Jan Braverman has been a serious cook for over 35 years and currently presides over his Garland range in Asbury Park,NJ. Resisting the persistent temptations over the years to open a restaurant, he has sublimated those inklings into cooking with great intensity for family and guests and the work of two of his sons, Malcolm and Karl, who are, respectively, a masterful baker of classic European breads and a pastry chef (and creator of www.camersoonsmacaroons.com). It has helped that he has numerous "foodie" friends (several of whom were crazy enough to open their own restaurants) who have shared his obsession with food and travel over the years.
Jan brings a special creativity to sauces - both the long-simmered and the rapidly-assembled kinds. His more recent cooking interests have focused on France, Italy, Spain and Vietnam. He has cooked from the markets in France, Italy, Spain, Hawaii and (exotic) Berkeley, California.
What?
What is it that we are trying to do here? Making use of Web technology,we want to achieve fairly conventional goals: giving you useful information about creative cooking from the markets, restaurants and travel. There are links to resources for travel information. Cooking from the markets is a rough translation of the French term "cuisine du marche". Cuisine du marche generally means basing what you cook on what's best in the market (at the time). For some, this term also means seasonal and locally grown.
While it's always great to work with locally-grown, seasonal ingredients in the kitchen, it's not always feasible. Fortunately, today most markets' local offerings are supplemented with products transported from afar. Some of these "non-seasonal" ingredients are quite good - some are not. In any case, Cooking from the Markets will emphasize creative uses of the best ingredients available ranging from fresh porcini mushrooms in the Mercato Centrale of Firenze to the mundane expedient of canned chick peas from your local supermarket. While it's great to go to Firenze to cook from its markets, it's not the only way to cook, for example, great Italian recipes.
Similarly, our recipes focus on the home kitchen. Sometimes it seems as though we've all gotten used to the concept that the best cooking can only occur in restaurants. While some of us have credit card bills that more than amply demonstrate a dedication to dining out, there are still inspirations and liberties that are unique to the home cook. We'll be pursuing those to the fullest extent possible.
Still, we've all had exposure to things in restaurants which inspire our cooking at home. Because all of our actual and virtual culinary experiences influence our cooking, we'll review some restaurants here. Particularly those that show some inclination to "cuisine du marche" but most importantly all types of creative uses of ingredients. Tradition and creativity are, by the way, never mutually exclusive in our view. Some of the "traditional" meals we've had in restaurants ranging (geographically) from Villa Virella in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania to the Petit Laurent in Paris to Ristorante Piperno in Rome and Trattoria San Ferdinando in Naples have been prepared with creative finesse of unbounded proportions. The reviews which appear here are solely a matter of our individual reviewer's opinions about the cuisine, ambience and service of a restaurant. Since we're interested in reviewing restaurants that please, we'll skip those that don't - rather than post a negative review. Do you know the blues refrain: "if the phone don't ring it's me"?
How?
We'll use technology just as a tool. This may mean avoiding some of the fancier screen layout techniques that take so much time to display. Sometimes an interesting photo image may take a while to load. We think that's worth it, since the travel part of our focus can often be well-illustrated by photo images. But fancy screen frames, animation, etc. are not really necessary here. It's the food and travel that count most and not the technology. The internet technology is great to make this type of site possible but even for computer programmers (like some of us), in this situation the technology is still only a tool.
Articles, photographs, recipes, etc. related to the topics covered by this site are welcome.