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I liked your mom's (Amy Ephron's) article although she missed the Penisula in Chicago which has this amazing jazz singer on friday and saturday nights with this exotic chocolate bar. it's so great. She made me want to go again.
Jesse
_________________
Wish I could comment on Nancy Mehagian's outstanding Marinated Cornish Game Hen recipe -- it was absolutely superb!
I basted quite frequently, so it turned out wonderfully. We were concerned they were getting burnt, so we recovered with foil for 15 of the last 20 mins, and they got just dark enough to look scrumptious.
I served it with Cauliflower gratin, which, in retrospect, might have been a bit of a rich accompaniment. Also, my addition of a splash of sherry to the marinade was probably superfluous.
I do recommend soaking the birds in a bag in the marinade in the fridge for a few hours or even overnight.
It was a highly successful dish that I will be adding to my repertoire.
Thanks!!
MaxMillion
_________________
where were you when i was over-cooking the turkey and burning the mashed potatoes?
Hi, I found your blog recently and really have been enjoying it! Such a great mix of writers, recipes, stories. Very informative. Thank you!
Mary McNiffe-Camp
Shrewsbury, MA
____________
Have I died? Is this heaven?
A place filled with people who write about food, think about food, prepare food, eat food. While my friends covet an invitation to my place for dinner, they're put off by my conversation which is usually about food. Conversation about the eating of food, the preparation of food, the shopping for food, good restaurants, bad restaurants and politics. They just want me to shut up and cook.
Dedicated to the notion that one of the things that’s wrong with the world is that there aren’t enough waffles in it and everyone should sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes order “one for the table”.
It’s about elegance and simplicity. It’s about
having a philosophy about life that extends to the choice of
ingredients, fresh and otherwise, (ecological within reason), the way
you entertain, the placement of flowers in a vase, the careful way you
sometimes scramble an egg or simply butter a piece of toast and
conversely a sort of casual chaos that allows you to whip up dinner for
12, just because you suddenly look up and there are 12 people for
dinner.
Amy Ephron
A Perfect Cake
by Amy Ephron
I’m not really a baker. I make perfect oatmeal cookies (once every
three years), perfect chocolate chip cookies (if really bored – Laraine
Newman thinks the Joy of cooking recipe is the best, I just use the one
on the back of the Nestle’s chocolate bits bag) The secret to chocolate
chip cookies is fresh nuts, if you ask me, the quality of the pecans or
the walnuts, changes the equation. Sometimes, if I’m feeling really
wild, I’ll make butterscotch chip cookies, same recipe, but
butterscotch bits instead of chocolate and totally delicious.
I went through a phase where I made bread (when I was at boarding
school in Vermont and there was a Country Store down the road that sold
100 varieties of flour from the grist mill down the road) so it was
sort of hard to resist. And we didn’t have a television, but we had a
kitchen in our dorm with a sweet old Wedgwood stove and somehow, the
smell of bread, and an occasional roast chicken, made it feel somewhat
more like home. But I can’t really find good flour any more and fresh
baguettes abound.
A number of Christmases ago, Quincy Jones gave my first husband a bread
maker. It was sort of a novelty (kind of like a pasta maker but more
useful) and the bread was from a mix and sort of oddly shaped but we
went through a phase of that, too. I think I lost the bread maker in
the divorce.
We saved a bundle by getting married in March and it allowed our
relatives to relieve their East Coast cabin fever, but it makes
celebrating our anniversary a bit of a problem. Since we live in Los
Angeles, having left our wintry childhood homes decades ago, our travel
options are quite slim, especially since we don't usually have the time
or inclination to schlep to Hawaii or Florida for the same weather.
Living next door to Arizona and being baseball freaks has recently
helped solve this vacation dilemma.
