Here's what I like this week:

GreenPan - This is a brand of nonstick cookware that is healthier for both you and the environment than traditional nonstick cookware. GreenPan's nonstick coating is made of Thermolon, which is not made up of PTFE or other fluoropolymers. Fluoropolymers release toxic substances when they are heated above 260 degrees F., which you would do when you cook almost anything. To manufacture fluoropolymers, another substance that is toxic to the environment (PFOA) is used in the process. GreenPan makes an effort to use as much recycled material as possible in the creation of its product line. These are the pluses of using GreenPan.
The minuses, at least as I have experienced them: You need to treat these pans carefully. You cannot overheat the pan, as with any nonstick pan. Don't turn the heat on high and walk away for 10 minutes. The website recommends use up to 450 degrees F. In other words, you can do most kinds of cooking in it, but you will ruin it if you use it to achieve a really intense sear. These pans also have significant residue buildup the longer that you use them. One recommendation, which I use to clean residue from other kinds of pans as well: boil some vinegar in it.
I have been using some GreenPans that my clients bought from Target. This is the original product line of GreenPan. GreenPan has also come out with an anodized aluminum line which has rectified some of the perceived problems in the original line. Since I haven't used the new line, I can't personally vouch for it.
Oh yeah, one of the best things about GreenPan: it is cheap cheap cheap. There are some cooking exercises for which a nonstick pan is almost essential (cooking with finely grated ginger, browning ground turkey breast), even better than well-seasoned cast-iron. If you gotta cook with nonstick, and you don't want to be slowly poisoned by Teflon, you might as well go with the cheap. That way, if you try it out and you don't like it, you're not out the cost of a small mortgage.

Braising - My favorite cooking method. Even though summer is almost here (even in Seattle!!, yay for sun), I could probably eat short ribs or lamb shanks every night. Braising is almost a religion for me. And, like most religions, there is a bible: Molly Stevens' All About Braising. This is in my top-5 favorite cookbooks. I thnk David gave it to me as a Christmas present a few years ago. It's funny considering its influence on me, but I actually haven't made too many recipes out of this book, maybe 8-9. I use it more as a guide and a source of inspiration. Her recipes do tend towards using some expensive ingredients, which is why I will use her recipes as a jumping-off point for my own creations. Two reasons why I love this book: 1) You won't find a more comprehensible or more comprehensive explanation of the whole braising process anywhere. Of course she touches on more than just the typical braised dishes - she also explains how to braise vegetables and seafood as well as beef and lamb. 2) Most of the great braised dishes from around the world are included here. Beef Rendang - check. Osso Buco - check. Coq au Vin - check. Braciole - check. Milk-Braised Pork Loin - check. Damn, now I'm hungry.

Food Network Humor - My new favorite snarky website, www.foodnetworkhumor.com is a blog written by a couple of sisters that not-so-gently pokes fun at Food Network hosts and shows. I promised to limit the bile in this blog, so I urge you to visit their blog to get your fill of greatly-deserved vitriole and ridicule aimed at the tools making millions off of FN. And let's face it, are there any bigger tools in the food universe than Guy Fieri or Tyler Florence? Any more ridiculous food "personalities" than Sandra Lee or Paula Deen? FN has long ago left behind the idea that talented chefs should be teaching and/or entertaining you about food. if you are mad as hell at FN and not going to take it any more, hit the Madison sisters' website as often as possible - they post new content just about everyday. My favorite post - a meditation on Tyler Florence's $80 lasagna pan. Read this - the best minute you will spend all day. Curiously, Rachel Ray seems to have been relatively spared on this site. The only thing I can think of is that RR's presence on FN is decreasing - she belongs to the whole world now, not just to foodies.


Readers (all 5 of you) - if you have a product or book or some other food-related item you think I should highlight in this blog, shoot me an e-mail and I wlll think about it (really, I will).

You may have noticed that I have taken a bit of a sabbatical from my blog. I guess that the crushing pressure of putting words to the page (so to speak) once or twice a month finally got to me. Either that, or I just no longer wanted to contribute to the cesspool that is cyberspace in 2009. Either that, or I'm a sloth. Whatever the reason, I think I am ready to start putting myself out there online again. Hopefully what I have to say will drop more into Helpful rather than Garbage. Most of my entries forthwith (my Ed Norton word of the day, its a good one) will describe food items/equipment/cookbooks/websites that I find helpful to me in my work. I will mostly stay away from bashing - too much negativity in the world already. Still, once in a while I'm sure I am gonna feel the need to flame away. As long as I can do it with some restraint and class, I don't think that should be a problem.

For my first entry post-sabbatical, I thought I would post a recipe for a dessert I just made. I don't create desserts too often; I'm creative with sugar, but not proficient. I like this one quite a bit. I call it a pie, but it's really a thick-crusted cobbler. Cobblers are really just top-crusted fruit pies anyway. I adapted the Sour Cream Cobbler Biscuit Dough from The Joy of Cooking and put all mishmash of stuff I like into the filling. Summer has not yet arrived, so I used frozen peaches here. Once July hits, however, I know I will make this again with the fresh stuff. Try to make the effort to hunt down the rose water to use in this dish - you'll be glad you did. You can find rose water at Amazon or at ChefShop.

Don't just sit there, get into the kitchen "forthwith" and make yourself some Scooter Pie.


