February 2005 Archives
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Pop Life
I'm excited and just a smidge skeptical -- Robert Sietsema reviews a new Isaan place in Fresh Meadows. My mama's from that region of Thailand and good Isaan eats send me into fits. I'm ready to be disappointed, but I gotta try it. Who's with me?
Zabb
71-28 Roosevelt Avenue
Jackson Heights, Queens
718.651.4354
NY Daily News pulls through with a nice article on citrus fruits. There are some great looking recipes, including a very exciting Kumquat Mojito recipe that I would love to make for a summer cocktail party.
I was at a dinner party at my friend Julie's house this weekend and we were discussing the merits and demerits of the Meyer lemon, which Amanda Hesser once said should replace regular lemons. One guest at the dinner party said that he loves Meyer lemonade, but that he wouldn't just substitute Meyer lemons for regular lemons. I couldn't agree more. Meyers are a different creature. They lack that zing that makes lemons, well, lemony. But the Meyer Lemon souffle recipe the NYDN suggests sounds like a great vehicle for the milder fruit.
I love eating citrus in winter -- they're like little shots of sunshine. Though it seems counter-intuitive, citrus fruits are actually a winter crop. I once helped production on an audiobook for teens that took place on a Florida orange grove. One fun fact I learned from the book was that in the winter, the trees have to be hosed down to keep the tree temperature level at 32 degrees (the freezing point of water). Otherwise, the tree is susceptible to cracking and death. Who knew?!
Here's a fun (though slightly confusing) recipe for Thai Pomelo Salad (about half way down the page). Just mix all the ingredients together, you can't really go wrong.
I rented Super Size Me and just finished watching it for the second time. Loved it. Worshipped it. So funny, so infuriating, so well done. Go rent it. And don't eat the McGriddle.
One of the most striking subjects of the film was the heavy marketing of convenience foods to children. My high school sold Taco Bell Chilitos and Bean Burritos for lunch. My daily diet often consisted of a warm Otis Spunkmeyer chocolate chip cookie and a small fountain Coke for breakfast (yeah, I know, I know) and a Bean Burrito or a heat lamp pastrami sandwich for lunch. You'd be hard pressed to find anything green or fresh for lunch, except the occasional mealy red apple. How can kids make the right decisions about food when there aren't any good choices offered by the schools? It's like telling kids to stay off drugs and then selling crack and smack in the cafetorium at recess. Sure, they don't HAVE to spend money on the crack and smack, but all their friends are buying; besides, it's SO UNCOOL to brown-bag homemade crystal.
Anyway, watch it. Morgan Spurlock, you are a good man with a very cool name.
P.S. The film features an interview with a fat French lady who refers to McDonald's as "Mac-Doo".
In Consider the Oyster, M.F.K. Fisher says:
"Then an oyster will taste like what the taster expects, which of course depends entirely on the taster. Myself, since I was seventeen I have expected all oysters to be delicious, and with few exceptions they have been. In the same way, some people wait, if they manage to swallow these shell-fish at all, to gag more or less violently. And they gag."
I gratefully, rapturously, enthusiastically fall into the former category, though I only started eating raw oysters a few years ago. My maternal grandfather (bless his soul) passed away after ingesting parasites in raw fish, so my mother and her siblings all have an understandable aversion to raw flesh. But when I was a freshman in college, my cousin Lynda splurged and took me to a sushi place in Rockridge where I experienced raw fish for the first time. I can't say that I took to it immediately, as I had been conditioned for my whole life to think of sushi consumption as a flirtation with death and illness. But once my raw fish cherry was popped, sushi became a gateway drug that led to heart-pounding adventures with beef tartares, raw egg batters, lime-cured ceviches, pinkish pork tenderloins, and eventually, the glorious oyster.
If you've never had an oyster, I don't think anyone could describe the experience better than M.F.K. Fisher has, so I encourage you to read about oysters in her words.
I gave oysters plenty of consideration tonight over dinner with my dear friend Dottie at the Grand Central Oyster Bar, a New York treasure. It has become our special date place, and the pleasure of slurp-and-chomping a dozen briny creatures down is intensified when you're with someone who shares enthusiasm for oysters. We always sit in the warm, festive Saloon area at one of the red checkered cloth covered tables, settling our stomachs with a warm bowl of their thick, starchy New England Clam Chowder. Then the oysters come on their sparkly beds of ice and kelp, and we attack.
