Cookbooks

The year was 1990 and Jay Moore was the executive chef at Hudson’s on the Bend.  Whenever Jay or I dined out at other restaurants, we would hurry home to give each other a report about our dining experience comprehensively reporting on the menu, atmosphere, location, service, etc.  Every chef has their own distinct autograph flavor palate, some like it spicy, some like it herbaceous and some like it salty, but everyone has their own level of seasoning and this is reflective of their early dining experience from their mother’s cooking.  Most chefs in the restaurant business try to appeal to the masses and as a result their food can be seriously lacking in salt and seasonings.  If the reported food needed imagination, or more flavor we said that the chef had the “fear of cooking” and this opposite mindset of “fearless cooking” became our kitchen mantra as we created our daily menu.  My personal fear in the kitchen was quite the opposite of those fearful chefs, I had a fear of not enough and if one is good more is better and we went to great lengths to avoid bland frightened food!  All kitchens go through phases with new dishes and it often takes the chefs many attempts at the dish to get the flavors up front, not at Hudson’s, we cooked fearlessly so much so that was the obvious name of our first cookbook “Cooking Fearlessly”.

In order to diversify the income at the restaurant I had begun doing cooking classes and about the time Jay was the chef I had finished my new home on Hudson Bend Road with a fully loaded outdoor kitchen and stadium seating with a stunning view of Lake Travis as our backdrop and the classes began to grow in popularity.  The cooking classes always revolved around a 4-course meal, from appetizer to dessert and all points in between.  Jay and I would agree on the menu and determine who would prepare each course and from there we would write our designated recipes and then I would type up the recipe making any needed adjustments and save it on my computer. On the day of class Jay and I would assemble and portion the ingredients, making one tray ready to go per recipe. While setting up our mis en place trays, we would mentally construct the recipe and review in our minds the how’s and whys we added the ingredients and mentally review the method of preparation.  In the wee hours of the morning of the class we would cook the 4-course meal for 20 to 30 people so that it would be ready and waiting upon the conclusion of the cooking school.  Then we would cook this same 4-course meal again during the cooking school but in reasonable small family portions.  Test and retest every level of the dish, this forced us to measure all ingredients and at the end of the day, it really cooked the book.  We talked about undertaking a cookbook for years, we talked so much about “what we ought to do” that the staff told us to put up or shut up. 

I eventually did an outline for the book and found the right people to do the book; Deborah Harter came aboard to be the ghost writer, Pun Nio was our page layout book designer, and Laurie Smith joined us as our food photographer.  I had a vision and knew what I wanted the book to look like, I wanted it to be a glossy hardback book with full color and I wanted it now.  If I shopped it around to different publishers it would take years and I would lose control and publishers did very little promotion so being the control freak I am off I went on my own.  I wanted the end result to be a restaurant chef inspired cookbook with colorful glossy pages with restaurant humor and flavorful recipes and it would be a vital tool in the kitchen and simultaneously look beautiful on the coffee table.  I began my research and as I collected cookbooks that had the presence and the feel that I wanted, 10 Speed Press kept appearing on the spine so clearly the owner of 10 Speed Press appreciated restaurant chef inspired cookbooks, it was not surprising that their books appealed to me.  When meeting with our team of cookbook developers, I would line up all of these books to view and explain to our team that this was the look I desired.

I added a lot of flavors that were unique to our cookbook, i.e. a musicologist or music to cook by, quote of the recipe (funny little quotes from funny little chefs), and some fantastical chef paintings.  Bobby Arnold was a friend of mine who taught and mixed music at Texas State University.  He joined the team of cookbook developers as my personal musicologist.

I had a ghost writer, Deborah Harter, who had never done a book before and was a self-confessed ignorant cook.  Pun Nio, my book layout designer, had designed high school books, but never a cookbook but she assured me she was “up” for the challenge.  Laurie Smith, the food photographer was the only one that came on board with experience and she had boundless experience, several cookbooks and lots of national magazines like Saveur.  She was a relaxed photographer and shot with natural light—preferably outside.  Laurie was perfect, fun and relaxed, not the type to obsess over a photo, she showed up with her dog in tow for our first meeting.  She would rather stick a spoon in a crème brûlée then spend hours adjusting.

