Bouchon Bakery's doughnut wipes the floor with the Doughnut Plant. Seriously. Eggy and moist with a generous squirt of seedless raspberry "jelly" that isn't too sweet, with just a touch of granulated sugar sprinkled over them like fairy dust...I am upset that I never had them before now. I am also upset that they will inevitably contribute to my weight gain because I'll eat them every chance I get. Unfortunately, they're also like $5 each. But as soon as my singing gig is over, I am going for the dairy-filled Boston Cream donut. Evil, evil Thomas Keller. My arteries will follow that pied piper to their triglyceride deaths.
Speaking of which, does anyone know if I can get some tomorrow morning? Or are they only available on the weekends?
Bouchon Bakery
The Time-Warner Mall
Columbus Circle
Relationship status: I always like to refer to whomever I'm dating as "my future first wife."
What did you eat today?
It's early, so all I've had is a bowl of Cheerios mixed with Frosted Flakes (a really good combo). I'm about to make some toast, which I'll wash down with a glass of OJ.
What do you never eat?
My life is a mayonnaise-free zone.
Complete this sentence: In my refrigerator, you can always find:
Diet Coke, butter, margarine, OJ, milk (usually 1%), Granny Smith apples, bacon fat (although at the moment I also have goose fat), more Diet Coke, mustard, some sort of meat thawing, eggs, pickles.
What is your favorite kitchen item?
My toaster, an early-1960s Sunbeam Vista VT-40-1 that I inherited from my grandmother. I love it for three primary reasons: (1) It's gorgeous -- a near-perfect balance of chrome and Bakelite. (2) It doesn't have a knob. Instead, a slice of bread dropped into the slot trips an internal lever that causes the mechanism to lower the slices into the toaster. It's pretty damn sexy. (3) Since I use it every morning, I also think of my grandmother every morning, and I like that. She was a cool lady.
Where do you eat out most frequently?
Popcorn at the movies.
World ends tomorrow. What would you like for your last meal?
The single most life-altering meal I've ever had was a cup of gumbo at Eddie's, a tattered old gumbo house in New Orleans. Ideally, this is what I'd want, but Eddie's is no longer in business (they closed long before Katrina), so I guess that isn't an option. Failing that: chicken skin. Lots and lots (and LOTS) of roasted chicken skin. It's my favorite foodstuff.
Visit Paul's otaku world of uniform scrutiny at Uni Watch.
Toast with strawberry jam & coffee for breakfast and my homemade tofu scramble for dinner.
What do you never eat?
Red meat, fowl, and corporate fast food.
Complete this sentence: In my refrigerator, you can always find:
Eden Soy Extra Original Soy Milk, jalapeno peppers, pickles from Guss' Pickles (Orchard St), apples (pink ladies especially), limes, garlic, in season berries.
What is your favorite kitchen item?
My electric tea kettle. [I love my electric kettle too. I love that it doesn't make noise and that it shuts itself off. Kettle whistle is too alarming to me in the morning. --Ed.]
Where do you eat out most frequently?
Barrio Chino (Broome between Orchard and Ludlow). Simply the best and most creative margaritas and mojitos, (my favorite are the jalapeno margarita and the coconut mojito), with amazing and authentic Mexican tapas. The pescado tacos are always delectable, the guacamole is always fresh, and the mole sauce is out of this world!
World ends tomorrow. What would you like for your last meal?
I go to Dunkin' Donuts today. The total bill comes out to $3.47. I hand the kid a $5 bill, a quarter, two dimes and two pennies. He punches in my total. The receipt prints, he hands me a $1 bill and the automatic change machine spits out a bunch of silver coins.
I look at the receipt. He typed in $5.37 as the amount I gave him.
Okay, so the kid can't add -- who can blame him when the machines do most of the work now? But where's your common sense, man? Why in the world would I give you $5.37 on a $3.47 bill?
Math is still important and this child got left behind!
Doug hosted a rather chic dinner party chez nous last night. The main event was a showing of The Descent, which I took no part of because I don't do horror flicks. Luckily, I could still partake of dinner. The menu theme was the color red, after the bloody fare of the movie.
We had:
Fennel, red onion, blood orange salad with pomegranate seeds and a red wine vinaigrette
Cream of tomato soup with roasted grape tomato "eyeballs"
Chicken salad with blue cheese on crostini, with roasted red pepper habanero sauce
Homemade beet and goat cheese ravioli with butter, poppy seeds, and red dye
For dessert, red velvet cake of course
The palate cleanser was a really lovely surprise: Wine Cellar Sorbets Sauternes sorbet, served with fresh raspberries. The sorbet was a huge hit -- fine, soft and almost slushy, sweet but not cloying, like a grown-up frozen margarita. It apparently has 5% alcohol, so don't try to serve it to your preggers guests. It would be the perfect end to a Valentine's Day dinner, served in a classic wide champagne glass with crunchy cantuccini. Our friend Sammy picked up a pint from Blue Apron Foods in Brooklyn, but the Wine Cellar Sorbets website has a list of other stores that carry their stuff all over the city.