                                                                       

                     SCOOTER PIE

Ingredients

5 tbsp. sugar
1 tbsp. cornstarch
1/4 tsp. ground cardamom
1 3/4 lbs. frozen peach slices (about 3 - 3 1/2 cups), thawed (reserve juices)
2/3 cup candied ginger diced into 1/4" (about 1/3 lb.)
1 1/2 tsp. rose water

1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
3 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1/3 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. fine-grain salt, such as table salt
1 tbsp. cornmeal
6 1/2 tbsp. cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
10 tbsp. sour cream
5 tbsp. heavy cream

All-purpose flour for rolling out the dough

2 tbsp. heavy cream
1 tbsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. ground cardamom

Baking pan: one 2-quart 11"x7"x1 1/2" casserole or cobbler pan, or something closely equivalent in size

• Whisk together the 5 tbsp. sugar with the cornstarch and 1/4 tsp. ground cardamom in a large bowl. Toss with peach slices and candied ginger. Toss again with reserved peach juices and rose water. Set aside.
• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine the flour, 3 tbsp. sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cornmeal in the workbowl of a food processor. Process for 30 seconds to combine. Add the cold butter. Pulse the butter into the flour mixture until the mixture resembles sand, approximately 20 one-second pulses. Transfer the mixture to a large bowl. In a small bowl, whisk together the sour cream and the heavy cream. Using a rubber spatula, gently mix the sour cream mixture into butter-flour mixture. Don't overwork the dough. Knead the dough just a few times in the bowl. Generously flour a work area, such as a counter, to roll out the dough. Flour your hands and the rolling pin also. Transfer the dough to the work area and shape into a rectangle (or whatever shape your pan is). Dust a little flour on top of the dough. Roll out the dough to a 13"x9" size, or roll it out to a size that is 1" bigger on each side of the pan that you will be using. This is a fairly wet dough, so the hard part will be transferring it to the pan. First, take a long flat knife, or a long thin metal spatula, and separate the dough from the work surface. Next, transfer the peach mixture to the pan. (No need to butter the bottom) There's a couple of ways you can transfer the dough: you can lift it using 2 or 3 long knives or spatulas, or you can roll it up on to the rolling pin and then unroll it on to the top of the pan. Fit the dough into the pan on top of the peaches. The dough will be thick and you may have to bunch it up in spots along the edges. If there are any holes in the dough, tear some dough from another spot and patch the hole.
• Brush the heavy cream all over the top of the dough. Mix together the 1 tbsp. sugar and 1/4 tsp. ground cardamom and sprinkle it over the top of the cream. Bake the pie on the middle rack of the oven at 350 degrees for 50 minutes, rotating the pie from front to back after 25 minutes. The crust should be golden and cooked through. Let rest for 20-30 minutes before serving. Serve warm. Garnish with whipped cream flavored with a splash of rose water.

Serves 6-8.

    

              

December 27, 2007: I guess it started right after Christmas. Knowing I would be travelling to New Orleans in March, one of my post-holiday purchases was a Frommer’s New Orleans 2008 Guide. It turned out to be helpful in many ways, but I used it most as an aid for picking out the restaurants I wanted to visit. Sure, there are a number of great sites and attractions to see in New Orleans, but, for me, this was to be a food pilgrimage.
    The most important food decision I needed to make was: Where to eat my birthday dinner. My birthday fell a few days before we started off for the Big Easy, and I was able to easily persuade David into putting off my celebratory dinner until we arrived. I perused my Guide, I dog-earred, I obsessed a little, and I was finally able to narrow my choices to two: Bayona and Galatoire's. Both restaurants have national renown, Bayona for the repute of its chef, Susan Spicer, and Galatoire’s because it is one of the legendary symbols of old-time, old-school New Orleans dining. I ended up choosing Bayona as my birthday destination, mostly because of Galatoire’s requirement for a jacket at dinner. (I discovered when we arrived in the city that Galatoire’s will provide a loaner jacket.) I do own a jacket, but it is old and ugly; not one I would want to be seen in public wearing. I wanted to look my best for Galatoire’s - Galatoire’s deserved the respect that I looked good, not cheap.
    The choice of Bayona for dinner was sublime; the room was quietly elegant, the service was friendly and informative, and the food was spot-on perfect, a foodie’s dream. The Crispy Quail Salad was the most singularly amazing dish I have eaten in my entire life. Nevertheless, despite the tasteful perfection of Bayona, my choice to eat lunch the next day, Good Friday, at Galatoire’s was dead-on faultless as well.

March 21, 2008, 10:15am: The hostess had warned me a day earlier that people often lined up at 10am for Friday lunch at Galatoire’s. Even on busy Fridays, reservations are not taken for lunch – it’s a weekly ritual of egalitarian access. (Egalitarian if you can afford to hand out $40 for lunch, that is.) I arrive at 10:15am and the line is already fairly long. The maitre d’ , who seems to know most everyone’s name, works his way down the line soon afterwards and (yes!) I make it on to the list for the 11:30am seating. As a party of one, apparently it will be easy to get me seated. David is not joining me for this meal; he is in his technology conference for the better part of the day, thus missing out on this authentic experience.
    Galatoire’s is on Bourbon Street – yes, that Bourbon Street. At night it is a decadent carnival offering up a smorgasboard of sins for your choosing. At mid-morning, however, the pleasures of the night give way to hoses washing down everything and delivery trucks replenishing beer, food, condoms, and who knows what else. The location of a restaurant like Galatoire’s on Bourbon Street initially strikes me as odd, until I remember that it has operated there for more than 100 years, much longer than the current atmosphere of excess.
    We are a motley group here, waiting in line for the doors to the lobby and upstairs bar to open at 11am. Certainly, I am hardly the only tourist, and some are decidedly under-dressed for the occasion. In fact, the maitre d’ turns away the ones who are in shorts. Mostly, however, I am aware that I stand in line with New Orleans gentility, men and women whose families have come to Galatoire’s for Good Friday lunch for decades. There is the gentleman in the light blue and white striped linen suit. There are the women, many of them, wearing hats and dresses in bright Easter pastels. There are a few teenagers, awkward in their braces and ill-fitting suits. I’m glad that there’s no favoritism here; despite the fact that these men and women are regulars, frequenting the place for years and years, they still have to stand on their feet in the sun for over an hour, just as I do.

11am: The doors open and everyone heads up the stairs for the upstairs bar, eager for the day’s first Sazerac or Gin-and-Tonic. I go up as well, but quickly descend to the lobby – too crowded. I hate crowds. Waiting for a half hour for my table, boredom should set in, but a silent and overpowering sense of awe and tradition sets my mind racing. I think about the scene in the lobby fifty years earlier; I think what Katrina had wrought upon the place; I think about how the drama of the lunchtime scene might unfold. Funny, but I don’t think that much about the food. The menu had rarely changed in all the previous decades, so I have a good idea of how my food will taste, regardless of what I order.

