Sour Cherry Crumb Pie to Welcome the New Year

Every summer, in sour cherry season, I fill the freezer with as many sour cherries as I have the patience to pit.  I try to make them last through the fall, leaving just enough to make one final sour cherry pie for the first day of the next year. It's a little reminder that summer really will return.

Sometimes I make a crostata.  Sometimes I make a tart.  Yesterday, for some reason, I thought I'd like to start the year with a sour cherry crumb pie. This morning, eating the first piece, the most intense flavor memory came floating back. I was 8 years old, eating dinner with my parents at The Cookery on the corner of University Place and 8th Street, spooning up their sweet, slightly salty cherry crumb tart. The Cookery was owned by my friend Bertha's uncle, who sometimes let us waitress there - just for fun - when we were in junior high. I thought it was enormous fun, and looking back, I realize that was my very first restaurant job. One bite brought it all back: a very fine way to welcome 2011.

Sour Cherry Crumb Pie

I hate blind-baking pie crusts, but in this case it’s worth it; you don’t want to waste your precious sour cherries on a sad, soggy bottom. So make a pie crust and blind bake it. While the crust cools, make the cherry filling by melting about 3 tablespoons of butter in a skillet and adding 4 to 5 cups of frozen cherries (along with their liquid), and 2/3 cups of sugar.  This will thaw with remarkable speed, and as soon as it does, add a squirt of lemon juice, a pinch of salt, and stir in a paste made of 3 tablespoons of cornstarch and 2 tablespoons of cold water.  Bring to a boil, stirring gently.  In about 2 minutes, when the filling becomes clear and thick, turn off the heat and allow to cool.

Pour the cherries into the pie shell.

Make a crumble by melting a stick of butter and stirring in ¾ cups of sugar,  ¾ cups of flour and a pinch of salt.  Strew across the cherries and bake in a pre-heated 375 degree oven for about 40 minutes, or until the top is crisp and golden.

It would be wise to bake the pie on a foil-lined baking sheet; sour cherries have a tendency to bubble over the crust, and cleaning the sticky liquid off the bottom of the oven is no way to greet the new year.

Prime Rib Hash

This is the perfect post-Christmas breakfast - or dinner - and the best way I know to use up the final, precious bits of a great rib roast.

<li>Prime Rib Hash:
<li>What you need before you start: a couple of small whole potatoes that are already cooked (any kind of potato will do, either baked or boiled), cut into small cubes.  About 2 cups of cold roast beef, cut into tiny cubes.  A small onion, diced.  Some aromatics, and a half cup of cream (Half and Half will do; heavy is better).  Three or four eggs.

Cook the potatoes in a well-oiled skillet for about 10 minutes, stirring about from time to time until they have turned golden.  Add the onions and cook until they become translucent and the potatoes begin to crisp, another 10 minutes or so.  Add the beef and a few aromatics if you like – I sometimes add a bit of thyme, or parsley, occasionally a clove or two of garlic, perhaps a small scraping of nutmeg.  If I’m in the mood, I’ll throw in a few flakes of hot chile pepper as well. Season with salt and pepper and cook for another 5 minutes or so, until the beef gives up its fat and begins to send its scent into the air.

Pour in the cream, listen to it sizzle, stir it about and then press the hash into the skillet with a spatula. Raise the heat beneath the pan and cook, turning occasionally until the cream has vanished into the hash, forming a wonderfully crisp crust.  This will take about 8 minutes.  Top each of three or four servings with its own softly fried egg.

How to Have a Great Party: Three Tips

1. The best parties involve a certain amount of serendipity. Don't be so organized that everything's done when the guests arrive.  Let people pitch in and help in the kitchen. It’s a great ice-breaker. 

2. The guest list is important. If everyone knows everyone else, the conversation can be dull. And if nobody knows anybody else, it can be awkward. Gather a comfortable group of people who are easy with each other, mix in a few new friends, and watch the party take off.

3. Don't serve soup or any kind of first course that means jumping up while everyone is seated to prepare the main course.  Put out lots of nibbley things to begin with – pate, cheese, salume, nuts, homemade crackers, some kind of vegetable dip. Or make something hot that  people can stand in the kitchen eating right from the oven, like a quiche or boureks. Bring the salad to toss at the table, so when you sit down for the main course you won't have to get up again until dessert.  It just makes the evening easier. 

Gift Guide, Day 27

A Promise for the Future:

The best thing about January?  The coming of the Kishus. 
Alice Waters introduced me to these tiny tangerines, which carry a little sunshine into the cold winter world.  I can’t think of anything more fun than bringing out a handful (yes they’re that tiny) and watching a child’s delight in the sweet juicy fruit.

The season is very short – just a few weeks in January – but you can sign up to be alerted when they start shipping. If you’re wracking your brain for a last minute gift, this is a wonderful one. It’s a few weeks away, but your friends will thank you each time they peel a tangerine and experience that deep, golden flavor.

And speaking of tangerines – if you’ve never read MFK Fisher on the pleasures of tangerine sections left to grow fat on the radiator and then chilled on a snowy ledge, here is an excerpt:  

“...It was then that I discovered little dried sections of tangerine. My pleasure in them is subtle and voluptuous and quite inexplicable. I can only write how they are prepared.

In the morning, in the soft sultry chamber, sit in the window peeling tangerines, three or four. Peel them gently; do not bruise them, as you watch soldiers pour past and past the corner and over the canal towards the watched Rhine. Separate each plump little pregnant crescent. If you find the Kiss, the secret section, save it for Al.

Listen to the chambermaid thumping up the pillows, and murmur encouragement to her thick Alsatian tales of l'intérieure. That is Paris, the interior, Paris or anywhere west of Strasbourg or maybe the Vosges. While she mutters of seduction and French bicyclists who ride more than wheels, tear delicately from the soft pile of sections each velvet string. You know those white pulpy strings that hold tangerines into their skins? Tear them off. Be careful.

Take yesterday's paper (when we were in Strasbourg L'Ami du Peuple was best, because when it got hot the ink stayed on it) and spread it on top of the radiator. The maid has gone, of course - it might be hard to ignore her belligerent Alsatian glare of astonishment.

After you have put the pieces of tangerine on the paper on the hot radiator, it is best to forget about them. Al comes home, you go to a long noon dinner in the brown dining-room, afterwards maybe you have a little nip of quetsch from the bottle on the armoire. Finally he goes. You are sorry, but -

On the radiator the sections of tangerines have grown even plumper, hot and full. You carry them to the window, pull it open, and leave them for a few minutes on the packed snow of the sill. They are ready.

All afternoon you can sit, then, looking down on the corner. Afternoon papers are delivered to the kiosk. Children come home from school just as three lovely whores mince smartly into the pension's chic tearoom. A basketful of Dutch tulips stations itself by the tram-stop, ready to tempt tired clerks at six o'clock. Finally the soldiers stump back from the Rhine. It is dark.

The sections of the tangerine are gone, and I cannot tell you why they are so magical. Perhaps it is that little shell, thin as one layer of enamel on a Chinese bowl, that crackles so tinily, so ultimately under your teeth. Or the rush of cold pulp just after it. Or the perfume. I cannot tell.

There must be someone, though, who understands what I mean. Probably everyone does, because of his own secret eatings."

Gift Guide, Day 26

A Share in a CSA:

Snow showers, gray sky, frozen world.  It must be this weather that has me dreaming of summer, longing for green things to start springing from the earth.

