Steeped in tradition

Colby De Sales, Miranda Smith and Kim Smith enjoy a French peasant food luncheon in Kim’s historic farm in northwest Marion County. [Photo by Dave Miller, MAVEN Photo + Film]

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Posted July 1, 2025 | By Susan Smiley-Height, [email protected]

In the halcyon days before the COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill, Kim Smith was the master chef behind intimate dinners hosted at her historic farm and homestead in northwest Marion County.

The events, under the Vintage Farm Company 1848 brand, went on for about four years and steadily gained a growing and adoring fan base with each unique presentation.

Smith, who comes from a long line of professional chefs, still knows her way around a kitchen, often in the company of her daughters Miranda Smith and Colby De Sales, both of whom also are trained chefs.

Kim was born in New Jersey but raised in Hancock, Maine, and the Provence region of France, where she got her early start in the kitchen of her grandmother. In Maine, she and her extended family ran two restaurants, Unbridled Bistro and Market Bistro, and they had a Bistro Street food truck that they would bring south “for the horse community” when they spent winters in Marion County.

Kim and her husband, Peter, a retired farrier, bought their historic dairy farm in Ocala 13 years ago.

THE FRENCH CONNECTION

Historical websites note that World War II began in Europe on Sept. 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland and with the United Kingdom and France’s declaration of war on Germany two days later, on Sept. 3.

According to Britannica.com, the “resistance” involved secret and clandestine groups that sprang up throughout German-occupied Europe to oppose Nazi rule. Those who took part included civilians who worked secretly against the occupation as well as armed bands of partisans or guerrilla fighters. Their activities ranged from publishing clandestine newspapers and assisting the escape of Jews and Allied airmen shot down over enemy territory to committing acts of sabotage, ambushing German patrols and conveying intelligence information to the Allies.

Kim Smith said her grandmother was part of the resistance and came to America from France in 1943.

“She was in the resistance, and she was hiding the Jews and helping them get out of the war. She was at a big family restaurant in Les Baux, France,” she recalled. “And when the time came that it was too dangerous to stay, my great-grandfather, Pierre Monteux, one of the most famous symphony conductors in the world, had worldly connections and was able to speak to the right people to get passage for my grandmother and my mom and her two brothers. My mother would’ve been about 3 or 4 years old and the boys probably 7 and 8 years old.”

Smith said that when the ship arrived in Hancock, Maine, “Which is where I grew up, my grandmother had no means. My grandfather was on the ship in the merchant Marines. Pierre Monteux had the Montour School of Music across the street and conductors and music students from around the world would come there to learn.”

“So, my grandmother decided to make a tearoom and to feed them, and then the tearoom grew into the Le Domaine and was the only authentic real French restaurant in the state for 75 years,” she noted. “She cooked with Julia Child, and they were friends.”

She said her earliest jobs in her grandmother’s Le Domaine restaurant were stuffing snails and picking maple leaves to serve as doilies under the desserts.

“That was when I was about 10. When I got a little older, I got to go behind the stove,” she shared. “So, all those years of being around a family restaurant is quite something to come from, from French women, so that’s how I grew up. My grandmother passed young from an accident and we probably would’ve taken over the restaurant from my aunts, I think, if we had stayed there, if things had been different.”

LIFE LESSONS

As Kim learned from her family, Miranda and Colby learned from her. In addition to their love of horses, with all of them being lifelong riders, the girls learned to love food and cooking from their mother and they were integral to hosting the intimate dinners at the farm, before the pandemic ended the tradition.

The trio recently embarked on a business of upcycling vintage clothing, called Milk House Studios in honor of the historic farm.

Along their shared journey, Miranda was part of the corporate culinary world for a time and recalled learning harsh lessons.

“I came out of a corporate restaurant world for 20 years. That was my path, and it was rough. It was a hard path to go on and I learned a lot. It was very man-driven, so to be an outspoken female in that environment was a struggle,” she shared. “So, I think being able to do it for myself and for my family and you know for the groups of people that we entertained when we did the dinners was way more fun because you just got to be yourself.”

Colby offered that her mother taught her to “just to be fearless in our aspirations to try new things and not have limitations. She was very independent and let us just follow our path and not be super rigid in what was expected of us.”

“I think we’ve always learned to never get stuck in in the typical 9 to 5, to find what we love to do and if you can make money out of it, great,” Miranda added, “but I think, always, it’s kind of coming back to happiness and feeling balanced and feeling centered and so we’ve always loved cooking. All three of us in the kitchen can get chaotic and we can yell like the best French woman out there, but I think it’s always staying in tune with who you are authentically and COVID kind of gave us permission to go back to the things that we’d always done.”

