Belize It or Not: A Belize Chef's Story on the Caribbean Sea.

Belizean Seafood Extravaganza

2012-02-03T06:55:00.000-08:00

Belizean seafood directly from the fisherman here has long been one of the most attractive reasons and motivating factors for my continued passion for the culinary arts. This season has proven even better as my 7 years of networking with the fisherman, becoming their friends, earning their respect by looking at the quality of their seafood and being able to identify the plethora of filet's, even when skinless, has made a great variety of seafood available to me without much searching. I am often the first one called , especially when a not so usual catch is made, simply because I know what to do with it.

Fresh Lobster Tails are on the top of the list for most visitors and we aim to please, so I've been buying tails about 4 times a week in various sizes to offer as many choices for customers as I can. I often list our most popular, simply baked with garlic butter and list sizes from 8 ounces all the way up to a 2 pound lobster tail dinner for 2. Other preparation and combinations round out the lobster offerings such as Lobster Coconut Curry, Cuban Style Lobster with Lime and Cilantro butter served over a pool of black bean coulis or a favorite, Belizean Seafood Combination, featuring a fresh fish of the day, a 6 ounce lobster tail and jumbo wild shrimp all cooked with lemon basil butter and served with pasta al fresco.

Fresh fish has gotten to such a wonderful selection for me this year, with snapper and grouper being the a common fish on most menus, like the above prepared grouper baked with pesto over roasted vegetables, but other fish like the Pelagic Wahoo, Marlin and Tuna has become more common for me as fisherman now know when they catch such delicacies, that I am there to pay a premium price for properly cared for fish of this nature. Indeed I've helped teach the locals how to bleed pelagic deeper water fish as soon as they catch them, to lend a mildness of flavor and texture to these denizens of the deep.

Fresh Marlin pan seared in Sesame oil and topped with a spicy tamarind-ginger peanut sauce, Medium Rare Yellow Eye Jackfish with mango salsa and thick medallions of Wahoo topped with shrimp in champagne sauce now are regulars to a menu that can be compared to one of the Fish Grottos of the East or West coast restaurants of old, when a chef would visit the fish market and buy a variety of fresh fish and prepare it in a variety of ways...go Grotto, that's my Motto!

And let's not forget about the ever plentiful Jumbo shrimp, both locally farmed and wild caught, they help to round out a great Seafood selection and offer the shellfish for our menus when lobster season closes on from February 15th to the 1st of June. At that time, restaurateurs are not allowed to feature lobster on our menus and we need to rely on the shrimp to fill the void. Shrimp Cocktails, scampi, curries, marinara's all lend themselves well to this versatile menu staple.

a new favorite combination is fresh Grouper and shrimp Pomedoro, an herbaceous concoction of pan seared grouper fillet finished with marinara sauce with a splash of heavy cream and a generous amount of fresh chopped basil and oregano from the garden, topped with jumbo shrimp and served over a cheesy polenta, it offers what has become known at the Barracuda Bar and Grill as Mediteribbean Fare......it's the freshest available ingredients from the Caribbean, prepared with a Mediterranean flair..That's Mediteribbean.....You'd better Belize It!

November Romance in Hopkins Belize

2011-11-05T06:42:00.000-07:00

November in Belize has it's advantages. It reminds me of springtime in Alaska, something you look forward to all winter long. Here in Belize, November brings the start of the tourist season, but it is a slow and gradual increase in pace, not a floodgate opening, thank god we are still a little off the beaten path for that. Yes November brings the end to the Hurricane and wet season, which really isn't much of a rainy season here in Hopkins. We enjoy moderate rainfall most summers, with a lot of night rains and stomach echoing thunderstorms, which I enjoy. But this morning I woke up to a beautiful sunrise and felt very lucky to be here as I walked out onto the dock and watched the sun come up on a deserted beach. There are few guests in the other resorts nearby, and we have a couple of rooms right now, and the ability to pay attention to each guest is something that is enjoyable for Angela and i and , hopefully the clients as well. I am already planning the 4 course chef's tasting dinner for one couple, here on a 5 day romance package. I've arranged a sunset trip up the Sittee River to Anderson lagoon, which is alive with phosphorescent plankton in the dark nights of November. Then they will return to sit out on the dock, torches aglow, and enjoy a first course of Indian Lamb curry, with a glass of Bolla Soave. Then on to smoked lobster stuffed raviolis with sun dried tomato cream sauce, a rocket salad of my baby greens grown off the back porch, and a little intermezzo with a glass of Melbac. Then, a simple lemon-garlic grouper fillet served over zucchini latkes and my wife has made a white chocolate-cherry cheesecake with dark cherries. We'll let them take their time. Let them savor and converse. let them enjoy the acquiescence of a warm, November evening in Belize. Let them take their time, there is no one waiting for their table. We left those days behind in Alaska, where we needed to do 300 dinners in a week-end in order to make the $4500 a month payment on the restaurant there. We've been there and done that. Hell, let ME savor the acquiescence of cooking a great meal for a handful of people, to take my time and be sure the seafood is cooked to the ultimate perfection. To visit with them over a bottle of wine after dinner. Let me savor the sunrise this morning and wax poetic over it in the blog...........Good Morning Belize.....You'd better Belize it!

Savor: The Food; The view, The Ambiance

A story from Alaska

2011-10-10T09:38:00.000-07:00

Well, it's October and I just celebrated my 50th birthday. We stayed down in Belize this year for the entire summer season, closing only in June when we had the roof torn off the main building, our home. we've now remodeled our entire place, the guest roomns first and now our home is finished (last , as usual). The season gave way to a more intimate type of cooking for guests, sometimes we would close to the public and cook just for our guests, buying just enough fresh fish for a few people. It was a way to really get to know the culinary expectations of them.

Often, a four couse dinner, eaten out on the dock with a great wine and the waves breathing the music for the night, it's a very special time, and one that may onlyu have existed at our place this summer of 2011, and we really enjoyed it as we hoped our guests did as well. Many of them left as lifelong friends. We had some folks from Fairbanks down this summer who remembered our restaurant there, Two Rivers lodge and mentioned that I used to write a local food column, flavored with some of the Alaskan local characters. We sat reminiscing about the land of the Midnight Sun and a wonderful likfe we lived there, raising 3 kids, living off the grid at the edge of wilderness while we ran a very busy 125 seat restaurant.

I though folks might enjoy a re-run of one of those articles printed in The Daily Newsminer in the early 2000's. My column ran for 4 years before I got a little too busy to keep writing.

Here now is....THE ART OF MANLY COOKING

“Looks like one-half inch,” I said authoritatively.
“It’s nine-sixteenths, you moron,” said my mechanic friend, looking at the nut on top of my pepper grinder.
And so the weakness of my masculine façade became evident , even to me.

