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Ouita Michel

Ouita Michel

Ouita Michel is a girl mom, a wife, daughter, sister and aunt; the founder of a culinary group that’s at the apex of the central Kentucky food chain. It includes seven restaurants – from her fine-dining flagship Holly Hill Inn to a country deli Wallace Station on Kentucky’s only national scenic byway – along with a bakery, a bar, an events business and a cooking studio. Ouita Michel has created a world where all are welcome at an ever-growing table.

She’s an author, a food activist, an eight-times-over James Beard semifinalist and a Culinary Ambassador in the U.S. State Department Culinary Corps. Ouita Michel is Kentucky’s go-to authority on local food and the culture of agriculture, winning awards for championing our farmers, fishermen, butchers and stewards of the land. Over the last two decades, her Holly Hill & Co. restaurants have purchased $10 million worth of Kentucky Proud foods and garnered lifetime achievement status.

She co-founded Lexington’s FoodChain to fight for food access and opened Smithtown Seafood as its window to the outside world. Her Holly Hill website tells stories of Kentucky’s people, places and ingredients. And she brings those people, places and ingredients to life in her Holly Hill Cooking Studio.

Ouita Michel wrote Just a Few Miles South: Timeless recipes from our favorite places. She’s been at the stove for 37 years, dispensing kitchen wisdom and life hacks. She’s a caretaker of cast iron, a collector of cookbooks (4000 and counting) and a mentor to multitudes of young chefs and creative spirits.

Ouita Michel - Kentucky Summer Rabbit Two Ways

Kentucky Summer Rabbit Two Ways

Rabbit has long been a part of Kentucky’s food culture, and in the 19th, century was likely served almost weekly in Kentucky homes. In the Kentucky Housewife, published in 1839, there are 10 recipes for rabbit! Even today many small farmers raise rabbits, and we are lucky enough to have it readily available year-round. A favorite way of preparing rabbit around this area is to fry the rabbit and serve it in a cream gravy, startlingly similar to Jacques Pepin’s Blanquette of Rabbit, found in The Art of Cooking Volume 1. I bought those books in my first week at chef school in 1989 and have pored over them for many years. This blanquette recipe is inspired by Jacques’, and by its familiarity to Kentucky tastes. The silver dollar hoecakes are another Kentucky tradition and really bring the dish home.

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