One of challenges of any cookbook is to produce recipes that can be re-created outside of the kitchen of the chefs/cooks writing the recipes. Our biggest challenge? We asked our photographer Jeff Broughton to prepare recipes from the pages of our book. In order to understand the significance of this let me introduce you to Jeff.
Jeff Broughton is one of our best friends. We have dubbed him our "Harley-riding, macho, opinionated bachelor" within our pages. Jeff is a car guy. He does indeed have and ride a Harley. I met Jeff a little over a year ago and at that time his diet consisted mainly of eating out, frozen dinners, cold cuts and toaster pastries. Marilyn and I soon made him the guina pig for our recipes that will adorn the pages of The Starving Artist Cookbook and enlisted him to take the photos for this project. Jeff is not unlike many singles. They don't cook. In fact, when he was approached with the idea of being the test cook, he laughed.
After some coaxing, and begging, Jeff consented to learning to cook from recipes for us. So, now to his first attempt at preparing a meal for himself, Marilyn and me. Irish (Beef) Stew is a wonderful meal for a cold winter night, so we picked up the ingredients and headed to Jeff's house. Not, just a little nervous considering he knew I would be writing about this experience both here and in the book, Jeff began the process. He followed the recipe with ease only asking one or two questions. The result? A delicious dinner of Irish Stew and corn on the cob totally prepared by Jeff.
The best testament to just how good his first meal turned out is the following comment he sent us in an email after the evening was over.
"It was fun tonight, thanks for the help. I thought it actually tasted pretty good for a first attempt… all I can say is that ya’ll are mighty brave women!!!"
Even better than that... the day after (yes, we had leftovers) Jeff wrote to us again and said:
"I’m going to take the stew with me to mom’s"
GREAT JOB JEFF!!!!!
