I'm working my way through a short collection of Burke - he would not sound out of place today, and I would be on his side. His economic instincts particularly are wonderful, as we see here in his "Thoughts on Scarcity", though the same sentiments apply to everything else, I think:
"To provide for us in our necessities is not in the power of government. It would be a vain presumption in statesmen to think they can do it. The people maintain them, and not they the people. It is in the power of government to prevent mch evil; it can do very little positive good in this, or perhaps in anything else".
2/11/2008
2007 Restaurants
I have done a quick back of the envelope calculation of how many restaurants I ate at in 2007, based on credit card records and records on Seamless Web, the delivery manager for my firm (and for most financial and law firms in New York city). Total? 70 personal restaurants, with my girlfriend, family, or friends. And a staggering 204 restaurants at the firm, not including those nights where I went out to grab a burger at McDonald's out of sheer desperation at staying in my office.
This all connects, because I have recently read Michael Pollan's "In Defence of Food", which lists various rules for healthy eating in the back. I was startled to see him basically ignore restaurants, which really are at the root of much of the problem with their extreme portions, salt, fat, and unknown chemicals. Eating actual food mostly at home is a huge lifestyle improvement, and during my vacation thus far have felt it to be one of the biggest differences in my health.
This all connects, because I have recently read Michael Pollan's "In Defence of Food", which lists various rules for healthy eating in the back. I was startled to see him basically ignore restaurants, which really are at the root of much of the problem with their extreme portions, salt, fat, and unknown chemicals. Eating actual food mostly at home is a huge lifestyle improvement, and during my vacation thus far have felt it to be one of the biggest differences in my health.
2/08/2008
Ciabatta
I made this Ciabatta for the minestroni I will post about later. It is a standard bread, with a little olive oil: flour, yeast, and salt. The secret to its extraordinary tenderness, however, is to knead the dough on the paddle setting of a mixer for a full twenty minutes. You get an astonishing, plastic, shiny, dough, which is hard to work with because it is so moist, but yields a great result if you can just push through the difficulty.
The recipe is from "The Bread Bible", just for reference.
The recipe is from "The Bread Bible", just for reference.
Frivol
I'm not sure there could possibly be a better explanation of what I find wrong with Ezra Klein's writing, public personality, politics, etc, etc, than this post about bookshelves. No, it's not about politics, but, well, read it and see.
I especially love how someone who writes what Ezra wrote could possibly claim to be a "wonk". Hey, ignorance is bliss.
I especially love how someone who writes what Ezra wrote could possibly claim to be a "wonk". Hey, ignorance is bliss.
2/04/2008
Shrimp and Cheesy Polenta
This simple dish was inspired by a romanian restaurant here in queens. A few shrimp marinated in garlic, ginger and lemon (which had nothing to do with the Romanian restaurant), and polenta served with grated Romanian feta (which did). A delicious combination, although I recognize that polenta is better (though less authentic) when made with milk rather than water.
2/01/2008
Risotto Cake
I made risotto the other day, and inevitably had some leftover. I'll post pictures of the risotto tomorrow, I think, if I can them. The usual answer with leftover risotto is to push it together, dip in flour, and to sautee in olive oil to make a delicious snack. It is accompanied by kale, first fried in olive oil, and then drained, squeezed, and sauteed again.
1/31/2008
Hugh Hewitt?
Hugh Hewitt wasn't on my radar screen until I reengaged with politics earlier this year. I certainly didn't know of his abominable record on pushing conservatives around with his own view of what makes up conservatism, most spectacularly on the blundered Harriet Miers nomination, which he defended with considerable vitriol. (Professor Bainbridge particularly turned me on to Hugh's seemingly wilful blindness) Now, as everyone but me knew, he's in the tank for Mitt Romney, of which this post is indicative. His theory, apparently, is that Romney is the only plausible choice for a good conservative, and that Mccain is some sort of liberal trojan horse.
I'll go into this a little more deeply over the next couple of weeks, I guess, but it really needs to be said - a moderate governor from Massachusetts who created government health care is a more authentic conservative than John McCain, who has fought the good fight for decades? How is this meme passing the smell test? And no, a willingness to defend waterboarding isn't the litmus test of conservatism.
It seems clear to me that Republicans, and especially the Republican money men, needs to start coalescing around Mccain. Bizarre stories about a conservative icon being liberal aren't going to get us there.
I'll go into this a little more deeply over the next couple of weeks, I guess, but it really needs to be said - a moderate governor from Massachusetts who created government health care is a more authentic conservative than John McCain, who has fought the good fight for decades? How is this meme passing the smell test? And no, a willingness to defend waterboarding isn't the litmus test of conservatism.
It seems clear to me that Republicans, and especially the Republican money men, needs to start coalescing around Mccain. Bizarre stories about a conservative icon being liberal aren't going to get us there.
