Miami chef Adrianne Calvo publishes her seventh cookbook
"Maximum Flavor at Home" turns two decades of her Miami restaurant's repeat orders into a cookbook, two decades after her debut funded the restaurant itself.
Miami chef Adrianne Calvo has published her seventh cookbook, "Maximum Flavor at Home," built around the comfort dishes she serves at her own restaurant.
The book, out November 3 through Agate Publishing, follows the title of her 2005 debut, "Maximum Flavor," which made her one of the youngest cookbook authors in the country at the time. She wrote that first book to help pay off culinary school debt, after a competition judge suggested she compile her recipes.
Recipes released ahead of publication include a whole roasted chicken soup built from pan drippings and a kale, sweet potato and goat cheese salad finished with a honey mustard dressing, both designed for home cooks working from a single sheet pan and a stockpot.
A cookbook built, chapter by chapter, from one restaurant's repeat orders.
A restaurant built on no business plan
Calvo opened Chef Adrianne's Vineyard Restaurant and Bar at 22, funding it with credit cards and her cookbook earnings. "I had no business experience, just a belief in making really great food," she has said. Two decades later, the Miami restaurant is still open, still built around dishes from her culinary-school years, including an award-winning lamb chop recipe.
Her path to the kitchen started with a scheduling mistake: a high school cooking class she was placed into by error, followed by a Johnson & Wales University demonstration that convinced her to train as a chef.
A foundation named for her sister
Calvo's younger sister, Jennifer, died of a rare cancer, a loss that stopped Calvo from cooking for a period before she decided to open her restaurant instead. She later founded the Make It Count Foundation in Jennifer's name, a nonprofit supporting cancer patients and their families, and now works with St Jude Children's Research Hospital each year on a holiday meal for patients.
Like Tini Younger's recent cookbook, Calvo has framed her new book as advice as much as recipes, telling other cooks, particularly women entering the industry: "No one is ever going to create something in your voice, in your style." It is a line that also describes a cookbook built, chapter by chapter, from one restaurant's repeat orders.