Everything came together and off we flew to Roanoke to the printer.  I was a newbie to the printing game so Pun traveled with me and she was a great asset.  There is a thing called “over run” which allows you to adjust the color level before you save the copy.  The printing press was a huge Heidelberg, it was a monster, a block long and deafeningly loud.  Pun would yell “more red, I want it to pop”.  I couldn’t tell it needed more ink, it looked fine to me, thank God Pun was there.  The hardback glossy, colorful cookbook cost me less than $10.00 each.  We sold them at retail and made about $15.00 profit, if you went through a publishing house you would be lucky to earn a $1.00 profit for each book.  As exhausting as the making of the book was, the truly difficult facet was the selling, Amazon and small shops were our best wholesale outlets.  The online craze was in its infancy but it was already beginning to close bookstores so how to wholesale the book was foggy.

I would fly out to see Deborah Harter at her home in Half Moon Bay and we would develop the verbiage.

My routine was to take a Southwest plane to Las Vegas, change planes and arrive in San Francisco where I rented a car and drive to Half Moon Bay.  When changing planes in Vegas I always had 30 minutes waiting time for my flight on to San Fran so I did what one does while in Vegas, slip on over to the slot machines and lose a quick $100.00.  I never planned on winning big as airport slots were notorious for bad returns, but on one of these layovers, the lights and sirens went off, I was surprised to see I had won $1800.00.  I had to wait for an attendant to give me my money and I almost missed my connecting flight, but I did pay for several flights to Half Moon Bay with my winnings.

The local paper did a large feature article on the making of the book and came to our photoshoot.  It was unique watching a photographer taking pictures of another photographer at work.  Jay and I were extremely busy keeping up with the photographer preparing the plates that Laurie was taking pictures of, it was a dizzying day keeping up with her.

Through the years, Kitty Crider who was the food writer for our local paper, did many articles about Hudson’s on the Bend, food writers are always looking for fresh ideas to write about and we tried to keep it fresh. Hudson’s had many articles featuring us, to the point that the general public was convinced that we were sleeping with the right person or on the newspaper payroll.  All of this free press came back to bite us with the next generation of food writers.  We had our 5 minutes of fame.

Our famous picture with our chef hats on fire had its roots in Aspen.  I’ve always thought the chef hat was out dated or looked like the pope’s head gear.  Over the years I have heard the pleats represent the different ways you can cook eggs. What BS, it must be a European thing.  Gert used to wear one when he went into the dining room and I always thought it looked pretentious. I would stand behind him and give his “paper” hat a flic of my bic.  We were at the end of our photo shoot and I was feeling mischievous and the idea for a flaming toque was born.  Jay and I stood in front of the smoke house with wet kitchen towels on our heads followed by paper chef hats that I had dipped in citronella for added flames.  We were laughing hard, the entire event lasted a few seconds, but enough time for Laurie to snap a great shot.  Later that day we went down to our friendly banker, Eddie Safady at Prosperity Bank to get the money for the book production.  Eddie was passing the papers around the table when he said “do you smell burnt hair?”.

After the cookbook had been printed and delivered, I realized that marketing the book was the hard part, you know the money part.  Whenever I felt overwhelmed by the task of hawking this baby, I would look at the title, take a deep breath and resume the fearless approach.

I was one of the featured authors at the Texas Book Festival later that year and I think the cooking demonstration was truly why I got major billing and prime location.  The success of the book and the restaurant was due to the fact that I was the “yes” chef and I would cook anywhere—a parking lot to a grocery store, I was everywhere. 

Back to the cookbook and the Book Festival.  Dennis Hayes, a marketing expert and an employee of 10 Speed Press was in attendance at the Book Festival promoting their line.  He found me and said “This book looks like one of ours”, my reply was “Super, I used your books as my template, that was the design and look I was going for”.  It wasn’t long after that we had a distribution agreement with 10 Speed Press and the book was in their catalog. 

