Category: Ruminations

While I toil away in obscurity, the Manhattan User's Guide has written up a bunch of New York-centric food blogs -- and I am NOT included.  Sadly. And my friend Donna alerted me to this month's issue of Bon Appetit which also included a reference to the exciting, tumescent food blogosphere -- with no mention of me and my carpal-tunnel/myopia inducing efforts. 

*Sigh*

Who do I have to whore myself out to for a little recognition? 

I am reminded of a story a friend told of randomly running into a fellow musician in a convenience store in Germany:

My friend: Hey, So-and-so!

So-and-so: Where are the yogurt peanuts?

My friend:  I don't know.

So-and-so:  (Bottom lip curled up) They don't care.

I was talking to my roommate last night about divine dining experiences in New York, which got me thinking about all of the restaurants in the city I've never been to and that I'd like to try someday when, by the grace of God, I am not flat broke.  I'm going to make a wish list here.  Not to be presumptuous, but if your money is burning a hole in your pocket and you need a platonic dining companion, send me an e-mail.  I can either pepper our dinner conversation with snarky commentary, or I can keep my piehole shut and appreciate your patronage in silence.  And if you want to be written about in the blog, I'll be happy to paint you through rose-colored lenses, but if you'd rather be the Anonymous donor on my engraved marble slab of contributors, I will accommodate.  So here is my wish list:

Daniel
Bouley Bakery
Chanterelle
The Spotted Pig
Per Se
Masa/Bar Masa
Donguri
Stone Barns
Kittichai
Applewood
5 Ninth
Alain Ducasse
Fleur de Sel
Babbo (I have been there twice, and was underwhelmed both times, but a friend whose taste I trust insists that I must go back and try it again.)

Are there other places I shouldn't miss?

This morning, I stopped at Panya Bakery for their downy-crumbed apricot pear almond muffin. I walked another block to the Mud Truck in Astor Place and ordered a perfect cappuccino, hot and foamy, with half a sugar and a little cinnamon. I took my breakfast to go, munching and sipping on the slow ride back to Sunset Park. That is my idea of a perfect breakfast.

And I had a little flashback of the time I visited my cousin in Rochester, where he treated me to the "good" local breakfast place, the Panera at the local strip mall, where we ordered half salads, half sandwiches and soups in various permutations. And back when I was in Chicago during a tour, we stopped at the Panera up the block from the Comfort Inn to get dry croissants and coffee before getting back on the road. And most recently, on a girls' day out in L.A., my girlfriend and I saved our appetites, drove out of the La Puente suburb and into town to get our ladies-who-lunch nosh at...Panera.

Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against Panera. Their soups are a little Campbell's-starchy, and their pastries are quite average, but it's affordable and pleasant enough, and it's convenient for burb living. But I have grown to love the way we eat in New York.

I sometimes feel like I'm in that scene in The Pope of Greenwich Village, where the Eric Roberts character goes to one shop for the bread, another shop for the meat, and yet another for the cheese before he sits down to make himself the perfect sandwich. I have my favorite shops, and I'm willing to travel around to get the best of the best. New York is European in that way -- without the suburban sprawl, all of those incredible shops are only minutes from one another. I can get my Parmagiano Reggiano Vacche Rosso from Murray's on Bleecker, then pick up solid raw wildflower honey at the Greenmarket. I can pick up chanterelles, porcini, and even white truffles in the East Village from the same supplier that Le Cirque and Alain Ducasse use. Or I can head to Whole Foods to pick up organic beef and grass-fed lamb, then zip down to Chinatown for dainty baby bok choy and cheap 5 lb. bags of jasmine rice, all on the way home. During the course of an errand running afternoon, I can pick up tart raspberry lemonade and a crystal-crisp, toothsome chocolate chip cookie at City Bakery, or a few slices of pizza pomodoro and a tiny San Pellegrino Aranciata from Sullivan Street Bakery, or a taro bun and sweet milky tea at the Golden Carriage Chinese Bakery, or a snowy lemon ice from Caffe Roma on a hot day, or a hot 60 cent cup of filter coffee with half and half from the corner deli.  I can check every errand off my list, shoot home on the subway, cook myself a light dinner, and then zip back out to meet my friends for a party. (Not that I really do that often, but I like that it's possible.)

