At Cumin in Hyde Park, Executive Chef Owen Maass is churning out some of Cincinnati’s most impressive, eclectic food. Behind the scenes, he’s driven. Articulate. Funny. Exactly who he says he is – no matter what. Lucky for us, Cumin owner Alex Mchaikhi is opening a sibling restaurant next door (called M), and Owen will be Executive chef there too, featuring a rustic, wood-fired menu. See his story in our third episode of Cincinnati Deconstructed, filmed by Michael Holder and produced by yours truly.

What is Cincinnati Deconstructed?

An intimate, behind-the-scenes peek inside the unique personalities that define the food scene here in Cincinnati. We’ve got big plans for the future. Please continue your enthusiasm by sharing, tweeting, posting and commenting so that we can continue this project. And let us know if you catch the video playing on the jumbotron in Cincinnati’s Fountain Square.

New to our project?

See our pilot episode with rockstar mixologist Molly Wellmann and our second episode with Jean-Francois Flechet from Taste of Belgium.

Owen Maass fan?

Let us know in the comments. Learn more about his new restaurant here – and of course – if you’ve got ideas for a future episode, please share. We’re always listening.

Special thanks to Owen Maass, Alex Mchaikhi, Katerina Pototsky Minevich and the staff at Cumin for making this video possible.

In 1995 my mother learned she had stage four breast cancer. The doctors tracked her white blood cells on a whiteboard while they pumped chemicals into her body. She promised me, wrapped in her white gown, shrunken from a liquid diet, that she would come home to make dinner again. In the mean time, I learned how to do laundry, how to make eggs and how to sleep on a hospital floor.

Today, more than 15 years later, we’re breaking bread.

The doctors sent her home the day before Christmas. We hoped she was well enough to celebrate the holiday. She wasn’t. 24 hours later, sitting in the back seat of my friend’s car, I learned she had returned to the hospital. All I remember are the cold, leather seats, the way they crinkled when I moved.

What followed, I don’t clearly remember. There were procedures and new medications and then there was a new word for my young vocabulary: remission.

By 1998, all of her hair had grown back –– darker and curlier than before. My dad threw her a party at The Maisonette to celebrate and we put on dresses and said toasts and tried to make sense of something senseless. She began resuming activities as usual, creeping into my room at night to switch off the TV, punishing me when I came home too late. But best of all, she started to make dinner again. Elaborate steaks. Twice-baked potatoes. Chocolate cake for dessert. Now we break bread around the table, never really admitting how different things could have been.

This recipe comes from the cookbook Beard on Bread – given to me recently by a friend. This recipe, which is cornmeal based, turns out hearty and rich. You barely need butter to serve. But, hell, I’d add it anyway. You only live once.

Quick is the game these days. If you’re not quick you get left behind, mentally and physically. This is the case in business––and it’s also the case in every restaurant kitchen I’ve ever worked in or observed. Slow movements burn the souffle. Slow cooks get their asses handed to them.

There is indescribable reward in toughing it out in a kitchen under these conditions––a place where your pride lives or dies on your ability to think on your feet. But all I seem to want to write about this morning is taking it slow.

At home, cooking is slow. There is time for wine sipping. If dinner slips past 8, no one is worse for the wear. It’s the kind of place where taking a little extra time to stir the grits gently –- and to butter poach the shrimp correctly –– is usually fine by everyone involved. So allow me to introduce Michael Ruhlman’s shrimp and grits. A dish we made for Sunday dinner when most everyone was being lazy.

BONUS: At the end of the process, the butter you use to poach the shrimp gets added to the cooked grits–making them rich and creamy. So go ahead, give it a whirl. That is, if you’ve got the time.

Friends, after two weeks of being completely offline thanks to a unfriendly hack attack, I’m back. And apparently I’m rhyming. Normally I’d celebrate with a recipe (or at least a beer) but today I’d like to ask you for a favor. So here goes …

Would you be willing to take a quick, 5-minute survey about food and cooking? Your participation will go a long way in helping guide my next project.

Ten questions. Completely anonymous. 100% guaranteed to secure your spot in heaven.

Take the extremely easy, fantastically rewarding survey now.

Thanks to all those on Facebook and Twitter who have already responded. And I promise to be back next time with something a little more tasty.

UPDATE: Because of you, I now have hundreds of responses to this survey. Thank you, thank you, thank you for taking the time to help a girl out!

This is a short hello and “how do ya do!” and a I’ve not disappeared forever.

This is a love letter about butter.

For a stick of butter + any herb + salt = compound butter. Yesterday I threw in a handful of dill and some roasted garlic. No one was home. My dogs were barking and my chardonnay was cold and my corn was charring on the grill and my compound butter was waiting. I ate alone, happy, quiet, warm. In the setting sun with my laptop and my iPhone and my to-do list longer than my arm.

This moment of stillness did not last very long. Shortly after my butter affair, there were dishes and phone calls and negotiations and laundry and putting the dogs out. When I fell into the bed like a cement rock, one of my last fleeting thoughts was not of work or family or obligation. It was about compound butter. Its simple construction. Its unearthly delight. And so, I share with you, my friends.

It feels ridiculous to be offering such a humble recipe after sucking down dirty martinis in swanky New York City bars, sashaying down Fifth Avenue and yes, breathing in the same airspace as Eric Ripert.

