It's happening! No more beluga imports to the U.S. I am going to Sarajevo in November. I wonder if I can smuggle some back. Are there any other food items worth bringing back from Sarajevo?
P.S. Sorry I've been slacking. I've been super crazy this week. I haven't even done yoga. I promise I'll be back with the You Are What You Eat next Friday.
Here's your chance to help the people of New Orleans AND further abuse your masochistic liver. I'll be at Mas slinging 'em back fast and furious. Hopefully they will toss some of those delectable gougeres our way. Come join me -- let's get drizzy and sing torch songs together.
The Museum of the American Cocktail
and Southern Comfort's Tales of the Cocktail
Invites You To Support:
Save New Orleans Cocktail Hour!
Monday, September 12, 2005,
5:00 - 7:00 pm
On Monday, September 12th, between the hours of 5:00pm and 7:00pm, bar customers across the nation will raise their glasses for a Save New Orleans Cocktail Hour as bar and restaurant owners shake up New Orleans' classic cocktails to directly benefit New Orleans food and beverage industry workers who are out of work and sorely in need of funds for rebuilding their lives. During this special event New Orleans classics will be offered at participating bars for $10 per drink. Receipts from the Save New Orleans Cocktail Hour will be donated to a special tax-deductible relief fund established by the Museum of the American Cocktail.
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Come out and raise your glass to the people of New Orleans ·
(For every New Orleans cocktail you order you will receive a set of Mardi Gras beads!)
"Laissez les bons temps roulez !"
*******
And a special bonus for you: The Blame Game. WATCH IT.
The AP reports that Laura Bush has hired Cristeta Comerford to be the first female White House head chef ever. Best quote:
"As many as 2,000 guests per month are fed there, and Mrs. Bush has signaled her intent to do more entertaining than in the first term, when the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks curtailed festivities."
Osama Bin Laden declares Jihad on the west, kills thousands of people in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and gets in the way of Laura Bush's entertaining. Remember, if Laura doesn't get to don her Valentino and serve up Freedom Fries and apple pie to the dignitaries, then the terrorists have won, people.
Interesting article on Cryovac technology in restaurant kitchens in the Times today. Looks like Amanda Hesser is taking Jeffrey Steingarten's advice to "write less often and writes [sic] longer pieces involving lots of research." Her articles since the Spice Market debacle have been cleaner and deeper, lacking that preciousness people love to hate her for (myself included).
Back to the Cryovac -- I hate to sound like a luddite, but it all seems very unromantic, doesn't it? I mean, you can call it sous vide, but in the end, it seems to be all about boil-in-a-bag and quality control. I think it's great that chefs can find a way to use the technology to create new textures and flavors in cuisine. But I think it will proliferate to the masses not as a new trickle-down tool in the kitchen, but more likely in the form of convenient complete prepared meals -- yet another way for people to distance themselves from cooking and think of food sources only in the abstract.
That said, I did have the low-temperature cooked egg in parmesan broth at wd-50, and it was indeed marshmallowy and unlike any egg I'd ever had before. I'm not sure it's an improvement on, say, a good fried egg or a perfect hard-boiled egg or custard-soft scrambled eggs. But it's different.
*******
Remember those vacuum pack machine infomercials? I always wanted to pack my winter sweaters away into tiny shrink-wrapped bundles with those things.
*******
Read Regina Schrambling's take on the Cryovac hype.
Hey, I heard an unsubstantiated rumor and I had to tell the internet! Taku got a Frank Bruni massage in this week's NYTimes. I know someone who was there when the Times shutterbug came by the other night, and HE said the photog was none other than DWEEZIL ZAPPA. Ho ho, nice pseudonym, "Rahav Segev" my tuchus! Anyone else hear that about the Dweez using a pseudonym, or has my source been smoking the anise hyssop? Before y'all start clucking, don't forget about Dweezil & Lisa Loeb's Food Network show. And how could anyone mistake those son-of-rock legend baby blues? The only better son-of-rock legend baby blues are those of Jakob Dylan:
HA-CHA-CHA is your computer going to BLOW UP from all this hotttness?
UPDATE!! Dude, Rahav Segev is SO NOT DWEEZIL ZAPPA. My source has obviously been hitting the soju. Witness Rahav with NYTimes pop culture critic and "Love him for his body" Gawker hottie nominee Kelefa Sanneh:
photo by Ray Tamarra
Okay, he's not at all new to the blog scene, but Lockhart Steele of Curbed fame and She Loves NY have started a new food & restaurant news/gossip blog called Eater. Go check out the news and come back here when the weather's cooled down and I'm actually able to eat again.