11:30am: Seating begins. I am one of the first parties seated, having waited in the lobby. I am seated in the very first table by the entrance to the dinning room. I’m not sure how I feel about this; on the one hand, everyone is going to walk by my table, but on then other hand, everyone is going to walk by my table. At least I get to easily witness the parade of humanity on their way to the start of this venerable tradition.


11:45am: My waiter, who somehow doesn’t know my name initially, brings my first course quickly. Turtle Soup. Before it even hits the table, I am struck by an olfactory recognition of sherry. Not a problem – I love sherry. As I sit covertly enjoying my soup, a table of eight Southern belles is seated next to me. They quickly proceed to shatter all my naïve notions of what a Southern belle might be. They are not petite, reserved and refined. No, it becomes apparent that they are raucous, possibly a little drunk, and have been joyously celebrating the pleasure of each others’ company for many years. They carry with them bagfuls of Easter regalia. Their hats are decked out, not just with flowers, but also with plastic eggs and birds. They exchange boxes of Peeps and other candies. Their table centerpiece is a memorable Easter bunny, replete with a battery-charged cigar that lights up.
    Watching the belles, in what can only be termed their ‘home turf’, I am suddenly conscious of the white elephants in the room: Katrina, New Orleans’ extreme poverty, class division. What a difference a day makes. 24 hours earlier, I had ventured off to find Willie Mae’s Scotch House, a renowned down-home fried chicken parlor in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. I think it might have been the poorest neighborhood I have ever seen, and I used to walk all around the city when I lived in Oakland. Willie Mae’s turned out to be closed, yet I’m glad I made the trek – it was a healthy and needed reminder of the many destitute that still live just minutes from a quickly-recovering downtown. Having witnessed this so recently, the scene in Galatoire’s has the potential to make me angry and frustrated: how could such poverty exist in the same city as my belles next door? I am not angry though – I do not know the personal history of these women, or of any of my fellow diners today. Everyone suffered in Katrina, rich or poor, Garden District or Lower 9th Ward. It could very well be that these women are heading relief efforts in the city. I think it’s right to be angry about poverty, to keep it near the front of your everyday consciousness. Still, until you know someone’s personal story, the whole story if you will, it’s also not right to play the blame game.


12:00pm: My entrée arrives. Chicken Clemenceau. This is an old-school dish, a pan-fried chicken breast smothered in peas, mushrooms, and potatoes. To paraphrase a local reviewer, the peas are unabashedly and proudly overcooked. Normally I am not a big fan of peas, but as the saying goes, butter makes everything better.
    Before I dig in, I ask the nearest of the belles to snap my picture. She graciously obliges, not without first forcing a pair of bunny ears on to me, though. Who can resist a Southern belle? Her charm oozes like the butter in my Clemenceau. And that accent……I think I am a little bit in love.
    As I slowly eat my chicken, I frequently gaze around the room. I am acutely conscious of the fact that I am an observer here, not a participant. I am here to absorb, and, eating alone and a somewhat obvious tourist, that is probably apparent to everyone else in the room, staff or client. Still, I don’t feel awkward; the gentle communal roar of the tables in the room warms me. I am happy, and that is even before I indulge in the sugar rush of my dessert.


12:30 pm: My dessert arrives. Sweet Potato Cheesecake. I am not a cheesecake aficionado, and I think about ordering the more obvious slice of Chocolate-Pecan Pie, but this somehow appeals to me. I am not disappointed. It is rich and decadent, probably the highlight of the meal, at least food-wise. I devour it quickly. I want to linger, to bathe in the light of the room indefinitely. This is, after all, a scene quite unlike one I had ever experienced before. I know I should really give up my table so someone else can start their Good Friday tradition. Rather than allow any guilt to shipwreck this dream of a voyage, I pay the check and leave my table for another. Turning back at the entrance, I wistfully survey the room, with one last glance and a willing smile for the belles.
    After the one belle had taken my picture, I thanked her and gave her my wishes for a happy lunch. She grinned and said, “Honey, we alwaaays do.” Leaving the room, it is easy to believe that this cheerful communal gathering ground of New Orleans’ gentle privileged had alwaaays existed and alwaaays would. Long live New Orleans!

    Back in the 19th century, young English aristocrats would take a Grand Tour of continental
Europe as a means of furthering their education. Only the wealthy could do this of course,
as tourism for the common man was still beyond the means of most. A common itinerary might
include the cities of Paris, Rome, Venice, Naples, and Vienna. The experience of meeting new
people and different customs was a rite of passage and an initiation into the cosmopolitan
world of the English gentleman. As the Industrial Revolution created wealth for the middle
classes, the alluring nature of the Grand Tour attracted more and more young English men and
women. This was, in part, the birth of modern tourism.

    In today's world, food tourism is quickly becoming the equivalent of the Victorian Grand
Tour. This is an industry that has really exploded in the past decade, creating big bucks
for entrepreneurs with the initiative and capital to dive in and create memorable food
experiences for foodies and chefs alike. Somehow, American cuisine no longer has the cache
of the cuisines from other countries. It has become as sign of reverence and respect for
American chefs who have war stories to relate about their time in Italy or France. If you
know anything about Mario Batali, you know all about the time he spent honing his craft in
Italy.

    If I were to take a culinary Grand Tour, I would skip Italy and France. 6 months in the
Italian countryside? A tour of a dark French prep basement spent as a semi-slave? Not so
much - I recognize the importance and even appeal of a culinary education based on these
paramount cuisines, but my thirst lies for the knowledge of ports less acknowledged and more
exotic. I did my time in cooking school endlessly hammering out the classic five mother
sauces of Escoffier, yet the seven classic moles of Mexico hardly received five minutes
mention. And that's a mistake that I want to rectify.