I admit, I hadn’t worn heels in quite some time and walking on a downward slope took some getting used to. You will be pleased to know that I pranced on – unearthing every food destination that my wallet and watch could stand. A chef’s tasting at Le Bernardin, another at Daniel and then almost literally bumping into Food Network’s Anne Burrell who was walking her bike just outside Chelsea Market.

But even the high life has its consequences. There, standing outside our hotel, in the same place that Kim Kardashian gracefully posed for paparazzi on her reality show, I hailed a taxi in a dress that I worried was too short while the wind whipped my hair in 72 directions. This kind of glamor is stressful, as you can imagine, so I eventually conceded that coming home to my snarling dogs and frumpy closet was really a blessing in disguise.

And anyway, lamb with asparagus isn’t exactly something to sneeze at. Especially because they incorporate Bing cherries as you can see here. I will pause for you to be thoroughly impressed.

The original recipe, which is really a glorified hash, comes from Stephanie Izard and calls for fresh peas. But for the last couple of years, I’ve been pretty taken with the idea of slicing asparagus into coins. The snappy little pieces barely require any cooking. And the Bing cherries? Just the proper amount of zing. But what really sets this thing over the top is the miso paste, which is stirred into the meat before it hits the pan, adding an unfamiliar spike of earthiness and richness.

On second thought, maybe my modest little kitchen doesn’t feel so far from NYC after all.

He’s Jean-François Flechet: smart, careful, decisive. And he’s the driving force behind one of Cincinnati’s best new restaurants: Taste of Belgium in Over-the-Rhine. So how did he create a cult-like following for his Belgian waffles? Seduce the city with his secret recipe? Find out here in the second episode of Cincinnati Deconstructed – filmed and edited by Michael Holder and written and produced by yours truly.

Our intention is to give you an intimate, behind-the-scenes peek inside the unique personalities that define the food and drink scene here in Cincinnati. (See the pilot episode with rockstar mixologist Molly Wellmann.)

If you like what you see, make sure to let us know by commenting, tweeting, pinning and/or posting on Facebook! This project is a labor of love and your feedback will go a long way in determining how many more we’re able to do in the future. So please share, friends!

Thank you to Jean-François Flechet and his entire team at Taste of Belgium for accommodating us during this shoot – and for all that they’re doing to make Cincinnati a thriving, exciting place to eat.

When I was living in Hyde Park as a preppy 23-year old white girl with a Mini Cooper, I’d fantasize about being the girl two floors up. She had deep black hair, always braided, a wildly colorful wardrobe and a small cat named Debbani. She was beautiful, but best of all, her apartment always smelled like curry.

Poor me, I didn’t know how to cook back then. I had to survive on smells alone. I’d imagine her whipping up naan and Chana Masala while I sat on my couch with Tostitos. Thankfully, John Besh changed all this misplaced jealousy and deep-seated longing. He showed me how to make a simple curry sauce – void of any pretension.

A lot of people these days ask for a simple sauce to pair with chicken, meat or vegetables, and this is one I’d like to formally recommend. Curry sauce. It’s not just for the insiders, the ones with grandma’s in India or Asia. It’s for anyone who can score a can of coconut milk.

When I was working as an apprentice at Nectar Restaurant, I often took the Sunday brunch shift. I wasn’t allowed to do much beyond vegetable prep, but this French toast recipe was right in my wheelhouse.

I’d jerk into action when an order came through the window: slice the bread, soak it in egg batter, throw it on the griddle over a pad of butter. I won’t give away the secret recipe (it incorporates scraped vanilla bean, as well as some other spices here and there) but I will say that it’s very similar to an Ina Garten recipe I remember reading years ago. This particular version with orange zest and honey is a mash-up of the two – and on mornings like this, it hits the spot.

At least it was this past weekend when we broke out the plug-in griddle on our trip to Tennessee. We spent the morning around the table, mostly in sleepy silence, listening to Ray LaMontagne pipe out of my iPhone.

Later, we tried to walk it off, but the hike didn’t last long. We had sufficiently filled the whole camp site with smells of pork shoulder slowly cooking on the grill. I’m not pointing any fingers but some of us were scared it would trigger an army of pork-hungry bears. But that’s a story for another day. For now, here’s what you need to know about the french toast…

Last week I had lunch with a dear friend who was eating a slice of pizza and I wanted to poke his eyeballs out. For a dieter, eating with a non-dieter can be very tumultuous. Oh yes, you might be saying, everything in moderation! And it’s not a diet it’s a lifestyle! But life is so tempting! Get a load of these s’mores: charred, warm and dipped in a tank of chocolate. Do these say moderation to you?

I admit there might be something wrong with me, but to me they say elastic-band sweatpants. To me they say, it’s time to throw elbows. To me they say, you might want to turn your head, this is going to be very unflattering couple of minutes.

Last weekend I briefly departed from my dieting routine – just a quick left and a sharp right into the land of excess. And oh, friends, how sweet! I thought I had come up with a very clever idea to slather melted chocolate on top of what’s already a delicious dessert, but as it turns out, chocolate-covered s’mores are quite the internet sensation. People all over the country are pretty giving their low-cal cookbooks the bird. I love them for that.

So, won’t you join us? You rebel. You renegade. You chocolate-loving daredevil…