Melanzana Sirenuse
This is a meal that Mario Batali says he used to eat at Le Sirenuse, a luxury hotel in Italy, near Lake Garda. I love eggplant*, and sandwiching mozzarella di buffalo and fried, it's one of my favorite foods. What's more, the technique is straightforward. Just bake sliced eggplants for about 10 minutes in a little olive oil, make sandwiches out with the cheese, and then dip in egg and flour before frying in the best extra virgin olive oil (eggplants suck up oil, and you'll pay for scrimping on the oil with poor taste).
* Why do we call it eggplant? Melanzana (italian) or aubergine (French) are much better. I wonder if the Germans manage anything less palatable.
1/30/2008
How we find ourselves here
Probably the chief reason for this vacation from my law firm (which I've been calling a sabbatical, as it is very long) is that I have gained weight. Those who used to read me on Crescat might remember that one of things I'm proudest of is of having lost eighty pounds, mostly by learning to cook, and eating clean, honest food made by my own hands. My job has robbed me of what I thought was a luxury, and the results were far worse than I anticipated. It turns out that restaurant food combined with tremendous stress makes me fat, and though the situation isn't irretrievable, it has turned grave, at least to me. So I decided to spend this time digging back towards the roots of the original weight loss, back to my hands and kitchen, to the food that brought me here, so to speak.
There is a profound peace in being in one's own kitchen, music in the background, hands deep in flour, or listening to the rhythmic chop of one's own knife slicing through garlic, its aroma slowly reaching one's nose. It is a peace which makes me think of pasta. Here, below is my own pasta, rolled out. You don't need a pasta machine to get thin pasta, as you can see
Those who have not made pasta before are daunted, I realize, but the concern is unjustified. All you need is about a pound of flour, and four full eggs. Pile the flour in a bowl, empty out a well in the middle of the flour, and add the eggs. Mix slowly, and then knead for ten minutes (or a little less with a good mixer, which is what I used). That's it. Afterwards, just cook in plenty of salted boiling water, and drain. It'll look like this.
Of course, you can dress pasta however you want. Perhaps the nicest thing to do is to sautee some bacon, and then add raw egg off the heat, which, of course, is carbonara. But instead I made a beef sauce with plenty of excellent french wine, and drank more with dinner. The road back to a
healthy life may turn out to be long, though I am doing by best. But it will be delicious, no matter what.
There is a profound peace in being in one's own kitchen, music in the background, hands deep in flour, or listening to the rhythmic chop of one's own knife slicing through garlic, its aroma slowly reaching one's nose. It is a peace which makes me think of pasta. Here, below is my own pasta, rolled out. You don't need a pasta machine to get thin pasta, as you can see
Those who have not made pasta before are daunted, I realize, but the concern is unjustified. All you need is about a pound of flour, and four full eggs. Pile the flour in a bowl, empty out a well in the middle of the flour, and add the eggs. Mix slowly, and then knead for ten minutes (or a little less with a good mixer, which is what I used). That's it. Afterwards, just cook in plenty of salted boiling water, and drain. It'll look like this.
Of course, you can dress pasta however you want. Perhaps the nicest thing to do is to sautee some bacon, and then add raw egg off the heat, which, of course, is carbonara. But instead I made a beef sauce with plenty of excellent french wine, and drank more with dinner. The road back to a
healthy life may turn out to be long, though I am doing by best. But it will be delicious, no matter what.
Hi! I'm back!!!
Hi. This is actually Raffi, back after a long, long, hiatus. For anyone who doesn't know me, I used to write on the fairly popular blog Crescat Sententia, as the resident food blogger, but also delved into things other than food on occasion. I graduated from law school and then clerked on the Delaware Court of Chancery, after which I took a job as a corporate lawyer in New York. I had a tough year, which people will learn about as a I write. And now, finally, I'm on vacation, for the next several weeks. And I intend to write again. I don't really expect anyone to read this. I've been out of the blogging loop for so long. But more than anything else, I want a record of this vacation, of how I felt, of what I was thinking. And, of course, we are in the middle of the most exciting political season in perhaps a generation. I have lots to say about it. So I don't care if anyone reads this or not. I'm going to write regardless.
6/05/2005
A number of friends around DC had told me that I ought to visit a specific restaurant in Vienna, Virginia - it had a good, inexpensive, French country lunch menu, they said. So I went, and was completely taken aback when the first course salad arrived - a few leaves of iceberg lettuce, topped with a couple of grated carrots and what seemed an awful lot like a sauce that had once seen the inside of a bottle.
There's plainly no sense in which my reaction to this salad was simply a matter of taste. Iceberg lettuce in a restaurant pretending to French country cuisine is objectively wrong, whatever someone like the often confused James Beard might have had to say. Nonetheless, my instinct in the restaurant was to say nothing. If they can't be bothered to notice that they just served an actual customer iceberg lettuce with insipid dressing, to me it makes no sense to help them realize their mistake
My dining companion, on the other hand, was pretty irate - they're taking their customers for idiots, she said. You can't let them just hand out iceberg lettuce salads with no consequences. You and I know this is wrong - we should take them to task. And, she added, we should specifically take them to task the more expensive the restaurant gets. Sure, maybe you can let them escape at $14.95 for three courses as here, but cowards like you say nothing even when a $40 plate is objectively wrong. Why?
