This is not shameless, only because I do feel embarassed (but, obviously enough, not so bashful that I'm not typing this shiz right now).
Every now and again, I write things, and I'd like to think that someone other than my father—no, I mean it: my dad's my lone reader as my mom "can't find the time to sit down!" and "isn't good at checking her email!"—consumes these "published works."
Now that I've made the stories look fancy, I will tell you they are always, always, always about 1) celebrities/actor-types and 2) food. As you can see, I'm a super serious reporter who will probably be up for a Pulitzer in '09. WATCH OUT.
Two of all, I did a profile of this up-and-coming actress Kate French for FOAM. It's a fashion-surfing magazine and is pretty rad. Kate is both adorable and hot (cause we all know those are totally different things). She is on The L-Word and, starting Mon. (a.k.a. my birfday) is doing a stint on Gossip Girl as, duh, a Chuck Bass love interest. All together now: DIE. For the pretty, picture-filled version, click here and navigate to pg. 94. For the user-friendlier option, direct your attentions here.
Most importantly, the teaser for next week's GG that promises to bring us K.F.—and a Blair Waldorf expulsion?!?! Yah, prolly no.
I'm toooootally in a holiday mood, you guys. I'm writing my cards, online buying gifts, making T listen to seasonal classics from Mariah and Madonna...and, next up, I will BAKE, which is ultimately my favorite part because 1) it entails food and 2) you get so much credit for whipping up cookies because, for whatever reason, people think mixing together flour, eggs, butter, and sugar is harder than it is.
I'm going to make one of my mom's Chrismukkah specialties, heavenly hash, which is an ooey gooey combo of chocolate, peanut butter, butterscotch, and marshmallows. It's her one Dec. treat that does not require a candy thermometer (which is really shocking if you know my mother, who hardly has the focus to complete a meal without leaving out a key ingredient). Beyond that, I'm playing domestic goddess with these crazy adorable sugar-crusted lemon sandwich cookies from this month's Gourmet and these brown butter cookies from a 1961 issue of the same inspired food mag (see the pretty pictures). [Please do not think that I resourceful enough to have dug up a sixties recipe on my own. The mag's website has this AMAZING roundup of the best cookie recipe from every year since 1941, and they all look so f-ing classy.]
Yesterday, the New York Times published a story about a 12-year-old wannabe food critic—and, if you can believe, it wasn't even in the trend-happy Sunday Styles. It ran in N.Y./Region. Anyway, as the story goes, pre-teen David Fishman went alone to a just-opened Upper West Side restaurant Salumeria Rosi last week. He did this because he's interested in food, has a mother who'd give him $25 bucks for dinner, and wants to be a food critic. That's basically it. Now, considering the fact that I have a six-year-old cousin who just loooooves Top Chef, Bobby Flay, and the Spotted Pig, I'm not so impressed that David prefers a fancy dinner (where everyone fawned over him, I might add) to Pizza Hut delivery. But what's more, the whole point of the article is to make light of David's pursuit. But he wants to be a food critic, and so he's pursuing his interest just as other kids his age play guitar, start websites, and volunteer at animal shelters (not to imply that he doesn't do any of these things). By writing about this in a "how adorable!" way when he clearly just wants to be treated like a grown up, the NYT makes it seem like there's something special, different, and maybe wrong about David's food fascination. The coverage will make him either embarrassed or pretentious. This being NYC, I go with option B: He'll have a blog by week's end and will be consulting for Danny Meyer by 2009.
David Fishman at Salumeria Rosi, eating food. From NYT.
David Chang, the man behind the Momofuku restaurant empire (we can call it that now, right?) has, from what I've read on the internets, done it again. His Momofuku Bakery and Milk Bar opened today (on 2nd Ave. at 13th...if you don't gots to work, go RIGHT. NOW.). Serious Eats—specifically Ed Levine—already has pics. I'm dying. My crappy midtown lunch is going to taste so much worse than it normally would.
From top, pork & egg bun, salty pistachio caramel soft serve, and blue cheese foccacia. Many more pics at Serious Eats. And White Lightning has the menu.
