get in my head. or my belly. same thing.

2006-09-23T00:17:00.000-04:00

get in my head has officially moved to wordpress: thatswhatyouthink.wordpress.com. please update your bookmarks! this page will no longer be updated, and although all the posts have been moved over to the new blog you will still be able to access them here. thanks.

2006-09-10T23:14:00.000-04:00

another movie roundup:

the apartment (1960): one of shirley maclaine's big hits. a classic, but didn't really do anything for me. very weird to see fred macmurray (of flubber (the original) fame) as the baddie.

babes in toyland (1961): blast from the past. fun disney flick, apparently based on a victor herbert operetta. not one of the best, esp. if you don't have the added nostalgia factor, but there are some good moments/scenes inc. annette funicello as mary quite contrary.

chung hing sam lam (1994) (chungking express): wong kar wai. nice cinematography. in two distinct sections, one dramatic and one more comedic, with nothing really connecting the two. enjoyable, though, and i'd watch it again.

the devil wears prada (2006): fun summer movie. as most critics have pointed out: meryl streep lifts this up from the dreck it could've been. i couldn't decide how much anne hathaway was annoying me, though.

heisei tanuki gassen pompoko (1994) (the raccoon war): somewhat trippy studio ghibli flick (miyazaki was one of the producers). typically japanese quirkiness with some raunchy humor and a fairly downer ending.

howards end (1992): entertaining enough and has emma thompson in an academy award-winning role. not quite a keeper though.

i can hear the sea (umi ga kikoeru) (1993) (tv): another studio ghibli flick. this one's about a girl from tokyo forced to live in a small town because of her parent's divorce. has some nice insights into adolescence, particularly at the end, but didn't really resonate with me.

kind hearts and coronets (1949): alec guiness flick in which he plays multiple roles. fairly slow with little tension.

the muppet movie (1979): the first muppet movie. fairly slow and a slew of celebrity cameos that if you weren't around at the time are fairly unrecognizable, but some great scenes esp. with ms. piggy, kermit, and fozzy.

notorious (1946): hitchcock suspense classic. nice performances by ingrid bergman, cary grant, and claude rains, although the ending is a bit abrupt.

the palm beach story (1942): another highly entertaining preston sturges flick. not quite as memorable as some of his others, but still worth watching.

passport to pimlico (1949): odd little british flick about a village that finds an ancient charter that declares them to be an independent country separate from britain and the chaos that ensues. entertaining, but doesn't really move beyond the premise.

thelma & louise (1991): a classic, and still fairly novel today as a female "buddy movie". not always the most convincing, but a good direction (ridley scott) and a good pair of leads.

top hat (1935): fun astaire and rogers movie. wasn't much more memorable than the others to me, although apparently people single it out as the best.

whisper of the heart (mimi wo sumaseba) (1995) : once again miyazaki completely captures childhood in all its confusion, enthusiasm, and innocence. a truly beautiful film. this is on the level of classics like citizen's kane or all about eve but all the more amazing because it's a "kids" movie (although i imagine it's prob. too slow for a lot of kids, american at least). no fantasy elements, but completely enchanting.

2006-09-06T04:51:00.000-04:00

food tourists in the big apple.

this article in the nytimes dining section today spells out exactly what i find scary about cooking and eating in new york.

it's that cooking things in the time-honored way with full respect for fresh, local ingredients gets likened to marie antoinette playing shepherdess in the gardens at versailles. and i can understand precisely this attitude, even though it totally chaps my ass to read it in the local paper.

one of the things i'll miss most about italy when i return to the states is how easy it's been to cook for myself twice a day, every day. and yes, it's both the fact that i don't have any access to pop culture or commerce after 7pm (the commerce, not the pop culture; the latter is a 24-7 kind of lack) and that i like taking the long, pain-in-the-ass route for just about everything i do, but it doesn't seem particularly problematic or ridiculous for me to devote maybe three hours of my day to feeding myself.

"frivolous" is what gets me: what's wrong with us that we have turned cooking into entertainment, drudgery, a mere hobby or playtime for the bourgeois? maybe i'm reading too much into this or maybe i'm out of touch with the reality of the way most of us live today, but i just don't know how to make all this square in my head. or how it will square once i move back.

and it's this same attitude that extends to eating, this sort of keeping-up-with-the-joneses-in-the-loft-next-door sort of mindset, where making some elaborate "peasant" dish is another thing to check off that list of things that make you cooler, more cultured than what's-his-face jones, and going to l'atelier de joël robuchon is another thing to check off.

okay, getting off my high horse now.

2006-09-04T22:23:00.000-04:00

today was the first i heard about nautical antiques, pinback's "selection of b-sides and outtakes", apparently coming out tomorrow. spin.com has a small article about it. hmm. i guess i'll have to get it ...

2006-08-31T03:56:00.000-04:00

a life-changing book: getting off the corn.

my sister just finished michael pollan's omnivore's dilemma, which i had immediately foisted upon her after i read it myself. while she also cares about what she eats, she tends to be more of a skeptic when it comes to the muckraking (fast food nation, for instance, didn't really stir her into action, since she felt it was all stuff she heard before. and neither of us really can handle eating fast food anyway).

we both agree that corn's stranglehold on virtually ever consumable (whether edible or not) is scary. and we're both boycotting it however we can. an interesting email she sent today:

i think if we lived in the US, it would be almost impossible to avoid all these random corn products [including this, which might just prove to be an extra roadblock in weaning ourselves off corn]. i have never even seen a butcher in st. louis that wasn't connectred to a grocery store. the reason the EU bans all these preservatives and fake food flavouring is that they don't have any economic reason to need to sell/move it, whereas its within the US's 'best interest' to develop these crazy ways of using corn.

by the way, this doesn't make me want to shop at whole foods either. i bought a chicken at the butcher's on saturday and split it up into different cuts, made stock out of the carcass/scraps, shredded the meat i got from making stock. can you believe that meat/stock from the chicken has been used for about 12 meals? check out what i've made with it since saturday. then again, it was kind of a big chicken (and it cost £7)

3 x homemade chicken noodle soup
4 x some indian curry (using stuff from the spice box)
3 x salad with chicken, pecans, pumpkin seed, cranberries, apple, and balsamic vineagrette dressing
1 x chicken leg (thigh and drumstick) with soy/honey/green onion reduction
1 x chicken leg to be used tonight.

if you've not already read OD and you eat, well, anything, i urge you to pick it up straightaway.

2006-08-29T10:33:00.000-04:00

pepper lodged in your eye: or, what happens when you eat in space.

is it just me, or has the nytimes been especially quotable lately? first that article about colicchio's departure from GT:

Mr. Colicchio said the tepid critical reception for the Craftsteak restaurant he opened near the meatpacking district in May "was a wake-up call."

"I saw that I needed to pay more attention to what I'm doing there,'' Mr. Colicchio said yesterday on a cell phone from the eighth hole of Liberty National, a golf course near Liberty State Park in New Jersey. His fourth Craftsteak will open in Los Angeles in Century City next year.

and then this.

2006-08-25T10:16:00.000-04:00

u moru, and other corsican things.

there seems to be this weird tendency for everyone to avoid making any kind of connection between corsica and sardinia, but having seen both now, i feel like they couldn't be more similar. they even have virtually the same symbol.

like sardinia, there's the same sort of harsh mountainous terrain perfumed with all kinds of wild herbs and vegetation (maquis or macchia, depending on your country). corsica is a little less burnt looking and has probably a little more flora. and then

there's also that predilection for lamb and grilled meat and rustic cheeses. this is at the restaurant niobel in belgodere, near île-rousse in the north, where we were. la planche niobel: figatellu (pork liver sausage) is the dark thing in the back. there's lamb and pork or maybe beef on here and that slice in the front seems to be a large piece of bacon or something.

called pagliagju (yeah, i couldn't say it either) in dialect. to the right of the salad, there's lonzu, coppa behind that, salami further to the right, and cheese beignets on the end.

2006-08-24T05:26:00.000-04:00

i know what i ate last summer.

okay, summer's not over yet, but the travelling is, more or less. this summer, i went to rome, paris, bern, chiavari, nice, sardinia, sarzana, york, edinburgh and corsica. whew. i don't think i'm forgetting anything, but it wouldn't be so surprising if i did. i did manage to take some photos while away.

sarzana, a charming town right on the border of liguria and tuscany (the next town over is marble-capital carrara): i went for some beach time and a party, and of course ate some pesto while there:

testaroli, a stack of thin crêpes, each layer spread with pesto. you're supposed to roll up each layer and eat it separately. there's a crazy sarzana-dialect name for this forerunner of pasta that i've since forgotten.

in york, we ate like kings:

dave's mom made connie a birthday (carrot) cake. from a delia smith recipe. i am now officially a delia convert.

and when in york, one must stop at betty's tea room

for a fat rascal -- a monster anthropomorphosized scone.

and you've gotta have a proper sunday roast for dinner, with yorkshire pudding (in yorkshire!), natch. and while you're at it, you might as well drive out to tourist-choked yet quaintly lovely whitby (past beautiful rolling hills and picture postcard-perfect english countryside) for:

fish 'n' chips at magpie cafe. the wait in the takeout queue is really quite remarkable. you can forget about eating in the place itself if you're impatient. FnC definitely require a generous dose of salt and malt vinegar, i've realized.

2006-08-22T04:35:00.000-04:00

idle hands.
it's been a busy summer over here, even if little evidence of that has surfaced on this here blog. in the event that you thought i had abandoned yarncrafts forever or have just been twiddling my thumbs these past couple of months, i give you my latest completed knitting projects:

from interweave knits summer 2005, it's the dress on the cover (better picture here, halfway down the page). only mine's a better color (redheads + gray do not a happy combination make). made with phildar licorne on no. 4s. and yes, i got a haircut. reverting back to those skunk stripes i had in 2003. (if you're passing through edinburgh and need a haircut, i have just the person for you. petra might just be better than richard. but shhhhh, don't tell him i said so.)

like my buttons?

from interweave spring 2006, the prairie tunic. okay, this one looks better on the ectomorphic model. again, made with phildar licorne on no. 4s.

2006-08-08T08:57:00.000-04:00

new home.

we're (or i should say fred is) setting up new digs over at wordpress, and the formatting mess you see here is just a little hiccup we have to deal with before the transition is complete. sorry for the lax posting as well -- i have much to relate, but some technical difficulties and serious work dumpage is making it hard to do so. soon, soon. i promise.

2006-08-01T13:10:00.000-04:00

w/ my resurgence of nintendo obsession i've been thinking about starting a video game blog ... and it looks like it's finally happened. check out: video games rock where you can read all about how cool pokemon on game boy is. (in case you were wondering, geodude is the name of the coolest pokemon.) of more particular interest is the fact that i chose wordpress over blogger. although as far as i can tell you can't really edit the templates they provide, this is far outweighed by the benefit of having categories and sub-categories for your posts so readers can filter your blog by their interest. and the tags are used by blog search engines (some at least). also, wordpress has RSS feeds for posts as well as comments. i haven't looked too much into their features for group blogs, but they look good. so how about it, winnie and foo -- should we move our little house to greener pastures?

2006-07-27T17:55:00.000-04:00

okay it's time -- bring on the London eats suggestions! (also seems like the margin problems resolved themselves.)

parsleyed tomatoes with cucumber raita

2006-07-27T00:50:00.000-04:00

I'm doing a three month internship which is much too far away from my house -- the commute is long by car and longer by transit/bike. this means i come home and pretty much am too exhausted to cook. but i did manage to sneak this one in over the weekend. summer csa box is amazing. this week: tomato(e?)s, basil, squash, green beans, onions, watermelon, potatoes, walnuts. corn is taking the week off. (did i break the format by trying to blog from flickr? suddenly the left margin is missing)

2006-07-24T18:12:00.000-04:00

two miscellany: carl posted an interesting survey of health care in massachusetts the new york times ran an article on the other big topic everyone seems to be talking about (the first being local vs. organic), and enlightened us on what you can currently expect if you want to use vegetable oil to run your car.

2006-07-21T12:45:00.000-04:00

paradise, found. we spent last weekend in sardinia, alternating between time at the beach: and time at the table (these are all homemade, by the way): utterly addictive crackly and sheet-thin pane carasau, made with a leavened dough that is rolled really, really flat and then baked twice. the first baking turns the dough into a giant bubble that must be skillfully cut in half to yield each disc. These are then baked again to get that crisp (amazingly humdity-resistant, i'm finding) texture. great to sop up juices from lamb, roasted on a spit in the ol' outdoor oven (what, you don't do this at home?). the traditional sardinian lunch. particularly good when followed by a nap. some spigola and muggine (and also orata, which was still being cooked and not pictured) that i stuffed with lemon , onions and rosemary and stuck on the grill. i also did some calamari with salt and pepper and let it just turn opaque. the sea offers up a truly incredible bounty of sweet flesh, it must be said. damn fine meal, this was (and separate from the lamb, in case you're wondering if i had to be rolled on to the ferry back to the mainland). no meal in sardinia is complete with cheese. and besides the pecorino and a local cow-and-sheep combo, there was also this pastry, sa sebada, made with savory dough and stuffed with cheese (provolone-style ones) and then usually covered with honey. but this one with sugar sprinkled on top gave the same kind of salt-fat-sugar rush that you get from, say, an elvis PB&J, and are reminiscent of that food-of-the-gods, funnel cake. but with cheese. please smack me if i ever complain about living in italy again.

2006-07-19T05:02:00.000-04:00

cheer up, zizou -- you've got some good eatin' over there. from nice, a couple weekends ago (because summer just doesn't feel right without a trip to the côte d'azur, sun-ravaged germans notwithstanding): the bio tomates guy at the market. tripes à la niçoise at lou pistou, with delicious, delicious chickpea fries.

2006-07-10T12:55:00.000-04:00

FORZA AZZUUUUUUUURRRRIIIIIIIII!! highlights: racing around town in a car trying to find the perfect game-viewing venue (and switching at half-time due to crappy reception) watching the second half in a football field with 200 italians all masticating pork chops, drinking wine out of little plastic cups, bleating away on their pressurized horns and high-pitched whistles and zealously waving their ridiculously oversized flags about watching italians everywhere near total breakdown just from the tension of it all italians cheering for every juve player that gets put on the field (this is piemonte, after all) italians cheering when zidane is red-carded italians cheering upon each successful penalty kick past barthez italians going totally apenuts when grosso makes the kick: screaming, hugging, laughing, jumping up and down, running around, waving ridiculously oversized flags about racing around town (sometimes at a standstill) in a car, honking the horn, hanging out the window and screaming like a hooligan (yes, i did this -- but only for a few seconds) listening to everyone else in town race around town, honk their horns and hang out the windows and scream like hooligans until 2 a.m. a sign, hoisted in the air: ADESSO VOGLIAMO LA GIOCONDA (now we want the mona lisa)

2006-07-05T04:18:00.000-04:00

independence day, in numbers. july 4 6 americans 1 australian 29°C 16 ribs 4 burgers 4 kinds of baladin beer 0 televisions 12 minutes into overtime 20 second search for nearest television 100 people in piazza dei caduti 30 meters from screen projection italy 2 germany 0 58,103,033 italians jumping up and down, kissing and hugging each other, running around screaming, throwing themselves on the ground and writhing, getting into their cars and driving around in circles and generally making a big ol' ruckus 3 close-ups of german fans in the stands shown crying on italian television 2 hours of general ruckus-making, outside my window: 1 lovely pavlova, australian-made and completely consumed: 1 glass each, grappa and irish whiskey 6 hours of sleep.

2006-06-30T09:59:00.000-04:00

small but perfectly formed and other oddities from the market today: it is, perhaps, unfair to group these plums under "oddities", as they're not odd at all, just little, like me. and really lovely, no? what with their jewel-like translucence. what is odd actually, is that i don't find so many of the conventional plums that are common to all american supermarkets (and here's where i could launch into a diatribe on how those plums, while large and perfectly formed, have not the generously juicy, honeyed, almost sparklingly bright and balanced interior, the luscious, yielding flesh that these do, but instead scrooge you with a thoroughly unpleasant acidity and either a consistency to rival sand or to make your stomach turn because of its sloppy, undercellulosed insides -- but there's no need, right?). here, we get all kinds of different plums (and were those gages i saw at the stand on wednesday?), and just about everyone i know has a ramassin tree in their backyard. they look just like cherry tomatoes. and speaking of tomatoes: i'm sorry to inflict the yearly close-up photo of cuore di bue tomatoes on you, dear reader, but 'tis the season (as we say all too frequently on this blog. we being me, i suppose), and nothing says summer like these ugly fatties: (this would be the bum shot.) this particular tomato has very special qualities, with a classic tear drop shape (seems like the other usual morphology for these guys is an elongated, bulbous ellipsoid), but also with a mug you just gotta love: (it was almost too tempting to deck him out, mr. potato head-style, but hunger won out and i ate him instead.)

2006-06-27T12:15:00.000-04:00

some boston/cambridge-related links worth noting: heyletsgo.com: looking for something to do? check this site out. list of MA farmers' markets: andy has told me about the cambridgeport one which is just down the street. will def. be going soon and reporting back. bostonist.com: one of the better boston blogs i've come across. arts, food, shows, etc. bradleysalmanac: another local. some fantastic live mp3s (inc. pinback's latest boston show), constantly updated. certainly, sir: a MA-based electronic duo that mike turned me onto. their site has a nice interface (a very media lab feel) w/ a lot of audio (inc. a track w/ ben gibbard on vox). will be checking them out this thurs. at 10 p.m. at the enormous room.

2006-06-23T09:20:00.000-04:00

pesca ≠ pesca. or, fishing and peaches: two sides of the same coin. for the brief period in which i learned italian semi-formally in new york, i remember asking at some point what the deal is with accents. which way do they slant? why is it perché and not perchè? and why, if it is the former, do some italians write the latter sometimes? my teacher at the time either didn't know the answer or didn't want us to worry about something she (very probably) considered less important than being able to conjuage the conditional properly. even when i pressed further, asking whether it signified some difference in pronunciation (as in french, differentiating between a closed and open vowel), she pretty much demurred and said there was no real difference. as it turns out, it is a matter of pronunciation (acute for closed, grave for open, though, as always, there are exceptions). well, this is not really that closely related to the title of this post, except that the word pesca means two different things, depending on the way it is pronounced. pésca (accents employed here to indicate pronuncation, as they are never used in writing) means 'fishing', while pèsca means 'peach'. and christ, if i didn't have enough problems memorizing where the stress falls or knowing whether to close or open my vowels, check this and this out. that whole preamble is probably not that important anyway, given that a) i've not been doing any fishing, and b) those aren't peaches below. but it's not too far off from the real point of this post, if i could claim that one exists. and plus, i just like that duality. let me explain: hi, my name is winnie, and i have a sardine problem. i just can't seem to stop eating them. i need to keep at least three tins in the pantry at all times to avoid feeling agitated or unprepared (for what, i don't know). when i travel to foreign countries, i have to buy every kind of sardine available to see if there's one particular brand that does them best. this is the result of my trips to bern and paris. from my arbitrary and only sort of extensive sampling i proclaim that the french in general seem to have the upper hand. that doesn't stop me from being equal opportunity, however. my mother noted, when the parents came to visit, that i seem to have a remarkable affinity for canned goods these days. (why, i don't know.) right -- as mentioned before, these above are not, in fact, peaches, but apricots rather. following christine ferber's instructions for bergeron apricot preserves (reducing the sugar by about half), i canned these guys from the market. i got two medium-size jars out of a kilo of fruit and a day and a half of maceration, simmering, straining, etc. i improvised a little and added some basil to one jar (not pictured here, as it's already been given away as a birthday present) before screwing on the lid, which, as intended, shook up the italians a little (but should be pretty nice once it has time to infuse the syrup a little). i left the skin on, though she suggested divesting the fruit of them, because i just couldn't figure out how, even if pre-simmered or blanched, they could come off without marring the flesh. the point being -- of the post, that is, not skin-removing -- is that yes, i do like canned food. bonus, for my italian-literate readers, a story (taken from an email i wrote today): di solito fa fresca nella mia casa durante la giornata, ma di notte, relativamente alla temperature fuori, fa più caldo, quindi devo a meno aprire la finestra. ieri sera, è venuta in mente l'idea brillante di aprire non solo la finestra nella stanza, ma anche quella nella cucina, per favorire un po' di ventilazione trasversale. alle 4 della mattina, mi sono svegliata improvvisamente da qualcosa che ha saltato sul mio letto (!). ero spaventata. e quando mi sono alzata, ho visto che c'era un gatto strano sulla copera. l'ho cacciato fuori la finestra e sono tornata al letto (dopo aver chiuso la finestra). quando ho toccato la coperta, ho sentito qualcosa umida, ma densa. e perché sono molto intelligente, l'ho annusato -- era il vomito di gatto! il che ho confermato quando ho acceso la luce. EEEEEUUUUUUGH. avevo -IO- voglia di vomitare. ho tolto tutto dal letto, cambiato tutto e ho lavato le mani (nell'ordine contrario). non potevo addormentarmi subito perché faceva così schiffo che mi sentivo malata. mi sento malata ancora. e adesso odio tutti i gatti. quando ne vedo uno, il mio stomaco gira. non posso descrivere la dimensione totale della mia ripugnanza. SCHIIIIIIFO.

