![]() I mentioned I was going to do this, and a student of mine piped in very quickly and said that her mother cooks iguana all the time. There are no nice words for what that animal smells like. I've been to restaurants that do unusual things, but cooking iguana? I had to google it just to see what the bone structure was going to be like. ![]() But technically, you're just dealing with frying gator tails. ![]() No! Well, being in Florida, yes, I've cooked gator. I originally thought it was a joke.ĭid you have any kind of experience cooking different kinds of reptiles? Like gator? It was one of those spur-of-the-moment things. The iguana is the wildest thing I've ever taken on. This year the Championship is moving to Kissimmee.īesides iguana carnitas, what are some of the wilder dishes you've created? VICE: When you're not stewing iguana flesh, what do you do for a living?Īmy Freeze: I'm a full-time English teacher and I'm actually a World Food Championship competitor. VICE spoke with Freeze about the creature's surprising bone structure, their free-roaming takeover of a certain South Florida island, and what the fuck your house smells like after slow-cooking an iguana overnight. But it was local English teacher and cooking competition vet Amy Freeze who rose as Florida's new Iguana Cooking Champion with her Iguana Carnitas. This summer, we took it one step further and hosted a culinary camp for kids ages 8-14.Five teams of brave chefs did their finest with the hunk of reptile dealt to them. We now host events, dinners and cooking classes, monthly, which gives us the good fortune of combining our love of cooking for others and teaching how to cook. Covid shut that down, and we, like many small businesses could have called it quits, but after a pandemic pause, we were in the right place at the right time and hooked up with a local winery. ![]() We hosted 4 dinners a year (1 per season) and we thought that was awesome. We started by hosting small farm-to-table dinners at a local, historical landmark & garden. After winning the National Pie Championship in 2013 and gaining my first entry to World Food Championships, my culinary career began. I began competitive cooking as simply a home cook. My biggest piece of advice is to look to your friends as untapped resources.Ĭan you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more. Fast forward 8 years, and now, she is the team member in charge of making our competitive dishes look phenomenal and my right hand keeping our farm-to-table kitchen running smoothly. My sous chef came on board as a member of my competitive cooking team in 2015, when I needed someone who could draw on plates in chocolate. We’d love to hear about you met your business partner. Since then, my culinary career has taken off, and my daytime students become my taste testers and servers at private events. In 2013, I won the National Pie Championship as a home cook and gained my first entry to World Food Championships. For the past 24 years, I’ve been a high school English teacher in a small, rural town in central Florida during the day and at night, weekends, and holidays, I’ve worked as a private and competitive chef. I’m neither the typical chef nor typical teacher. I want our guests to go away having eaten well and learned a few things about food.Īmy, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do? I hope that I’m never simply seen as an ordinary or mediocre cook. In our farm-to-table dinners, we serve unique dining experiences while at the same time teaching our guests about food sourcing and exciting ingredient combinations. However, I’ve been able to merge the two. Most teachers aren’t competitive chef’s on the side and most chef’s aren’t also educators. Let’s jump to the end – what do you want to be remembered for?Īs a teacher and a chef, I am not what anyone expects. Alright, Amy thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below. Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Amy Freeze.
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