A Blithe PALATE

America is my country and Paris is my hometown.

I think every woman should go to a foreign country or do something amazing for a significant birthday. I turned 30 in Paris five years ago. 

If I'd known how fabulous my thirties would be, I would have skipped my twenties.  The months leading up to my thirtieth birthday were relatively trying.  My grandfather was dying and I had ended a dead fish masquerading as a relationship (a very weak attempt at co-opting Woody Allen's comment that relationships are like sharks; they need to move forward or they die).  Going to Paris seemed like the perfect antidote to this dreary intrusion of life and who better to go with than my dear friend Peggy?  I told Grandfather I was going to Paris for my 30^th birthday; he told me to eat jambon and butter sandwiches and all the foie gras I could eat, for myself and for him.  He died the  night before I left for Paris so I determined to follow his advice.

I turned 30 crossing the Atlantic.  P. turned to me and said, "It's midnight!  Happy Birthday!"  That is how I think of 30.

How do I remember 30?  Even better. We spent ten days engaged in my favorite activities:  eating, drinking and exploring the city.  In fact, I think we spent most of our time walking the city going from one restaurant to the next.  How we both managed to lose weight whilst consuming frites, fish, steaks, ham sandwiches, fattened livers, cream sodden sauces and bottles of red wine daily is beyond me; the French Paradox in action, clearly.

On our last night in Paris we ate two dinners:  the first meal at Le Procope, and the second at Closerie des Lilas.  Neither are particularly soul-satisfying in terms of food, but mind-bending for their storied lineages. 

Le Procope is the world's oldest operating restaurant.  It was opened in 1686 and has been serving ever since.  It's located in the 6th Arrondissement (St-Germain/ Luxembourg) and occupies a three-story town house.  We stumbled across it purely by chance.  We had just finished eating crepes at one of the creperies and were on our way back to the Latin Quarter when we rounded the corner and saw the building.  Intrigued, we came up to read about the restaurant.  What struck us immediately were the names of past luminaries who had dined there: Benjamin Franklin, Diderot, Voltaire, George Sand, Victor Hugo, and Oscar Wilde. And Robespierre.  It was too much to resist.  In retrospect, maybe we should have.  The service was perfectly French, which is a polite way of saying complete merde.  We sat, ignored for nearly fifteen minutes, until the man next to us, a French professor at the University of Tennessee with whom we had struck up a conversation, bitingly informed the waiter who came to take his order that we had actually been seated first so it seemed fitting that we should order first.  The waiter turned towards us and said with a sniff that he was not our waiter but would go find our server.  I pretty much gave up ordering anything that could hide spit.  Our dinner lasted two hours – mainly because we were enjoying the Sancerre our neighbor had recommended.  My main takeaway from that experience was simply to be able to say that I had dined where historical luminaries had eaten.

We wandered the city for a few more hours before deciding to head back to my dear friend Lan’s loft in the Latin Quarter.  On our way back, we came upon Closerie des Lilas and I said, “We have to eat there.”  Never mind that we’d just finished a three course meal with a bottle of wine two hours earlier.

Closerie des Lilas.  Christ.  How to describe this one? Let me preface first: I have a deep affection for Ernest Hemingway, and specifically for The Sun Also Rises.  It wasn’t always so:  in high school, John H., my English teacher, went a fair way in nearly demolishing this fondness.  He himself was a lover of Hemingway and was so obsessed that we studied Hemingway to nth degree for nearly ¾ of the school year.  Let’s talk about too much of a good thing being bad.  It took me years – YEARS – before I was able to read Hemingway like a normal human being again (but occasionally, I still hear John’s voice in my head:  “Code Hero!  Stoic!  Aficionado!  Premier style of writing!”).

Anyway, the cafe is located in Montparnasse, where artists and writers have hung out for centuries (and continue to do so).  Notable residents in the early 20^th century included Picasso, Modigliani, Anais Nin, Henry Miller, Hemingway , Gertrude Stein, Lenin, Trotsky, the Fitzgeralds, T.S. Eliot, Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir (and Nelson Algren, the unwilling third party in this on-again-off-again Existentialist ménage), and Josephine Baker.  They frequented cafes like Le Séléct, Le Coupole, Café Deux Magots, Café Flores, and Closerie des Lilas.  The name roughly translates to “pleasure garden of lilies” because a prior owner had planted thousands of lilies in the garden in the 19^th century.

Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley, moved to Montparnasse in 1924 and it was at Closerie des Lilas (when he wasn’t drinking with James Joyce) that much of The Sun Also Rises was written.  It was in Paris during this time period that he adopted the spartan writing style that would be become his literary calling card.  I’m the sort of person who thrills in what Anne Fadiman, author of Ex Libris, refers to as a “you are there” sort of reader.  Sun was written in Paris about Paris?  At Closerie des Lilas?  Well, there you’ll find me. 

Unafraid of spiteful waiters, we ordered another three course meal with another bottle of wine:  foie gras to start, a whole roasted fish, and crème brulee for her, mousse au chocolat for me.  Wine was another bottle of Sancerre since we had so enjoyed the first one at Le Procope.  It was the perfect end to a perfect day of a perfect trip.

After this Lucullan week, I came home to several voice mails from my sister:  "Have fun in Paris.  Remember you have to be vegetarian for the next 7 weeks. It's important so that Grandfather’s spirit can be judged properly so you can't eat anything that was sentient or he won’t be reincarnated as a higher being."

Fabulous.  In his next life, Grandfather gets to be a dung beetle because I took his advice and ate every porcine forcemeat and anatine confit I could lay my hands on.

“Mom,” I yelled in the phone when I got a hold of her, “I’ve eaten like a complete carnivore for the past 10 days!  What the hell am I supposed to do?”

