Name: Luisa Weiss
Occupation: Literary scout and Wednesday Chef
Borough: Manhattan
Relationship status: Yes, in one.
What did you eat today?
Breakfast: Hot apple cider and a whole-wheat roll from Bread Alone. Lunch: fennel taralli from Caputo Brothers, a plate of steamed broccoli with lemon juice and olive oil, a slice of Cacio di Roma and a Suncrisp apple. Dinner: half a calamari-citrus salad and half a plate of red-chile braised pork with mashed plantains and collard greens at Rocking Horse Café (a girlfriend and I shared).
What do you never eat?
Cilantro, dill, mayonnaise, raw spinach. [Interesting...it's hard for me to imagine a life without cilantro. I'm sure it must taste different to people who don't like it. --Ed.]
Complete this sentence: In my refrigerator, you can always find:
mustard, butter, cherry jam, maple syrup, multivitamins, light soymilk, carrots, orange juice, eggs, Parmigiano, peanut butter, tomato paste in a tube, Liberte plain yogurt and Sherry.
What is your favorite kitchen item?
My All-Clad stainless steel pan. Oh, and the Wüsthof chef’s knife that my father gave me to in college and is still the best knife I own.
Where do you eat out most frequently?
At lunchtime, I usually vary between the soba noodles in broth at Ennju near Union Square and the Indian lentil soup at
World ends tomorrow. What would you like for your last meal?
I don’t know that I’d have much of an appetite. I’d like my mother to make me spaghetti with cherry tomato sauce. And I’d like a bowlful of ripe apricots picked from the tree behind my aunt’s old summer house in Italy.
Luisa is the Wednesday Chef. At her web home, she tries out a staggering number of Wednesday food section recipe clippings. Her kitchen stamina is super impressive and her photography's delicious.
Hmm, to your cilantro note, I grew up HATING cilantro and literally a week and a half ago, I was eating it and thinking "Hmm, it's not so bad anymore..." It still tastes the same but I suddenly don't mind the taste. I would even say I like it, since I then went out and bought some. :)
I was also taken aback to learn that certain people hate cilantro in a very specific way. I've run into a couple people with this taste recently, and I think they were both Japanese, if that means anything.