I don't have to be content with $4 acidic coffee at Starbucks, or frozen margarita birthdays at Chevy's, or McDonald's chicken strips from a drive-thru which has been outsourced to a call center in a nearby town. And the thing is, I'm not content with that anymore. I have been royally spoiled by New York.  When I think about leaving New York, not only do I think about leaving my loved ones; I also think about having to leave Dean and Deluca, Tacos Matamoros, the Greenmarkets, my Chinese bakery right next to my subway stop, the Grand St. pho joints, Pearl Oyster Bar, late night sandwich and frites at Balthazar, 24 hour Korean BBQ house-calls in the wee hours. I have a little map in my head of places to relax with a hot beverage, places to meet new friends after work, places to grab a soda and use the restroom, places to show my out-of-town friends what an amazing city this is. I worked hard to acquaint myself with the many pleasures this city has to offer, and it's hard to think about all of the knowledge I'd have to reacquire in another town.  I'm sure there are places in Chicago, L.A., and maybe even Rochester where a girl can get the perfect muffin and the perfect cappuccino. But my muffin won't be served by a willowy Japanese girl with high-pitched, soft-consonanted English, my cappuccino won't come out of the window of a bright orange refurbished ice cream truck blasting Creedence Clearwater Revival at 10 am, and I certainly won't have the rest of the day ahead of me to enjoy doing and running and visiting and picking up and just being in my most favorite city of all.

Welcome to part 4 of the Dinner Date Guide, aka The Maxim-type Dude's Guide to Getting Laid By Convincing Girl To Come Over For Dinner Even Though Dude Can't Cook Worth Shit! By now we've covered the basics, the Meat and Potatoes girl, the Vegetarian, and the Atkins girl.  Now we move on to the girl nearest and dearest to my heart...

But first, I want to tell you a little morality tale.  A few years ago, I was back in San Francisco doing a gig with the band I was with.  We played at a little club in the Mission, and I sent out the e-mail missive alerting all of my S.F. cronies about the show.  An ex-fling of mine (let's call him Moto) came to the show and we flirted (as exes do) after the gig was over.  He invited me to come to his house for dinner and I accepted.

It doesn't take a genius to put two and two together -- I was going over to his house anticipating a little action outside of the kitchen.  I figure, I'm in town for a second, neither of us has to worry that there are any strings attached, and dinner is only a preliminary, a formality before the main course.  Now I know that I can be an asshole when it comes to food, asserting my opinion when it is sometimes not necessary or solicited.  But I wasn't under any illusions that our little get-together would be about the food.

I arrived dinner time the next day at an apartment building on one of S.F.'s proverbial hills just outside the Tenderloin, wondering what was on the menu for the evening.  We said our hellos and Moto let me know that we were going to cook dinner together. 

Me:  What are we having?

Moto:  I don't know, I have this broccoli, and we could have some pasta alfredo.

Me:  (gulping)  Okay.  Let's get started.

He opened his bare-shelved refrigerator and pulled out the lone fresh resident, some sad, stumpy broccoli with florets that had opened and gone yellow. 

Me:  Um, do you have butter?

Moto:  No, but I have some olive oil.

He pulled a lilliputian bottle of olive oil down from the naked shelves of his cabinet.  It was obvious to me that dinner was not going to be an elaborate affair.  I told him that I would do the broccoli and he could do the pasta. 

In a 2-quart sized pot, he boiled a small amount of water and managed to push the entire box of spaghetti into the few cups of water.  I didn't want to tell Moto that pasta like to swim like free fish in an ocean, not like striped bass in the Chinese restaurant tank.  I didn't want to be rude.  But I was feeling very sorry for that pasta.  In the meantime, I trimmed the broccoli of its (many) inedible bits, found a jar of pre-minced garlic of indeterminate age in the underused refrigerator, and got to work on a saute in the thin steel pan. 

I watched as he grated the shrink-wrapped, perfectly triangular chunk of Sargento "parmesan," heated up some heavy cream in another pan, and nonchalantly threw the cheese into the white pool.  I watched as the cheese melted in clumps that swam around the cream.  He drained the pasta in a tiny plastic colander and poured the pasta into the sauce.

We sat down to eat our dinner of long-dead broccoli and spaghetti in chunky milk.  Now maybe it was the disappointing dinner, and maybe it was the boring slide-show of Moto's cross-country motorcycle travels, but I lost my appetite and went back to the apartment I was staying at, unsated in every way.

Needless to say, he's just the kind of guy who could have used a little Dinner Date Guide help.  We've already established that I am not the kind of girl you are trying to date anyway, but we food snobs come in all kinds of packages, including lovely shapely ones you Maxim men may desire.  Still, there are a couple of lessons you should learn from this story, should you still want to woo an epicurean asshole like me:

1.  Every meal counts with the epicure, and she has decided to spend a meal with you, despite the fact that you don't seem like the kind of guy who enjoys cooking.  She must like you or she wouldn't have agreed to come over in the first place.  It's almost in the bag, buddy.  Sure, she may have eaten a little something before your date, just in case dinner turned out to be a disaster, but she showed up in spite of her low expectations.  She probably wants it as much as you do.