2006-06-18T17:37:00.000-04:00

voter exhaustion I didn't vote in the primaries this month. This is the first election I've skipped since I've moved to California. I've probably voted more in the past two years than I have in my entire life. Not because I didn't used to vote much, but because they make us vote all the fucking time. I moved here in the fall of 2003, and I had to vote three times in the first three months. Gubernatorial recall, regular election, mayoral runoff. And everytime you go, it's a total ordeal if you haven't prepped in advance. There's the candidates, but then there's a slew of city, regional, and state initiatives with all sort of letters and numbers. We have to vote on things like parking lots and seismic retrofit and library funding and pre-k classes and minimum wages and reversing previous initiatives and the number of people that sit on some municipal board and who gets to appoint them. There are initiatives that go together, so if you vote yes on 68 it only makes sense to vote no on 70, but the ballet doesn't say that, or 71 has to pass in order for the result of 74 to even be considered. Don't I elect people to decide these things for me? Am I supposed to trust my fellow citizens to make the "right" decision on something as specific as how many people should sit on some obscure board? I don't have time to really research these initiatives, should I believe that other voters do? Do elected leaders do anything besides put initiatives on the ballot? The governator has been personally responsible for one or two trips to the ballot box, can't he solve his own political problems without getting me involved? I'm tired of democracy.

2006-06-15T16:56:00.000-04:00

finally, something i cooked A while back I came across this recipe for "absorption pasta". I really liked the thought of not boiling a big pot of water. Turns out my flea market fry pan and the lid of a pot i got for free on freecycle sort of fit together and work well for this sort of thing.. Simmering the pasta in chicken broth makes it so yummy and delicious, although I have to admit that the smell of chicken broth makes me think Campbell's chicken noodle soup. I sliced up some summer squash and grated some carrots from my csa farm box and had a delicious bowl of this for dinner:

2006-06-15T02:32:00.000-04:00

Is there a summary of all the $25 and under reviews in the nytimes? I'm off to new york again in a couple weeks and will have a lot of daytime hours and meals to kill. Also, I need London suggestions for an August trip, but I'll bug you about those later.

2006-06-13T06:40:00.000-04:00

miam: or paris, part deux. on saturday, i insisted that we eat at yves camdeborde's le comptoir, right by the odéon in the 6th. i've been dying to go, having followed the endless praise the bloggers and other writers have been heaping upon camdeborde and his food. unfortunately, i wasn't around for one of the weekday dinners, when they fancy it up a bit. weekends and lunches are brasserie-style. that is, simple, straightforward, classic food that is just mind-blowingly, deliciously good. when i move to paris (someday), i'll be a regular here. my gazpacho andalou: sparkling, summery and bright with acidity. definitely helped me cool off in that heat wave over the weekend. there were all kinds of little treasures floating within and hidden in the depths of my bowl (including a staggering amount of garlic). MIHT's dodine de lapin (as made by someone's aunt or grandmother. i didn't do a good job of writing down the actual menu items.) a wonderful forcemeat with big meaty chunks of hare. the mustardy sauce and crisp lettuce offer great textural contrast while amplifying the subtle flavors of the dodine. MIHT's pig cheeks and ears with lentils. (i'll let him describe his dish further.) my cochon de lait, beautifully presented and so, so good. i wanted to eat it all over again, it was so good. the silky layer of skin and fat surrounding the yielding, sweet porcine morsels within -- there were some choice little offal bits stuffed in there as well. some of the best pig i've ever eaten. up there with the middle white at st. john. we had an assiette des fromages, a gateau opéra (MIHT) and crème brulée de café (moi). no more photos, though: i find the lingering taste of pork is best, don't you? this might make my top 5 restaurants of all time. (and i've not yet been for weekday dinner even!) there's an attention to detail and well-defined aesthetic at work (and play) here. everything is pitch-perfect. if you're in paris or anywhere near and haven't been to le comptoir, go go go!

2006-06-12T19:49:00.000-04:00

a rare splurge life changes when you go back to school. especially if you're a homebody to begin with, it's that much harder to actually go out, and when your boyfriend moves to the east coast and then on top of that you're basically a cheapskate, it's impossible to cajole yourself to spend money on anything but plane tickets. but now that class is officially over (and the unending years of research begin), I feel like I'm about to rejoin the world of the living and drinking and spending. To celebrate the end of our first year, a few of my classmates and I dressed up and went to frisson. see, I love a good restaurant. but I don't know a single good restaurant in SF where it's not the place you would fit in better in jeans than a cocktail dress. so I enlisted the help of tablehopper, who will offer a personalized recommendation in exchange for a recap of the evening. so I sent her the following email. you'll have to excuse the enthusiasm, i might still be reeling from the studying.

Frisson was absolutely fabulous!! It was exactly what we were looking for. The decor is nice without being too dated (yet) and there was a DJ spinning pretty good music. I was pleased to see they had a bottle of (inexpensive) prosecco on the menu, which we had in lieu of champagne. I had the en fuego cocktail, which was based on a pomegranate tequila -- yum! Not very strong though, which was good as I had to drive everyone home. My whiskey-loving friend was pretty pleased with her manhattan which also had pomegranate in it. It was good enough she said she would come back just for that. We started with a few appetizers -- the japanese sea bream sashimi (even some of the sushi-virgins liked it), pork croquettes (yummy mashed potatoes), artichokes, and scallops. I think the scallops came in a dollop of some sort of creamy aioli which was okay but not amazing. The entrees were universally loved. I had the short ribs, which just fell apart when I put my fork in. Personally, I think I had the best thing on the menu, but I bet the rest of my table would beg to differ. They were served with a puree that had vanilla in it -- the flavors were unexpected and stunning. I kept getting everyone else to try the vanilla.. Also at the table: duck breast, salmon, rack of lamb, ribeye. I think the portion size was great, although if I had an entire appetizer and entree, I might not have had room for dessert. So up until this point, everything came really quickly. Maybe we were just having too much fun so time passed quickly -- but then we ordered dessert and maybe 20 minutes went by with no sign of food. Eventually the waitress apologized about the delay and told us that our desserts would be on the house, and we would be sent a bottle of dessert wine! (This kind of thing makes me always wish that I had ordered multiple desserts! Is that terrible?) They brought us 6 glasses of dessert wine, of three each of two different types. Again, I'm pretty sure I ordered the most delicious thing on the menu -- the chocolate and cardamom pot de creme. It tasted roughly like what you'd expect gingerbread to taste like in heaven. And it came with these cookie sandwiches with the most delicious icing inside. I also snagged a bite of the chocolate souffle (the sorbets accompanying it were delicious), the blackberry bread pudding, and the warm cookies and milkshake. Oh, for a moment I thought I was hallucinating and re-experiencing my dessert, but then I remembered that I'm baking banana bread. It wasn't nearly as expensive as we feared -- of course, we didn't have to pay for dessert. It came out to about $60/person, although in retrospect I wished I had tipped on top of the included gratuity since we had such a fabulous time. I hope that doesn't make me a terrible person.

2006-06-12T08:07:00.000-04:00

tanti auguri a me what's better on one's birthday than waking up in paris? nothing, i say. well, unless one is waking up on one's birthday in paris to take an early flight back to italy, the better option might be stay another day. i've been on the planet for 26 years, give or take a few hours, and to celebrate, i paid a much-needed visit to the city of light over the weekend. and yes, even if parisiens live up to their reputations of unfriendliness and general contempt for non-parisiens, i still want to move there straightaway. particularly for the food. in all honesty, i don't have much of a sweet tooth, but there's something about this city that pulls me into patisseries and chocolate shops, even if it's just a half-hour before lunch (or a half-hour after). my intrepid host tom (MIHT hereafter) took me to the classic pastry shop in his neck of the 2nd, stohrer, for breakfast. i also managed to stumble into pain de sucre, a fairly recent addition to the patisserie stratosphere. no photos of the pistache-flavored calisson square or the marshmallows (chocolat, safran et piment d'espelette, gingembre et angelique) i picked up there, because they disappeared too quickly into my mouth and plus, i had to go into the musée carnavalet, a beautiful structure (complete with idyllic garden) housing a collection detailing the history of paris (through paintings, relics, signage, etc.). highly recommended. in any case, i did manage to record my return trip to pierre hermé -- if not the hordes of japanese, at least the macarons: the second photo, of course, is of hermé's specialty, the ispahan, a rose-, raspberry- and lychee-flavored confection and a really miraculous combination of flavors and textures. my favorite macaron is the passion fruit. on clothilde's advice, MIHT and i went to l'ami jean, a lovely basque bistro in the 7th: my tongue and ears en gelée, with piment d'espelette. i love aspics in summer. and tongue is one of my favorite offal cuts. come to think of it, there's a piedmontese saying that's fitting for cold tongue salad suspended in aspic: bon pì bon fa bon (good plus good equals good). MIHT's pannière de cochonailles. [MIHT's and my exchange as we peruse the menu: w: what do you suppose this is? MIHT: well, cochonaille must be some pig thing. w: right MIHT: i don't remember pannière. course arrives. MIHT and w: hm. MIHT: ahem. i remember what pannière is. it's 'basket'. w: right.] terminology confusion aside, i loved the spicy one (though really all were very, very good, and made by the camdeborde family -- see post on le comptoir tomorrow. l'ami jean's chef, stephane jégo, is one of yves camdeborde's protegés.). MIHT was a fan of the blood sausage. axoa, a veal and pepper stew. much written about, but i wasn't all that impressed. the veal was a little on the dry and stringy side. the robuchon-style pommes purées were, as always, kick-ass. (we're talking 4:1, potato : butter here. ass-kicking and name-taking is what this baby is about.) it's unfortunate that my photo of MIHT's pigeon (roasted, with lobe of foie) didn't turn out so hot because it was one of the bestest birds i've ever tasted. and of course, foie gras never hurts. my soupe de rhubarbe et fraises. a perfect, perfect dessert. space is tight at l'ami jean, so you're well within earshot of your neighbors. we made friend with ours: a funny priest who lives just a hundred yards from this place (lucky dog). we had an amusing exchange with him. not sure if it was all priest-appropriate, but then again, i'm no authority on any religious practices, much less catholic ones. he's definitely one of the most friendly parisiens i've come across -- possibly a little too friendly in that elderly european male way. but doesn't he look like a fun guy? even if the food here weren't head-spinningly good, the prête would probably keep me coming back. more on paris tomorrow. in case you were wondering why i've been so silent lately, there's been too much work and not enough good eating in these parts. but i can't complain too much: i did manage to make it out to bern with the Big Friendly Giants to see the cousin, cousin-in-law and the bears -- who seem to be more docile than ever: maybe even ridiculously so. this one has taken to rolling over on her back to more comfortably catch the fruit and veg that visitors toss down to her. she doesn't bother straining herself if they overshoot. if it's beyond tongue or claw, she just waits patiently for the next toss. switzerland itself is still pretty alright looking:

2006-06-01T10:59:00.000-04:00

somehow even though winnie's been out of boston for the past four years i still haven't managed to catch up to all of her eating escapades while she was here. her article for the tech of favorites provides a handy checklist: you too can take advantage of her extensive legwork and skip the bad stuff. her list led me directly to wang’s fast food in somerville (went a few weeks ago. will post pics soon.) and: punjabi dhaba (hampshire street, inman square): more out of the way than the hundreds of other indian places in cambridge, but well worth it. homey fare but some of the most savory indian food i've had in boston. i had the "vegetable special" which included biryani and a curry, and andy had the aloo gobhi. both were just about the perfect level of spiciness, and the chutney was nice and chunky and flavorful. definitely has jumped near the top of my list of indian eateries. in other food news: hit via matta (back bay) for the third time. andy scored with his "Poached Shrimp with white beans, arugula, and bottarga" and rabbit tortelli. i had the roasted cauliflower which was one of the best things i've had this year: breaded and cheesed to perfection. my buffalo mozzarella with grilled peppers was forgettable. i was hoping the crispy eggplant would be as perfect as when i first had it, but it was disappointing for the 2nd time; this time around it was overdone. service was decidedly subpar, with the waiter neglecting to even bother lighting the candle on the table. border cafe (harvard sq): i'd been before, but somehow i'd gotten it stuck in my mind that this place was about on par with a friday's or the cactus club on boylston (maybe b/c it's always so crowded), but when andy and i dropped in for a laid-back meal this past monday afternoon we were both pleasantly surprised. hot chips, fresh veggies, and a nicely done black bean and corn empanada with a sauce that, while not particularly deep, didn't at all wear out its welcome. not to mention attentive service. one of the few times a place was distinctly better than i remembered. will def. put it back on my list of restaurants worth going to. also, the wrap was apparently bought out by a company called boloco. the menu is pretty much the same, but when bess and i hit the one on mass ave by berklee this past weekend it was tangibly improved. fresher, less greasy ingredients meant a fresher wrap that didn't leave you with the sickly/gross feeling that the old place often did. and worth mentioning (or if i've mentioned it before, worth mentioning again) is shalimar food and spaces (central sq), not to be confused with the restaurant which is only a few stores away on the other side of the street. what's notable about this store is the lunch counter they have in the back. for something like $7.50 you can get a veg. special which includes rice, two vegetable dishes (e.g. curry, saag, mutter paneer, eggplant), a samosa, and a mango lassi. they also have meat specials for you carnivores. not the most memorable indian food in boston, but when you're jonesin' for some indian and you don't want to wait to stuff your face, this is perfect. they also have a whole case of sweets: several kinds of gulab jamun and a host of pink, white, yellow, diamond-shaped, and similarly unidentifiable confections. every once in a while andy and i get a random selection of these, and although a lot are sickeningly sweet, some are worth getting again.

2006-05-31T23:00:00.000-04:00

complete and utter miscellany Fried chicken, fast food.. got to hold down the low end of the blog. I have a fried chicken obsession that is developing. Fried chicken used to mean Roy Rogers (back in the day when there were 2 or 3 Roy Rogers within as many blocks in Ardmore, PA) and then KFC. KFC is just too greasy and then they are always also Taco Bells and that smell! That smell of grease is just sometimes too powerful, I can't actually go inside. Powell's chicken in the Fillmore was a new find thanks to a fellow classmate. But I think their chicken (and fried okra) is just too salty for me. So then I tried Hard Knox Cafe down the street from me -- for $9 you get enough food for two meals. I wasn't super impressed by their collard greens or rice and beans, but their mac and cheese and their corn muffins are delicious. It's a funny little place, Southern joint run by asians. Recently I went to Popeye's for the first time. Y U M. It wasn't nearly as greasy as KFC tends to be, and it had that particular spicy kick that you can only get from chain fast food. However, when you reheat their chicken in the microwave, it loses its crunch and becomes very KFC-like. Next time I'll try the oven reheat. On other fast food -- are there other chains that emulate the In-And-Out model? Fresh ingredients, cheap barebones menu, and good pay? It's so successful out here I don't know why everyone isn't doing it -- and it's cheaper than McD's?? And naturally the one closest to me is in the same parking lot as Krispy Kreme. Talk about a heart killer. YUM. I've discovered the flea market -- apparently the one remaining flea market within city limits. This weekend for $4 I acquired an old Le Creuset frying pan and some measuring spoons. Pancakes come out spectacularly on cast iron. Has anyone used emusic? I signed up for the 50-free-download trial and it's fabulous. Wait what's this? I just found a link for 100 free downloads. Maybe I'll have to cancel and resign up.

2006-05-26T08:58:00.000-04:00

ribs à la mom, round one. my mom makes the best ribs ever. no exaggeration. you can ask anyone who's ever had them, including my sister's and my college friends and a handful of taiwanese families in suburban st. louis who frequented our dinner parties when i was growing up. though my sister has nearly perfected the recipe and technique over many trials in the last few years, i had never braved the ribs. mostly because i can never eat more than two of them, and making them always seemed just too daunting. turns out it's just a matter of mincing a ridiculous amount of garlic, and smearing it all over your ribs with salt, pepper, honey and soy sauce. this is definitely further evidence that simple is best. in general, i've tended to refrain from attempting any dishes that fall squarely in my mother's domain, but talking them up to others not only has them asking for a sample, but also has me craving them myself. but i'm getting ahead of myself. in honor of a good friend's return from the states, i decided to do a rib-themed dinner. before you start imagining baby back brownies, let me explain that in italy, they call swiss chard coste, which means 'ribs' (obviously for the substantial stalk this vegetable has). they also call a more spinach-like leafy green costine, which also means 'ribs'. i cooked up the former with some fish sauce and lime and garlic. the latter i didn't bother with this time around. but first, the scallion pancakes: which would have been substantially better had i the right flour and cooked them long enough. the edges of these were just about perfect, while the middles were a bit chewy and undercooked. with guanciale (and rendered guanciale fat) of course. animal (and people) ribs are also called costine, and here are my costine di suino. i guess i should point out that this dinner was rib-themed only in the sense that i realized while cooking that i was working with more than one ingredient that goes by that name. in any case, i definitely got the proportions for the wet rub right (and the recipe is very, very approximate, if it can even be called a recipe), but for round two, i'm definitely going to triple the quantity. while tasty, these just weren't saucy enough and didn't fall off the bone. it might also be the pork here as well -- the ribs weren't endowed with fat in the same places that i'm accustomed to -- but we'll see if i can't get these up to mom level before the summer's out. i still can only eat just two costine, but i know a couple people who can help polish off two kilos' worth.