If I ever have the money to take a Fantasy Food Grand Tour, here's where I would go:

1) Tunisia. My Tour would start in North Africa. David and I spent a year at home eating
nothing but North African food (the Maghreb plus Egypt). This was probably the best year of
eating I have spent in my whole life. If I had I had single out one region's cuisine I
revere above all others, it would be North Africa. The highlight of the year was probably
the Moroccan dishes I made. But Morocco is familiar - in 2008, every city of any size now
has at least one Moroccan restaurant you can frequent. Try finding a Tunisian restaurant in
the U.S. though. Tunisian cuisine is in some ways similar to Moroccan, but often spicier.
Harissa, a fiery red pepper condiment, permeates almost everything edible. Tunisians eat couscous,
like Moroccans, but theirs is different. Tunisians eat tagines, like Moroccans, but theirs
are very different. One of the fun but often perplexing things about eating North African is
that terms often have more than one meaning. Moroccan tagine - stew. Tunisian tagine - baked
egg dish. Some of the Tunisian dishes I made during our year were casse-croute, brik,
t'fina, chakchouka, and mechouia; trying these dishes in their native land would be a great
experiment to see how my versions differed. Tunisia is one the world's great producers of
couscous and olive oil. I definitely think an olive oil tasting would be in order, as well
as an excursion to the fascinating island of Djerba. For an introduction to Tunisian
cuisine, read Claudia Roden, The New Book of Middle Eastern Food.

2) Argentina. 2nd stop, South America. David and I also spent a year eating nothing but
Arentine food at home as well. Argentine cuisine gets a bad rap. I think there's a
perception that it has nothing to offer except grilled beef and empanadas. But what grilled
beef and what empanadas! If that perception were true, I would still be content to travel
the country to see how the empanadas of Cordoba differ from the empanadas of Mendoza from
the empanadas of Buenos Aires from the empanadas of Patagonia from the empanadas of Salta
from the empanadas......Our year of Argentine food, of course, did include much more than
grilled beef and empanadas. Argentine cuisine is highly influenced by Italian and Spanish
cuisines, modified of course by the local bounty. So we also ate pasta and pizza, but pasta
and pizza that portenos might eat. My ham and blue cheese fugazzetta (stuffed pizza) might be
one of the crowning culinary achievements of my lifetime - I wonder if I would find the same one
in the back streets of Buenos Aires. Argentine cuisine is woefully underdocumented in English, but
one place you can start is Maria Baez Kijac, The South American Table.

3) Mexico. My vote for the world's most underappreciated cuisine. 99 % of Americans have no clue
what Mexican cuisine is really like. It is not cheesy enchiladas slathered in canned red sauce. It is
not mildly spiced chicken chili. Think instead Jan Brady - masa, masa, masa! (Wow, that was cheesy.)
Do you know what huitloacoche is? Wonderful earthy corn fungus. Have you ever had squash flowers?
Rarely served in American Mexican restaurants. Do dried shrimp sound disgusting to you? Try them in
pozole. Want to read more? Diana Kennedy's My Mexico is not really introductory material,
but it is a mouth-watering read. And though a good read is important, but I would much rather spend
several months down there. Bonus: I hear you can get a tan in Mexico.

4) American South. No, it is not foreign or even an exotic port of call, but if any American
region has a distinct and identifiable cuisine, it has to be the South. Yes, I am going to
New Orleans next month, which puts never-ending ants in my pants, but the Creole and Cajun
influences in New Orleans seems somewhat distinct  from Memphis barbecue or the slow-cooked
collards of Alabama. Hmmmmm, barbecue - I'm tired of only reading about the differences between
Carolina barbecue and Memphis barbecue. Reading is not visceral, reading cannot fill your
stomach to the point of orgasmic explosion. Not that I think all Southern cooking is
gut-busting and coronary-inducing. I suspect there is a subtlety to Southern cooking that is
a well-hidden secret from most of America. It is a shame that Paula Deen has become the face
of Southern cooking. I'm sure she is a nice woman and well-intentioned, but Food Network has
transformed her into a two-dimensional cartoon character. I doubt that Memphis barbecue is a
cartoon - time to find out if it is rather Dostoyevsky. I recommend David Martin Taylor's The New
Southern Cook.

5) Indonesia. Last stop on my Tour. Not that I can't think of other uncelebrated countries
or regions I want to Tour, but I have to stop the Tour somewhere. David and I also ate
Indonesian food at home, but circumstances prevented us from lasting a whole year on that
adventure, ending it after two months instead. What a wonderful and educational two months
that was. Indonesia, like other Asian countries, uses a whole different set of ingredients
than what Western cooks normally use. I found that you can't just start in using these
ingredients and expect instant success every time. I was just starting to familarize myself
with my new pantry when our experiment ended, but I have a whole new list of ingredients I
want to play with: palm sugar, tauco, blachen, candlenuts. Kecap manis (sweet soy sauce)was one
of my favorite discoveries from cooking school, and I was more than happy to get re-acquainted
with it. I suspect my stabs at Indonesian-style creations would have been laughable to a
native. I suspect I would need several years there to even begin to gain a mastery of the
cuisine. But even a few weeks as a food tourist would help sate my curiosity. James Oseland's
Cradle of Flavor is one of the best-written cookbooks ever. Check it out from your
library or go buy it.

I am now accepting financial contributions to my Grand Tour. Contact me through this site.

    Not yet anyway. It's only my blog that has been dead. Almost 3 months since my last entry. Do I feel bad about it? Sort of. There is no point in having a blog if you aren't going to post in it. I was just starting to develop a readership too. Nevertheless, I am not going to blog just for the sake of having words on a page. I read too many blogs that are simply boring as hell: No - I don't want to see pictures of everything that you have made for dinner for the last 2 weeks. It's no small coincidence that my last blog entry occurred before the onset of winter. You see, I don't handle the infamous Seattle Gloom very well. Not only does it sap all semblance of color from my complexion, but it also saps all semblance of initiative from my soul. I manage to get to work everyday, and I hit all my doctor appointments, but after that? Couch time, spending quality time with good films and bad reality shows. I know I'm not alone when it comes to an inability to cope with Seattle Gloom - I wonder how others handle it? Anyway, the sun has shone for 3 days straight now; hence the fire and the energy to write.

