mushroom soup and gougeres

Last night I made the mushroom soup from Bourdain's Les Halles cookbook. To go with it, I made gougeres...basically pate a choux with gruyere cheese added. Nummy.

Serious Eats has the soup recipe here, so I won't re-post it. However, I did add a shallot along with the onion, and I used dried thyme instead of flat-leaf parsley. This doesn't make a whole lot of soup, so if you like to make soup and freeze the leftovers, you should probably double the recipe.


For the gougeres, I used the basic recipe from Ruhlman's Elements, and added shredded gruyere to the batter before piping it out...about a cup and a half or so. After piping them out, I sprinkled more cheese on top, then baked them at 450 for 8-10 minutes. Simple!



Everything was good, as far as I can tell. I was catching a bit of a funk last night, which is now full-fledged. According to Tony, the soup gets better the next day. Well how about 2 days later? I'm hoping I'll feel better tomorrow and can actually taste things.

coq au vin-breaking in the le creuset

The first dish I cooked in my Le Creuset had to be special. It sounds silly, but this is one of those kitchen pieces I have been wanting for so long. I needed a worthy initiation. What could be better to break in my classic French vessel than a classic French recipe? Coq au vin it was.

Now, there are a plethora of coq au vin recipes out there, from the simple, to the less simple, to the nostalgic classic. I, however, went straight for my copy of Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles cookbook. This is not a quick and simple recipe. It requires overnight marinating, 3 different pots/pans and several steps. But it's really not hard if you prepare and stay organized throughout the process. Plus, the recipe calls for 1 bottle plus 1 cup of red wine...so you have that remaining bottle to drink while you enjoy making classic, heart-warming cuisine!

It started with a chicken in a bath of red wine (every girl's dream, no?)...


the next day everything was the prettiest purple color.


well...not everything was purple. Here are the brown components, awaiting their fate. (Yes, those are lardons from our second batch of home-made bacon. I'm hooked! Must get more pork bellies to make more! I even gave some away as Christmas presents!)

the le creuset doin' it's thang:


Served up with some buttered egg noodles (admittedly I wimped out and used frozen...they were good, though!):


TOTALLY worth the effort. The flavors were so good together...the acid and fruity depth of the red wine, the salty bacon, the earthy mushrooms and the juicy chicken...there's a reason why this is a classic.

tiny toasts

I am actually making beef stock today, thanks to my new book. However I think I will just be finishing it right before I head out to my 10 year high school reunion (10 Years! Can you even believe it?). So, I won't get a chance to write all about it until tomorrow (when, hopefully, Jack will be using it for some French Onion soup!)

So here's what I ate while working on my stock today.

I love those little min-toasts. They are my favorite vehicle for brie and other soft cheeses and cheese spreads. They are simple...no powdery overly-herbed flavors. Just tiny toasted crunchy bread. Gorgeous.

I roasted some beef marrow bones along with soup bones for my stock. Once out of the oven, I couldn't help but scrape the tiny bit of marrow out of a couple of the bones to try it. Bone marrow is after all, what Tony Bourdain chose as his last meal for the new book My Last Supper: 50 Great Chefs and Their Final Meals / Portraits, Interviews, and Recipes by Melanie Dunea It's a neat book (and uh-oh! tony is nooood innit!) that's fun to read. Thought-provoking and drool-inducing...luckily they provide recipes AND restaurant names. For a really good preview of the book, check out Time magazine's slideshow. Anyway, although my marrow wasn't veal marrow, it was still a fantastic little nub of rich flavor. Sooo good. All I did was sprinkle some kosher salt on it and put it on a mini toast:



Although rich and delicious, one tiny toast with a little bone marrow does not a lunch make. A friend gave me some leftover cranberry chutney he had made. I don't have the recipe, but it was a spicy chutney. Yum! I pulled some meat off a store-bought smoked turkey leg and had myself a little thanksgiving teaser:




Okay, I gotta go add the veggies and aromatics to my stock and get all prettified to see my old pals.

well read, well fed (installment 8)-Summer reading for food lovers

One of my favorite parts of summer is lazy days spent reading by a pool or in a hammock or out on a porch at night with a glass of wine. Lately I've been reading all food-related books. Not cookbooks, but actual novels and memoirs that have food as a major focus. First, I'll go through the first 5 books I've read, then there's the list of books I hope to get to this summer, plus some other people's food book lists. Without further ado...