Laura Bush was the founder of the festival when George W. was Governor.  When George was elected as president, they were off to Washington and I got an invite to the White House.  Pretty lofty for a cook and his book.  The food was good!

I often wonder if I would have been as fearless if I didn’t have multiple outlets, we had a restaurant, a cooking school, a sauce line and cookbooks to promote no time to ponder, just do it. 

When the first book arrived the National Chicken Council was doing an expensive promotion and they invited food writers from all over the country to their seminar on chickens—how boring.  They needed to fill empty time with fun, food related activities, like our cooking school for 120 food writers—what a captive audience.  I agreed to do the cooking school and in chorus do my own cook book promotion.  I assured them we could accommodate their entire group, but how.  My home’s main room has very high ceilings so we removed all of the furniture and replaced it with rented bleachers.  But that only held 95 people and that is if they tightly squeezed in.  To accommodate the remaining 25 people, we rented closed circuit cameras and monitors and set up a remote area that was enhanced with the service of prickly pear margaritas.  I knew from doing indoor cooking schools on days that were extremely cold or rainy that sent us inside, with the stoves lit for cooking, we didn’t have enough AC to keep everyone comfortable, so I rented remote air conditioning units that came with whisper quiet generators (movie type).  Jay and I did an entertaining cooking school routine with Jay and his Foster Grants doing a Ray Charles imitation; it was outrageous doing a cooking school with a blind person and it was a great success that generated dozens of newspaper articles written about our book across the country.  A restaurant and its chef are raised to a higher standard once they are involved with a book, it gives a certain stamp of validity.

The second book followed the same template as the first one with one major difference, instead of Deborah Harter being the ghost writer I used Hudson’s general manager Sara Courington who would become Sara Blank years later.  Her unique writing style adds to the book and she had worked for me for 20 years and knew me well and was very conscious of writing in my voice.    We didn’t sell as many books but we didn’t spend nearly as much time with promotion.  We rode the coat tails of the first book.  The second cookbook was called “Fired Up”.  When it came time to do a fire shot for the cover, I had to be inventive because that burning hat was old hat, I had to do something new.  The burning hat had been reproduced on the cover of magazines etc. it was our identity so clearly there had to be something fiery and spectacular.  I put a goose on the end of a sword, filled my mouth with 151 rum and lit the rum as I sprayed it out of my mouth.  The fire enveloped the goose and Laurie snapped another iconic photo.  Again, it was reproduced in a grocery store ad and many other magazines and papers.  The joke around the restaurant was Jeff only has one more orifice to light on fire.

Jay had opened his version of Hudson’s in Rockport, Texas and was not involved in the second cookbook.  Robert Rhoades, chef at Hudson’s and Becky Barsch Fischer, chef at Hudson’s both helped enormously in the production of “Fired Up”.

Every well stocked kitchen should have a blend of spices that seasons everything you cook.  I like to store them in air tight containers, like mason jars.  The most common one is a blend of sea salt and ground black peppercorns.  75% sea salt (I use Maldon sea salt, it is harvested by the English very similar to the French fleur de sel, but the cost is much less).  Every cooking station at Hudson’s had a fresh supply labeled sabor.  Everything that was cooked on the grill or in the oven or in a sauté pan was dusted with seasoning, avoid premaking large amounts of this as the pepper has a different flavor when exposed to room air.  The bronze seasoning was created by Courtney Swenson and can be used on fish or really anything.  If you are on a restricted salt diet try the bronze rub.  It was not created for a low salt diet, but has low amounts of salt.  If your diet requires no salt leave the salt out.  Enjoy.

Bronze Rub

Ingredients

All ingredients are dried and well blended.

½ cup of toasted and ground coriander (grind using a food processor with the S blade or a spice grinder)

1 tablespoon ground onion

3 tablespoons lemon pepper

1 tablespoon oregano

1 teaspoon ground white pepper

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon sea saltTop fish or game or poultry, then grill.