|
 John
Shields is a man who still likes to get his feet
wet. Growing up on the Chesapeake Bay, he would wiggle his toes
over the water from a wooden pier and go fishing, dreaming about
his catch-of-the-day winding up on his grandmother's stove.
Today,
John still looks for fetching fresh seafood, but in much larger
bounties for his own kitchen at a restaurant in Baltimore he named
after his grandmother. You may recognize this chef from his television
show, Chesapeake Bay Cooking. But John is a celebrity off the air
as well.
In
fact, John Shields has become the culinary ambassador of the Chesapeake
Bay, which is no small feat. The 10,000-year-old bay is the largest
inland tidal body of water in North America, with some 4,600 miles
of coastline winding across Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. Still
getting his feet wet on his never-ending culinary journey in kitchens,
on boats and in fields of the bay's undiscovered waterside towns,
John has emerged as a key figure in giving the Chesapeake's tidewater
heritage a worldwide gastronomic identity.
"In
my research, I was amazed to discover that the first four presidents
of the United States sent their chefs to the Chesapeake to learn
how to cook," John reports. "American cooking really got its roots
here."
Years
ago, folks along the Eastern Shore never thought that the way they
prepared crabs, rockfish, sea trout, roasted wild goose and duck,
beaten biscuits or Silver Queen corn, had any uniform style. "No
one ever thought about the foods of the Chesapeake's waters and
farmlands as having any regional character," explains John. Not
even his grandmother.
Greta
Cleary, affectionately called Gertie, was a well-known home cook
on the Eastern Shore. And John was lucky enough to spend untold
hours with her in her garden and kitchen, learning about local ingredients
and how to turn them into a satisfying meal.
"She was a first-rate cook and her enthusiasm was infectious," admits
John, who was studying for a career in music until he agreed to
pinch-hit in a restaurant kitchen for an injured friend. "I never
thought of cooking in a restaurant as a real job. But after my first
experience, I felt so at home; it all came back to me and I knew
I wanted to work in food," recalls the chef.
Now,
many years later, he has opened his second restaurant, Gertrude's
at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Chesapeake Bay cuisine is the
mainstay of the menu, with items such as grilled rockfish, which
he pairs with a warm vinaigrette potato salad and a delicate composition
of chopped fennel and shallots roasted in an essence of pure maple
syrup. Crab cakes are cooked a variety of ways, including Gertie's
traditional Eastern Shore recipe with cracker crumbs. The restaurant
has been called "sleek" and the service "professional," by Southern
Living magazine.
"I try to keep the atmosphere warm and easy, like a time gone by
when the days at the bay were slower and everyone had time for one
another," John explains.
Not
only does John seek to preserve this pace of life, he also hopes
that his efforts at promoting Chesapeake cooking heighten the importance
of regional cooking. "Now more than ever as the world homogenizes,
we have to seek ways to serve regional foods so that when you go
to an area, your expectations of finding the specialties of that
region will always be met."
The
chef suggests that everyone who cooks can be a part of that effort:
"When you have a dinner party, next time think about cooking foods
found fresh in your region and build a menu and theme around that.
It makes planning a lot easier, and people feel a sense of being
-- a sense of wholeness -- right where they are. When cooking can
do that for you, you know you are on the right track."
 Seeing
him bring all of his culinary philosophies to the table — at
his restaurant and on his TV show — it is easy to understand
why John's childhood memories from the dock of the bay are what
he draws on time and again for his daily needs, whether they be
deciding what to cook or when to take time out for play.
|