How to Cook a Tart, by Nina Killham

This book caught my eye from a random library shelf. It's Bright pink, first of all and has a giant fork on it. The name amuses me a little, too. I turned to the back to see the blurbs so I could get an idea of what this books was about. Lo and behold, one of the blurbs is from Anthony Bourdain:

- “How to Cook a Tart is gastro-porn – as if Julia Child and William Burroughs had a bastard child. It mercilessly harpoons foodies, gourmands, health freaks, dieters and food writers with great style and deadly accuracy. Filled with magnificent descriptions of the best of food, the novel left me questioning whether I should cook less and have more sex – or cook more, just with more butter. Dysfunctional family melodrama, biting satire, scathing indictment and a call to the barricades, How to Cook a Tart takes no prisoners.” –Anthony Bourdain’s blurb on the book jacket.

Maybe I'm overly obsessed with the dude, but a blurb from Tony worked on me. The book is a perfect pool-side reading book. Darkly funny, sensuous and full of drama. Jasmine, the main character, is a cookbook writer, her high-fat, butter and flavor filled dishes losing ground to trendy diet books. Her husband is obsessed with cleaning his colon and her daughter hardly eats at all. The tart in question is her husband's young mistress, a thin actress who is also obsessed with cleansing, and also protein. It's not my favorite book of this group, but worth a read, for sure. Here's an excerpt:

“When Daniel had first seen Jasmine at the American Café in Georgetown seventeen years ago, he walked right into the wall. It was her way with the tarragon chicken croissant in her hands, her intense concentration, her closed, rapturous eyes, the large salad and double chocolate brownie at her table patiently waiting their turn. After salvaging his tray, he grabbed his veggie sandwich, overflowing with righteous sprouts, and sat as closely to her table as possible. He sipped his Perrier and watched while the vision before him sucked like a Hoover at her straw of Coke. She wetted her finger and dabbed at the flaky remains of her croissant. She took a deep, satisfied sigh and looked up, catching him staring at her, and smiled. He, with a mouthful of cucumber, tomato, avocado, and wholegrain bread, nodded back. She then actually smacked her lips and drew forth her salad. Daniel watched in amazement as she forked her lettuce into her mouth as economically as filling a trash bag with trimmings. Finally, she stopped and began to chew, grinning over at him, her eyes mere slits left in a face enlarged by two busy cheeks. Daniel noticed by now that he was not the only one who gawked. Whole tables chewed silently, breathlessly watching as Jasmine, her salad a mere memory paused. She sat up straight and rolled her neck around to release any tension. She hiked up her shoulders to her ears one at a time as if getting ready for strenuous exercise. One last roll of her head and a beatific smile for the waitress who swerved by her table to grab her two exhausted plates. Jasmine then reached for her dessert and drew it close. She gazed at it, contemplating the melting ice cream flowing down to moisten the side of the decadent chocolate brownie, the thinning line of chocolate sauce which pooled into the white cream before disappearing to the bottom of the plate. She picked up a fork, mumbles something Daniel didn’t catch, and began to slide bites of drenched brownie methodically into her increasingly warm and chocolaty mouth.
She met his eyes as he approached, licking her lips. Without a word he sat down before her. She chewed on her lower lip and said nothing. Daniel reached over and gently removed the fork from her hand.
“I hope you saved some for me,” he said.
She smiled, her teeth brown and white like a Jersey cow.”

For more information:
New York Times Book Review of How to Cook a Tart.



Bento Box in the Heartland, My Japanese Girlhood in Whitebread America, a Food Memoir by Linda Furiya

Of course I had to read this, what with my new Bento Box and all. Stories of the children of Immigrants always fascinate me, especially in the small-town Midwest setting. Furiya tells of being embarrassed when her mom packed her a bento lunch and all she wanted was a plain ol' peanut butter sandwich so she could be like all the other first graders. But she always loved the traditional food her parents worked so hard to keep at the table. This took place in the 60's, so ethnic groceries were not really around in the Midwest, and supermarkets sis not yet have a large selection of international foods. One of the big themes in the book is the struggle to keep the kitchen stocked with Japanese food. This struggle led to family road trips, meeting new people, and huge packages from relatives in Japan.The book is filled with storytelling, identity struggles, family, coming-of-age, history, and some really yummy sounding recipes. It's a great read. Here's an excerpt:

