Chef Michael Bennett's cookbook Underneath a Cloudless Sky Copyright
Book overview
Chefs on the New American Riviera have created a culinary fusion cuisine that is
based on all of our five distinct culinary heritages. This multi-cultural cuisine category is a
Five Flags conglomerative cuisine. Each of these Five Flags represent a South Florida social
group. A South Florida Chef’s culinary interpretation has resulted in a wondrous bounty
of dining choices for your gastronomic enjoyment. By fusing our locally grown tropical,
exotic food pantry with the melding of multiple Caribbean and American - North, South
and Latin American - culinary heritages, it is no wonder that this Cuisine was called the
most adventurous in the country.
The best trait of our new American regional cuisine is it’s complexities of
tastes, with extremes in exotic boldness. Distinct, and various individual cultural cookery
heritages from Caribbean Basin nations are united within each new recipe. The chef
daily infuses his/her menu with an multitude of flavor varieties with multi-cultural
cookery techniques and then elevating the dining experience to a level of “metropolitan”
sophistication. A South Florida chef will tell their patrons that their food is going to
explode with colors on the plate, as well as, tastes on the palate.
The use of an eccentric tropical pantry of spices and exotic sounding foodstuffs to
produce bold flavors have been intertwined into this multi-cultural cookery cuisine. Just
as a fine wine develops different characteristics, from differing soil conditions and a change
of micro climates, so do many of the exotic tropical products harvested. The mango can
be a topic of much discussion here because being that there are 2500 differing varieties of
mango worldwide, each of these mangos produce differing tastes in a finished plate.
O f course, with 800 miles of Florida coastline, South Florida menus are regularly
interspersed with a wide spectrum of seafood choices. Chefs treat our seafood bounty as
if it never left the Ocean, pairing these super-fresh ingredients with the exotic tastes from
this Caribbean inspired tropical pantry.
Hopefully, my passion will soon be one that learn you to explore more and more
throughout the next few hours, days and weeks....
A Chef’s Passion is...
by The Tropical Cuisinier!
…what is or has been important in one’s own life.
…it drives us for more.
…it encourages for the betterment of ourselves.
…it overrides other motives for it’s own fulfillment.
…it discourages stagnation.
…it drives us to pursue the seemingly once unattainable.
…it unrealistically fulfills one’s life with obtainable platitudes.
…it overrides or blurs out important real life issues, concerns and needs.
Aspirations for greatness develop from…
Passion!
And the journey begins….
As you are opening this book we start our journey in to the vast tropical regions
of the world. Our journey will start at the southernmost tip of Florida, cruise down to the
Leeward islands, go west to South America and travel back home across the Gulf of Mexico
generating this large triangle we call the Caribbean Basin.
Our journey together is also based on the premise that you are looking for
something different to cook for dinner tonight. This journey begins as you flip through
the pages of this book and will end with your family’s amazement at tonight’s dinner.
You are now embarking upon a journey of freedom.
I will begin our trek by setting the scene for you. Imagine a beautiful “Cloudless
Sky”. The panorama before you is a tropical azure sky touching an even more beautiful
blue-green sea. Warm breezes are always wafting towards you from the east. They bring
with them a steamy essence of the tropics. You are now beginning to appreciate my
journey into the Caribbean.
The passages within this book will tell you a story of what it is like to be in this
exotic region. It is a mind-set predominated by use of exotic food and boundless culinary
freedoms. The freedom to invent combinations of tastes and cross-cultural culinary
wizardry not constrained by “regional” cookery stereotypes. You are now in the nation of
innovation.
Tropical journey realized….
Any expedition usually starts at an airport. Ours doesn’t. We are going to travel
sans-jet propulsion. I have journeyed to many of these island nations living and working
as a chef. This book will enable you to investigate what it is like to be a cook within these
eternal territories from your own kitchen.
H ere in South Florida, chefs aren’t bound by any regional cookery preference.
We assess the preferences of our community and then stylize menus for our multicultural
base of residents. Since this area of the country is alive with the immigrants of the
Caribbean, it only makes sense for restaurateurs to offer a myriad of Caribbean influenced
foods. This is what I have done on my menus for the past thirty years.
This journey has taken me to the tropical regions of the World. My passion is
reminiscing about these experiences (on the pages of this book) and then artistically
presented it in-between the circumference of our dinner plate. These pseudo-travel
occurrences are now yours without having to buy a ticket on a jetliner.
This is how I have cultivated the menu styling of this book. It is culinary journeys
without restraints~without physical boundaries…
Underneath a Cloudless Sky
....is a compilation of recipes collected from my culinary
journeys through South Florida and the Caribbean.
I have brought these recipes to you through years of evaluation and planning. Being
from South Florida, I was immersed into the Caribbean cookery heritage through my
cooking. I admired my new cookery traditions so much that I relocated myself and my
family 1600 miles away from the mainland to the tropics.
After spending a four years in the Caribbean, I have returned with a greater understanding
of how everyday cooking has evolved into what is known today as Caribbean
Fusion or, “Caribb-ican” ~ as a chef describe to me in the Caribbean.
The area that encompasses the Caribbean basin is a tropical paradise - with few
cloudy days. The Caribbean always has 300 plus days a year - where we are treated to
beautiful blue skies, that are warm and comforting as the food that you will encounter
throughout these pages.
People that have been lucky enough to travel to the tropics will be familiar with
many of these tropical foods. Those that haven’t traveled to a place without clouds, can
now visit through the stories and recipes within this book.
