marlena spieler

North African food often wonderful, and so ubiquitous! (though sometimes bog-standard joints, a bit like mexican food in california, texas, etc). with the large pieds noirs community (north africans) in the lands that were once French, you have a large group of people who fled to france, and brought with them their cuisines. there is some good lebanese food around, much of it on the street. the same story: former french rule. i love the rose drink, ward. and the roll up flatbreads stuffed with herbs, cheese, etc. similar deal with vietnamese food, ie vietnam and french rule, but i find french vietnamese food sometimes wonderful, sometimes over refined until its soul is gone. i find indian food in paris much inferior to most of the indian food i find in london or the uk. but turkish food can be very nice, even kebabs. stay away from mexican food in france! but i've had some very nice greek food, with excellent feta, served as dessert, with onions and cucumbers. Ever since then, that is my favourite dessert. well, sometimes! marlena

Mexico actually belonged to the French, for a short while. France introduced the French bread roll, now known there as the bolillo, though to tell you the truth, it seems as if spain could have just as easily introduced it. i've also read that the mexican passion for pastries was partially induced by French rule. earlier, the spanish brought pig which really transformed the native cuisine with its lard (introduced frying) . they brought cow which made milk/cheese, another transformer. and they brought diseases, but lets not go there. the germans, bless em, brought the art of brewing--the result, mexico's beer culture. mexican food is so wonderful when its wonderful, and awful but in some weird way acceptable when its mediocre....and nothing is worse to my mind and palate than mediocre mexican food. so, bleu, when are we all invited over for tamales? x marlena ps there is actually quite a mexican community growing in britain right now. i haven't been to the two mexican places, one opened by cool chile co, and the other someone else, but perhaps will start a thread on the UK forum...

what with all of the craziness around me, i completely forgot about Bastille Day. AND I'm going on a wine and food pairing in Bergerac from Sunday to Tuesday night--if only we could have stayed through the celebrations! I'll be back in Blighty by the time the fireworks are going off on the other side of la manche! happy Bastille Day, Farid! And i wish your mother health, marlena

while usually i adore messy foods, the messier the better, when it comes to corn on the cob, the only thing i can bear messy about it is the butter, and then i'm not above licking all the way up my elbow if it drips that far, or my neighbours elbow if it gets flicked in that direction. BUT the way I eat it is OBSESSIVE TOO! I do the typewriter method, left to right, and eat only ONE ROW AT A TIME, picked each kernal out completely with my pearly whites and then moving on to the next. I like the cob to look completely naked when i'm finished with it! and then i rub it around in the melted butter and salt for awhile, then suck all the buttery juices from it. by the way, i make a good stock out of corn cobs, but of course, to reassure you, not the pre-sucked corn cobs. corn cob stock makes a delicious base for tortilla soup. marlena

Wow, Daniel! Thanks! marlena

At risk of shamelessly mentioning that I was quoted in yesterdays Jerusalem post (in Faye Levy's column), I have always leaned towards goats milk for Shavot as I'm sure there were more goats than cows in biblical days and places. i like delicate goats cheese omelets, sprinkled with a little thinly sliced fresh mint (not a strong one) for Shavuot, or a salad of thinly sliced cucumber layered with goat cheese, dressed in olive oil and sprinkled with chives, or a slice of goats cheese on top of young dandelions, garnished with walnuts and walnut oil and sprinkled with chives....or slabs of goats cheese, broiled/grilled until melty, served with halved cherry tomatoes, sauteed and sprinkled with basil. actually, that would make a good blintzey dish too: just stuff the cheese into blintz pancakes....... and also, a nice fruity noodles cottage cheesey kugel. (though thats cow cheese). chag sameach all, i don't know about you but when a holiday comes up and i get all excited planning meals for it, i wish it would last forever, or at least until i got tired of celebrating (and i seldom get tired of celebrating). marlena

Thanks, Juuceman! Perhaps I'll try the new happy-service butcher, along with the green market and florent.... marlena.

I am supposed to be writing right now, but all i can think of is: what should you smoke when you get your brick oven smokin! oh and fat squirrel is looking particularly fetching right now...... looking forward to your blog.... marlena

THE FRENCH BUTCHER The most horrible experience I have ever had shopping for food. My daughter the doctor was in the mood for steak, so we had seen the French Butcher and decided that would be the best place to shop for the meat. The butcher (French, middle aged, the owenr--I asked) was the meanest, nastiest, really horrid insulting man I"ve ever met. My daughter and I had trotted over happy as a clam, ready to spend some money on a really nice cut of meat, and we ended up with a bitter taste in our mouth. I can't even tell you if the steak tasted good or not, because we felt like we had eaten something horrible. I will say this, though: if the meat had been extraordinary I would have noticed. I think it was okay. One of her collaegues (the building is peopled with staff from the hospital) also went there for a meaty treat, and came back saying: what a mean mean man! but then a few months ago i went there (no place else open, i thought the quality of the meat would have to be higher than a supermarket) and the butcher wasn't there, his assistant, or salesman was. A young guy. very nice. didn't know much about meat, or wasn't sharing his knowledge with us if he did, but at least he didn't insult us or throw anything, so we were happy. again: fine meat, okay meat, nothing special. but that butcher was sooooooo mean! MEAN! memorably meat! as witness this posting. i've been waiting to share this for while, the opportunity never came up. i don't think you can sell even the finest of anything with a bad attitude. I'll always go to the farmers market for meat, now. or Les Halles....... Marlena.