“The first frost of the season was expected that night. In the vegetable garden, the last few hakusai cabbages were draped in plastic, and indication that our meals would be heavy with sweet, hearty leaves.
On a cold evening, the perfect end to a meal was a bowl of tamago gohan (rice and egg porridge). This rice porridge was my comfort food, like chicken noodle soup was for my friends. Japanese mother fed their children this porridge when they had a cold or were recovering from the flu. The essential flavors of the porridge came from the rich broth that remained after chicken-nabe, a one-pot chicken and Chinese cabbage dish
It was unusual for Dad to cook, but chicken-nabe was his specialty, and the ingredients and dark wintry weather at hand suited this meal. Like the yakiniku, chicken-nabe is a communal meal prepared at the table, where those joining in can help themselves to the cooked chicken parts and hakusai cabbage as the please.
The clay pot sat atop a butane-heated tabletop burner that kept the broth, precooked poultry, and vegetables piping hot. We ate in happy silence, savoring the tender chicken and silky cabbage, dipping it in a lush, lemony-salty soy dipping sauce. As dad prepared to make the porridge, the meal was just starting for me. I watched Dad, as if he were catching goldfish with a handheld net, slowly drag a slotted spoon across the golden broth to strain the remaining bits of chicken and cabbage. When it was clear of the meat and vegetable, Dad turned up the blue flame of the gas stove, bringing the broth to a rapid boil before adding the fresh steamed rice to the pot. Like Italian risotto, the rice porridge required long constant stirring to prevent scalding. It was the rhythm of the stirring that seemed to put Dad in the mood for storytelling.”

For more information:
-The blog “What Did You Eat?” reviews the book and cooks one of the recipes from it, Roasted Pork Tenderloin
-Linda Furiya’s food columns from The San Francisco Chronicle



A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway is one of those writers I always feel like I should read more. A fascinating character, what with his six-toed cats in Key West and all. I remember reading The Old Man and the Sea when I was younger, because I loved the movie so. But other than that, my Hemingway repertoire is quite lax. A Moveable Feast was published a couple of years after he committed suicide. It's pretty much a semi-fictional memoir of the time he spent in Paris with his first wife. It was right before he got famous, and had him interacting with a circle of other famous authors of the time, like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein. The book makes for good summer reading, because the prose are straight-forward, and the picture painted of Paris is one of lively cafes and interesting characters, and of course wine and cocktails galore. Here's an excerpt:

“I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out. It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people doing something that they understood. At the end of the Ile de la Cite below the Pont Neuf where there was the statue of Henri Quatre, the island ended in a point like the sharp bow of a ship and there was a small park at the water’s edge with fine chestnut trees, huge and spreading, and in the currents and back waters that the Seine made flowing past, there were excellent places to fish. You went down a stairway to the park and watched the fishermen there and under the great bridge. The good spots to fish changed with the height of the river and the fishermen used long, jointed, cane poles but fished with very fine leaders and light gear and quill floats and expertly baited the piece of water that they fished. They always caught some fish, and often they made excellent catches of the dace-like fish that were called goujon. They were delicious fried whole and I could eat a whole plateful. They were plump and sweet-fleshed with a finer flavor than fresh sardines even, and were not at all oily, and we ate them bones and all.
One of the best places to eat them was at an open-air restaurant built out over the river at Bas Meudon where we would go when we had money for a trip away from our quarter. It was called La Peche Miraculeuse and had a splendid white wine that was sort of a Muscadet. It was a place out of a Maupassant story with the view over the river as Sisly had painted it. You did not have to go that far to goujon. You could get a very good friture on the Ile St.-Louis.
I knew several of the men who fished the fruitful parts of the Seine between the Ile St.-Louis and the Place du Verte Galente and sometimes, if the day was bright, I would buy a liter of wine and a piece of bread and some sausage and sit in the sun and read one of the books I had brought and watch the fishing.”