“Oh don’t worry,” she said.  “He was such a good soul I’m pretty sure your transgression won’t matter.”

Well that’s good to know.  Personally, I’m pretty sure he was savoring every bite of duck, goose, fish, and pig I had for him (and for me).  

Hemingway was right:  “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris…then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, because Paris is a moveable feast.”

Green Day

Last night I dreamt I ate a salad. This tells me I'm not eating enough greens. I only dream about food if I'm craving something and salads aren't high enough in my preferred food chain to desire in real life. However, my body is much smarter than my brain so it's clearly feeling a deficiency. I love (and eat) legumes and vegetables, far more than salads, but the crisper is bare, mocking all pretense of a well rounded diet.

When Hubby is home, I'm pretty good about including leafy greens and vegetables (for his health as much mine) in our diet. When he is gone, as he is currently, I find myself reverting to bachelor behavior: whatever's easiest to make is what I'm going to eat. My friend Greg asked me a few days ago if I continue to cook and eat well when Hubby is not home; I said yes. It's not a quite firm yes; there are caveats. I don't eat junk food (actually, the last time I ate McDonalds, I called up Dani sobbing uncontrollably because I had deliberately used food to fill an emotional void, which, as she pointed out, is a perfectly American norm), but I'm not fulfilling the requirements of the third layer of the Food Pyramid, either.

Last night, my concession to green would have been nori seaweed, because I was planning to make spicy tuna hand rolls (sans cucumber). As it happened, Jamie didn't have any tuna so my second choice dinner was steak tartare (you see the pattern here, right? Least amount of work? Food so raw it makes Roxanne Klein’s cooking seem overdone?). I suppose you could count the onions as a vegetable.

A few years ago, I had a dinner guest who had never eaten anything but iceberg lettuce. When I brought salad plates out, she stared suspiciously at the greens and asked “What are these?”

“Baby romaine,” I said.

“These aren’t from a tree are they? You aren’t trying to trick me, are you?” Yes, that’s what I do: I make food for giraffes and trick people into eating it.

Salads have come a long way since the days of iceberg lettuce. I think I’ve eaten iceberg maybe 3 or 4 times in my life. That’s because Mom came from a culture which emphasized raw, crisp greens (thank God), so we grew up eating Romaine, Bibb, Boston, radicchio, endives and the like. My friend Julie recalls that the first time she ever ate dinner at my house, Mom made a Boston lettuce salad – Julie was enthralled. Upon returning home to her parents’ house, she asked them, “Have you ever heard of this? Have you ever eaten it?” They hadn’t, but after eating a salad she made from those ingredients, they became – and still are – converts.

In 1986 when I was living in the south of France, my aunt took me to the grocery store and introduced me to Salade Minute. It was a novel concept: pre-washed, packaged salad. Earthbound Farms, one of the largest organic produce companies in the States, introduced the salad-in-a-bag in select U.S. markets in 1986, but the concept really didn’t take off until the early 1990s. Alice Waters is one of the acknowledged trailblazers for organic, local foods at a time when most Americans had forgotten what non-canned peaches tasted like. It was she, at the famous Chez Panisse in Berkeley, who popularized mesclun. Mesclun originates from the South of France and includes very young leaves of endive, dandelion, arugula, mache (also known as “lamb’s lettuce,” and I’ve heard it referred to as “lamb’s tongue”), oak leaf, radicchio, chervil, frisee, sorrel and other distinctive wild plants. It’s the same stuff I ate in 1986, except produced domestically. It’s known as a spring salad mix in most stores (mesclun sound too similar to a popular drug?). At the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market, I always get edible flowers with the mix, which makes for one of the most gorgeous salad plates imaginable.

Even here in the gastronomic hinterlands I can find mesclun and frisee and baby arugula, although I invariably find myself answering questions at the checkout counter like, “What is this? What do you do with it?” (The only time I’ve never had to answer either question was when I bought hotdogs and buns and sauerkraut for a Fourth of July party at a friend’s house. Mistaken food identity happens a lot to me. On one occasion, the older woman at the checkout counter picked up my ginger root and checked her produce list. She rang it up as garlic. Another time, the checkout kid picked up my kiwis and beamed, “Limes, right?” Sure kid, if I wanted moldy brown and fuzzy limes.)

My favorite way to eat mesclun is with fresh raspberries and gorgonzola cheese with about 3-4 tablespoons of raspberry vinaigrette. I’m a big believer in less is more with vinaigrettes. Just toss the mesclun into a bowl, drizzle with vinaigrette and use your hands to mix well. Serve salad on a chilled plate, top with raspberries and crumbled sweet gorgonzola.

I like Belgian endives chopped and served with hearts of palm, tossed in a homemade Ranch-style dressing. It’s sharp, distinct, bitter, and smooth, all at once. Some chopped hardboiled eggs really add to the flavor.

Insalata Florentine, was served at my wedding. The wedding caterer liked the recipe (which came to me by way of Peggy & Sunil, who brought the recipe back from Florence) so much he’s now included it in menus for prospective brides and grooms. Cut 1 zucchini and 1 yellow crookneck squash into thin strips or julienne using a mandoline. Pat dry with towels (you don’t want wet squash). Toss with 2 T white truffle oil, fresh ground pepper and freshly grated Parmigiano. Add more Parmigiano or pepper to taste (don’t salt: the cheese will provide enough of that flavor).

Baby arugula tossed with olive oil, a few spritzes of fresh lemon juice and fresh ground pepper is about as perfect as you can get. I like this salad best just before pizza, or a pasta meal with heavy red sauces like Bolognese.