 I’ve been thinking that if someone gave me a share in a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), as a Christmas present, it would make me incredibly happy.  It would be a reminder that spring really will come, that the world will once again be fruitful. And more than that, it would give me a warm feeling to know that I was joining forces with a local farmer; not just buying his vegetables, but becoming a small partner, participating in whatever the coming year might bring – good or bad - in the way of harvest.

The CSA movement keeps growing; I’m now a member of a chicken CSA, as well as a vegetable one. These days you can find meat and fish CSAs too.  How do you find a local one?  Put your zipcode into the link above, and your local CSAs will come up. (It’s not perfect; if someone knows a more up to date data base, please leave a comment.)

Gift Guide, Day 25

Home Made Bread Crumbs:

A couple of years ago Kempy Minifie, who was running Gourmet’s test kitchen, gave me a container filled with homemade bread crumbs for Christmas.  “This,” I thought to myself, “is a really dopey present. I can make my own crumbs any time I want them.”  But I took them home and stored them in my freezer anyway.

One day, about a month later, I reached in and found they were gone:  I had used them all up. I instantly made some more, and since then my freezer has never been without a supply of good crisp, oily, crumbs.  They’re as essential as chicken stock, a wonderful fall-back ingredient that adds flavor and texture to many dishes.  I use them on pasta, in casseroles, to top vegetables. I’d be grateful to anyone who offered me some.

And they’re easy to make. 

Cut a good loaf of stale bread into cubes and grind it into crumbs in a blender or a food processor.  (A blender is better; it gives you a more uniform texture).  If your bread is not stale enough to crumb, you can dry the cubes out in a 200 degree oven for about 15 minutes before grinding.

Spread the crumbs onto a baking sheet and toast in a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes until they are crisp and golden.  Drizzle with olive oil (about a quarter cup for every 2 cups of crumbs), season with salt and allow to cool completely before putting into containers.

These will keep in the freezer almost indefinitely.  Just stick them in the microwave for a few seconds to take the chill off.

Gift Guide, Day 24

Colatura di Alici:

This is the essence of anchovy - and very likely what the Romans thought of as garum.  Its closest relative is Asian fish sauce, but Colatura di Alici is richer, more elegant (and more expensive). Still, it’s a powerful elixir, and a single bottle will very likely last a year in most people’s refrigerators.

What do you do with the wonderful stuff?  Use it almost anywhere that you’d use anchovies.  I add it to Caesar salad dressings, for instance, and I like to sprinkle a few drops into a bowl of sautéed kale.  When I'm making a simple dish of spaghetti with garlic, it adds a wonderful depth of flavor.

This is probably the last day you can still mail order a gift in time for Christmas.  The truth is that anyone who likes to cook would be very happy to see this show up at their door. It will give them  the opportunity to play around with an exotic ingredient all year long. And every time they use it, they'll think of you.

Gift Guide Day 23

A Pizza Stone:

As any of my friends will tell you, I’m not much of an equipment freak; I was probably the last person in America to buy a food processor, and I’m still using some of my mother’s geriatric pots and pans. But every once in a while you come upon something that turns you into a better cook.

I’d put the pizza stone into that category.  A good one will make your oven heat more regularly and help the crusts on homemade bread and pizza become seriously crisp. And if you’re looking for a good present for a cook, this is one thing that many people both covet and lack.

I like the 14 by 16 inch rectangular stone from Old Stone Oven.  You can buy one just about anywhere, but if you’re in a mail order mood, Amazon will still send it off in time to bake a crisp loaf of bread for Christmas dinner.

Gift Guide, Day 22

Cookie Book:

Gourmet’s last big idea, conceived by Jackie Terrebonne, was a series of pop-up cookie shops at Macy’s. They would have been beautiful, lapidary little shops with cookies displayed like jewels. But the magazine closed and they never happened. The accompanying Gourmet Cookie Book, however, was already finished; Romulo Yanes had shot all the photographs, Richard Ferretti had laid the book out and I had written the copy. And even though I asked the publisher not to put my name on it, every time I see this sweet little book it makes me happy.

This isn’t just another bunch of cookie recipes. We wanted to create a mini-history of cookies in America. We tasted through our archives, selecting the best cookie from each of Gourmet’s 68 years. Then, rather than homogenizing the recipes into current recipe style (as we did with The Gourmet Cookbook), we left the recipes exactly as originally written. If you did nothing but read the instructions you’d learn a great deal about the way we were.

The book offers a tiny taste of American history. As new ingredients came into the culture, they were incorporated into cookies.  New equipment became available to home cooks, and that also allowed the recipes to evolve. Time passed, we kept baking cookies, and our tastes kept changing. All of this is reflected in the recipes. The discounted book sells for about $10, not much more than a fancy Christmas card.

Just to be clear: I do not get a penny from the sale of this book.

Gift Guide, Day 21

A Very Sharp Knife:

The best present you can give a cook is one great kitchen knife. But choosing a knife is very personal; everyone should really go into the shop himself, play around with the knives, pick the one that feels right.

Knife sharpeners, on the other hand, are a universal gift.  Dull knives make cooking a chore instead of a pleasure, and every kitchen needs at least one easy to use sharpener. But here’s the problem: the wrong one can ruin your knives.  The Rollsharp won’t do that – on top of being inexpensive and very easy to use. Your friend will thank you every time she slices an onion and discovers that a sharp knife means no tears.

 

Gift Guide, Day 20

Today is National Maple Syrup Day:

And that reminded me that maple syrup is one of my favorite gifts. A few years ago I was packing up bottles of deep, dark grade B maple syrup for all my friends.  Then I discovered Blis; What’s different about this syrup is that it’s aged in old bourbon barrels, which takes the edge off the sweetness, imparting a mellower, slightly smokey taste.  It’s fabulous stuff.

This year I’m giving it to a friend, packaged with my favorite waffle maker, a cast iron Jotul.  I’ve been using mine for 40 years, and it makes perfect waffles (in the shape of hearts) every time.  Unfortunately, these wonderful waffle irons are no longer being manufactured. Fortunately, you can find them on ebay all the time.

I’m also including a copy of my favorite waffle recipe.

And I know where I’d like to be eating breakfast on the day after Christmas!

Gift Guide, Day 19

 Cheese Papers:

Here’s the problem: If you love cheese as much as I do, you always buy too much. Then you watch it wither away in your refrigerator, dying a slow and horrible death. In order to protect it, you need to wrap it away from all the aggressive odors that inhabit your refrigerator, waiting ot pounce. But plastic or foil simply suffocate your cheese. Waxed paper is less lethal – it allows it to breathe – but offers little in the way of protection. If you want to make your cheese happy, cheese papers are the answer. 

Somebody actually gave me a package of cheese papers a couple of years ago, and it changed my life; I’ve been grateful ever since.  I’m pretty sure your friends will feel the same.

Gift Guide, Day 18

A Paella Pan:
Kitchen equipment is a difficult gift, because you have to know someone pretty well before you know what they might need.  But a paella pan is a safe bet: Few people have them, and with the new focus on Spanish food, most cooks wish they did. But which pan to buy?

You can buy enormously expensive stainless steel paella pans in most kitchen stores, but I wouldn’t; although the cheaper carbon steel pans require care to keep them from rusting, most people won’t make paella often enough to justify the high cost of stainless.  So I’d stick with tradition.  You need to give some thought to size as well: it’s tempting to buy one of the giant pans that will feed a crowd, but most home stoves won’t accommodate a pan larger than 20 inches, and if it’s going into a home oven, 18 inches is pretty much the limit.

When I give paella pans, I usually add a bag of Bomba rice (wonderful stuff that absorbs three times its volume in liquid, making it perfect for paella), and as much saffron as I can afford. Nobody ever has too much saffron.

