Category: Ruminations

In case you were wondering, the "sri" in Sriracha and Sripraphai is pronounced "see" -- not "shree", not "sree". The "r" is silent.

Who cares, right? Well, I care.

Alex Witchel covers the re-opening of the 2nd Ave. Deli in this article. If you're like me, and you miss that deli like you miss your (goy) bubbe, it'll break your heart and make you hungry for some matzoh ball soup (with noodles and carrots).
I am pretty thrilled that it's opening just one block from my work. Here are just a handful of the article's really cherce quotes:

Abe Lebewohl to a conference of food writers: "'What am I gonna tell you?' he said. 'My food will kill you.'"

One employee on Abe: "[He] came to this country with a dollar and a dream except for the dollar."

Russ and Daughters' Mark Federman on keeping it all in the family: "I just think it’s right that there’s a Russ angsting over every piece of fish that goes out the door.”

Steve Cohen, general manager for 2nd Ave. Deli on who's in the kitchen: "They are Puerto Rican, Chinese, Haitian, Indian and from Central America. It’s the U.N. back there.”

Cohen again on the clientele: "But my favorite was when we had five nuns eating matzoh balls served by a Lebanese waiter — in a kosher deli. That’s New York.”

Quoted by Tim Russert this morning on Meet the Press:

"A woman is like a teabag. You never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water." -- Eleanor Roosevelt

I was a little worried about turnout for the Gourmet Institute panel on blogging -- I mean, who wants to listen to a bunch of bloggers when Masaharu Morimoto is down the hall doing a cooking demo, and wine is being liberally poured into shiny crystal in the tasting room? As it turns out, we had a healthy audience of about 30, mostly young people in casual garb. Before we settled in the auditorium, Ben Leventhal of Eater wondered if anyone was going to throw tomatoes.

It was a fun discussion, and I'm glad there were no tomatoes -- though it might have been fun to parry a little. Some highlights:

Ben Leventhal (Eater) revealed that Eater's readers are half male, half female, are mostly 25-34, go out to eat 5 times a week on average (!), and have 2-5 cocktails every time they go out. "So they're drunk when they're reading Eater," he joked. Adorable. He also thinks that blogging has already become a legitimate job and speculated that strong bloggers, like those at Gawker, could be making $100K/yr.

Tyler Colman (Dr. Vino) doesn't allow wine advertisers on his blog because he wants people to trust his recs, and pay-to-play is the fastest way to lose that audience. He makes a pittance on advertising and makes more from the business that has grown out of the blog -- private wine tastings, classes, etc. I really enjoyed his friendly, inclusive demeanor. He's the opposite of a wine snob. I'm looking forward to perusing his archives (and finding an appropriate wine for my upcoming birthday.)

Ed Levine (Serious Eats) had a lot to say on the topic of the WSJ blog payola exposé. He made the strong argument that old media has been taking freebies for much longer than bloggers have. When asked what it was like to go from print to blog, he said that he was born for the blog medium.

The panel also discussed Gawker, Restaurant Girl, Yelpers, the speed of publishing, how blogs are changing new media, and more. I've never been on a panel, and as I said to the panelists before we began, who doesn't like to hear themselves talk? I hope I didn't come off as a total jerk. Doug says I did alright, but he's on my side, of course.

Biggest thrill for me: during introductions, Ruth Reichl announced to an entire room full of people today that this blog was the first one she started reading regularly.

!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was plotzing. I must have been as red as a beet.

I meet La Doug at Ollie's tonight (check!) for fake Chinese food (check!) before going to watch Le Nozze di Figaro at the Met (check!) where we are subscribers (check!).

Over sesame wontons and shrimp chow fun, I tell La Doug that I'm thinking of finding a psychiatrist (check!) because I'm having this anxiety problem (check!) where, well, I won't go into details because it's TMI (check!).

The guy next to us, who's sitting just twelve inches away because the tables are crammed so close together (check!), gets up to leave. He deposits a card on the table. "Hope you don't mind, heard you were looking for a therapist. Here's my therapist's number. She's very good. Give her a call." (Check, check and check, please!)

How New York is that?

Cliffs notes from the discussion last night:

Julia Child thought Alice Waters was nuts. Molly O'Neill, who lived across the street from Child in Cambridge, A.) said that Child preferred male chefs and B.) did a very funny impression of Child saying derisively that "a peach is not dessert.!" The panel then started to veer in this weird jokes-at-Alice Waters'-expense direction, though Dan Barber did try to defend her. But Alice is hardly the anti-Julia. They both love food, they both want to share that love for food. I would hope that Julia Child would have been able to turn her wrath on a more appropriate adversary, like the people who make Uncrustables.

Child was also apparently a big supporter of agribusiness -- The French Chef was sponsored by Safeway for many years, and she didn't give a hoot about where her ingredients were coming from.

Molly O'Neill says she wasn't a very good cook! She was a great teacher, and a great cheerleader for good food, but that her food was just meh.

Laura Shapiro says she preferred the glossy, perfect shows of later years over the funny "Remember, you are alone in the kitchen and nobody can see you" years. (In case your memory fails, she dropped half a potato pancake on the stove, not a chicken, or a turkey, or a turducken or whatever.)