2.  Even though she agreed to come over, not for the food but for the dessert, it is still possible for you to fuck it up.  Clumpy cheese and rotting veggies are not sexy.  You don't have to be (dreamy) Eric Ripert.  You just need to show her that you cared enough to put the TINIEST bit of effort into the food. 

And so, here we go with contestant #4:

The Girl: The Epicure.  She knows her romanesco from her romesco sauce.  She lives to eat and doesn't understand people who only eat to live.  She's probably orally fixated and good at you-know-what, so if you play your cards right, this could be your lucky night.

The Menu: Braised short ribs.  Roasted Parsnips.  Salad.  Cheese.

Now, we've established that you are not Jacques Pepin, and that's okay.  So we are going to thwart disaster by getting you started with the best ingredients and giving you recipes that are very very difficult to fuck up.

The short ribs:  Okay, I'm going to cheat a little here and refer you to a couple of recipes.  There's one in the Chez Panisse Cafe cookbook and one in the French Laundry cookbook.  They are both easy to follow and incredibly impressive.  Besides, Alice Waters and Thomas Keller can explain the techniques better than I can.  The reason I have chosen this recipe for you is that short ribs are difficult to mess up.  If you forget it's in the oven, no problem -- the longer it cooks, the better it gets.  You should cook them the day before your date -- this way, the flavors will really penetrate the meat and you can strain and de-fat the sauce for reheating the day of.  Also, the fact that you own one of these cookbooks will go a long way with your potential paramour, so make sure that it's lying out conspicuously, maybe with a nice, small smudge of grease and a smattering of flour between the pages.

The parsnips:  They look like carrots but they taste like a cross between a carrot and a sweet potato.  They're wonderful and super easy to prepare.  Peel them, chunk them, toss them in a little olive oil, salt and pepper, and roast at 375 degrees for 40 minutes or until they are tender.  (Originally I thought that roasted jerusalem artichokes would be very impressive and delicious -- but then I remembered that they purportedly cause major gas problems in many diners.  You see how much I care about your welfare?  The only thing worse than having to pass gas in bed is having to pretend your sexy partner didn't just pass gas in bed.  Or is it the other way around?)  Anyway, when she's got you on ball and chain and you have no problem with involuntary bodily functions around each other, you can try the jerusalem artichokes prepared the same way.  Until then, stick to parsnips.

The Salad:  Salad is so easy.  Good lettuces are the key to a good salad.  I personally don't enjoy the standard baby mesclun that's so widely available these days.  There's too much bitter frisee and not enough crispness for my taste.  I like to start with what I once heard chef Peter of Savoy restaurant call "teenage lettuce": lettuce that's bigger than baby, but smaller than headed lettuce.  This way you get the delicate flavor of mesclun and a bit more of a textural crunch, but not the fibrous crudeness of the large heads of lettuce.  Windfall Farms at the Union Square Greenmarket has a nice mix of lettuces that are my absolute favorite -- large, not bitter, but still crisp.  While you're there, you can pick up a variety of greens to add -- silky mache, savory sunflower sprouts,  sexy burgundy amaranth.  You don't drown these living greens in buttermilk ranch or canola oil and dehydrated onion bottled salad dressings.  Just take a dollop of dijon mustard, 2 glugs of good quality extra virgin olive oil, 1 glug of good white wine vinegar, a 1/2 spoon of honey, salt, pepper and some minced chives, whisk, and toss with the greens.  Use your clean hands to toss the salad -- it's very easy, distributes the dressing best, and you won't get lots of unsightly dents in your greens.  You can choose to serve the salad with the meal or after the ribs and parsnips.  I just can't get used to eating salad at the end of the meal.  (I saw an episode of Oprah where some "teen expert" who seemed to be neither a "teen" nor an "expert" said that "tossing the salad" is a euphemism for fellatio.  But the metaphor doesn't work for me so I'm not going to proliferate it.)

The Cheese:  You are serving cheese for dessert.  I know your brain is reeling from the concept, but it's a perfectly acceptable practice in many parts of the world.  This is the easy part.  Go down to Murray's Cheese shop, or an equivalent excellent cheese shop in your part of the world, and tell the orangey-blond haired Latino guy with the lisp behind the counter (or your local equivalent) that you want three cheeses for an after dinner cheese plate.  Also ask him to get you the sides, like maybe quince paste, date and almond cake, roasted marcona almonds, etc.  He will hook you up.  That guy is a psychic cheese genius.