Gift Guide, Day 17

Blanched Nuts:

I hate skinning nuts.  There, I’ve said it.  It’s one of the few kitchen tasks I don’t enjoy.  But hazelnuts are the worst; they’re just a complete pain. For those of us who consider Linzer Tarts an essential Christmas treat, this can be a problem. I used to spend hours peeling those mean little nuts.

Then I discovered Nuts Online– a fabulous resource for bakers - where you can buy blanched hazelnuts by the pound.  A strange present, perhaps, but one any baker will thank you for.  (And if blanched hazelnuts aren’t your thing, they’ve got all sorts of unusual products from goji berries to dark chocolate m&ms…)

Gift Guide, Day 16

Fauchon Christmas Tea:

I know proper tea drinkers will look down their collective noses at this.  It’s not monkey-picked, or large leafed, or any of the other high-fallutin’ terms that connoisseurs use to make you know that their tea is better than yours.  But I can’t help myself; I love this stuff.

When you open the tin, the loveliest perfume escapes into the room.  It is cherries and caramel, orange peel and vanilla, with perhaps just a tiny tropical touch of pineapple.  I can make a tin last all year, so that even in the heat of summer, I can brew a pot and remember how the air smells when it snows. I love the fact that Fauchon only makes Un Soir de Noel at this time of year, and it is my annual Christmas gift to myself.  Occasionally I also buy it for a friend – if I think they'll like it as much as I do.

Gift Guide, Day 15

Bring Home the Bacon:

The best present I ever gave my former boss, Si Newhouse (the epitome of the man who has everything), was some bacon from Violet Hills Farm. I waited on line at the farmers market for hours to get it.  But that was years ago, when the bacon craze was new and there was no such thing as a Bacon of the Month Club.

These days, if you’re looking to surprise a bacon freak, you have to think beyond the edible.  And you certainly can.  My favorite is the very cool, very strange bacon wallet, but there are all kinds of other appealing bacon products. Bacon soap? Bacon lollipops? Bacon jellybeans? And don’t forget the adorable Bendy Mr. Bacon, who will sit on your friends' desks making them extremely hungry.

 

 

Gift Guide, Day 14

Jack Black Industrial Strength Hand Healer:

With the current craze for cleanliness, it’s hard to overestimate how much time your hands spend in water when you're cooking.  This time of year, between the washing and the cold, a cook’s hands are constantly cracked.  Nothing is more welcome than a really effective handcream.

There are lots of hand creams out there, but a cook’s concerns are different from those of ordinary people.  You don’t want something that is merely rich, soothing and nongreasy; you also want something that won't leave your hands smelling like cheap perfume. Finding a hand cream that is neither greasy nor smelly is not easy, and it seems like every time I find one, they take it off the market.  I’m hoping that my current favorite, Jack Black Industrial Strength Hand Healer, will stay around for a while.  But just in case, I’ve stocked up.

 I got mine at The Gardener in Berkeley, but it’s sold all over; you can buy this superb hand cream at Sephora and Amazon.
http://tinyurl.com/22mz2tx

Gift Guide, Day 13

Rare and Wonderful Balsamic Vinegar:

One of the first theories of gift-giving is to offer your friends the indulgences you most covet but feel guilty about buying for yourself. Great aged balsamic vinegar definitely falls into that category.  I love it, find it endlessly useful in the kitchen – and am always reluctant to spend the money for the best. 

Buying it for friends is another matter.  It is, I think, a perfect gift. Choosing which one to buy is a constant problem, but here is a suggestion.  Aceto Balsamico of Monticello is a wonderful elixir, with deep, concentrated flavor.  Organic and hand-made, it is aged in Italian casks for thirteen years.  It is rare – only a thousand bottles are sold each year. And – here’s the amazing thing – it is made in New Mexico. Paul Bertolli of Fra' Mani first told me about it, and I am forever in his debt.

This is, obviously, a present for someone you really care about. But if they dole it out the way that I do, a drop here, a drop there, it will last all year. And they’ll think of you each time they taste the mysteriously deep, dense flavor.

http://www.organicbalsamic.com/home.php

 

 

Gift Guide, Day 12

Pig Products

It’s already too late to order Allan Benton’s fabulous bacon for your friends, and his hams can’t be guaranteed for Christmas either. Unfortunately Armandino Batali’s mole salami, rich with chocolate and spices, won’t be available by mail again until early next year. But there are still plenty of wonderful pig products to send your pork-loving friends.

To begin, there’s the pig bank from Moss, which I gave to half my friends last year (the other half will get them this year.) Cast from real piglets, they’re endlessly lovable. They come in a number of colors, but I prefer the gold pig. Animal-lovers will want to note that 5% of proceeds go to the Humane Society.

Then there’s MOMA Store’s adorable pig cover, a pig face to put on top of a pot (or in the microwave). Made of silicone, and very silly, it allows steam to pour out of the snout. Who wouldn’t want this?

And finally, there’s the salt pig - a very pink, very cute salt holder in the shape of a very greedy pig.

Want to really pig out? Put all three into a single package for a truly spectacular gift.

Gift Guide, Day 11

Geoduck

The first time someone told me about the existence of clams that grow to 15 pounds I was eighteen years old, and I was convinced that he was putting me on. It was, from my Manhattan perspective, impossible to think of such a giant clam as anything but a joke. The name made it seem even more absurd: Gooeyduck? (That’s how the word is pronounced.)

But geoducks are no joke. Native to the Pacific Northwest, they are among the stranger beasts of the world. And also among the most delicious. If you’ve ever had “giant clam” in a sushi bar, you’ve tasted geoduck. To me this is the essence of clam – briny, mild, crisp, crunchy. Just one taste makes me happy.

For an adventurous cook, nothing would be cooler than to open up a package and find a giant clam. If it were me? I’d slice that long neck into sushi on the spot, and make the fat belly into an awesome chowder. That is, after I’d stopped laughing – and expressing my endless thanks.

Gift Guide, Day 10

Salmon Roe

Okay, I’m obsessed. I admit it. But every time I spread a little bit of sour cream onto a cracker and top it with salmon roe, I experience a tiny frisson of pleasure. Salmon roe is so jewel-like and beautiful, each tiny globe glistening orange. The eggs pop pleasantly in your mouth, delivering a surprising rush of flavor. And if you’re a caviar freak – I admit to that – this is the least expensive way to feed your obsession.

But lately I have found myself thinking that if it were not so inexpensive, it would be more prized. Consider the case of blue fin tuna, which was so despised it served as cat food for many years and then turned into the world’s most expensive fish. Some day epicures will discover the joy of salmon roe – and prices will soar.

Until then it makes a wonderful present, packaged with homemade blini (should I offer a recipe here?), and a carton of sour cream or crème fraiche.

It’s a gift that would certainly make me very happy.

There are many sources. Russ and Daughters and Zabars are two that I like.

Gift Guide, Day 9

La Vieille Prune

It was pretty much love at first whiff. The first time I tasted this aged, plum brandy the aroma came surging toward me out of the glass. It was so mellow that I imagined a crackling fire, violins playing, a cashmere hug. I folded my hands around the glass and the aroma lingered, still seducing me with its perfume long after the liquor itself had vanished.

I love cooking with Vieille Prune; add it to apple sauce, or chicken liver pate, or just toss a drop into a ragu – and whatever you’re making becomes softer, rounder, more appealing.