In the end, I did nothing, and the meal somewhat redeemed itself with a passable duck confit, though the accompanying potatoes had obviously been hanging around since the night before, and the dried plantain adorning the creme caramele (after I had ordered creme brulee anyway) ill placed. But I'm left wondering whether my approach is wrong. My sense is that if they want my advice, they're welcome to pay me, or suffer when an actual critic shows up and is served the same desultory nonsense. But maybe, and especially since this restaurant has survived unscathed for a while, people should speak out during dinner. I wonder - please email me with your opinions.
There's plainly no sense in which my reaction to this salad was simply a matter of taste. Iceberg lettuce in a restaurant pretending to French country cuisine is objectively wrong, whatever someone like the often confused James Beard might have had to say. Nonetheless, my instinct in the restaurant was to say nothing. If they can't be bothered to notice that they just served an actual customer iceberg lettuce with insipid dressing, to me it makes no sense to help them realize their mistake
My dining companion, on the other hand, was pretty irate - they're taking their customers for idiots, she said. You can't let them just hand out iceberg lettuce salads with no consequences. You and I know this is wrong - we should take them to task. And, she added, we should specifically take them to task the more expensive the restaurant gets. Sure, maybe you can let them escape at $14.95 for three courses as here, but cowards like you say nothing even when a $40 plate is objectively wrong. Why?
In the end, I did nothing, and the meal somewhat redeemed itself with a passable duck confit, though the accompanying potatoes had obviously been hanging around since the night before, and the dried plantain adorning the creme caramele (after I had ordered creme brulee anyway) ill placed. But I'm left wondering whether my approach is wrong. My sense is that if they want my advice, they're welcome to pay me, or suffer when an actual critic shows up and is served the same desultory nonsense. But maybe, and especially since this restaurant has survived unscathed for a while, people should speak out during dinner. I wonder - please email me with your opinions.
Hell's Kitchen
Raffi Melkonian at 10:48 PM
I'm just watching Gordon Ramsay's restaurant reality show, Hell's Kitchen. The show began with each contestant being asked to prepare a "signature dish" in just 45 minutes for the chef. I was left wondering what I would do in that situation.
Obviously, my stews are out of the question. Roasts wouldn't work either, and my favorite spaghetti carbonara would collapse completely if left for even a minute or two. There's nothing so nasty as slowly congealing eggy pasta.
Frankly, my first idea would be to simply make Ramsay a fried egg, or scrambled eggs, or an omelet, the best way I know how. For the first, by cooking the egg slowly in butter, and then dripping warm butter over the still raw yolk, and then salting only the white to avoid disturbing the yolk's color. The second over a double boiler, with cream at the end. And the last by rolling the omelet around the pan in that way I've never been able to manage.
But he'd probably have thrown those back in my face for being too unambitious. So after thinking about it a bit more, I hit on risotto with morels - and was gratified to see the chef serve a similar dish in the first night of the restaurant's "opening" later in the show.
Of course, by then I would have run out of time to make the risotto properly. Sweating the vegetables at the beginning takes time, as does the rice itself.
Well, better them than me. The difficulty of satisfying a real chef, even one putting on a bit of an act like Ramsay is, is too much for me. I'll stick to what I'm actually good at.
Raffi Melkonian at 10:48 PM
I'm just watching Gordon Ramsay's restaurant reality show, Hell's Kitchen. The show began with each contestant being asked to prepare a "signature dish" in just 45 minutes for the chef. I was left wondering what I would do in that situation.
Obviously, my stews are out of the question. Roasts wouldn't work either, and my favorite spaghetti carbonara would collapse completely if left for even a minute or two. There's nothing so nasty as slowly congealing eggy pasta.
Frankly, my first idea would be to simply make Ramsay a fried egg, or scrambled eggs, or an omelet, the best way I know how. For the first, by cooking the egg slowly in butter, and then dripping warm butter over the still raw yolk, and then salting only the white to avoid disturbing the yolk's color. The second over a double boiler, with cream at the end. And the last by rolling the omelet around the pan in that way I've never been able to manage.
But he'd probably have thrown those back in my face for being too unambitious. So after thinking about it a bit more, I hit on risotto with morels - and was gratified to see the chef serve a similar dish in the first night of the restaurant's "opening" later in the show.
Of course, by then I would have run out of time to make the risotto properly. Sweating the vegetables at the beginning takes time, as does the rice itself.
Well, better them than me. The difficulty of satisfying a real chef, even one putting on a bit of an act like Ramsay is, is too much for me. I'll stick to what I'm actually good at.
French toast for dinner
Raffi Melkonian at 04:33 PM
In The Whole Duty of a Woman from 1737, I find the following recipe for French toast. The entire thing is good (though necessarily simple) - but the last sentence is best. Breakfast for dinner is great fun.