For more information:
-Washington Post review/article on the book
-Another excerpt



Bread Alone, by Judith Ryan Hendricks

I didn't have high expectations for this book. I was afraid it would be a bit to "chick-lit" for my taste. It had those aspects...woman going through a divorce, her ad-exec rich hubby dumping her for a younger prettier advertising associate. Yada Yada. However, I ended up really getting into the book. It made me want to hole up in a quaint cottage and bake bread. And I don't bake! So yeah, there's the heartbreak and the romance and "girl-power!" finding yourself of it all, but it's invigorating, inspiring and a good read. An excerpt:

“It wasn’t until I went to France that I tasted bread that wasn’t full of additives and air. It was like a religious conversion for me. In fact, it’s kind of like sex – one of those things that everyone thinks they know all about and they tell you how great it is, but which is actually pretty uninspiring until you have it one time the way nature intended it to be.
So, the first thing I do is cut the yeast in half. You don’t want the dough to set a new land-speed record. What you want is a long, slow rise to build the kind of texture and flavor that make people think you paid $5.95 for this loaf at the European Gourmet Bakery.
I combine the yeast with the water in a large crockery bowl, stir in the sugar, and let it sit for a few minutes while I measure the flour into another bowl. Then I stir the flour with the only big spoon I can find in this pitifully underequipped kitchen. When it clumps together and pulls away from the sides of the bowl, I turn it out on the counter and knead it for ten minutes, adding just enough flour to keep it moving. Then I knead in the salt. Dead last. Because salt strengthens the gluten and makes the dough fight you.
When it’s smooth and elastic enough to spring back when I poke it, I oil a big bowl, slosh the dough around in it, making sure the entire surface is oiled. Then I put a damp towel over it and set it as far from the stove as I can. Someplace like a wine cellar would be nice, but CM doesn’t have one of those. I put it on her dining room table.
With half the yeast, it’ll take twice as long to rise, so I pour myself a glass of sauvignon blanc and start scraping dough off the counter.
The scent of yeast hanging in the air reminds me of my levain and the day that David came to my apartment with the Nixon mask and a pizza. The sharpness of longing I feel takes me somewhat by surprise. Maybe CM was right. Maybe I would be better off without him. But then why do I feel like howling right now? Why do I want to touch his face, smell him, feel his body against me?

For more information:
-Reviews of Bread Alone at the author's website
-Another excerpt



The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine, by Steven Rinella

This book could definitely not be confused with "chick-lit." A memoir by Rinella about his quest to prepare a feast using recipes from Auguste Escoffier's Le Guide de Culinare...using mostly game that he has hunted himself throughout the United States. The book is so interesting...taking you throughout America on hunting quests for big game like Elk and Ram, as well as very small game like the elusive squab and plentiful sparrow. Though I wouldn't recommend this book to people who are squeamish about where meat comes from, I would recommend to anyone who wants to learn alot about types/cuts of meat, nature, conservation, fish, travel, farming and cooking. It really was eye-opening for me, a suburban girl who refuses to touch a gun. I have become more and more intriqued with offal lately, and Escoffier's recipe call for lots of it. Caul fat, sweet meats, bladders, livers, hearts, etc. And although he is hunting these animals, you get such a sense of the respect Rinella has for them and for nature. He's not hunting for sport, although most of his hunts seem quite thrilling. He's hunting to eat, and even to contribute the natural order of life. And he's having exciting, often funny adventures doing it. Here's one of my favorite excerpts:

"When you go on a big trip with a group of people, you feel a bond with them that lasts for months or even years. The bond is especially strong if it's a dangerous sort of trip, like canoeing in white water or hiking into a particularly sketchy and remote piece of wilderness. I think that bond forms because the people in the group know they're doing something new and perhaps uncomfortable, and they associate their fellow participants with that great rush that comes from being brave, from going all the way out. That first day's Escoffier meal was the only time I felt a bond like that form inside a house. My friends felt the bond, too. Our rented dinner table had been like a runaway raft, taking us into a crazy, uncharted gorge full of rare tastes and strange smells. Rather than run away, or feign lack of interest, my friends dug in and went for it. And they all came out on the other side, laughing and having a good time. And we still had two meals to go."