In all cases, I don’t add vinaigrettes or dressings to the salads until I’m ready to serve. Wilted salads just don’t do much for me. I know it seems obvious, but I’ve eaten more than my share of soaked, wet, darkened greens that bear no resemblance to a lettuce. I don’t think anyone should wince when they’re eating salad.

Unless it’s iceberg lettuce.

What Do Superheroes Eat?

I spent a few hours yesterday trying to make sense of the comic collection. I had it in my head that I would empty all eight comic boxes and create and catalog master anthologies and duplicates. And just like the book collection, this valiant effort to impose order was met with abject failure, as it has every single time I’ve tried to do this. It’s my own personal Sisyphusian rock. Instead of staying mission focused and looking only at titles and numbers, I get sidetracked: I start reading a few books, which means that hours later, I'm still reading and making a bigger mess than what I’d started with originally. It’s funny; the comic book collection is similar to the book collection in spirit, if not in letter: there’s a core set of interest (in this case, “X” titles – Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, X-Factor, New Mutants), surrounded by satellite miscellany (Amazing Spiderman, Daredevil, pretty much everything Bill Sienkiewicz ever did, Dark Knight, Infinity Inc. [early Todd McFarlane], etc.), and then the odd shelf, one-shot books (early Image Comic books, Chips and Vanilla, and Hamster Vice [don’t ask]).

Except for the aforementioned “Chips and Vanilla,” about a boy and his murderous, carnivorous dog, no other comic book addressed gastronomic considerations. How is it possible for New York’s superheroes to live in one of the world’s great food capitals and never be seen eating? Do they not read the Wednesday edition of the New York Times? You can’t tell me that in a comic book of 20-some pages there can’t be at least one panel devoted to eating (food)? “Calvin and Hobbes” was never more than four or five panels and still we know about his predilection for Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs and his revulsion with most of his mother’s cooking (excepting the notable episode in which she told him she made stewed monkey brains).

Surely superheroes have time in between battling powerful villains and routing Galactus to replenish their caloric needs? Which brings up another issue – the only “consumption” I’ve ever seen in the Marvel universe (because I do not read DC Comics) consists of planetary ingestion.

Consider Jean Grey of the X-Men, Galactus’ fellow devourer of worlds. As Marvel Girl in the Silver Age, she was probably a cheeseburger, fries and shake kind of girl. In her incarnation as Dark Phoenix, she consumed an entire planet of celery people which makes it difficult to discern if she’s vegetarian or omnivorous. I’m pretty sure her teammate Storm is a vegetarian. Storm grew up in Africa, revered as a nature goddess so it’s unlikely that she eats animals for whom she provided cooling rain and sheltering warmth. Maybe she experimented with meat during her cold-as-ice, lost-my-powers, get-a-Mohawk phase. Her antipodal counterpart is, of course, Wolverine who is undoubtedly a carnivore. Not your namby-pamby fowl type of meat eater, but seriously red, fatty, and heart-killing bovine flesh. Downed with lots of beer. His mutant ability isn’t his adamantium-laced skeleton or those killing claws; it’s actually a rapid healing factor. Therefore, he can pretty much eat anything and not get sick. As dour, troubled and humorless as Cyclops is, I think his food of choice is cold gruel (which is apt if you consider his hard childhood in an orphanage: “Please sir, may I have some more?”). Angel and Psylocke grew up privileged as Warren Worthington III and Betsy Braddock, so they’re probably four-star cuisine aficionados; but Betsy is British so it's debatable because I don’t know if “gourmet” and “British kitchen” are complementary. However, she did undergo a brain switch from prim English miss to Japanese warrior goddess so who knows? Rogue's difficult to figure out. On the one hand she's a Southern girl which means fried chicken and cuisine capable of rendering vegetables unhealthy. On the other, she's got Carol Danvers, Boston-born New Englander, trapped in her head (as a result of a physical absorption gone wrong) -- which means clam chowder. I guess whoever's in charge gets to pick.

The X-Men live in Westchester so their choices aren’t as unlimited as say, Spider-Man’s. Spidey lives in New York City, but on his salary as a freelance photographer, he’s probably a hot dog and pizza kind of guy. Maybe now that he’s married to MJ, who is a relatively successful model/actress, they can afford more upscale fare. I don’t know. MJ has always struck me as the kind of person who’d rather eat Pastis than go for the real thing at Les Halles. I’m biased because MJ paled so completely next to Felicia Hardy (Black Cat).

Daredevil alter ego Matt Murdock lives in Hell’s Kitchen, which has undergone a recent gentrification push; in 1992, Amy’s Bread opened in the neighborhood, the start of what has since become a culinary renaissance in the area. For a blind guy whose senses are ultra-heightened, the smell of fresh bread has got to be manna from heaven, yes? He’s one of the moodier superheroes though – always brooding and sulking. Maybe he just needs to go to Therapy. It's a stylish new bar over on 52nd and I'm pretty sure they appreciate a man in skintight red leather there...

Batman. Makes Daredevil look like Pollyanna. Bruce Wayne eats nails and drinks single malt scotch. I'm pretty sure of that. Wait. He's DC Comics (I read him only because Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli were his writers. Also, Selina Kyle was infinitely interesting. And then came ghastly Halle Berry). We'll skip that.

So I wonder: who's the gourmand out of the entire 2-D bunch?

My friend Dani suggested Elektra. I thought so too, originally. But then I pointed out that she was too busy killing people to have time to savor a meal. Dani thought she'd be great help in a kitchen though because she could really slice and dice. We had a whole discussion about Emma Frost and psychic calorie consumption better left unreported.

I need to get a life.

Kitchen Stadium

Long before there was a Food Network or food shows featuring attractively voluptuous women whose cooking skills still remain in doubt, or famous chefs barking like trained seals at live audiences (I borrow once again from Tony Bourdain because I’m just not that clever), there was my mother. Food and my mother are inextricably intertwined, as both nourishment and entertainment.