Amendment, 12/13/04 -- My friend Donna pointed out that cheese breath stinks and may foul the otherwise romantic ambience you have created thus far. I stubbornly protested and said that I didn't think it was a problem (more because I didn't want to admit I was wrong and besides, I was in no mood to re-post). After a cheddar sample at the Greenmarket on Saturday left me tasting fermented milk on my tongue for hours afterwards, I decided she was right and wanted to take this time to give you the alternate anti-halitosis dessert option. Chocolate: My friends, do not underestimate the power of a well-made truffle. Chocolate=seratonin=sex. There are several excellent chocolate shops around town. My current favorite is Vosges Chocolate, with their artful array of inventive chocolates. I love the complex Naga Curry truffle and the caramel dream Sale de Mare truffle. Champagne truffles from Teuscher are classic winners. (I like to think that the first time my dear friend Dottie took a liking to me was when I declared Teuscher the best chocolates ever, to which she looked at me with surprise and replied, "You are a classy lady." -- and that might just be the best compliment I've ever received, considering the very classy source.)

****

And there you have it folks, your guide to cooking and serving ladies of the night.  I didn't discuss alcohol because I don't drink and I don't know the first thing about what to serve with what.  Go to a good wine shop and ask them for help.  To those of you who are sorry/angry/disappointed that the guide has come to a close, I know there are other types of women out there, and that we womyn are not so homogenized that we only fall into four limited categories and blah blah blah.  But if this guide saves one girl from a night of gastronomic disgust, or provides one lonely Maxim dude and one hungry woman with a little warm companionship for an evening, then I'm proud to have helped make it happen. 

And now, I'm tired of you Maxim dude.  Get out of my bed.  But leave the cheese.  And the date and almond cake. 

For those of you who have just tuned in, this is part 3 of the dinner date guide, aka The Maxim-type Dude's Guide to Getting Laid By Convincing Girl To Come Over For Dinner Even Though Dude Can't Cook Worth Shit! We've already covered the basics, the Meat and Potatoes girl and the Vegetarian. Now we move on to higher levels of difficulty.

Contestant #3

The Girl: She's on the Atkins diet. She knows what the fuck "net carbs" means. Breads and pastas are her axis of evil, but she's tired of spreading butter on her bacon. You want to make sure she doesn't go back to looking like she did when you were in high school, you chauvinist pig, so you'd better get your Splenda on.

The Menu: Broiled lamb chops. Cauliflower puree. Haricot verts with lemon vinaigrette. Fresh figs and goat cheese.

This was a tough one. I mean, what are these people thinking? How could being thin possibly taste better than a big bowl of pasta alla amatriciana, slick with olive oil and san marzanos, or a stack of crisp-edged pancakes with a side of maple butter for dunking? I guess I'll never know. I tried to cut out all carbs once, but I became lupine and beady-eyed, stalking my way through the day with a deep insatiable hunger. I admire the Atkins-committed -- you are woven of stronger wool than I. But the question is, what are the key things to think about in making a simple meal without carbohydrates? Variety of texture and color are always important in a meal, but perhaps they play an even larger role when the cook is trying to hide the fact that something is missing.

The lamb chops: I prefer the tiny grass-fed lamb chops from New Zealand -- they are juicy, tender, and super-flavorful. I think a lot of American chops are grain-fed -- they tend to be streaky with fat and not as soft. Rub them with a little olive oil, salt and pepper. Put them close to the broiler for 2 minutes on each side. If you go out and get a grill pan, you can do them on top of the stove for the same amount of time and get those nice barbecue marks on your wee chops.

The cauliflower: Steam the cauliflower til quite tender. Heat up some cream and butter. Mash the cauliflower using a fork. Add the cream, butter, and 1/2 cup of freshly grated parmesan (and of course you understand that I am referring to block of cheese, not cardboard can or even labeled plastic tupperware).

The haricots verts: Haricots verts are just baby green beans. You can get them at any good upscale grocery store. In a pinch you can use adult green beans -- just look for the smallest ones you can find. Yes, I mean go through the pile by hand and pick out the good ones. Trim the stem ends. Boil them in a lot of rapidly boiling, salted water, for 3-4 min. or until they are tender and not crisp. (Again, I do not believe in crisp green beans. They should be green and brightly flavored, but they should be tender to the tooth.) Transfer into ice water to stop them from cooking further. Prepare a vinaigrette with the juice of half a lemon, 2 glugs of olive oil, sea salt, pepper, and a tsp. of dijon mustard. Add 1/2 tsp. of honey (she'll never know) and whisk. Toss with drained green beans and serve at room temperature.