For more information:
-Review of A Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine at Bookslut
-Another excerpt from NPR

So that's where I am so far in my summer reading. Here are some books that are on my list to read for the rest of the summer, thanks to lots of internet/blog browsing:

-Educating Peter by Letie Teague, via not martha

-Climbing the Mango Trees by Madhur Jaffrey, via Full Belly

-Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany, by Bill Buford, via Cooking for Engineers

-The Debt to Pleasure: A Novel by John Lanchester via New York Magazine

-Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, by Elizabeth Gilbert, via NPR

-Comfort Food: A Novel by Noah Ashenhurst, via Amazon Listmania

-Little Earthquakes, by Jessica Weiner, via Bookslut

-Crescent, by Diana Abu-Jabar, via Brownie Points

-The Zen of Fish, by Trvor Corson, via Will Work for Food

As if that weren't a big enough pile of books for one little summer, check out some more food book lists:

A long ilist of Food-related books on Cooking.com

Albany Public Library’s “Book Appetit” List

A list of culinary novels

A thread on favorite food books on Serious Eats

also, check out past intallments of my Well Read, Well Fed feature for more good books about food.

Happy Summer reading (and eating)!

Well Read, Well Fed (Installment 7)

I recently finished reading Micheal Ruhlman's book Soul of a Chef. I had first heard of Ruhlman when Anthony Bourdain had him as his sidekick on the fabulous Las Vegas episode of No Reservations.I also enjoy reading Ruhlman's blog pretty regularly.

Soul of a Chef has 3 parts. The first follows a group of chefs taking the Certified Master Chef exam. This is a thorough, grueling 10-day culinary test that very few Chef's have passed. Reading about it via Ruhlman is amazing. The emotion and skill of the candidates, the toughness of the judges. I'm always intrigued by people who are so into what they do. Those who choose to take the CMC do so on their own time and money, for a distinction that is well-respected and impressive, but not at all necessary to be a successful chef.

In the second part of the book, Ruhlman hangs out with chef Micheal Symon at his restaurant in Cleveland, Lola Bistro. Micheal is young and successful. His is a more laid-back casual style of cooking/eating. People love his food and his personality. This part of the book is more about the pleasure of food... versus the technique and formality of the CMC.

The third part of the book was the most intriguing to me. Micheal spent time with Thomas Keller at his super-famous French Laundry. Keller is did not go to Culinary school. Ruhlman traces Keller's footsteps to becoming the world-famous, well-respected chef he is today. And now I seem to be obsessed with Thomas Keller and the French Laundry. It's now a new travel destination dream for me. The food sounds amazing, and the way the kitchen works and how Keller thinks/works is so interesting and inspiring. I've since looked through the French Laundry Cookbook. It's intimidating to me, especially after reading how detail-oriented Keller is. I don't know that I'd want to attempt one of his recipes in my haphazard home-cook ways after knowing how much care and thought he puts into food, and how much every little thing makes a difference. It is a good cookbook, though, if you're not a scardey-cat like me. The in-between chapters on basics are very informative, and the whole thing is just gorgeous to look through.

One blogger, Carol, isn't intimidated, though. She couldn't get reservations, so she decided to cook EVERY recipe in the French Laundry cookbook. She's crazy, and kind of my hero. This girl did get a chance to eat there. Sounds wonderful, and she has some tips on how to get in there. It's not exclusive or anything, just small and very popular.

It's been like a week and a half since I've finished the book and started trying to write a post about it, but I can't seem to write about it properly. It's a great book and you should read it. I'll tell ya that much. It's too much for me to go into deeply, I think. There were lots of very eye-opening/thought provoking/exciting moments. You just need to read it, that's all.

Here's the part where Ruhlman interviews Keller's mushroom lady, Connie Greene:

When Connie first had dinner at the French Laundry, not long after it opened, she knew something unusual was afoot in the kitchen. She had come with two friends, and when one course appeared endowed with a nautical theme, complete with a flagpole skewer onto which was hoisted a flag like sauteed duck kidney, she wanted to laugh. "There seemed to be some kind of irony that was going on," Connie recalled, "some kind of inside joke. It was as if the beauty of the food weren't enough." And then it struck her like a gong; she knew the truth. "Thomas Keller," she said, "Is Dr. Seuss's illegitimate child."

Those two observations–Dr. Seuss (what post-World War II American childhood was not filled with Dr. Seuss?) and inside irony–were new to me, but I sensed immediately she was right. They provided the key.

Reichl's review had made special note of a dish Keller called oysters and pearls, a sabayon–a savory custard, really–with pearl tapioca, an oyster, and caviar. I'd eaten this dish, and it made me laugh, not just a chuckle bu an extended, quiet laughing, as if someone was telling me a hilarious story. I had been dining solo, so I probably looked no different from a person you see on a park bench carrying on an animated conversation with himself.

