The Chef's Voice: Marcia Miller of Sabroso

Cooking, food, ingredients and eating: what wonderful things they are. My very first memories of food are images of large stockpots, floured wooden pastry boards, the divine smell of soup stock and baking bread and the bustle of women. I was small and lucky to have grown up in an extended family that included all the families living in our building, the storeowners on the block and then some. My love for cooking started here in East New York, the heart of Brooklyn, a mix of Russian, Jewish and Polish immigrants.

Memory feeds technique. Long before I became a chef I made stocks and soups from seeing how my grandmother made them. She made sure the stock simmered, didn't boil, that certain ingredients were used. These techniques have been given me from memory; in cooking school they always called me a visceral cook because I could always feel the pouring of something without having to measure it.

Memories are the reservoir that we call upon every time we create things in our kitchen. Erica, co-chef and one of the partners of Sabroso, has told me how making soups always brings back childhood memories of being out in the woods and making potions out of the berries she found; even today when she makes a soup or a sauce I can see in her eyes the glimmer and the joy of that memory.

Memories of the past sustain the creative process of cooking, a process that begins with love and whose language we learn young and develop as we go through life. The more varied our food experiences are the more a vocabulary we have to work with; that being ingredients, techniques and more.

I lived in Haiti and spent time in Mexico, Egypt and Palestine. I look at the exploration of food anthropologically. I'm always looking for new discoveries in new places and often see there traces of other places. This why Latin food is so very exciting: it is the true fusion cuisine. The countries of the Americas have all been colonized, and so we often see traces of other continents mixed in with the regional cuisine. In Peru we can see Asian influences; in Haiti and Cuba, European and African. Through cooking we can understand another people, another culture. Sabroso is cuisine from all over the Americas, also Spain and Portugal, the Caribbean, but it also takes in Turkey and other countries whose fates are intertwined.

Tonight as I get ready to go into the kitchen I think of the large stockpots, floured pastry boards, and divine smells of soups, stock and breads of my youth. I think of my Grandmother's hands and all the many hands in many worlds.

Ecuadorian Shrimp Avocado Ceviche

1 lb of 21/25 shrimp, peeled and deveined
water & white wine
1 small onion, chopped
1 tbsp garlic, chopped
3 bay leaves
1 tbsp black peppercorns
1 tbsp whole coriander
salt

Marinade
1 large tomato, roasted, peeled, seeded & chopped
l red pepper, roasted, peeled, seeded & chopped
1/2 red onion, chopped
2 jalapenos, roasted, peeled, seeded & chopped
3/4 cup lime juice
1/2 cup orange juice
1/4 cup tomato juice
1 tbsp sugar
1 avocado, diced
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
Tabasco
salt & black pepper to taste

Make a water and wine mixture from all the non-marinade ingredients except the shrimp and bring to a boil. Add shrimp and blanch for one minute. Remove and transfer to an ice bath. When cold, slice in half lengthwise. In separate bowl, combine marinade ingredients and mix with the shrimp. Allow one hour to macerate and serve. Yields 4 servings.