NYMag: Vegetables Are the New Meat

Vegetables Are the New Meat

Thrilling. I was feeling fatigued by foodtalk, and was ready to close down this blog, but I'm excited by the prospect that I could eat at Per Se or French Laundry or, more affordably, Dovetail, without having to call ahead and work out the restrictions.

Sweet Paul: So hot out!

I'd heard of tequila-soaked watermelon and the like, but this method of pouring the booze directly into the melon is very appealing. It's a bit romantic. From the blog Sweet Paul. Paul's online magazine is pretty great, as well.

So hot out!:

Photography by Studio Dreyer Hensley

Do spices really only keep for six months?

Do spices really only keep for six months?

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NYT recipe: Arroz de Verduras

Recipe here.

Francis Lam: Having a Japanese knife makes you a serious chef

Francis Lam correlates the investment into good-quality and/or artisanal cooking tools with increased discipline and artistry in the kitchen, here. I am completely on-board with this concept. It is true for me, at least, to say that I can be slightly (slightly?) reverential in the care and use of my prized kitchen items, which inspire a kind of striving for worthiness, and for a process and product that fulfills the promise of such well-crafted tools.

What I am working on

is a recipe for a favorite simple supper. With photos. The trouble is, I never measure when I make this. It is definitely a by-the-seat-of-pants kind of thing, and when a recipe finally materializes, it should be considered a guide with room for wild manipulations. Last night, I made some progress toward quantifying ingredients. The photos were a dismal failure, though. Daylight is required.

Le Fooding

Found via Bitten blog: Adam Gopnik's New Yorker article on the the French "Fooding" movement.

Tasting Chocolate

Clotilde Dusoulier, of Chocolate & Zucchini, has posted a lesson -- gleaned from Valrhona's sensory analysis expert -- in tasting chocolate.

On Tweezers

Was just reading this, about the proliferation of surgical tweezer use (for plating, mostly) in restaurant kitchens, in the NYT Dining and Wine section. I find it very satisfying to produce and eat multi-component meals, and precise plating is often intrinsic to success in these endeavors. To paraphrase one of the chefs in the article, through intentional plating you can direct how the flavors are experienced during the meal. I love that, and the idea of each meal being a process of discovery. I also have an immense love for food and cooking on the more rustic end of the spectrum. This kind of simpler food is what I make most often, and would choose to make nearly all the time even if I had more time to spend in the kitchen. While going "rustic" gives one license to be a little messy, I do like a nice-looking plate, and my clumsy fingers are often my downfall. So I say, "Yes!" to surgical offset tweezers. I will buy some and keep them in my apron pocket. Hopefully I will use them more than the plastic squeeze bottles I purchased with the same good intentions (and visions of artfully-sauced dishes). Maybe I will put one of those in my pocket, too.

The facts about food and farming - latimes.com

The facts about food and farming - latimes.com

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Blogging 2010

The farm days ended in late November. Which was unexpected and great, actually, because things usually wind down about a week before Thanksgiving. But I didn't blog about any of that, or what we made, even though there was some good stuff. That is because I kind of stink at blogging. One of the things I hoped to gain by consistently documenting this was... a document. Something that I can refer to, when I am considering my experiences in the kitchen or simply trying to remember how I approached something the last time. I have a document, but it is not very complete and it has no pictures.

I had planned to give up on this endeavor and shut down the blog, but Matt convinced me not to. And he bought me a new little point-and-shoot camera. So I am going to try again. But I'm not convinced that this first-person, talking-to-the-ether format is for me.