My friends were always hovering over 350 turbos in the driveway, able to discern a 350 from a 302 at a glance, admiring things like 5:1 gear ratios, posi-traction and forged pistons. They were always naming sizes of bolts, whether metric or not, always talking in code about FPS and PSI, while my area of expertise never left the kitchen.
“Looks like one-half teaspoon,” I said, thinking of bread pudding and the amount of nutmeg in it. I only hoped I didn’t say it out loud, for I do make an effort to learn manly things like nut and bolt sizes.
Once, at a gathering with some leather clad, heavily tattooed Harley-riding friends who were discussing flatheads, panheads, knuckleheads and evo’s, I blurted out, “Oh, yeah, well there’s nothing like a pinch of caraway added to pureed beets to bring out the best in my borscht.”
The room grew silent as Jake the Snake stood and walked toward me, big black boots echoing across the cement floor of the garage.
“Say,” he said, “what I really want to know is do you add the sherry to your French onion soup before you sauté the onions or right before you put the croutons and cheese on it?”
“My secret,” I confided, “is to sprinkle the sherry on the floating croutons just before adding the cheese, that way the croutons soak up the flavor.”
“I told you, man,” laughed long, tall Rich, a guy who looked like he belonged in ZZ Top.
And so is the life of a chef—hanging out with mechanics and bikers, carpenters and welders, trying my best to fit into testosterone-driven situations. Yet I ended up being myself, turning the conversati0on about Yamaha’s new four-cylinder, faster-than-fast snow machine into a debate about the difference between copper and all-clad cookware.
After being caught in the charade of trying to fit in, I have decided to stick to areas in which I am an expert: gardening, cooking, wine, and, of course, eating. Finally, I became comfortable with my forte, and realized that although I may be envious of the mechanic who can fix an engine or the carpenter who can dovetail any joint, those experts appreciate the skill of making the perfect soufflé or cooking a romantic dinner for a spouse.
Nothing made this clearer than the summer of 1999, when we were remodeling our kitchen, putting in a wood-burning Tuscan-style oven. This required daily visits from carpenters installing cabinets, a welder forging the frame for the oven, concrete workers, tile men, carpet layers—a veritable bevy of those steeped in their manly careers.
As I went from worker to worker asking how I could help, they gave me menial tasks just to get me out of the way of any power tool capable of de-limbing me (or them).
“Take this jigsaw, and go cut this tin along the lines I drew,” said one worker.
I gleefully went outside with the jigsaw, placed the tin between sawhorses and began to cut. The result sounded like a cross between fingernails on a chalkboard and a thunderstorm. The entire contracting team stampeded out the door to see what the commotion was.
“Who gave him the power tool?” yelled the foreman, watching me vibrate with tin and saw like a cartoon character clashed between cymbals.
“Go make some lunch!” shouted the worker responsible for sending me to near death as he snatched the jigsaw from my hands.
“This New York Steak Diane is seared to perfection,” the foreman said at lunch, “How far from the coals did you cook them?”
“Looks like one-half inch,” I said, glancing at the frill, “one-half inch.”

End..........From Alaska to Belize, at least I won't freeze! Good Cooking!

Lobster deliciouso

2011-07-25T07:34:00.000-07:00

The Belize barrier reef, the world's second largest barrier reef next to Australia's, is apparent in it's fisheries regulations, which state that no lobster can be taken during the closed season from February 15 through June 15th. It is also unlawful to possess or sell, even frozen lobsters, during this closed season.

We fill in our menu with lots of shrimp and fish dishes, but hey, lobster is lobster so we're glad to be including these denizens of the deep back into our reperatoir of foodie fare.

This is the first summer season that we have kept the Barracuda Bar and Grill open, largely because it is such a chef driven restaurant, I won't let anyone else come and cook there or attempt to keep the restaurant open in my usual summer absence. This summer we stayed on to complete our 5 year renovation plans, fianally getting our own home above the restaurant in order. I must say that even summer now is bringing the tourist trade and alot of people coming to look at real estate in thier desire to retire in paradise, so the Bartracuda Bar and Grill has been open and though not hopping, it has been a pleasurable pace to cook at , and of course leaves a little time for culinary experimentation and personalized serrvice of our guests like 6 course tasting dinners filled with fresh veggies, seafood and the Italian-Caribbean blend of fusion cooking that we call Mediteribbean.

Avacados are in abundance right now and one of our little Tapas items for the tasting dinners has been a simple lobster and avacado salad, laced with fresh tomatoes, garlic, firm but ripe avacados, fresh basil and tiny slivers of crispy roasted garlic on top to give a crunchy, slightly bitter aspect to the freshness of the dish.
The lobster fisherman are bringing the fresh lobsters right to our dock on an everyother day basis, so keeping fresh lobsters on hand for Lobster Bisque, Lobster Thermidor, Lobster Coconut curry, Lobster Scampi, and even just plain lobster baked with garlic butter and lots of fresh limes for squeezing. Another great dish we prpare using all of our fresh available seafood is a uniquely Mediteribbean dish we call Mediteribbean Seafood Stew. It's somewhere halfway between Boulabaisse and Ciopino, incorperating seafood stock, marinara almost equally, add lots of our fresh chopped herb mix of Thyme, Marjoram, Basil and Oregeno, grown right here on the second story herb garden, lots of garlic and a splash of white wine. We simmer the seafood just until done, adding the larger peices first and the smaller, faster cooking things like shrimp last so that none of the seafood becomes overcooked, a personal complaint of mine. There is nothing worse than someone overcooking seafood, especially of the shellfish variety. So I always pay special attention to cooking times in mixed shellfish ingredient dishes.
If you make it down to Hopkins this summer, be sure to stop into the Barracuda Bar and Grill at Beaches and Dreams.

Touch Down in Belize Lobster Extravaganza

2010-10-16T09:11:00.000-07:00

Excuses, excuses! I know....No Blog for 6 months!

Life really turns into a whirlwind when you make the decision to split your time between two far away places. We closed the Barracuda Bar and Grill at Beaches and Dreams Seafront Inn in late June, after having a week-long 40th birthday party for a California girl and her entourage of friends that filled up ourplace and spilled over to some of the other resorts nearby. The celebration was, much to my joy, centered around culinary theme nights, culminating in a 6 course wine dinner which was provided an impromtu intermezzo when a sudden storm blew in our outdoor dining area. The menu was matched with wines and began with a Lobster Bisque, Roasted Duck and apricot salad, seafood ravioli with sundried tomato pesto, mango sorbet and a 12 layer Lithuanian Torte.

The Inn remains open with breakfast all summer until our return in late September after working in a remote kitchen for firefighters in the Alaskan outback. This year, on the return trip to Belize, we decided to take a 2 week camping trip in an area I'd never really explored, the Northwestern US. We drove down the Washington and Oregon Coast into Northern California , then returned through the central portions of those states, staying mostly on 2nd class roads and hitting some phenominal fishing in Oregon.

This gives me an answer for the oft-asked question we get here at Beaches and Dreams- "Where do people that live here go for vacation?"

Of course our camping trip centered around.....you guessed it.....FOOD!

It's nice when you have a passion that you can indulge in daily, and still enjoy doing it ...and make a living out of it, and culinary pursuit is definitely mine. It's my heroin. If I don't cook for a few days, I can have crazy mood swings. The camping trip was started provisioning with kitchen essentials for our little rented van. Every night we built a fire and cooked over it, roasting peppers in our clamp grill and cooking portabellos stuffed with the roasted peppers and cheese. We bought fresh seafood in the little fishing towns along the coast and lunched in mom and pop diners serving fresh crab and oysters.

Fast forward now, back at our home in Belize for our usual pre-season maintenance rush. Painting the main building and completing the last of our room re-models, reseeding a current crop of basil, oregeno, thyme and dill as well as planting a new raised bed for baby lettuces like mesclun mix and getting stocked up to re-open the Barracuda Bar and Grill has kept us busy 16 hours a day since our return and the first of the seaswons guests are here, but we are ready.
We will now go into the operation mode, where life just skips along at a nice Belizean pace and my mornings are filled with buying fresh snapper filets and lobster tails and checking the local vegetable stand for jicama and tamarind.

Daily Hopkins life is full of things to do, most of which I love to do. Buying fresh ingredients for the nights specials board, serving great clientelle who are Foodies and then enjoying a glass of wine with them after dinner while we sit out on the new extended dock as the palm trees dance in the breeze ...and the ocean sings us her lulabye....I'll meet you at Beaches and Dreams.
You'd better Belize it!