The Phoenix/Scottsdale area is home to the Cactus League, the Spring
Training grounds of our beloved Chicago Cubs and, as of this year, our
hometown Dodgers. So, for the past few years, instead of scouring the
Internet for an interesting place in Southern California to while away
a weekend, we’ve just jumped in our car and headed East. The drive is
brutally dull and longer than you'd imagine considering flying to
Phoenix only takes an hour, but our excitement and the MLB channel on
XM kept our
spirits up.
Perhaps it's my New England roots, but many of my favorite recipes, both savory and sweet, include maple syrup as a key ingredient. Of course, I always have it on hand to adorn things like my Crispy French Toast, Banana Pancakes, and Fluffy Buttermilk Waffles or to drizzle over my steel cut oatmeal, but I keep a major reserve to use as a "secret ingredient" in many of my other recipes. And this is the time of year that I begin to replenish my personal supply of 100% pure maple syrup.
There is no sweeter harbinger of spring than the sugary sap that flows from maple trees around the middle of March in Northern New England. In late winter and early spring, the roots of the maple trees are loaded with a clear, sweet liquid and it is the ideal combination of freezing nights and warm days that induces sap flow. The change in temperature from above to below freezing causes water uptake from the soil, and temperatures above freezing cause a stem pressure to develop, which allows the sap to flow out of tap holes made in the tree trunks. We had several maple trees at our house, and my brother and I, after a few hours of playing in the snow, would rejuvenate ourselves by sneaking handfuls of the sugary water-like sap from the gray lidded tin buckets that my Dad put out each year to collect the sap.
It was not uncommon to take a "Sunday drive" with my parents and head off to one of the many local "sugar houses" to watch the actual maple syrup production. You could spot them in the distance with the plumes of steam and smoke and, as you got closer, you could actually begin to smell the maple aroma in the air.
I was out for a walk today in the neighborhood and
I took
three photos – left, center and right – and PhotoShop stitched them
together into
this panorama. I'm determined to do that everyday, walk that is,
regardless of
the weather. I've got cabin fever and need fresh air and exercise!
If I wasn't so old I would take up skiing or
snowboarding but I see people everyday, locals, in casts needing things
like
ACL surgery. I don't think my little knees can take the strain of
skiing or
snowboarding.
I have slipped on ice three times this winter
right
around the house, and hit the ground all three times. I bruised my hand
one
time as I went to break the fall. I've convinced myself that next time,
I'm
going to tuck my arms in and break the fall with a
shoulder. They recommend that
for skiers and snowboarders – sidewalks aren't snow though – I may be
going in
for shoulder surgery...
When it comes to navigation skills, some of us are homing pigeons. Others are mice in a maze.
The sharp navigators are those who can figure out which way they need to go in an unfamiliar setting to get to their destination. No GPS needed to find their way around town. No always stopping for directions. Some folks, meanwhile, are hopelessly disoriented — the type that gets lost in a paper bag.
A new study suggests that skillful navigation just may be in your genes.
Say you are in a city — Washington D.C., for example — and you emerge from a Metro station to walk to a specific destination. For a minute you feel discombobulated. But, glancing around, you see the Capitol building, and a layout of surrounding streets helps you pinpoint your location. What if the landmark and roads didn't help?
It is Sunday late morning, the North wind is howling outside and the
rain has changed to half inch hail but the farmhouse walls are more than
two feet thick and we are very cozy. We hear nothing, just the sounds
of the wood fire crackling, a knife on the cutting board and two friends
engaged in a lively conversation catching up on many things since our
last visit. We are sitting at a 8 foot long chestnut kitchen table
boning out the leg of a wild boar, removing sinew, fat glands and
chipped bones from the bullet wound. Alain has told all his neighbors of
our visit and one has shot a wild boar for the occasion and foraged for
black truffles.
It was long decided before the boar was cold that we
would make a daube just like his mother made for him in his child hood
home in Avignon and it will marinate today and simmer over a wood fire
all afternoon tomorrow. Tonight we are having raclette with charcuterie
for dinner that they brought home from their skiing vacation in the
Alps. Not a bad way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon!
