My love of food is fed from the fond memories of smells and tastes of my childhood.

When I smell the stem of a vine ripe tomato, I can visualize myself running through the large rows of tomato plants as my brother and I played hide and seek.

The taste of a cucumber brings to mind my father who used to carry a salt shaker and pocketknife through the fields to enjoy the simplicity of such a subtle vegetable.

The smell of a leek reminds me of sitting with my mother and helping sort the seedlings to be replanted.

So many smells and tastes zoom my mind to childhood memories. The excitement of having an omelet from a double yolk chicken egg … the simple taste of a sunfish from the pond… the neighbor get-togethers to feast on local clams and blue crabs … the fresh pomegranate my brother and I grabbed from Mr. Beasley’s tree on the way back from fishing…

I have to attribute my fearlessness toward hard work to the not-so-fond memories of being on a farm.

You have never prayed so hard for rain until you have to move sections of irrigation pipe over sixty acres of peppers every four hours at the age of ten.

I would have to miss cartoons on Saturday mornings so I could cultivate the field with the tractor before the sun became too strong.

Through the hard work of growing up on a farm, I have found serenity and comfort in the preparation of food. When I am stressed, I would much rather turn a case of artichokes or filet sixty pounds of fish. That is my thinking zone—that is my spa.

Chef Dean James Max