Irene Watson, editor of Reader Views, is pleased that our guest is Valerie Hart, author of The Bounty of Central Florida.
Hi Valerie, thank you for taking the time to participate in this interview.
Irene: Valerie, why do you feel that Bounty Central Florida was an important book for you? What were your goals?
Valerie: Regional cookbooks have flooded the market. Southwestern, Northwestern, Cuban, Caribbean, Cajun and their combinations, including American innovation called Fusion, which includes Asian products, as well as any other interesting areas and new creative chefs that include fresh ingredients in these areas.
When we moved from Miami to Central Florida 15 years ago, the kitchen changed dramatically. In addition to local Italian eateries, which featured Sicilian culinary tomato culinary, as well as Mexican food for migrant workers in this citrus region, mom-dad restaurants north of Orlando served a unique kitchen of their own. It was based on their roots in South America with the rustic edge of the available fish, and the game was simply grilled or roasted and accompanied by fruits and vegetables, recently torn from trees and land.
Every spring lake gives bass. Large lakes are flooded with alligators and tilapias. St. John’s brackish river is rich in blue crab and shrimp, and its tributaries are filled with perch, bass and snook. Wood ducks, apparently, exist solely for the pleasure of the casserole, and a little bit south of Osseola County, wild turkey and deer meat for hunting hunters. And, as in the rest of the south, barbecue reigns supremely with its central florists, with a sauce of sweet, spicy and mustard sauces carved on slow smoked giant pork ribs.
My goal as a food writer for The Daily Commercial was to inform people about the bounty of this area.
Irene: What problems did you have while writing this book and how did you overcome it?
Valerie: The problems were amazing. My many trips along the St. John's River with the help of old boats led me to direct contact with people who live and tear their lives out of the intercostal waters. My membership and association with the NWTF (National Wildlife Federation of Turkey) not only taught me to roast a whole turkey, but also inspired respect for this dedicated group of environmental organizations that teach women to survive in the desert, as responsible food control for children.
However, the most difficult task was to write a book when it faced the deadline for submitting letters to my newspaper column on Thursday and teaching cooking at a homeless shelter. I just didn't have time to do all this, and I spent more and more hours creating recipes late
at night and open my computer to record them before the sun came up.
Irene: Are the recipes your own creation? Some of them were transferred to you through the family?
Valerie: Recipes are my own, stemming from my sense of taste and smell and the desire to create. My learning experience in France (later, Cordon Bleu courses after I started teaching in Miami), and our 30-year-old business in Italy, where we had an apartment in Florence and traveled extensively in Northern Italy, brought me into contact with by many
country chefs and nonnas (Italian grandmothers) in their home kitchens, who shared their “secrets” passing through the generations.
Irene: How did you get into cooking? Did you cook as a child? Where did you learn to cook? Do you have funny stories when you learn to cook, which you can refer to?
Valerie: I would like to say that I learned to cook from my mother and grandmother, but fortunately this is not true. My mother and grandmother had absolutely no talent in the kitchen, probably because they always prepared for this. The only foods my mom knew how to cook were beef, turkey, and grilled lamb chops. Those were the days when all the fat was left on the sand in the bark. We not only ate the top fat on the beef and between the bones of the chops; we enjoyed it. And the trick was to eat turkey and beef before the sauce was poured on it, frozen in a solid white mass.
We have had a German cook for many years. My parents traveled extensively, leaving me in her care. The kitchen was a sensual wonder of chocolate and pastry creams and veal, which she delicately dipped in beaten eggs and then in homemade bread crumbs before frying until golden brown delicacies, which she called Wiener Schnitzel, which she served with fried potatoes and butter noodles . Elizabeth never used an electric mixer, but she manually beat butter, sugar and egg whites to make her 6-layer German Doboshttorte, a rich chocolate Viennese sahartort and a Hungarian caramel cake. She was my first culinary mentor, and her recipes appeared in my first cookbook The New
Traditional cookbook.
Irene: I note that in your biography you wanted to be an opera singer, but you ended up in a food career and then in a culinary career. Are there times when you would like to return the pages and continue your singer career?
Valerie: Sometimes, although my life would be completely different. I remember forever how I studied under the great Andre God on the stage of the Paris Great Opera. I clearly lacked ambition, or perhaps I realized that I do not have a voice destined for greatness.
Irene: Do you have a favorite recipe from this book? What for?
Valerie: Guests and family who dine with us usually ask me to make a Lemon Cheesecake Key or Non-alcoholic individual chocolates for dessert. My duckling is a favorite child, and I offer 2-3 options of sauce for their pleasure. I really love the soup from buttered and
refreshing strawberry salad. I make dozens of mushroom rockers that you can freeze for an unexpected company, and because our limes are so prolific, you will always find frozen lemon pie.
Irene: This is the second cookbook for you. First of all, it was a new book according to tradition, which was published in 1988. What did you learn after the first one that changed you in the second book, "Bounty Central Florida"?
Valerie: My first cookbook was written as a result of my years as a food writer for a newspaper in Miami Beach and a lunch restaurant that I had for 15 years in my husband's furniture store, Import for Trade. The restaurant was my test kitchen. We did not sell food, but rather offered it to designers and their customers, as in the same house. The buffet, which changed daily, became so popular that people lined up around the block. We served more than 100 people every day in a restaurant that we built inside the exhibition hall, with the bricks of the old Union Station in Chicago, which were torn down.
Despite the fact that most of the format of the first book was based on American cuisine and my French and Italian cuisine, the wonderful ethnicity of Miami Beach allowed me to open recipes for Matzo balls, Gefülte Fish, stuffed cabbage, beef brisket and potato pancakes that I published in the newspaper during the Jewish holidays. I would go down to what became the region “in”, now known as “SoBe”, which in the late 60s and 70s were still inhabited by an elderly Jew. I would go to the ladies who were shopping. Each of them had a different recipe for the same dish, and each considered it the best. Then I went home, experimented, tested and tested until I didn’t like the combination of ingredients. Then I will write my food column.
The common denominator of the two books is my belief that people love to read about gourmet cuisine, but they want to cook and eat basic food.
Irene: What do you expect from this cookbook experience? Are you planning to write another one?
Valerie: I don’t know if I can ever write another cookbook, but I have so many recipes that don’t appear in the first two that I’m tempted. Anyone who cooks knows that there is always a new and different way to prepare to please the taste. There is never a final chapter for cooking.
Irene: Thank you, Valerie. Is there anything else you would like to add about your cooking book or your experience?
Valerie: I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. This is the first time I have been asked these questions, and the interview was most enjoyable.