2006-05-22T11:15:00.000-04:00

when in rome fill your intestines with intestines. er, more on that later. i spent this weekend in rome, mostly in the lovely and nearly tourist-free testaccio neighborhood. we also made it out to the beach on sunday (did you know rome had beaches?), food-shopped, and ate whenever we could. i'd had serious doubts about rome's place among the world's great capital cities (as a place to live and work and party), but no longer. testaccio has converted me. just 20 minutes from the center on foot and adjacent to trastevere, this area still has a real homey, neighborhood-y feel. it reminds me not a little of brooklyn. the locals don't insist on responding to you in english if you speak to them in italian (they were even encouraging -- or amused -- at the famed local alimentari, volpetti, when i ordered my guanciale to take back north). this place is happening at night too. we had dinner (sushi!) at 11pm (!) on friday night, and the women staggered and swayed about in their sky-high heels and band-aid-sized minis, while a bon jovi lookalike (complete with frosted, blown-dry coif) hung about in his 'bon jovi' t-shirt (seriously). but the food, of course, is the best part. besides volpetti and countless other food and wine shops, there's the market, which reminded me of the big market in kaohsiung, taiwan. malcolm took us to his tomato stand, which not only has numerous varieties i've not ever seen: but will also pick through the offerings to give you tomatoes suitable for whatever you desire. these, for instance, are diminutive guys that have the same wrinkled, misshapen appearance as cuore di bue and are from the southeastern sicilian town of pachino, where my favorite cherry tomatoes are also grown, but are used only to make sauce. i asked for tomatoes that are good for snacking on, and the lady walked around the stand, sticking her hand in this crate and in that crate, pulling out handfuls that she threw all together in my bag. maybe it's all BS (though the tomatoes are wonderful), but i enjoy this kind of specificity and this show of discernment, this confidence in one's professional expertise. on saturday, we had dinner at agustarello, which must be the archetypal roman trattoria, with a take-no-shit chef/owner that tromps (because he is very large and clearly not averse to sampling his own creations) around with your plates in hand and has no problem turning people away (because the place is very small and always, always full). the kitchen here is as big as the dining room (which might seat 40, max), the service, while kind (once you manage to get a table), can get a little spotty once the place fills up, and the menu probably only changes when puntarelle are out of season. even if rome, as an urban center, can boast sushi joints and restaurants that specialize in regional cuisines beyond lazio borders, romans are still darn proud of their own special dishes. and i can understand why. here, you can order half-portions of the primi and secondi, which is especially good if you want to order everything on the menu (as, indeed, i did). we tried the rigatoni all'amatriciana, cacio e pepe and alla carbonara. the first two were solid (perhaps slightly on the watery side), the last one was a knockout. i maintain, as ever, that guanciale makes everything taste good. could be the ample fat-to-muscle ratio. contorni: puntarelle con salsa di acciughe, or wild roman chicory in a delectable anchovy- and garlic-heavy sauce, on the right. a rather lackluster carciofo alla romana on the left (we were hoping for the deep fried alla giudea ones). great oven roasted potatoes in the background. squishy and saturated with olive oil, as is the italian way. ah, my pajata di agnello, or lamb intestines (usually from lamb that's not yet been weaned), cooked with a little tomato. a very, very traditional roman dish. it didn't blow my mind as far as offal dishes go, but it was tasty and i would definitely eat it again (though judging from what i saw heading for other tables, i might also pass it up for the abbaccio di agnello, or roast lamb, perhaps a chop cut of some kind). i did, however, get a half portion of the coratella, which is apparently all the insides of a chicken mixed together and stewed to produce a simultaneously sludgy (that would be the liver) and chewy (that would be the heart and kidneys) grey-tinged dish. which is actually delicious but not at all photogenic. so that's why you don't see it here. weekend refrain: i've gotta move to rome.

2006-05-21T23:57:00.000-04:00

first off, this has got to be one of the weirdest food-related sites i've ever seen. this project will give you an idea of what it's all about. tasty ... somewhat recently seen ... The Lady Eve (1941) preston sturges continues to impress. a popular auteur in his day (often writing the films he directed), he isn't as generally known nowadays as he should be. in this film, like his others, characters do things just a bit differently then you would expect them to in a film, but their actions are emotionally believable and oftentimes thought-provoking. his "romantic comedies" are what every romantic comedy should aspire to be: literate, witty, thoughtful, and memorable. definitely recommended. Sons of the Desert (1933) laurel and hardy flick. andy found a good L&H collection. this was the longest of the bunch (a bit more than an hour) but still packed with gags (including a scene where laurel sneaks bites out of fruit from a bowl at ollie's house only to find out that they were made of wax). hadn't seen any L&H before, and they're classics that are still funny today and def. worth watching. particular favorite moment was in "another fine mess" in which laurel and hardy somehow find themselves pretending to own a mansion, with ollie pretending to be the millionaire owner and laurel forced to pretend to be both the butler and the maid. Kurenai no buta (1992) (Porco Rosso) working my way through the miyazaki canon. as usual, miyazaki's obsession with flying and his anti-war preachiness feels overly familiar, but his animation is still thrilling and his characters are still completely endearing. this one, with a wonderfully improbable story about a pig pilot and his adventures, has jumped near the top of my list of favorites and makes me want to go back and re-watch the others. and although i know winnie isn't a fan of american dubbed voices, michael keaton does a great job as porco. i've ordered the 6-disc chinese set that winnie has (legit release i think, w/ 2 movies on each disc), which, having come out several years ago, lacks the american voices and extras of the more recent disney 2-disc releases, but will still be great. oh, and david ogden stiers continues to amaze me. he's done cogsworth and the narrator in beauty and the beast and the governor in pocahontas, but here he plays a wacky grandfather. The King of Comedy (1983) de niro impresses as a geeky, irritating wannabe stand-up comedian who, along with sandra bernhard, worships late night impresario jerry lewis to the point of stalking him. not a comedy, and not as visceral as it could've/should've been, but has its moments mostly thanks to the acting and the direction by scorsese. Young Frankenstein (1974) mel brooks movie that should've been way funnier than it was. cloris leachman was amazing though as the housekeeper, and the other two female leads were also pretty funny. skip this. Shimotsuma monogatari (2004) (Kamikaze Girls) if you like amelie i think you'll like this. this has the same sort of quirky humor, although the morals are a bit looser. the protagonist is an aloof daydreaming girl who's obsessed with wearing rococo clothes, while the girl that intrudes on her life is in a biker gang. has the larger-than-life characters and stylized action and reactions that i've been loving from reading manga lately. def. recommended. To the Manor Born (1979) another classic british TV comedy. this one has a widowed aristocrat forced to leave her beloved manor, only to see it bought by a supermarket mogul. a riot of class humor ensues. brisk pace, some good one-liners, and engaging leads make this worth watching (although andy has to explain things to me every other minute, like how to spell "fforbes-hamilton" which is supposed to be with two small "f"'s. yes, those brits are strange).

2006-05-19T09:22:00.000-04:00

the bestest peas ever. i've been kvetching about the bloated, sour and deceptively rosy strawberries at the markets for the past month, but spring is finally delivering, because in this last week, i've bought probably five pounds' worth of berries that have not disappointed in the least. these strawberries vie with the strawberries of memory, with the fragrant, floral fruit of my youth. i've not any photos of them because i've been too busy scarfing them down. instead, i offer you this morning's discovery: the first peas of the season (that i've seen, anyway). i don't know what it is, but the favas and peas are exceptionally good this year. i ate half a kilo this morning with my strawberries for breakfast (this is what spring produce does to me), laughing at myself as i shelled them when i recalled how placated i've been by frozen peas for the past year -- frozen peas are definitely one of my favorite (and one of the few worthy) processed foods, and they make it possible to remember that green things still exist, even during the darkest depths of winter. these fresh peas, however, make me scoff at the thought that frozen peas could ever compare. i'd never been convinced by the fresh ones -- until now. these are pea-ness incarnate. not a starchy one among them -- all sweetness and sunshine, they are a testament to the wonders of photosynthesis. they make me wish spring lasted forever. (especially since my wee corner of italy is having some truly glorious, frisbee-worthy weather of late). oh, but right, the peas: they say that peas (and many vegetables in general) are best straight off the vine or plant, and that the longer the wait between garden and plate, the greater the loss in flavor and nutrients. and you best believe it. these peas are so good raw, and they were just harvested this morning. which nearly convinces me that what i really need to do is move to some verdant patch in the pacific northwest and plant me some peas. i can already picture myself running out to the garden when the time is right and just sitting in the dirt in my overalls and shelling straight into my mouth amongst the pea vines themselves.

2006-05-15T04:29:00.000-04:00

travelling light: madhur jaffrey (part i in a series) this is my version of the desert-island scenario, a bit less dire and a lot more plausible (however much i get sucked into these ‘lost’ dvds), particularly since i speak from experience. what cookbooks are essential enough to lug across an ocean? which are worth their weight (and i mean this quite literally)? which will i turn to, again and again, for instruction and inspiration? when i moved to italy over two years ago (and re-moved a year ago), i had to restrain my hoarding/collecting/pack rat impulses and leave most of my food library in the states. i was already in the habit of considering my acquisitions very carefully, as it never seemed that i’d be sticking around one place for too long – and also because i hatehatehate packing and moving like you don’t even know. ultimately, i realized that, while i can’t just go completely food lit- and cookbook-free for a few years, i would have to make some tough decisions. Specifically, while i love my grapes of ralph, it had to go in the inessential pile. same goes for the elizabeth david (who just can’t compare with MFK.) and then, is it really necessary to have more than one volume of steingarten or thorne on my streamlined shelf? i seem to be surviving okay without IMHBSIA (not nearly as good as TMWAE) and serious pig (pot on the fire has always just suited my purposes better). and while i wish i had the french laundry cookbook (or bouchon for that matter) out here, the shit is heavy. (my old reliable – and constant companion for maybe six or seven years now (even if i seem to be confident enough in the kitchen these days to not refer to it as much) – is comparable in size, but weighs probably a third less. big-ups to bittman, who must have known this book would be going the distance.) this series is devoted to the books that made it to my shelf-away-from-home. i don’t cook out of these all that often. in fact, i consider it sufficient that i use these books just once while i live over here (though usually i find that they get pulled off and flipped through much more frequently than that). it just makes me feel better to have them within arm’s reach. an invitation to indian cooking is the only madhur jaffrey book i own, and i could probably count the number of times i’ve cooked from it on one hand. which is a darn shame, since it turns out some really memorable dishes. generally, my version of indian food involves hauling out all the spices i’ve stuffed willy-nilly into various drawers, crushing arbirtrary amounts in the braun grinder (officially – and sadly – retired as of two days ago, when i perservered in grinding almonds using the incompatible european wall current without a transformer, despite the acrid smell of combusting parts), and throwing it all together with ginger, garlic and yogurt. which means, usually, that while it tastes pretty good to my non-indian palate, it all usually tastes the same. and through this (non)method, i’d never really fully registered the nuances and differences amongst all these spices, and i’d dismissed some (cumin, for instance) just because i didn’t know how to get them to play nice with the other ingredients in my pan. thankfully, jaffrey’s here to show me that there is indeed rhyme and reason. this is my new favorite way to eat green beans: aromatic and tantalizingly sour (i was generous with the lime juice I substituted for the lemon), these beans make me wish i had made a little more. (i’d also like to take a moment here to pat myself on the back for improvising a new grinder out of one end of my dowel rolling pin and my favorite mug. who needs a mortar and pestle?) green beans with ginger (adapted from madhur jaffrey’s an invitation to indian cooking) serves 4 1 ½ lbs green beans ginger, a 2 inch-by-1 inch piece, peeled and chopped 6 tbsp vegetable oil ¼ tsp ground turmeric 1 clove garlic, thinly sliced 3 tbsp chopped cilantro 1 tsp ground cumin 2 tsp ground coriander 1 tsp garam masala 1 tbsp lime juice salt wash and trim green beans. slice on the bias into 2-inch segments and set aside. put ginger into a blender with a few tablespoons of water and puree into a paste. heat oil in a skillet on medium heat, add ginger paste and turmeric. fry, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes. add garlic and cilantro and cook for another minute. then add green beans and continue cooking and stirring for another minute. add cumin, coriander and garam masala, lime juice, salt to taste and 3 tablespoons of water. cover and cook on low for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. and the reason why my grinder’s now out of commission: orange polenta cake (from a recent issue of olive). the last time i made this, it rose much higher, but i think i had the oven on too low (only a third of the way between the big flame and little flame settings). however, i’m still enough of a novice baker to be thoroughly impressed that i manage to get anything out of my oven intact and respectable-looking. which of your cookbooks/food books are worthy of being lugged across oceans and continents and back again?

2006-05-10T09:41:00.000-04:00

C_n(H₂O)_n, my friend! in a moment (okay, a month or two) of weakness, i once succumbed to that silliness that goes by the name of atkins. and sure, i dropped eight pounds and discovered a new mental clarity (that i now attribute to raw-edged hunger), but i was a miserable bitch. (and for those of you that have seen me thus with a fistful of bread or a bowlful of rice, we can blame other things.) while italian women do get fat (they bring new meaning to 'sturdily built' and 'brick house' by the time most of them reach their fifties), that doesn't seem to stop them from eating their bread with pasta, with pizza (simultaneously!) or with more bread. even if i've not come around to this practice, i can appreciate the sated happiness that comes from tagliatelle col ragù bolognese. this is the authentic, the original 'spag bol', courtesy of caminetto d'oro in bologna. emilia-romagna's fresh pastas beat the pants off of just about every other italian region's, as far as the egg-based pastas are concerned. and even the dried stuff is commendable: rigatoni with young zucchini and chile pepper. emilia-romagna, home of prosciutto di parma, culatello di zibello and parmigiano-reggiano, does not shy away from fat. let us be grateful for that: lasagnette delle erbe con ricotta.

2006-05-08T04:12:00.000-04:00

bodies of water: beyond piedmont. the family came to visit this last week. my sister and i made it down to cinque terre (stopping first for some early morning focaccia di recco in camogli, of course). the view, as always, was spectacular: these are both of riomaggiore, i believe. the high season's only just begun, so the hordes of germans, americans, british and australians were tolerable. and the food at cantina de mananan, in corniglia -- one of my favorite osterie of all time -- never disappoints: anchovies, three ways. spaghetti ai frutti di mare. we met up with the parents to go up to lugano (the very italian part of switzerland) for the weekend. i'm pretty ehhh on the lakes, for whatever reason. and lake lugano just hasn't the paradisiacal gloriousness of, say, annecy. which is not to say that it's not rather pretty: view from the hotel. view from the village of morcote, at the southern tip of the lake. maybe my problem is with lugano città itself, which is just an enclave of the tastelessly wealthy. i did, however, manage to console myself at the difficult-to-find osteria grotto dell'ortiga, in the nearby inland village of manno. just a sampling: zuppa di fagioli, or bean soup carciofi ripieni, with polenta ticinese, which has a satisfying stone-ground coarseness to it, with those fun little hard bits (as in cornbread) and a lovely rustic essence-of-corn flavor. my mom's delicious, delicious trippa, or stewed tripe with greens and beans. my stinco di maiale arrostito, or roasted pork shanks with patate al forno and broccoli. as good as it looks. when we got back to bra, my mom cooked up her mi fen or taiwanese rice noodles, stir-fried with onions, black mushrooms, carrots, scallions and that very essential asian ingredient, guanciale. (the vessel here is an eight-quart pot, by the way.)

2006-04-27T16:17:00.000-04:00

i know everyone's heard this quote by now:

"I'm the decider, and I decide what's best," Mr. Bush said in the Rose Garden. "And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense."but it really, really bothers me that our "president" always sounds like he's a 6 year old on a playground.

2006-04-26T09:40:00.000-04:00

splendor in the grass. no, not the kazan movie, but a lazy saturday in the park up in the hilltop town of verduno. it was an intense four-day weekend over here (and one of 4 long weekends in the past two months). the most repeated refrain this spring: che vita difficile. lots more frisbee, way too much food. but first, the latest in my adventures in emulsification: my first attempt at making mayonnaise. i left it on the thin side, but i'm pretty satisfied with the results. how the hell did anyone manage to come up with this sauce, anyway? another example of the alchemy that is cooking: a unification of such simple, strong flavors, once it comes together it doesn't taste like anything other than itself. (grazie per l'aiuto, dany.) this mayonnaise went into the potato salad i made for our picnic (top center, left of the salad). behind the wine bottle, there's my tzatziki; carla's frittata is in the center, and i've improved my pita bread to achieve what you see here on the bottom left. i think that's sardinian wine we're drinking. daniele and carla's feet in the periphery. carla's frittata is full of greens from the market. my potato salad is a mayo-2-mustard-celery-parsley affair. with piment d'espelette, naturally. maybe it's the weather, maybe it's the lengthening days, but we both seem to be in a cooking mood these days. carla, also inspired by julie & julia, barded and tied up some quails. sorry about the horrible lighting -- my camera went dead after i accidentally took this with the flash on. still pretty good-lookin', though, huh? and finger-lickin' good too. particularly with heaps of buttery mashed potatoes and roasted asparagus (i'm eating asparagus every other meal these days, definitely a good -- no, great -- thing, notwithstanding the funny smelling pee).

2006-04-20T08:55:00.000-04:00

the book that begat a blog that begat another book that begat this blog posting. or: potato and leek soup. there is something a bit meta about my potage à parmentier. mostly because the inspiration behind making it comes from my blitz-through reading of julie & julia, a book based on this blog which I’d not planned to read (the book, not the blog – the blog I’d followed on and off at various stages of its development a few years back). the book, like the blog, is entertaining – clever, at times laugh-out-loud funny, a little self-deprecating, a lot crass, and probably too smart for its own good. and realizing that it is, indeed, pretty good sort of makes me wonder why we denigrate/blow off those that find success. because, while julie picked up a pretty significant blog readership and not a little press, there was at least a handful of sour grapes circulating in food blogging circles about her book deal, etc. it’s not unlike the hating-on-amanda-hesser (where’s she gone, anyway?) thing, and let me be totally honest and say that i was a little put out by not just julie’s success but the enormity of her success. i think i’ll attribute it to her accessibility, her everywoman-ness, and that she tackled something that i really could have (should have) done myself (dammit.). (this is a whole can of worms deserving a post of its own – it’s threatening a takeover in this one already.) i've gotten over the jealousy though. she deserves every last bit of recognition. anyway. i highly recommend the book. worth reading even if you’ve read every post on her blog (maybe especially so). mostly because she’s a capable writer, with a confessional, nastily funny kind of frankness that makes one really wish she were one’s friend. but also because she has that ability as a food writer to insinuate future meals into your head. this is particularly remarkable given her often grisly, tortured descriptions of the cooking process and sort of limited remarks on the outcomes. so yes, the point is, i made potage à parmentier because i read a passage in a book, which came from a blog based on a woman’s travails cooking through a book. and now i’m blogging about it. the whole thing makes one rather dizzy, doesn’t it? luckily, potage à parmentier (potato leek soup) is a good cure for such dizziness. the description of the soup in the book is pretty cursory, but i’ve got enough soupmaking under my belt to riff on it, sautéeing leeks in butter and tossing in cubed potatoes to sweat for a while, adding the chicken stock that’d been hanging out in my fridge for a week, simmering it all while i tried to assemble my next music mix, and then giving it all a little buzz with the immersion blender once the potatoes were cooked through. yes, my parsley chiffonade is pretty half-assed, but it's enough that i remembered it. the piment d'espelette is, as always, key. this, like so many soups, is very much a case where the total is greater than the sum of its parts. without at least some kind of mashing or blending, the disparate elements really just sit apart, in the bowl and on the tongue; something that tastes like potatoes and soggy leeks in chicken stock. but miscegenation not only gives this soup an astonishingly silky, velvety mouthfeel, but also makes it taste wholly like something else. like, say, liquid potato chips, if you, like me, are a little zealous with the salt. or like an almost-clam chowder, if you, like me, manage to correct the saltiness with an extra potato and some liquid after the first couple of bowls. and then, because reading all these descriptions about ridiculous quantities of butter and animal fat just makes me really freakin’ hungry, i made my own rice pudding for the first time ever. i had a phase towards the end of college where i kept a constant supply of kozy shack rice pudding in the fridge, and i had a ritual of eating half a (pint, i think?) container at a time, giving it a good ol’ shake-shake with the cinnamon. i managed to get joyce hooked on this for a while too, but it’s now been nearly 4 years since i’ve had any rice pudding. writing that post about thai food house the other day put the stuff back in my head, so i pulled out the mark bittman and made his incredibly simple version with the last of my thai long grain (boo), some coconut milk (whoot!) (one of his many variations on the plain ol’ milk version) and 1/3 the sugar (because what is it with american cookbook writers and their ridiculous quantities of sweetener?). i briefly considered adding vanilla or almond extract but decided (wisely, i maintain) to leave well enough alone and stick with the cinnamon. it was just as good as the kozy shack – better even, because it was as good as my memory of it.

2006-04-19T09:14:00.000-04:00

easter is all about eating. (part ii) the rest of pasqua was spent sguazzare-ing nel torbido (which is one of my current favorite slang phrases, literally meaning 'to flail or splash about in the murky water' but really means to party a little too hard). that is to say, it was a whirlwind of entirely way too much meat with just a little frisbee-throwing in between to keep the next round of protein-loading sort of manageable. we spent mini-easter (pasquetta) out in the monferrato hills, in diminutive, tranquil casorzo, where we sat down with some 150 of the locals and their friends and family while the town matrons scurried about, getting more underfoot in their efforts to help and set everything up than they realized, and the resident males set about doing what men the world over do best -- grilling meat: usually, easter here is all about eating lamb (though i've yet to do that in the past 3). instead, i've gotten respite from veal (which is not a little thing in cattle-obsessed piedmont) only to be stuffed with pork (chops, sausages, belly -- any way you slice it. and boy, do they). they're also big into the kebabs here, though, as you may already know, they're called spiedini. in addition to the skewer of sausages, wurstel (aka hot dogs), chicken thigh and peppers below, we've got another separate sausage in the top left atop a hefty slice of 'ham' (said the friend on the right, though really, i think what he meant was 'fatty fatfat cured pork belly'). and then on the upper right, another sort of half-hearted stab at vegetables: radicchio and eggplant, grilled in whatever meat drippings were left on the grilltop.