Setting Back the Clock....and Moving Forward

2010-01-20T06:27:00.000-08:00

For anyone who may not be aware, I am from Italian American decent. Both my parents arrived ont "The Boat" with thier parents as young children, making my siblings and I, 1st generation Italian -Americans. I was the youngest of six and my sister Annette recently sent me the following discertation which I relate to perfectly:

> The Italian Clan ~ > > I am sure for most second generation Italian American children who > grew up in the 40's, 50's & 60's there was a definite distinction > between us and them. We were Italians, everybody else, the Irish, the > Germans, the Polish, they were Americans. > > I was well into adulthood before I realized I was an > American. I had been born American and lived here all > my life, but Americans were people who ate peanut butter and jelly > sandwiches on mushy white bread. I had no animosity towards them, it's > just I thought ours was the better way with our bread man, egg man, > vegetable man, the chicken > man, to name a few of the peddlers who came to our > neighborhoods. We knew them, they knew us. > > Americans went to the A&P. It amazed me that some > friends and classmates on Thanksgiving and Christmas ate > only turkey with stuffing, potatoes, and cranberry sauce. We had > turkey, but only after antipasti, soup, lasagna, meatballs and salad! > > In case someone came in who didn't like turkey, we also > had a roast of beef. Soon after we were eating fruits, nuts, pastries > and homemade cookies sprinkled with little colored things. This is > where you learned to eat a seven course meal between noon and four > PM, how to handle hot chest nuts and put peaches in wine. Italians > live a romance with food. Sundays we would wake up to the smell of > garlic and onions frying in olive oil. We always had macaroni and > sauce (gravy). > > Sunday would not be Sunday without going to Church. We knew when we got home we'd find meatballs frying, and > nothing tasted better than newly cooked meatballs with crisp bread > dipped into a pot of hot gravy (not sauce). > > > > Another difference between > them and us was we had gardens. Not just with flowers, but tomatoes, > peppers, basil, lettuce and 'cucuzza'. Everybody had a grapevine and > fig tree. In the fall we drank homemade wine arguing over who made the > best. Those gardens thrived because we had something our American > friends didn't seem to have. We had Grandparents. > > It's not that they didn't have grandparents. > It's just they didn't live in the same house > or street. We ate with our grandparents, and God forbid we didn't > visit them 3 times a week. I can still remember my grandfather telling > us how he came to America when he was young, on the 'boat.' > > I'll never forget the holidays when the relatives would gather at my > grandparents' house, the women in the kitchen, the men in the living > room, the kids everywhere. I must have fifty cousins. My grandfather > sat in the middle of it all drinking his wine he was so > proud of his family and how well they had done. > > When my grandparents died, things began to change. Family gatherings > were fewer and something seemed to be missing. Although we did get > together usually at my mother's house, I always had the feeling > grandma and grandpa were there. > > Its understandable things change. We all have families of > our own and grandchildren of our own. Today we visit once in a while > or meet at wakes or weddings. Other things have also changed. The old > house my grandparents bought is now covered with aluminum siding. A > green lawn covers the soil that grew the tomatoes. There was no one to > cover the fig tree, so it died. > > The holidays have changed. We still make family > 'rounds' but somehow things have become more formal. > The great quantities of food we consumed, without any ill effects, are > not good for us anymore. Too much starch, too much cholesterol, too > many calories in the pastries. The difference between 'us' and 'them' > isn't so easily defined anymore, and I guess that's good. > > My grandparents were Italian-Italians; my parents were > Italian-Americans. I'm an American and proud of it, just as my > grandparents would want me to be. We are all Americans now...the > Irish, Germans, Polish, all U.S. citizens. > > But somehow I still feel a little bit Italian. Call it culture...call > it roots...I'm not sure what it is. All I do know is that my children, > grandchildren, nieces, and nephews, have been cheated out of a > wonderful piece of our heritage. >

Now, here I am in Belize, and the clock has been set back. Abundant tomatoes grow in my own garden. A second story balcony in a more protected area grows my herbs such as basil, dill oregeno and mint.
Two times a week the pineapple and lime guy comes. He's the grower. Another truck arrives with Francesco, another vegetable salesman. He's not the grower, but he travels around and buys from local farmers and brings a variety of fresh produce. I talk with the farmers and let them know what I'll buy. Now there are a few more lettuce growers and instead of going for the giant zuchini for weight, I can get smaller more delicate ones. The very fisherman I buy my fish from now know how I like my filets and actually what type of filets I like and we are on a first name basis. The Country Foods truck brings local eggs, of which all are fresh brown eggs (white eggs are illegal to sell here) and dried beans and flour produced in Spanish Lookout by the Mennonites.

The Dairy truck comes once a week as well, with cream, milk and yogurt. To me it is as close to the food as a chef can be without being the farmer himself, (which wouldn't give one enough time to be a chef). A local farm not 5 miles away now has a meat processing plant and I can go to the butcher himself and again give him my specifications on various cuts of Beef and Pork.

Another farm on the Hopkins road is now raising quality ducks, quail, lamb and Guinea Fowl and one only has to pick up the phone and order for a next day pick-up.

When a few of the fisherman go out to Glovers Reef, they know to bring me my Tuna and Wahoo whole, as I like to cut the filets myself and the palagics keep better that way after proper bleeding, perfect for a rare seared Albacore Tuna over spicy Bok Choi with ginger lime reduction sauce.

All in all, maybe its not the days of yesteryear for most people in the States, but here , the clock has been set back to a more direct interaction between chef and suppliers, and as a first generation Italian American- Belizean, I can only sit back in the evenings when the cool tradewinds blow and reflect on anther Culinary day of buying and cooking and sharing and enjoying and think that this is the way it should always be....close to the things that sustain us.........Belize it or not, its a step back in time, and in my opinion, a step in the right direction!

Colorful Caribbean Cuisine

2009-12-11T10:02:00.000-08:00

Colorful Vegetables
I am never ceased to be dazzled and amazed on a daily basis here in Belize. Dazzled by the extra dose of optic stimulation consisting of stunning contrasts in hues. It occurs in nature all around me at all times, and it occurs by human hands daily as well, perhaps inspired by natures infinite palette. It occurs in the personalities here as well. I can't help think that it becomes cause and effect that is self perpetuating. What ever the reason for this colorful cornucopia here in Belize, and the Caribbean, I love it.
In fact, I was born to participate in a colorful scheme of life, and this of course bleeds into my kitchen and the resulting creations that emerge from my culinary playground. Even a simple medley of vegetables becomes a kaleidoscope of color. I seek out the red, yellows and green peppers from the veggie stand. I prefer the smaller locally grown thin skinned peppers that sometimes come in half green and half red with a bit of purple streaking through them. The larger varieties with thick and often bitter meat are available in perfect colors, the result of grafting for more volume per fruit, but are far less sweet than the un-grafted peppers. Add some zucchini and yellow squash, purple eggplant and white onion and the result is a visually stimulating Caribbean Vegetable Blend that is its own garnish.

Colorful Crabs

Colorful Chairs

Colorful Everything!

And so it goes, surrounded by a
plethera of colors everyday from the
beautiful flowers to the colorful personalities
to the clothes and the food and the flora. It's
like Las Vegas without the electric bill.
Even the uderwater world of the reef is alive with colors.
The fish and the coral all echo the theme:
We are alive! Alive with Caribbean Color.
It says : Have fun. Be happy. Enjoy.
All of the ramifications that I would like to think my food exudes. Enjoy, have fun eating and cooking, be colorful, like the flowers and the birds. Like the Spanish and the Mayan and the Creole and the Garifuna......and like the Chef in Belize ...........You'd better Belize it!

Mediteribbean Cuisine

2009-11-01T06:07:00.000-08:00

Well, October is behind us now and we are gearing up for the season which, for us, officially starts now. Lots of hours have been spent in the kitchen, and as I do often, a menu re-design has transformed our menu into a plethora of dishes founded from my roots and my passion for Mediterranean dishes and the availability of fresh Caribbean ingredients. The result is a selection of fresh seafood, pork, beef, lamb, chicken and vegetarian prepared in the simple,but elegant style of Italy, Greece and Spain, which I call Mediteribbean.
The result of the new beachfront smoker and wood grill, now complete with stainless steel lid, has sent my culinary imagination on fire (pun intended) in finding ways to infuse the smokey flavor of Craboo Wood into some of the dishes that come out of my main kitchen. One trip to the veggie market in Dangriga answered my own question. I bought abundant amounts of zucchini, Roma tomatoes, eggplant, white onions and sweet peppers, which I would cut into large enough chunks and grill them over the Craboo wood. First I marinated the veggies in olive oil, a splash of balsamic vinegar, lots of mashed garlic and a spoonful of Dijon. When the fire was ready, I grill the veggies, closing the lid for a few minutes to dampen the fire and let the wood smoke for a little while.

