Over the two years I have been writing this column, many people have approached me with questions. They usually want to know where in the world do I come up with the topics and how do I even know about these things. My grandfather said I was born with a huge curiosity bump. For many of my younger years I kept wondering where on my body would I find this bump. I have always loved eating, food preparation, why people ate the things they do, where do recipes come from what makes a dish mediocre or memorable?
This same grandfather recognized my deep interest in cooking, which reflected his own interest. He fostered this by purposefully exposing me to different tastes, places, books, thoughts and places. When I became totally immersed in The French Chef in 1964, he purchased a subscription to the magazine Gourmet for me when I was only 13. That subscription lasted until the magazine closed its pages in 2009. The articles and recipes in that magazine fed my imagination for many years.
Formalizing these flights of curiosity was the opening of evening service at The Back Door, my late restaurant on Main Street. I wanted to offer our guests the opportunity to sample some of the products of my imagination. Since owning a restaurant impedes travel, I decided we should travel vicariously through a menu special we called "On the Road.” Each week I would pick a subject, research it, plan a three-course menu and write a small paragraph telling about my subject. Doing the research and planning our "On the Road" was the highlight of my week. I did my best to make the dishes as authentic as possible, ordering spices and cookware to help keep the taste true to its origin.
We explored meals as varied as what is eaten on Easter Island to specialties of extinct restaurants. Sometimes the meals were amazing, sometimes they were just good and once the entire meal was awful. My inspiration could come from something I heard on television, an article from a newspaper, a memory, a book, a passing comment or just from deep in my head.
One I particularly remember was about a hotel in Dallas in which a secret room was discovered during a renovation. I researched the chef at the time and chose some menu items of his to serve. A great favorite of our customers was "Chicken with Forty Cloves of Garlic.” We actually repeated this menu by popular request. Baking whole cloves of garlic make them grow sweeter, not hotter. The gravy from this slow baked chicken dish is fabulous.
We traced the path of Route 66 over three stops. This iconic highway described a generation of travelers, both active and armchair travelers. We learned about something called a "Jiggs Dinner" from Newfoundland - a one dish meal hardy enough to sustain hard working people in a very cold climate. The year the Olympics were in China, we did China, but also did Tibet in order to give equal time to an enemy of China.
One of my favorite "Roads" was the all avocado dinner. Each Hass avocado grown is a descendent of one tree - a mutant discovered by a postman in California named Rudolph Hass. The dessert for that menu was Avocado Ice Cream - which wasn't half bad. After Katrina we explored some of the Gulf Coast's classic, but no longer open, restaurants. These places were deeply imbedded in the DNA of Baby Boomers who grew up eating there. The novel, Like Water for Chocolate, an allegorical novel set in Mexico, combined literary interest along with a good dinner.
One "On the Road" menu put me in touch with a man from Buenos Aires. The topic for Buenos Aires was "Closed Restaurants.” These are actually homes, open on specific dates, no published address and attendance by reservation only. The one I used as an example was Casa Saltshaker, operated by an American, Dan Perlman. Mr. Perlman does things such as an Oaxacan "Night of the Radishes" and "The Cuisine of the Maranos, the secret Spanish Jews.” Imagine, someone else in the world whose brain is wired like mine. Mr. Perlman somehow found the mention of my menu online and contacted me. We occasionally exchange emails.
To sum up this weird predilection of mine I will quote a favorite poet, Brian Andreas. I like this comment of his so much I adapted it as my mission statement. This is called Real Reason,"There are things you do because they feel right & they may make no sense & they may make no money & it may be the real reason we are here: to love each other & to eat each other's cooking & say it was good.” n
Fran Ginn is former chef/owner of The Back Door Café, who retired after 31 years in the food industry to be a grandmother. She can be contacted at fran@franginn.com.
