better or for worse. What I can vouch for is that most white people think of African American cooking within this very narrow set of soul food dishes, and while many white folks love at least some soul food for what it is, the fact that almost every white person I know thinks African American cooking = fried chicken, catfish, greens, sweet potato pie, etc. is perhaps the most powerful evidence of lingering racism in America today. Stop putting African Americans in that box, just stop it! Yes, African Americans have a history with those very foods and they are delicious, but they represent such a tiny sliver of their history and heritage (a heritage you and I share with them as Edna Lewis can show you) that to make soul food the beginning and end of the African American Culinary Story is absurd, to put it nicely.  If you need therapy for your narrow preconceptions of African American culinary heritage, your treatment begins with a thorough reading of The Taste of Country Cooking.

Agribusiness and the food processing industry would have us all believe that before they figured out how to make chemical fertilizers from fossil fuels and to make shelf-stable culinary fats that resemble plastic more than they reserve food, we were all eating gruel and starvation was rampant. Where that was true, it was true as it still is today – hunger and malnutrition are the product of inadequate distribution of food and lack of access. Edna Lewis showed what was always true, which is that if folks – black or white (or name the race or creed) – had access to food, especially the land to produce it, we in fact ate better back then than we do even today.

Compare the menu Miss Lewis proposes for a n Emancipation Day dinner, with what can be had on the menu at a Chili’s, or from the refrigerator case at Jewel, and bear in mind, this was all grown and processed at their home, no jars of jam or brown-n-serve laziness here:

Guinea Fowl in Casserole Garnished with Watercress

Steamed Wild Rice

Green Bean Salad with Sliced Tomatoes

Grape Jelly

Parker House Rolls with Butter

Purple Plum Tart or Stewed Quince with Special Cookies

In context, but one generation removed from bondage, you might find this extraordinary as a menu you might like to see in an upscale Contemporary American restaurant even today. What’s even more extraordinary is that Edna Lewis could translate the cooking of her heritage in a way that makes it come alive in a way that is relevant for all Americans with a history in the country, at the same time putting the lie to the narrow preconceptions of African American cooking perpetrated by a media culture more interested in selling ideas that are easy to understand rather than pursuing the complex truths of the history of African American food traditions.

It’s true that this was all hard work, but these days we also work hard, often in unsatisfying careers, in order to be able to buy food produced without the kind of love, family, and community that Miss Lewis knew growing up and spent her life championing. I believe it’s always time to assess where we are and how we got here, and now is as good a time as any. Every time I pick up The Taste of Country Cooking, I can’t help but be overcome with angst at how horribly misguided our food system has become in this country and that strikes right at the heart of my own family, as I consider our history as a family of the land and my heritage coming from a long line of farmers.

Personally, The Taste of Country Cooking took me back home through generations of my own family and their experience, from putting calves to pasture in the spring to making homemade wine in the summer and fall and butchering hogs in the winter, not to mention the joys of fishing and picking berries and putting the fruits of those efforts on the table. Even as she became, against all odds, a famous chef in New York, her cooking never tried to be anything. It just was. There was a confidence in the seasons and simplicity that I still struggle with every day. In her words, American life as both of our families knew it is so vivid, so real and compelling beyond even her words, it elevates the meaning of our common heritage in a way that I still grasp to communicate, except to say it is our common heritage. Her family could so very well be mine, and I’d think she would say the same of my family and hers were she alive today. That’s powerful stuff, and it’s instilled in me a desire to pursue our oneness in my own personal way, something I’m still coming to terms with and what I suspect will be a lifelong journey.

In light of what I’ve just said about her first book (though all of her books are must-haves, especially the collaboration with Scott Peacock) there is a giant, hulking elephant in the room when we consider the state of the good food movement, and from the elephant emanates a fetid odor. That odor is the extreme whiteness of the good food movement, something that ultimately threatens the success of what we are trying to build but more importantly, threatens our very equality, our solidarity, and the justice we all seek for the land, air, and water, all of which are linked to every singe human being regardless of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, or creed.

I’m so proud of my involvement with the Green City Market and the many charities we work with every year, but I have to point out that it strikes me every year at the Green City Market’s Chef Barbecue and similar events – if the crowd got any whiter I might think I was at a Phish concert. I enjoy volunteering in the schools and (hopefully) inspiring young children of all races to cook, definitely at home and for those inclined, professionally down the road. But I’ll say this – there is no ultimate good and no ultimate justice if what we do doesn’t benefit people of all races and classes. In the words of the Southern Foodways Alliance, “Pastured pork and local collards should not be the province of wealthy patrons and gourmet fetishists.” They need to be the province of all. Everyone needs to be involved, we need to hear all voices as difficult as it is sometimes, and we all need to benefit. That starts with more listening and less pontificating.

To that end, the Edna Lewis Foundation seeks to promote African American culinary heritage and provide resources for professionals and more importantly, culinary students with scholarships and educational initiatives. The foundation is new and it is young, but it needs our support. Now is our chance to see the seeds planted by Edna Lewis grow into mighty plants that will someday bear fruit. We need more African American chefs, for their talent, their unique experiences and perspectives, and for their voices. We also need more African American culinary authors, writers, and tastemakers. Here’s a great opportunity for all of us, and another hat tip from me to Edna Lewis.