With the sole exceptions being her eggplant parmigiana (a dish that does not lend itself well to Asian fusion cooking) and the squash she attempted to force (literally) down our throats, we have never refused a single dish from her kitchen. It never occurred to us to hate anything Mom made because everything was exceptional. She could not afford to buy processed food for us, so we grew up eating éclairs and not Twinkies; delicately braised and meltingly tender beef tongue in a tomato Cognac stew instead of meatloaf; and spicy Redtail Scad in garlic ginger caramel sauce instead of baked salmon. Long before Thomas Keller and a handful of chefs made offal fashionable, we ate it at my mother’s table. She used unwanted animal parts because it was yummy when cooked right (which we knew) and cheap (which we didn’t). We ate veal brain before we knew it was called sweetbread; one of my all time favorite soups is congee with cubes of congealed duck blood; I have consumed duck eggs with partially formed duck fetuses (shit, that’s one I wish I HAD refused. I just didn’t know what I was eating until one day a too-fully formed duck fell out and I screamed, “It’s a bird, it’s a bird!” and Mom said, “Don’t look at it! Just eat it!”). How could we possibly think we lacked anything when we ate so well?

Food was also one of the great entertainments of our childhood. We didn’t have Play Doh, which cost maybe $4 or $5 then. But we had green, red, blue, and yellow play dough – which she had made for us from flour, water and food coloring. Yes, it dried out eventually, but we always had a fresh supply whenever we wanted. We didn’t know there was a difference between what we had and what was sold in the store. We wanted to color eggs on Easter so she made dyes for us with food coloring because the Paas kits were too expensive. How could we possibly think we needed anything when she kept us supplied with toys?

We had a very small TV that we seldom used – because the live entertainment in the kitchen was so much more interesting. In the small, mean, and worn kitchen of the rental house at 7th Road, we had a ringside seat to watch our own Nigella Lawson. We lined up three chairs at the entrance of the kitchen; the four younger children could fit on the chairs, but more often than not, one or two would stand up for a better view. I served as the host of this unofficial show. We were not allowed to cross the magic line in the kitchen -- right behind Mom at her stove -- but like Ota Shirohito to her Iron Chef, I would run up to the frontline and pose investigative questions ("What are you doing now? What does that do? Why are you using that sugar and not this one?") then race back to share my commentary with the audience (Kenji Fukui before anyone had ever heard "Fukui-san!"). “She’s putting eggs into the choux batter and mixing it. Now she’s stirring with the wooden spoon to mix everything in. The batter has to stick together like a ball. Now she’s going to put it into a pastry bag to pipe out the éclairs. She’s going to make even lines of pastry on the jelly roll pan.” Who needed the French Chef when we had our mom?

I worship at the altar of food because I grew up watching the original domestic goddess. Like all culinary divas, she knows the finest form of entertainment is found in the kitchen.

Warm Comfort.

When I was younger, my favorite comfort food was a bowl of my mom’s pho. When I am sick, that’s still what I want. In moments of emotional distress, I have friends who immediately reach for chocolate (or beer, depending on gender); I gravitate towards savory dishes.

Over the years, I’ve noticed a steady progression of preferences for carb-laden dishes like mac and cheese, mashed potatos, and more recently, risotto. There’s been a movement towards luxe comfort food, that is, your old stand-bys like mashed potatos now drizzled with truffle oil, and cream of mushroom soup made with shiitakes, black trumpets, chanterelles and Hedgehog mushrooms. I think risotto was already luxe to begin with: it’s warm, rich, sybaritic; it soothes, it embraces, it’s exotic to palates raised on sticky jasmine, fragrant basmati, or God forbid, Uncle Ben’s. I love the creaminess of a well made risotto where the Arborio rice is cooked just right – firm yet still tender, and neither mushy nor al dente (sacrilege, I know, but I’m sorry, I just don’t like picking mashed rice out of my back molars).

I love the way risotto looks on a spoon: all those glistening kernels clumped together, swathed in stock. Sometimes there’s a vegetable or a meat mixed in, peeking out from behind a mound of Arborio. It’s an incredibly versatile dish based on the ingredients you choose. You can go from something as rich as a Lobster Risotto made with lobster stock to a spring vegetable risotto with peas, carrots in chicken or vegetable stock.

I especially like that risotto takes time to make, because somewhere in the routine of preparing the dish, peace descends.

First you’ve got to gather the ingredients: you’ll need a large saucepan, a small stock pot, a small onion, 2 cups of Arborio rice, 1/2 cup of dry white wine, 2 T olive oil, 1/4 cup freshly grated Parmigiano or Reggiano, and 4-5 cups of chicken stock (or store bought broth. I like the Horizon or Pacific Age organic broths. If all else fails, use Swanson’s organic broth). Let’s do a simple risotto, not a lavish one: a tender dish to cradle close against your soul. Have 1 cup of shelled sweet peas and 1 cup diced carrots on hand. Or even better, find a package of Birds Eye or Jolly Green Giant frozen peas and carrots. What’s more comforting than childhood icons?

Heat the 2 cups of peas and carrots according to directions and/or preference. I like to saute mine in a tablespoon of butter in a small sauce pan. Set aside. Bring chicken or vegetable (not beef) stock or broth to a boil in the stockpot. Reduce heat to simmer. This shouldn’t take more than 5-7 minutes; but you can do it concurrently with dicing the onions, which will take a few minutes at least. I like cutting the onion in half, then making radial cuts along the vertical, then turning it to slice horizontally – viola – instant dice. It’s good to start with an onion. If you’re already crying, now you have an excuse other than anguish. If tears aren’t induced, go ahead and lean down and inhale deeply. I promise instant water works.

