"The dish": a symbol of his zest for life and his love to be loved.

• Author: Pudlow, Jan
• Position: Chesterfield Smith - Testimonial

Half of Chet Smith's freezer is filled with Bradley's Country Sausage, a memento from the last time his father visited Tallahassee.

Once again, they made the required trek up moss-draped, oak-canopied Centerville Road to the old country store where they still turn pigs into pork and peddle it sausage-style, so Chesterfield Smith could have one of the main ingredients of his famous recipe, known simply as "The Dish."

Neither paella nor pilau, it is a zestily seasoned combo of saffron-tinted rice, vegetables, shrimp, and hot country sausage.

For 47 years, the elder Smith spent four hours in the kitchen each time he made "The Dish," first concocted for his law partner back in Barrow. Through the years, he served it up with gusto, a symbol of his zest for life, and his love to be loved.

Smith called his old friend Sandy D'Alemberte one day and said: "You've got to get The Miami Herald on Sunday. It's going to have a feature story on me, and it's the best anybody's ever done."

"What's it about, Chesterfield?" D'Alemberte asked.

"About what a good cook I am!" bellowed Smith.

As Smith told the Herald: "I think this dish is dadgum good."

If you go to D'Alemberte's kitchen in Tallahassee, the recipe for "The Dish" is framed on the wall.

Whenever Smith planned a special event, he would give each guest a copy of that 1991 Herald story and the recipe in a folder, along with a little paragraph naming the guest of honor, such as this one from October 23, 1993, complete with Smith's personal signature: "On the occasion honoring Rhea Grafton Chiles, First Lady of Florida, following her presentation of the Tree of Life Award at the Jewish National Fund reception and banquet at the Fontainebleau Hotel, internationally known Chef Chesterfield Smith presents to each attendee a copy of his fabulous recipe for 'The Dish.'"

At his high-ceilinged Coral Gables house, Smith loved to entertain.

While there were always a lot of very important people invited to these gatherings, he would always include young lawyers, too. As Martha Barnett observed, it was "someone he was bringing in and validating. When we were recruiting people for the firm, they didn't stay at a hotel. They stayed at Chesterfield's house. It was personal. He invested in them."

His wife, Jackie, once joked the dishes got used so much from so much entertaining, the glaze had been rubbed off.

"It was almost pathological; he liked being around people so much," said Chet Smith. His favorite memory of his...