***

I must admit that I had hoped in vain to see a French Chef segment Judith Jones talks about in The Tenth Muse (pg. 72):

"Another memorable Julia moment of truth came when I was on the set as she was preparing suckling pig. She was explaining how the ears and the tail could easily burn while the piglet was roasting in the oven, so the thing to do was to wrap a piece of foil around each. Then she paused, looking at the creature in front of her, and said that there was an even easier method for the tail. Fortunately, she pointed out, there's a natural little hole below the tail, so just tuck the tail into that and it won't burn."

Thanks to Cutlets for standing up for the broke ass food blogger. And Regina Schrambling, as usual, nails it. For the record, I have never asked for a free meal, and I've got the credit card debt to prove it. I'm too neurotic about owing people money or favors, and it mortifies me to ask for something for nothing. I also don't want to tell people I'm writing about them because I can't promise I'm going to be nice. And I'm not so egotistical that I think I need to worry about being recognized. Besides, the best maitre d' in the world couldn't possibly keep track of all of the small fry food bloggers in New York getting their yap on. We multiply exponentially every day.

For all of my reviews, I've paid for the meal (for NYMag.com, I paid and they reimbursed me) and I've been anonymous. I even have aliases for making rezzies, and I don't put my name on my outgoing message in case the reservationist calls to confirm with my alias. That's not to say I've never taken a few freebies. I do know a few chefs by now, and If I've reaped the benefits of being friends with a cook (extra dishes, special treatment from the waiters), I'll tell you.

You, my dear audience, are small in numbers but smart. I'm sure you'd have no problem calling me out on bullshit. I'm still low profile and I'm happy to keep it that way.

Is anybody else insulted by this guy's bug-eyed chop suey act on Iron Chef America? I mean, I know peeps gotta make a living, but it's 2007 -- Asian men don't have to do karate chops to be watchable. B. D. Wong on L&O SVU -- no wax on/wax off business AND his English is perfect. Look at that dude on Lost -- he's never done a roundhouse kick to get off the island. Alright, that guy on Heroes has a samurai sword, but it's a comic book show so it kinda makes sense. The whole Chairman's nephew as martial artist is not charmingly eccentric the way the pompadour and yellow pepper were. It's not hot. It's just vaguely racist and kind of embarrassing.

I did enjoy the first episode of The Next Iron Chef, though. It's fun to watch professionals who can actually cook on the Food Network instead of shlocky candy product placement and pointy haired chili dog assemblers. But I can't believe Traci Des Jardins got cut so early.

Bonus, because I'm feeling so judgy judgy tonight -- Is Alton Brown going through a midlife crisis? The whole motorcycle road trip thing complete with tattoo is so Wild Hogs.

I'm immersing myself in Julia Child this week -- first by reading the new Judith Jones memoir and next by going to this panel discussion on Julia Child at the NYPL this Wednesday, Oct. 10. Judith Jones' book is a fascinating read for anyone who enjoys reading cookbooks. She discovered Julia Child and championed her masterwork, Mastering the Art of French Cooking; she was also the editor for Madhur Jaffrey, Lidia Bastianich, Edna Lewis, Marion Cunningham, and lots of other cookbooks you probably have in your kitchen. Jones talks about how Mastering the Art of French Cooking and The French Chef really changed the culinary climate of the country -- whereas before, home cooking was a chore best knocked off in as little time as possible (sound familiar?), Julia Child encouraged people to indulge in spending time, energy and brain power in the kitchen.

So I've been thinking, what will be the next culinary revolution in the home kitchen and who will be its hero? Will it be the gastrolabs of Wylie Dufresne, Will Goldfarb, Grant Achatz? The slow, local romance of Alice Waters and Dan Barber? The real world test kitchens of blogging home cooks like Chocolate & Zucchini, 101 Cookbooks, The Wednesday Chef, Smitten Kitchen?

I'd like to predict that the next revolution will happen when every kitchen gets a computer. Soon, you'll be able to put recipes together for a meal or a party and have the computer not only spit out a shopping list, but know which ingredients you already have in the pantry, order the other ingredients for delivery, or tell you the nearest place that has the obscure ingredient in stock. You'll be able to program the dietary restrictions and allergies of all your friends so that red flags will be sent up for incompatible recipes.

You'll be able to adjust all recipes automatically for number of servings, altitude temperatures, or to fit the equipment we have on hand. The computer will be able to give you a minute-by-minute game plan for every dish in a single list of directions, complete with hands-free, eyes-free audio recipe instructions. It'll show at the touch of a screen how to tournedo a vegetable, how to butterfly a chicken, etc. How about cooking seminars, where you can follow the audio and visual of a pro chef in real time, with TiVo style pause and rewind? Or family recipes, recorded and handed down as video clips?

Does the idea freak you out? It's a total Jetsons fantasy which is so close to becoming reality. Don't get me wrong, I totally believe in slow food cooking methods. I mean, I still can't really bring myself to trust the food processor. But I would love having a computer in the kitchen for auxiliary memory and computation.

***

This is the only clip I could find of The French Chef in a lazy YouTube search. It's hard to believe that roast chicken was not as ubiquitous as it is now. They're apparently going to show lots of old clips at the panel on Wednesday, which I'm looking forward to.

Cutlets, I love you, I read you regularly, but I gotta stand up for the lady M.F.K. What you call treacly, precious and brittle, I would call feminine and melancholy. The woman knew how to string words together with economy and style. I'd love to be 1/10 of the writer she was. Besides, comparing her to those other writers is like comparing white asparagus to a great hamburger (or a plate of char kway tiew, or escargots en pots de chambre). All are good for different reasons. You don't like white asparagus, fine. But overrated? That's a little harsh.