Books & Books presents…

AN EVENING WITH CHEF JAN JORGENSEN

discussing

A Cook’s Table: Food and Wine Together

(Page Publishing, $64.95)

Wednesday, March 12, 7 PM | Books & Books, Coral Gables

RSVP HERE FOR FREE

Books & Books is proud to present an evening with Chef Jan Jorgensen discussing A Cook’s Table: Food and Wine Together (Page Publishing, $64.95)

This event is FREE and open to the public and books will be available for purchase the night of the event! An RSVP grants general entry, but seating is not guaranteed, so please try and show up early. Please RSVP only if you intend to join us.

About the Book:

This cookbook will not be like most other cookbooks. And when we write this, we’re not claiming that we have reinvented the genre, one that has not really changed all that much–other than in presentation–over the centuries. Our book is not organized by the seasons. It is not pegged to certain proteins, the cuisine of a specific country or cooking techniques, be they primal or avant-garde. Instead, we have organized this book around a handful of the most commercially important and recognizable grapes. The recipes in each chapter are conceived so as to complement one of that grape’s resultant styles of a finished wine.

This is not the first cookbook to double down on the importance of a dish and a wine complementing each other. However, we think it goes further on the subject without getting bogged down by theory, formulas and rules–and the invariable exceptions to them–in a very commonsense and straightforward way. We have all come a long way from “white with fish” and “red with meat.”

Jan has often said that he’ll figure out what to cook and how to cook it based upon what he is in the mood to drink and vice versa. That very unfussy, sort of weeknight ethos is present throughout these pages. The recipes aren’t designed to elicit oohs and aahs or impress by employing the newest technology or technique–the words sous vide, air fryer and even tweezers will not show up in them. Instead, there are dozens of recipes, some simple, some less so, that hew to traditions that in some cases date back hundreds of years or borne of necessity or by chance. Many others are grounded in Jan’s background in professional kitchens, including his own in Miami, Two Chefs.

BUY THE BOOK HERE

Jan Jorgensen came to his vocation much earlier than most. He specifically pegs it to a visit to the bustling hotel kitchen owned by his paternal grandparents in his native Denmark. He was five. Instantly attracted to the clattering of pots and pans, the smells, the flames shooting from the32-burner stove, and the chatter and organized chaos, Jan was then forever hooked once he tried the first of many perfectly deep-fried French fries made in that kitchen. For him, this professional kitchen, the first of many he would spend time in, seemed to embody Thor, the Norse god of thunder, lightning and storms. After training in a hotel kitchen—a very typical path for a European interested in a career behind the stove—he made his way to Miami, then to San Francisco, where he worked for the legendary Jeremiah Tower at Speedo 690 and Stars, then two of the most influential restaurants in the United States. He returned to Miami in 1994, and in 1996, he opened Two Chefs, which has been serving food and wine to patrons for more than thirty years. Jan continues to reside in Coconut Grove with his wife, teenage son and a big German shepherd named Odin, of course.