When Adam came to Nicaragua a few months ago, to launch his career in the kitchen, we had hoped we might coax some good meals for ourselves when he would come for some rest time in Granada.
Adam started his job at Sushi Q in San Juan Del Sur almost immediately upon arriving in Nicaragua, settled nicely into his SJDS routine punctuated by some week end visits to Granada. It soon became clear that his time in the restaurant was very useful to help mature his organizational skills in the kitchen, but that the nature of the job was more repetitiveness of task than an outlet for his boundless culinary creativity.
So with this in mind, we created the conditions for Adam to try his hand at being a private chef. And try his hand he did, over and over again.
We launched the adventure with a dinner for CO2 Bambu’s Director of Bambo Science, Gib Cooper, and his wife, who live in Oregon and visit Nicaragua a few times a year. Gib always has a hellish trip as his task is to go on reconnaissance trips to identify bamboo in Nicaragua. His regimen is typically hours of driving on bumpy roads, a steady diet of rice and beans and little else, bare-bones hotels and cold showers. So the idea here was to launch Gib and his team with a happy stomach. Our private chef delivered a scrumptious meal that got Gib to conclude after his trip “Who cares about doctors and lawyers, you guys have got it right, having a chef in the family is the way to go”.
Adam’s adventure as a private chef soon took a critical turn as we hosted Fabio and Juan Carlos, two critically important business associates, in fact European investors from the country of Lichtenstein. They came to Nicaragua to perform extensive due diligence and the outcome of their weeklong visit would be fundamental to CO2 Bambu’s future, as their recommendations would drive the Lichtenstein bank’s decision to invest in Co2 Bambu or not. Seeing as we were going to be immersing ourselves in days of discussions about the business, we felt it was appropriate to cast the business in the context of our personal life stories. And so we decided to host our investors and new found friends at home, rather than go to a restaurant. This proved to be a radically brilliant move, as it humanized us, the entrepreneurs, and they were able to see how complete our family’s commitment is to CO2 Bambu and to the lifestyle that this entails.
Adam took on the challenge very professionally and understood the importance of striking the right note of informal authenticity, but with a crowd that enjoys good food and recognizes that shared meals are not just about “refueling” but also about sharing an experience. With that in mind, Adam’s challenge was to stay coherent with the theme of a Latin American flavor, seeing as Fabio is Colombian and Juan Carlos lives in Brazil.
Adam hit it “out of the park” on all fronts. His menu was just “spot on” — he made a cold corn soup that featured one of Latin America’s most ubiquitous foods, corn. The main entree was a wink back at CO2 Bambu’s launch when we first attended a Bamboo World Congress in Puebla, Mexico. Peta and I came back from Mexico in 2007 raving about the bamboo world, the beauty of Puebla and this amazing dish we had encountered — Chile en Nogado. This phenomenal dish features Mexican Poblano peppers and an array of original ingredients such as peaches, pomegranates, walnuts and quail. While many foodies tend to default to French, Chinese and Indian cuisine as the world’s most varied and sophisticated, we’d very much put Mexican food (not the common burrito and taco shortlist) right up there in terms of culinary sophistication. Adam’s goal to create a memorable meal was achieved, and then some! Incidentally the experience of sharing such a delicious meal in the informal context of our home really stayed with our guest and infused our discussions over the next few days with a feeling of goodwill. It didn’t hurt that a few days later, we bumped into Adam late in the evening in the street, as he had concocted a “sequel” meal and was delivering it to us as we were working through a late night session.
The “private chef” approach really worked well for us, and we took shameless advantage of Adam’s desire to cook. The next opportunity was a dinner with musician friends, guitarists who live in Granada and whom Adam had played guitar with. Playing up on the Southern heritage of his blues-playing audience, Adam served us some unrivaled braised short ribs glazed in red wine and apple juice, mashed potatoes and a mind-blowing crumble of peaches, pears and apples.
Then there was a vegetarian-inspired dinner for our friends and neighbors Warren and April, who own the gym, yoga studio across the street. This yielded a casserole of grains and beet, preceded by an amuse bouche of shrimp with avocado. The side benefit of this evening was that we invited Annette, a vivacious beautiful Norwegian student taking her gap year, as all Norwegians do, to build up her Spanish in Nicaragua (adding to her fluent English and French) – visual rewards for the hard working Chef!
Adam’s time in Nicaragua is drawing to a close, as is our window of opportunity to squeeze in more delicious meals from our PC (Private Chef!). We had an awesome culinary time together, remindful as it was of Adam’s final high school year when he would rush home and cook for us increasingly sophisticated and creative dishes.
Here is a link to Adam’s blog “Tales of an aspiring chef” (if you read it, be sure to sign up as a follower):
Hey Adam, great to have a culinary account of some of your banquets. I love reading about them but would rather be there to enjoy your talented cuisine in person!