When the veggies are cooked, I can use them in lots of dishes. I finely dice a little and added to one of our side dishes, a cornmeal polenta and the result was an absolutely sublime creamy polenta with a hint of smoke and sweet peppers. It blended perfectly with the Romano cheese I add to it at the last moment. Now THAT'S Mediteribbean. Another use for these veggies is a great additive to some crispy sauteed vegetables for my vegetarian marinara. I'll add a few of the larger pieces after I've sauteed the other veggies and just when I add the marinara sauce. After a light tossing, the subtle smokey flavors add depth to the marinara that would be impossible to ascertain without the smokey vegetables. The uses for these veggies is endless, to using them actually as a spice blend to centering them on a piece of crostini made from our home made sourdough bread, drizzling olive oil over the top and a little shaved Parmesan. I put into a hot oven, and in a few minutes have a great appetizer or salad accompaniment.
The grill is not just for vegetables, mind you , It's versatility lend to the slow Jerk smoking we do with our pork tenderloins and whole chickens. We serve the slow smoked pork tenderloins, which have been rubbed with my own jerk spice blend, over a bed of spicy Cuban black beans after it has been basted with my homemade honey jerk BBQ sauce, to which I have added ground smoked habenero peppers. The smoked chickens are used as an entree and as a topping for our BBQ chicken pizza. This pizza uses our BBQ sauce as the sauce and is finished in the end with crumbled Gorgonzola cheese. The smokey chicken also in nice in pasta, like sweet Italian sausage and smoked chicken Alfredo. The shining star of the grill will come every Friday night, while we simplify our menu and offer Lobster, Shrimp and Fish as well as steak, cooked to order on the wood grill. We make a fabulous basting sauce by melting butter and adding an equal amount of our BBQ sauce, chopped pineapples and a plethora of ground peppers. The simple flavors of the grill take care of everything, the rib steaks are rubbed and basted with garlic oil. The upper rack of the grill will keep roasted corn on the cob hot and the resulting plate can only be described as....well....Mediteribbean. One thing I am anxious to try, will be a wood grilled pizza, I'll have my camera ready and report on that in my next blog, but I think I can place it on a kamal on the rack, then transfer directly to the rack after a generous basting of olive oil.

As menu planning goes with me, that is just a small sample of the actual new menu. Other items of course feature lots of fresh fish, like pesto baked grouper or Seafood marinara. Fillet Oscar Mediteribbean are medallions of beef tenderloin, pan seared and topped with diced lobster meat, hearts of palm and a Bearnaise sauce, served with pesto potatoes. Shrimp scampi has been a mainstay on my menus for my entire 30 year cooking career, but the availability of the fresh shrimp from the many shrimp farms around make it a must. We also prepare a Lobster Tail Scampi appetizer for two, featuring a butterflied lobster tail sauteed in olive oil, lemon, wine and garlic, the signature scampi sauce of generations. It is also enhanced by a fresh herb lend I chop nightly consisting of herbs from my upstairs container garden which is on the "back" of the building, sheltered from the wind driven salt air that can burn delicate little herbs. I find the oregano does well anywhere, and imagine clumps of it coming out of scraggly rocks overhanging the Mediterranean sea on precarious cliffs. Its tough. The basil, once established does well as does a variety of thyme here. The 3 herbs make for a great blend and add the extra freshness whether added to a dish while cooking or sprinkled over the top of a pizza or pasta.
To round out the Mediteribbean menu, I've selected a center cut of boneless pork loin to star as the main attraction in Pork Loin Picatta. After cutting about three-quarter inch thick medallions, I pound out the cutlets, dredge in a seasoned flour and saute in olive oil with white wine, capers, garlic and lemon. Served with pasta with roasted vegetables and topped with a blend of Parmesan and Romano cheeses. Keeping in mind that this is of course just the base menu and that 3-6 features of the day are usually added at the 11th hour as fishermen return or my ADD personality sees a breadfruit and ..... God forbid..... I go off on a Breadfruit tangent, or some similar such circumstance that pretty much describes my culinary career. Indeed, I can get very excited about a simple edible morsel and my imagination can take just about any ingredient and make it center stage for an evening or 2. "Its what defines a passion," I tell my wife, after waking her at 3am to tell her my latest food preparation fantasy.
"It defines something!" she mumbled as she rolled over and went back to sleep.
Angela too, has been refining recipes for her ever changing dessert menu. Chocolate is always the favorite and she brought lots of specialty items for her desserts back with her from the states. It will be interesting to see what she comes up with in her secret labratory with all those measuring spoons and other items I try never to use.
For now....You'd Better Belize it.... and now you're hungry too!

Spring.... err fall spruce up.

2009-10-12T10:09:00.000-07:00

Coming from early Alaskan winter to the warm climes of our beach, it almost seems like we skip winter and move right to Spring and being that it is a little pre-season, we get right to business with our pre-season spruce up, a little like Spring Cleaning.

A little Re-thatching of the the roof over our beach sign.......

And the building of a new beachfront smoker/wood grill....................

The foundation and some governors I had made to regulate the airflow to the fire. The ends can turn and let in more air. They'll be cast into the bottom of the fire pit.

After they are cast into the fire base, we put a stone facade on the outside and casted ledges for the racks. We are still waiting for the racks and the quarter circle lid to come from Spanish Look-out where the Mennoniotes are fabricating them.

The view from the BBQ isn't bad either......................................

We are also doing some painting of the cabanas....

And last summer we finished the new roofs for a cool interior

And finally, Ruger the super dog continues to patrol the beach picking up all plastic bottles and becoming a leaping eco-cause beach dog. You can see his exploits below....

To Alaska and Back in Belize

2009-09-24T06:47:00.000-07:00

After not planning on returning to Alaska for a full year and quite enjoying the slower pace of June and July in Hopkins we were able to gain our permanent residence status in Mid-July followed by phone call from a friend who was running the Fairbanks kitchen for Alaska Fire fighters asking if I could come and help out with an extremely busy fire season.

July 26th saw us landing in Fairbanks once again for an 8 week stint back at the cabin on the Upper Chena River in Two Rivers, Alaska. Both Angela and I went to work immediately in the kitchen for 2 back to back stints of 7/12 hour days for 21 days straight. Needless to say, our time there went quickly, and a day before the first snowflake fell on September 21st, we made our return.

My trip there was a personal revelation, as I found myself missing Belize after the first few weeks and, for another revelation, for the first time, we said we were going home.

And home it is, and its great to be back. We awoke the first morning with still a little jet lag from a too long flight, but to the usual fabulous sunrise as I took it in from my upper deck with some fresh ground Guatemalan coffee. I was happy to see that my basil, papaya, lemon grass and peppers took good care of themselves when I was gone, do mostly to a great summer cycle of night rain followed by breezy semi-cloudy days and it almost a necessity to process a large batch of pesto immediately. Though I was in a kitchen in Fairbanks, I was mostly feeding larger quantities of people so my overactive culinary imagination had been vicariously running rampant in Belize a month before I actually came back down. We won't officially open the restaurant to the public until mid-October,though lucky guests of Beaches and Dreams will have

our undivided culinary attention should they so desire.

The villagers have made note of our return and the fisherman and lobster divers hail as we pass through Hopkins. They yell that they will be down with their catches and the different vendors of vegetables also know to begin stopping by again. I phoned the restaurant staff, who all can't wait to get back to work. Kendra, my associate in the kitchen, has been with me since my first season, her teaching me about some of the traditional foods and taking great pleasure learning creative ways to prepare them. Indeed, only for the first few weeks of her employ did she think that the way she grew up with and learned to cook things like breadfruit and jicama and calilou was certainly not the only way to do things.

Last year we discovered a giant patch of wild calilou growing on our Sittee River property and my Belizean friends showed me this great green which I liken to a cross between spinach and beet greens.

