Award-winning chef Norman Van Aken has been cooking in Florida for 40 years. My Key West Kitchen is his love letter to Key West, where he first found the passion to cook, and where the unique cultural makeup of the island influenced his cuisine today. Follow Chef Van Aken as he strolls through Key West, reminiscing and re-creating dishes from "little joints" and restaurants both past and present. Norman includes recipes for his own take of the first foods and drinks he experienced in Key West and how they seemed "different than ordinary American fare," from the Sunday Fish Fry at Capt. Tony's to the Rib Sandwich and Dark & Stormy from the Bahama Village Elk's Club. Norman also focuses on the home cooking of Key West, whether it's "Yard Bird" Fricasse with Collard Greens and Pot Likker from the Tropical American South, Plaintain Soup from the Spanish Caribbean, or Nassau Grouper in Banana Leaves with Coconut "Run Down" from the British Caribbean. The colorful stories behind the recipes make My Key West Kitchen essential reading both in and out of the kitchen.

How to set up and maintain a worm composting system.

The chef/proprietor of Norman's, the widely acclaimed Miami restaurant, offers a collection of recipes for his dazzling and multicultural New World cuisine--a blend of Latin, Caribbean, Asian and American flavors.

No Experience Necessary is Chef Norman Van Aken’s joyride of a memoir. In it he spans twenty-plus years and nearly as many jobs—including the fateful job advertisement in the local paper for a short-order cook with “no experience necessary.” Long considered a culinary renegade and a pioneering chef, Van Aken is an American original who chopped and charred, sweated and seared his way to cooking stardom with no formal training, but with extra helpings of energy, creativity, and faith. After landing on the deceptively breezy shores of Key West, Van Aken faced hurricanes, economic downturns, and mercurial moneymen during the decades when a restaurant could open and close faster than you can type haute cuisine. From a graveyard shift grunt at an all-night barbeque joint to a James Beard–award finalist for best restaurant in America, Van Aken put his trusting heart, poetic soul, natural talent, and ever-expanding experience into every venture—and helped transform the American culinary landscape along the way. In the irreverent tradition of Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential,and populated by a rogues’ gallery of colorful characters—including movie stars, legendary musicians, and culinary giants Julia Child, Emeril Lagasse, and Charlie Trotter—No Experience Necessary offers a uniquely personal, highly-entertaining under-the-tablecloth view of the high-stakes world of American cuisine told with wit, insight, and great affection by a natural storyteller.

"Key West Sweet, Key West Treat!" If you visited Key West, Florida in the 80's & 90's, you certainly were entertained by The Cookie Lady of Key West. She PEDDLED her original baked goods by rhyme while she PEDALED her bicycle through the crowd at Mallory Square as the sun dipped into the gulf for the night. In this book, you can recapture those times. If you missed those times in Key West, this book gives you the opportunity to get a taste of it all and more!

"Author Mee McCormick cooked her way back to health when Crohn's disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and Hashimoto's disease knocked her down. Through relentless recipe testing, she healed her gut issues with a diet of organic whole foods, anti-inflammatory oils, and nutrient-rich foods. In My Pinewood Kitchen, she shares 130+ of her gut-friendly, gluten-free recipes. From breakfasts and salads, to soups and smoothies, to dinners and desserts for weeknights or company. She also includes the science behind why gut health is important, how to stock a gut-friendly pantry, and tips for how to eat for optimal gut wellness"--

As the new food critic for Key Zest magazine, Hayley Snow went from being a culinary groupie to one of Florida’s cutting-edge tastemakers. But as always, when life serves Haley a dream come true, it comes paired with a most exquisite murder.... The annual Key West literary conference is drawing the biggest names in food writing from all over the country, and Haley is there to catch a few fresh morsels of insider gossip. Superstar restaurant critic Jonah Barrows has already ruffled a few foodie feathers with his recent tell-all memoir, and as keynote speaker, he promises more of the same jaw-dropping honesty. But when Hayley discovers Jonah’s body in a nearby dipping pool, the cocktail-hour buzz takes a sour turn, and Hayley finds herself at the center of attention—especially with the police. Now it’s up to her to catch the killer before she comes to her own bitter finish.