2006-04-18T11:36:00.000-04:00

easter interlude from badthings, we get the scary yet amazing easter turducken. which looks about as appetizing as actual turducken.

2006-04-18T05:47:00.000-04:00

easter is all about eating. (part i) for italians, pasqua is among the most sacred of holidays -- and i'm not speaking specifically in the religious sense, though there was definitely a scary plasticine twice-lifesize madonna float in the middle of my town's square for a couple days, and i heard the (very) odd clomping of hooves outside my window on sunday morning, both of which must have been part of the usual easter procession through town. most italian families spend pasqua eating copious quantities of meat (it's the culinary equivalent of memorial day or fourth of july) and then go away for some or all of the long weekend (we get pasquetta, the monday after, or as i like to translate, 'mini-easter', off as well). this holiday, like christmas, is an important time to spend with i tuoi and i parenti (your parents and relatives). and my italian friends, when not downing aforementioned copious quantities of meat, were in transit to go see the relatives and wish them a buona pasqua. my buona pasqua actually began friday night in asti (more on that below), but first, a recap of our saturday trip to the ligurian coast. the best view (ever?): while it was too overcast and chilly to really get in some decent beach time, the trip was definitely worth my while because i finally, finally got to go try focaccia di recco. which is indeed, as everyone has told me, sublime. i'd been told to go to recco itself (a small, otherwise forgettable town outside of genova) for this specialty, but this was refuted by some other experts, who directed me to the beautiful shores of camogli in the levante (or the right-hand side of liguria, if you're looking at a map). unlike regular ol' focaccia, this stuff consists of a layer of recco cheese (made from sheep's milk) baked between two thin, thin layers of dough. the dough itself doesn't seem all that similar to spongy, oily focaccia dough, but more like the dough the ligurians use for their torte salate. this definitely makes my top 20 italian food items of all time. and this is perhaps in part because it's eaten on a rock-strewn jetty extending into the mediterranean with seagulls wheeling overhead and a good friend sitting beside you. the focacceria we went to (in the center of camogli, just opposite the main chiesa, i believe, right by the beach) does the regular stuff too (as well as fried stuffed sardines and anchovies and other fun, tasty treats), though in their capable hands, you can also get focaccia with lovely anchovies and tomatoes. as delicious as it looks. some lesser views of camogli (only because they're focaccia-less): on friday night, we had pizza at daniele's house. pizza that daniele made with his own two hands. let me remark again on this one exceptional attribute of italian guys -- they might not lift a finger where other things are concerned, but most of them know their way around a kitchen and a big mound of dough. pizza with carciofi and pecorino.

2006-04-14T09:28:00.000-04:00

this is why they pay him the big bucks. sietsema writes better than i ever could about thai food house.

2006-04-11T13:23:00.000-04:00

talk about your outsourcing. wow. i hope this doesn't go the way of tech support. customer service has improved there by leaps and bounds from my recent (though admittedly patchy, since i've been out of the country) experience, but there would be something immensely weird and sort of scary about my order for 'fries with that' being routed to pakistan. but why the hell would i ever be ordering from mcdonald's anyway?

2006-04-10T22:17:00.000-04:00

as some of you may know, andy and i finally got around to going to radius for a certain special day on a fairly quiet friday evening (which sound like is typical for them). i hope winnie appreciates these stealthy pics i took (whilst trying not to feel like a tourist). i suppose i should start by saying that overall we were both underwhelmed. very solid execution, but nothing wowed us. here's the pornographic play-by-play: amuse bouche #1: tiny roasted cauliflower + something green (bad memory, sorry -- maybe mint?) + two tiny bits of kumquat. simply lovely. andy's version had shrimp instead of the kumquat. amuse bouche #2: two bits of tempura. mine were both tofu-esque. andy's was shrimp (he thinks) and sweet potato. my first course (L to R): liquid pee, i mean, pea. very strange (not quite in a good way), but interesting. half as much would have been plenty. then pea greens with marcona almonds and grapefruit (a bit OD'ed on the peas by then and i'm not big on salads anyway). "toasted" asparagus with a nice sauce. mushroom with a puff pastry, reminescent of the wellington i had at hamersley's but miles away in terms of quality. the pastry was nice and dry and just the right density for forking into, although the mushrooms were more creamy where i would have much preferred savory. andy's first course: rabbit roulade wrapped in bacon with grapefruit glazed salsify on a puree of something green (sorry again) with a zucchini blossom dipped in a gooey cheese and fried. andy gave a solid A to this one. my second course was a rosemary-infused spaetzle with baby carrots and something in the onion family. had some nicely browned bits. fairly intense rosemary if you're a fan of it (which i'm not particularly). again, i wasn't so impressed with this. instead of a subtle flavor in each bite it was more like in this (and most of the other courses), the accumulation of flavor got to the point where you didn't quite want to finish it and in between courses you had a really strong aftertaste (which andy said he could taste simultaneously with everything by the end of the evening). radius was kind enough, however, to not leave andy courseless and gave him a serving of their mint gnocchi (with peas! talk about exploiting the fruits of the season). again, we weren't so impressed. more sweet than savory. maybe overall they were going for a lighter, more summer menu than either of us were at all ready for (i mean, it snowed last week!). the best course for me. hedgehog mushroom ravioli with something green, lentils, celery root puree, and dollops of carrot reduction. some quibbles: two would've been enough, and a bit too much celery root and lentils. and is it just me, or is one meal with celery root enough celery root to last you for a year? i think i've had three in the past three months. enough already! andy had the arctic char with pickled ramps and lemon. he was distinctly unimpressed with the quality of the char and the balance of the dish, which had an overall onion taste he found overwhelmed it. dessert, L to R: glass of chocolate milk which i have to say was strongly reminescent to me of the sugary chocolate milk that's left after you've eaten a bowl of chocolate rice krispies or cocoa puffs. very strange. next, chocolate cake with cashews. standard, but a nice consistency. last, milk chocolate ice cream, which was unusual and quite good. andy had the goat cheese cheesecake with huckleberry ice cream. good, but again the balance left something to be desired. andy's comment: the ice cream was too creamy to complement the goat cheese. a sorbet would have worked much better. and to see us off, bits of chocolate-y squares, those fruit things i like (i feel so ignorant; winnie will have to remind me), and tiny macadamia cookies. our server was adequate although the rest of the service was better. the initial wait for menus was noticeably long, and we would've expected the restaurant would have had a more rigorous no cell phone policy. so that's my fairly laid-back review. feeling fairly chill at the moment. sorry, winnie, looks like of the three, great bay is the one that gets our vote (even though i think you weren't a fan of it). maybe it's just the level of boston restaurants, but i still haven't had a really memorable meal in boston in a long while. def. have some things lined up, though, so until next time faithful readers (haha) ...

2006-04-10T22:01:00.000-04:00

get ready for a marathon post ... here's the precursor: first off, saw that burrito max closed! is this a product of the kenmore square gentrification? RIP, burrito max. your tofu bbq burrito will be missed! second, julia child's memoir looks totally cool and i was looking for a good bio on her w/out success so this is great to have. here's the amazon link for easy ordering access. and despite the fancy-shmancy dinner at radius where each dish was labored over by top professionals, i have to say i'm proud of the thai red curry i whipped up just now (now that i have my life back i actually have time to cook -- and do laundry haha). since i was dumping pictures i thought i'd take a rare pic of my own cooking. this curry was amazingly simple. you pretty much just put 1 cup of coconut milk in, some red curry paste and maybe a bit of sugar (and fish paste if you're of the omnivorous ilk), and some veggies, and then some more coconut milk, and that's it. my respect for thai curry makers has severely diminished. actually i shouldn't be too cocky, b/c the other curries in this book were much more elaborate. but this is def. going into my limited arsenal of guy-who-doesn't-really-cook-but-can-if-it-takes-less-than-10-minutes-and-there-are-less-than-five-ingredients dishes. here's the cookbook it came from. andy and i picked it up b/c it has lots of nice pics.

2006-04-08T12:43:00.000-04:00

why i heart ny. sietsema never steers me wrong. (here's one place he suggested that i'd wanted to hit up while i was in nyc for an, as usual, too-brief visit. here's another.) this time, robert took us to thai food house, a testimony to the extraordinary diversity and quality of ethnic eateries in nyc (perhaps only LA compares, but each city has particular strengths). thai food house, despite its circumscribing and rather generic name, actually serves up a burmese/yunnanese/malaysian menu (perhaps some of the best regional chinese food i've had in nyc). just a small sampling of the many, many hits: i don't know which cuisine to credit with these little plates, as i don't recall ever getting a panchan-like assortment of nibbles in yunnan or in any southeast asian restaurants. no matter, i am grateful. clockwise from 7 o'clock: roasted soy beans (?), pickled carrots and cukes, and something delicious i can't recall (is that bamboo? tofu skins? i had just come from a 12-hr transatlantic journey, so i was content to just eat my face off and not think too much about what i was eating.) one of maybe four yum-type salads we ordered. this one has deep-fried pork, i think, but i believe there was also duck and/or chicken in another. garnished with orchids and dressed in that magical sour-sweet-spicy-salty-funky way that makes southeast asian cuisine so, so good. the chinese influence was exemplified with this noodle dish. (are these the tofu skins i'm thinking of?) i'd forgotten how fundamental those fermented pickled vegetables are (you can seem them underneath the greens and mixed in on top), adding a much-needed tangy, tongue-curling bite of acidity. TFH does some solid curry (robert points out that this is just like the stuff you get with roti canai, though they don't call it that). at any other place, this would be mind-blowing, but my mind was elsewhere, most likely with the pork salad. that is, everything is so damn good here, superlatives just don't do justice. robert's never without a fun little surprise: these would-be crinkly freezer fries are actually a deep-fried tofu variant, made from mung beans instead of soy beans. they are addicting (which we probably have the deep-fryer to thank) but also have this unexpected texture -- a silky, gelatinousness that recalls those cold jelled noodles we ate in taiwan that they cover in garlic, peanuts and soysauce. but totally different. surprise no. 2: like something straight out of 'alien: resurrection', but actually a mountain of prawns. okay, more a nest of enormous prawns, covered with an incredible (as in possibly not-to-be-believed) combination of oats, sugar, sesame seeds and god knows what else. this dish has a fun kind of sandy texture and smells and tastes like some kind of cookie (i had a particular cookie in mind at the time that eludes me now). this wasn't one of my favorites, but was definitely novel. i'd definitely make someone else get it again. how big were the prawns? this big. perhaps the best dish of all: coconut rice roasted in a banana leaf. yeah, maybe you've seen this before. but all your sripraphais and zabbs don't hold a candle where this is concerned. i must -- must -- figure out how to make this. but first, how to find banana leaves in rural piedmont? thai food house college point blvd flushing, queens

2006-04-05T13:25:00.000-04:00

words i wish were for me. i just received the march 27 issue of the new yorker (it takes a little while for these to cross the ocean and a couple continents), and in it, i was pleased to see an article by one of my food writer heroes, calvin trillin. this was less about food, however, and more about alice, his wife, whom he mentions often in his writing. this was a tribute/love letter to her, some four-and-a-half years after her death. and it took my breath away. by turns poignant and chuckle-aloud-funny, it is one of the most beautiful and heart-breaking things i have ever read on love. you need to read it. [they've not put it online, but here's a piece alice wrote instead.] almost as important as love: breakfast. in los angeles (well, in the chinese triple-threat-ghetto of alhambra/san gabriel/monterey park, to be more precise) a couple weeks back, my aunt took me out for some proper taiwanese breakfast. my favorite shen doujang (salty soy milk) with you tiao (savory crullers) and cong you bing (onion pancakes). and because like all good asian/jewish/italian mothers (aunts/grandmothers/maternal figures), she wasn't going to be satisfied until my pants no longer fit properly, so she also bought me a bunch of baozi (stuffed buns) and this rice ball (okay: cylinder. but usually a ball. maybe an american supersize-type adaptation), stuffed with you tiao, ba hu (that deep-fried, dried and shredded pork fluff), probably some other pickles and a few other very tasty yet completely unidentifiable items. when i expressed my desire to live in taiwan for a little while, my cousin scoffed and said, why would you do that? it's fun for vacation, but it's really just a pain in the ass to live there. i protested that i wanted to go at least for the food. he replied that you can get all the same stuff in LA and it's just as good. he's got a point. in LA, i also ate korean twice and had a knockout burger at nook, in west LA, just a couple blocks from joyce's place (and laughably walking distance in any other city, but yeah, we drove). every single eatery -- actually almost every place, restaurant or not -- i went to in LA was located in some remarkably hideous strip mall. i am impressed that they managed to carve a generic manhattan-bistro feel and aesthetic out of a strip mall for nook. coming soon: what i ate in new york and boston, who i ate it with and why. not too soon though. i'm in the process of unearthing myself from way, way too much work.

2006-03-31T18:10:00.000-05:00

my deadline for work is finally FINISHED and i'm wholly enjoying my first free time. i'll start by catching up on some music news: cat stevens recording: Mr. Islam is working on his first pop album since 1978. It is expected in the fall, though there is no indication as to whether it will be released under that name or the one by which he first became famous, Cat Stevens. also, paul simon's new album was produced by brian eno. interesting. also worth mentioning is the recent announcement of the end of what was indisputably one of the greatest tori amos websites ever, thedent.com. this news is a particular shock to me b/c i have literally checked this site almost every day since i first came across it, prob. sometime just a few months after it began (in 1996). congrats to the dent for ten years of feeding my and countless other fans' tori love. you have been much, much appreciated and you will be greatly missed.

2006-03-25T14:02:00.000-05:00

since when did cooking become domestic purgatory? this baffles me to no end. i'll concede that this is a tiny step up from hot pockets and takeout, but it's still horrifying in so many, many ways.

2006-03-18T10:07:00.000-05:00

this nytimes article about american regional accents is interesting. as a louisvillian there have been times i've had people give me "where the heck are you from?" looks b/c of isolated, random words that somehow got into my pronunciation (and have since been somewhat smoothed over). off the top of my head: - "crayon": used to pronounce as "crown" - "sentence": inexplicably, used to pronounce as a very hillbilly-sounding "sint-ince" - "Iraq": not sure how people pronounce this, but I used to pronunce it as "EYE-rack" which I think is more hillbilly than the pronunciation "Ih-rack" - "Louisville": and of course everyone knows that natives pronounce this not as "Loo-ee-vill" but as "Loo-uh-vuhl".

2006-03-16T10:50:00.000-05:00

i wasn't too good about taking a lot of pics while in seoul, but here are a few. building at deoksugung, one of several palaces: at inwangsan, a buddhist shrine: street food: deokbokki along with (from near to far): fried gimbap (korea's version of sushi, here mostly just rice noodles wrapped in gim, korea's version of nori), some fried seafood i think and mandu (korean wontons), and fried carrots/scallions i think and fried sweet potatoes. the sweet potatoes there are yellow and soo good. various kinds of fried doughnuts/rice cakes (ddeok). the ones on the left have red bean in them. the ones at the top of the picture are called hoddeok and are soo good. they have brown sugar in them, which gets nice and gooey. i craved them the whole time i was there, but unfortunately only had them once. am def. going to have to go back for more.

2006-03-13T04:35:00.000-05:00

peeking into pots and pasta from potatoes. yesterday, i went out to the village of casorzo (past asti, near casale) where daniele and i waited tables at a community event benefitting children from chernobyl. here i am, in between courses, helping myself to some of the panissa di vercelli (more of which below). i've been particularly struck lately with how socio-politically active these italians are. many of the people i know here give their time, money and vacation days to their political party (which may have everything to do with the organization i work for), and many more do volunteer work in africa or form organizations that work to help groups in eastern european or african countries. is it a function of our isolationism that we americans only tend to help our own (if we help at all)? i'm not entirely prepared to address these kinds of hard-hitting questions this morning (let's just say it's been an eventful weekend, and i'm not faring so well in the aftermath). instead, let me return to the contents of the pots: unlike the panissa of liguria, which are fritters made from chickpea flour (like sicilian panelle, briefly in vogue in new york restaurants in 2003ish, where they were described as 'chickpea fries'), that of vercelli is a piedmontese risotto-like dish, made with the area's well-known rice, beans, sausage and barbera wine. it is serious stick-to-your-ribs farmer fare. this is what we served after 3 courses of salumi (including the wonderful salame cotto of casorzo and some hammy paletta di maiale), a round of uova di salvin, the very local take on devilled eggs, which involves mashing hard-boiled yolks with tomato paste and serving the mash with the whites. unlike panissa, the eggs don't benefit so much from cooking in quantities for a couple hundred people. though, apparently, polenta and cinghiale do: i talk and write about local, traditional food an awful lot, but really, this tiny town's gastronomic wealth (see salame cotto, uova di salvin, etc.) really surprised me. it's just another one of the hilltop towns that dot the monferrato area (east of the langhe), but here, they've got a slew of grape varietals specific to just this area (grignolino and cortese) and a dessert wine made only in this town (malvasia di casorzo). this aspect of italy continues to captivate me. and i suppose this is the reason why i stay. this, and these guys: because there are few things i appreciate more than boys that cook: daniele and andrea make gnocchi on my kitchen table.

2006-03-09T07:01:00.000-05:00

addendum to previous post. not that i really want to pursue this sous vide thing any further, but looks like nyc chefs are getting bitten in the ass by the FDA (what else is new?) for their boil-in-a-bag penchant, thanks to the nytimes (ditto). also, just got my (and the) very first issue of alimentum in the mail today. this compact volume is jam-packed with gems from the likes of mark world-as-seen-through-a-particular-foodstuff kurlansky, [yours and my favorite neurologist] oliver sacks and clifford a. wright. it's a beauty. you should subscribe.

2006-03-07T03:12:00.000-05:00

the return of la-maison-de-la-casa-house. (not that it ever went away.) i've just emerged from an extended weekend of meetings involving several dozen international visitors. one of the perks of these kinds of working weekends is that my lunches and dinners are taken care of. i have to confess that i'm pretty ungrateful when it comes to appreciating the piedmontese kitchen/table (the larder i'm okay with most of the time -- except when it comes time to find limes or cilantro). though, perhaps you've picked up on this in my posts over the past couple of years. on saturday, however, i realized how misguided i've been. we were served a beautiful-looking piece of piedmontese veal for the main course. i impressed the hell out of my table (which included a handful of aged gastronomes (whether self-appointed or no, i'm not totally clear)) when i observed that the meat had been cooked sotto vuoto (sous vide). there's no mistaking that rosy, moist flesh and the squishiness. rather taken aback, they all asked me how i knew. oh, è molto new yorchese, i said. it reminded me of nearly every piece of protein i've eaten in the past four years in new york and paris and a few other michelin-starred eateries in france. and if you follow food and dining columns, sous vide is like the second-coming, it's been covered so much (everywhere from the nytimes to slate; the story is so old now and so oft-repeated that my involuntary response now to those two words is a big eye roll.). the sad thing is, vitello piemontese doesn't benefit from the sous-vide treatment. i mean, maybe the chef fucked up, but it wasn't as tasty as carne cruda, brasato, arrosto or any of the pot-roasty treatments they're particularly fond of over here. it was bland. it was boring. maybe this is just further proof that regional cooking really is an expression of the land and particularly suited to local ingredients. or maybe the chef needs to add a little salt to his sauce. there was something about the whole experience though -- the white tablecloths, heavy silver, a sort of miró-esque aesthetic sensibility with saucing, a predilection for garnishing with chips made from dehydrated vegetable purée -- that was so generic. i really could have been in new york (though i've had many more inspired and equally expensive meals in nyc). the title of this post refers to the kind of place calvin trillin used to write about (and maybe still does; i've not yet ponied up for feeding a yen): the interchangeable upper-end establishments that serve a kind of (inter)continental cuisine that really doesn't have any particularly special characteristics in and of itself (aside from squishy pink meat cooked under vacuum). i'm going back to nyc for a visit in a couple weeks. and i can't wait, it's true. but i find myself feeling sort of tired when i start to consider where to eat, as far as the latest openings/hot spots. (don't worry: i'm still so, so stoked to finally wrap my lips once again around a perfectly-cooked burger (with pickles! with heinz ketchup!) and to gnaw on some ribs and lick barbecue sauce from my fingers and to slurp up some pork belly ramen.) and oh, i know it's easy to be too-cool-for-school this way and that maybe i sound more than a little spoiled. but sometimes i just want something a little more personal, with a little more personality. i can't wait to eat my mom's dumplings.