After buying last seasons lobsters in quantity on the opening day of lobster season, I featured a plethora of lobster dishes including lobster bisque. When I returned to the restaurant with my new found booty of calilou, I decided to saute a little bit of it and added it to my bisque, which was still on the thick side as I add sherry at the last minute when serving. I blended the sauteed Calilou in with the lobster bisque and topped it with a little mozzarella and baked the entirety until golden on the top. Some fresh chopped parsley and Parmesan finished the dish which is served with pieces of pesto focaccia for a fabulous lobster fondue. Indeed, when I ask Kendra about the uses of a new found vegetable or fruit she responds, "Why are you even asking me how we prepare that, you will do what you want anyway!" True as that may be, I still usually start with finding out the traditional uses of things, as many times this is a starting point to find out if things may be starchy or sour and how the traditional preparations may change the palatability of these foods.

After being in Alaska for the last 8 weeks, I was glad to return to an abundant crop of basis and oregano and find out that my long nursing of the mint plant had payed off and I now had a healthy crop of mint established. I am ready this morning to make a batch of pesto. I'll make 3 kinds. Standard , sun dried tomato and a multi herb pesto with thyme, oregano , but still mostly basil. This I use for many seasonings and pasta dishes. It never ceases to amaze me how fresh herbs change a dish, especially when you are dealing with the fresh seafood I find in Belize.

On other news from Hopkins.........

Ruger, the new puppy, grew by leaps and bounds since I left and has learned to jump, no make that leap, off the dock into the water to retrieve. If you look back in this blog history and see the little puppy picture of him jumping like super dog, he has materialized into an adult version of this. I'll shoot some photos and put it in my next post.

For now, our first guest of season is here and has just taken in a splendid sunrise and I see he is having coffee on the dock, watching the fisherman catch his dinner.

We opened the restaurant with a limited menu last night and I sold out of my curried lamb stew, fresh lobsters and some cobia fillets so I am off in search of today's fare......You'd better Belize it!

Tony

June in Belize

2009-06-13T06:40:00.000-07:00

Well, amidst all the warnings of the treachery of summers here in Belize, we have so far had great weather and the tourist season, though waning, has far from dried up.

The hammocks always have a nice breeze

On the days temperatures rise, one only has to walk to the back(roadside) part of our building to feel the full force of the sun. Beach side however, continues to enjoy a nearly constant breeze and a comfortable respite from the heat. Hell, its just a great place to hang out. Perfect beach, 3 hammocks in the shade under the palapa where wireless still remains available so one can get a bit of work done and sip cool beverage of choice.

The first of June usually marks the beginning of the rainy season, but it has been held at bay now and is not predicted to start until the end of the month. We need some rain, but we are in the middle of replacing the roofs on our two beachfront cabanas(each has 2 rooms). The result form the first cabana re-roof is that our rooms are about 20 degrees cooler on a hot sunny day. the old roofs were of asphalt with the plywood underneath actually being the ceilings in the rooms, so on a sunny day, the roof acted like a heat sink and it was often early evening before the rooms would begin to cool off for the night. Now we have built a ceiling out of cement board, created a 1 foot airspace with high tech reflecto(this is not a registered trade mark in case anyone was wondering) insulation and a zinc roof on top of that. then we finished with some new soffets and fascia boards. We have one unit done and will be starting the 2 week project on the second beginning of next week. This is phase 4 of a six stage, 4 year renovation that will ultimately include the remodeling of our upstairs living quarters, to which we hope to add a third story small deck with view of the Caribbean Sean and the Maya Mountains. The other phase will be a dock extension to include a small amount of seating and room to dock our boat.

The important thing to remember about the renovations is that they stick to our plan of Zero Growth. We been there done that in Alaska already and have no intentions of borrowing to get bigger and to lose the small resort ambiance that is ultimately our success and our sanity. There is just enough here to do and make decent money while pursuing my passions for cooking, gardening and water activities and the ultimate payoff comes of course in the resale of prime Caribbean Beachfront property. In the meantime, we'll be enjoying every minute of our time here.

\ The ultimate plan of course will be to spend 3 months in the off season in Alaska at our place on the Chena River while being here during the peak seasons. There are times right now we miss the crackling of our Tuscan Oven in our log home in Alaska, friends gathered round and raucous conversation. We miss our friends, but have made many new ones who have opened our eyes to a simpler, less complicated life. We have several friends from Alaska who have visited and purchased property here to spend half a year here during their retirement years. Alaska, after all, is as rural and diversified culturally as Belize and I can draw many parallels. The little town of Galena , Alaska, where I have gone to work for the last 3 years is very much like Hopkins. Athabaskans still fish the Yukon and hunt for subsistence, while taking paying jobs is secondary to many there, though this is changing rapidly, just as in Hopkins. Persons per square mile of country is also very alike and populations are concentrated with one very big city and several smaller ones and many very small villages. the list goes on, but I would be waxing senselessly, as is my nature.

Dangriga market and my Garifuna language lessons

Dangriga, to most first time visitors, seems gritty and intimidating, and indeed remains that way in the minds of many expats with years of living in an evolving 3rd world country. Well it is a little gritty, but scratch that grit and you will reveal a place steeped in culture. Gritty culture I guess, but full of the same life and emotions and cultural intermingling as any town of that size.

A few people will ask for a dollar, usually with a story of a sick baby, but they are not aggressive.

The guys near the river by the Chinese grocery, The Price is Right, offer to wash your car with the saltwater from the river for $5, and if you look the part, you may be offered a bag of weed, but that is nothing different than any Central American town that size, or any tourist driven location for that matter.

The Dangriga area, and the entire Stann Creek District, was settled by the Garifuna, and many of the descendants of those settlers, are still everywhere. Most remember life without electricity and when they made their living from the sea. Most still speak , or at least understand the language, which is African based. My staff has been teaching me some and I have been trying to learn a new phrase or two every week. I have known how to say good morning, good afternoon and good night for some time now, but the presence at the open air market in Dangriga of some nicely traditionally dressed older women who are perusing the various booths for their daily supply of cassava, plantains and sweet potatoes. The traditional Garifuna women are usually of a larger frame, walk with pride and dignity, usually wear a dress with a matching sun hat, and banter with each other robustly. These were my targets for my new greeting,k "Good morning beautiful ladies." I had practiced it for 2 weeks and actually chickened out last week. In Hopkins I am known by all. Many know I am trying to learn the language a little and forgive small mispronunciations and indeed, help to teach by correcting me or leading me into areas of language that they know I am familiar. But this, this is Dangriga, I am recognized, but not known.

I seized my opportunity when two ladies were arguing with a Spanish gentleman about his price for sweet potatoes. They would ask him how much, then in Garifuna, converse with each other into what I took to mean, from the words I recognized, that his price was less yesterday.

Having mastered a phrase that would fit wonderfully into their conversation, and aware of the shock effect of a white guy speaking Garifuna, or trying, I interrupted politely: " Aye, Abba cate ugaine, Amu cate haruga." Yes, one thing today and another thing tomorrow."

True to form, a quick moment of complete silence and an exchange of quick glances brought forth robust laughter and conversation in Garifuna with each other that of course was totally incomprehensible to me.

Calmly I smiled, "Aye," (yes) usually a yes in agreement works, but I knew I was seriously out f my league, but here it went anyway as I slowly walked away..................................

Buiti Banaafi he-eru beut.... Good morning beautiful ladies.

Exit stage right to the gleeful sounds of laughter and a beautiful language.....You'd Better Belize it.

One of The Beautiful ladies in Dangriga

The puppy

2009-05-04T06:53:00.000-07:00

When we first came down to Belize 3 years ago, we brought our dog of , then, 11 years, Sugar. She was a beautiful German Short hair Pointer that we owned in Alaska since she was 8 weeks old. The Alaskan winters were harder on her than us and her joints were always stiff and she was dangerously lethargic in winters now, barely going off our generous porch to do her business at 40 below zero. She had a wonderful life, never knowing confinement and having a the clear cool waters of the Upper Chena River in her front yard. The move down to Belize proved to be a great one as she was rejuvenated and often swam in the water for hours at a time and plenty of birds, crabs and other crawlies to chase. I think most of all, she loved the fact that I never left her for 12 hours at a time as was the case with our busy restaurant in Alaska,. and she was free to follow me around all day until I had to go to the kitchen to work at about 3 pm every day at which time she would dutifully go upstairs where we reside and take up her place on the love seat. Not a bad life. Indeed she became quite the schmoozer of the beach as wandering tourists ogled over her, missing their own pets. Our guestbook makes just as much reference to Sugar as to the hospitality and food that has become our trademark. Alas, last summer, she had a seizure and we put her to sleep where she can swim in the fluffy clouds for eternity.