Heat the olive oil in saucepan on medium-high flame. Add the onions and saute with a wooden spoon, about 5 minutes or so, till the onions are translucent and soft. Add the Arborio and stir, making sure to coat each grain with oil. Of course, one or two unoiled spoonfuls are okay, too. The rice should get opaque and start to stick to the bottom. That’s okay, too. The pan will be really hot now, so when you add the wine, do so off the range (if you have a gas range), or be really careful. When the wine hits the pan, it will sizzle and pop ferociously – imagine the sound of Rice Krispies on steroids. Let it boil. Stir the rice until the wine is absorbed, about 2-3 minutes. Now add 1 cup of the simmering stock. Just like the wine, stir until the stock is absorbed, another 2-3 minutes. Just before the stock is completely evaporated, add another cup. Stir, absorb, 2-3 minutes. Mind you, it might take 4 minutes, sometimes even 5 – just make sure the liquids are almost absorbed before adding another cup. After about fifteen minutes, take a bite. If there’s still a crunch to the rice, add 1/2 cup of stock and repeat above. Be careful at this stage: you don’t want to make mush. The rice should be completely cooked through but still firm at about 20 minutes give or take a few minutes. Now add the peas and carrots and stir carefully to mix the vegetables. Grate 1/4 cup of fresh Parmigiano over top and stir in gently.

There it is in under an hour: nourishment by your hands for your soul. Your heart will follow suit.

To serve yourself, warm up a deep dish or a soup bowl in the oven. Or put it in the microwave and irradiate it for 30 seconds. Spoon generous portions of risotto into the bowl. Top with a little extra Parmigiano. There’s no need for fancy fresh herbs or parsley toppings. We’re not trying to impress; we’re looking for consolation.

Feed yourself. Find yourself. Love yourself.

For J: Because all pain is valid. And eventually, even this will be just mail.

Forty Days and Forty Nights.

After five years together, it’s nice to know that you can still be surprised by your spouse. On what constituted my Lunar New Year, Hubby announced while we were watching TV that he needed to give something up for Lent.

“Lent?” I said. “I thought you were Anglican.”

“Episcopalian,” he said. “I’m not British. And we observe Lent too.”

This was a rather stunning revelation as I had seen no such evidence of said observances in years past.

“What did you give up last year?” I asked.

With a completely straight face, he said, “Chocolate.”

“Chocolate? Chocolate?! What are you talking about? You don’t even eat chocolate.”

“Well see, I was observing Lent,” he sniffed.

“For the whole year?!” Okay. “So what are you giving up this year?”

He paused and thought a moment. “Trout.”

“Trout?! Trout?! You don’t even eat trout!”

“How do you know?’

“Because I cook for you and I’ve never made trout! Why don’t you give up your video games?”

“Now that’s just crazy talk.”

“But I thought the whole point of Lent was to give up something you really loved and treasured. I mean, this is like being a vegetarian and giving up meat.”

“This is between my Lord and me,” he announced loftily. “You just don’t understand because you weren’t washed in the blood of the Lamb, you heathen.”

“Okay, well is this like all fish or just trout?”

“Maybe all fish.”

“How are you going to eat sushi then?”

“I can eat ocean fish….”

He’s been true to his vow. He has avoided eating trout for the last five weeks. (Never mind that I do the grocery shopping and have yet to tempt him with trout, which, by the way, is not even in season apparently). Good Friday is tomorrow and with Easter Sunday on the horizon, I think I’ll reward his faithfulness by making him Arctic Char (a member of the Salmonidae family, a cousin to both salmon and trout) with Caramelized Shallot Beurre Blanc, Roasted Fingerling Potatos and Wilted Baby Bok Choy.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cut 6 or so fingerling potatos in half, lengthwise. Parboil until tender, about 5-7 minutes. Rinse in cold water, pat dry. Toss with sea salt, fresh herbs (I like rosemary but dill would be nice with the Arctic Char) and about 5 T oil. Make sure all potatos are coated. Place on baking sheet in oven for about 20 minutes, until the potatos are crisp on the outside.

Slice 4 shallots. Heat 1 T butter in frying pan. Add shallots. Saute 4 minutes. Add another tablespoon of butter, turn heat to medium-low. Let the shallots caramelize, being careful not to burn. Add 1/4 cup white wine vinegar. Let the shallots absorb some of the vinegar. Add cold butter, 1 T at a time until the sauce reaches desired richness and consistency (I use about 3-4 T butter). Lower heat to warm.

Chop ends off the bok choy and separate the leaves, washing to remove grit and dirt. Add 1 T olive oil to wok or deep frying pan. Add 2 smashed garlic cloves. Once fragrant, add the bok choy. When the water on the bok choy hits the hot oil, it will sizzle madly – no worries, this is fine. Stir fry about 4 minutes, then add 1/3 cup vegetable stock (or water), reduce heat. Cook until liquids are absorbed and bok choy is tender but still has some crispness when you bite in. You don’t want mushy bok choy.

Season 2 Arctic Char filets with salt and pepper. Heat 2 T olive oil in frying pan. Add the fish, skin side down. Let the skin crisp up, then flip the filet over. After 2 minutes, flip again, lower heat, cover with lid for about 2 minutes until the flesh is cooked.

To plate: Spoon bok choy onto warm plate. Arrange 6 potato halves on top of and around bok choy. Place filet on top. Drizzle with warm shallot beurre blanc.

Eat lightly the next day or you will gain weight. Then next year you really will have to give up chocolate for Lent.

Not as good as Mom's.

My sisters and I compulsively attend grand openings of, and eat at, Vietnamese restaurants.  I discovered this shared affliction last year when I visited New York. 