2006-02-28T16:14:00.000-05:00

been out of the restaurant loop and wondering what the news is. anyone heard anything about delpha's new place sorellina (who was behind mistral)? this globe review makes it sound pretentious and the weird ending of the review just sounds seedy. i've only been to mistral once but was distinctly unimpressed. also, i think daisy mentioned toro, oringer's somewhat recent tapas place. similarly, i didn't care for clio and i believe andy didn't have much good to say about uni. what's the buzz? tell me what's a-happenin'.

2006-02-27T07:07:00.000-05:00

le olimpiadi torinesi sorry for the recent silence. it's been crazy over here, what with all the work they've been piling on me. i've made some time for some dinner parties recently, and there might be photos of those soon (though don't hold your breath), but otherwise, the main event in these parts have been the olympics. which, regardless of being underattended or whatever else, was actually pretty fun. (and we're all amazed that the italians managed to pull it off in the end.) unfortunately, the winter olympics isn't really chock full of spectator-friendly events. one exception, however, is hockey. i made it to a men's game, germany vs czech republic (the latter outskated and outperformed the former), and my sister caught the women's bronze (here, USA scores on finland) and gold medal games, as well as men's canada vs czech republic. and then we braved subfreezing temperatures, fog and some snowfall and waited several hours outside (and trekked all the way out to sauze d'oulx) to see women's aerial freestyle. which was actually very, very cool:

2006-02-16T16:10:00.000-05:00

i've been lax in posting ... been methodically making my way through every cambridge eatery i've happened to miss since my time in boston, as well as checking out the few new ones. some quick comments: bombay cafe (harv sq): it's been a long time since i've been to this place. not bad, but it's the type of gussied up indian food (like kashmir on newbury st) that i'd pass up in favor of more homey fare. 9 tastes (harvard sq): relatively new thai place. you've gotta wonder about any thai place that has an "all you can eat" special. this has earned a spot pretty near the bottom of my list of thai places in boston. pretty sloppily prepared and bland all around, and not bland in a minimal way like the popular MIT-student destination thailand cafe on mass ave. pepper sky (pearl st, central sq): has become a regular spot thanks to its closeness. pretty standard americanized thai food, and although the curry is depressingly bland, the spicy pad thai (also pretty minimal) is acceptable. the drunken noodles are prob. the best thing i've gotten from here. middle east (central sq): no one goes to the middle east for the food, and for good reason. the falafel was okay, but half of our grape leaves were inexcusably gritty. falafal palace (central sq): tiny place, but not bad. picante's (central sq): ecchh. i don't remember this place being so incredibly bad. have they changed management since i was in school? pretty inedible stuff. mass ave restaurant (b/t central and harv sq): the breakfast was okay, but the lunch (pseudo-mexican) is pretty much on the level of picante's, i.e. pretty terrible. in related news i've pretty much had to strike hamersley's (tremont st, south end) off of my list. went last night, and at the server's strong recommendation (although much against my better judgement) i got the mushroom wellington w/ madeira sauce, a sort of pot pie. this dish really chrystallized hamersley's failings, namely that in their pursuit of the full-bodied french rustic feel every dish is so buttery and creamy that they're overwhelmingly rich, heavy, and in the end just uninteresting. andy had the so-so duck confit, and our warm chocolate tart was similarly lackluster (just as most of the desserts we've had there have been). we've had some good meals there, but i've had too many subpar ones that it'll be a long time before i'll be persuaded to go back. so now that those mostly mediocre places are out of my system, i'm looking forward to hitting some new places w/ the warm weather. top of our list: upstairs on the square (in harv sq), petit robert bistro (kenmore sq), salts, the blue room. also, after the disappointing trip to hamersley's i'm more enthusiastic about hitting rendezvous again.

2006-02-14T03:31:00.000-05:00

france: such great heights i dunno why it never occurred to me to head to points further north in france, instead of always going the côte d'azur/provence route. the route through the hautes-alpes offers equally lovely vistas. lac d'annecy, early morning, taken from a lakeside bench in a tiny village on the southwest tip of the lake. i've got the camera in one hand and a freshly baked lardon quiche in the other. bliss -- save for the subzero temperatures. lac d'annecy, from annecy ville. (not pictured: thousands of families milling about lakeside with children and dogs in tow. swans swanning about and viciously snatching bread crumbs tossed by children.) annecy, vieille ville. for lunch, we went out to clos des sens, a one-star michelin establishment in annecy-le-vieux, up above annecy proper. they do several prix fixe options here, which make a lot of economic sense if you take a look at the à la carte menu. we did the €70 prix fixe menu découvert. they've not yet managed to send me the menu, so cut me some slack on the dish descriptions i've cobbled together from my rusty french and the servers' perfunctory explanations (they were very nice otherwise). amuse-bouche: beef broth (with veg brunoise), gelled celery cubes, carrot ice, and tomato chip (buried in a little cup of sesame seeds in the background). the broth was underseasoned, the cubes not really memorable and the carrot ice just plain weird. we liked the tomato chip though. deconstructed tartiflette: the house specialty. a very traditional savoyard dish, tartiflette is a very light and healthy combination of sliced potatoes, onions, butter, cream and reblochon cheese that's baked in the oven. in this version: onion ice cream with a little onion chip, a pastry tuile cone with a scoop of reblochon and a lardon chip on top, and a paper-thin potato chip in the back (with a parsley leaf in the center). foie gras with apples (overlaid on top) and smoked lake fish (trout?) with a wine reduction sauce. crab cake and seafood bisque. there's a shot glass of a mushroomy-seafoody broth as well that's not pictured. unfortunately this dish was inedibly salty. the bisque is the tan grainy stuff -- so grainy, in fact, that it had a texture remarkably like sand. and did i mention it was salty? they were rather perturbed that i didn't manage to eat mine, so they brought out some oysters with a celery gelée to make up for it. and the oytsers were fine. (good enough, even, that i forgot to take photos.) but this dish made up for the crappy crab: perfectly perfectly cooked prawns with mushroom liquid-injected pillow. revelatory, this one. lamb chops, perfectly cooked, with a vegetable brik/bisteeya (i can never remember the difference) thing. the table next to us got some amazing looking roasted lamb shoulder instead of our chops, but these were pretty damn good. fourme d'ambert with hot and cold pear. the cheese is toasted on layered pastry. the pear disc is hot, the pear sauce cold. walnut granité with candied walnuts on top. lemony white chocolate cake (more a creamy, fluffy dense mousse or light cheesecake texture) with some kind of sponge cake layer on top. chocolate sorbet. mignardises: a very strange foam and custard combo with extremely off-putting colors (i think the orange is ginger-flavored, the green i have no idea), pâte de fruits (no idea what flavor. it tasted red and was cloyingly sweet), serviceable caramel sheets and excellent chocolates (that might have had some kind of nut- (hazelnut?) flavored ganache inside. we loved the wee clothespins. one of the most beautiful cheese boards ever. mostly regional: you can see the rectangular slab of beaufort (one of my favorites right now) halfway back, some tomme de savoie, reblochon, etc. there's some vacherin mont d'or back there, and the rest i don't know. they've got a cave downstairs, and all the cheese has been extraordinarily well cared for. a peek into the kitchen. for dinner, we went to le vertumne, a more modest restaurant in the center of annecy. they do great food here with a much more manageable price point than clos des sens. the amuse here: a sort of quenelle-like fish cake made from rascasse. i had the pigeonneau three ways: confited leg, sûpreme and a little pigeon liver flan. mashed potatoes and braised red cabbage. delicious. on our way back, we passed through the alps, just on the other side of where they've got the olympics. the mountains are packed with skiiers and snowboarders right now, and i can't blame them.

2006-02-13T14:54:00.000-05:00

carl sent me this info about a CSA that has a pick-up location in central square. i'm sorely tempted to join, but $25 worth of vegetables a week sounds a bit much for me and i don't think they have smaller boxes right now.

2006-02-10T08:42:00.000-05:00

i am [almost] speechless. this is pretty freakin' amazing. and not a little weird. but props for the anatomical correctness (particularly the bobbles on the pancreas). check out some of the other crazy shit she makes.

2006-02-09T09:28:00.000-05:00

jackpot español! my BBM4 sender is the bestest! jorge sent me a giant box from santiago de compostela, spain, with (clockwise, from 10 o'clock) tinned octopus, beer (!), fig cake, turrones almendras (almond nougat), homemade pink grapefruit, ginger and scottish whisky preserves, chorizo, salchichón and lomo made from iberico di salamanca pigs, smoked, dried chiles (they look like habañeros) called ñoras, something mysterious that's called 'pink panther', morcilla (blood sausage), pimentón dulce de la vera, and in the middle, from left, fresh mirando do douro almonds (!), anchovy-stuffed olives, cheese (that looks like manchego, maybe), and canned sardine-like fish, called agujas. i just found the lovely letter he wrote as well, which explains a little more. santiago de compostela is in galicia. apparently there was a laurel branch in here too (from jorge's garden!), but i think the customs people might have taken it out. there were still a couple leaves floating around in there though. apparently the pink panther thing is something jorge loved to eat as a child. as usual, the letter is the best part. though, everything else comes in a very close second. the spanish torrone is wonderful crunchy stuff -- i might even prefer it to piedmont's hazelnut version (don't tell them i said so, though). and the salamis are delicious. i'm a sucker for chorizo. and for spanish pork. the rest of it i'm hoarding for later. there's a mix in there for me too, but i'm going to give that serious listen once i've unearthed myself from the pile or work sitting on my desk. he's on one of the tracks, as well. thanks, jorge! you're much more resourceful than i am. i owe you some gianduiotto and formaggi.

2006-02-08T03:32:00.000-05:00

in which i stay at home, but my food travels: BBM4 andrea got the BBM4 package I sent her yesterday. brava, posta italiana! that's nearly a record 3 days, cross the ocean and at least one continent and just before the olympics. let's all congratulate andrea on her engagement, as well -- tanti auguri. this BBM had a music focus along with the usual food component, and we were asked to make a mix for the recipient. fortunately, i've been thinking about a food-themed mix for at least a couple of years. this was just the right impetus to make it happen: insalata mista 1 jens lekman - julie 2 pavement - ...and carrot rope 3 luna - cindy tastes of barbecue 4 blonde redhead - four damaged lemons 5 cocorosie - milk 6 wendy rene - bar-b-q 7 wilco - candy floss 8 the robot ate me - watermelon sugar 9 eggstone - taramasalata 10 death cab for cutie - champagne from a paper cup 11 emiliana torrini - tuna fish 12 gang of four - cheeseburger 13 mathieu boogaerts - rendez-vous dan mons sandwich 14 amadou & mariam - sénégal fast-food 15 squeeze - black coffee in bed 16 brian wilson - vege-tables [in case you're wondering, as someone on art of the mix did, julie eats french fries by the dock of the bay, with lots of ketchup and mayonnaise.] and because i don't think i ever posted about this one, my january mix: the right foot [as in, starting off on] 1 The Mountain Goats - This Year 2 Jens Lekman - Rocky Dennis Farewellsong to the Blind Girl 3 Husky Rescue - Summertime Cowboy 4 Astrud Gilberto - The Gentle Rain (RJD2 Remix) 5 Danger Doom - Benzi Box 6 Black Box Recorder - New Baby Boom 7 My Morning Jacket - What A Wonderful Man 8 Tapes 'n Tapes - 10 Gallon Ascot 9 Boy Least Likely To - Be Gentle with Me 10 Goran Bregovic - Tale II (adagio poco febrile) 11 Arcade Fire - Cold Wind 12 Silversun Pickups - Kissing Families 13 Jens Lekman - Pocketful Of Money 14 The Light Footwork - The Art Of Everyday Communication Part 1 15 Margot & the Nuclear So & So's - Dress me like a clown 16 lisa hannigan and damien rice - be my husband (nina simone cover) 17 Animal Collective & Vashti Bunyan - I Remember Learning How to Dive and yes, in case you were wondering: i love jens lekman. the guy is a frickin genius. come to italy, jens! you can crash at my crib.

2006-02-02T03:52:00.000-05:00

coughs, wegetables and the poor people of genoa. last night we drove down to genoa. after a frantic search for parking and for our destination and a drive up one of the many, many steep hills in the city with one of the funniest cabbies ever ("yes, everybody says they are poor. and look how poor they are! golf. mercedes. smart. golf. smart. smart. porsche. golf. golf. " -- he nodded towards the cars we were passing on either side -- "yeah, so poor." [really loud, really aggrieved SIGH.]). we bolted down some tasty crêpes at a friendly eatery next to the 'cough theatre'. we asked the crêpe man what was up with the name of this place, and he told us that back when they were building the place, it was right next to a little street called 'cough alley'. (i prefer my explanation that they were pre-empting the theatre-goers' tendency to cough.) andate a un concerto stasera? (going to a show tonight?) he asked. sì, sì, ma siamo un po' in ritardo (yes, yes, but we're a little late (we had just started eating at 9pm, when the show was supposed to start)). the guy seated next to us chimed in, vedete quei tipi che suonano le carotte? (you going to see those guys who play the carrots?) why yes, indeed we are. the vegetable orchestra is a viennese ensemble that plays carrots. and celeriac, pumpkin, onions, radishes and parsley. and whatever else they can find at the market that day in whatever city they're in (their favorite market is the vienna one, but they might have some slight bias there). their music is particularly percussive (lots of beating on pumpkins with extra-large daikon radishes), with an avant-garde, sort of minimalist lean. most of their sound owes to some pretty serious mixing and expensive mics, but it's amazing how they can make eggplant and celery sound like children squealing happily. scary, almost. theirs songs have such titles as 'asp' and 'ambiente industrialis' (which i quite liked) and about a third of their program consists of covers of such fun, melody-driven groups as kraftwerk. the whole concept is entertaining at first but then quickly becomes sort of tiresome -- luckily these guys have a good sense of timing. as in, they know when to change it up and innovate a little with the instruments. most of the root veg had holes drilled into them, and the players would blow across the apertures as if they were blowing on bottles. in my favorite piece (simulating a crackling, skipping record, most of the tune consisted of breaking up a lot of celery. perhaps the high point of the program was a piece that one of the players introduced as 'our version of igor stravinsky's 'le sacre du printemps,' except it sounds quite different on wegetables. and in fact, it is very difficult to transpose notes for wegetables.' few things are funnier to hear than a german speaker and his w's. especially for an, ahem, vord like wegetable. their stravinsky rendition sounded nothing like 'sacre du printemps', but they did have this fun bit where this dude dropped onions down a slide. it might have been this one as well that started off with the whole group crumpling up the papery skins of some allium (onions? garlic?). but the encore was great: they returned to the stage. one of them explained that this song, 'automat', was a play on words, a reference to 'tomato'. and sure enough, they all stood and held up a tomato in each hand and beated out the song, producing a stage full of pulp in the process. it's kind of a messy show. but kids, that's what i call playing with your food.

2006-01-24T08:53:00.000-05:00

taiwan: variations in the key of sea sorry, couldn't help myself. being an island, taiwan offers a wealth of fishy delights. some areas (kaohsiung, for instance) are more known for their seafood than others, but seafood makes it all around in one guise or another. while way down south in jialeshui, we ate at one of the waterfront establishments inside the national park. asians are obsessed with the freshness of their seafood, hence the stocked aquariums at your local (perhaps more reputable) chinese restaurants. they had the tanks down there with some more unusual specimens. these guys, for example, are almost golfball-sized, and when cooked, acquire a rubber-band-like texture (which we actually kind of like). they're quite bland, except for the odd one that would have an intensely bitter appendage. the taiwan strait is filled with these lobsters. ours became soup. but first the critter's blood is drained and offered (uncooked) to diners (complete with antenna thing as a garnish). my relatives urged me to try it (because they didn't want to?). i felt like a small, slanty-eyed version of anthony bourdain. not into the lobster blood -- it's remarkably viscous, almost a stiff gelled consistency, with a barely (almost un-) palatable bitterness. yech. interesting to try though. and i think it impresses the locals. this was my favorite dish, fish intestines, stir-fried with basil and chile peppers. chewy and rubbery like the snails, but with an excellent meaty flavor. almost as good as my aunt's pork intestines (not a fair comparison perhaps, as these benefit from porkiness). fish aren't just eaten fresh here, but processed into a fishy version of that deep-fried, dried shredded pork sung, but instead of being called ba hu, it's called hi hu ('hee hoo'), 'hi' for fish. or, it's turned into fish balls, like these fish balls at this great little storefront in danshui, a former fishing village and now outlying neighborhood of taipei. i'd never had fish balls stuffed with pork before, but i hope i have them again. these might very well have been the best fish balls i've ever had. but if the stuffed kind isn't exciting enough, there's always these. a veritable baskin-robbins of fish balls. this is a stall at the day market in douliou. one of several, actually, which i thought was notable, given this isn't exactly a huge place or anything. i dunno what's up with the striped, spotted and pastel argyle kinds and i wasn't really that psyched to try them. but the range is impressive, no? fish balls are basically like a sturdier, firmer fish dumpling, like those classical pike quenelles, made with egg whites and other binders and processed quite finely, but with a more pleasing bite and less paste-y texture. and they generally taste better.

2006-01-22T04:54:00.000-05:00

taiwan: ilha formosa the portuguese sailors that made it as far as these shores in the sixteenth century called taiwan ilha formosa, or 'beautiful island.' wen wu temple. a view of sun moon lake from above the rooftops of wen wu temple one of the lions that sits in front of the giant buddha at baguashan matsu is the taoist goddess of the sea. the taiwanese have erected hundreds of temples in her name (this one, for example), and the islands way off to the north are named after her as well. matsu is usually accompanied by two guards, former generals that served her once upon a time. the guy who took us to this temple explained that this one, with his large eyes, could see very far into the distance, while the other, with his enormous ears, could hear anything. inside a temple on the outskirts of kaohsiung the sandy, hole-y cliffs at jialeshui

2006-01-19T05:15:00.000-05:00

provence: sous la lune let's take just a little break from our regularly scheduled program so we don't get too backed up over here. this past weekend, i made it out to provence to get my french fix. which looks a little like this: flayosc is a tiny village in the var. we were fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of it while the moon was sitting low over the horizon. there's a lovely restaurant here, called l'oustaou, that serves all kinds of traditional provençal fare. pieds et paquets , for example, which is a rather homely looking dish made of mutton tripe. it's alright, but i'll take daube over the p'n'p any day. flayosc was just one of maybe six different towns we managed to hit over a couple days, we also made it out to the gorges du verdon, where i went a few years ago with the parents. (for some reason, i only manage to get out here in january. i'm betting it's even better in the summer.) unfortunately, we had to cut this visit a little short so we could get down to chez bruno, in lorgues. bruno is a serious truffle freak. you're greeted at the driveway by two monstrous truffle sculptures on either side of the gate. there are huge baskets of black truffles scattered around the dining room and too much truffle paraphernalia to even go into. bruno may be a little discomfitingly into truffles as well as himself, but he does serve some decent food (on truffle-embossed, monogrammed plates, no less): guests get to choose between several truffle menus (one with just the white guys, one with both white and black, and the most expensive with just the black ones). we did the €58 lunch, which i think had both kinds. not sure though. the amuse-bouche: a quenelle of chickpea purée in a rich, meaty, wine-y sauce. with truffles on top. we each got not one, but two poached eggs in a creamy truffled sauce (france = sauce). with truffles on top. two was definitely overkill, but this was amazing. definitely my favorite. the house specialty: hyperspéciale potatoes, in, yes, a creamy truffled sauce. and you'll never guess what they put on top. the potatoes were remarkably sweet. perfectly cooked 5-hour lamb, in some ridiculously good sauce. i really should have the menu in front of me so i can copy down the components and whatnot here, but the pictures give a good idea, no? with root veg (celeriac, etc.) and more truffles. surprisingly, they didn't manage to sneak any truffles into dessert. here's the cutest little crème brulée i ever did see. i wasn't so keen on the spice element (these pastry dudes tend to go overboard with the whole exotic cardamom-cinnamon-clove thing), but the small proportions give just the right ratio of crunchy-to-creamy. nice mini-palmier too. the regular-size dessert: banana tarte tatin with coconut ice cream. who knew that lemon sauce could complement caramelized banana so well? altogether a fine meal. i wouldn't go again necessarily, but i'm glad to have been. no better place to get the full Tuber melanosporum experience, particularly when they're in season. speaking of which, clementines are definitely on the decline at the market, but we're finally hitting some glorious peaks with the blood oranges: i'm always struck by their softer flesh -- there's less snap, less resistance than with other oranges. this one was particularly acidic, but still super juicy.