"Having two French Rolls, cut them in Slices as thick as your finger, Crumb and Crust together, lay them on a dish, put to them a Pint of Cream, and half a pint of milk, strew them over with beaten Cinnamon and Sugar, turn them frequently until they are tender; but take care not to break them, then take them from the cream, with a Slice, break four or five Eggs, turns your slices of bread in the Eggs, and fry them in clarified butter, make them of a good brown colour, not black; scrape a little Sugar on them.
They may be served as a second Course Dish; but fittest for Supper"
Raffi Melkonian at 04:33 PM
In The Whole Duty of a Woman from 1737, I find the following recipe for French toast. The entire thing is good (though necessarily simple) - but the last sentence is best. Breakfast for dinner is great fun.
"Having two French Rolls, cut them in Slices as thick as your finger, Crumb and Crust together, lay them on a dish, put to them a Pint of Cream, and half a pint of milk, strew them over with beaten Cinnamon and Sugar, turn them frequently until they are tender; but take care not to break them, then take them from the cream, with a Slice, break four or five Eggs, turns your slices of bread in the Eggs, and fry them in clarified butter, make them of a good brown colour, not black; scrape a little Sugar on them.
They may be served as a second Course Dish; but fittest for Supper"
A sticky problem
Raffi Melkonian at 08:39 PM
One of my friends in Paris has just finished his training as a boulanger - that is, a bread (rather than pastry) baker. For some really good reasons, he needs to get out of France, and we've been chatting about opportunities for him in the United States and in China.
But he's got a problem. As far as we can tell, no one has been able to duplicate the best Parisian bread baking abroad, despite herculean efforts. The most enthusiastic, like the excellent Bread Line of Washington D.C, have even tried importing their ingredients and ovens from France to close the gap - and yet, they still fall short.
Neither of us have any real idea why this is so. The best guess we've come up with is something about the water, which obviously can't be shipped from the motherland. But just yesterday, in the midst of some other research in the extraordinary culinary history collection at Harvard's Schlesinger Library, I ran into this excerpt from a late 19th century report on the bread of Vienna.
“The uniformity of the product demonstrates that the problem of making good bread has been solved. One wonders why such bread cannot be elsewhere obtained. It is know that efforts have been made to introduce the production of the Vienna bread to the public of other countries, but with indifferent success. The trained journey-man bakers of Vienna are sought for and obtained to serve in other capitals; but the bread they produce is inferior. Why have these efforts failed? Why cannot so apparently simple a process be communicated to others in such terms as to be followed?”
Same problem, different country. I wonder if I ought to be encouraged, since the French were apparently able to fix their deficiencies.
Raffi Melkonian at 08:39 PM
One of my friends in Paris has just finished his training as a boulanger - that is, a bread (rather than pastry) baker. For some really good reasons, he needs to get out of France, and we've been chatting about opportunities for him in the United States and in China.
But he's got a problem. As far as we can tell, no one has been able to duplicate the best Parisian bread baking abroad, despite herculean efforts. The most enthusiastic, like the excellent Bread Line of Washington D.C, have even tried importing their ingredients and ovens from France to close the gap - and yet, they still fall short.
Neither of us have any real idea why this is so. The best guess we've come up with is something about the water, which obviously can't be shipped from the motherland. But just yesterday, in the midst of some other research in the extraordinary culinary history collection at Harvard's Schlesinger Library, I ran into this excerpt from a late 19th century report on the bread of Vienna.
“The uniformity of the product demonstrates that the problem of making good bread has been solved. One wonders why such bread cannot be elsewhere obtained. It is know that efforts have been made to introduce the production of the Vienna bread to the public of other countries, but with indifferent success. The trained journey-man bakers of Vienna are sought for and obtained to serve in other capitals; but the bread they produce is inferior. Why have these efforts failed? Why cannot so apparently simple a process be communicated to others in such terms as to be followed?”
Same problem, different country. I wonder if I ought to be encouraged, since the French were apparently able to fix their deficiencies.
Criminal Pie
Raffi Melkonian at 10:58 PM
Two weeks ago, I asked whether people would feel cheated if a bakery sold customers Sam's Club or Price Club pies as homemade.
Eileen, of the blog Ambassador Boo, runs a bakery in New Hampshire. She wrote back noting an aspect of the problem I hadn't considered when I asked the question. People apparently have grown so used to industrially made pies that they disdain the real thing. As she puts it,
"At our bakery, we often end up with the opposite -- people come in, and they want a pie. And we say, Oh, we just made this lovely blueberry peach this morning, it is $20. And then they get all huffy, and say, "You know, I can get a pie just like that at Shaw's/Albertson's/Sam's for $3.95". It is hard to explain to those people that this is real pie crust, and made by hand, and etc.
"As we are the only real bakery in the area, most people usually buy it. But not all. One person one time came and bought a slice of pie (blueberry), ate two bites, and came to the counter and said, "This is the worst pie I have ever tasted. It is absolutely disgusting." And we were shocked, and offered her money back and a free other-dessert (she said no, which is weird), and asked what it was that was so gross. Tasted like dirt? Gross crust? And she wouldn't tell us! Just that it was horrible. Then she left. We tasted what she had left on her plate (not proper, but whatever), and it tasted great! Blueberries! Buttery crust! Yum!"