Two weeks prior to this event, I had accidentally crashed an invitation-only "test run" at a new Vietnamese restaurant in Atlanta with two of my cousins.  Luckily the owner is a close friend and he assured me (perhaps to spare my horrified self) that he had actually invited me to an earlier test run but I had been in Europe at the time. 

But back in NY: Hani and I were walking through her restaurant-laden neighborhood on a quest for gratin dauphinois (my particular fetish) when we stumbled across a new restaurant called Hue. 

"Hway!" Hani said, pronouncing it in Vietnamese.  Hue is the imperial city to the north of Saigon and from whence our father's family (and their amazing recipes) come.  Then we said in unison, "Or maybe it's hue."

Crossing the street, I attempted to enter the restaurant to check out a menu while Hani stalked the bank of windows and peered over the diners' shoulders staring at dishes.  The door was locked (odd since there were people inside). 

"I can't get in," I told Hani, who was frowning. 

"Maybe it is hue," Hani said.  "There's a sushi bar in there."

We agreed that no self-respecting Vietnamese restaurant could possibly offer a sushi bar and my rumbling stomach reminded me that we had not yet satisfied my craving for potatoes soaked in cream, bacon fat, butter and Gruyere cheese so we took off. 

The next day Souris sent us an email about a new Vietnamese restaurant in town -- the aforementioned Hue -- and suggested dinner out.  I did not know it then, but had I entered the restaurant the night before, I would have repeated the previous week's gaffe of crashing another invitation-only trial run for Hue.  Happily, I was there instead for opening night with Hani, Souris and Silvio. 

Or perhaps not so happily.  I sincerely feel for our waiter, because not only was it Hue's grand opening -- complete with the hip, modish crowd, models galore, PR people, TV writers, producers and the usual beautiful people demanding all manner of obsequious homage from the wait staff -- but the poor man had to contend with three of the Hong sisters.  He had no idea what café sua da (Vietnamese iced coffee) was when I asked for it.  Then he couldn't comprehend any of us as we ordered the dishes by their Vietnamese name (they were LISTED in Vietnamese for God's sake!).  And he wouldn’t have been able to miss as I noted mispelled words.  It's a lowering thought that I am the supercilious sort who notes other people's errors with the self-congratulatory "sic" but I can only blame Washington Lee's finest English teachers for inculcating such behavior.  It's like being the kind of guy who drives an automatic Porsche.  But I digress. 

We ordered several dishes that are standard fare in Vietnamese cuisine (spring rolls, banh cuon [rice crepes with meat & mushroom filling], nem nuong [grilled pork] and chao tom [grilled shrimp paste on sugar cane]), and some entrees (curry and potatos for me, beef stew for Hani and some more appetizers for Souris). 

The banh cuon came out and was quite good -- except we were deeply offended that for the same price we could have had three dozen of them from a real Vietnamese restaurant as opposed to the THREE measly pieces on our plate.  Souris took a bite of her nem nuong and grimaced, exclaiming, "It's sweet!" Then she took a bite of her chao tom and shook her head, saying, "It's ALL wrong!" My curry came with uncooked potatoes, and the minute her beef stew hit the table, Hani said, just on the basis of the smell: "It's got too much cinnamon."

A few minutes into eating, Hani looked at us.  Waving her hands, she asked, "Why do we do this to ourselves?"

"We can't help it," Souris said. 

"We're stupid?" I suggested. 

And we might be.  Do we sound awful? We don't mean to be.  It's just, as Hani so eloquently put it as she stared, bewildered at the dishes before us, "You know what Mom did? She FUCKED us!"

And she's right.  Mom is the nonesuch of Vietnamese cuisine for us.  If you have ever eaten at my mother's table (and many of you have), you know EXACTLY what I'm talking about.  I have friends who, after decades away from Arlington, reminisce about my mother's spring rolls longingly.  My uncle can describe my mother's dishes in Proustian detail that his wife once said it was enough to induce her to forgo decades of vegetarianism. 

It isn't that Hue served bad food.  On the contrary, if you had never eaten Vietnamese food (or more specifically, MOM'S food), you would think it was quite a good restaurant.  The smells are nice, the tastes are delicious if lacking a bit in complexity and the environment is gorgeous.  It's just that they didn't serve what we consider to be Vietnamese food. 

We live in eternal hope that when we eat at a Vietnamese restaurant, it will taste exactly the way Mom's food does.  When we siblings talk to each other, we invariably end up talking about food, talking about Mom's food and how much we LOVE Mom's food.  We demand Mom's recipes from each other because each of us has asked Mom for details on how to make our favorite dishes.  When Hani makes Mom's chicken and mint salad, it tastes EXACTLY like Mom's.  When Souris makes Mom's spring rolls, it tastes EXACTLY like Mom's.  So we think that other people will make Vietnamese food EXACTLY like Mom's.  It just never happens that way. 

We are only this hyper-critical of Vietnamese food because our mother is SUCH an exceptional cook.  And lest you think this obnoxious behavior is one more by-product of Hong insanity, let me bring you briefly back to the previously mentioned party that I crashed with my cousins.  They are cousins on our mother's side -- and we enacted THE EXACT SAME SCENE that Souris, Hani and I did.  Because THEIR mothers are as exceptional as my mother.  So really, it's a distaff line disease. 

Our mothers completely screwed us because nothing will EVER be as good as Mom's. 

I'm sure you know what I mean.

Cultured.

I got a wild hair earlier this week to make yogurt from scratch. I took the recipe from French Women Don't Get Fat, which author Mireille Giuliano claims is a centuries old recipe. I need to talk about that book in a future blog. Such common sense.