2006-01-18T09:05:00.000-05:00

taiwan: fish eggs, fish eggs, roly poly fish eggs no, i'm not done posting about taiwan yet. but we'll have a brief french interlude soon, i promise. but first: i've always contended that italy and china/taiwan are remarkably similar, what with the native inhabitants' aversion to forming queues, their love of noodles, their boisterousness/raucousness/expressiveness (depending where your sympathies lie and what kind of situation you're in at the time), and so much else besides. here's another similarity, which i first discovered walking through the old village of lukang: taiwanese people also make bottarga. it never occurred to me that asians would also be into curing and drying mullet roe, but with their penchant for dehydrating anything remotely edible, i guess it should have been a foregone conclusion. they consume it in a different way, but it looks the same, even up close: oddly, my mother never mentioned the connection when we visited sicily last year and picked up some bottarga there, but i think that's because we got some made from tuna roe, which is so huge that it doesn't really look anything like this. when i mentioned the bottarga to her this time, she said, oh, you're talking about oh hi ji'. an oh hi being one of these guys: or grey mullet. mom pointed these out to me at the douliou day market. they've already been divested of their ji', or eggs. while in italy, bottarga is usually grated or sliced and used more as a condiment for pasta or maybe celery salad, in taiwan, they like to slice it fairly thin width-wise, stick it in the toaster oven with some kind of garnish (scallions and something else i think) and eat it as a snack. they were selling tons of this at the kaohsiung night market.

2006-01-17T22:59:00.000-05:00

kyo-ya Saturday early evening, dinner at Kyo-ya. I read about Kyo-ya here and had to go, but decided I could only go on a special occasion -- "lucky" for me, A. has moved away and so for his first return trip, we went and splurged on the Kaiseki dinner. An $80 menu that is worth every penny. First course, Zensai. On the japanese menu I can make out the characters that in Mandarin are chien tsai which I suppose translates to first course/appetizer. This came in a little laquered box, served on a tray that was our place setting for the remainder of the meal. But once I opened the box, I was stunned. It was an array of tiny things that were so pretty to look at I didn't want to eat it. A small round lime, hollowed out and filled with miso marinated ikura (salmon roe, I think). Two pinwheels of red and white fish cake wrapped around a soft cheese. A marinated pickled sardine wrapped in paper thin layers of daikon and carrot, resting atop a slice of lime. Two chunks of herring roe sprinkled with bonito flakes. A little kite-looking thing on a toothpick with japanese characters and a little bit of some evergreen were placed in the box. The most gorgeous slice of fish cake I have ever seen, in the shape of a bell with a pink handle and a branch of cherry blossoms on the bell. The flavors were incredibly luscious -- the miso in the ikura was intense and only made the oily-ness richer and fuller. Yum. Second course, Sashimi. This was a plate with five small slices of halibut, served with a ponzu dipping sauce. A small pile of diced scallions and a small pile of something pink that I couldn't discern were on the plate and meant to garnish the sauce. A few springs of a tiny flower nestled between some of the fish slices. Each slice of sashimi started with the sweet and sour taste of the ponzu and the crunch and slight spice of the garnishes, and, as you chewed on the fish, slowly gave way to a delicious fleshy salty fish. It was amazing and stunning. Third course. A combination of Uni and Miso on top of a fillet of red snapper. The uni and miso had been mushed up and plasted on top of the fish before broiling. Mmm. A bit of pickled vegetables. Mmm. Fourth course. Tempura. Shiso Leaf, Nori, Lobster. The menu says red ginger but I don't remember any tempura ginger. It must have been on the side. The lobster was in the form of two small fish balls. The tempura shiso and nori were a surprise and were actually quite tasty, and the tempura batter was surprisingly substantial. A green tea flavored flaky salt was provided to sprinkle over the tempura, which the waitress told us was the traditional way that japanese eat tempura, although she would bring us some dipping sauce if we preferred, which we didn't. Fifth course. Beef wrapped papaya with our special sweet and sour sauce. By this point I was starting to feel pretty satisfied with the quantity of food. The papaya was tender and rich, although I wasn't convinced the texture matched well with that of the beef. The meat was served on top of sprouts, and a small salad of thinly julienned daikon and carrot. Their "special sweet and sour sauce" was quite tasty. Sixth Course. Ochazuke. Broiled Musubi in a Delicate Fish Broth. This was a little rice patty, broiled, placed in a broth with a little mound of wasabi on top. I smushed it up and stirred the wasabi in. Dessert. Mizugashi. Refreshing Japanese Jell-o with an Assortment of Sweet Beans. A clear gelatin, slightly sweet but mostly just tasted clear, and beans of all colors inside. Quite strange, it was topped with some little crunchy candies the size of nerds, some were chocolate and some were something else. They were hard and round and we spent some time chasing them around the plate with our forks. Little slices of orange fruit jellies, you know, just like the sunkist kind. Silly looking, I wasn't sure if it was intentional, but it was a good light dessert to cap off the evening. We had some really good sake to go with it, whose names I won't remember and the next time I go to a restaurant I still won't know what to order. I just remember that the first one we got had this description: "Simply the best." So of course we had to order it! I'm a couple hundred dollars poorer but oh, that was so worth it. We're going again and we'll try out the sashimi menu, which is astoundingly expensive to my inexperienced eyes, with four slices of sashimi running about $20. We got there early in the evening but ate for 2 1/2 or 3 hours, and at no time did the place really fill up. Maybe it's more of a lunch place, it's definitely an expense account kind of place. Very, very quiet for a restaurant on a saturday night.

2006-01-13T07:03:00.002-05:00

taiwan: the dumpling pilgrimage i'd been planning to go to din tai fung, taipei's (and now singapore, seoul, L.A. and wherever else they've set up satellites) legendary dumpling house. this is (one of?) the larger location where there's not as much waiting in lines. (unfortunate, because i definitely wanted to see one of these space mountain-worthy lines myself.) inside, the dumpling crew is shut up in a glass-walled wonka-style dumpling lab/workshop, where they work, surrounded by bamboo steamer baskets and equipment for mixing up industrial amounts of dumpling dough. you can watch them efficiently roll out, stuff and pleat their famous xiao long bao, or soup dumplings, a shanghainese specialty. if you're not familiar, these are like your usual very delicious steamed dumplings, save for a fun soup surprise. (when they make these, the filling includes a chunk of aspic, which melts into soup when the dumplings are cooked.) dumplings are definitely among my favoritest things to eat. and xiao long bao rank up there as one of the best versions. the shanghainese are also known for their noodles, and din tai fung offers many kinds, like this one -- a saucy, toothsome version that reminds me a little of dan dan noodles, but maybe more refined. in the background: a little dish of soy sauce and vinegar with some fine strands of shredded ginger, for dipping your xiao long bao. they also had excellent noodles at dian shui lou, a newer establishment that also specializes in soup dumplings (din tai fung is to the dumpling world what magnolia bakery is to cupcakes. except that DTF's reputation is most justly deserved), a much more intimate place (that still serves banquets upstairs and probably does 300 covers a night) and less of an institution than DTF. dinner here was awesome. there was suan la tang (which chinese-takeouters will recognize as hot & sour soup). insipid versions are so easy to come by. this one has all the depth and complexity that is characteristic of good chinese (and indeed asian) food: a little tangily sour, a little sweet, with nuances of pork, mushroom, possibly seafood and/or chicken, silky ribbons of tofu and shiitake and big hit of umami. but there are those noodles i mentioned: you take a little of this in your bowl and add some o' this (some kind of porky, scalliony saucy thing) on top. or you can get some barbecued pork to put on another bowl of noodles with an entirely different broth. i could probably call it a day with just the noodles. but we, of course, had to try their xiao long bao and also a different version, called tang bao, without the pleats on top. any soup dumplings i've ever had in new york just don't cut it at all when compared to these, which are much more delicate and elegant (because the skins are rolled out until translucently thin and the american ones, like their human counterparts, are 3 times fatter). DSL's soup dumplings are as good as DTF's, and i might even prefer the former, since they were kind enough to let me come in the next morning and yeah, they really do wear these face masks everywhere. even (or especially) when making dumplings. the one major different (besides size) between DSL and DTF is that the dumpling crew at dian shui lou makes their dumplings in a very zen-like, calm and carefully considered fashion, where din tai fung, while they might possibly win speed-wise, have a more hectic, factory pace. the nice guy at DSL (across from me) very patiently showed me how to make the 19 pleats on top (not easy to do at all, as all the pleats must be uniform and both hands must work together to keep the filling in, the margins of the dumpling skin free of filling and the overall shape uniform), which you then tuck into a neat little circle. it's funny to see the similarities between good cooks across oceans and continents. my teacher was very meticulous with his dumpling-making and placed each one just so in the steamer baskets, shifting or rotating mine just a fraction of a centimeter so that they were in some kind of perfect, planets-and-stars-aligned configuration that was only discernible to him (and maybe the rest of the kitchen -- certainly not to me). the whole process of filling and folding these so perfectly is definitely not something you can just pick up in a week or a month, much less a day. mine were pretty ugly, but they were still damn tasty. here's a final shot of them pulling dough for baozi. and back in america: few things are sadder than morbidly obese asian kids. (get those chips out o' yo' mouth, son, and drop that fried chicken. eat some rice, fer cryin' out loud.) shudder.

2006-01-12T04:07:00.000-05:00

taiwan: and here you thought amy tan just makes all that shit up. my grandmother was 10 years old when her father sold her, for 300 dollars, to my grandfather to pay off a debt. she moved from zhejiang, an eastern province in mainland china, to taipei (many, many li away, as tan would say), where my grandfather already lived with his wife and her daughters. she did not speak any taiwanese and presumably knew no one. she worked in their household as a servant until it was clear that my grandfather's wife would not bear him any sons. he then decided to marry my grandmother (as well -- yes, there were two wives in this household). my grandmother did them all proud, producing 6 sons (including my father) and 2 daughters. (taiwan did not ever have china's 1-child-per-household policy, clearly.) my grandfather died in 1982, i think. he was in his nineties. i really don't remember him at all, but he seems to have been well-liked and highly respected, and he's the one i should probably thank for the study habits my father passed on to me -- and, i'm told, for my aptitude for chemistry. my grandmother (on the left, with a neighbor) will be 90 years old next year. she moved to douliou, a little town (of 100,000) down in the middle of taiwan when she started running a shipping operation. they live in a residential/farming area with about 100 other families. this area is considered rural, so a food truck, carrying provisions (from fruit and vegetables to cookies and sausage) makes the rounds, and she likes to eat as much as the rest of us, so she'll go out and meet it. like she's doing here. ah-ma's got a nimble mind and she's still pretty active on her feet. she's funny as hell and not a little mischievous. she lives with my uncle david, his wife and 3 kids. my aunt cooks all the meals (with some help from ah-ma sometimes), which all, like this one, usually include 6 or 7 different dishes, plus soup. from the left, there's a cold poached chicken in the back, squid with some kind of asian leafy green, another leafy green, some tempura (either shrimp or zucchini, i forget now), probably winter melon and a whole pan-fried fish. the soup in the middle might be miso (which people eat in taiwan all the time, it seems), or it might be winter melon soup, fish soup or something like this with a black chicken foot and everything. i think there are pork bits and daikon in there too. here, on a different night, we've got shrimp tempura, braised chinese cabbage, some pickled bamboo shoots in the back, maybe some pork or something on the far left. pickled cucumbers on the right, foreground. and a different night, counterclockwise from top left: there's soy sauce-star anise pig intestines (one of my favorite dishes there), tofu (maybe?), pressed, dried tofu with seaweed, a whole fish, snow peas with mushrooms, soup, turkey/chicken/duck (not sure), some sautéed veg, and shrimp in the middle, of course. my mom always has to serve everyone, wherever we are. my grandma, in her old age, has become very particular about what she eats and tends to go for the saltiest things -- many of which she makes herself. one night, she was enjoying some broccoli stems she had pickled and my mom insisted that she take some pork, let's say it was. and then when my mom had her head turned and was busy serving someone else, ah-ma quickly put the pork back on the serving plate and continued eating as before. my grandma is very much like an 8-year-old. and i mean that in the best way. another night, we were all (uncle david's family, my grandma, my parents, me and my sister) happily munching away on dinner when my father reached for some chicken and everyone stopped eating and looked up when he took a piece. ah-ma scowled at him. my aunt and uncle both said (in taiwanese), 'chen, that's ah-ma's piece. only ah-ma gets to eat the chicken butt.' ah-ma snatched the chicken butt from his chopsticks with hers and placed it in her bowl. dad apologized and looked embarrassed.

2006-01-09T09:29:00.000-05:00

taiwan: kaohsiung nightmarket nightmarkets (yeshi in mandarin) here are truly eye-popping. you can get your sugar-, protein-, fat- and food-on-a-stick-fix at these open-air street markets, which are in most major towns and cities (more than one in bigger cities) and are usually up and going from 5pm to 5am. they're a combination food hall, chuckie cheese (complete with games that involve throwing projectiles into various holes and crevices to win ginormous stuffed animals or remarkably tiny (live) puppies), bazaar and hang-out for the under-30 set. mostly, you come here to eat. the most popular and most numerous stands are those that sell meat-(and various other unidentifiable bits)-on-a-stick (the guy will grill whichever skewers you choose, whether it's chicken parts, chicken hearts, chinese sausage, blood pudding cakes, squid, prawns, baby octopus, pressed tofu, etc. they cost about $1 a stick.) and DI(almost)Y noodles. probably 75% of the stands (there are probably 50 all together) at the kaohsiung nightmarket offer variations on this theme. usually people would get soup noodles (maybe because the parkas they were wearing in the 20°C evenings weren't keeping them warm enough) but i'm sure you can get them fried as well. you got your veg, your seafood and any ol' animal part you fancy. you can even pick your fish from the live fish tanks! the noodles range from your standard wide and skinny wheat and egg noodles to taiwan's deservedly famous rice noodles (to the left of those hearts in the bottom photo). i didn't actually try any of these because connie and i got held up at the dumpling stall (there was only one! we thought that was weird), where they had the whole family rolling, stuffing and wrapping these guys. they taste exactly like my mom's (which is the highest praise imaginable) but they manage to make them 10 times faster than her. i really need to bring a videocamera next time. all you people in new york can shut up about the 5-for-$1 dumplings -- these were 15 for $1 and a thousand times better than those greaseballs. my favorite part (besides the actual dumplings) is that they don't premix your dumpling dipping sauce. they have containers out of all the different components (soy sauce, rice vinegar, green onions, chile pepper) and you concoct your own. kaohsiung is well known for its seafood, so many stands also sold crab legs, whole crabs, deep-fried squid and octopus and whole fish. and if that ain't enough, you can get pickles (like my mom's! except on an industrial scale.), breakfast -- these are those youtiao crullers. and i lie, they're not really just a breakfast food. and in fact, i don't think taiwanese people relegate anything to -just- the breakfast table. they wouldn't think twice about eating anything any time of the day. and then there's dessert: these are little doughnuts with chestnuts inside. the guy skewers a chestnut and then enrobes the nut with the batter in a crazy sort of wrapping motion. and then deep fries it all, naturally. these are really really really good. but not so stomach-stuffing that we couldn't get down a little grass jelly (the black stuff towards the right). i'm not so into the sweet red bean you get all over asia (i can do green (mung?) bean desserts), but grass jelly i love. almond jelly is excellent too, but they didn't have any of that at anywhere we went. this is nothing like that crap that comes in the cans -- it's got this addicting, really singular flavor and all the fun wobbliness of tapioca and jello. it might be shredded into strands, cut into cubes or made into these tiny little balls (my favorite shape, by far). way better than pearl milk tea.

2006-01-08T17:48:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago I went to Otto, one of Mario Batali's restaurants in New York (Washington Square? My geography is not good), apparently on the "cheaper" end of his scale, which I take to mean "really expensive, but not really fucking expensive". It's meant to be a pizzeria-type restaurant, but really expensive. The menu is laid out with a pizza section, a pasta section, and then several sections of antipasti-type dishes. We chose to start with proscuitto, warm olives, and octopus with celery, followed by a pasta dish I can't remember now (some sort of bolognese?) and their pepperoni pizza which has a few different meats on it. The octopus was by far the best thing we ate. The proscuitto was disappointing - $9 a plate meant we got four slices of proscuitto that was only okay. The olives were decent but not amazing. Pasta and pizza was also acceptable but not overwhelming. The highlight of the meal, and the reason I would go back, were the gelato desserts. I can't remember all the details of each dessert, only that they were heavenly. My dessert was an olive oil gelato topped with a swirl of olive oil, a sprinkle of salt, and a couple other flavors including something fruity. A.'s was some obscure-liquor flavored gelato and the only thing I remember is that it had blood orange on it. P. got a simple affogato which was particularly good. So if you ever go -- go light on the food and heavy on the dessert. If I went again, I'd probably get some of the small antipasti and maybe a cheese plate and then go straight to the gelato. The cheese plate looked exciting, P. had gotten it before and it comes with three different sauces.

2006-01-08T17:09:00.000-05:00

nadeau from the boston phoenix (not the most reliable source, since i believe he also adored the nightingale in the south end) raved about steve johnson's newest venture, the rendezvous. it apparently opened in november; it's in central sq; and it "offers Western Mediterranean inspired cuisine". johnson was the chef/co-owner of the blue room. enough with the facts, andy, patty, and i checked it out a week or so ago, and had some good eats. andy and i were disappointed the garlic soup wasn't on that evening, but we both started with the "Celery root salad w/apple, goat cheese, pomegranate & green peppercorn vinaigrette". a bit dry, but enjoyable. andy had the "Moroccan-style lamb tagine w/dates, almonds and flagelolets" which he quite liked; patty also liked her escarole salad and "Potato gnocchi w/braised oxtail". i had the "Homemade cannelloni w/cavalo nero, foraged mushrooms, ricotta & sage". as with my salad, i found the cannelloni, while nicely prepared and thought out, to be just a tad bit underpresent, by which i mean that it wasn't bland, but the level of emphatic, savory tastiness was lower than it should've been. maybe a bit more vinaigrette in the case of the former and a bit more salt for the latter would have rectified this. the desserts turned out to be the highlight. much as i like creme brulee, i'm fairly bored of the various flavors in different restaurants (in their case vanilla), so we opted instead for "Apple crostada w/red grapes & honey-lavender ice cream" and "Warm chocolate-hazelnut cake w/cinnamon cream". the latter was particularly memorable. it seems hard to find noteworthy desserts in general, but both of these were palpable hits. in cambridge's (particularly central square's) otherwise mostly food-barren landscape, rendezvous is a nice addition. service was acceptable; decor (it was a burger king before) is a bit undefined and hopefully transitional: it's too spartan to be as homey as its lighting and color would seem to want to suggest. in any case, will def. will be going back; we'll have to see how it shapes up over time.