I think my parents got rid of satellite TV. This is a tragedy because after watching a three-ep Blow Out marathon on Jet Blue on the flight over here, I was so jonesing for more. And I really wanted to catch up on The Dog Whisperer.
Anyway, while totes bored, as I often am in La Puente, I was flipping public channels and landed on the all Japanese network. I discovered this CRAZY AWESOME Japanese cooking show called DOTCH something something. It's like S&M porn for foodies.
Basically, there's a battle between two dishes created by two chefs. This episode's battle was beef rice bowl vs. sea urchin rice bowl. There are seven celebrities who vote on what they'd like to eat. The hosts spend the whole first part of the show showing informative and delicious segments about where the ingredients come from, how they are cooked, where they are raised, etc.
They showed a segment on an 88 year old man who claims to be the ORIGINAL SEA URCHIN FISHERMAN. He's so good he can practically find the best sea urchins by ESP. The sea urchins he collected, and which were being served, were bright, navel orange and super fresh looking. Then they showed the 20 year old Kamebishi soy sauce that they would serve with the competing super marbled beef, a demi-glace thick soy sauce so precious that the family did not sell it.
Over the course of the show, the chefs cook the tantalizing dishes in front of the voting celebrities. They cracked those sea urchins open right in their faces. They fanned the flames of some glowing red logs underneath a huge, fatty slab of meat which oozed and popped with caramelizing goodness. The seven celebrities cast several preliminary votes for what they'd like to eat, the saliva practically gushing in rivers from their titillated mouths. As they close in on the final vote, the celebs get a tiny taste of each dish.
Then they cast the final votes, and here's the rub -- if you vote for the losing dish, YOU DON'T GET TO EAT. The sea urchin rice bowl won the most votes, so the sea urchin rice bowl backers got to gorge on huge bowls of mitsuba, wasabi, and yamaimo strewn sea urchin goodness, while the losers who voted for the equally delicious looking beef bowl had to watch, totally titillated but unfed. IT'S SO CRUEL, I LOVE IT! And then, bizarrely, they sent the losing chef to the back to eat his beef bowl by himself which was actually really lonely-looking and sad.
If you catch it, you must watch it. As an added bonus, it has the awesome translated subtitles that used to run on pre-Food Network Iron Chef.
DOTCH
9 p.m., Saturdays (at least)
Japanese network on public television in L.A.
The Strong Buzz points to Harriett's Tomato this week, an excellent NYC based food blog focusing on high-class home cooking. Author Michele Gentille looks like she stepped out of a Mucha drawing, her French is probably impeccable (she attended La Varenne Culinary School in Paris and Burgundy), her recipes are well-documented and her stories seem nicely researched. If you must go, go there. But please come back. I may be more Matisse than Mucha, but I've still got a couple of dirty Twinkies jokes up my sleeve.
Justin, mover and shaker over at New Release, says that tomorrow, June 21, a corporately-sponsored 20-ton, 2 1/2 story kiwi strawberry ice pop will be erected (heh heh) in an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for biggest ice phallus and to sell more pink sugar juice.
I would go take a picture for you but I don't want to be maimed by a falling pink ice shaft. Despite the fact that I am now insured.
******
For those of you who haven't mastered reading my mind yet, this is happening in Union Square. The event starts at 10 am, but the pop will be unveiled at noon; event ends at 2 pm. But weather.com says it's going to be 82 degrees tomorrow so if you don't want to take a picture of a melty Snapple puddle, I suggest you gawk on the early side.
******
UPDATE! Mmmmmmmmmmmkay?! I guess it was so hot, they couldn't even get it up (heh heh).
I love this New York Mag piece on Plump Dumpling vs. Dumpling Man. That Dumpling Man guy has got to be kidding. First of all, he takes 5 for a $1 dumplings from Eldridge St., brands them with a cutesy logo, and charges 6x the price. Then he goes ballistic on a fellow con-man who's trying to get into the same racket.
Best quote:
"The East Village is one of the toughest neighborhoods to run a restaurant. People want something nice and trendy that has character. And if you are doing what you're doing now, it's lacking all of that. And you're going to close. Very soon."
Can you smell his trendy fear? All his undistinguished, overpriced dumplings have going for them is character -- a cartoon character, to be precise.