For years you couldn’t buy Vieille Prune in America, and I faithfully brought bottles back from France for my friends. I usually bought mine at La Maison de la Truffe in Paris, because I loved the old-fashioned writing on the label. This wonderful liquor is still shockingly rare in the United States – and isn’t that one reason to offer it as a gift? – but I’ve found a few sources in California. If anyone knows another place to buy Vieille Prune, I’d love to know about it.

Gift Guide, Day 8

An Entire Wardrobe of Flours

There are a few things I always have in my freezer, and Anson Mills grits are one of them. A big bowl of grits is perfect comfort food, and this hand-milled corn is the best I’ve found. And I don’t even think about making polenta unless I’ve got some Anson Mills on hand.

But as I was trolling through their website a few weeks ago (the recipe section is impressive), I came upon a few more must-have products. For one thing, they sell ni-hachi sobakoh buckwheat flour to make fresh Japanese soba. They also have old-fashioned sesame flour for benne cakes, semolina for pizza and pasta, rye flour for bread, and wonderful hand-milled cake flour. The result: This year my baking friends are all getting entire wardrobes of flours, (along with their recipe for Angel Food Cake). I can’t think of a single baker who won’t be thrilled.

Anson hand-mills and ships its products only on Tuesdays.

Gift Guide, Day 7

A Wardrobe of Great Beans

Yesterday was all about carnivores. Today we’re taking the other tack, coming up with ways to please a vegetarian.

In my opinion, every vegetarian's perennial problem is trying to find good beans. This is because most stores keep them forever and sell them stale, so that the beans refuse to get soft, no matter how long you cook them. Even worse, in a world filled with exotic beans, most places offer only pedestrian varieties.

Enter Cesare Casella, the maestro of beans. The chef/owner of Salumeria Rosi loves the gentle little Burrino that tastes like butter, and the giant Fagioli Grossi with their mottled flesh. His beans, imported from Italy, are flavorful, beautiful and plump. My favorites are the Fagioli del Papa, which have marbled purple and beige skins and taste of chestnuts, and the big creamy Fagioli Corona that like to stand in for meat. The restaurant's website is a great resource for bean-lovers, and a few varieties, packed into pretty jars, make great gifts.

Cesare doesn’t sell black beans, but if that’s all you can get, here’s my favorite black bean chili (this is for you, Jessica.)

Black Bean Chili

Soak 2 pounds of dried black beans overnight.

Toast 2 tablespoons cumin seed, 2 tablespoons paprika, and 2 teaspoons crumbled dried oregano in a dry skillet just until fragrant. Grind the spices into dust with a mortar and pestle. Add 2 dried pasilla chiles (stem and seeds discarded), coarsely chopped.

Saute a couple of diced onions in a bit of oil until golden in a large pot with a teaspoon of salt. Add 10 cloves of garlic, minced and 2 tablespoons of chopped canned chipotle chiles in adobo. Stir in spice mixture. Add the drained black beans, a couple of bay leaves and 3 quarts of water. Simmer, covered, until the beans are soft. (This should take about an hour, but if your beans are old it might take considerably longer.)

Add a 28 ounce can of chopped tomatoes. Taste for salt. Cook another 20 minutes or so and serve topped with sour cream and shredded cheddar cheese.

This will make 8 to 10 people very happy.

Gift Guide, Day 6

Bacon Filled Hot Dogs

One of the best memories of my last trip to San Francisco was standing on line outside the Ferry Building, contemplating which hot dog I was going to order from the 4505 stand. Just watching people walking away munching on dogs piled high with crisp chicharrones was a treat. It was topped only by getting my own Zilla dog, which was every bit as delicious as advertised.

The 4505 dogs are uncured and made from good ingredients (the bacon in them comes from Niman); this is, in short, a hot dog you don’t have to feel guilty about. They’ve got the classic snap of a great dog, as well as the tender texture. The big drawback was that the were sold only in San Francisco.

4505 now ships its bacon filled hot dogs across the country. You have to order by Monday, they ship 2-day air on Wednesday, so on Friday you can be giving these great dogs to all your friends. (How convenient that Christmas falls on Saturday.)

I’m planning to wrap them up with jars of kimchi, bags of chicharrones and if I’m really ambitious, home-baked buns. I can’t think of a single friend who won’t be happy to see me carrying this through the door.

Gift Guide, Day 5

Handmade copper cookie cutters

The year the monogrammed sterling silver yo yo appeared on my desk at Christmas, I knew the corporate gift giving culture had gone insane. When you’re a magazine editor people are constantly sending you gifts you don’t want.

But occasionally something both useful and pretty actually shows up. My favorite was a huge copper cookie cutter in the shape of a star; it makes beautiful cookies – and looks swell on the Christmas tree.

Stars are kind of generic, but cookie cutters come in every shape and style you can imagine, and you can tailor your cutters to your friends. Coppergifts makes cookie cutters in 2,000 shapes (every dog you have ever seen, for instance) – and if they don’t have what you’re looking for they’ll custom craft a cookie cutter just for you.

Gift Guide, Day 4

Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve

I had the terrible misfortune of discovering the world’s best Bourbon 22 years ago, right before I became pregnant. I bought myself a few bottles, which sat there, mocking me, for the entire 9 months.

The Van Winkles age their Bourbons longer than other people. Some people swear by the 23 year old, but to me it seems more like Cognac than a great American liquor. The 20 year old, on the other hand, is the sexiest, smoothest, most delicious drink there is. It can stand up to full-flavored foods (it has the ability to make even mediocre barbecue taste great), while being subtle enough to enhance delicate dishes. And a single splash will improve any stew.

Pappy's not easy to find, but the website offers some help. If you really love someone, you’ll seek it out. They will be yours forever.

Gift Guide, Day 3

OLD COOKBOOKS

They open a window into long-gone worlds, offering an unselfconscious portrait of another time. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than spend a long morning browsing through a great old bookshop. And if there’s a better way to honor friendship than by offering a specially chosen old cookbook, I’ve never found it.

My most recent find was a seed catalog from World War II, filled with great drawings of long-gone vegetables (and including an exhortation to grow the magic vegetable, kudzu). The seed company has the same name as one of my closest friends, and it will make a fine Christmas treat.

You never know what you will find, but there is always something for everyone. In the past I’ve found first editions of MFK Fisher books, a whole trove of volumes from Alan Davidson’s library, a book written in the fifties for supermarket executives on the future of the grocery store – even copies of my own first cookbook, MMMMM: A Feastiary – which I ran out of years ago.

My favorite old cookbook stores? Bonnie Slotnick in New York, and Omnivore Books in San Francisco.

Happy browsing!

Gift Guide, Day 2

Artisanal Soy Sauce

Nobody goes out and spends twenty bucks on a bottle of soy sauce. At least too few people do. Which makes this a perfect gift opportunity.

Artisanal soy sauce is one of those magic elixirs that makes everything taste better. If you’ve never had it, you won’t believe how different it can be from the commercial kind. (And if all you’ve ever tasted is the really cheap supermarket soy sauce that is basically caramelized water, you have a real revelation ahead of you. Just the jump from that to, say, Kikkoman, is huge. The leap into one of the hand-made brands is another enormous step forward.)

You can buy a few different brands of fine soy sauce from Corti Brothers in Sacramento. You can buy it other places as well, but when you go to the Corti Brothers website you can also download the most opinionated, illuminating and interesting newsletter in the business. I learn something every time I read one of Darrell Corti's entries. That's another great gift – and it’s free.

The Gift Guide

Starting today I'm going to post a new gift suggestion every day until Christmas. These are all products I've tried and loved, all gifts that I'd like to receive myself. (And although I shouldn't have to say this, I should add that nobody's paying for product placement.)

