Chefs team up for literacy fundraiser
If the samples from local restaurants don’t entice you, the star-studded lineup for Reading Between the Wines should.
The fundraiser for Orlando’s Adult Literacy League will bring together chefs Art Smith and Norman Van Aken to share their thoughts about Florida cuisine and more on April 12 at the Orlando Science Center. (Tickets: $90, available at adultliteracy league.org). The agency is a nonprofit dedicated to building a literate community.
The two James Beard award-winning chefs and cookbook authors operate local restaurants: Chef Art Smith’s Homecomin’ Kitchen in Disney Springs, and Van Aken’s 1921 in Mount Dora and Norman’s at Orlando’s Ritz-Carlton resort.
We couldn’t resist asking these two chefs a few questions before the event:
Question: What does Florida taste like?
Smith: It tastes like vine-ripe tomatoes, fresh fried okra, fried chicken from my mother’s cast-iron pan, sweet shrimp and sweet corn that is so tender and rich it doesn’t need butter. Van Aken: It tastes like a sangria made from water from the Fountain of Youth mixed with moonshine, orange blossoms and a wild array of our tropical fruits.
Q: What Florida ingredient are you most excited about?
Smith: Lately I have been exploring Florida’s many varieties of honey. Growing up in Jasper [a town in North Florida], we had a lot of wildflower and saw palmetto honey. But I have expanded my palate with clover, orange blossom and tupelo. They each have their own flavor nuance. You can infuse sweetness
into just about anything with just a touch. At Homecomin’ Florida Kitchen we make a hot honey drizzle for our fried chicken by mixing local orange blossom honey with our housemade hot sauce.
Van Aken: The first ingredient that got me hooked on the seductive flavors of Florida were plantains. I still love them. My favorite way to use them is in the Maduro stage of ripeness. I make a dark caramel sauce that I drizzle on them and serve with seared foie gras.
Q: If you could only own one cookbook, which one would it be?
Smith: “Jacques Pepin’s Complete Techniques.”
Van Aken: The first cookbook I bought which helped me move from being an unenlightened line cook to a chef: “James Beard’s Theory & Practice of Good Cooking.”
Q: What’s your favorite non-cooking book?
Smith: Anything by Florida Pulitzer-prize winning writer Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings [“TheYearling”]. She can describe an orange blossom and I can smell the aroma. I know her characters. Her portrayal of Florida life are pages out of
my family’s history.
Van Aken: “Huckleberry Finn” (by Mark Twain).
Q: What has surprised you about the local food scene?
Smith: How ethnically diverse it is. It’s a melting pot of world flavors from restaurants to fabulous little markets.
Van Aken: How it is rapidly learning how to speak from her own SOUL.
Q: How important are agencies such as the Adult Literacy League in building the next generation of culinary leaders?
Smith: Being there for those who have slipped through the cracks is so important. I am grateful every day for my success and celebrity, but all that is meaningless unless you use it to help others. Literacy is the bridge to understanding. The fundamentals of reading and writing are critical for success throughout life.
Van Aken: I would never have become a chef of any importance had it not been for the love of books and reading instilled upon me by my mother and grandmother.