When I hung out in the kitchen, there was time for brief exchanges with Keller before he walked off to put something away, to get something, to take a phone call, or answer any number of questions from his cooks. I asked him why he thought to put an oyster in tapioca pudding. He said, "Certain things you just know." When I pressed, he said "It's just logical."

I said, "Putting an oyster in tapioca is not a logical thing to do."

"For me it was," he said.
"How?"
"Tapioca, pearls," he said. "Where do pearls come from? Pearls come from oysters, right? So to me it's completely logical. How does is taste to you?"
I asked, "What do you think?"
"I've never tasted it," he said.
"Excuse me?"
"I know that's not a good thing for me to say," he confessed. "But I know it tastes good. You don't have to stick your hand in fire to know it's hot." And he headed out of the kitchen towards the walk-in.

Oysters and pearls is a very sensual, perhaps sexual dish, what with the aphrodisiacal oyster, the creamy-slippery mouth feel, the rich sabayon, the pearls, the salty-fishy-ocean perfume of the caviar, But it can seem plain silly as well.

Awesome! Also? I can't resist sharing this part where Ruhlman recalls the best food he's ever tasted...a calf's brain prepared by Keller:

Offal was the true test of the chef. If you could take organ meats and transform them into exquisite dishes, that was cooking. My Webster's dictionary defines offal as "(1) waste parts; esp. entrails, etc. of a butchered animal (2) refuse;garbage."

Keller had made a tasting menu, then, of "garbage," eight courses of it for seventy bucks.

He began this with the truffle custard, here served with a sweetbread ragout. Next, a crispy medallion on calf's brain with a celeriac puree and black truffles. (I eventually had Keller's calf brain, and it was so good I almost tipped over in my chair at Table Five in the middle of dinner, slowly and to the side, as though I'd been turned into concrete from euphoric surprise. I later told Keller how good it tasted and remarked on how hot the thing was when it got to the table. He smiled and said, "I know. Brain stays hot forever. It's like tar." Now that I think of it, far away from Keller and the French Laundry, I can't name any dish anywhere ever that has been better. That, I realize now, in contended retrospect, was the best dish I have ever eaten. It had a delicious crisp exterior and fatty, molten, succulent interior. It was extraordinary. Calf's brain. "Garbage.")

seriously. go get the book and read it for yourself.

the king of fruits

Friday I got the opportunity to cut open and taste a durian fruit! I was so excited. After seeing them on TV and reading Anthony Bourdain's experience with this exotic stinky fruit, I couldn't believe I was face-to-face with one here in Missouri! I had the honor of opening the thing. It was very spikey and hurt my delicate hands a bit, but I toughed it out and stabbed a huge knife through it, at one of the seams, cutting it in half. The smell got stronger once it was opened, and the insides looked like soft organs of some sort. I scooped a piece of the smelly flesh up and tasted it. Despite reports, it kind of does taste a little like it smells. But, yummier. Very yummy in fact. Creamy and silky like some kind of custard. The taste was kind of like over ripe melon, stinky cheese and and aftertaste of green onions. Yeah! Green Onion! Crazy!!!

So, another fun food to cross off the list! Oh, and coincidentally, when I got home that evening, I saw that Slashfood had a post about durian cupcakes! I don't know about getting a durian and bringing it home, though. Maybe in the summer, when I can have an outdoor picnic. The smell is really pungent. Oh, and the burps? Eeek! To learn lots more about this very interesting "King of Fruits," check out the best durian webpage I've come across so far, Durian Palace.

And since it was where I first heard of durian, here's the bit from Anthony Bourdain's A Cook's Tour:

"I knew it was close. I could smell it. The fabled durian fruit. You can smell it a hundred yards away. Imagine a big green menacingly spiked football - only it exudes an unforgettable, gassy, pungeant, decomposing smell. It's an odor that hangs over markets and produce stalls all over Asia. It is said to be delicious. I was intrigued. Expensive, ugly, difficult to transport - it's against the law to take durian on most planes, buses, and trains - it is said to be one of the most prized delicacies of the East. I had to try it. I bought a nice big one; it looked much like the relatively benign jackfruit, except spikier. I'd planned on taking it back to the hotel, but after ten minutes in the car with the reeking, foul-smelling object, the crew were crying for mercy. We had to pull over by Wat Phnom, a pagoda and park in the center of town, where, under the watchful eye of an elephant, I carved up my durian, sawing through thick skin and cutting myself on the stegasauruslike armor. God it stank! It smelled like you'd buried somebody holding a big wheel of Stilton in his arms, then dug hime up a few weeks later. After sawing through the skin, I pulled apart the fibrous yellowy pulp, exposing, around the avocado-sized pits, lobes of cheesy, gooey, spreadable material that looked very much like whole foie gras. The smell inside was less intense. I took a thick smear of the stuff - it had the consitency of a ripe St. Andre - and was shocked. It was fantastic. Cheesy, fruity, rich, with a slightly smoky background. Imagine a mix of Camambert cheese, avacodo, and smoked Gouda. OK, don't. That's not a very good description. But tasting the stuff, one struggles for words. It didn't taste anything like it smelled; the flavor was much less assertive, and curiously addictive. Durian was one of the first truly 'new' flavors I'd encountered - unlike anything else in its uniqueness, its difficulty. Remember the first time you tasted caviar? Or foie gras? Or a soft ripened cheese? There's that same sense of recognition that you're in new and exciting territory. You may not love it right away, but you know you've tasted something important and intriquing."

yes! yes! yes!

Anthony Bourdain sounds off on Food Network Personalities. Good stuff. Right on. Hilarious. Especially the parts about Rachael Ray and Sandra Lee. Here'w what he says about Sandra:

"Pure evil. This frightening Hell Spawn of Kathie Lee and Betty Crocker seems on a mission to kill her fans, one meal at a time. She Must Be Stopped. Her death-dealing can-opening ways will cut a swath of destruction through the world if not contained. I would likely be arrested if I suggested on television that any children watching should promptly go to a wooded area with a gun and harm themselves. What’s the difference between that and Sandra suggesting we fill our mouths with Ritz Crackers, jam a can of Cheez Wiz in after and press hard? None that I can see. This is simply irresponsible programming. Its only possible use might be as a psychological warfare strategy against the resurgent Taliban--or dangerous insurgent groups. A large-racked blonde repeatedly urging Afghans and angry Iraqis to stuff themseles with fatty, processed American foods might be just the weapon we need to win the war on terror."

Brilliant.

And here are his thoughts on the Top Chef contestants. I love how he talks about Mikey. Adorable!

Naked in Italy

I was watching No Reservations the other night *of course* and what came on but a commercial for a new show, which starts tonight. This got me very excited and happy. Why? Because it’s a new JAMIE OLIVER show! We have not been getting enough Jamie Oliver here in the states for a looooong time. TLC showed his “School Dinners” show one week, but that was it.

The new show is “Jamie’s Great Italian Escapes” and it’s on tonight (Wednesday) at 7 (central). Dare I forgo my embarrassing habit of watching America’s Next Top Model? I think that I should. Jamie is much much better for my brain.

This reminds me, a month ago or so someone sent me an e-mail with a Word document attached which claimed to be Jamie Oliver’s new cookbook “Naked Chef 2.” It said it was released by an angry insider at the publisher before the book was to be rsomethingr aomething. The word document is indeed filled with more than 100 Jamie Oliver recipes (I recognized some of them from teevee), but I hadn’t heard anything about a so-called “Naked Chef 2,” so I put my goodies gumshoe hat on and, well, I just checked it out at Snopes.com. Yeah, they are all Jamie Oliver recipes, but it’s not an actual book. Someone just compiled a bunch of his recipes, which were available all over the internet already, and put them on one document.

And remember, TONIGHT! New show! *squeeeee!*

obsessed much?

I'm almost done with Anthony Bourdain's Nasty Bits. I should have finished a long time ago, but I think I'm really putting it off because I love it so much I don't want it to end!

At least I can get more Anthony from all the interviews he's doing. Here's two really good ones:

Interview with Powell's Books.

Interview with Salon. you have to watch a Honda commercial to read the whole thing, but Tony's well worth it. Here's a little blurb to convince you:

Salon:You've said that the U.S. should open the borders to let more workers from countries to the south of us get work and populate the kitchens.

Anthony:[Laughs.]

S:Am I getting that right?

A:Ooh, I got a lot of mail over that. Listen, in 25 years, I don't remember ever seeing an American-born kid of any income level walk into my restaurant, or any restaurant owned by any of my friends, and ask, Do you have a dishwasher job, or a prep job, or a job for a kitchen porter? We're not willing to do it. If somebody else wants to come over here and do it, that's fine with me.