That, I think, is one of the sadder things about food that I've recently read. And yet, I know it's happening. People like the stuff that comes from a box, or a tin. They think it tastes right, somehow, and that the authentic product is the mockery.
Before anyone gets worked up about my elitism, I should say that to the extent these feelings are essentially nostalgic accidents, I don't think anyone should mind. I know that Heinz ketchup is sugary glop, but drowning some cheap fries in the stuff reminds me of the Friday evening hamburgers my family had when I was a kid, our only foray away from home food for the week. Those are evocative memories, and I don't mind the occasional culinary mistake to reach into them. But I think we've got ourselves a generation of younger people particularly who don't even know about the original article. That is to say, people who think the real pie tastes disgusting, rather than recognizing that what they're after is margarine and preservative taste. That, I think, is the worrying distinction - and is something that can't be addressed by well meaning state programs, but at home.
Raffi Melkonian at 10:58 PM
Two weeks ago, I asked whether people would feel cheated if a bakery sold customers Sam's Club or Price Club pies as homemade.
Eileen, of the blog Ambassador Boo, runs a bakery in New Hampshire. She wrote back noting an aspect of the problem I hadn't considered when I asked the question. People apparently have grown so used to industrially made pies that they disdain the real thing. As she puts it,
"At our bakery, we often end up with the opposite -- people come in, and they want a pie. And we say, Oh, we just made this lovely blueberry peach this morning, it is $20. And then they get all huffy, and say, "You know, I can get a pie just like that at Shaw's/Albertson's/Sam's for $3.95". It is hard to explain to those people that this is real pie crust, and made by hand, and etc.
"As we are the only real bakery in the area, most people usually buy it. But not all. One person one time came and bought a slice of pie (blueberry), ate two bites, and came to the counter and said, "This is the worst pie I have ever tasted. It is absolutely disgusting." And we were shocked, and offered her money back and a free other-dessert (she said no, which is weird), and asked what it was that was so gross. Tasted like dirt? Gross crust? And she wouldn't tell us! Just that it was horrible. Then she left. We tasted what she had left on her plate (not proper, but whatever), and it tasted great! Blueberries! Buttery crust! Yum!"
That, I think, is one of the sadder things about food that I've recently read. And yet, I know it's happening. People like the stuff that comes from a box, or a tin. They think it tastes right, somehow, and that the authentic product is the mockery.
Before anyone gets worked up about my elitism, I should say that to the extent these feelings are essentially nostalgic accidents, I don't think anyone should mind. I know that Heinz ketchup is sugary glop, but drowning some cheap fries in the stuff reminds me of the Friday evening hamburgers my family had when I was a kid, our only foray away from home food for the week. Those are evocative memories, and I don't mind the occasional culinary mistake to reach into them. But I think we've got ourselves a generation of younger people particularly who don't even know about the original article. That is to say, people who think the real pie tastes disgusting, rather than recognizing that what they're after is margarine and preservative taste. That, I think, is the worrying distinction - and is something that can't be addressed by well meaning state programs, but at home.
What I ate this week
Raffi Melkonian at 11:25 PM
It's June! That not only means that many of the summer vegetables are heading to the market, but also that heavy dinners sit too stolidly on the stomach to be comfortably eaten in the air-condition-less torpor of my flat. The solution is light, happy fare - like the two recipes I note below. As for my birthday on Friday (June 3), I had a pleasant lunch with some law school friends, and then stole away home for my real treat - a small linzer tart of home-made raspberry jam and short crust pastry.
Ratatouille - My mom's ratatouille is just a medley of vegetables turned quickly in some olive oil with lots of garlic, and then put into the oven until cooked. It's perfectly tasty, but I discovered this week that the traditional French recipe for the stew is actually rather more involved.
Specifically, a real French ratatouille is made by slowly sauteeing the vegetables in a pan over a low flame, starting with the hardiest of the ingredients and only adding the most delicate at the very end. This technique not only keeps the last entrants into the stew fresh tasting and crisp, but also yields a light, "syrupy reduction", in the words of Richard Olney - that is to say, a tasty sauce.
For my own version, I started onions and garlic, and then with a couple of artichokes, cleaned and turned with a paring knife, and rubbed with lemon to preserve color. Fifteen minutes later, the eggplants went in, with some extra olive oil, followed by some nice bell peppers and asparagus. Finally, I added four summer squash for a quick ten minute sweat. The result, cooled in the fridge overnight, and mandatorily lightened with some lemon, was extraordinary. The oven based home ratatouille is great - but this thing is something else.
Salad Nicoise - I read somewhere that Salad Nicoise never tastes quite as good at home as it tastes on a southern French beach, your toes digging into the warm sand. While that's true, I find it makes a perfectly nice dinner. The only really doctrinal ingredients are green beans (cooked for ten minutes in salted water, and then shocked in ice), those small nicoise olives, tinned tuna preserved in olive oil, and a hard boiled egg. Otherwise, let your imagination roam free.