In addition to these things, I'll have a brown-butter cinnamon bun (with cheesecake filling!), chorizo challah, cereal milk, a hoisin bun, kimchi butter...
Now that it's cool outside, I'm psyched to cook again. (When your kitchen is just one teensy wall of your living room and your oven door doesn't quiiiiite shut, summer cooking really does make for an Amazon apartment.) Last year, in addition to leaving torn-out pages of Gourmet and Real Simple (because apparently I'm 40 and love reading the tips on alterna uses for wax paper?) around the apt., I embraced The Silver Spoon—and ultra-classic Italian cookbook that was first published in 1950 but didn't go English until 2005—and The Art of Simple Food—the latest from the Chez Panisse goddess Alice Waters. I also finally learned which vegetables and fruits actually grow in the winter thanks in a large part to Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: potatoes, squash, leeks, carrots, sweet potatoes, apples, brussels sprouts, pears. Yes, it's totally weird that at 24 I didn't grasp seasonality.
ANYWAY, two of my fave sweater weather recipes come from these two cookbooks.
Leeks Viniagrette, adapted from The Art of Simple Food 4 servings
12 small leeks or 6 medium leeks -Trim 'em, clean 'em, and cut 'em up into pieces the length of your pinkie finger. Cook for 5-10 min in boiling salted water, depending on how much bite you want. Test like pasta, and—when they're ready—drain and rinse with cool water to stop the cooking. 1/4 cup red wine vinegar 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard 2 tablespoons olive oil Salt and pepper to taste -In the bowl you want to serve these puppies in, mix the vinegar and mustard and then whisk in the oil. I like dressings tangy, but if you don't use more oil and less vinegar. Add the salt and peps, throw in the leeks, and toss until everything is slicked with vinaigrette.
Glazed Carrots with Lemon, adapted from The Silver Spoon 4 servings
3 medium carrots -Peel them and slice them into silver dollar-sized disks. If you have a mandoline, use it. Soak the carrots in a bowl of cool H2O for 15 min. w/ a pinch of salt and then drain them. 2 pearl onions -Chop them up finely. 3 tablespoons butter juice of one lemon lemon zest of a 1/2 lemon (optional) -In a skillet, melt the butter on medium-low heat. Add the onions and cook for 5 min., stirring now and then. Dump in the lemon juice and zest (if you're using) and cook for a couple min. Add the orange guys and cook for 10-15 min. (stirring regularly), depending on how soft you like your cooked carrots.
I went to a new restaurant on Bowery over the weekend called Double Crown that has this pseudo British colonial vibe (think curries and quail), and I had my very first Pimm's No. 1 Cup. (Wow, I'm making this seem like a WAAAAYYY bigger deal than it was.)
ANYWAY, I think it may be my drink of the season, which is especially surprising considering I've tried to keep my distance from anything gin-based since a curious night that included some sort of painful cookie dough liquor. (Yup! Totally as gross as it sounds!) Apparently—thanks, Wikipedia!—the cocktail was invented in 1823 as a health drink. So CLEARLY it's good for you, and I don't have to feel guilty about not taking vitamins.
Fruity, pretty, non-Pimm's drinks at D.C. by way of NY Mag
This weekend's issue of the New York Times Magazine is all about food. YAY! More importantly, it features an article by the incredible Michael Pollan, who might just be one of my favorite people in the world. I saw him speak at P.S. 1 once, and I wanted to adopt him as an uncle. If you haven't read Omnivore's Dilemma, do it now. Like, go to Amazon and buy it. It's the least preachy book ever about how the food system actually works. (Cliffs Notes: Corn rules the world.) It won't make you a crazy vegan—and I should know since I was one of those once.
Anyway, the article (click!) is all about what our next president has to know and do about food policy. It's written as a letter directed to "Mr. President-Elect." Highlights:
"Since enhancing the prestige of farming as an occupation is critical to developing the sun-based regional agriculture we need, the White House should appoint, in addition to a White House chef, a White House farmer. This new post would be charged with implementing what could turn out to be your most symbolically resonant step in building a new American food culture. And that is this: tear out five prime south-facing acres of the White House lawn and plant in their place an organic fruit and vegetable garden."