There's a certain irony in this, because when I was at Gourmet I did a terrible job of showcasing stuff to buy. This was partly because there was always so much pressure from the publishers to showcase the advertisers' products. If you're wondering why there are always watches on the cooks, there's your answer. But it was also because I could never figure out a really interesting way to offer shopping suggestions. But now that I'm no longer at the magazine, when people ask me for gift suggestions, it all seems very straightforward. So here it is, a list of gifts that I think your friends will appreciate.

I'm starting with Mangalitsa pork, because I cooked some the other day, and I was truly startled by the sheer deliciousness of these beautiful wooly pigs.

MANGALITSA PORK

I love baking with Mangalitsa lard, which is pure white, soft and has a fine sweet flavor that is not quite like anything I’ve tasted before. When you're making pie dough it rolls out like a dream, and bakes up into a wonderfully flaky crust that lacks the mean piggy flavor of so much lard.

But the last time I ordered the lard from De Bragga and Spitler (debragga.com), I decided to order some meat as well. Let me just say that it is, hands down, the most delicious pork I have ever tasted. It is so sweet, succulent and seductively flavorful that the only seasoning it needs is some salt and pepper (and maybe a few cloves of garlic). Trust me: if you send this to a friend, he will love you forever.

The World's Best Waffles

Fannie Farmer's Yeast-Raised Waffles

Sprinkle 1 package of dry yeast over a half cup of warm water in a large bowl and wait for it to dissolve.

Meanwhile melt a stick of butter, add 2 cups of milk and allow it to just gently warm up. Add it to the yeast mixture.

Mix a teaspoon each of salt and sugar into 2 cups of flour. Add this to the liquid and beat until smooth.

Cover the bowl and let it stand overnight at room temperature. In the morning beat in 2 eggs and a quarter teaspoon of baking soda, stirring well. Cook on a very hot waffle iron until crisp on each side.

This makes about 8 waffles, and will keep for a few days in the refrigerator.

My Favorite Seafood Pasta

Had dinner at Torrisi Italian Specialties the other night. Everything was wonderful - the famous garlic bread, the three bean salad with shredded dried scallops, the potato gnocchi and the juicy pork - but it was the spaghetti with seafood that really knocked my socks off. It was rich, slick, very sexy.

With the first bite I was suddenly in Venice, cooking again with Enrica Rocca in her lovely kitchen, making an aromatic (and bright orange) stock out of shrimp heads. I loved her spaghetti allo scoglio, the most intensely flavorful seafood pasta I've ever tasted.

The secret to this dish is simple: You finish cooking the pasta in the aromatic seafood broth until the pasta becomes one with the sauce. This is not spaghetti with sauce on top; it is spaghetti with sauce inside each strand. The seafood on top is lovely and delicious, but here it is just a garnish.

Spaghetti allo Scoglio

¾ pounds medium shrimp with heads
* 1 medium onion, sliced
* 1 large carrot, peeled and chopped
* a handful of chopped parsley
* 1 lb mussels, scrubbed 
* 1 lb spaghetti
* 2 cloves garlic, smashed or minced
* about 20 cherry tomatoea, halved
* 1 small dried hot chile, 
* 1 pound squid, cleaned, and cut into rings (tentacles left whole)
* white wine
* olive oil
* salt and pepper to taste

Remove the heads from the shrimp. Put them into a pot with the carrot, onion, parsley and a glug of olive oil and cook, covered, over medium-low heat, stirring lazily every once in a while for about 15 minutes. Then add the shrimp shells, ¾ cups of white wine and 4 cups of water and simmer very gently for about an hour and a half to make an intense stock (it will turn bright orange from the fat in the shrimp heads). Strain the liquid into a bowl and set aside.

Heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and the garlic in a deep heavy skillet. When the garlic is fragrant add the mussels and 3/4 cup white wine, cover the pan and cook until most of the mussels have gaped open. This should only take a couple of minutes. Snatch the mussels out as they open, setting them in a colander set over the stock bowl. Continue to cook for about 5 minutes; discard any mussels that refuse to open.

Meanwhile, cook spaghetti in well-salted boiling water until barely al dente, about 6 minutes. Drain in a colander.

Put 1 cup of stock, cherry tomatoes, chile and some more chopped parsley in the skillet and simmer a few minutes until the tomatoes get soft. Stir in the spaghetti and simmer until the pasta has inhaled all the liquid (about 3 minutes), adding more stock as needed to make the pasta perfectly al dente. Add the squid and shrimp, stirring for about one minute or just until the shrimp turn rosy and the squid loses its translucence. Stir in the mussels and a bit more parsley and serve to 4 very happy people.

Can we change the Food System?

It was a beautiful drive down to Princeton yesterday, the sun illuminating the bright yellow trees lining the road along the way.

And it was a beautiful hall, all carved antique wood, where Marion Nestle, David Kessler and I sat down to discuss the politics of food and health care.

But it was not a beautiful discussion. Interesting, yes. But ultimately depressing. They each began by addressing what they consider the major problem with the current food system. For Marion it is that the government encourages farmers to produce too much food – and then encourages us to eat it. That is the basis of our obesity problem.

David does not dispute that. He agrees with it. But for him the basic problem is that we are literally being addicted to food; that the food companies are creating combinations of fat, sugar and salt that are driving us to overeat. We cannot help ourselves. And so we continue to eat to excess, even when we know we shouldn't. Even when we don't want to. As he says, “Everybody in America’s on a diet; everybody’s living in inner torment.”

We are all agreed on these basic facts. The question is, what do we do about it? And that’s where the most depressing part comes in. Because these politically connected people (David, after all, was the FDA commissioner who took on cigarettes), both believe that there are only two paths to political change. Campaign laws must be rewritten to prevent large corporate contributions. And the first amendment must no longer be interpreted as protecting advertising as free speech. Until that happens, political change is not possible.

In other words, change is up to us. They both believe that it is going to take grassroots efforts to change the current system. The upside? They both believe it's possible. But it's going to require a lot of work.

The Best Potato Dish, Ever

Regine asked me what I serve with a beef roast. This rich and wonderful gratin is the answer. It's a tweak on a Jacques Pepin recipe that I absolutely love. It's great for a party because it can be done ahead of time, and the timing is very forgiving; you can pull it out of the oven and serve it an hour later. It is also a great snack the next day, reheated in the microwave.

Gratin Dauphinois
* 2 1/2 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes, thinly sliced
* 3 1/2 cups of milk, cream or a mixture of the two
* 2 garlic cloves, minced
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
* a bit of freshly grated nutmeg
* 3/4 cup coarsely grated Gruyère (or other cheese - any one will do).

  Preheat oven to 400°F. Generously butter a shallow baking dish.

  Put the potatoes into pot with the milk or cream, garlic, salt, and pepper 

and bring just to a boil. Pour the contents of the pot into the buttered baking dish, grate the nutmeg over the top and sprinkle on the cheese. Bake for about 45 minutes, until the top is browned and all the liquid has been absorbed by the potatoes. Allow this to stand for 15 minutes (or more) before serving.

  This will serve about 8 people.

Thoughts on Japan: Flavors of Culture

Few of the chefs spoke English. Many had never before been in the United States. One closed his restaurant for the first time. Others came bearing Kyoto water, unwilling to trust the quality of their cuisine to the harder California sort. This was a group that left nothing to chance.

It was, by any measure, an extraordinary conference. But when 46 of Japan’s finest chefs came to the Napa Valley last week, they went a long way towards demonstrating how much we still have to learn about Japanese cuisine.