By the way, the one thing that makes Nicoise better at home is that you can toss each element in dressing before plating. Bistros in a hurry pull composed salads out of the fridge, and drench them with dressing from on top. Not good.
Raffi Melkonian at 11:25 PM
It's June! That not only means that many of the summer vegetables are heading to the market, but also that heavy dinners sit too stolidly on the stomach to be comfortably eaten in the air-condition-less torpor of my flat. The solution is light, happy fare - like the two recipes I note below. As for my birthday on Friday (June 3), I had a pleasant lunch with some law school friends, and then stole away home for my real treat - a small linzer tart of home-made raspberry jam and short crust pastry.
Ratatouille - My mom's ratatouille is just a medley of vegetables turned quickly in some olive oil with lots of garlic, and then put into the oven until cooked. It's perfectly tasty, but I discovered this week that the traditional French recipe for the stew is actually rather more involved.
Specifically, a real French ratatouille is made by slowly sauteeing the vegetables in a pan over a low flame, starting with the hardiest of the ingredients and only adding the most delicate at the very end. This technique not only keeps the last entrants into the stew fresh tasting and crisp, but also yields a light, "syrupy reduction", in the words of Richard Olney - that is to say, a tasty sauce.
For my own version, I started onions and garlic, and then with a couple of artichokes, cleaned and turned with a paring knife, and rubbed with lemon to preserve color. Fifteen minutes later, the eggplants went in, with some extra olive oil, followed by some nice bell peppers and asparagus. Finally, I added four summer squash for a quick ten minute sweat. The result, cooled in the fridge overnight, and mandatorily lightened with some lemon, was extraordinary. The oven based home ratatouille is great - but this thing is something else.
Salad Nicoise - I read somewhere that Salad Nicoise never tastes quite as good at home as it tastes on a southern French beach, your toes digging into the warm sand. While that's true, I find it makes a perfectly nice dinner. The only really doctrinal ingredients are green beans (cooked for ten minutes in salted water, and then shocked in ice), those small nicoise olives, tinned tuna preserved in olive oil, and a hard boiled egg. Otherwise, let your imagination roam free.
By the way, the one thing that makes Nicoise better at home is that you can toss each element in dressing before plating. Bistros in a hurry pull composed salads out of the fridge, and drench them with dressing from on top. Not good.
Summer Garlic
Raffi Melkonian at 10:46 AM
Nigel Slater is one of my favorite food writers - not because he is traditional (the usual way into my stomach), but because he so clearly is gluttonous. Even the names of his books betray him - Thirst, or Appetite. His finest book is the foundational Real Food, and the best passage in that book is about summer garlic:
"Round about late May or early June, the first garlic appears in the market. The very first from Italy or FRance is plump and white, its skin a soft green, brushed with anything from the faintest pink to the deepest mauve. Tied in three, the bulbs are fat and pale and the smell is at first barely detectable.
At home, I peel back the waxy skin and pull out the slippery white cloves. Each one has its own thick skin, still wet and pliable. Tucked inside are the sweetest, juiciest nuggets of garlic. So firm and crisp I want to eat them like slices of new season's apple. This is the garlic I want for cuting in half and rubbing on tihick, crisp toast, or for slicing thinkly and tucking between the sily folds of a toasted pepper, or for rubbing round the salad bowl. This is the garlic for scenting summer mayonnaise, for stuffing into a chicken as it roasts. This is the sweet, mild, garlic of romance".
I personally don't know what I'm going to do with the summer garlic I found in the small Cambridge Farmer's market this morning. Maybe I'll finally indulge my need for a shrimp po' boy, and make a spicy remoulade to go with it. Or perhaps a simple pasta with asparagus is on order. Or, if I'm being particularly homely, I'll simply grind it into a bowl of yogurt like we do at home.
In any case, keep your eyes open. The summer garlic is here.
Raffi Melkonian at 10:46 AM
Nigel Slater is one of my favorite food writers - not because he is traditional (the usual way into my stomach), but because he so clearly is gluttonous. Even the names of his books betray him - Thirst, or Appetite. His finest book is the foundational Real Food, and the best passage in that book is about summer garlic:
"Round about late May or early June, the first garlic appears in the market. The very first from Italy or FRance is plump and white, its skin a soft green, brushed with anything from the faintest pink to the deepest mauve. Tied in three, the bulbs are fat and pale and the smell is at first barely detectable.
At home, I peel back the waxy skin and pull out the slippery white cloves. Each one has its own thick skin, still wet and pliable. Tucked inside are the sweetest, juiciest nuggets of garlic. So firm and crisp I want to eat them like slices of new season's apple. This is the garlic I want for cuting in half and rubbing on tihick, crisp toast, or for slicing thinkly and tucking between the sily folds of a toasted pepper, or for rubbing round the salad bowl. This is the garlic for scenting summer mayonnaise, for stuffing into a chicken as it roasts. This is the sweet, mild, garlic of romance".