    I have no one particular subject I want to address today, but there have been four things on my mind:

1) The neighborhood Moroccan restaurant. The one that I trashed last summer has closed. Karma strikes again. The furniture store next to it has expanded into its space. I don't know whether the business failed or the furniture store took over the space from a desire to expand - I'm guessing the former. Restaurant closures in Seattle are not rare, but I believe this helps illustrate that if you put out an inferior product, you will be faced with an inferior revenue stream. Far too many great restaurants in Seattle for a weak-ass, mandarin orange-lovin' establishment to survive.

2) Yelp. Yeah, here I go again about Yelp. One of my clients gave me a generous gift certificate to a fairly new and classy Italian restaurant for my holiday bonus. This place, Barolo, had received mixed reviews, and I was a little bit wary about what David and I might see and eat when we went a few weeks ago. After making our reservation, I Googled Barolo to read all the reviews. Other than the reviews from the local papers, my Google search also brought up hits for several Yelp reviews. I was pretty sure what I might find in the Yelp reviews, but I looked anyway. I looked and I found some of the most insipid writing about restaurants I have ever seen. Like the professionals, Yelpers also had mixed reviews for Barolo. And some of the reasons Yelpers gave for their bad reviews? "My waiter looked at me wrong." "My waitress asked me if I wanted wine when I already had a cocktail." I am paraphrasing these - maybe I have blocked the actual offending words from my mind. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with reviews that I disagree with - I just want reviews to be reasonable, cogent, and well-written. Apparently Yelp needs to instutute an intelligence requirement for posters. Not all Yelp posters are unreasonable, uninformed and flat-out stupid, but enough of them are that I can't ever go to the site expecting to find anything resembling a helpful review.
    And how was Barolo? Great. Up there with Il Terrazo Carmine as my favorite Italian places in the city. Not just the best osso buco I have ever had, but also the biggest. Normally David and I split a dessert. After my osso buco, I didn't have room to even split something. I did manage room for a fine late-harvest white that our waitress recommended though.
    In my first blog I lumped together Chowhound with Yelp. I apologize for that, Chowhound. While Yelp posters seem to consist mostly of 20-somethings who have recently come into enough money to start dining out on their own, Chowhound posters seem to be true "foodies." When I visit Chowhound I find reviews that are better-intentioned and by far better-informed. True, there are still some problems with Chowhound: if you read enough postings in the message board for a particular city, you will notice that the same 6-8 restaurants are always championed. Maybe Chowhound posters are a small group who have influenced each others' tastes, I'm not sure. Still, I can be reasonably sure that I can find thoughtful and articulate writing when I log on there. And I recently logged on to their message board for.....

3) New Orleans. I'm going to New Orleans next month. I am so "jazzed" to be hitting the Crescent City. I've never been, and it will also be the first time I've taken an almost purely food vacation. David will be attending a conference there  - since his hotel room will be paid for, and since I also possess a free round trip plane ticket anywhere within the U.s., well, it was a no-brainer where I would be taking my vacation this year. My birthday is just a few days before our trip, so in a sense it is a birthday gift to myself as well. I am a little overcome with the possibilities of what I might do when I'm there. Lots of free time while David is at his conference - where will I go? I don't want to fall into the trap of spending the whole week in the French Quarter, but since we are staying on Canal Street, I think many of our dinners will be eaten there. And where to go for my birthday dinner? Commander's Palace is the most famous NOLA restaurant , but I don't think that will be my choice. Bayona? Galatoire's? Herbsaint? Any New Orleans residents or visitors reading this blog, you are more than welcome to give me a recommendation. There are other spots I know I will be hitting for sure - Central Grocery for muffaletta, Dooky Chase for gumbo, Acme for oysters. Maybe if we have time we will take a bus tour out to bayou for some Cajun cuisine. I've read the Chowhound message board and my Frommer's guide - I think I am now on information overload. I will try to post my impressions of NOLA after we get back. Soon after we get back, not three months later.

4) Freerice.com. My sister turned me on to this site. It is an online vocabulary game, and when you answer questions correctly, grains of rice are donated to help feed the world's poor. Not only do you improve your vocabulary, but you also help accomplish a social good. Plus, by increasing your vocabulary you can write in your blog about the caryatid-shaped vegetable napoleon you recently constructed, or the pruritus effects of Australian reds. Well, maybe that's not such a good idea - a blog should be readable, not pretentious. Finally when you reach Level 48, and get within one question of Level 49, you can call your sister to piss her off. Not that I'm bragging or anything. Blogs should be readable, unpretentious, and braggadocio-free. (See if you can spot my recent vocabulary words.)

My next blog will be forthcoming in less than 3 months. Thanks for staying with me.

    If I were a whore, I would be paid to endorse the following products. But I’m not getting paid, I have no relationship with these companies, and I don’t think I have ever even met anyone who works for these companies. I just want to share with my readers some of the love that goes into my dishes.

Products that I love:

- Applegate Farms Sunday Bacon: The price of this bacon has almost doubled at my co-op in the 4 years that I have been using it. I periodically get fed up with the price increases and I will stop using it for a week or two. And you know what? My food tastes not just different, but noticeably inferior. So I go back. On Wednesday I used it to make Bacon-Wrapped Jalapenos Stuffed with Goat Cheese, Sundried Tomatoes, and Bacon. On Thursday I used it in a Cobb Salad. Always remember the first rule of cooking: Bacon Makes Everything Better. Come to think of it, maybe that should be the first rule of therapy as well.

- Armstrong Plain Green Olives: These Sevillanos are big, meaty, and brined perfectly. According to their website, Armstrong makes 45 different gourmet varieties. I don’t know why - they are perfect just plain and simple. Why muck up a great thing?