Gazpacho, how much do I love you? This cold, raw tomato soup hails
from Andalusia, Spain and if I don’t get my butt to España soon I will
be forever cranky. I could easily dedicate an entire blog about the country of
Spain, it’s one of my favorite places on the planet that I would gladly
pack up and move to tomorrow if I had my druthers. The only problem is
that a) I am an American so there’s that pesky paperwork problem and b)
I’d fall asleep at the dinner table each and every night. Oh who am I
kidding? I would have been in bed for 2 hours by the time everyone
assembles for dinner. Old man, me.
These two recipes for gazpacho come from Chef José Andrés. Whenever
I think of him I get warm and tingly and I am thankful that he has
chosen to live here in the US. I believe it makes this a better place,
for sure. Saving the conversation about Spain being a gastronomic mecca
for a later date, Chef José’s recipes have always worked for me and
these two recipes are not only extremely flavorful (and one packs a
punch!) but easy to prepare. You may not want to think of cold tomato
soups in February I realize but I am in Los Angeles and we’ve had
glorious sunny weather lately. Plus I wanted to pretend I was in
Spain. I even listened to a little Segovia.
How Red Kale Will Make You Look Like a Smart Shopper
by Susan Russo
It happens every week. As I'm selecting my Swiss chard, kale, or
collards, someone inevitably sidles up to me and asks, "What do you do
with that?" Then after I share a recipe idea, she usually follows up
with, "To me, they're all the same."
No wonder people get
confused. Every time you go to the supermarket all the winter greens
are mixed together in one big, undivided, forest green section, with
seemingly randomly placed signs and prices scattered above and below
them. It's like a game: Match the green on the left column with the
correct name and price on the right column. Chances are you probably
just select the green that your mom made when you were growing up
because it's the one you actually know how to cook.
Well here's
a tip that will make you look like a savvy supermarket shopper. Buy red
kale. It's the one winter green that you can always correctly identify.
Red kale has red tinged curly, oak shaped leaves with a dramatic purple
vein down the center. There's no mistaking it for collards.
Is soda the new tobacco? In their critics’ eyes, producers of sugar-sweetened drinks are acting a lot like the tobacco industry of old: marketing heavily to children,
claiming their products are healthy or at worst benign, and lobbying to
prevent change. The industry says there are critical differences: in
moderate quantities soda isn’t harmful, nor is it addictive.
The problem is that at roughly 50 gallons per person per year, our
consumption of soda, not to mention other sugar-sweetened beverages, is
far from moderate, and appears to be an important factor in the rise in
childhood obesity. This increase is at least partly responsible for a rise in what can no longer be called “adult onset” diabetes — because more and more children are now developing it.
Attention is being paid: Last week, the Obama administration announced
a plan to ban candy and sweetened beverages from schools. A campaign
against childhood obesity will be led by the first lady, Michelle Obama.
And a growing number of public health advocates are pushing for even
more aggressive actions, urging that soda be treated like tobacco: with
taxes, warning labels and a massive public health marketing campaign,
all to discourage consumption.
Miso soup is a traditional Japanese comfort food that has gained
popularity throughout the world. Here in the United States, it entered
the zeitgeist along with sushi and sake when Japanese cuisine became
popularized in the 1980s. In Japan, miso soup is eaten by everyone
everyday and is as popular as tea. Most Westerners tend to find it
difficult to appreciate miso soup, to say the least. It's just one of
those foods that is either loved or hated. But for me it's a soup I've
been trying to come to terms with for many years. Whenever I've had
miso soup I've always hated it, but sometimes I've almost liked it.
I've learned that depending on the restaurant and depending on the
preparation and the paste used, miso soup can be very different.