And then, so no one seems elitist:
"You’re probably thinking that growing and eating organic food in the White House carries a certain political risk. It is true you might want to plant iceberg lettuce rather than arugula, at least to start. (Or simply call arugula by its proper American name, as generations of Midwesterners have done: "rocket.")"
If you live in NYC and like to eat (and, to be clear, if you DON'T, I have little use for you), sign up for Tasting Table, the latest addition to the daily newsletter doohickeys category. This one actually seems...what's the word...vetted. And, judging by the landing page, additions for other cities (Peoria, no doubt) will be on their way sooner rather than laters.
J and I are going to eat these at Bobo next week. Because why wouldn't we? Sharpie me in, Flaky McFlakerson.
This is undeniably a dumb thing to be obsessed with, but I am all about these adorable French macarons from this place Paulette in L.A. Have I, like, eaten one? No. Mostly because I don't live in L.A. But when I was on the other, chiller coast a few weeks ago, I had to rip myself out of bonkers mindset that was telling me it was totally reasonable to spend $20 on a cab to go to a teensy bakery and buy $12-worth of cookies. Oh, and then spend an hour trying to chase down a taxi to take me back because, hello, hailing cabs in that city is an f-ing breeeeeeeze.
But, come on, look at these things.
HEAVEN.
Don't worry: I'll convince myself it's sane to purchase them online any day now.
I have a thing for cookbooks in general—big, glossy pictures of tortes and asparagus? Sold. But The Big Fat Duck Cookbook is really beyond. Like, keeping it in a kitchen would seem wrong. There are crazy, intricate illustrations, dishes art-directed to a whole bananas new level, and recipes that fill multiple pages of a book that's as tall as my arm.
The ginormous thing is from Heston Blumenthal, the mad scientist-type chef at the book's namesake restaurant in England. (He makes things like smoked bacon-and-egg ice cream.) And, duh, because the book probably took the budget of an indie film to produce, it's price tag is a leeeeetle removed from that of The Joy of Cooking. We're talking $158 on Amazon when it comes out in Nov.
It took me until 2008 to realize that writing things on the internet doesn't (necessarily) make you the most annoying person in the universe. Then my friend had a dream that I had a blog where I posted a photo of myself in an orange sequined dress. Hot.
I'm toooootally in a holiday mood, you guys. I'm writing my cards, online buying gifts, making T listen to seasonal classics from Mariah and Madonna...and, next up, I will BAKE, which is ultimately my favorite part because 1) it entails food and 2) you get so much credit for whipping up cookies because, for whatever reason, people think mixing together flour, eggs, butter, and sugar is harder than it is.
I'm going to make one of my mom's Chrismukkah specialties, heavenly hash, which is an ooey gooey combo of chocolate, peanut butter, butterscotch, and marshmallows. It's her one Dec. treat that does not require a candy thermometer (which is really shocking if you know my mother, who hardly has the focus to complete a meal without leaving out a key ingredient). Beyond that, I'm playing domestic goddess with these crazy adorable sugar-crusted lemon sandwich cookies from this month's Gourmet and these brown butter cookies from a 1961 issue of the same inspired food mag (see the pretty pictures). [Please do not think that I resourceful enough to have dug up a sixties recipe on my own. The mag's website has this AMAZING roundup of the best cookie recipe from every year since 1941, and they all look so f-ing classy.]
This weekend's issue of the New York Times Magazine is all about food. YAY! More importantly, it features an article by the incredible Michael Pollan, who might just be one of my favorite people in the world. I saw him speak at P.S. 1 once, and I wanted to adopt him as an uncle. If you haven't read Omnivore's Dilemma, do it now. Like, go to Amazon and buy it. It's the least preachy book ever about how the food system actually works. (Cliffs Notes: Corn rules the world.) It won't make you a crazy vegan—and I should know since I was one of those once.