****
When I was working at Whole Foods in the produce department, all of the haricots verts and mini-pattypan squashes were coming out of Guatemala. I used to imagine miniature farms with Guatemalan hobbit pickers plucking all the tiny veggies from spindly vines. I also used to imagine that the little rotten cherry tomatoes were feeling ill and vomiting their juicy innards in protest. I imagined that the Granny Smiths were in some sort of fruity daisy chain, lined up protuberance to puckered asshole in their military rows. The fat, contentious grapefruit were elbowing each other for room in their crowded pen, occasionally fussing so much that they had to take their disputes to the ground, where they could roll around in fisticuffs. When you silently stack fruits and vegetables for eight hours a day, you have a lot of time to think about really random shit.

Next up, the epicure.

This is the second installment of the dinner date guide, aka The Maxim-type Dude's Guide to Getting Laid By Convincing Girl To Come Over For Dinner Even Though Dude Can't Cook Worth Shit! For the basics and a run-down of contestant #1, the Meat and Potatoes girl, read the Dinner Date Guide! Part 1.

Without further adieu, contestant #2:

The Girl: She's a vegetarian. She tries not to wear leather, though she does like milk and honey in her morning cup of chai. She cried while explaining the plight of Proctor & Gamble's laboratory animals, but you didn't hear a word she said past the phrase "shaved bunnies."

The Menu: Edamame with sea salt. Spicy Eggplant with Tofu and Basil over Brown Rice. Ciao Bella coconut sorbet.

The Edamame: Look, every idiot, you Maxim-dude included, can make edamame. Serving edamame to your guest may even suggest that you are the kind, sensitive, worldly man she would want to lay down with. Buy frozen edamame pods. Boil them. Season with coarse sea salt, preferably some nice fleur de sel or some moist coarse Asian sea salt, which will elevate your plain boiled legumes into a thing of beauty.

Now, about the main course: stir-fries are simple fast-food. All you need is protein, veg, allium (garlic/onion/scallion family) and sauce. There are tons of cooking sauces out there which are delicious and easy to use. Your stir-fries need not be limited to soy sauce, sugar, and cornstarch. There are ready-to-use sauces like black bean and garlic, yellow bean sauce, oyster sauce, ponzu, curry pastes, fish sauce, etc. Get familiar with these sauces, as a composer gets to know the instruments of an orchestra. Some are loud, some are subtle, all are useful for making delicious food at a moment's notice.

The Eggplant: Cook your brown rice according to directions. Take phallic Chinese or Japanese Eggplant, cut in half lengthwise and cut into 3 inch chunks. Steam the eggplant until just tender. In a large wok or frying pan over high heat, quickly saute a little minced garlic and 1/2 a sliced red onion. Add 1/2 sliced red bell pepper and sliced long green chili, saute another minute. Add cubed block of soft tofu (not silken), eggplant, 1 1/2 tbsp. Lee Kum Kee vegetarian stir-fry sauce (which is made from mushroom extract) and cook til heated through. Add a large handful of torn Thai basil or green basil and remove from heat. Serve immediately.

*A note on chopsticks: Thai people only use chopsticks with noodles. When it comes to rice dishes, they eat with a spoon in the right hand and a fork in the left, the fork doing the duties usually relegated to the knife in Western-style eating. So if your chopsticks struggle in a losing battle with delicate clumps of rice, you don't have to be ashamed: ditch 'em and pick up the fork. An entire Asian nation stands behind you.

I responded to an ad recently calling for contributors to an online asian mag, no pay involved. Why a person would get involved in a field that requires so much unpaid grunt work to begin with is beyond me. Yes, I know, I'm one of those idiots. But a girl's gotta start somewhere, and being a slave-freelancer goes right in line with all of the other masochistic life choices I've made so far. There's an ancient Buddhist/Confucian/Karate Kid saying -- if it doesn't hurt, you're not doing it right.

Anyway, as it turns out, the webmag is a Maxim-type men's mag with fluffy articles arranged in a halo around a large ever-changing jpeg of some Suzie Wong in ecstasy. I don't really have a problem with that stuff, which the me of ten years ago who attended UC Berkeley and wrote papers on bell hooks and Eve Ensler would be horrified to know. So I started brainstorming ideas I could pitch to the editor for stories that would appeal to the dolts who mistakenly run their mouse over the text in search of more pics. What are the pressing food issues for the pizza and PBR set? What kind of advice could a very un-Maxim type girl give to guys who are interested in articles like "What to do if your tongue gets frozen on a lamppost" or "Zhang Ziyi, House my Flying Dagger"? And then I thought, fuck that, if I'm not getting paid to say it, I'll publish it online on my own website, goddamnit! Besides, my articles can't compete with hot girls in bitty bikinis.

So in the interest of experimenting with genre exercises I came up with this question -- you're the Maxim guy, the consummate lad, the balls-scratching, baseball cap wearing dude who's been following the careers of Alyssa Milano and Jeri Ryan very closely over the years. You want to get laid. To get laid, you gotta get a girl over to your house. What better way to lure the fuck of your sad wet dreams than the promise of a home-cooked dinner? But calling the local Indian delivery and digging sporks into plastic containers of vindaloo just ain't gonna cut it. You need to cook something impressive that doesn't require the mad skills and fancy equipment you don't have. Dear readers, it's about to get crass, so put your beer goggles on and enjoy the ride.

