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the Holiday issue

Good Chefs Hunting by Mary Beth Romig

H unting is quite often a matter of DNA, a deeply ingrained practice in families far and wide. Such is the case with noted chef and restaurateur John Besh. In the first chapter of his book Cooking From the Heart , Besh celebrates what he calls “Lessons of the Hunt.” He begins by describing a magical, cold, beautiful gray day on steep inclines of the Belchen, the fourth highest mountain in the German Black Forest. On this particular day, he was

Today, the art of the hunt continues for Besh across the familiar landscape of his native Louisiana, and extending to a hunting lodge he owns nestled in the rolling hills of northern Alabama country, which has become the site of many a memorable gathering of fellow chefs, a busman’s holiday of sorts. On these occasions they hunt, cook, swap stories and share the convivial fellowship of their craft and the bounty of the land and sea. Not sure if one exists, but if there were a guest

hunting with fellow chef and friend Karl- Josef Fuchs. Besh writes: “I feel just as I did at seven or eight-year- old, following my father and grandfather through Louisiana’s low-lying cypress swamps and the jagged red clay hills planted in pine, chasing after an elusive white tail deer. I was reared to pursue the art of hunting with bows, arrows, shotguns and rifles. The meat my family ate during hunting season was wild.”

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MY ROUSES EVERYDAY NOVEMBER | DECEMBER 2016