Gourmet home cuisine

Culinary goals

We designed Fivemile Hill cuisine with two goals in mind:

1

Eat a tasty, healthy, sustainable diet on a regular basis.

2

Create unforgettable culinary experiences at home.

What is Fivemile Hill cuisine?

Fivemile Hill cuisine is a gourmet home cuisine using wood fire and natural heirloom ingredients, fit for the Texas Hill Country climate, inspired by tropical, Asian, and Mediterranean traditions.

It fits a balanced, varied, plant-rich diet supporting human and planet health.

Although Fivemile Hill cuisine emphasizes wood-fire cooking, it also includes indoor cooking with stove and oven. Therefore, culinary courses also include non-wood-fire culinary compositions and recipes.

What is a culinary composition?

The primary format of Fivemile Hill cuisine is a single-course meal centered on a culinary composition made of a few dishes and a drink pairing meant to be enjoyed together.

In Fivemile Hill cuisine, we create culinary compositions with an ingredient-first approach. We start with great natural and craft ingredients, then we design recipes to make each ingredient shine. We combine ingredients into dishes, which in turn are combined into a culinary composition.

A culinary composition is a culinary ensemble comprising a few dishes and a drink, combined together with harmony, balance, and imagination to create a delightful and meaningful taste experience, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Aurélie

I played the violin in orchestras and chamber music ensembles for 15 years. I see a great analogy between music and culinary. An orchestra shines best when each musician excels at their instrument and all play together in harmony a beautifully composed symphony. So it is with a culinary composition where each ingredient shines and all elements come together in harmony to create wonderful flavors.

Culinary courses

Each culinary course focuses on a specific topic, such as fundamental knowledge (e.g. Cooking Essentials), cooking technique (e.g. Fivemile Wood-Fire Cooking Techniques), or culinary composition (e.g. Grilled Swordfish on the Beach).

Culinary courses are grouped together in course series around a general theme (e.g. Introduction to Tropical Wood-Fire Flavors).

Each culinary course comprises several chapters, each explaining in detail a sub-topic of the course. This could be a specific ingredient, technique, recipe, or notes on how to put a culinary composition together.

We have carefully crafted Fivemile Hill culinary courses and their chapters as a progression, with each course building on the content of previous ones, to make it easy to learn and remember. Therefore, we strongly recommend to read courses and their chapters in order, to get the most out of them.

An index is provided at the end of this page, with the list of all courses and chapters, as well as searchable lists of ingredients, recipes, and compositions. This is similar to the index at the end of a book.

Course series 00: Fundamentals

01 - Foundations of Fivemile Hill cuisine

4 chapters

In this first course, we explain the genesis of Fivemile Hill cuisine, its core culinary principles, and the nutritional knowledge that guides its design.

02 - Course: Fivemile Hill wood-fire cooking techniques

11 chapters

Wood-fire cooking is a pillar of Fivemile Hill cuisine. We have developed a new way of cooking with wood fire using a conventional BBQ. In this course, we describe in detail our approach to wood-fire cooking including equipment and tools, types of fuel, and techniques.

03 - Course: Cooking essentials

8 chapters

In this course, we go over essential cooking notions and ingredients such as measuring quantity and temperature, salt and pepper, olive oil. We provide reference lists for spices, condiments, aromatics, herbs, and garnishes commonly used in Fivemile Hill cuisine.

Course series 10: Introduction to Fivemile Hill wood-fire cooking

11 - Course: Grilled Swordfish on the Beach

8 chapters

This is the first composition course to learn Fivemile Hill wood-fire cooking. We explain the background of this easy wood-fire culinary composition. We go over the ingredients that were not presented in the Fundamentals courses and provide the recipes to make it.

12 - Course: Exquisite Wood-Fire Salmon and Arctic Char

10 chapters

This is the second composition course to learn Fivemile Hill wood-fire cooking. We focus on salmon and Arctic char, cooked in the same way, but showcased in two different compositions.

13 - Course: Grilled American Bison Filet

7 chapters

In this course, we focus on the finest cut of high-quality bison or beef. We explain the cultural background of this composition, discuss bison and beef in detail, and provide recipes.

14 - Course: Yogurt bowl with fruits, nuts, and seeds

5 chapters

In this course, we explain in detail the different types of ingredients that we combine to create this healthy and satisfying yogurt bowl.

Course series 20: Introduction to wood-fire tropical flavors

21 - Course: Sate Ayam

13 chapters

This course is an introduction to Indonesian cuisine with a focus on Sate Ayam, the famous Indonesian grilled chicken skewers served with peanut sauce.

22 - Course: Wood-Fire Combava Fish

6 chapters

This course focuses on an original Fivemile Hill composition that showcases cod (or haddock) and tropical aromatic ingredients, cooked over wood-fire in an exotic sauce, and served with grilled bitter greens and a spicy tomato-combava relish from Réunion Island.

23 - Course: Kecap-Manis Chicken Breast

6 chapters

In this course, we explain how to use a meat thermometer to grill chicken breast to perfection over wood fire, in an original Fivemile Hill composition that elevates chicken and traditional Indonesian ingredients to the level of fine dining.

24 - Course: Cari Pois Citrouille

5 chapters

In this course, we introduce our first plants-only composition featuring a traditional large lima beans curry from Réunion Island cooked on the stove and served with rice and bitter greens sauté. We also present the wide range of beans, lentils, and other legumes used in Fivemile Hill cuisine.