Get ready for a good time
Admit it! Many of you are Food Network fans. You watch Emeril do his thing and share his amazing creations with his audience. Now Hernando-ites have a chance to get in an audience just like the ones on the Food Network to watch, cheer, ooh and ahh up close as one of the sexiest young celebrity chefs on the scene today wows you with his culinary common sense and invites to you taste and participate while he whips up some of the yummiest foods this county has ever seen.
The event is the Relish Cooking School Expo. And the star of the show is Relish Magazine’s in-house star Chef Jon Ashton. Now an Orlando resident, Ashton is a transplant from England. His British charm and passion for food is so infectious, it’s not possible to watch him without feeling inspired.
His down to earth philosophy of fresh and simple takes the mystery out of cooking.
“Food is not just food. Food is life,” Ashton told Hernando Today in an exclusive interview. “The only true relationship with life you have from the day you are born. And it’s the memories that surround it. That’s the beautiful thing. And it has no language.”
From the time he was a child Ashton had a dream. It was to come to be a great chef and to come to America. Here he hoped to widen his experience by learning from the melting pot of home cooks all over this land.
To that end, Ashton has traveled the world and this country. He puts on Relish Cooking Show Expo’s around the country. This first one in Hernando is being held on next Thursday, Oct. 29 at Heffernan Hall in Brooksville.
In addition to being Relish’s in-house chef he is also the food guru on the nationally syndicated morning show The Daily Buzz. He’s appeared with Al Roker on the Today Show and Jay Leno on the Tonight show – to name a few.
But the live Relish Cooking Shows are his favorites.
“I love to get people to come up on the stage because America is still new to me and I don’t know all the foods and dishes and there’s so many family recipes I want to learn about,” he explains. “I’m much more interested in that than the chef’s recipes. A lot of the times the chefs have egos and they think they’re the best chefs ever but it’s not about that. In all actuality a chef isn’t the star. Mother nature’s the star. She gives us the land and the sea. She gives us the seasons. All I am is the maestro.”
For Ashton being the maestro means lining up mother nature’s freshest offerings and arranging them into taste-pleasing, mouth-watering experiences that are almost sensual.
“It’s like music. Whether it’s my recipe or Emerill’s recipe or Paula Dean’s, it’s made to their taste – for their five taste buds – whatever they feel cozy with. When you’re home, you do the same thing. Go where you want with your ingredients. Go with your tastes. Take the foundations – bitter, sweet, salty, marmy – anything you want and add to it”
Ashton’s Relish Cooking School’s aim is to de-mystify food and make it a fun and personal experience. When it comes right down to it, ingredients are the cart that follows the horse. According to Ashton, there’s really no such things as a recipe – just techniques of cooking.
“Grilling, roasting, shallow frying, braising it’s just techniques. Once you learn a technique you can cook anything. A braised chicken in China is the same technique as braised chicken in France. In China, shitake mushrooms, soy, some Chinese white wine, garlic, ginger, some sesame seed oil. In France maybe we’ll make some coq au vin – some onions, bacon, red wine mushrooms, exactly the same thing – it’s just technique it’s not a recipe. Once you learn that you can go anywhere.”
Ashton’s menu for the Oct. 29 festivities. You will feast your eyes and your taste buds on these:
• Meatballs in Sofrito sauce – tender olive studded beef served in a bright, Latin inspired tomato sauce topped with a lime cilantro gremolata (a chopped herb condiment typically made of garlic, parsley, and lemon zest).
• Butternut Squash Soup with Caramalized Apple Brucetta – Creamy butternut squash puree wit a hint of cayenne complemented by crisp baguette slices topped with cinnamon scented apples and a garnish of fresh thyme.
• Sauteed Brussels Sprouts with Garlic and Parmigiano Reggiano.
• Rosa di Parma – Whole beef tenderloin filled with spinach, prosciutto and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, pan seared, sliced and served with a brandy reduction.
• Bananas Flambe Ripe bananas served over vanilla ice cream with a rum-fortified caramel sauce.
Helping out behind the scenes will be Ashton’s right hand prep man Matt Hendrikson and Hernando’s own Chef Audrey Costa. A native of New Bedford, Massachusetts, Costa has been wowing those who’ve discovered her at Chef Audrey’s Eclectic Cafe located at the back of Brooksville Natural foods.
A special morning favorite there is her fresh brewed organic coffee and straight from the oven Morning Glory Muffins made with applesauce, raisins and carrots and other palate pleasing ingredients.
Don’t forget the recipe contest!
For Hernando’s unsung heroes of the kitchen, Hernando Today is proudly inviting you to enter the “Taste of Hernando” recipe contest which is being run in conjunction with the Relish Cooking School Expo.
Just select your favorite main dish or dessert recipe and send it in to [email protected] along with your picture and a brief line about where the recipe got its start and why it’s such a favorite. Three finalists in each category will be chosen. They will each receive two tickets to the event.
Judging will take place during the Relish Cooking School Expo VIP mixer (5:30 to 6:30 p.m.)
Winners get a $100 Publix gift certificate and will be introduced on stage by Relish Chef Jon Ashton. They will also get an autographed picture with the chef.
Deadline for entry is 5 p.m. today so act now.
The event
Relish Cooking School Expos have been held in other parts of the country but this is a first for Hernando County. Tickets cost $15 each and $2 from each sale will be donated to Hernando County food banks.
If you are attending, you are also invited to bring canned foods and other non-perishable items like dried foods (pasta, rice, flour, sugar, and instant potatoes, shampoo, bath or hand soap, toothpaste, deodorant, laundry soap, disposable razors, etc. Publix shopping carts will be standing by to receive your donations. Please do not bring any opened packages or outdated food.
In addition to enjoying free samples of foods at the outside food court, there will be live entertainment and door prizes will be given out throughout the night.
The main event will, of course be the Cooking School staring Relish Chef Jon Ashton and don’t be surprised if many of you in the audience end up on stage treating your taste buds to Ashton’s specialities. Sharing his creations is one of the chef’s favorite parts of the show.
“The best moments are when people try my food for the first time and to me it’s a little like going on a first date with someone. And I get a little antsy pantsy – I get the butterflies in my belly. I love to watch them as they take that first bite and it’s like that first kiss on a date. And you watch them and you watch their eyes. I love it when their eyes become glazed and they look at you and they say “yeah.”
So don’t miss this one of a kind party opportunity! Come, eat, drink and be merry! Other Web sites where you can learn about Chef Jon Ashton and his recipes:
Relish Magazine – www.relishmag.com and his own Web site – Relish Chef Jon Ashton – www.jonashton.com.
For more information or tickets, call Denise Nohejl at 352-544-5206 or e-mail her at [email protected].
For recipe contest submissions e-mail [email protected].
Not only is Virginia Diaz a regular contributor to the Health Today, she is also an experienced Food Network Producer who spend many years working with Al Roker on his hit series Roker on the Road.
For More Information
See the Relish Cooking School Expo special section in this edition of Hernando Today.
Not only is Virginia Diaz a regular contributor to the Health Today, she is also an experienced Food Network Producer who spend many years working with Al Roker on his hit series Roker on the Road.