Anybody noticed how many Asian American women food bloggers there are? Food writing seems to have surpassed local news anchor as the liberal arts Asian American woman's career path of choice. They're both talky vanity careers with service elements; the former requires a large appetite, the latter requires shiny helmet hair. Sit down meals are often central to Asian family life, and cooking is still a highly valued skill in Asian cultures (as I'm sure it is in France, Italy, Ethiopia and many, but not all, other cultures). But is that all there is to it? Is it, as a friend said with a wink, because we're nerds and like computers?
In February, there's a new book (disclaimer: it's being published by my employer ) called Stealing Buddha's Dinner which is about a young Vietnamese immigrant's coming-of-age and her obsession with food, specifically name brand junk foods which she coveted, paralleling her adolescent desire to fit in. I was a little shocked at how much it resonated with me -- the obsession with Little House on the Prairie food (remember the green pumpkin "apple" pie and maple syrup squiggles in the snow?), Chef Boyardee (ahem), the mix of shame and pride for the foreign food cooked at home. As I wrote in the reading guide (yes, for money that they paid me), in a consumption culture, she's trying to eat her way toward an American identity, to become an American from the inside out. Bich Minh Nguyen, the author, has more at her website. Reading it made me feel, well, a little unoriginal. But well understood. And I'm not saying that because they pay me to, I swear.
I used to study the one Better Homes and Gardens Complete Step-by-Step Cookbook we owned and imagine what it would be like to make parker house and clover leaf rolls, how sweet and sticky a floating island might taste, how filling and savory a flaky beef Wellington might be. I'd wish silently that we had all-purpose white flour in the house instead of arrowroot starch and small boxes of Mochiko rice flour. Cookbooks fed my imagination far more than they fed my stomach.
In any case, I'm glad that whatever cultural significance food had for me has been distilled into personal significance, because now writing about food is my way of using the mundane to circumnavigate the vastness of life.
I say the more the merrier. Besides, I know my Connie Chung dream died when I found out she was married to Maury Povich.
If you do it on February 3, you can see me perform with David Byrne in a concert version of Here Lies Love, his multimedia song cycle about the life of Imelda Marcos. THE Carnegie Hall. With David Byrne. About Imelda Marcos. Written by David Byrne with musical contributions from Fatboy Slim. If it's like the premiere we did in Australia (which you can read about here and here), it'll be three singers and David's 4-piece band. Three singers as in David Byrne, Joan Almedilla (the woman who's going to play Imelda Marcos), and me.
[!!!]
It's a great show -- multimedia, disco lights, archival footage, worldbeat, kick-ass band (including my Miho Hatori bandmates Mauro Refosco and Thomas Bartlett). I had so much fun with David and his band in Australia. This will be the U.S. premiere of the music.
I hope you can come. It's Carnegie Hall! It's once in a lifetime! Tickets are selling really well already. You can check for available tickets on Carnegie Hall's website. Here's the Stern Auditorium seating chart (main stage, holla!). And if you've got good eyes, you might just spot my adorable Mae in the audience.
Saturday, February 3, 2007 at 8:00pm
Carnegie Hall
Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage
$21-$70
David Byrne, Vocals and Guitar
Joan Almedilla, Vocals
Ganda Suthivarakom, Vocals
Mauro Refosco, Percussion
Graham Hawthorne, Drums
Paul Frazier, Bass
Thomas Bartlett, Keyboards
David Byrne and his band perform selections from his new multimedia song cycle written in collaboration with DJ Fatboy Slim—Here Lies Love. The songs invoke the life of Imelda Marcos, the former First Lady of the Philippines, and the servant who raised her.
You came to my house once, lured only by the promise of banana pudding. You told me it was the best banana pudding you'd ever had. I loved believing you. I tried to get you to come to Thanksgiving at my house with the promise of another banana pudding. You didn't come, so I didn't make any.
Now I wish I could make you a thousand banana puddings, puddings with spiced rum-caramelized bananas and whipped cream, bruleed tops, cake puddings with flecks of vanilla bean, stirred custard with toasted coconut shreds, steamed banana custard, bananas and milky gingersnaps. We could bring them all up to your roof and wash them down with cold white wine. I would make you laugh and kiss your hand, my sweet, sweet friend.
Name: Paul Lukas