Here is the first installment of: The Maxim-type Dude's Guide to Getting Laid By Convincing Girl To Come Over For Dinner Even Though Dude Can't Cook Worth Shit!

The Basics: First of all, clean your house. Clear out the bathroom of anything suspect (ex-girlfriend's tampons, your dog-eared issues of Penthouse, etc.) because, believe me, we will be poking around. Go to Crate and Barrel (or, if you've got money to burn, Moss) and buy two complete sets of matching dinnerware -- plates, spoon, knives, forks, glasses. And nothing says class like cloth napkins. Now add a couple of unscented tealights on the table and a short-vased floral arrangement so you two can ogle each other across the table without having to tilt your heads.

Some notes on the cooking process: Cooking, like sex, is about timing as well as skills. Cooking is also like sex in that the foreplay leading up makes the main event that much better. Have your lucky girl come over at 7:00 for a 7:30 dinner -- not only will the food be hot and ready to be eaten while she's there, but also she can whet her appetite with aromas, witness your mad multi-tasking and draw conclusions about your sexual prowess.

And here's our first contestant:

The Girl: She's a meat and potatoes kind of girl. She's got the right kind of junk in her trunk and you want to be the key that pops it open. She thinks Italian food is exotic and she wouldn't touch any kind of seafood with a ten foot pole.

The menu: Steak and mashed potatoes. Steamed Asparagus with butter. Haagen Dazs Vanilla with strawberries if they are in season, with limoncello if they are not.

The steak: get a couple of dry aged porterhouse steaks from the butcher. You can't go wrong with a nice, tasty dry aged steak. Buy them the day you're going to have your dinner and leave the steaks out of the fridge so they can come to room temperature. Rub them with olive oil, then sea salt and pepper right before they go four inches from the broiler. Two to three minutes on each side for medium rare, then let the steak rest for five minutes. Why? This allows the meat to soak up and hold its own juice, so the juice is released in your mouth, not wasted in a bloody mess on the plate.

The potatoes: get some Yukon Gold, white, or russet potatoes. Peel them. "Smashed" potatoes with skins on them are absolutely neanderthal and they will not get you laid with anyone who's got taste. Quarter the potatoes. Boil them in salted water til done. Drain them well. Now, get thee a potato ricer, man's best friend when it comes to making smooth mashed potatoes. The potato ricer is like a huge garlic press, and on the fine setting, it will make hassle-free, super-smooth potatoes in seconds, without the elbow grease. Heat up some milk and butter in a pot on medium low heat til the milk is hot but not burnt and the butter melts. Add to your potatoes and mix with a light hand.

The asparagus: Get some fat asparagus. Pencil asparagus will make her think pencil dick, and if you're going to feed her some suggestive veg, you might as well make the right kind of suggestion. Asparagus is available all year round these days, and much of it comes from Peru. Make sure that the buds at the top are closed and tight, and not too dry. Feel the tips, then sniff them. If the tips are soft and mushy, or if it smells strongly of aspara-pee, the asparagus will not hold up. Cut a good inch and a half off the bottom, two inches if they seem especially woody. (I personally don't think the trick of snapping the end off works so well.) Peel the bottoms of the spears with a vegetable peeler -- you'd be amazed at how this one little trick will make you seem like the classiest guy on earth. Steam them until they change from dull green to bright kelly green and are cooked all the way through without being mushy, 3-4 minutes. Finish with some melted butter and salt.(I once made the mistake of telling some inexperienced guys to cook the asparagus until it changed color. 15 minutes later, the asparagus was a sick shade of puce and had become gassy mush.)

Your girl's not a meat and potatoes kind of girl? Stay tuned for my cliffs notes version of Brillat-Savarin for the modern man. We will explore the delicate palates of the elusive vegetarian, the common Atkins girl, the wily epicure, and any other sweeping stereotypes I can think of. Have any suggestions?

*Special thanks to Thomas for kicking my ass into posting...again...sorry kids...

www.eatdrinkonewoman.com should start working in at most two days. hope it works! i'm a bit of a luddite when it comes to servers and DNS and domains etc. so we'll see if I've followed the directions right. This is probably extremely uninteresting to you so I will shut up now.

In An Alphabet for Gourmets, the inimitable M.F.K. Fisher (of Whittier, CA, haaaaayy) said on the subject of dining alone, "If One could not be with me, 'feasting in silent sympathy,' then I was my best companion." M.F.K. has had tons of genius things to say on the art of eating, but her sentiments on dining alone are some of my favorite.