“Food is very personal and you either hit the mark or you don’t. And when you’re got 30, 40 people out here, it’s very personal and we want people to feel what they’re eating and take it back to what it used to be; wake up a memory that they have from somewhere, from their childhood or a trip,” Kim said wistfully. “Basically, our food was all French peasant food, but will we ever get to the dinners again… noooo…”

The trio does cook for each other and Miranda’s husband Marco and Colby’s husband Chris also offer up dishes native to their culture.

“We’ll do a group text and say, ‘Market board for dinner,’” Kim said, pointing to a large wooden cutting board on the kitchen counter. “And then it’s pretty funny because we’ll all bring the same thing. It’ll be the pork belly, the baguettes, the cheese, the pate and then we just put it on top of this and just stand here and eat.”

During the photo shoot for this article, the three chefs cooked up a delightful luncheon of rustic drop biscuits, apple fennel slaw, pickled onions and roasted pork belly with a blueberry glaze. The herbs came from the garden just outside the kitchen and Kim noted that they often incorporate a blueberry wine from the Island Gove Winery north of Ocala into their recipes.

Their favorite local eateries are mostly ethic venues, such as Ayuttaya Thai Cuisine, Amrit Indian restaurant, Latino Y Mas, Sayulita, Café Havana and K-Pot.

And they aren’t afraid to buck traditions.

“Two Thanksgiving’s ago, we were kind of tired of the same Thanksgiving,” Colby explained. “It’s like once a year you get these casseroles or whatever you grew up with, so Miranda and Mario made Puerto Rican, Kim made French food and Chris and I made Brazilian food, and we all had a buffet.”

“Eating for the purpose that it is, rather than just eating subconsciously to fill a void or kill time, I think, it is really important to eat the way we did all those years ago and not just mindlessly go to random stores and buy random stuff and bring it back. I’m going to Spain, Italy and France and I’m excited to see and feel what food does over there and bring it back,” she added.

The three ladies made one excursion to France together to visit with a friend of Kim’s grandmother, who owned a restaurant.

“When we were in France, there was so much sightseeing that we wanted to do but the most fun we had was in the kitchen and just learning new things and I was deboning fish for six hours and I was like, ‘This is great!’” Colby said with a grin.

“We cooked with one of my grandmother’s friends in her restaurant, which was in an old barn,” Kim added. “It was like the whole room was a stove. It was the coolest thing ever.”

 

RECREATE THIS SPECIAL MEAL AT HOME

Pork Belly with Blueberry Glaze

2 pounds pork belly

1 can of Florida Avenue Beer, Blueberry Wheat Ale

1/3 cup blueberry jam (we use Stonewall Kitchen Wild Maine Blueberry Jam) 

Salt and pepper

Cut the pork belly into cubes and season well with salt and pepper. Cover in blueberry beer.  Place in a covered pan and bake at 325° for an hour and 45 minutes or until tender. Remove the pan from the oven and toss the pork belly with the blueberry jam to coat. Return to oven uncovered and bake until crisp.

 

Rustic Drop Biscuits

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder 

1 teaspoon sugar

3/4 teaspoon sea salt

A couple pinches of chopped rosemary 

8 tablespoons cold, unsalted butter, cubed

1 cup cold buttermilk

Goat cheese

Blueberry jam

In a large bowl, add the flour, baking powder, sugar, salt and rosemary. Mix with a wooden spoon then add 8 tablespoons of cubed cold, unsalted butter, cubed. Use your hand to “smoosh” the butter into the flour until you get pea size chunks. Work quickly so the butter doesn’t melt. Add 1 cup cold buttermilk. Mix, but don’t over mix. Line a baking pan with parchment paper. Scoop the biscuit mixture onto the baking pan and bake at 425 degrees for 20 minutes. When ready to serve, cut the biscuits in half. You can spread goat cheese and/or blueberry jam on each side of the biscuit before layering them with pieces of pork belly. You can add the pickled onions as well or serve on the side.

Fennel Slaw with Apple Vinaigrette

For the slaw:

1 fennel bulb, finely sliced

Handful of fennel fronds, chopped 

1 Ganny Smith green apple, finely sliced

1 lemon, for juice and zest

 

For the vinaigrette:

1 ½ tablespoons apple cider vinegar 

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon maple syrup 

1 teaspoon mustard 

Combine the fennel bulb and fronds, green apple and lemon juice and zest in a serving bowl.  Put all of the dressing ingredients into a glass jar with a lid and shake vigorously. Pour the vinaigrette over the slaw and toss until evenly coated.

 

Quick Pickled Onions

1 red onion, thinly sliced

½ cup apple cider vinegar

½ cup water

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon kosher salt

Pack the onion slices into a mason jar. Mix the remaining ingredients in a small saucepan.  Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally. Once the liquid boils and the sugar and salt are dissolved, remove the pan from the heat. Pour the liquid over the onions in the jar. Let cool at room temperature for 30 minutes. Place the lid on the jar tightly and refrigerate until fully cooled.