Beth and I came to Dublin, not knowing what may lie ahead. My uncle offered me a job at The Golden Corral, with the opportunity to learn more about the restaurant business. ‘Mr. M’ as we all called him was great at managing a restaurant; I had worked for him when I was sixteen at Dairy Queen. I had already been assistant manager at two different pizza joints; so I figured that I already knew enough! But was I wrong. I learned the basics of how real restaurants worked, with an emphasis on customer relations. Little did I ever think that I’d own my own dining establishment; instead, I was intending to move back to the place I called home; in a year or two. Even though I intended to move back to Florida, I still wanted to move my then girlfriend up here, so after 3 months and unreal phone bills we decided to move here together, for a couple of years, anyway. She immediately found work in her specialty, cake decoration, at Piggly Wiggly. When I got bored waiting tables, I set out to take up my old trade, wallpaper hanging.
When we both had a following in our respective fields, we made a more or less mutual
decision to make Dublin our home. We’d already gotten married, so we looked for a
place to live. We found a piece of land we thought might make a nice homestead, and
bought it for the future. Meanwhile, our need to clear up finances so we could build,
led us into catering for an extra cash flow. Our favorite parties were those that
people just gave us a theme to work with and we would research the idea, come up
with a menu and prepare the food. But to be different, our display had to be impressive.
Just about that time The Peppercorn came up for sale; it would be our foundation
to cater from. Beth was still decorating cakes, after having opening the restaurant
for Mr Allen, I was still hanging Dublin, one wall at a time. When we bought The
Peppercorn, we instantly had three jobs apiece. The catering had to end because we
couldn’t work 24/7 and maintain our sanity. So we both worked our jobs and The Peppercorn
as well. I still had a penchant for preparing theme-
First I’d like to thank my wife, Beth who has made everything I cooked, look fantastic, for putting up with (or enduring) my food experiments, and for not telling me that I was crazy, even though she must have thought it many times.
I have to, at the very least, thank her for not wanting to cook at home, or not having the time, or both, otherwise I would not have had the impetus to learn how to cook all those dishes that sounded so good. Thanks also go out to those chefs that as a younger person I admired for one reason or another. Julia Child for telling me that anyone could do what she did so exquisitely, Graham Kerr for showing me how to have fun cooking (with or without getting sloshed), Paul Prudhomme for getting me excited about flavor, Justin Wilson for showing me how to measure, Emeril for ideas about food combinations and for forcing me to figure out an easier way to go about doing things and my taste buds that rarely let me down.
Cooking is all about flavor; changing the color of the food by cooking it a little longer, a soft and translucent onion is nice, but taking it to golden, then brown, and finally to almost black is a is an experience of the flavor trail. Each stage looks different, tastes different, and smells different; you’ll need to quit smoking (I did it as much for those smells/tastes as for my health; it was easy enough to accomplish with the proper desire), to evoke the wonderful sensations that food reveals.
I'd like to thank my mom for the trust in me by leaving me home with a pizza mix to fix my own supper. I suppose I should thank 'Jeno’, he made my favorite mix. But even then following the directions seemed to confining, so I improvised and made it better! When that became boring, I experimented with whatever was in the fridge. Finally with the advent of our catering business we both figured that we could make any recipe, that we tried, look better and taste better than the original. The Peppercorn became the outlet for our love of food.
Recipes begin with ingredients, so think about the freshest, prettiest ingredients that you can imagine; then go buy a reasonable facsimile. When I create a menu, I first think of what main ingredient I want to build the meal around, then I build the walls (side dishes and sauces) and finish with the roof (dessert). It all starts with the ingredients; make them the best you can. My daughter used to say that all we had in the pantry was ' ingredients '. But a well stocked or diverse pantry makes cooking a delight, simply because of the endless possibilities for creative and innovative meals that can result. They say that we tend to eat maybe a dozen different meals... ...over and over again, just in different order. The unusual things on your shelves, just beg you for a new presentation.
I would like to thank also Grace ‘Ma’ Lenius for filling me with the smells and tastes of baking & cooking at an early age and allowing me to ‘help’ her do her baking; especially of the cookies and bread. Also I would like to thank Harold and His Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson for giving me at an early age the confidence that anything I imagined I could do!
I would like to especially thank all of our Thursday Night Friends at the restaurant
for allowing me the latitude to experiment (that’s what cooking’s all about) and
use them as my culinary guinea pigs with no fatalities other than some scorched taste
buds on occasion. Without our combined stubbornness; yours for continuing to stomach
what I prepare and mine for incessantly trying to include taste with the fire (or
vice-
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