- Pillsbury Refrigerated Unroll-and-Fill Pie Crusts: I am lousy with pastry. It is a serious big gaping hole in my repertoire. Each January 1st for the last three years I resolved to take a pastry class – somehow, it never happens. If you don’t work with pastry crusts frequently, they can be a nightmare. Practice really does make perfect when it comes to pastry. When it comes time to making a quiche or a pie, and I don’t have the patience for several attempts at getting the crust right, I turn to Pillsbury. Sure, it isn’t organic and it isn’t local, but I don’t feel the need to be a culinary saint 100% of the time. These are 10x better than any frozen pie crusts I’ve ever tried. And easy enough that even a pastry moron like me can use them.

- Stahlbush Island Farms Frozen Super Sweet Corn– To help compensate for any guilt I might have for using a Pillsbury product, I use this corn during the 10 ½ months out of the year when I can’t use fresh corn cobs. Stahlbush is local (Oregon), they practice sustainable farming techniques, and they package their products in natural paper. All of which wouldn’t convince me to buy this product if it weren’t so damn good. Picked at the peak of season and flash-frozen, this corn tastes like August.

- Thai Kitchen Roasted Red Chili Paste – I use more than one of the Thai Kitchen products, but I use them mostly out of convenience. I don’t have the time to run to the International District to buy better, more “authentic” (for me, “authentic” should always be put in quotes) products every time I am cooking Thai. Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t bad, I just know I can find better. I would still buy the Roasted Red Chili Paste, however, even if I were living in a mountain village outside of Chiang Mai. It is relatively mild, meaning I can use more of it in a dish, delivering a flood tide of its wonderful flavor. More than just chiles, it is tantalizingly complex, with a strong overnote of peanuts. I wonder how it would taste in a milkshake. Or a doughnut. Or ice cream. Or a yogurt smoothie. Or a pound cake. Or.......

- Wellshire Farms Chorizo Sausage – With 65% less fat than other chorizos. True, this is not as good as a true Spanish chorizo. Fat is an important component in any chorizo – you just don’t get the same mouth feel without it. Nevertheless, if you need to reduce your dietary fat and you don’t want to give up sausage, this is as good as it gets. Redolent with spices and exploding with heat, I love using this in my Black Bean and Chocolate Soup. Reduced-fat and gluten-free, these links also have no added artificial flavors, colors, food starches, or fillers. At this moment Seattle is getting dusted with snow. I can think of no better way to warm up than a grilled chorizo on a potato roll.

Dear Ms. Ray,

    We have known each other for quite a while now. Years ago, when you first appeared on Food Network with your show $40 a Day, you were a fresh, engaging new face. A fresh engaging new face that probably saved Food Network from oblivion. I loved the natural candidness you brought to the camera. Whether you were really natural and candid, or well-rehearsed and well-scripted, didn’t really matter. Millions loved you. You turned to new shows and authored new cookbooks. Millions tuned in and bought the books. If the number of people you influenced is a guidepost, you became the number #1 cooking authority in the country. Sure, Thomas Keller’s cookbooks are more beautiful, more authoritative, and more fun, but I would estimate that 30 times the number of people use your recipes more than his. No, you aren’t a chef, which you willingly acknowledge. You say you can’t make bread or coffee – well, I am a trained chef, and I’m pretty bad at those things as well. You may be a flawed culinary diva, but a culinary diva you still are.
   
    A year ago you jumped to the big time with your own daytime TV talk show. You host that show almost daily, you continue to appear on Food Network with 30-Minute Meals, and you also pump out more 30-Minute cookbooks – do you ever get to sleep? You have also, naturally, leaped into food endorsements. I see you everywhere in grocery store aisles, staring out at me with your PhotoShop-enhanced neck. Are you trying to become as rich as your sponsor Oprah? While you probably have a long way to go to catch her, I’m sure your wealth must now be in the 9-figure range. Which I have no problem with. I once went to a career counselor who provided me with several bromides and a few instructive pieces of advice, but the one I remember most: Never be afraid of, or feel guilty, about making money. If you were to relinquish your wealth and your status as a culinary diva, there are thousands out there who would jump at the chance to take away your reign. No, I don’t begrudge you your wealth and your fame.
    HOWEVER: last week I caught your daytime talk show for the first time. I don’t ever work too much during Thanksgiving week, and last week was no exception. I was feeling lethargic one day, so I committed myself to an afternoon of couch time. Guiding Light came on – I endured an hour of the antics of the Lewises and the Spauldings. You came on. You had some guests – must have been irrelevant B-listers, I don’t recall who they were. Then you provided a Thanksgiving week recipe – Apple-Cranberry Walnut Sauce. It was a DIFFICULT-with-a-D recipe:

1)    Put some walnuts in a bowl.
2)    Put some applesauce in a bowl.
3)    Put some canned cranberry sauce in a bowl.
4)    Stir.

Seriously, that was the recipe. Open some cans and stir it all together. Rachael, is this what you have sunk to? Sure, the audience applauded – must be a condition of their admittance. (Maybe you steal audiences from Emeril?) But is this the culinary face you want to present to the world?
    Rachael, I know you are busy and spread too thin. I know you have no assertions to being a chef. I know you are cooking for the masses, and not even such masses who might be Top Chef devotees. But I have one thing I want to say to you: you have lost your dignity. At least on 30-Minute Meals you still cook. Maybe not meals I would want to cook very often (although there are a couple that I cook for clients on occasion), but you are still teaching people how to cook. You know – use a stove and an oven, not a can opener. There is something I beg you to remember: like it or not, you are a culinary role model. You have more influence than Charlie Trotter, Thomas Keller, and Mario Batali put together. What happened to you when you moved to daytime??
    You have lost your dignity. Worse, you have become Sandra Lee. Please reconsider your career path.