Fast forward to February 2009 when Angela and I knew we would stay down here for the season I began thinking about getting another dog. I had had German Shorthair Pointers my whole life, hunting them some, but mostly as family pets and I wanted another. I really didn't want to spend the nearly $1000 US to purchase one from the States, but had my mind set on a GSP. I went online to some of the more Northern Breeders (remember, it is February there) and basically offered a 5 night stay with a fishing trip to any breeder willing to trade me a puppy. Low and Behold a breeder from Minnesota (that's where the February thing fits in.said he had a 3 week old male that he would do the trade and would wait until next March to come down and do his trip and he would send the puppy when he was 12 weeks old. We are expecting shipping on the puppy this May 18th and are very excited as for the first time in my life, I will have the time to work with a dog.

The owner is also a trainer of hunting dogs so he started him and asked if we had a name for him as they were just calling him Belize. After exchanging a few pictures and seeing him as a little pistol, we opted for the name Ruger and he is a cutie.

I have no doubt that Ruger will equally "own" the visitors on the beach and will soon learn the ways of "Schmoozing" That Sugar was so good at.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE FARM

.For such a small patch of salty seafront property, my micro climates around the roadside part of the property continue to amaze me as, at the time of this post my Mango tree is laden with fruit, a few pineapples are coming on, my basil is going at full bore, my tangerine tree is beginning to fruit (and it is full !)and the papayas are still producing small papayas. My pride and joy, however, has been the Tuscan Cantaloupes, of which we harvested the first ones earlier this week and they are positively the best cantaloupes I have ever had with their sweet, soft syrupy texture.

That's all for now, I see a boat pulling up to the dock and I know that the morning fisherman is returning....You'd better Belize it!

The Morning Fisherman

2009-03-29T09:45:00.000-07:00

All year long, on the calmest of mornings, I arise to drink my Guatamalen Coffee and take my morning sunrise stroll, most commonly just out to the dock to look to see if any barracuda or rays might be lingering in the azure Caribbean Seas near shore.

Many mornings, especially when the sea is like glass, I watch as my neighbors from Hopkins Village prepare to fish as they have done for centuries.

The traditional ones still paddle thier dugouts out after casting thier nets for bait near the docks. After catching enough sprat to fish away the morning from thier dugouts they paddle into the sunrise with thier handlines in the bottom and a supply of palmetto leaves used for shading the catch.

The serenity of scene can only be described with photos as the fisherman shares the sea with pelicans and cormorants. Later, when he's back on shore cleaning his catch the frigate birds will signal to the villagers and savy resort chef's like myself that a fresh catch of snapper, grouper and barracuda is at hand. These are the same gentleman I buy my fish for such dishes as filet of snapper baked with pesto and blackened barracuda bites.

To observe the ritual in which my fresh catch is brought from sea to table is gratifying, we were all linked here not just to make a living, but to savor life. It made me feel just about as close to the food I serve as possible, until a recent trip to Dangriga to drop off some guests at the airport.

That's when another link in our intertwined lives near the sea revealed itself. When driving into town, over the 1st bridge, I looked up the river to see a gentleman, Mr. Fred Martinez, sitting in a partialy built dugout patiently chiseling the log which would later become the dugout. Another step in the process of catching fish, as the Garifuna have done for years. I will return to talk to Mr. Martinez as he was just one of those people I am drawn to. I asked him if I could photograph him and how long it took to build a large dugout like the one on which he was working.

He said yes I could take his picture if he could get a print to which I agreed readily.

How long would he be there working on the canoe?

About a month, and I'll be back. I printed him a copy and returned the next day to find Fred off at lunch somewhere, his chisel lay idle in the bottom of the canoe. I just stood there awhile, thinking of the canoe the old man had paddled out in the previous morning and thought about the lines that would lay in the bottom of this working boat, palmetto leaves and cast net at the ready. I must have been a sight to the Dangriga locals as I stood looking at a transformation ..from log to boat.....but I felt lucky to witness what is sure to become a dying art.

Since I had laminated the 8 X 10 glossy for him, I left it under his chisel and departed without seeing him, but I know he will be happy with his photo and I'll be back to take more.......You'd better Belize It!

Winter's Over in Belize

2009-03-05T09:17:00.000-08:00

After a whirl wind season, I suddenly looked at the calendar and see it's the first week of March. In Alaska , this would have been a highly anticipated event of longer days and waining cold snaps, but here in Belize, the signs a little more subtle.
Yin and Yang
My Belizean Home in Winter

My Alaskan Home in Winter
One of the bonuses of owning a little beachfront resort and offering all the excursions to the reef, river and jungle is that I personally sample each tour before I will send anyone on the trip. I began to customize trips, some that only I offer.

One of these such trips, The Sittee River night tour, utilizesthe guiding talents of Udell, who grew up on the river and likes nothing more than showing off the glories of the Sittee River at night.

He loves to snatch an iguana or baby croc from the water to show participants the beautiful changing colors of the reptiles. He then cruises through a small cut in the mangroves used by cane farmers for more than a century to Anderson Lagoon. The lagoon is home to bioluminecent plankton and glows eerily when the water is disturbed. Udell will stomp the bottom of the boat to make fish dart, leaving a sparkling trail, reminding me of the Northern Lights of Alaska.

Another such trip I just have to try out often is a fishing trip to the reef.

I will usually pack a nice lunch like asian shrimp roll-ups. Sauted shrimp in sesame, honey and ginger sauce, chilled and mixed with shredded chinese cabbage and what ever crunchy veggies I might have like cho cho, celery and jicama. I never forget a cooler full of ice cold beverages to include Belikin, water and Pinot Grigio. One has to quench his thirst after battling a hefty Barracuda, grouper or kingfish.

We also have found some great narrow lagoons just to the south of us. We have found that if you leave before it gets light out, with a thermos of guatamalen coffee of course, and arrive at the lagoons(about a half an hour ride along the coast, that during the full moon phases, the Tarpon boil for about an hour. They quit just as suddenly, but for and hour, it's a tarpon hitting about every 3rd cast. The first time we went we werer seriously undergeared for these rambuncous fish and out of about 30 strikes, we landed zero. But i consider it one of the most exciting hours of fishing I have ever experienced.

Since we quit being open for lunch after our first year here, (we now only do gourmet boxed lunches for people going on tours) we get breakfast for our guests, then our days are free until early afternoon when we begin preparing for the evening meal. This allows for morning hikes to one of the many nearby Forest Reserves like Cockscomb Basin Jaguar Preserve ( Read Jaguar, by Alan Rabinowitz) or Mayflower Bocwina National Forest, both less than 10 miles away and offer many trails for wildlife viewing and of course the mandatory waterfall swim.

Both flora and fauna are so overly abundant on these hikes trhat one could take half an hour to walk 20 feet and still not take in all there is to see in the rainforest. Mayflower Bocawina is home to unexcavated Mayan Ruins as well and evidence can be found of worshiping sites, mounds of buried ruins and old trails that have existed for centuries. Indeed the Mayan population was more than 10 fold the current population of Belize.