2006-01-08T16:58:00.000-05:00

a couple of crossposts from mailing lists: winnie's december mix, like her others, are full of what i presume are the latest indie bands that i should know. in a lot of ways i feel that now that indie pop has been around for so long so many people are doing the same thing rather than moving forward, and it's becoming easier and easier to reference bands' sounds (e.g. the of montreal track sounds totally like a belle and sebastian ripoff to me). harpsichord, glockenspiel, violin, trumpet, and harmonica seem to be requisite instruments nowadays. as i've said before, i'm on the edge of being able to still enjoy this stuff, but i do still enjoy it, particularly the more wistful tracks (like the jose gonzalez and the national tracks from last time). this time the blissfully moody tracks i loved are the books, gravenhurst, okkervil river, and the rosebuds. each of these had little production details i loved, like the "whoo whoos" in the latter track; and the books' has a bass guitar-centric sound (very pinback style) and bitty beats that i just love. i also liked the kings of convenience track quite a lot. this and the okkervil river track strongly reminded me of matt pond PA who i should listen to more of. i agree that the kathleen edwards track sticks out in the same way the imogen heap track stuck out last mix -- a bit too mainstream sounding. i also thought the baby shambles was a bit too much of a clash ripoff, but maybe that's just me. but it's a good mix, esp. since i've been out of the indie music loop so much lately. i like ang lee's direction, and in brokeback mountain he didn't disappoint. the vibe is much like crouching tiger, w/ gorgeous, hugely expansive scenery providing a backdrop to an intimate story. like that movie, this one also has a beautiful balance of sparse, spaciousness with explosions of energy, an aesthetic that i really, really love. the story could've easily been banal, but it was beautifully restrained, helped hugely by good performances all around and 2 particularly impressive performances by heath ledger (who i knew nothing of and who i just found out is australian) and michelle williams (who i also know nothing about although apparently she was in dawson's creek). all in all a solid 9 out of 10.

2006-01-07T05:18:00.000-05:00

taiwan: flora & fauna flora: dragon fruit. i don't know what it is about tropical fruit, but there must be some sort of correlation between extreme climate and messy fruit-insides. unfortunately, when i finally had the chance to eat one of these guys, i didn't have my camera handy. thank god for google images!. it's bright white inside, with tiny black seeds scattered throughout. the texture is sort of a cross between kiwi, watermelon and pear. for such an extroverted fruit, it doesn't taste like a whole lot, but the seeds are also reminiscent of kiwi seeds. like guava, which was in season when we were there (heaps of it everywhere), dragon fruit seems to have suffered from some kind of internal seed explosion. there are no tidy little seed rows in this fruit (and even though the guava seems to have a neater appearance, once you take a bite (the core and seeds are edible) it seems like the seeds are just thrown in at random). most of the guavas (ba la', in taiwanese) we saw were white inside and their flavor seems hardly related to guava juice (you can almost detect a similiarity, if you think about it real hard). they're more pear-like. sugar apples, called shekya in taiwanese for their resemblance to buddha's topknot. when ripe, the flesh is creamy, almost custardy, and quite sweet. you break it open and eat it with your hands. i do a little better with a spoon. my sister and i decided it has a generic 'tropical fruit' flavor. (and no, the seeds here come in tidy little rows. you can see them all lined up inside the fruit's flesh at the bottom of the second photo.) wax apples, lem bu in taiwanese. apple-sized and really, really popular. or maybe just in season. these are really fibrous inside without a core or seeds. they're as watery as watermelon. my sister's favorite, though i don't understand why, since they don't taste like all that much. here, connie holds up a jujube next to an asian pear. i love asian pears, but oddly, i didn't eat a single one while i was there. (and no, you cannot get them in italy.) we'll touch upon the brobdingnagian fruit thing in a sec. durian (background), king of fruits. in front of it, pomelo(e?)s, a grapefruit-like (and in fact, wikipedia tells us that the grapefruit is a cross between a pomelo and orange) citrus fruit with an enormous amount of pith and non-acidic flesh. in front of those are tangerines. oddly, tangerines seem to be the only type of orange that taiwanese eat -- no navels, no other mandarins (like clementines or satsumas). they're really, really good here, though. just to get an idea of size here, the tangerine is nearly softball size, while the pomelo is human head-sized. and the durian's about a football-and-a-half. taiwanese people (and chinese also, probably), not content with just peeling and eating the pomelo, also like to cure it (smoked here maybe? dried also? pickled?) and claim it has medicinal properties (like just about every biological thing over there). they also like to shrink wrap it (like they do with everything else). this is at the night market in douliou. at the same market, the sugar cane stall. they press the cane for juice, but one of the taiwanese native's favorite pastimes is chewing and sucking on the stalk. says my mom. (but then, she also has stories about how they were so poor when they were growing up that sometimes they would just have a little spoonful of lard with their rice for dinner.) these apples were also everywhere. in fact, it was difficult to find normal-sized apples. i don't know if you can tell, but this thing is like 6 inches in diameter. according to the sign at an upscale supermarket (this photo was taken at a daytime street market in douliou) in taipei, these are a japanese specialty, created at an apple lab in aomori. i don't know how good it is because i was too frightened by their enormity to try one. asians also really like to wrap their fruit in protective styrofoam netting. fruit is so, so cheap here. you can get a kilo of tangerines for 50 cents or something. also, i unfortunately missed out on strawberries. they were in season and apparently are a particular specialty of an inland county. besides fear of giant fruit, i'm also afraid of death by sprayed-fruit-induced-diarrhea. taiwan also has excellent papayas, mangoes, persimmons, lychees, star fruit, pineapple, cherries, bananas, melons and kumquats. (i'm not sure if aloe counts too, but they also like eating jelled aloe.) in taiwan, tomatoes are considered a fruit and nearly always eaten raw, following a meal. (my mom does make that savory egg-tomato thing that's eaten all over china, but i think that's more a mainland thing.) they have an incredible variety of cultivars. one thing they like to do with their cherry tomatoes is stuff them with pickled cucumbers and dates (prunes?). they had these at all the markets. fauna: a mynah bird we came across when investigating an old well in the historical town of lukang. not only does he do a totally spot-on cat meow, but he also says 'be quiet!' in mandarin, in both a man's voice and a child's voice. and a really spooky 'HA HA HA' laugh too. taiwanese people love to dress their dogs up. every dog in taiwan was wearing a sweater, a hoody or a parka. (then again, the islanders also think that 20°C is extremely cold and couldn't understand how connie and i could go around in t-shirts and flip flops.) but maybe this is an across-the-board asian thing, because at this bookstore in taipei, they had 20 japanese how-to-make-outfits-for-your-dog (or cat) books. this is a page from one of them. i mean, WHY? and just because -- the cutest little puppy in all of taiwan. he likes to lick the window.

2006-01-06T05:09:00.000-05:00

taiwan: he jia the most important meal of the day -- is probably every meal. the taiwanese care just as deeply about their snacks (xiao chi) as their breakfasts (lunches and dinners). i think they're most loathe to miss a meal at all. i'd wake up around noon at my grandma's house and help myself to some breakfast leftovers, but then 10 minutes later, my aunt would come rushing in with all the fixings for lunch and all the adults (in my grandmother's house, i will always be one of the children) would insist that i had to have at least one bite of that as well. can't make the relatives feel bad; how could i refuse? he jia is my attempt to romanize the taiwanese phrase for 'this/that tastes/is good' (hao chi in mandarin), or literally 'good eat' (chinese/taiwanese depends a great deal on context). one of the few phrases i can consistently put together. whether something is he jia is a critical consideration indeed. in taiwan, 2 out of 3 storefronts are restaurants or snack stands or noodle shops, and there's bound to be food carts lined up at most major intersections. i exaggerate only slightly -- and i haven't even touched upon the night markets (not to mention day markets). they love eating out just as much as eating in. for breakfast, you can have cereal or oatmeal if you want, but why would you when there's tsao bing-youtiao with shen doujiang. tsao bing is the sesame seed-studded savory flatbread housing youtiao, crinkly churro-like deep-fried crullers on the left. this is one of my favorite breakfasts, especially with shen doujiang, or salty soy milk. most of my relatives seem to prefer the regular sweet kind (which is just plain, sweetened soy milk), but the salty kind is dosed with vinegar and scallions and has sliced up youtiao floating about in the broth. it's like a really excellent soup. you can, of course, eat tsao bing and youtiao separately (i usually can't manage so much you tiao, which comes in 2-foot long batons). we used to get freezer tsao bing in st. louis that we would just pop in the toaster oven. better than any pop tart. nobody really makes tsao bing-youtiao and shen doujiang at home ('it's too much trouble'), because it's so readily available at the neighborhood fried bread canteen. (i don't know what else to call them. they specialize in a whole host of bing, or flat breads and fried savory pastry.) like the japanese and their onigiri (which is maybe the inspiration here, or the other way around), you can get your breakfast inside-out, or stuffed into a rice ball. not such a great picture, but there's some kind of unidentifiable porky substance inside, with maybe some pickles and seaweed and a little ba hu (pork sung to some), that dried, shredded pork stuff that takes to rice like an asian adolescent to his cellphone. uncle philip swears this is best freshly made and still warm, but it was pretty good cold some 10 hours later too. asians have a special genius for stuffing stuff in other stuff. another one of my favorites, bao-ah (mandarin: baozi), meat (or vegetables, but usually ground pork) stuffed inside steamed, slightly sweetened bread. deeeeelicious. i guess my parents didn't just make up this tradition of rice porridge breakfasts. they eat this at my grandmother's house nearly every day. uncle david has even systematically taste-tested all the brands of pickled bamboo shoots, wheat gluten with peanuts and grilled eel (spicy, bbq or with black bean sauce) -- all essential to muai, along with the ba hu and soy sauce pickles. (foo, he says wei chuan does the best bamboo and hsiang ting yang (or something like that) for the eel.) Ah-ma's muai is always made with cubed sweet potatoes, taiwan's most favored tuber.

2006-01-05T05:44:00.000-05:00

where to begin? taiwan is exactly as i remember it -- and not at all as i remember it. the last time i was here, it was august, 1992. i was a crabby-as-hell adolescent, it was 100 degrees out and 100% humidity all the time. there were cockroaches as long as my forearm, and i spent two weeks nearly round-the-clock in the can, suffering from a really extreme case of montezuma's revenge (or chiang kai shek's revenge, really). which is why i hadn't gone back for 13 years. it still smells like a mixture of camphor, incense, car exhaust and pork. it's still a riot of color and confusion and noise. it's not nearly as dirty as it used to be (but i've given up hope that the taiwanese will ever abandon their squat-style, hole-in-the-ground public restrooms). the people are remarkably friendly and open and funny (especially compared to the piedmontese), my formerly bratty cousins are now 13 years older (they were then 2-5) and much more tolerable, and there's way more good things to eat than can you can shake a stick at. and actually, taiwan is not too hard on the eyes:

2005-12-29T14:02:00.000-05:00

in a surprise turn of events, i actually did something artsy while i was home for the holidays, thanks to my friend charlie. he wanted to see louisville's spankin' new muhammad ali center, and in louisville's culturally-deficient landscape it's a fairly worthwhile tourist trap, i mean, "destination". the not-quite-completed museum glosses over some of the details about his personal life and misses opportunities to delve more deeply or leave a more lasting impression, but it does a pretty good job of contextualizing his life, in particular the civil rights movement and the vietnam war (which ali opposed and refused to serve in, and as a result was forced to give up boxing for some five years). and although it gets touchy-feely near the end with exhibits for kids about "believing in yourself" and "setting goals", it does give some insight into ali's humanitarian work, inc. his work w/ the U.N. the exhibits have a splashy look to them that will prob. feel extremely anachronistic twenty years from now, and are rather heavy on video clips. among those a highlight is a video explaining some basics of boxing by ali's daughter who is also a boxer. all in all the part i found most worthwhile and which was spotlighted the least were two galleries of ali-related works by leroy neiman. perhaps still in development, these neglected to provide any information about this american artist, but his style is immediately recognizable and worth seeing.

2005-12-21T09:38:00.000-05:00

now that i'm back in the land of the living, i have time to find out what's been going on in the world. in today's news it looks like we come out with a score of one to one:

one for the home team

one for the oligarchy

2005-12-16T03:49:00.000-05:00

the bestest. yeah, i've got my 2005 favorites for you, but what, you want an order now? sorry, no. on the speakers: antony & the johnsons, 'i am a bird now' clap your hands say yeah, self-titled wolf parade, 'apologies to the queen mary' feist, 'let it die' andrew bird, 'the mysterious production of eggs' jens lekman, 'oh you're so silent jens' the go! team, 'thunder, lightning, strike' animal collective, 'feels' sufjan stevens, 'illinois' (my tastes seem to get a bit wussier and more sad-bastard with every passing year, no?) runners-up: ted leo, the national's 'alligator', calexico/iron & wine's 'in the reins' current loves: tapes 'n tapes, margot & the nuclear so and sos, of montreal, husky rescue, okkervil river, danger doom, the rosebuds, sun kil moon on the page: david mitchell, cloud atlas (techincally 2004, i suppose) zadie smith, on beauty ian mcewan, saturday (though atonment is better) on the screen: happy endings crash batman begins disappointments: howl's moving castle, charlie & the chocolate factory --- stuff i really should have discovered before 2005: marcel dzama, philip pullman, alan moore, e.m. forster, tony kushner, julian barnes, the kings of convenience's 'riot on an empty street', mice parade's 'obrigado saudade', broken social scene's 'you forgot it in people' stuff i've gotten over: bloc party stuff i just don't get (as in, why does everyone love this?): death from above 1979, joanna newsom, out hud, kazuo ishigiuro's 'never let me go' --- another year, another round of glorious, glorious consumerism. and i'm off to taiwan. stay tuned for my adventures and all the gustatory delights of the motherland (oh, but there are so many!)

2005-12-15T13:01:00.000-05:00

who do i think i am? betty crocker? excepto betty habla al parecer español. my most recent iteration of the lemon sponge pudding. this one turned out pretty alright with a really nice substantial pudding bottom. this dessert is so damn easy to make and so damn tasty, it might just become my standard. i'm still trying to recreate the banana bread of my youth (our next-door-neighbor's amazing recipe, which is now who knows where). this one (the cook's illustrated best recipe version) bakes up with a really unbelievable crust (thanks to my oven and my loaf pan, i'm supposing). i made a coconut substitution for the walnuts, which was alright, but the banana bread just wasn't moist enough. could be that i should have waited for the bananas to get totally mushy. but i feel like there's something out there that's better (admittedly, best recipe has been surprising me lately with its fairly respectable baking recipes -- perfect chocolate chip cookies, for instance. this book is usually my last reference, but bittman has been sadly failing me a little too often when it comes to batters and doughs). daisy, whatcha got for me? i'm slowly getting used to the idea of knitting for other people. (trust me, it's not quite like cooking for other people. at least, not for me.) but this scarf was just so inevitable: i'm still destashing and pink makes me look so grotesquely yellow that i needed to find a giftee for something in this color. and carla likes lily of the valley. and that's what this pattern is supposed to resemble. and it kinda does, no? it's -- yes -- a barbara walker lace panel pattern (maybe from this one?), knit with my favorite cascade 220 on size 8s. i did a little stitching up the side in hot pink. just because.

2005-12-13T21:56:00.000-05:00

been really pressed for time, so i kind of had to throw this collection of "A"'s together. i'm def. gearing myself up for a more thematic mix, but in the meanwhile there's this hodge-podge of mostly peripheral likes. prob. one of my shortest mixes ever. some middle-aged housewife music that i picked up randomly, some somewhat generic indie, and some electronic-ish stuff. worth noting is the "it" band, architecture in helsinki, track which i got from winnie and which is excellent (although i haven't liked the other tracks i've heard of them), and the absentee track which i got from the BBC collective site (hence the mediocre quality), which is so low-key folky that you may start worrying that they're cadavers. prob. not a keeper mix, but i've been meaning to do a mix like this for a while. and i think the sequel (the "B" team, i suppose) will be much easier. --- when the evenings fall mix collective mix #2: the "A" team 1 architecture in helsinki . one heavy february 2 rick astley . never gonna give you up 3 arcade fire . neighborhood #2 (laika) 4 aphex twin . mookid 5 american analog set . come home baby julie, come home 6 jeff arundel . hey ann 7 ambrosia . a reminiscent drive 8 apollo sunshine . katonah 9 archers of loaf . harnessed in slums 10 geoff abraham . i'll come around 11 tori amos, bt . talula (the tornado mix) 12 a-ha . dark is the night for all 13 arab strap . monday at the hug & pint . glue 14 the album leaf . wander 15 absentee . there is a body in a car somewhere (live)

2005-12-12T05:22:00.000-05:00

gettin' some tongue. no, not that kind of tongue. what kinda blog do you think i'm runnin' here? if offal or meat cuts that actually look like the animal parts they come from make you feel at all squeamish, i advise you to skip this post and maybe check back in a few days. but just in case, let's start off with something that [probably] won't give anyone a serious case of the howling fantods. at thanksgiving (no. 2) in england, my parents brought me all kinds of asian goodies to pacify the ridiculous withdrawal i'm going through in a little italian town where just hunting down some fresh ginger is an ordeal in itself. i was the lucky recipient of a big ol' plastic jug of ba hou, taiwanese for pork sung (which is, i suppose, the english bastardized name that other chinese/taiwanese-americans call it) -- the furry brown stuff on the bottom left. in the rear of the bowl, there's a few little wei-chuan soy sauce pickles. both of these, together with the rice porridge (what my family calls muai (my sort of phonetic approximation)) underneath, make up the substance of much of my childhood. that is to say, being a kid was not at all like mushy, watery rice with condiments, but that we ate lots of this when i was growing up. most saturdays and maybe sundays, actually. and in fact, maybe i was suffering from a little homesickness this weekend, because i made myself some rice porridge when i got up yesterday and listened to 'parsifal'. which is exactly what my father would do (except he'd probably listen to a beethoven sonata). and i chilled on the couch (which IS exactly what my father would do). a while ago, molly put up a post about her ultimate comfort food, and though i wrote at the time that grilled cheese and mac 'n cheese were mine, i have to retract: rice porridge is my ultimate comfort food. but only if i have the pickles and dried deep-fried shredded pork (both of which are delicious, despite possible appearance to the contrary). the fried egg, over easy mom-style, is pretty compulsory too. i love me some grilled cheese, but it doesn't totally, completely satisfy the way my muai does. it's what my mom would give me when i had the flu or my stomach felt unsetlled (minus the pickles and furry pork, of course). it's what i eat now when i'm hungry for home. don't say i didn't warn you. this is half a cow tongue after a week of brining/curing/pickling/corning with some bay leaves, cloves, peppercorns and juniper berries. i then prepared it with some direction from fergus henderson, boiling it for a few hours with carrots, onions, celery, parsley and more peppercorns and then peeling it while it was still hot. tongue is intensely beefy with a dense velvety-ness and much fattier than i'd ever thought. i rank it right up there among my favorite cuts, right next to sweetbreads. and yeah, it's weird to think about eating tongue while eating tongue -- it's the thought of one's tongue mingling with this other tongue that makes some a little queasy. so don't think about it! as henderson claims, tongue is indeed excellent hot or cold, fried, in a sandwich -- any way you slice it. i ate mine first with farro and cicerchie, the chick pea-like legume i brought back from the marche a while ago, and here i've cooked it john thorne-style, for four hours in a clay pot in the oven. not as good as straight-up beans (they don't keep their integrity as well), but they have an interesting soy nut-like flavor going on. tongue is especially tasty with a dab of german mustard. but my favorite way to eat tongue is with salsa verde, which i made with parsley, anchovies, capers, a tiny sliver of garlic and a hard-boiled egg. (there's something sort of weirdly -meta- about this meal, isn't there? i mean, aside from the whole tongue-on-tongue thing, i'm also eating hard-boiled egg with a sauce made from hard-boiled egg.) this is bollito misto, my way. (that's a boiled potato on the left.) (and traditionally, tongue is among the boiled meats served in traditional piedmontese bollito misto, along with various other parts of a cow's head, maybe some cotechino sausage and any number of other assorted bits and pieces.) tongue and green sauce go ridiculously well together. and because i just can't help myself: my sister did a 6k benefit santa run this weekend. what's funnier than a big group of stretching santas? apparently, running in a supposedly one-size-fits-all (or none, as connie says) santa suit isn't easy. what with the beard and all getting in your mouth.