Highlights? I imagine that each of us took something different away from this conference, which packed an astonishing amount of information into three days. But I’ll tell you what the most memorable moments were for me.

It was a thrill to watch a number of famous kaiseki chefs assembling seasonal plates before our eyes. As they placed each ingredient they told us what they were doing, and why, which was like watching an artist explain each brushstroke as he splashed it across the canvas. The differences were fascinating: For one chef a lobster was the Golden Gate Bridge, for another a mountain. Finally, Kunio Tokuoka, third-generation owner of Kyotol Kitcho stepped onto the stage, where he constructed a dish so delicate, so poetic, so astonishingly beautiful that you instantly understood the difference between very good and great. He is a master. (His new book, incidentally, is gorgeous.)

The biggest crowd-pleaser of the event was Yoshinori Horii, who made soba from green buckwheat as we watched, rapt. His family has been making soba since 1789, and I am dying to go to Tokyo to taste it. Buckwheat has no gluten, but he somehow managed to take this cantankerous material, knead it into dough with nothing but water and a tiny amount of flour, and then roll it into a smooth sheet. The magic moment was when he turned the round sheet into a perfect square with four swift passes of his long rolling pin. Then he folded it up and cut it into fine noodles with a few quick snicks of the knife.

Another great moment? Eating Ivan Ramen. Ivan Orkin is a Long Island boy who has, improbably, opened a ramen shop in Tokyo. His springy noodles have a lively quality that nobody else at the conference could match; I snuck back into line for seconds, and I would have gone for thirds if they had not run out. (For the record, another restaurant I really want to try is Nombe in San Francisco; Nicolaus Balla gave a very fine demonstration – and he makes his own umeboshi.)

But it wasn’t all food – there was also a fair amount of food for thought. Yoshiki Tsuji kicked the conference off with a fascinating look at the history of Japanese cuisine, showing us how it has been affected by the politics of the nation. The most used word at this conference was surely “umami,” which virtually every chef mentioned when he spoke. But when Harold McGee got up to talk, he dropped what was, for me, a bombshell: he believes that umami is only the beginning, and that we will identify many more essential flavors in the next few years. It’s an exciting thought.

An Ode to Brining

I’ve had such a love/hate relationship with pork. I loved the sweet meat when I was little, loved the wonderful aroma that filled the house as it roasted. And then, suddenly, I couldn’t stand the papery dry meat that emerged from the oven every time, which had all the charm of cardboard. For a long time, I stopped cooking pork altogether.

Then I discovered that simply by plunking the meat into a salt water brine, I could revive the joy of pork. The added bonus is that if you throw in some herbs, you not only get fabulously juicy meat, you also get extra flavor.

Brine recipe:

2 quarts water

1/3 cup kosher salt

3 tablespoons of sugar,

a few cloves of garlic

rosemary

black peppers

Bring this to a boil, pour it into a large bowl and chill in the refrigerator. When it’s cool, add a 6-rib pork loin roast (about 3 ½ pounds) and marinate in the refrigerator for two days.

Drain the roast and pat dry before browning and roasting. It will be fat, sassy, completely satisfying. Especially if you begin with a pig who led a happy life.

The Easiest Dish for a Crowd

What I wanted was a ham. I should have ordered one in the mail, because in this not quite holiday season, a great ham is hard to find. And so, because I’m lazy and a lot of people were coming to dinner, I settled for a filet of beef. (Actually, 3 of them.)

It is (next to ham, which needs nothing more than an oven to warm it up in), the easiest way to feed a crowd. But how to make it special?

I made this sauce – which really adds a wonderful zing of flavor. But I wanted something more. Pawing around in my spice cupboard I found an overlooked jar of truffle salt, and although it was old, I opened it anyway. The flavor literally leaped out of the jar and filled up the kitchen – it was that intense – and so I patted my filet dry (this is important) and sprinkled it liberally all over the filet before browned the meat in the pan. Even two days later I could still detect that wonderful truffle scent in my hair.

You brown a 3 to 3 1/2 pound filet in a pan until all sides have turned a nice brown, then cook it in a 350 degree oven for about 25 minutes (it should be at 120 degrees). Let it rest for at least 15 minutes (you can serve it at room temperature if you like), so it gets to 130 degrees for rare. Slice, inhaling the fine truffle perfume, and serve the rosy beef with this sauce.

Cook ¾ cups of minced shallots in 2 ½ cups of white wine until the wine is reduced to about ½ cup.

Mix a stick of soft, sweet butter with a third cup of mustard. Add to the cooled shallot-wine mixture with a couple tablespoons of cream and a half cup of cornichon pickles that have been thinly sliced into julienne strips.

This will generously feed 6 people

Another Great Meatloaf

When Amy Mastrangelo came up with this meatloaf for the low-fat section of Gourmet, I'll admit that I was skeptical. I'm not a fan of turkey meatloaves, and the low-fat aspect of the recipe didn't do much to spark my enthusiasm. So the week she presented it, I went home and made it for my family.

We all liked it. A lot. The secret is the mushrooms, which add flavor, texture and moisture. Amy used cremini mushrooms, but I like to throw in some shiitake for extra flavor, as well as a few dried porcini. Play with it.

This one doesn't have the wow factor of Ian's bacon and prune laced meatloaf, but for a weeknight dinner (and one without a lot of calories), it makes six or so people very happy.

Mushroom-Turkey Meatloaf

Cook 1 1/2 cups finely chopped onions with1 diced carrot and 3 cloves of smashed garlic in a bit of olive oil until softened. Add ¾ pounds of mushrooms that have been finely chopped in a food processor, a bit of salt and pepper, and cook until all the mushroom liquid has evaporated (about 15 minutes).

Add 2 teaspoons of Worcestershire sauce, 1/3 cup chopped parsley and a quarter cup of ketchup and allow the mixture to cool.

Meanwhile soak 1 cup fine fresh bread crumbs in about a third cup of milk. Stir in 2 eggs and then mix into cooled vegetables.

With your hands gently mix in 1 1/4 lb ground turkey (if you can get dark meat, do; it will taste better), add a bit more salt and pepper and shape into an oval (the mixture will be very damp and moist), and put in a large pan. Brush the top with ketchup and bake at 400° for almost an hour (the loaf should register 170 degrees on an instant read thermometer).

Let it sit a few minutes before serving, just to reabsorb the juices.

Thing I Love 4

Matzo Brei for One

It's a rainy day, and the wind is howling around the house, whistling through every crack. That must be why I'm making all my comfort foods. I've got a pot of chicken bones on the stove, slowly burbling into soup, and I have a sudden, urgent desire for matzoh brie. When Nick was little he called it "manna" - and it's still pretty much that to me.

My mother always said that lots of butter was the secret to matzo brei, and I won't disagree. Brei, incidentally, rhymes with fry...

* 1 matzo
* butter
* 1 egg
* salt

Break matzos into a colander into small pieces. Run under the tap and moisten well. Drain.

Melt as much butter as you will allow yourself to get away with in a large skillet. My mother says the secret of matzo brei is lots of butter, so if in doubt, add more. Beat eggs in a bowl. Add matzos and mix well. Put into pan and cook, stirring constantly, until eggs are set. I like it quite dry, because I love the crunchy little bits that you get at the very end. Salt to taste. Eat with enormous pleasure.

Note: There is a big debate, between matzo brei mavens, on the virtues of the sweet versus the savory sort. May I just say that sweet matzo brei is, to me, an abomination?