And yeah, I think we should open our borders, for a variety of reasons. First of all, we've got plenty of work for people, apparently. People say "they're taking our jobs" -- well, no one's asking for those jobs.

I also like the idea of people from other places coming to our country and multiplying. It makes for better food, higher expectations, more diversity and cuter people. Foreigners should come to our country and have sex with our womenfolk.

S:Hey, why can't they come have sex with our menfolk?


A:That, too!

nasty bits *swoon*

Check out this great interview with Anthony Bourdain on Bookslut.

"All I can say is, do anything to get yourself into that position of being lost and letting things… like eating, travel should be largely submissive. As opposed to cooking, which is not that at all. Let things happen to you, good things and bad things. It’s almost invariably rewarding. And of course, avoid the hotel, avoid Western food, if you see other Westerners, run away. Avoid backpacks, maybe dreadlocks is not a good choice for you if you’re a white guy. Forget who you are. You’re never going to melt into Asia. They won’t have you completely. But that’s okay. You can love them, and you can love Asia, and Asia will love you back."

I'm so smitten.

devour a book

I'm just finishing up Anthony Bordain's latest novel (not a book about food, but you can see the chef coming through in certain parts). He's one of my favorite writers, food writers specifically. A Cook's Tour and Kitchen Confidential are definite must-reads for any foodie. I'd like to explore food writing (not cook books) some more, so this week theme is "Food Writing and the Writers who write about food."

Both Bookslut and I Was Just Really Very Hungry have posted recently about writer MFK Fischer. I've read some of her stuff, specifically in a food-writing anthology (name?). After those 2 blog posts, I must read more.

Outlaw Cook is an iteresting food journal.

A zine for food writers...in case you wanna get into it. Good info.

Art Of Eating Looks to be a neat literary food journal (printed). You can read excerpt articles here.

An (long) interesting article about food writing...how it's changed through the years, where it's at now, what it's all about.

A good list of food-related books. Gonna have to check some of these out!

Food quotes (many by authors).

Leites Culinaria's list of the 20 best food books of 2004. I love lists!

Reading and food...two of my favorite things. Both activities than can be ordinary...if you let them. But I find them both to be enriching experiences. So much to learn, and enjoy! Do you have any food book recommendations?

don't ask me i don't give a damn, the next stop is vietnam!

For my birthday a couple weeks ago my mom treated me to lunch at one of my most favorite places...Mekong Vietnamese restaurant on S. Grand. Oh how I love Vietnamese food. I had a spicy beef stew with noodles. It looked a lot like this:


looks good, huh? Well, lemmetellya it WAS. very. We also had spring rolls (of course), and since it was my birthday I got a free order of fried bananas! My first fried bananas, by the way, and they were yummy! Rich and crunchy and covered with honey.

So this weeks theme is the cuisine of Vietnam.

If you haven't read Anthony Bordain's book A Cook's Tour, you should (and the show on the food network was one of the best tv shows ever!). now. It's chapters on Vietnam are wonderful. Makes you want to go there and try all these interesting and delicious foods. From an an interview with Bordain:

Dave: Vietnam, of all the places you traveled, blew you away.

Bourdain: I fell in love with the country. I was enchanted. I was just so gonzo over the place.

Dave: Did you make a number of trips there, or are the chapters in A Cook's Tour part of one extended visit?

Bourdain: One trip. I chopped it up province by province and sprinkled it throughout the book to give it some kind of balance. I was so unrestrained in my admiration for the people, the country, and the food; it was such a disproportionately ecstatic buzz that it would have tilted the whole book had I written it in one piece.

The history of Pho. From a really neat website that has all kinds of Vietnamese food info, like a collection of articles and advice from mama.

I have not seen or tried one of these Vietnamese sandwiches, but OMG they look good! I'm gonna have to keep my eye out.

Vietnam photo essays.

Listmania list of good Vietnam related books to read.

Wikipedia entry on Vietnamese cuisine. Always a good place to start.

I encourage you to explore this cuisine. It's one of my favorites. Diverse, healthy, interesting. And if you ever have a chance to attend a traditional Vietnamese wedding, do it. 12 courses. yes 12. I went to one years ago, and it was one of the best food experiences I've ever had.