I personally don't know what I'm going to do with the summer garlic I found in the small Cambridge Farmer's market this morning. Maybe I'll finally indulge my need for a shrimp po' boy, and make a spicy remoulade to go with it. Or perhaps a simple pasta with asparagus is on order. Or, if I'm being particularly homely, I'll simply grind it into a bowl of yogurt like we do at home.
In any case, keep your eyes open. The summer garlic is here.
5/24/2005
A faulty stove
Raffi Melkonian at 11:07 PM
Don't you hate things that look great, but don't work worth a damn? Like chiseled boxers with glass jaws, or beautiful looking tasteless food? I do, at least. And I'm feeling that way about my parents' new stove.
It looks astonishing, I have to admit. An array of buttons festoon the front, promising to do things I didn't even imagine stoves did. The griddles can be electronically expanded and contracted, while the stove can be programmed to the single degree. There's a professional looking ventilator above, and an equally complicated microwave (boo) attached to the top. There's even this needle you're supposed stick into meat, which shuts off when the internal temperature reaches the FDA approved standard. Incredible. And expensive.
Oh, and also completely useless. You can't use cast iron on the griddles - it might crack the glass, or whatever it is. The repair man who came to look at the scratch our completely normal pot made said that you have to take a carpentry level when you're out buying cookware, since the heat is apparently inefficient if your pots aren't exactly flat on the bottom - "don't bother with those expensive pans", he said - "they don't work". To keep the complex electronics cool (for which, by the way, you have to buy a warranty, otherwise they're essentially guaranteed to break down to expensive effect), the oven almost constantly emits a giant fan noise. Oh, and that ventilator? It's so weak that the steam from your cooking degrades the microwave handle to the extent that it eventually falls off. Seriously.
So what is this oven possibly for? Well, just like a lot of gadgets that people buy, the point of this stove is apparently to invite friends over, show them that your credit rating is still high enough to afford the gleaming monstrosity, and then send them home again having eaten food bought furtively at the Price Club and passed off as your own by the addition of some aerosol whipped cream. We're taking it back to the store when I return from Wilmington. And buying an honest stove with a few knobs, and some coils that can heat cast iron and normal pots alike.
Raffi Melkonian at 11:07 PM
Don't you hate things that look great, but don't work worth a damn? Like chiseled boxers with glass jaws, or beautiful looking tasteless food? I do, at least. And I'm feeling that way about my parents' new stove.
It looks astonishing, I have to admit. An array of buttons festoon the front, promising to do things I didn't even imagine stoves did. The griddles can be electronically expanded and contracted, while the stove can be programmed to the single degree. There's a professional looking ventilator above, and an equally complicated microwave (boo) attached to the top. There's even this needle you're supposed stick into meat, which shuts off when the internal temperature reaches the FDA approved standard. Incredible. And expensive.
Oh, and also completely useless. You can't use cast iron on the griddles - it might crack the glass, or whatever it is. The repair man who came to look at the scratch our completely normal pot made said that you have to take a carpentry level when you're out buying cookware, since the heat is apparently inefficient if your pots aren't exactly flat on the bottom - "don't bother with those expensive pans", he said - "they don't work". To keep the complex electronics cool (for which, by the way, you have to buy a warranty, otherwise they're essentially guaranteed to break down to expensive effect), the oven almost constantly emits a giant fan noise. Oh, and that ventilator? It's so weak that the steam from your cooking degrades the microwave handle to the extent that it eventually falls off. Seriously.
So what is this oven possibly for? Well, just like a lot of gadgets that people buy, the point of this stove is apparently to invite friends over, show them that your credit rating is still high enough to afford the gleaming monstrosity, and then send them home again having eaten food bought furtively at the Price Club and passed off as your own by the addition of some aerosol whipped cream. We're taking it back to the store when I return from Wilmington. And buying an honest stove with a few knobs, and some coils that can heat cast iron and normal pots alike.
I've not been keeping up with writing up my 50 book challenge entries - suffice to say that I've been reading diligently, except for a short gap around exam time. Hopefully, I can catch up over the next week or so, mostly posted on my own web site.
But my thoughts on Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphires are appropriate here, even though Will has written on it previously. I'd only disagree with Will's assessment in that I find this book's lighter emphasis on personal drama when compared with Reichl's previous memoirs a tremendous strength. Give me formalized, Handel-opera like emotion any day.
Amid a real flood of good writing, however, one passage did strike me particularly. Discussing New York's famous Le Cirque, Reichl writes, "I had meanly ordered risotto, a dish few French chefs can master". (37). First of all, of course, the author is right - my suspicion is that French chefs see risotto as a convenient, superficially elegant sop for the awkward vegetarians that fashion has forced them to accomodate. Consequently, the number of wall-paper paste risottos I've eaten in otherwise competent restaurants is a little startling.