Gourmand International World Cookbook Awards, Selected to Represent the USA in the Local Category Florida Book Awards, Gold Medal for Cooking Award-winning chef and restaurateur Norman Van Aken invites you to discover the richness of Florida's culinary landscape. This long-awaited cookbook embraces the history, the character, and the flavors of the state that has inspired Van Aken's famous fusion style for over forty years. Drawing from Florida's vibrant array of immigrant cultures, and incorporating local ingredients, the dishes in this book display the exciting diversity of Van Aken's "New World Cuisine." Recipes include Key lime beignets; cornbread-stuffed quail with strawberry-ancho-guava jam and sweet and sour parsnips; "Spanglish" tortillas with hash browns, creamed spinach, and serrano ham; pork stew with raisins, tamarind, plantains, and chiles; and fully loaded cracked conch po' boys. While preparing these dishes, readers will enjoy advice and stories straight from the kitchen of a master chef. Van Aken infuses his recipes with tips, techniques, and personality. He reveals the key to a good gumbo, praises the acidity of a pickled peppadew, connects food innovation to jazz and blues music, describes hitchhiking adventures across the state with his wife, Janet, and tells the tale behind the Mustachioed Swimmer, a cocktail named for Tennessee Williams. Norman Van Aken's Florida Kitchen is a delicious read--the definitive guide to the historic past and multicultural future of Florida's abundant foodways. With its forward-thinking blend of old and new, thoughtful step-by-step instructions for wonderful meals, and plenty of friendly conversation, this book is a rare immersion in a culinary artist's world.

Key West is a world apart. People come for one reason or another and never want to leave. Ernest Hemingway, Robert Frost, and Jimmy Buffett are well known. Lesser known'except to Louie's regulars'are Phil Tenney, Doug Shook, Ben Harris, Darlene Ciulla, and others, all of whom call Louie's "our home and our family." What marks the food at Louie's backyard is innovation. Chef Doug Shook likes to create new variations daily. "Inventing is the joy of cooking," he says, Which means the recipes in The Louie's Backyard Cookbook are the best of many recipes Shook has created over the years. They are for people who enjoy the entire process of creating a meal, from procuring the ingredients to making a handsome presentation of a finished dish. The Louie's Backyard Cookbook contains not only 150 of Doug Shook's most creative recipes, but through photos and stories it takes you behind the scenes to learn about the restaurant and the Key West culture that lures people with its bauty and keeps them with its liberty. The Louie's Backyard Cookbook is the next best thing to experiencing the islands themselves.

2018 James Beard Foundation Book of the Year | 2018 James Beard Foundation Book Award Winner inWriting | Nominee for the 2018 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Nonfiction | #75 on The Root100 2018 A renowned culinary historian offers a fresh perspective on our most divisive cultural issue, race, in this illuminating memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces his ancestry—both black and white—through food, from Africa to America and slavery to freedom. Southern food is integral to the American culinary tradition, yet the question of who "owns" it is one of the most provocative touch points in our ongoing struggles over race. In this unique memoir, culinary historian Michael W. Twitty takes readers to the white-hot center of this fight, tracing the roots of his own family and the charged politics surrounding the origins of soul food, barbecue, and all Southern cuisine. From the tobacco and rice farms of colonial times to plantation kitchens and backbreaking cotton fields, Twitty tells his family story through the foods that enabled his ancestors’ survival across three centuries. He sifts through stories, recipes, genetic tests, and historical documents, and travels from Civil War battlefields in Virginia to synagogues in Alabama to Black-owned organic farms in Georgia. As he takes us through his ancestral culinary history, Twitty suggests that healing may come from embracing the discomfort of the Southern past. Along the way, he reveals a truth that is more than skin deep—the power that food has to bring the kin of the enslaved and their former slaveholders to the table, where they can discover the real America together. Illustrations by Stephen Crotts