Of course, not everyone feels the same way. Some people can't bear the thought of dining out by themselves, much less preparing a whole meal at home for one. As Joni Mitchell sang, "But when he's gone, me and them lonesome blues collide/The bed's too big, the frying pan's too wide." The act of going to the market, collecting all the ingredients, slaving over a hot stove and a cleaning up the mess seems like a lot to go through when there isn't someone around to appreciate your good work, or perhaps more importantly, someone to share your gustatorial experience with. I have no scientific evidence to back this claim up, but sometimes food just tastes better when you're digging in with other hungry folk.

But sometimes, dining alone can be a wonderful thing, a chance to spend some time with your charming self, discussing the issues that matter to you most (not aloud, of course), and eating exactly the things that you crave at that very moment. I've been dining alone more often lately, and I am remembering just how satisfying it can be. Fancy restaurants, coddling service, and festive atmosphere have their place, but not when you're dining alone. I love simple food enjoyed in the leisure of time and silence. Sometimes, I don't want to have to think hard about my dinner, about whether or not cocoa, foie gras, and anchovy work together, or about how the little kitchen elves manage to cut such perfectly cubical brunoise, or about the hovering maitre d' who'd love to turn the table over for the patrons shivering by the entrance.

On Monday afternoon, after a three hour hair modeling stint at Bumble and Bumble university, I decided to take a nice stroll down Hudson to Myers of Keswick, the little British food shop(pe) in the West Village, to buy myself some goodies for days when I'm too lazy to do more than pop the lid off of a can and fry some toast in butter. As I was stocking up on tins of Heinz baked beans, Cream of Tomato soup, and Spaghetti, I noticed a sign on the wall advertising the Chip Shop, a British style fish and chips joint in Brooklyn that I'd always wanted to try. It sounded like the perfect treat on a cool autumn day, so I decided to make a date with myself and check it out on the way home.

It was a very San Francisco day, with high sunshine and a brisk wind. It was about 4 p.m. by the time I made it back into Brooklyn, and I was ready for a little late lunch/early dinner to warm up. I ordered a hot mug of PG Tips with milk and sugar, a plate of crisp-fried cod and fresh but slightly soggy chips, overcooked olive colored English style peas, and a ramekin full of pickled onions in malt vinegar. I thought about so many things as I picked away methodically at my plate. I thought about my dear friend Matt who's currently slogging away in England. I thought about how they managed to make the fish batter so crisp, and how it was genius to turn the fish fillet on its side so the whole thing would stay crisp. I thought about washing my hair. I thought about what the ingredients in Branston's pickle might be. I thought about the little ketchup bottle on the table which was in the shape of a red beefsteak tomato. I thought about whether I prefer malt vinegar or tartar sauce with the fish. In other words, I thought about nothing in particular and let the thoughts pass through my head like the cars whizzing by in front of the restaurant.

I ordered a second cup of tea because the first was so impossibly delicious (English tea really is very different from the pencil shavings that pass for "English Breakfast" tea here). The waiter, a scruffy blond with a working class accent, cleared away my table except for my steaming mug. The Chip Shop is the kind of place where they play a constant loop of Beatles music everyday -- it's shticky, but my friends and I listen to the Beatles and the radio so rarely that it was a real treat to listen to these familiar songs, these nostalgic songs, for the first time in a very long time. I was staring out the french doors onto 5th Ave. on this perfectly sunny, apple-crisp fall day when "Til There Was You" came piping through the speakers sweetly. And I just had a perfect moment, you know? Where the milky tea was the perfect temperature and exactly what I wanted to be warming my gullet, and the song in the background was the perfect soundtrack to a perfect little frame of my life in New York. It was the ultimate decadence for me -- a selfishly chosen, gratuitously plentiful dinner enjoyed with a dopey grin on my face and the quiet swirl of my thoughts.

I grew up in a Thai family in suburban southern California, circumventing endless idiotic jokes about my long-ass last name, fending off the jealous haters in kindergarten who made fun of (but secretly wanted) my shrimp and winter melon soup lunchbox, and going to Sunday school and summer day camp to learn all about the culture, religion, and language of a little axe shaped country on the other side of the planet.