2005-12-05T03:42:00.000-05:00

snowed-in weekends. okay, so most of the snow on the street has melted, but it's still 4°C out there. so right now you can find me indoors, making a stash-reducing garter-stich shawl. (and looking more and more like a forlorn old homeless lady all the time, consequently.) and eating which began as carbonnades flamandes, but just onions and beef seemed too boring, so it became an irish stew of sorts. after i browned the meat and got the onions all melty and sweated the carrots and potatoes, i upended a big ol' bottle of stella and whatever leftover stock i had hanging out in the fridge, stuck a bay leaf in it and called it a day. except that, an hour and a half later, it wasn't getting any thicker, so i ended up making my first successful roux (directly after my tenth unsuccessful burnt, lumpy roux) and got it to a nice deep brown, even. i discovered that < 1 tbsp butter + a few tbsp flour is enough to thicken 3 quarts of stew. i'm also getting pretty decent at cooking rice (asian, natch) on the stovetop in my crappy little pentole and am discovering the merits of letting a little browned crust of rice form at the bottom of the pot (on purpose). what does this taste like -- rice krispies? barley tea? think i've read somewhere that there's a specific name for this crusty rice in chinese. i remember linda telling me it's especially good fried in butter. (but then again, what isn't?) i just like to sprinkle some maldon's on it and eat it with my fingers. this stew on rice thing was a fixture of my childhood. but mom always used cornstarch to thicken hers. my latest mix: decemberizing. december, rising. 1. xiu xiu - ceremony 2. the rosebuds - blue bird 3. jens lekman - black cab 4. metric - police and the private 5. the books - smells like content 6. gravenhurst - bluebeard 7. kathleen edwards - summerlong 8. the deadly snakes - gore veil 9. spinto band - oh mandy 10. babyshambles - fuck forever 11. okkervil river - song of our so-called friend 12. black belt - only one 13. happy bullets - the vice and virtue ministry 14. rogue wave - love's lost guarantee 15. kings of convenience - i'd rather dance with you 16. of montreal - nickee coco and the invisible tree

2005-12-02T05:40:00.000-05:00

how to smoke a turkey on your stovetop. ask and you shall receive. and then some. for adam and whoever else is curious, my sister has generously drafted instructions (a veritable manual, much less a recipe) for smoking your bird. and yes, this is what happens when you ask an engineer how to do something. connie, you're a big dork. but nice little illustration. --- Smoking a turkey on your stovetop is an inexact science and depends on a number of factors including the size of your bird, type and size of heat source, size of roasting pan, how smoked you want it to taste, etc. It’s best to learn how smoked you like your bird by multiple trial and errors. Start by brining the turkey in a solution of salt, water, pepper. Brine anywhere from 3 hours to overnight (refrigerated if overnight). Meanwhile, be sure to soak the woodchips in water for an hour before you start smoking. The idea is not to have the woodchips burn or catch fire, but to extract smoke from them due to heating. I like to use woods like hickory (just right), applewood, or mesquite (almost too strong a flavour). To set up your stovetop tented foil smoker, start with a large roasting pan that has a rack attached to it. The rack will be used to support the bird and raise it above the level of the woodchips. Put a long sheet of foil lengthwise in the roasting pan such that the sheet is centred within the pan. Repeat this step across the width of the roasting pan. You can also repeat this on the diagonals (although it’s a bit more awkward), as this helps make a more airtight tent. Spread the woodchips evenly across the bottom of the roasting pan. Then put the grate/rack across the top of the pan. Drain the brining solution from the turkey. Salt and Pepper the exterior thoroughly and place the turkey on top of the rack. Bring together the sides of the foil sheets and fasten them thoroughly together to create an airtight ‘tent’ within the roasting pan. My roasting pan is pretty big so I prefer putting it across two burners so that there is a more even heating (rather than the legs side or breast side hanging off one end, not getting evenly cooked). I would put the heat on medium or even medium low (if you’re patient) and let the tent system warm up. Resist the urge to crack open the tent to check to see if it smoking (it will be). If you see any smoke escaping, try to patch up the tent with additional foil. Make sure there is enough ventilation in the kitchen as the house can get very smokey if you have a leaky tent … maybe disconnect the fire alarm. I like to smoke my bird for 1.5-2 hours depending on how big it is, how strong the wood is, what heat I have it at. It’s likely that you’ll need to finish the turkey off in the oven, probably another 45-90 minutes. Use a meat thermometer to determine when the turkey is done. Also, the smoking tends to give the meat a more pinkish colour so don’t be put off by the slightly pinkish tinge when you carve the meat.

2005-12-01T04:34:00.000-05:00

christmas came early this year. i am loving the mailman these days. look what he brought me yesterday! first, mari's BBM3 package arrived: like me, she's an expat (from the midwest, to boot) living in europe, and she's cobbled together her own traditions from her inherited american ones and adopted dutch ones. in this lovely letter she's written me, she tells me how, for the dutch gift-giving holiday, sinterklaas comes two weeks before christmas from spain, of all places, with his helpers, the zwarte piet (elves in makeup that gives me pause). on the feast day (december 5), everyone exchanges gifts and writes funny rhyming verses about a family member. everyone gets a chocolate letter -- mari's so thoughtfully included a giant droste 'W' for me. In the little tube (top center left), there are pepernoten, delicious little thumbnail-sized ginger cookies (i allowed myself one last night -- so good. impossible to find ginger-flavored anything in italy). next to the pepernoten, we've got homemade cranberry sauce, made from her mother's recipe, which is also in the package, along with her family's recipe for cream cheese bundt cake (how stoked am i for that?). there are also some restaurant reviews from the paper about local spots she likes and one of those lovely postcards with french cooking utensils on it (which i collect, coincidentally). the best part (other than the edibles) is the letter. i'd not realized how meaningful -- touching, really -- receiving handwritten letters from people (people i don't even know, even!) is. it's an art that must be kept alive. mr. mailman surprised me with not one, but two packages -- the long-awaited, much-bemoaned care package joyce sent. and holy shit, what a care package: she threw in 8 different kinds of instant noodles (i am gearing up for yet another viewing of tampopo), japanese curry, seaweed, black rice, a korean cookbook and stendhal! but the best part, by far, are the uniball pens she's got ziplocked (center) -- how well does joyce know me? (perhaps too well.) and the canned kimchi and -- holy crap -- big ol' tub of gochujang! she's made my chile pepper collection nearly complete: i've got chile pepper paste and pulverized paprika from hungary, pimentón from spain, piment d'espelette from france, dried anchos, guajillos and pasillas from a spice shop in chicago, tabasco sauce, sambal, sriracha, togarashi and the pulverized and flaked peperoncino i get from the spice lady in town, not to mention the new addition gochujang. i didn't even mean to amass this collection (unlike so many others that are taking over my apartment). but i like it. and because the fog finally lifted, a view from the roof of my office: those are the alps in the distance, beyond bra's rooftops. monviso is the big guy in the center.

2005-11-28T11:35:00.000-05:00

gocco experiments I got a print gocco at the start of fall and it laid dormant until a couple nights ago. Will have to report on experiments soon, but for now I will say it's extremely fun yet I feel guilty about the waste you generate as you use it. I am making new years postcards -- co-authors please email me your addresses.

2005-11-28T10:47:00.000-05:00

turkey day, round 2. nothing's better after travelling many hours by plane, train and automobile than showing up to a plate of my mom's freshly made potstickers. this made up slightly for the 8 hours i spent that night and the next day helping my sister prepare a thanksgiving spread for her nearly all-british crowd. i made my usual (and favorite) sausage and fennel cornbread stuffing (foreground, left), roasted rutabagas with caramelized onions combined with sweet potatoes and parsnips each roasted separately in a truly horrifying amount of butter (foreground, right). i made the cranberry sauce (light on the sugar, done in stages to create a saucy base but to also leave as many berries intact as possible, so they burst in your mouth), gravy, biscuits and the pastry for the pumpkin pie (perhaps my first-ever successful crust -- i'll thank english butter for that). connie made cornbread and the pumpkin pie filling and was in charge of the turkey, which she first brined overnight and then smoked on the stove over a couple burners (or 'hobs', if you're british) with some woodchips and this foil tent she erected. the finished turkey's not a bad-lookin' bird, yeah? i'd have to say it's a toss-up between the roasting and the smoking (although the smoked guy is finished in the oven). smoking gives the bird a really ham-like quality, but it's a nice change from the usual.

2005-11-25T04:28:00.000-05:00

turkey day, round 1. this year, i'm doing thanksgiving twice. last night, carla and i threw a dinner for eight. look what a lovely setting she made: i contributed pickled beets and quail eggs (which is now my traditional thanksgiving dish, it seems) and braised brussels sprouts. you can just make out the turkey resting in the background behind the sprouts. i used this year's gourmet and nytimes instructions for the simplest, most straight-up roasted turkey, and it worked perfectly. i cranked my oven up to Big Flame and sprinkled salt and pepper really liberally all over mr. turkey and shoved him in, legs first. it took a little less than two hours for a 6-kilo turkey, and i didn't baste -- not once. and there was no need to. i think it has partially to do with the superior quality of turkey one finds here. they're not easy to find, but i'm willing to bet that they are all free-range. they also haven't been bred to the point where they're all dry, cottony breast. and in fact, the breast meat on the two turkeys i've had over here retained a succulence that you'd be hard-pressed to find in the states, unless you got one of these guys. this turkey also rendered out a remarkable amount of fat. i might have to make matzo balls with all the turkey schmaltz i've got in the fridge now. bra is kind of like nyc in that no one has a kitchen that can quite handle turning out a whole thanksgiving dinner, so i did the turkey at my house, and we drove it over to ugo's: he looks kind of dinosaur-like, doesn't he? the high heat made him look a little shrivelly and wizened, but he tasted pretty alright. i was definitely happiest with the gravy, which required a whole stock-making session on wednesday and then a little flour slurry (which is how one avoids lumpiness), deglazing and lots and lots of drippings. all the salt and pepper i threw on the turkey actually eliminated the need to season the gravy. so, we had, from left, clockwise, braised brussels sprouts, mashed potatoes (which are mounded on top of some awesome stuffing), roasted sweet potatoes, turkey, and pickled beets and quail egg. there was also a beautiful mâche salad, green beans (blanched and tossed with olive oil, lemon zest and pine nuts, from the same gourmet), cranberry sauce and, naturally pumpkin pie (or a tart version if you really want to split hairs). you know, i'd always believed that one can't make proper pumpkin pie from actual fresh pumpkins -- that you need to use the canned cucurbit, but i've now had two specimens that have totally converted me. using fresh pumpkin gives the pie much more elegance, flavor- and texture-wise. there's a lightness to it and it tends not to become as cloyingly overspiced and oversweetened as the kind made from the canned. round 2 begins tomorrow. first i have to get my ass to england.

2005-11-21T04:51:00.000-05:00

and what do we have here? this is russ parsons' lemon sponge pudding cake from his excellent how to read a french fry. i've strangely not ever cooked out of this little guy, though it's sat on my shelves through five different relocations, including two transatlantic ones. so yeah, it was about time. as is my natural tendency, i couldn't leave well enough alone, and reduced the sugar (by 1/3!) and guesstimated everything except for the milk. (god, i am so not a pastry person.) but even i can't ruin this one: when baked (in a water bath), this cake separates into two layers: a light sponge cake above and a custardy pudding below. the first one i baked off didn't look quite as nice, but when i go to eat the second one later today, i'll be sure to get a shot of the inside. which is absolutely the best part. and what's this in the foreground? i've been busy at my little one-woman sweatshop lately, and this is one of three projects i'm trying to crank out before the holidays. --- okay, i didn't remember to take my camera home with me at lunch, and i couldn't resist the temptation of that second cake, so we'll have to go with the first, less attractive one: i would most definitely make this again. lemon sponge pudding cake (heavily tweaked) 1/4 c all purpose flour 1/2 c sugar 3 generous pinches of sea alt 3 eggs, separated 1 c milk juice and zest of 2 lemons 1 tbsp butter, melted heat oven to 350°F (or the 'little flame' setting, if you're using my oven). butter 3 half-cup ramekins. combine flour, sugar and salt thoroughly in a bowl. mix together egg yolks, milk, lemon juice and zest in another bowl and add dry ingredients to wet to make loose batter. add butter (make sure to let it cool so it doesn't curdle the egg). beat egg whites until they form soft peaks and fold into batter gently but thoroughly. divide batter between ramekins and bake in a water bath for about a half hour or until top browns.

2005-11-20T17:26:00.000-05:00

welcome to episode #2 of fred's adventures in 8-bit gaming. gradius is a classic. it's a side-scroller, and you're a ship that as you go along gets more and more decked out with extra speed, shields, missiles, and lasers. you have to shoot various mechanical-looking enemies and dodge their variously-shaped projectiles to, i suppose, save the world. the game gets pretty tough, but one of the best features is an upgrade, similar to in galaga, where you get an enhancement that acts like an additional ship and doubles your firepower. in gradius you can get up to two of these at one time which is totally the high point of the game, although apparently in the arcade version you can get even more. yet another NES game that's gotten me completely hooked and has me looking forward to the sequels.

2005-11-17T09:04:00.000-05:00

blogging by mail ------> i've been very happy with the postal service lately (aside from joyce's -- let's assume it's lost now -- care package). maybe the planets and stars are aligned or something, but the US and italian postal systems have been working well in tandem to get the recent spate of packages i've had coming and going to their proper destinations, and all in one piece to boot. so i decided to take part in BBM#3, an international mail swap, with a bunch of other bloggers. food bloggers, for the most part. and my receiver just emailed to let me know she's received her package and wrote up a lovely post to describe what i sent. it's rather odd to see my handwriting on a stranger's table, thousands of miles away. and no, sorry, fred, i didn't take a photo of the contents, but linda did.

2005-11-17T00:40:00.000-05:00

etsy Have you ever been to etsy.com?? This site is amazing. It's basically a "open your own online store" site, but for crafters. This is fascinating for two reasons. One, back when I was doing lots of jewelry a few years ago, I wanted to sell my stuff online but there wasn't a cost efficient way to do so if you were looking at low volume sales. You either had a crappy storefront (ebay stores, your own store with a paypal shopping cart) or you paid a hefty monthly fee at Yahoo stores. Etsy is ebay costs but with a real storefront. The second is that it seems like the guys who invented this are really using this as a platform to show off the searching and tagging things that the stores are based around. There are all these crazy media-labbish interfaces where you can browse through the stores by color or most recently sold. Also, this site is only a few months old. I think this is brilliant. Also, this is getting me infected with a serious crafting bug. I can tell this will be bad news for my productivity..

2005-11-14T03:57:00.000-05:00

fall sweater, fall music. i meant to finish this ages ago, but it's just as well that i'm done now, when the last leaves are just barely hanging on. the inspiration: this is one of teva durham's designs from her amazing book. i love the unconventional tweaking, the beautiful shapes she comes up with and the edgy modernity she champions. despite all the hipsters knitting these days, as far as patterns go, there's still a glut of cheesy-ass old-lady knits out there. (who wants to wear a big ol' shapeless sack disguised as a cardigan with scottie-dog buttons?) plus, she's a st. louis native, which gets her big props. anyway, never able to quite follow any instructions properly, i used different yarn, a different gauge, made it shrunken as opposed to oversized, and moved some of the little motifs around. hers is much springier, mine is an homage to autumn. (and yes, i know i need a haircut.) on heavy, heavy rotation: wolf parade (thanks, isaac) the robot ate me and my most recent mix: always and never the same. 1. the national - secret meeting 2. clap your hands say yeah - over and over again (lost and found) 3. arcade fire - rebellion (lies) 4. feist - mushaboom 5. calexico/iron & wine - a history of lovers 6. animal collective - did you see the words 7. wolf parade - shine a light 8. josé gonzález - crosses 9. the mountain goats - palmcorder yajna 10. imogen heap - hide & seek 11. cocorosie - beautiful boyz 12. the go! team - get it together 13. the organ - brother 14. the robot ate me - on vacation 15. mice parade - focus on a roller coaster

2005-11-12T10:14:00.000-05:00

brown and crusty, just the way i like it. is it the weather? or am i just sick of produce with color? either way, lately my meals have been devoted to variations on earth tones (think caramelized, think maillard reaction, think tasty), or slow and low cooking in the pyroking clay vessel i inherited with my apartment. i love that pyroking. look what he makes me: these are the clay pot beans from john thorne's pot on the fire. a friend made these for me with borlotti (cranberry beans) last year, and i haven't been able to get them out of my mind since. i made mine with cannellini, as thorne suggests, but i actually like the borlotti better, so we're going to try that tonight. basically, you soak the beans for about 12 hours and then bring the liquid to a boil separately from the beans, put the oven on 200°F, add some olive oil, a few sage leaves, salt, pepper and crushed chile pepper, pour the hot bean juice all over it and let it sit for, oh, 4-5 hours, taking care that not a bubble breaks the surface. there's no bean boiling here -- it's all about coaxing the liquid into the beans when they're good and ready to take it. the beans become creamy and sweet and take on an almost molasses-y, meaty flavor all on their own, all the while maintaining their structural integrity. which is the important part. did i mention the delcious brown and crusty bits on the sides?

2005-11-10T12:40:00.000-05:00

I can't stop watching this Sony shot a commercial in San Francisco on my cousin's street. They sent 250,000 superballs down the hill and filmed it. The extended version of the ad in high-res is worth it, it just takes forever to load. It's absolutely stunning. There's also a 7 minute long "making of" movie which is cool if you ignore the talky parts. Sony BRAVIA - The Advert Extended hi-res commercial Behind the scenes movies

2005-11-10T03:25:00.000-05:00

sunday, schmunday. this one's worthy of a wednesday. suzanne goin's sunday suppers at lucques might just be my new favorite cookbook. not that i've gotten my hands on it yet. but the nytimes' piece about it yesterday gave us a few recipes, all of which look great to me, and two of which managed to derail carla and me from my chicken pot pie plans. [aside: the nyt's food section yesterday may have been one of their best in recent memory, restaurant reviews and other bullshit aside. i wanted to make every recipe i saw.] instead, we made goin's devil's chicken with braised leeks. and maybe we should have read a bit more closely (or read the article and recipes, period): we thought this was going to be an easy, quick dinner. but no, even double-teaming, this manages to be time-consuming and requires lots and lots of pots and pans and dishes, with a multiplicity of steps that could very well be done way in advance, if one has the foresight. but god, this mustard-vermouth coating and the bread crumbs drenched with brown butter make this totally worthwhile: first, the leeks have to be softened in a pan and then braised for a while in the oven, steeped in stock. when we saw this come out of the oven, we knew the finished dish was going to be a winner. after the chicken is browned thoroughly, it all gets a nice coating of this mustard-egg-vermouth-parsley-thyme mixture. yeah, this one's an action shot. we were afraid that the crumb topping would burn (particularly because i have no idea what the temperature is -- ever -- in my oven. and yes, i have an oven thermometer. and no, i don't use it.), so we basted it a little with all the excess stock/deglazed-chicken juice-yummies, which doesn't look quite as impressive maybe, but yields some extra flavorful and just as crunchy crumb crust. i suck at plating. but don't let that keep you from admiring the glorious results of our wednesday-night sunday supper (i also threw in some lentils i'd made the day before that i'd adulterated with lardo -- because really, i can't leave well enough alone). i think i'm going to have to buy this cookbook.

2005-11-09T12:54:00.000-05:00

foo, check out the L.A. Times' coverage.

2005-11-09T11:39:00.000-05:00

A narrow escape It appears that after two years of politically-induced stupor, Californians have finally snapped out of it. SFgate.com | THE SPECIAL ELECTION : CALIFORNIANS SAY NO TO SCHWARZENEGGER STATE MEASURES My favorite article from yesterday has to be the one about San Francisco voters grumbling as they go to the polls. The initiatives were somewhat close in the state overall, but went down in flames here. SFgate.com | SF voters show up, but they aren't smiling.