Upon my return from a morning of activity, my appetite is usually whet for fabricating the special dishes that are in addition to my regular menu. Freshness is the key and I usually contact the fisherman who have fished from their dugouts early in the morning. After getting to know them, they know how I like my fish fileted and iced and have come to bring thier catch to me first as I offer them a little more than the going rate for quality fish, lobster and conch.
Then, the veggie man will drive up to see what fresh produce I might need for the next few days and i will peruse the back of his truck for pineapple, cilantro, lettuce and tomatoes. We make fresh salsa evry few days from the abundant produce that is brought down form the Cayo District by enterprising Belizeans who drive up early in the4 morning and briong down a truckload of beautiful produce. As a chef, the closeness to the food can't be beat, I am truly in my cooking euphoria here and have found an appreciative market.
We have made the decision to stay in Belize this entire summer in order to meet our residency requirements of staying in the country for a year with only a 2 week absence. We are both excited about it and hope that as the winter season comes to a close, tyhat the summer will leave a little more time to do some touring around Belize.

For now, Spring is in the air here in Belize and I think I might take the kayak around False Sittee Point with my flyrod and see if I can catch a few snook......You'd Better Belize It!

Holidays in Hopkins, Belize Style

2008-12-29T06:46:00.001-08:00

The Holidays in Hopkins center around the same things as Holidays most places: Re-uniting family and friends, celebrating with music and, of course, the all-important center of attention, FOOD.

To me, I like to use what the land around me produces locally, intertwining fresh local ingredients with customs and traditions that bring back the comforting memories of Christmases past. It is a culinary segue of past, present and future that creates a timeline for our own personal histories. This is especially evident in my many Belizean friends, Garifuna, Mayan, Spanish and Creole, all cling to the dishes that they were raised on, and all have been exposed to and are beginning to embrace and intertwine the traditions of European and hence American holiday traditions. Indeed, after watching the on site smoking of Ham and Turkey for the last 3 years during the holidays as I Incorporated the dishes expected by many of the traveling tourists that are our mainstay, asked me to smoke them some of the same for their Christmas dinner. The aroma of the full smoker Christmas Eve on the beach here have now been stored in my olfactory file for another comforting smell of, for now the present, but of course, is already advancing to the realm of history. I can certainly hope that now these same smells, will be passed on to the children of the parents for whom I smoked the Christmas dinners, there is comfort in that thought. A minute spec of culinary history in a developing nation, but culinary history none the less.

Papaya for everyone!

Machine, otherwise known as Emory Gonzalez, wearer of the perpetual smile and all around good guy poses with the papaya tree the day before it fell over, laden with fruit. In the picture you can see where it was propped up by the all useful "Y" stick, but, alas the fruit's weight proved too great and the tree fell over. Most of the fruit was ripened over time, but you cannot reproduce the sweetness and texture of a just picked papaya at its height of ripeness. Happily, 3 trees still remain and my crop of spaghetti squash is now climbing the wall along with 2 surviving Tuscan Cantaloupes, the seeds of which I brought down on my return from Alaska in September. With allot of water, I think I should have some fruit from those two in 2-4 weeks.

Angela continues to bake through the mornings as her desserts have proven to be the talk of the village and people stop by often looking for "that couple from Alaska" having been sent by the various locals and expat's who might have been asked the re-curring question that many culinary disappointed tourists ask just anyone: "Doesn't anybody have any good desserts around here?"

" Her desserts aint yo mama's coconut buns!'" I heard Kendra, my assistant in the kitchen telling a customer one day.

True enough, try Banana Rum and Italian Cream Torte, Mango Creme Brulee and Chocolate Double Diablo for just a few of her creations. She sometimes goes into a semi-trance when pondering desserts...." So anyway," I continued in what I assumed to be a riveting conversation with my wife, "Jim ended up not catching any.......Hey, are you even listening to me?"

Her nose was deep into a Chocolatier magazine and I was sure she hadn't heard a word I said about whatever it was I was talking about. Belizeans were now ordering fancy desserts to have as a grand finale to their holiday meals, creating new traditions to add to their rich cultural heritage.

And so it goes, smoked Belizean Ham with mashed plantains, Smoked turkey with Creole potatoes. Christmas Tamales with pumpkin pie for dessert. Cultural intermingling and fusion cooking are what keeps the passion of cooking alive, for me anyway.

That's all for now, the lobster boat is pulling up to the dock with his fresh catch from the cayes so from Alaska to Belize....Happy Holidays.

Basil, Papaya and Mr. Ventura

2008-11-27T06:43:00.000-08:00

It has been a whirlwind first 6 weeks in Belize. Aside from the usual paint and nails and re-establishing my contacts for fresh fish filet's, lobster and imported culinary niceties like arborio rice and cous cous, I was re-establishing my sensitive herb garden. The salt air on the coast is hard on the non-native varieties of Italian Basil, dill, sage, marjoram and thyme, so I seek out small micro-climates out of the wind, on the back sides of buildings, offering protection and some partial shade. One such area I had established last season was, happily, right outside the kitchen door. One big basil plant remained upon my return this year and I was able to make a very big batch of pesto before my well meaning do-all maintenance yard man, Machine, fried it with some non-organic fertilizer. I have hauled in some fertile dirt from the Sittee River and changed out the soil and have now re-planted basil, dill and sage there. I'll keep you posted with pictures as they begin to sprout.
High point of my little garden forays is the maturity of 3 papaya trees which I started in March. When they were 3 feet tall by the time I left in late April, I planted them near the driveway and in front of the entry steps. When I came back in late September, they were 15 feet tall and laden with fruit. Guests now enjoy fresh from the tree papaya with yogurt and any other fresh fruit from the local stand in Hopkins village. I was saddened to hear of the death of Mr. Ventura over the summer. He was an elderly, slightly overweight Garifuna man that became my friend by way of me practicing the Garinagu language on him. The Garifuna, of which Hopkins is probably 80%, are descendants of Africans who were on slave ships which crashed into the reef in the 1700's. the surviving Africans mingled and married with the local Carib Indians and settled in groups in Honduras, Belize, Guatemala and Nicaragua. The language that evolved to these culturally vibrant people is a mix of African and Arawac Indian. Since the staff in my busy little kitchen and restaurant are all young Garifuna who speak the language to each other, I try to learn as much as I can, usually things to do with food and drink, but also saying of life etc. By learning a new sentence each day, I soon began to steer conversations towards words I knew in Garifuna and such was the case with Mr. Ventura and I.
"Abba lebu green peppers, bieme lebu jicama," I said the first time I met him.(1 pound green peppers, 2 pounds jicama).
The startled gentleman asked where I learned to speak Arawac, and I told him I was just learning and my staff taught me.
My other great encounters with Mr. Ventura showcased a skill I developed from my many years buying produce and meats, and that is I am very good at estimating the weight of anything from 1/2 pound to 25 poundsw. I can fill a bag with any vegetable or fruit, weigh it in my hands and come to with-in one ounce every time.
I would walk to the hanging scale in the old vegetable stand and hold up bag after bag of vegetables, proclaiming its weight in Garinagu before placing it on the scale and watch as time after time I got it right. This always prompts me to bet a banana or bag of fresh roasted peanuts(Banana= 10 cents, peanuts 50 cents for a bag) to any new young recruit at the vegetable stand and Mr. Ventura would chuckle each time as he watched as I would eat my banana and tell the new guy that it is the absolute best banana I have ever eaten because I won it from him.
On another occasion, the ve getable stand was very busy, with a lot of locals buying one or 2 -50 cent items. I have learned patience in Belize, and indeed find it entertaining to see the people in big hurries for nothing so I patiently waited my turn when a Belizean working from one of the larger restaurant/resorts on the beach came in wanting a large amount of potatoes right now! An exchange of words in Garifuna took place and Mr. Ventura proceeded to ignore the man completely, even serving others that came in after him first. The last straw was when the old man looked at me, asked me how much of this and that I had, never putting it on the scale and allowing me to just pay for it with-out ever weighing it. That sent the "hurried up" man out the door with steam shooting from his ears. That was my chance to spring a new Garifuna saying I had been practicing.
"Fuda Bah, Chulu Beya Haruga
Beyba-ba-dan, chulu beya Oogaen," I said to Mr. Ventura after the episode.
(Hurry up- and get there tomorrow, take your time and get there today.)
"You got that exactly right my brother, " he said.
And we both had a great laugh.