Most nights, either my mom or dad cooked dinner; if my mom cooked, it was usually rice and some variation on what my friend Dottie calls the "brown and green" -- meat and veg stir-fry in very few variations. But if my dad cooked, we usually had a nice little spread -- a brown and green stir-fry, maybe some fried pork spare ribs, and a little soup. At temple on Sundays, we'd eat in the food court in the temple basement. We'd trade our dollars for $2 coins and 50 cent coins, which we'd use to buy delicious Thai lunches like Thai-style shumai, som tum with sticky rice and barbecued pork, stewed fatty pork leg over rice with egg and pickled chinese cabbage, grilled meatballs, or, my favorite, duck noodle soup. In the evening, before the 45 minute ride home down the 101 to the 60 in our hydraulics-free bouncing Chevy van, we would often stop by a Hollywood Thai restaurant for a delicious dinner. I liked to order rad-nah -- noodles with chicken and chinese broccoli in a thickened gravy flavored with yellow bean sauce. I'd ladle on spoonful after spoonful of chilies pickled in white vinegar and bathe my face in the fragrant steam. My brother, who would probably rather have been eating at Sizzler, would usually order a crab fried rice and put up the walls when any renegade spoon (especially mine) tried to get in on the action. In tribute to his Chinese heritage, my dad loved to order goy see mee, which is a lot like rad-na but uses deep fried egg noodles instead of sauteed wide rice noodles. My mom often ate yen-ta-fo, something I only learned to appreciate as an adult -- a spicy noodle soup with strange tripe-shaped chewy white fungus, an artificially red sweet bean sauce, water spinach, and an assortment of seafood.

So I was a bit confounded when in high school, some friends invited me to join them for lunch at a local restaurant that they loved. I was surprised by the growing popularity of Thai food in the 80s and 90s. I didn't know there were any good Thai restaurants in our hood, so I was skeptical. They asked me, "Do you know how to make pad [rhymes with rad] thai? I LOVE pad [rhymes with bad] thai!" In my sixteen years as a Thai-American girl I had never tasted it. We never had it at any of the Thai family birthday parties I'd been to. It looked like something that the guy who made the fried mussel omelet in the temple basement peddled as an accompaniment. I must have seen it before, but I'd never tasted it myself.

When we got to Thai BBQ, everyone ordered the famed pad [rhymes with sad] thai. A steaming plate of pad thai emerged from the kitchen and everyone readied their wooden chopsticks with watering mouths. The noodles I recognized as "sen lek," the skinny rice noodles I usually associated with noodle soups. But the color was a bit strange to me. How do the noodles get so red? What was with all those peanuts? Why had I never heard of this before? And then I tasted it -- sticky, soft and overbearingly sweet with the clean crunch of raw bean sprouts and peanuts. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it, and it really didn't have anything to do with my experience with Thai food. I was familiar with the flavors of northeast Thailand's cooking -- the bright, clean salt-tart heat of som tam, the mouth-watering savor of dried-fried beef. Pad thai was not really my cup of tea, and I was ready to leave it that.

But pad thai was not going to leave me alone. As I went off to college and started meeting new people, many of my introductions began like this:

POTENTIAL FRIEND: Hi, my name's [POTENTIAL FRIEND'S NAME].

GANDA: Hi, I'm Ganda.

PF: Ganda, what an interesting name. What kind of name is it?

G: Um, it's a Thai name.

PF: Oh, are you Thai? I LOVE Thai food. Do you know how to make pad thai?

G: [Huh?] Um, no.

I realized that pad thai was the dish people thought of first when they thought about thai food. And it had nothing to do with the Thai food I knew. Thai restaurants I went to had food that was overpowered by sugar and peanuts, sugar and peanuts, two things that were used very sparingly in my house. Why did pad thai become so popular? Why did people think Thai food was about sugar and peanuts? I think it got popular maybe because it's easier to pronounce than pad kee mao (hangover noodles) or pak boong fai dang (fiery water spinach) or moo daed diew (dried fried pork).

Of course, there's a history of imported foods becoming bastardized for palates that maybe wouldn't be ready for the real deal. Candy-apple red sweet and sour pork (disgusting by all standards as far as I'm concerned), California rolls (I like them, but they don't have much to do with the sushi tradition), ham and pineapple pizza (also something I happen to like) -- they're all American creations. Pad thai is actually a Thai dish, but for some reason, people here think that it's the national dish of Thailand. That's like saying brie is the national cheese of France. Brie is a great cheese, and brie is quite nice, but there is so much more to the world of French cheeses. It would be a crime against the many other cheeses of France to only eat brie. And it's a crime against the expansive world of Thai cuisine to only ever order the pad thai lunch special.

If you're in New York, I encourage you to go to my favorite NYC Thai restaurant, Sripraphai in Woodside Queens. Their menu is extensive, their ingredients run the gamut, and they will still make you some pad thai if you can't let it go. If you're in L.A., go to Ruen Pair on Hollywood Blvd., my favorite Thai restaurant anywhere. Make sure you point and order anything from the specials whiteboard (which happens to be written only in Thai). It will rock your world. Without excessive peanuts and sugar.