Sincerely, I-Still-Want-To-Be-Your-Fan Jay Williamson

    I am not a saint. Don’t get me wrong, I think I am a genuinely nice person, kind to small children and animals; I even donate to charity on occasion. When it comes time, Saint Peter will welcome me with no reservations. But G-- f---ing d--- it, I swear like a whore whose pimp ran off to Mexico with the week’s bank. No f---ing kidding. I’m smart and restrained enough to pick my moments – I watch my mouth around kids and anyone else who shouldn’t be exposed the inner workings of my filthy mind. I go to a basketball or baseball game and I scream myself hoarse, but I steer clear of 4-letter words. When I’m alone, though, or around other cooks, the F-bombs rain down like frogs in a P.T. Anderson movie.
    Kitchens, of course, are notorious for their “earthy” environment. When I work in a kitchen and I don’t hear dirty jokes flying, it feels a little unnatural and surreal, like I am forgetting some crucial element of my mis en place. For a few months, I worked alongside a group of lesbians, and they taught me all about dromedary hooves and other indelicacies that had somehow been left out of my kitchen education previously. And that kitchen felt more like the norm, not the exception. Some advice for the politically correct and those sensitive to sexual harassment – consider another career out of the culinary world. It might be easier for the Sonics to stay in Seattle and win the NBA title than it is to go into a kitchen and clean up every single person’s language.
    Still, I wonder: what happens to food when you curse aloud or voice unclean sexual fantasies about Jack Mackenroth? Does your curse and negative energy get absorbed into the food? Or does it bounce off the food and get absorbed into the cook? I suppose it doesn’t matter which is the case if you are eating your own food. But if you are cooking for others, I think the curse may be amplified. There must be a scale of consequences for cursing while you are cooking: cry out “oh cr--" while you are cooking for your partner – your alarm clock fails to go off the next morning; curse and kick the stove while you are working to fill your freezer with soup – come down with diverticulitis; tell an onanistic dead baby joke while doing a plate-up for 400 – get thyroid cancer and require two surgeries to get it removed. I know a lot of people think curses must come from witches or voodoo Maman. But what if all the bad things that happen in the world are a result of people yelling, swearing, and reiterating their pornfolio while they cook? It’s a truism that you are what you eat, but these thoughts of curses make me think twice about what I am really larding into my food.
    Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. David and I were supposed to go away to Victoria for the weekend, thus allowing me to avoid the whole turkey ritual. Something suddenly came up, though, and now I am staying home and doing a small, modified turkey dinner for the two of us. Tomorrow, I won’t be stressed – I can take my time with the meal, prepping at a leisurely pace. Tomorrow, I will keep the F-bombs in my head, buried in my subconscious. Tomorrow, I will stay in the spirit of the day, happy and thankful for the company of my partner and some good basic food. Tomorrow, my food won’t be cursed. And you know what? The peace of mind that will give me might make my food taste even better.

              I was raised outside of a small town in Northern California. Not born there, but my family moved there when I was 12. I only lived there from ages 12 to 18, and for a couple very brief periods as an adult, but I think Grass Valley is the place I will always think of as home. We lived on a small farm, complete with a country-sized garden and livestock. Did we eat well? Does a Duroc spend its days rooting in the mud? To this day, I don’t think I’ve ever managed to eat such pristine food. We had two freezers stocked with the meat we raised. We had a few fruit trees, as well as a huge 1/4-acre patch of wild blackberries. Blackberry pie was my first misadventure in the kitchen, but I can also recall one particular height-of-summer dinner I prepared when I was 17 or 18. Some aunts, uncles, and cousins were visiting, mostly from Iowa. The dinner included grilled pork chops, zucchini fritters, and fresh corn on the cob, among other things. I’m sure if I were to prepare the same meal today it would be a far-cry better, but the simple purity of the food must have gone a long way towards masking my mistakes. Everyone said the meal was great, but what else would you say to a teenager just starting out in the kitchen? On that farm, I lost my culinary virginity. On that farm, I was infected with a cooking itch that I never really started to scratch until 15 years later.

            As much as I loved the food at home growing up, I loved our infrequent excursions out to dinner even more. I don’t remember too many of the restaurants where we dined, but I know there was a lot of pizza, some Mexican, and even some occasional Chinese. I wonder what I would think if I could go back to 1978, packing with me the years of culinary experience I now have, and eat at those same restaurants - I suspect I would be sorely disappointed. For one thing, my parents probably didn’t waste their money taking me and my sisters to nicer restaurants that we couldn’t appreciate. For another, I honestly believe food, in general, has come a long way since the late 70’s. It’s not my intent here to diss Grass Valley and its food, though. My younger sister moved back there a few years ago, and she regales me with tales of some remarkable meals she’s had there. It has also become home to something of an artisanal food movement. When I went back for a visit last summer, I was stunned at the price and quality of the produce at a farmers’ market that I roamed. Garden-fresh tomatoes for $1.25 per pound! You can bet some fantastic gazpacho was made that day. But I left Grass Valley when I was 18 to go off to college in the city, and I never really left the Big City ever again.

            I thought about my rural past the other day when David and I went for a drive out in the countryside. Nominally, it was to be a day to meander along the Mountain Loop Highway, which re-opened after a 4-year closure, but it turned to be a day to re-connect with uncitified grub. We started with a visit to a pumpkin patch. Hey, why not, it was coming up on Halloween, which everyone knows is not just for kids anymore. Incredibly, this was my first visit to a pumpkin patch. We trudged through the muddy field and David picked out a pumpkin to carve. (We’ll see if he follows through.) It may eventually end up as pumpkin pie or pumpkin bisque. After we finished in the fields, we headed to Glacier Falls for lunch. Not too many options for dining in Glacier Falls, at least along the main road, so we settled on a Mexican restaurant. It was the kind of place, viewed from the outside, that you knew exactly what you would get. Or so I thought. A lot of the details of our lunch were standard Mexican fare – Mexican rice and beans, plates finished under a broiler, chips and salsa to start. And then there was the machaca. Only the best machaca I had eaten in my life - and I used to eat a lot of machaca back in my college days. Really simple and flavorful, without any extraneous additions to muck it up. Besides the machaca, we also had some delicious house-made salsas for our chips. David’s chipotle chicken burritos were outstanding as well. Score one for Mexican food in Glacier Falls.