There are three to four main types of miso paste used to make the soup
including red, white, yellow, and a mixed paste. They can be made of
soybeans, wheat, barley, rice, or a combination. The flavors range from
very strong and salty, of red miso, to more delicate and refined, of
white miso. I've become very fond of yellow miso, which is the one I
use for this soup recipe. I use a brand that makes a low-sodium
version, which is just how I prefer the taste. Most miso pastes are
very high in sodium. I do love the umami flavor of miso, but do not
like the overpowering salty taste of many miso paste brands. That's
what turned me off in the first place. But making miso soup is mostly
about personal taste.
I'm going to have twist your arm and insist you make
this...it's so unbelievably full of flavor, it left me speechless.
That's pretty hard to do. This also does not have to be spicy. For
the record, mine was not. I only used 1/4 teaspoon of red pepper
flakes. The suggested amount is one teaspoon for spicy, but I knew
that would leave the kids out, so I went easy.
The trick to
this dish is a 24 hour marinade. It infuses the chicken, making it
unbelievably flavorful, tender and juicy. It's nothing less than
incredible. Honestly, when I tasted it, I wanted to use it as salad
dressing.
This is a great weeknight dish but it is by far
company worthy. It's sweet and spicy (if you choose it to be) and
looks so beautiful. Makes sure to serve it over rice or couscous so
you can drizzle the sauce from the pan and catch all the wonderful
flavors.
The other day, I just couldn't shake the thought of slow-smoking some
ribs. I was in the mood for Memphis-style baby backs, the meat
fall-off-the-bone tender, a simple dry rub tantalizingly complicated
with deep hickory notes, the flavors drawn out with a tart
vinegar-Dijon mop.
There's a primal wonder to smoked food — that such depth of flavor can
come from so simple a technique. And then, of course, there's the lure
of the sunny afternoon spent in a lawn chair with a cold beer while
you're waiting, patiently, for the Weber to work its magic.
Here at the rustic wooden headquarters of Ridge Vineyards, nestled
2,400 feet up in the Santa Cruz Mountains overlooking Silicon Valley,
the winery is celebrating its 50th anniversary this week, practically
an eternity in the California wine business. Most wineries seize anniversaries as an opportunity for marketing and promotion, and Ridge is not immune, assembling a small
group of wine writers and sommeliers for an in-depth, historical
tasting of its top wines.
Ordinarily, I pay little attention to
such events. But for a half-century, Ridge has made one of California’s
greatest cabernet sauvignons, Monte Bello, in a remarkably consistent
style independent of the twists and turns of fashion. Ridge has also
been the leading standard-bearer for zinfandel, which has likewise
followed a serpentine path of styles.
Perhaps because of its
longevity and its consistency, and because its wines are actually
available to consumers, Ridge tends to be taken for granted, its
achievements noted dutifully even as attention shifts to the new, the
expensive and the scarce. That seemed reason enough to spend an
afternoon visiting Ridge before the celebration.
Today I spent an hour at Barnes and Noble browsing through the cookbooks. The ones that seemed most interesting to me featured cooking from Asia. Nobu and Masahara Morimoto have incredibly beautiful books about Japanese cooking. But it was James Oseland's Cradle of Flavor, with his account of cooking in Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia, that was most appealing. What I liked was his description of street-vendor food, full of flavor and easy to eat.
Years ago when I was experimenting with Vietnamese food, I planted lemongrass in the
garden. I didn't use it very much, so the plant grew undisturbed until
it had taken over most of the garden. Looking through the Asian
cookbooks reminded me about all that lemongrass in the back yard. When
I got home I cut off a stalk and came up with an incredibly easy to
make shrimp dish.
While I LOVE Breakfast, I'm not really a fan of Brunch. The concept of
it is great. Getting your choice to eat breakfast way past lunchtime on
a lazy weekend morning is a treat and sometimes a necessity, depending
on the excesses of the night before. However, the cost is often a joke
for merely gussied up eggs and pancakes, even accompanied by bottomless
mimosas. The buffet even worse, since we really shouldn't be chowing
down "all-you-can-eat" and why would you want to when it's not made
freshly for you? There's nothing worse than stiff, overcooked, yet
lukewarm food.