Pumpkin Pancakes

I made these today because I had some left-over pumpkin from the Swiss Pumpkin I made the other night. But I originally made them to use up that annoying bit of canned pumpkin puree that's always left over when you make pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving.

Mix 1 1/4 cups flour with 3 tablespoons brown sugar and 2 teaspoons baking powder. Add 1/4 teaspoon each cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg and a pinch of clove. Add half a teaspoon of salt.

Separate 4 eggs. Put the yolks into a small bowl and mix in half a stick of melted butter, ¾ cup pumpkin puree, 1 ¼ cups milk and a teaspoon of vanilla.

Beat the egg whites in a separate bowl until they are just stiff.

Mix the pumpkin mixture into the flour mixture, and then carefully fold in the egg whites.

Cook in a lightly buttered cast iron skillet and serve with maple syrup. (These are particularly good with Blis, which is cured in bourbon barrels.)

Butter Taste-Off

A world without butter is, to me, a very sad place. In the list of foods I can’t live without, it ranks very high. I like it sweet and cold, and I have a very hard time understanding how anyone could possibly want it warm and salted.

My basic butter choices are Plugra and Land o’ Lakes. (Although I’ve been unhappy with Land o’ Lakes since they stopped wrapping their butter in foil; sweet butter is fragile, and foil provides the best barrier to the off-flavors it so easily absorbs.) But the store had sold out of both, so I decided to buy three other brands, from three countries, and have a butter taste-off.

Celles sur Belle, a French butter from Charentes-Poitou was the most expensive of the lot. Creamy and delicious, it was the most neutral. However, given its price, I wouldn’t buy it again.

Jana Valley from the Czech Republic was the least expensive of the butters, a little more than half the price of the French butter, and definitely one I would buy again. Of the three butters, it had the purest cream flavor.

Kate’s Homemade Butter from Maine was the big surprise to me. It was the median-priced butter, with a clean, sweet flavor. This is the one I want on my morning bread.

Ian's Great Meatloaf

This is my favorite meatloaf. It's a recipe that Ian Knauer invented for Gourmet a couple of years ago, brilliantly deciding to lace the bacon through the loaf itself, instead of laying it on top. He balances the smokiness of the bacon with the sweetness of prunes, then punches the flavor up with Worcestershire sauce and a touch of vinegar. I've increased the onion in the recipe a bit, and upped the proportion of pork to beef, but otherwise the recipe is pretty much the way he originally wrote it. This recipe will feed 6 to 8 people, but you really want to have some leftover. I love it reheated for breakfast, topped with a fried egg.

Bacon-Prune Meatloaf

Soak 1 cup fine fresh bread crumbs in 1/3 cup whole milk in a bowl large enough to eventually hold all ingredients.

Chop 2 onions. Smash 3 cloves of garlic.Chop a rib of celery and a carrot. Saute them all in 2 tablespoons of butter until tender and wilted. Remove from heat and stir in 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce, 1 tablespoon of cider vinegar, 1 ground allspice clove, 2 teaspoons salt, and 1 1/2 teaspoons pepper. Add to bread-crumb mixture.

Grind 1/4 pound of bacon and 1/2 cup pitted prunes in a food processor, then add to onion mixture along with 1 1/2 pounds ground beef chuck, 3/4 pounds ground pork, 2 eggs and 1/3 cup chopped parsley Mix it together, gently, with your hands.

Pack mixture into an oval loaf in a 13- by 9-inch shallow baking dish or pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour and a quarter. Let stand 10 minutes (or longer) before serving.

The Changing Taste of America

Went to visit Nick at college today, and we stopped into the campus grocery store. I was fascinated by what this tiny little place had on offer.

Right by the door, in the most prominent place was a case filled with sushi and hummus. The sushi was no surprise: it was the garden variety sort that you now find in every supermarket. The hummus, however, came in a dozen different flavors. Have I somehow missed the hummus revolution?

The produce section was equally interesting. To Nick’s disgust there was no organic produce, but I was amazed to see, among the prosaic lettuces, onions and eggplants, a surprisingly diverse display of herbs and aromatics. Ginger!

One entire wall of the store was devoted to various kinds of soft drinks; no surprise there. And the vast cast of ice cream was complete expected. But I was stunned by the wide variety of grains: quinoa, cous cous, barley, bulghur….even sticky rice.

Looking back at the campus grocery store when I was in school, I mostly remember that I yearned for garlic, which was considered too exotic. Walking through the aisles in my memory, I am wandering past shelves holding what were once considered staples: mayonnaise, Wonder Bread, macaroni and cheese. Clearly the taste of America has changed. It gives me hope

Things I Love 3

Zabar’s in the early morning, when you’re almost the only customer in the store. Everyone’s setting up, waiting for the day to begin, and there’s a hopeful quality that disappears in the exhausted rush of the day.

The cheese people will wave and smile at you. And the fish guys, who become taciturn later on (except in the presence of children for whom, in my experience, they always have a smile), will actually talk to you as they unwrap the slabs of salmon and wipe the display windows down.

Walking home, the feeling lasts. People on the street nod at one another like conspirators with a wonderful secret. For this moment, the city belongs to us.

Things I Love 2

White sweet potatoes, with their fluffy flesh, have a nutty flavor that is unlike that of any other potato. Think chestnuts. Cooked until near melting, they turn into a flavor catalyst. Add a bit of butter and a splash of maple syrup, and they make a great impromptu “cake” for dessert. Spoon in a bit of miso, and they’re an equally easy accompaniment to chicken or beef.

Things I Love 1

Yama Imo, the mysterious “mountain potato” of Japan, has the most exotic texture of any food I know. Pure white, it has a bite, a crunch, a crispness that quickly dissolves into a creamy paste and then, while you are chewing, breaks down again, becoming stickier and stickier until it is pure slime. This transformation never fails to entertain and delight me, and I love to carve it into sticks and eat it for breakfast, with umaboshi (the plum paste of Japan, for which it has a great affinity), or simply drizzle it with soy sauce. It creates a little circus of the mouth, the perfect way to start any day.

Talking with David (Chang) and Rene (Redzepi)

Rene Redzepi and David Chang are two of the most thoughtful, charismatic and entertaining chefs today. But I couldn’t help thinking about the irony of the evening. We were talking about eating culture, about the need to create a truly local cuisine. We all agreed that restaurant cooking has become so homogenized that if you closed your eyes and simply tasted what was on your plate, you would have no way of knowing where in the world you were. You could be eating the same dishes in Sydney, Shanghai, London or San Francisco. For these two young chefs, the creation of a truly local cuisine is the next food frontier.

But while they may be thinking local, they're living global. David looked exhausted, and he had to run off to catch a plane to London, where he’ll be cooking a meal with Claude Bosi of Hibiscus. Meanwhile Rene’s whistlestop tour has taken him to three continents in the last two weeks, and he's still wearing his traveling shoes.

Some more thoughts:

Favorite Moment: Rene pointing out that chefs would make great terrorists, because they’re so single-minded and obsessed. (Although I may have been the only one who laughed.)

Favorite Audience Question: The young chef, who stood up in front of all those people and made a pitch for a stage at Noma next summer. How could Rene say no? He couldn’t, although I suspect he’s opened the door to many more requests along the way.

Favorite Food in the Goodie Bag: The wild kiwi from Maine.

Second Favorite Food: Sea Asparagus.

Favorite Noma Dish: The incredible vintage carrot (which wins the ugliest food on the planet award).