I was seriously hankering for the yogurt and granola from Bouchon and, as usual, with complete lack of regard for sanity or possibility, thought, "I can make that!" The !@##$%^&* Brown Cow yogurt Jenn and I ordered is coming in on Friday but can I wait? No. How many times has that particular blind, obstinate idiocy gotten me into trouble? Like making my first quilt (Anya's baby quilt) in 12 hours?

The book’s recipe:

1 quart whole or 2 percent milk

1-2 tablespoons plain yogurt as a starter or 1-2 tablespoons of a commercial starter culture (available at natural food stores)

1. Warm up the milk in a saucepan over medium-low heat until bubbles appear around the edge and steam rises from the surface.

2. Pour the warm milk into a large bowl to cool until the temperature reaches 110 to 115 degrees on a cooking thermometer. If you don't have a thermometer, do what the locals do: the temperature is correct when you can keep your index finger in the warm milk for 20 seconds.

3. Put the starter in a small bowl, add some of the heated milk, and stir until well blended. Return the mixture to the large bowl, a third at a time, making sure to stir and blend well after each addition. End with a final stir, making sure all is well blended. Cover with a heavy towel and keep in a warm place 6 yo8 hours or overnight (a gas oven with a pilot light is fine, or placing a saucepan of hot water in the oven to raise the temperature will help if your home is not warm enough).

4. When set, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 8 hours before serving. If thicker yogurt is desired, empty chilled yogurt in a muslin bag or cheese-cloth, suspend over a bowl, and drain.

Okay. So, first of all I have exactly a quart of 2% milk left. I grab the remainder of my plain Brown Cow yogurt from the fridge intending to use it as a starter. The thing I dread most about opening plastic containers is mold. Even before I moved in with a guy, this was a problem I frequently faced (somewhere there is an email about eating cereal with sour tasting milk and not noticing). And there, on the Brown Cow yogurt, was fuzzy white stuff. Dammit. On further inspection however, it appeared that the fuzzy white stuff was ICE. Ice? In the FRIDGE? And sure enough, those are ice crystals and half the yogurt was frozen. Apparently it had been pushed to the back of the fridge where cooler air prevailed. I briefly considered using it but discarded the thought as soon as it entered my mind – because I’m dealing with frickin’ BACTERIA here. Acidopholous – good. Botulism – BAD. That left as a possible starter, the Yoplait Strawberry custard yogurt. Vile. I’d bought it for Hubby to tuck into his lunch box but given the frequency with which those jars were returned, UNOPENED, I need to stop. This jar was about 3 days old and I figured, what the hell? I opened it and just stared, dumbfounded. Instead of strawberry fruit on the bottom with pristine white yogurt on top, the whole thing was PINK. No wonder Hubby refused to eat it. PINK! But what was left to use? Nothing. I’d dumped the Brown Cow already so I had no real choices – and the milk and vanilla were already boiling. So I scooped out two T of pink yogurt and mixed it per directions above.

By the next morning, I had a smooth bowl of slightly pink yogurt. It was lovely.

I’m not quite ready to share it. I’d hate to poison people I care about. So I tested it on myself this morning and so far, no ill effects. It's a little tangier than I like but I think that can be modified. I’ll see how this goes. If I’m dead tomorrow, it won’t matter though I should probably leave a warning note for Hubby on the fridge. If I’m sick, I’m never telling anyone because auto-food-poisoning sounds ridiculous.

And the Brown Cow starts coming into Peachtree Natural Foods on Airport Thruway beginning Friday. They said if they get a good response, they’ll start carrying it. I’m going to implore everyone to buy from them.

Food Infidelities.

I feel like I've just cheated on my fishmonger with my butcher.

I get my fish from Jamie at the Fresh Fish Market on 17th Street. I get my meat from Burt at Burt's Butcher Shoppe on Warm Springs. It's good to be friends with your purveyors - you're pretty much guaranteed fresh, superb seafood and meat, much better than what you can ever get at a grocery store. Most of you know this having lived in cities where fresh meat and seafood were available. But let’s face it: we currently live in culinary hell. We drive 130 miles ONE WAY to go food shopping in Atlanta.

Anyway, I stopped buying fish from "Big Grocery Store Chain" [name changed to protect the innocent and to prevent said chain from suing my ass] after I became friends with one of the guys at the fish counter who told me in a fit of confidence one day, "You know, I always wonder how people can eat sushi. The fish that comes in every day are crawling with worms."

Sushi. Ah. That's discussion for another day.

But nematodes in my fish: I DON'T THINK SO. I returned the tuna I'd just bought and stopped buying from "Big Grocery Store Chain," period. (Actually after the "Big Grocery Store Chain" thing I stopped eating fish for a while unless it was being prepared for me at MF Sushibar because I knew Chris, the chef/owner had fish flown in fresh every day). I'm willing to pay an extra few dollars but I'm pretty sure that what Jamie gets was twitching at least one to two days before. Jamie can also do special orders for me -- so when I'm craving sea urchin, Jamie can have it for me within two days. And the cost of his large lobster (not the skinny chicken lobsters at grocery store tanks) is $12.99 a pound. Money well spent, especially if I'm craving a lobster risotto. So. Recently Jamie started carrying gourmet items (truffle oils, aged balsamic vinegar, etc – PLUS). He’s also started carrying organic, “clean-fed” meats. Jamie is an outstanding fishmonger. I will always love him for calling me last fall and shouting, “WE HAVE BLUEFIN! Come in right now!”

But … I’m a huge fan of steak tartare. I remember the first time I ever saw it, on my 30th birthday in Les Halle. I was out at dinner with my friends Lan and Peggy and one of Lan’s photographer friends, who ordered it. I was completely taken aback by what appeared to be raw ground beef. Who knew that I’d be smitten after having a dish at Les Halles? I’ve been eating it rather frequently lately. My friend Kellie valiantly tries not to vomit when she watches me eat this stuff (she hates onions and meat loaf).

