I Wrote a Book!
“A Cook’s Table” has been in the making since at least 2003, although not continuously. We started collaborating on this project sometime after Jan’s initial collaborators decided to focus on other things. Jan then reached out to me—over several bottles of wine, if I recall correctly!—in order to gauge my interest in joining him.
I had by then spent many a lunch and dinner at his long-running restaurant, Two Chefs in Miami, as part of trade and media wine/food events as well as numerous dinners with friends and family, not to mention my wife and I completely surprising each other on our birthdays a few years apart with parties that Jan executed flawlessly. My answer was, yes, and we went about poring over the work that had already been done.
After a few years, I moved with my family to New York City and we intentionally or otherwise shelved the project. In retrospect, the intervening 15+ years of inaction may have been the best thing to happen to the book. When first conceived, the wine and food worlds were in very different places than they were when we resumed work during that first COVID shutdown in 2020.
Then, much of the book focused on educating consumers about how to put together menus, wine service, glassware and rudimentary wine and food matching. There were also a few hundred words on umami, the then virtually unknown “5th taste.”
All of that information and instruction had and still does have value, but we have come to believe that the consumer we believe this book in its current form will appeal to has over the last two decades developed significant institutional knowledge, so to speak, about all aspects of wine and food, from varied cuisines to kitchen skills and techniques to orange wines made with grapes scarcely known back then not to mention an overall belief that wine and food need not be stuffy. In fact, quite the opposite is now true. Even three-star restaurants know better than to intimidate those paying their freight.
So out went thousands of words. What remained were Jan’s recipes (the number of which has grown considerably since the first version of book to reflect changing tastes and the more pronounced sophistication of the home cook) and my wine essays, all either updated or more recently written.
The main chapters are named after a grape—or in three cases, primarily blends—and organized as follows: There is an introductory essay on that chapter’s grape, which is then followed by a recipe list, an intro to the recipe, the recipe itself, and, finally, “Kitchen Wisdom” and “What to Drink” entries.
The wine essays vary in content but typically include some history about the grape’s primary origin, different styles, often referenced in the Old World/New World dichotomy, and commentary about that grape’s best and sometimes less-than-best attributes. They are not meant to be treatises. Instead, they are fairly concise intros to the grapes and resulting wines made from them. It’s all too easy to descend into rabbit holes of endless depth, and by all means, those so inclined should do so, but for those who are simply looking to grasp some basic but very defining information, these essays will be a helpful guide.
“A Cook’s Table” is not meant to be a compendium of all knowledge associated with food and wine in the style of “The Oxford Companions” on both subjects (these hefty volumes belong on the shelf of every serious kitchen). As such, we both had to make choices about what to include, and perhaps just as importantly, what not to, particularly with regard to wine.
A quick spin through the recipe lists will show that Jan touches on countless cuisines, techniques and ingredients, so while the lists are not encyclopedic in breadth, they do cover a lot of ground.
The wine choices were more difficult. Or, maybe not, because while we initially set out to include many more grapes—primarily as alternatives that had some similar attributes to the main grapes—we quickly realized that we were hurtling toward full-blown wine book territory, which was a destination we never really were interested in arriving at.
Instead, we chose what we believe are among the most well-known and commercially significant grapes (and resultant wines) that most consumers come across on a day-to-day basis. After reading each essay, think about your experience with those grapes and wines. Maybe you liked the wine that was the subject of the essay or maybe only one or two of the styles highlighted. Maybe you didn’t. But with that context in place, you can experiment.
“A Cook’s Table”
Food and Wine Together
Page Publishing
Hardcover 382 pages; 150+ recipes
Available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble
It can be purchased directly from me for $70 which includes shipping and handling anywhere in the Continental United States; this price is less than Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