            Then, after our afternoon loop through the mountains, we hit Darrington. Or, rather, Darrington hit us. This was not our first time in Darrington. A few years ago, on our way back to Seattle from Mt. Baker, we also trekked through Darrington. As it was dinnertime, we found our way to a roadside dinner. My dinner wasn’t memorable; I think it was a Reuben sandwich with a sad little salad. I got the better deal. David, however, ordered chicken-fried steak. It arrived tough, with a pasty gravy that obviously derived from a packet. The kicker, though, was an insipid small bowl of previously-frozen, microwaved, graying peas and carrots. My dinner wasn’t memorable, but that bowl of vegetables was. I have never sustained a held-in burst of laughter as long as I have for the 20 minutes it took David to pick through his meal. I could barely keep it in, finally releasing in the car before we even escaped the parking lot. I wanted so badly to capture his meal on film, but I feared getting my city-ass kicked by a bunch of out-of-work foresters. To match the worst side of vegetables ever, on Sunday we were served, in a different Darrington establishment, the worst hot chocolate ever. It wasn’t hot, it was lukewarm, it was way too sweet, and David only took one sip. We were cold, and some hot chocolate would have really satisfied and warmed us. It was not to be though.

            So, what’s my verdict on small-town food? Is small-town food my $1.25 fresh-out-of-the-garden tomatoes, or is it a humorously evil side of frozen vegetables? What strikes me is that here, in the Big City, you probably wouldn’t find either the tomatoes or the peas and carrots. Sure, we have delightful weekend farmers’ markets, but we pay Big City prices at our farmers’ markets, nothing like the fantastic bargains I saw in Grass Valley last summer. You also don’t find the Americana of small-town diner food in Seattle. Even in our small neighborhood joints, the food is still influenced to some extent by the sophistication of venerable downtown institutions. I have a friend who runs a neighborhood comfort food place in the Ravenna neighborhood, and I know Dan would sooner die than serve a side of pruny and cadaverous peas and carrots.

            I guess the (painfully obvious) answer is that small-town food is as good and as bad as anything you can find in the Big City, just different. I go out to great restaurants here all the time; I am also frequently disappointed here as well. I think the major difference between Seattle and Grass Valley or Darrington is the breadth of variety that you find in the Big City. I know you can’t choose between eight different Ethiopian places in Grass Valley, or hundreds (thousands??) of Thai places in Darrington. And maybe that’s a good thing. Small towns should stick to what they do best; so should big cities. And even in Darrington, I believe there is hope. Along with our awful hot chocolate on Sunday, I also ordered a slice of apple pie. If I had been in Twin Peaks instead of Darrington, I might have written an epic poem about that gorgeous slice of pie. With that slice of pie, Darrington redeemed itself to me. With that slice of apple pie, I remembered what it felt like to be an utterly small-town American.

            I went to the symphony the other night. I have a symphony buddy, my friend S. We go about once a year, and the other night we watched opening night of Mozart’s Requiem. It was the second time we had seen it (he says first, but he has a lousy memory). Every time I go to the symphony, I get started thinking about food. Any time the music slows, and I snap out of my otherworldly reverie, I want to conjure comparisons of what I am hearing with food. Why at the symphony? Must be something to do with the complexity of the music. One of the few things in the world that can match the complexity and transcendence of a great work of classical music is a well-thought-out and well-prepared meal. Sometimes I get these flashes of analogy for a single dish: Beethoven’s Ode to Joy simply screamed at me that I was at that very moment eating bastilla. Sometimes the inspirations come as impressions of an entire meal: Bach’s Eroica took me back to the simple strong flavors of a particular brunch my gifted friend A made for me once.

            Mozart’s Requiem is my favorite work of classical music in the entire world. I have it on CD of course. I watch the movie Amadeus a couple of times a year. And now, I have seen it performed twice in person. That night, when I wasn’t flung into the depths of rapture, I started to think of what food the Requiem could be. (Wouldn’t it be a blast to return to the 18^th century and ask: Mr. Mozart, if you could be a food, what would it be?) I’ve never had a seven-course tasting menu before; otherwise I would have been tempted to make that comparison. A meal that long could only be compared to a lengthy work of music. Actually, the Requiem doesn’t last as long as a seven-course tasting menu probably would. Still, I remembered a five-course meal that I prepared that might parallel the Requiem. Yeah, it’s a bit of hubris to compare my work to that of one of the world’s all-time geniuses. I doubt my food has ever brought anyone to tears. This one meal, however, a Moroccan feast, was elaborate and memorable. My flavors were spot-on, there were a wondrous grab-bag of textures, and the meal built, crescendoed, and subsided. David and I still talk about it. If your happy places include hauntingly indelible meals, you know what I’m talking about. And, if your happy places are hauntingly indelible meals and performances of the Requiem, well, then I barely need to write the words in this post – the language of memory doesn’t need a blog.

            Going to the symphony gets me thinking about another subject as well: the inadequacy of words. More to the point, the inadequacy of my words. Music is a language – you don’t need to be a musician to understand that. Besides the music itself, there is a whole vocabulary you need to even talk about music intelligently. I impressed myself that I was able to use the word “crescendoed” in a sentence. I don’t understand that vocabulary; I’m content being a music lover, rather than a music aficionado. The fact that my vocabulary regarding food seems insufficient is more troubling to me. How do you write about food and make the words fresh every time? I think that is the big thing for food writers. I don’t mind using music as a reference in this blog post – that’s what this post is all about. But if I were to continually use it s an analogy, not only would my writing become tired,  it would also be a little pretentious.

            There’s a whole different vocabulary surrounding the cooking of food than there is surrounding the description of food. If I were to write about 9-pans and kicking some ass on my mis, well, nonprofessionals reading my writing would be lost and turned off. To describe food, to describe it in a vibrant and original manner, you really need a large miscellanea of adjectives and adverbs. A thesaurus helps; a vivid imagination is a better tool. I tend to describe food as “rockin’ good”. After the tenth repetition, the phrase becomes trite, and frankly, embarrassing for a 43 year-old to be using it at all. If you aren’t practiced and adept at the description of food, your words can become pretty tired pretty quickly.

            I wish I was better at describing food. Nevertheless, you have read down to the end of my post. Maybe you have read my other posts. I’m not good yet, but hopefully I have made a good start.