Florida (con)Fusion Cooking

www.distinctlyflorida.com

The strong identity of any people is their cooking culture. What influences that is the environment and the spirit of their own palate. Florida has had a long history of many different peoples from the Native Americans (Timucua, Calusa, Apalachee, Creek who came to be known as Seminoles, Tequesta, etc.) to the Europeans, Asians, and Africans. Every culture has contributed a little something to our cuisine in Florida and depending on where in the state you stop, you can be treated to quite a different take on what nature has to offer. It is with this in mind that I present what I have come to think of as FLORIDA ConFUSION COOKING. It is our version of fusion cooking, just a little mixed up and hopefully in a fun way. It is a play on words because in Spanish "con" means "with" and so we are all with each other in this adventure. My first fusion meal is called the Florida Cracker Tortilla. It takes the wonderful mix of bacon, onion and collard greens and adds it to the tradition of a Spanish tortilla or omelet. These are served in Spain at any time, not just for breakfast and can be made very large and cut into sections for tapas. Below is a single serving recipe.

FLORIDA CRACKER TORTILLA

2 strips bacon
2 eggs (scrambled with a little splash of milk or cream if you like)
1 T. diced onion (or to taste--I like a lot and I use frozen for convenience)
2 T. chopped collard greens (or to taste and I use frozen for convenience)
salt & pepper to taste

Fry your bacon until very crisp. Drain & reserve most of the oil leaving some in the pan for the vegetables. Saute the onion until just starting to caramelize then add the collards and continue cooking until they soften. If you need to add a little of the bacon fat back to keep the vegetables from sticking, go ahead. Crumble your bacon evenly over the vegetables and then pour the scrambled eggs over the whole bacon/vegetable mixture. Season with salt and pepper to taste and cook until the bottom is firm. To get the top of the omelet cooked, you will either need a tortilla pan (also known as a frittata pan) or you can slide the omelet off the pan onto a plate, invert the pan over the plate so that the uncooked part of the omelet is now facing the pan and the plate is acting as a "lid" and just flip. Continue cooking and should have a perfect unbroken omelet.

Growing Up In Florida...A Sampler

What did it mean to grow up in Florida?

It meant that you got your orange juice, freshly squeezed, every morning in an eight ounce glass.

It meant that after school you went to the beach to study and you always kept a beach bag full of all your beach things including a portable radio.

It meant that the defroster was for when it rained to get rid of the condensation INSIDE the car windows.

It meant that the cold water tap was NEVER too cold.

It meant that bugs were a part of your life and you found ways to use them or avoid them. You chased your mother with the palmetto bugs or tossed them to waiting lizards, hunted down mole crickets in their tunnels, fed ants to doodle bugs, and learned to paint clear nail polish on chigger bites after climbing ficus trees.

You went cane pole fishing and learned that catfish will hit on anything including Lifebuoy soap.

You remember the smells of Coppertone and the ocean better than anything and when your sunburn healed you would have your sister/brother/best friend peel the skin off your back and marvel at how thin it was.

As hot as it was, we were always outside riding our bikes, climbing trees, hunting, snorkeling, water skiing, surfing, fishing, scuba diving, playing tennis, racket ball, skating, volley ball, hand ball, water polo, synchronized swimming, canoeing, hiking, golfing, riding horses, or just plain swimming, swimming, swimming because water is everywhere. It should be against the law in Florida to not know how to swim.

It seemed like everyone had a Florida room with jalousie windows that were impossible to keep clean or fully closed and the crank ALWAYS broke.

If you stuck a stick in the ground, it grew or got moldy. If you left something metal out, it got rusty and in a week it was covered in vines. Good luck finding it.

It always rained at three o’clock to cool things off and made the walk home from school a puddle hopping adventure.

Sinkholes are a fact of life, just like ‘gators, sharks, Portuguese man o’ war, sea lice, chiggers, water moccasins, brown recluse spiders, and I-95.

Lizards were earrings and we were always sucking on the base of some flower or chewing on some plant. It's a wonder we didn't die.

It meant that thunderstorms and tropical depressions held no special meaning but you prepared for hurricanes a couple of days ahead and filled the bathtub with water and collected all your supplies.

It meant that you could eat fried catfish and hush puppies one night and Ropa Vieja with black beans and rice the next and think nothing of it.

It meant the people around you were always changing but you never met a stranger because this was the land of sunshine and whomever you met received your smile.

Welcome to Florida.