I buy my meat from Burt. Jamie carries super quality stuff – I wouldn’t expect less of him. But when I call Burt and say, “It’s Cathy” and he interrupts and says, “One and a half pounds. It’ll be right here waiting for you,” that’s just quality, you know? I mean, let’s face it: I’m eating RAW MEAT. With raw eggs. This is Burt’s specialty. Just like sashimi grade fish is Jamie's.

And still, I feel like I’ve been stepping out on Jamie even though this is Burt’s domain. Man. I gotta stop taking things so personally.

Tony Bourdain’s “Les Halles Cookbook” steak tartare recipe is the one I’ve been using. Mainly cuz I started eating Steak Tartare there. Great with fries. I’ve modified this to suit my own preferences. The important thing he says, is to use fresh sirloin. 1.5 pounds theoretically handles 4 people. Or 1 Ki and 1/2 an Hubby (who was revolted at first before he started reaching for hunks of my steak tartare).

STEAK TARTARE based on Tony Bourdain’s "Les Halles Cookbook" recipe.

Whisk two egg yolks with 2 T of Dijon mustard. Add 1 T Tabasco sauce (I add about 2-3 T), 2 T Worcestershire, 2 T ketchup (Heinz 57!). Mix well. Slowly pour 1/3 cup salad oil (vegetable or corn oil; I used grapeseed), whisking to create an emulsion. Add 1 T Cognac. Stir in capers and finely chopped onions and cornichons. Chop the sirloin finely. Don’t use a food processor; it’ll destroy the meat. Add sirloin to the marinade. Mix well. Shape into patties. Using a fork, drag the tines across the top to create a nice light grid pattern. Serve immediately on chilled dish with frites.

Happily Eating Crow

Look out the windows folks. Porcine aviators in sight. I've been proven gloriously wrong about Columbus, GA restaurants. Even if it *is* a singular anomaly in our town, I don't care -- good food is good food no matter where it is.

Hubby and I went out to dinner Saturday night and I had the most outstanding meal I've ever had in Columbus (which isn't saying much since we have four hour waits for Olive Garden) but it was also one of the most best meals of recent memory for me (which is, since you read about my foodie obsessions in Vegas).

Allow me to bring to your attention Miriam's Tapas Bar. Say that real fast and you'll understand why Fay Simmons (the new owner who bought the entire operation from Miriam) now calls the restaurant Tapatinis at the Village. Apparently she had several people call, offended. They used to have T-shirts that defined the word "tapas" on the back and said, "TAPAS, not TOPLESS." That you'd need a t-shirt at all speaks volumes about the confusion. On the other hand, we do have a nice concentration of shirtless bars in town so I suppose it was a necessity.

The new chef, John Melton, is a graduate of Johnson and Wales, one of the top culinary schools in the country. Other graduates include Emeril Lagasse (feh) and Tyler Florence of the Food Network. Melton is from Auburn and did his externships throughout the south, mainly in South Carolina. His cooking, however, is world class.

Tapas are simply appetizer-sized dishes meant to share. It's a great way to try different things and Hubby has no choice but to share (normally I have to move quickly to avoid getting forked in the hand if I try to eat something off his plate. The serpentine weave and wave method of stealing food works well. However, his hand-eye coordination is getting better).

This is a sampling from memory of the 6 dishes we had Saturday night:

- Spring risotto with peas and carrots and roasted chicken
- Veal medaillions in Zinfandel sauce with leeks
- Squash blossoms stuffed with mushrooms in fried tempura batter with white truffle emulsion
- Horseradish encrusted tenderloin with roasted fingerling potatos
- Andouille encrusted sea bass with white bean salad and heirloom tomatos
- Grilled cornish hen on polenta pancake

We also got two desserts, the chocolate crème brulee (which was QUITE good) and the Neapolitan mousse (chocolate, vanilla and strawberry mousses in a cocktail glass) which was exceptional.

They also have one of the nicest wine selections I've come across in some time. They carry bottles I don’t normally see in restaurants much less in Columbus. Fay also pours by the glass -- even the fabulous bottles. Hubby and I love pinot noirs, particularly Oregonian ones. Fay had a bottle we'd never heard of called Archery Summit on the menu. We thought we'd try different pinot noirs, but when she came back and said how excited she was that someone had ordered a glass so she could taste now (she was going to open the bottle just to pour my ONE glass), we thought, man this is probably good. So Hubby decided to have a glass too. Right out of the bottle on the pour, the wine was so fabulous that we decided to buy the entire bottle. They also have a great martini selection. I may have to rethink my problems with vodka (this relates to the vomiting-every-time-I-saw-my-husband episode).

Without that bottle, we would have paid the exact same amount for dinner for two at Carrabas with appetizers and entrees. This was FAR superior and the environment was gorgeous. The bar is located upstairs (our first test, which we failed miserably since we tried to go in downstairs) and overlooks the first floor which gives the place an odd upscale treehouse sort of feel. Very stylish in a San Francisco / New York hip kind of place. Dark woods, high tables with dark wicker and rattan chairs (not good to sit Indian style because your feet can't touch anything as I did, unless you want waffle weave patterns on your ankles) and soft lighting. Perfect date night location. Or girls' night hang out.

Needless to say, I loved every moment of my experience. The ONLY thing I don't love is the fact that they're only open Fridays and Saturday nights (6 pm - 11pm).

But who cares? I now have a place to go on the weekends. Which means, that when the guys decide to go play poker, WE can go out and have martinis and tapas. Can't wait to share it with you all.

Tapatinis at the Village
1350 13th Street
Columbus, GA
706-327-0707