Since I make a mean breakfast burrito, we usually only eat out on the
weekends when we're out of town and lacking a kitchen. If I'm going to
bother getting dressed, I want the excursion to be worth the trouble.
To go out in Los Angeles, not only do we require great food that won't
break the bank, but a location that makes us feel like we're on
vacation. We found a place that fit the bill this past Sunday – The
Malibu Cafe on Calamigos Ranch in Malibu.
The Foundry - Why Some Restaurant Grudges are Worth Giving Up
by Maia Harari
I hold restaurant grudges. Big time. If they take french fries off the
menu and replace them with sweet potato fries (ahem, Melrose Bar &
Grill), if I get sick from the seaweed salad (ahem, Reel Food Daily),
if the take out portions are unreasonably small and unbelievably
expensive (ahem, Nook), mark my words, I will never come back. EVER.
But what happened the first time I went to the Foundry, might not have
been entirely their fault.
I was starving and jet-lagged and I was with my then new,
"not-quite-boyfriend" with whom things were getting increasingly awkward.
We ordered vodka sodas while we waited for our table that wasn't quite
ready, plopped ourselves into bar stools and took a much-needed sip of
. . . tonic. I hate tonic. I'm actually allergic to tonic, but no one
ever believes me when I say that. It was an honest enough mistake and
was quickly corrected. But when we finally sat down, I noticed there
were only four things on the menu. Four. Something with duck confit,
some kind of lamb situation, veal and chicken. They were out of
chicken. So Mr. Wrong left some money on the table, politely explained
that I'd just gotten off a plane and we needed something a little less
. . . fussy.
I’m not really a baker. I make perfect oatmeal cookies (once every
three years), perfect chocolate chip cookies (if really bored – Laraine
Newman thinks the Joy of cooking recipe is the best, I just use the one
on the back of the Nestle’s chocolate bits bag) The secret to chocolate
chip cookies is fresh nuts, if you ask me, the quality of the pecans or
the walnuts, changes the equation. Sometimes, if I’m feeling really
wild, I’ll make butterscotch chip cookies, same recipe, but
butterscotch bits instead of chocolate and totally delicious.
We saved a bundle by getting married in March and it allowed our
relatives to relieve their East Coast cabin fever, but it makes
celebrating our anniversary a bit of a problem. Since we live in Los
Angeles, having left our wintry childhood homes decades ago, our travel
options are quite slim, especially since we don't usually have the time
or inclination to schlep to Hawaii or Florida for the same weather.
Living next door to Arizona and being baseball freaks has recently
helped solve this vacation dilemma. 
Perhaps it's my New England roots, but many of my favorite recipes, both savory and sweet, include maple syrup as a key ingredient. Of course, I always have it on hand to adorn things like my Crispy French Toast, Banana Pancakes, and Fluffy Buttermilk Waffles or to drizzle over my steel cut oatmeal, but I keep a major reserve to use as a "secret ingredient" in many of my other recipes. And this is the time of year that I begin to replenish my personal supply of 100% pure maple syrup.
I was out for a walk today in the neighborhood and
I took
three photos – left, center and right – and PhotoShop stitched them
together into
this panorama. I'm determined to do that everyday, walk that is,
regardless of
the weather. I've got cabin fever and need fresh air and exercise!
It is Sunday late morning, the North wind is howling outside and the
rain has changed to half inch hail but the farmhouse walls are more than
two feet thick and we are very cozy. We hear nothing, just the sounds
of the wood fire crackling, a knife on the cutting board and two friends
engaged in a lively conversation catching up on many things since our
last visit. We are sitting at a 8 foot long chestnut kitchen table
boning out the leg of a wild boar, removing sinew, fat glands and
chipped bones from the bullet wound. Alain has told all his neighbors of
our visit and one has shot a wild boar for the occasion and foraged for
black truffles.