I'm no purist when it comes to the oyster -- I love 'em stewed, I love 'em fried, and boy, do I love 'em raw. With raw oysters, I tend to go crazy with the condiments. I start with a squirt of lemon, then I add plenty of horseradish and tabasco to the cocktail sauce and dab a little of the red mixture on the oyster, and finally I anoint it all with some mignonette. When Doug and I went to Blue Ribbon, they had an additional condiment, some salsa verde kind of thing with peppers and onion or shallots, which I happily dabbed on as well. I'm always overwhelmed by the GCOB's extensive selection of oysters, so I thought it would be fun to share my descriptions and ratings of the specimens we chose tonight, for your future reference and mine. A note: Dottie won't eat oysters from Long Island -- she prefers oysters from cleaner, colder waters, and since I'm trying to be just like Dottie, I don't either. Here were our picks for tonight's plate:
Chedabucto (Nova Scotia) -- Medium size, sweet shallow flesh with gentle salinity. Gray oblong pearly shell. Dottie's favorite. ****
Kumamoto (Oregon) -- Always bite-size in a small scalloped gray and white cup. Buttery sweet flesh with gentle salinity. My all time favorite oyster. ****
Imperial Eagle Creek (British Columbia) -- My wild card pick. On the small side but bigger than the Kumamoto in a frilly, deep white shell. Fleshy and sweet with medium salinity. Pretty good. ***
Malpeque (Prince Edward Island) -- Medium size, more slurpy than other oysters. Shallow gray shell with thin flesh. Assertive salinity. Nice texture, but saltier than the Malpeques I had at Blue Ribbon. Dottie didn't like this one, but I would give Malpeques another chance. ***
Raspberry Point (Prince Edward Island) -- Medium size, pretty much the same as the Malpeques but considerably saltier. Dottie didn't like this one so much either. **
Windy Bay (Alaska) -- Dottie thought that since these were in colder waters, they'd be smaller, but they were the largest oyster we ordered. A good four inches of oyster, quite fleshy, with a creamy sweetness and medium salinity. It had a little sea urchin-like flavor. I prefer my oysters to be single bites, so I'll give this one **.
Newport Cup (Rhode Island) -- Dottie's wild card pick. Medium large in a deep cup. Interesting mineral sweetness, not metallic. Quite fleshy with medium salinity. ***
I love me some oysters. I hope to eat more before the months with "R" in them come to an end, so I'll amend this guide as I assess more of them. Happy slurping!
****
From Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway:
Dianne Wiest's character to John Cusack's character: "You stand on the brink of greatness. The world will open to you like an oyster. No...not like an oyster. The world will open to you like a magnificent vagina!"
Have you ever bought blood oranges, only to be vexed by the fact that the fruits you paid top dollar for aren't any bloodier than your everyday Valencia? Despite the fact that the kid in the fruits section of your supermarket assured you that even though it looked like a normal orange on the outside, it would be bloody on the inside?
Sadly, not all blood oranges give you that deep bloody color, and for me, it's all about that shock of dark garnet flesh. The fruit itself is not as sweet as a Navel or Valencia, nor as complex as a good tangelo or clementine. The flavor is a cross between that of a Navel orange and a less tart pomegranate.
The market may get whole flats of blood oranges that are only as bloody as a pink grapefruit. Even from the best purveyors, only a few of the fruits get that deep coloration. So what's the secret to picking perfect, deep maroon blood oranges? Check out the skin. The more red blotches on the skin, the more red the pulp. I know it sounds too easy, but believe me, I spent plenty of time cutting those suckers open in the interest of science (sorry, Whole Foods).
Here's a recipe for Jody Williams' Insalata d'Arancia from New York mag.
This is so funny. Okay, I'm mean. But it's funny. You're going to laugh too, my friend, so as they say on Gawker, see you in hell!
*petebrush via Lindsayism
Sweet and wonderful Etsuko, owner of Soy, one of my favorite places to eat in NYC, mentioned me in her blog! Because I mentioned her in my blog! Let the mutual appreciation society meeting come to a close. My polaroid is up on her wall -- that makes me feel like a local more than anything else.
A couple of weeks ago, my friend Donna read this French Women Don't Get Fat book and told me she really enjoyed it.
But I have to admit that I'm skeptical. It's not that I don't trust Donna's opinion, or that I have something against the Frenchies. It's just that it seems like an advice book, and I don't like taking advice. From anyone.
But I was curious about what the general population had to say about the book, especially given our current Freedom Fries political climate. And what better place to find out what the people think than the Amazon.com user reviews:
From someone who lives in France..., February 8, 2005
| Reviewer: | S. Lisa (France) - See all my reviews |
Ironically, this book is not published in France (at least not yet), now I wonder why ? Talk about cliché, it sounds like this woman left France in the 1950's and never came back since. I can guarantee you that no more women in this country spend week ends eating leek soup than anywhere else in the world and there is plenty of fast food being consumed here. Though there are perhaps a few less overweight people here than in some other countries, there are still plenty of them and the number is steadily growing. And I certainly wouldn't describe french diet as an ideal to aim at.
One thing that IS UNMISTAKABLY french is the author's ARROGANCE about the superiority of everything french.
Dear S.Lisa,
1. Obviously, French people don't need lessons on how to be French; so why would the book be published in France?
2.. If French people suck so much, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING IN FRANCE?
a tasty treat for the mind, January 25, 2005
| Reviewer: | Friendly Neighbor "Darryl" (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews |
There are indeed many things to be said vis a vis this book, which may indeed be effective at connoting the human condition. However, I must deduct one star for the offensive subtext, for such material is of, in fact, a prurient nature.