Back on the beach...and in the Kitchen.

2008-10-10T07:16:00.000-07:00

It's great to be getting up at 5:30 am again. I have my first cup of strong Guatamalan coffee out on the dock while the sun rises. I was excited to see the distant silhouettes of a couple of dug-outs this morning on the calm as glass sea. A couple of the locals were out diving the patches of coral between the reef and the mainland for lobsters. If they know I'm back, I'll be thier first stoip in selling them.
Sure enough, Ivan stopped by with some nice sized lobsters and I bought 5 pounds of tails. They clean the still kicking crustaceans right on my dock and I ask for about 5 of the bodies. I will boil them and freeze the stock for such dishes as Belizean Boullabaisse, Lobster Bisque, and it is my secret ingredient for the clay pot version of Belizean Paella I do. I'll put the stock, saffron and rice in the clay pot with some of my own smoked sausage and cook it for half hour in the oven with no lid. Then I remove the pot and add fresh shrimp, grouper, lobster and any of the meats we smoke weekly. The lid goes back on and I finish it in the oven for 20 minutes and remove the clay pot, lid still on and let it rest for 10 minutes. Then, to the table and the resulting aroma-therapy olfactory overload as the lid is removed to the oohs and ahhs of salivating diners at the Barracuda Bar and Grill.
I will venture down to the vegetable stand in the middle of Hopkins later this morning to buy fresh veggies for tonights menu. Fresh jicama, peppers and onions, and some eggplant for my vegetarian feature of the night, eggplant parmesan. For a chef, there is no closer one can get to the food than buying fish from your own dock and vegetable from the farmers themselves. The pineapple guy will come on Monday and Thursday with the sweetest pineapples I've ever tasted, just picked that morning. Angie and I will go pick oranges and grapefruit from a friends grove for fresh squeezed juices as well as for our signature drink, the Grapefruit Margarita.

I was happy to see that one of my Italian Basil plants was kept alive through the stormy summer we had here while I was back in Alaska. I re-seeded more and the special order pinenuts should be here next week to make some great pesto.
Also growing well while I was gone are my Papaya trees, a mere foot tall when I left, these trees are now 15 feet and laden with thier succulent fruit. They'll be perfect by the time we start doing breakfast for our guests in a couple weeks.

Stay tuned for more fun and recipes and life in Hopkins, Belize, because I'm just getting started.
Ciao

Two Years Later

2008-08-06T19:10:00.000-07:00

The first post on this blog represents in retrospect our meager beginnings at Beaches and Dreams. It is now the third season that Angela and I will be beginning in September of 2008 and we have spent the last 2 summers, from May until September, back in Alaska working at a remote camp in Galena, on the Yukon River, running a kitchen for the Alaska Fire Service. We are just about to head back down to Belize now and look back at the many improvements and changes we made to our beachfront resort and look forward to finishing the projects we have begun down there. So far we have added cement walkways and built a beach side dining deck, remodeled 2 of our 4 rooms and will do the other 2 upon our return in September. we added a tree house cabana that sleeps 4 for families with children and forged many friendships that will last a lifetime. Our plans for this season, as Angela and I are preparing to spend the entire next year there to gain residency and open year round include a dock extension which will house a bar and dining area over the water, and finally remodeling the upstairs living space where we have been staying in a state of semi-construction for the past two seasons. We have closed the resort the past 2 summers during the off season as we returned to Alaska for various reasons, but are now returning to stay and we can't wait!

Our restaurant, now named The Barracuda Bar and Grill, has proven to be just as busy as we wanted and we have gone to doing only breakfast for our guests and dinner 6 nights a week, with a daily happy hour happening from 4-6pm, closed on Tuesday. For a chef, it has moved me closer to the food than I have ever been. Daily forays to the see Francesco, the operator of the local vegetable stand, and a relationship with the actual fisherman who still paddle dugouts out every morning at sunrise, means that besides our base menu, a daily special board featuring just caught lobster and snapper fillets might just be filled out an hour before dinner time. It is a chefs dream, my personal culinary epiphany.

Angela too has reached a pinnacle of confectionery euphoria. Her deserts are highly acclaimed to visitors to the higher end resorts up the beach. It is not uncommon for one "batch" of visitors to extol the virtues of the Italian Rum Cream Torte upon their departure to a new "batch" of visitors as they cross paths on their way to the airport. Indeed, after many tourists have spent 2 or 3 happy hours at our little beachfront deck with us and later closed the bar after a lingering dinner, then a bottle of wine in our company before meandering back up the beach, they have conversations with total strangers telling them about the cuisine from "the Alaskans down the beach."

"You must stop down at the Barracuda Bar and Grill for some of the Mango Cream brulee' " they say, peppering the comment with stories of lingering dinners that started with conch seviche as an appetizer, with a segue of smoked pork tenderloin sliced over spicy black beans and the climactic ending of banana-rum torte. After a conversations at the airport, guests walk down the beach on their first foray in Hopkins and walk right up to us, as if they have known us all their lives. "you must be those guys from Alaska," they say.

"Why yes we are," I answer, and welcome to Beaches and Dreams, Home of the famous Barracuda Bar and Grill!"

First Year at Beaches and Dreams

2008-08-05T20:08:00.000-07:00

The adventure gene that had laid dormant in my wife and I for 25 years while we raised a family and ran a busy fine dining restaurant in Alaska awoke one minus 40 degree day in our cabin on the Upper Chena River, 30 miles East of Fairbanks.

The fire in our wood-fired Tuscan Oven crackled and gave off an eye level haunting glow on the honey colored logs of our home. We lived off the grid using a combination of solar in the summer and generator in the long, dark and very cold winter, storing power in 4000 pounds of batteries.

Our youngest of three daughters was graduating from high school in 2 years and it would be time to make an exit plan of our own. We had our successful 120 seat restaurant, http://www.tworiverslodge.com/ , to sell, and we would keep the cabin on the river, able to drain it down and leave it. We decided to concentrate on finding a little beachfront property that we could put a small restaurant on and a few rooms........somewhere warm, was our most important feature. We could put the restaurant up for sale and start looking for somewhere to take our next great adventure. Things would be a little easier than the first one that found a young 20 year college junior and his, then girlfriend Angela and her 2 young daughters, packing an $800 van from Ohio and making the 3500 mile drive with all our spare change rolled up under the seat. We now had 25 years of success in the hospitality industry. I was chef doing some TV spots and writing a monthly food column for the local paper and my wife had become a very accomplished pastry chef as well as managing the front of the house. Besides the confidence we had in our business capabilities, we had a little more to start out with than an $800 van and 30 rolls of quarters. Add to that the mettle that comes from living and doing business in a place that can see 2 month stretches of minus 40 degree temeratures, and, its pretty hard to throw us any curveballs.

Armed with this enthusiam, I began the search for our next dream, planning on taking the 2 years before my daughter graduated to find a few places, go and check them out and hopefully selling our restaurant in the meantime to give ourselves the capital to buy what we wanted.

Day one of my cyber-search had brought me to the country of Belize, formerly British Honduras.

English speaking, British Common Law(which is basically the same legal system of the US) and a temperate climate coupled with the fact that the world's second largest barrier reef existed there, it seemed as though property ownership in this politically stable country seemed viable.

After an hour into my day one search, the search that I had 2 years to complete, I googled "beachfront resorts sale Belize," and found a little 4 room beachfront place, already with a small restaurant, on a nice stretch of beach in the little Garifuna fishing village of Hopkins. It was perfect, in my price range, and the name of the place, our beach that we had dreamed of, was actually already named Beaches and Dreams Seafront Inn. The problem was, we still had 2 years to go in our exit plan and this property I knew would not last. We juggled funds and purchased the property in January of 2005 and were able to get an old friend of mine and his new wife and young son to go down and house sit for us for 2 years until we were able to complete our exit plan. Now, Angela and I live in Hopkins at our beachfront resort, http://www.beachesanddreams.com/, and these are the stories of fresh lobster, grouper and conch and everyday life in the village of Hopkins, on the white beach of Belize.