Rainbow on the river

Rainbow on the river

Sent from my iPhone

Lunch at Daniel, 2

Colman Andrews, who arranged the lunch at Daniel, wrote to tell me that my Iphone had very graciously changed "cuisses de grenouille" to "cuirass de grenouille." "Rather leathery, don't you think?" he asked. He also pointed out that my phone had decided that foie gras en gelee should be foie gras glee - which both of us rather liked.

Then we continued a conversation we had started at the end of lunch. He said that Americans don't like French food anymore, and that French cookbooks don't sell. I pointed out that Balthazar is the hardest restaurant to get into in New York; it is packed from the moment it opens for breakfast until well after midnight. So clearly we do like French food.

This isn't "writing"; it's just a casual conversation, but I thought you might be interested. I asked Colman if he'd let me let you listen in.

COLMAN to RUTH

Was thinking later about your contention that Americans DO like French food, they just don’t like to cook it, and I think there’s something to that. The whole point of the kind of stuff we had yesterday, though, is that NOBODY should try to cook it at home. It’s restaurant food and depends on a whole repertoire of stocks and other fonds, many hands to do the work, etc. That incredible multi-level soup, for instance... I mean, I guess somebody could reproduce something along the same lines if they wanted to go to the time and expense, but why would you? We might fool around on the fiddle but we don’t think we’re Pincus Zucherman. Why should we assume that we can cook like Daniel (or Jean-Georges, or Michel Richard, or....)? Whereas if you want to make, say, Italian food, all you really have to do is cook like Mamma—which of course is equally impossible, but much easier to imagine. Anyway, it makes it hard to write a book about cooking French food (though we did it, in a way, with the Saveur Authentic French book), which just leaves books about eating it I guess.

Would be nice to think that “nouvelle cuisine” was the next big thing, though. Yeah, right.

RUTH to COLMAN

That's why Americans love the idea of provincial French cooking so much. Bistro food books do sell. Our French home cooking covers always did well on the newsstand. People want to make cassoulet and poulet a la creme....all that cuisine de bonne femme.

As for chef cooking - I don't get why anyone at all buys any of the chef cookbooks. Not just the French guys; you look at David Chang's recipes, and every seemingly simple dish requires about a million steps. For me, part of the joy of that meal of Daniel's was being reminded of how much pleasure there is in that kind of cooking. That soup was extraordinary - on so many levels - well, it all was. I don't eat at big deal French restaurants much anymore, and it made me want to make the rounds again.

The one place I wish he'd gone in a different direction was dessert. I was trying to remember great nouvelle cuisine desserts, and I couldn't. Or is it just that the new desserts are so much more interesting?

COLMAN to RUTH

Yes, you’re right. I do think it’s interesting, though, that people (“our” people, the serious food folk) tend to think that they should be able to—that they have the right to be able to—reproduce the most elaborate and labor-intensive of restaurant dishes, when they would never think themselves capable of playing serious music or painting museum-quality art or imagine themselves capable of leaping into Scorcese or Coppola territory with their Flips.

I know what you mean about not going to big-deal French restaurants any more (though I do always try to go to one or two when I’m in Paris) and about wanting to make the rounds again. I don’t think there’s much of that kind of food left in NY though. We experienced together how things have fallen (or our expectations have risen?) at the Cuisses de Grenouilles. I didn’t like the last meal I had at Jean-Georges very much (though he is certainly capable of doing this kind of food). Per Se to me is a different thing, not French—which I would usually say is a good thing, though not necessarily in this context. Haven’t been to Citronelle forever, but I imagine Michel would still be a real contender in this arena if he wanted to be. It was this kind of cooking I had in mind when I called the piece I did on Michel Bourdin at the Connaught years ago in Saveur “The Last French Restaurant in the World”.

Re desserts, as you know that’s never been my thing, but I thought the fig tart was very good. I do think desserts are on a whole different level, conceived differently and using different technology, today. I can’t really remember any ground-breaking masterpieces from the old days either. Lots of sorbets and tarts as I recall, basically the same old stuff, though often very good. (You may or may not remember, but I recall vividly your reaction to the very very simple pear sorbet at the old Boyer.)

I tweeted about the menu and mused how wild it would be if nouvelle cuisine turned out to be the next big thing. It won’t of course, but I got a lot of comments back on that and all but one seemed to love the idea...

My Lunch at Daniel

It’s been years since I sat down to lunch at noon and spent the entire afternoon at the table, slowly, dreamily, eating (and drinking) the day away. After today’s languid five-hour meals at Daniel, I wonder why I got out of the habit.

The idea for this lunch grew out of another long lunch, when Daniel Boulud and Colman Andrews boozily started reminiscing about the French food of the seventies. It was a halcyon time, the beginning of nouvelle cuisine, when young chefs were throwing out all the rulebooks. It was also the time when Daniel was starting out, working with French masters like Michel Guerard and Paul Bocuse.

And so, this “retour aux annees ’70,” an homage to all the great French chefs of the time. It was also, said Daniel slyly, an attempt to lure Colman (who has just written a book on Irish food and a biography of Ferran Adria), back to France.

As a seduction, I’d say it was entirely successful. We started with whole foie gras wrapped in a peppercorn jelly; the soft, rosy livers shining merrily inside their dark wrapping, their sweetness underlined by the prickle of the peppers. We drank an extraordinary sauternes, a ’62 Coutet (with its original price - $4 - still stamped on the bottle).

Back in the seventies you couldn’t pick up a food magazine without reading about the the truffle soup that Paul Bocuse made for Valery Giscard D’Estaing. A golden dome of puff pastry rose dramatically above the bowl. Daniel changed the recipe, creating a textural treasure hunt; every time you stuck your spoon through the pastry into the intense game broth, you came up with some wildly different texture. Now it is a bit of quenelle that dissolves in an instant, now a chewy little nugget of truffle, now a soft pillow of liver.

Georges Blancs frog’s legs, heady with parsley and garlic and served in a puddle of clarified butter, were so invitingly fragrant that it was impossible not to pick them up and eat them right down to the bone. The Raveneau Chablis (2004), was not only the most perfect Chablis I’ve ever tasted, but also the perfect wine for this dish, the acid cutting right through the butter.

Why did I forget what a shock it was the first time I tasted the Troisgros salmon? Eating this lovely little square of fish in its sorrel sauce, I suddenly remembered that moment, in Roanne, remembered thinking that I had never really tasted salmon before. Thinly sliced and barely cooked (and only on one side), it was, for me, the doorway to sushi. Eating it, slowly, thoughtful, I began to wonder what fish might taste like raw. It was then – and is now – the epitome of simplicity, and utterly satisfying.

Next we had an extraordinary tart of cepes and innards, an Alain Chapel dish from 1974. Even more appealing, at least to me, was the tender little kidney on the side; it looked like a rose just beginning to bloom, with a flavor so gentle it was hard to remember how kidneys usually taste.

As those plates were being removed a trio of large ducks was paraded about the room and then carved with great fanfare. The carcasses were put though an enormous duck press and the blood went into the sauce. The meat was deep red and deeply flavorful, with the primitive and faintly metallic tang that comes only from blood. The wine with that, a Domaine de la Grange des Peres 2000 impressed me more than the fancy 1990 Volnays served with the previous course.

Then there was a rare cheese Le Timanoix, a caramelized fig tart and a spectacular cake that Gaston LeNotre invented to honor the Concorde in 1978 (although with its mass of chocolate curls it looked more like an homage to Shirley Temple). They were both great, but even greater was the Boal Madeira from 1865. Think about it: We were drinking wine that was made while the Civil War was being fought.

And that, of course, is one of the great things about food. It is one sure way to remember the past. And as this lunch reminded me, the seventies are worth remembering.

(pictures follow)