Dear Friendly Neighbor "Darryl",
Could you speak American? And lay off the thesaurus, buddy.
Based on a misconception, January 21, 2005
| Reviewer: | Cladinoro (The Eastern States) - See all my reviews |
I'm
one of the many people who has wholeheatedly embraced the fashion for
Frenchness. Any link to France, however indirect or vague, will always
get me in. I love it when people use French words in conversation, or
insist upon the inherent superiority of French cuisine. I'm fascinated
by people's accounts of their travels in France and Paris (which,
despite the ignorance of some, is actually IN France), and really
appreciate the fact that people tend to like to recount them at great
length. I treat books like "Almost French" almost as my guide to life,
having burnt out on Tuscany a while ago, along with everyone else
(that's in Italy). My wholehearted embrace of the idea of "France" as a
fashion accessory serves me well in the social circles with which I'm
acquainted (originally a French word).
This book does a good job of catering to my superficial
fascination for all things "a la Francoise", but suffers from one fatal
defect. Although I have never been to France or met any French people,
I have seen plenty of photos, and from these it can easily be
ascertained that, contrary to this book's most prominent claim, there
are, in fact, quite a significant number of fat French women. Of
course, "fat" itself is not such a vulgar concept in France, where,
according to my Francophilic acquaintances, folk prefer to refer to the
overweight as "fillesse des osseau grande". It has so much more style
in French...
In summary, I give this book a gallic deux stelle.
Cladinoro mon coqueluche,
Doug doesn't think you're for real. But I know c'est vrai. Paris is DEFINITELY in France.
We've been had., February 6, 2005
| Reviewer: | Evelyn Uyemura "explorer" (Torrance, CA USA) - See all my reviews
|
Why is it that here in the USA, we call food that no Frenchwoman would eat "French" fries and "French" toast? I'm guessing they don't eat "French" onion soup with an inch of rubbery cheese either. And they probably don't eat green bean casserole with "French" fried onion ring thingies in and on it as a holiday treat.
Actually I haven't read this book, but I do notice that most people in most countries, except maybe Samoa, are in better shape than most of us. Perhaps we ought to finally figure out why.
Dear Evelyn "explorer",
First of all, frites, pain perdu, onion soup with gruyere -- hate to tell you, but plenty of French women eat those things.
Secondly, I'd lay off the Samoans if I were you, girl. You got a death wish or something?
Yet Another Failure for the Behemoth, February 10, 2005
| Reviewer: | Hoppy Doppelrocket (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews |
I spent quite a bit of time with some elegant (albeit hairy and smelly) French ladies during my floating phase back in the glorious '70s. The gals were slim and were rather fond of eating for pleasure. A steady diet of Young Hops kept those darling putains Scarlett O'hara thin. There is no mention of the Hopperoo diet in this book.
There is a lot of advice on enjoying what you eat (here! here!) and repetetive pourparlers about how the clever and capon Frenchies avoid obesity. I suspect some of this is all the running away that they do, but this is also neglected in Guiliano's otherwise wonderful book.
Nevertheless, I purchased this philisophical/diet book for my baboonish bride Bessie in a desperate attempt to help her lose some of her excess tonnage or at the very least, enjoy the eating while she's not losing it. Well, you guessed it: Failure number 371. She's bigger than ever and has stopped shaving her armpits. Another losing effort for your truly. But some pleasant memories of my French fugue. A worthy attempt, but unable to do the impossible.
Dear Hoppy,
Have you met our Friendly Neighbor "Darryl"? I think you'd really get along.
Nothing New Here-but don't shot the messenger, February 9, 2005
| Reviewer: | Karen A. Lake (Coldwater, MI United States) - See all my reviews
|
There is nothing new in this book-the author cites the usual use of fruits, vegetables, taking your time eating, drinking water and exercising as ways that the French stay slim. She also annoying names all the exotic types of fruits and vegetables (including 4-5 types of plums) available fresh to her at the Paris outdoor market. Just try finding some of those things at your local supermarket! If I was the CEO of a champagne firm and lived in NYC and Paris, I could do my shopping at some of those markets, too. I did find her voice and accent very pleasant to listen to, but that was about it.
Dear Karen,
Um, I think that the CEO of Veuve Clicquot probably is as busy as you are, unless a CEO's job description has changed since last time I checked. And actually, I did a little research and there are plenty of fruit orchards in Southwestern Michigan, near your little town of Coldwater. I'll bet there are at least two or three different kinds of plums available during the height of the season. So why don't you get off your fat ass and stop complaining?
So, having read those reviews, will I be reading the book? Yes. If Donna sends me her copy, I will read it. Et pour quoi non? It's much easier to talk schmack from the pedestal of experience.
The New York Times runs an article on a Maxim kind of dude who cooks three dinners for three different ladies. Hmm....sound familiar? What is this guy doing trying to make stuffed strawberries and lobster risotto? Come on, consult me first, people.