But much more interesting is Reichl's real point, about ordering dishes "meanly". I too have been known to take part in this bizarre game, ordering dishes I know the restaurant can't cook. Of course, to some extent this one sided exercise is silly, rather like the pitched academic rivalry we at St. Andrews maintained against Cambridge, and about which the latter knew nothing. And it's also somewhat masochistic - I know for a fact that the Cheesecake Factory isn't going to produce a creditable pasta carbonara, and it's idiotic to order it just to prove to myself that they couldn't. But I do it anyway, because I feel like part of what you're suposed to be doing at a restaurant is finding out if the menu is serious. Unless someone is paying for me to eat the entire menu, like a proper critic, the best I can do is make sure the most unlikely entry isn't a joke. And yet, this technique obviously results in me eating a lot of junk I don't want to eat. So who is really being mean, and to who? At least in Reichl's case, she was at a good restaurant, and the meal was great regardless. That doesn't often happen for me.
But my thoughts on Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphires are appropriate here, even though Will has written on it previously. I'd only disagree with Will's assessment in that I find this book's lighter emphasis on personal drama when compared with Reichl's previous memoirs a tremendous strength. Give me formalized, Handel-opera like emotion any day.
Amid a real flood of good writing, however, one passage did strike me particularly. Discussing New York's famous Le Cirque, Reichl writes, "I had meanly ordered risotto, a dish few French chefs can master". (37). First of all, of course, the author is right - my suspicion is that French chefs see risotto as a convenient, superficially elegant sop for the awkward vegetarians that fashion has forced them to accomodate. Consequently, the number of wall-paper paste risottos I've eaten in otherwise competent restaurants is a little startling.
But much more interesting is Reichl's real point, about ordering dishes "meanly". I too have been known to take part in this bizarre game, ordering dishes I know the restaurant can't cook. Of course, to some extent this one sided exercise is silly, rather like the pitched academic rivalry we at St. Andrews maintained against Cambridge, and about which the latter knew nothing. And it's also somewhat masochistic - I know for a fact that the Cheesecake Factory isn't going to produce a creditable pasta carbonara, and it's idiotic to order it just to prove to myself that they couldn't. But I do it anyway, because I feel like part of what you're suposed to be doing at a restaurant is finding out if the menu is serious. Unless someone is paying for me to eat the entire menu, like a proper critic, the best I can do is make sure the most unlikely entry isn't a joke. And yet, this technique obviously results in me eating a lot of junk I don't want to eat. So who is really being mean, and to who? At least in Reichl's case, she was at a good restaurant, and the meal was great regardless. That doesn't often happen for me.
4/05/2005
I obviously prefer home made food, but that doesn't mean I don't care about processed and other ready made food. This is the stuff that's feeding America, and somone ought to pay attention. Here, for example, you can see my brief thoughts about C2 cola, and here my review of the sugar free baby ruth.
The target of my eating this week has been 7-Eleven's relatively new "gourmet" sandwiches, called "Big Eats Deli". They claim to be made with artisanal bread, fresh meats, and interesting cheeses. In an area where one local bakery sells a single sandwich for $8.25, 7-Eleven has come into the market at between $2.99 and $3.49. That's the good news.
And the sandwiches aren't appalling either. The basic offerings, such as smoked turkey & Jack cheese on Wheatberry bread, are perfectly serviceable - made relatively close by in Brockton with ingredients as advertised. No, the supposed southwestern mayonnaise wasn't that exciting, and the bread had generally gone a bit gummy, but I've had worse sandwiches at places purporting to serve sandwiches. That 7-Eleven is matching even some sandwich shops is pretty impressive.
And as much as it worries me to say this, the Mediterranean Style Turkey with Pepper Supreme spread is actually decent. Like, I'd have it again. The tomato and basil bread was fresh and tasty, there was some sort of tapenade (yes, I'm serious), and the pepper sauce was an interesting mix of bell peppers and some sort of cheese. No, I wouldn't pay any more than $3.50 for it, but at that price it's a pretty good deal. If you're hungry and desperate, 7-Eleven has moved into the market with at least one relatively impressive offering. Go for it.
The target of my eating this week has been 7-Eleven's relatively new "gourmet" sandwiches, called "Big Eats Deli". They claim to be made with artisanal bread, fresh meats, and interesting cheeses. In an area where one local bakery sells a single sandwich for $8.25, 7-Eleven has come into the market at between $2.99 and $3.49. That's the good news.
And the sandwiches aren't appalling either. The basic offerings, such as smoked turkey & Jack cheese on Wheatberry bread, are perfectly serviceable - made relatively close by in Brockton with ingredients as advertised. No, the supposed southwestern mayonnaise wasn't that exciting, and the bread had generally gone a bit gummy, but I've had worse sandwiches at places purporting to serve sandwiches. That 7-Eleven is matching even some sandwich shops is pretty impressive.
And as much as it worries me to say this, the Mediterranean Style Turkey with Pepper Supreme spread is actually decent. Like, I'd have it again. The tomato and basil bread was fresh and tasty, there was some sort of tapenade (yes, I'm serious), and the pepper sauce was an interesting mix of bell peppers and some sort of cheese. No, I wouldn't pay any more than $3.50 for it, but at that price it's a pretty good deal. If you're hungry and desperate, 7-Eleven has moved into the market with at least one relatively impressive offering. Go for it.
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