Gazpacho, how much do I love you? This cold, raw tomato soup hails
from Andalusia, Spain and if I don’t get my butt to España soon I will
be forever cranky. I could easily dedicate an entire blog about the country of
Spain, it’s one of my favorite places on the planet that I would gladly
pack up and move to tomorrow if I had my druthers. The only problem is
that a) I am an American so there’s that pesky paperwork problem and b)
I’d fall asleep at the dinner table each and every night. Oh who am I
kidding? I would have been in bed for 2 hours by the time everyone
assembles for dinner. Old man, me.
It happens every week. As I'm selecting my Swiss chard, kale, or
collards, someone inevitably sidles up to me and asks, "What do you do
with that?" Then after I share a recipe idea, she usually follows up
with, "To me, they're all the same."
Is soda the new tobacco? In their critics’ eyes, producers of sugar-sweetened drinks are acting a lot like the tobacco industry of old: marketing heavily to children,
claiming their products are healthy or at worst benign, and lobbying to
prevent change. The industry says there are critical differences: in
moderate quantities soda isn’t harmful, nor is it addictive.
Miso soup is a traditional Japanese comfort food that has gained
popularity throughout the world. Here in the United States, it entered
the zeitgeist along with sushi and sake when Japanese cuisine became
popularized in the 1980s. In Japan, miso soup is eaten by everyone
everyday and is as popular as tea. Most Westerners tend to find it
difficult to appreciate miso soup, to say the least. It's just one of
those foods that is either loved or hated. But for me it's a soup I've
been trying to come to terms with for many years. Whenever I've had
miso soup I've always hated it, but sometimes I've almost liked it.
I've learned that depending on the restaurant and depending on the
preparation and the paste used, miso soup can be very different.
I'm going to have twist your arm and insist you make
this...it's so unbelievably full of flavor, it left me speechless.
That's pretty hard to do. This also does not have to be spicy. For
the record, mine was not. I only used 1/4 teaspoon of red pepper
flakes. The suggested amount is one teaspoon for spicy, but I knew
that would leave the kids out, so I went easy. 
The other day, I just couldn't shake the thought of slow-smoking some
ribs. I was in the mood for Memphis-style baby backs, the meat
fall-off-the-bone tender, a simple dry rub tantalizingly complicated
with deep hickory notes, the flavors drawn out with a tart
vinegar-Dijon mop.
Here at the rustic wooden headquarters of Ridge Vineyards, nestled
2,400 feet up in the Santa Cruz Mountains overlooking Silicon Valley,
the winery is celebrating its 50th anniversary this week, practically
an eternity in the California wine business. Most wineries seize anniversaries as an opportunity for marketing and promotion, and Ridge is not immune, assembling a small
group of wine writers and sommeliers for an in-depth, historical
tasting of its top wines.
Today I spent an hour at Barnes and Noble browsing through the cookbooks. The ones that seemed most interesting to me featured cooking from Asia. Nobu and Masahara Morimoto have incredibly beautiful books about Japanese cooking. But it was James Oseland's 
While I LOVE Breakfast, I'm not really a fan of Brunch. The concept of
it is great. Getting your choice to eat breakfast way past lunchtime on
a lazy weekend morning is a treat and sometimes a necessity, depending
on the excesses of the night before. However, the cost is often a joke
for merely gussied up eggs and pancakes, even accompanied by bottomless
mimosas. The buffet even worse, since we really shouldn't be chowing
down "all-you-can-eat" and why would you want to when it's not made
freshly for you? There's nothing worse than stiff, overcooked, yet
lukewarm food. 
I hold restaurant grudges. Big time. If they take french fries off the
menu and replace them with sweet potato fries (ahem, Melrose Bar &
Grill), if I get sick from the seaweed salad (ahem, Reel Food Daily),
if the take out portions are unreasonably small and unbelievably
expensive (ahem, Nook), mark my words, I will never come back. EVER.
But what happened the first time I went to the Foundry, might not have
been entirely their fault. 
