Brewer Art - First We Surf, Then We Eat: Recipes from a Lifetime of Surf Travel

Text copyright 2018 by Jim Kempton

Original food photography copyright 2018 by Bill Schildge; other photographs copyright as credited at bottom of this page.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by Prospect Park Books

2359 Lincoln Avenue

Altadena, California 91001

www.prospectparkbooks.com

Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution

www.cbsd.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress. The following is for reference only:

Kempton, Jim

First We Surf, Then We Eat: recipes from a lifetime of surf travel / by Jim Kempton 1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-945551-34-5

1. Cooking, International. 2. Cooking, Regional/Ethnic. 3. Travel, Special Interest/Sports. 4. Travel, International.

Edited by Colleen Dunn Bates

Book & cover design by Amy Inouye, Future Studio; book layout by Michelle Ingram

Cover photograph by Bill Schildge

Travel & surf photography credits

Alamy Photo: page 146

Brian Bielmann: pages 222-223

Art Brewer: pages 25, 108, 118, 128

Jeff Divine: pages 4, 9, 10, 15, 22, 30, 36, 53, 62, 82, 87, 88-89 (Catalina), 90, 103, 130-131, 142, 150, 154-155 (Todos Santos), 170, 198 (G-land), 201, 212, 218 (vendors)

Dreamstime: 108-109, 114, 116, 121, 122, 135, 234

Carlos Ferrer: page 221

Pierre Gascogne: page 52

Tom Keck: page 72

Aurelien Laborde: page 42

Russell Ord: pages 206-207

Marco Pompeo: page 80

Bill Schildge: pages 38-39, 170

Jose Schiaffino: page 218 (Chicama), 241

Brent Schlea: page 135

Tom Servais: pages 8, 13, 25-26, 29, 34, 70, 88 (surfer/boat), 94, 140, 154 (Baja), 168, 176, 177, 178, 179, 187, 192, 193, 198 (door), 202, 206, 208, 213, 224, 227

Witchs Rock Surf Camp: page 96

Nothing like a good seafood snack after a solid surf session. At Macaronis in Mentawais, Indonesia.

Table of Contents

Contents

Jim Kempton in France

Its 6:30 on a Saturday evening in the hills above San Clemente. A dozen of Jim Kemptons longtime friends, including my wife, Debbee, and myself, are gathered at Michael and Leslie Daviss home at Jims invitation to enjoy a Kempton-style evening of convivial dining. The menu consists of Moroccan dishes that Jim has recently been perfecting. Jim has been laboring over this meal for several days: the first few spent locating the more exotic ingredients, then two days of prep and cooking. Accordingly, the Daviss kitchen counters are littered with dirty mixing bowls, pots and pans, cooking utensils, and traces of ingredients. Sipping wine and catching up, we await the arrival of a leg of lamb, which is crusting on the patio grill.

On this evening his guests also include The Surfers Journal photo editor and renowned surf photographer Jeff Divine and his wife, Julie; Jims longtime friend (dating back to mid-70s evenings at Le Steak House in Biarritz) Pierre Gascogne and his wife, Corine, and gracious Aussie photo master Ted Grambeau, whos passing through to renegotiate his gig with Quiksilver. The attendees sample various items around the dining table while Jim stands at the end, describing the origins of each dish. The meal is as richly exotic and splendid as we knew it would be.

Jim Kempton and I first met at Surfer magazine when I was publisher while also standing in as editor during a vacancy. He was a surf writer from San Diego who had cleverly been exporting silk-screened T-shirts with esoterically cool graphics to France. After a few months of visits, I saw that he was surf knowledgeable, worldly, and quite capable. Over the next eight years at Surfer, we began a surf-centric relationship encased in the common interests of riding waves and enjoying food. My enthusiasm was mostly for eating it; Jims, perhaps even more for cooking it. He saw culinary creation as an art form.

Thus our surfing adventuressurfing a summertime south swell in Malibu with dim sum in Chinatown on the way home, attending the Eddie Aikau big-wave contest and meeting George Downing for Oahus best Korean barbecue, weeklong surf trips to Mexico sampling every imaginable type of tacobecame enriched with culinary sidebars; on occasion it was the other way around.

When Surfers parent company transferred me to oversee the companys multiple titles, management asked Jim to take over as publisher. After three years of that life-changing experience, a time when Surfer was quite good, Jim enlisted the owners of a successful restaurant in Tijuana to join him in opening an authentic Mexican eatery in San Clemente. The resulting Margaritas Village soon developed a cult following, drawing swarms of surfers and locals to the restaurant and bar, the latter of which gained fame by serving as the scene of several bawdy performances by certain Hall of Fame surf legends. As they always seem to do, the restaurant gig fried Jim, so finally he left to take consulting assignments from surf-industry brands that had realized that, indeed, they were lost in Kansas without the counsel of a wise surf guru like Jim. While doing that with his left hand, our friend began creating hugely imaginative celebratory dinners at his home. Each one would begin with Jims intense interest in a certain cuisine and progress through the testing and perfecting of the recipes hed discovered throughout his travels, and finally would come the main event.

Jim has had the charmed tendency to fall into really cool gigs. During his stint at Quiksilver, his rsum inclined them to assign him the task of coordinating and accompanying a legendary surf-world vessel, the Indies Trader, captained by rogue Aussie skipper Martin Daley. Jim was the onboard corporate entity. She was a trawler turned luxury, seaworthy surf explorer that carried fourteen guests plus five crew, who offered up gourmet meals, Australian wines, a full bar, evening surf films, and perfect waves, all never before so thoroughly combined and cunningly delivered. As host of a surf-exploration vessel promoting Quiksilver with an ever-changing rotation of hero surfers on board, he traveled and surfed and dined throughout Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean. This global multi-year adventure further nurtured his absorption of a broad spectrum of the worlds culinary offerings, bolstered by his lack of queasinessor is it an adventurous nature?about what went in his stomach.

These days, Jim has progressed to not only collecting recipes that spike his interest and creating his own versions of them, but also writing about his unique experiences over a life of culinary and surf adventures. The book you are holding in your hands represents the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Its an invitation to a Kempton feast that you must seek.