It's good to hear someone French explain the horrid condition of French coffee and confirm why I always note which restos serve Illy. Luckily my Monoprix has Illy and I don't need to go farther. ← Try Union Roasters coffee at The Rose BAkery on rue des Martyrs. Union Roasters is, beileve it or not, a British company, two fine guys who went to do scientific research in california and fell in love with Peets Coffee. they trains with them, and voila: source (ethically) and roast the best beans in the land. and i'm a big coffee-in-Naples fan. try their foundation blend.....dark and yummy., though i like revolution blend too. marlena

I'm so dying for andouille, tasso, and maybe a bit of ol boudin to suck up while i'm eaiting..... thanks you guys for superb posting..... marlena

Well, insisting that animals are "just food" particularly in France is one to me. I cannot think of one place in the world where this is different. I don't understand this focusing on France. Is there a place in the world where lullabies are sung to meat cows before bedtime? (Please don't say "Kobe beef", we all know it's for marbling ) Also, but this is going a little further, there are degrees of consideration for animals that are going to be eaten, it's not "Bugs Bunny" and "just food" with nothing in-between: a choice poulet de Bresse is not "thingified" the way a poulet de batterie or a hormone-laden veal will be, for instance. There is something left, in rural places and not only in France, of the old "religious sacrifice" state of mind (one of the only ways to get meat in the old days), and I believe, with the revival of high quality meat after the Mad Cow crisis, it is even more alive than before. What's left of the traditional rural mind in the Old World (though in Europe there's not much of it left indeed) is still the reason why a carefullly-raised charolais will never be "just food". Eating animals does not mean you don't respect them, and I believe this is the hard-to-understand point for anthropomorphists. ← I think that being aware that the animal is the meat is the most important step towards making a true thanks for the food we eat. if we eat meat, an animal died for our plateful, it didn't come wrapped in cellophane. its so important that we give the animals a good life and a swift painless end. and not waste. I can't bear when people WASTE meat bits. I want to say, it was an animal, we should use every bit of the animal and treat it with respect. its not just a commodity. and the more of the animal we eat, the fewer animals we need to kill. and funnily enough, many of my friends to whom i tell that i eat this and that act as if i were a murderer, a cruel person. it is hard though even for farmers. my friend in greece who raises a gorgeous pig every year from baby to big porker cannot bear to eat his own pig, he gets so attached, and so does his friend, so he and his mate switch pigs at the butchering time. they each bring their own pig to the slaughterer, and take away the others. each has no problem with that,. and how delicious these pigs are, spending their days eating fresh garden grown goodies and greek leftovers...... marlena ps: last night i roasted a storebought cheap battery chicken. i'm so sorry i did that. i couldn't resist, it was about 2.50 pounds sterling, but it tasted awful, well not awful, but not the chickeny deliciousness a good roasted bird should give. eating an animal is a bit like a religious sacrifice, and thinking that the animal didn't have such a nice flavour made me sad.....for i knew that reflected on his life...and on me for buying it. i felt caught up in something unpleasant. but husband was happy, especially with the roast rosemary potatoes, we're all so different.

In the early nineties I spent time travelling in France with a vegetarian (daughters then boyfriend, now husband). the result was a cookbook: The Vegetarian Bistro, Chronicle Books, now out of print. overwhelmingly restaurant and bistro owners would say, if we called ahead, and/or looked on the menu and there was nothing listed that was meat-free, they would say: we will always feed you well, you have only to ask. only once or twice were the main courses kinda strange, though i can't think of examples at this moment.... it was a great thing for the rest of us as there are so many wonderful vegetable dishes in the French kitchen, regionally, and we ended up eating so many great veggies dishes that we might not have otherwise. italy was easy. greece was easiest. but spain was difficult, it seemed as if they considered jamon a vegetable. how often we would get a beautiful dish of say, artichokes, or eggplant/aubergine, and when the tell tale pink chunks appeared on the fork they would say, oh, yes of course its a vegetarian dish........and when we pointed to the pink bits: oh, yes, thats jamon! marlena

Actually it gets worse: it was at a synaogue, and i know that those snails were not kosher. luckily it wasn't a conservative or orthodox synagogue, so its only me feeling guilty..... m

Okay, here goes. I was a caterer in san francisco, and one of my clients was such a nightmare, she argued the price, and shaved money off here, and money off there, and complained and complained and complained. by the time of the wedding she had shaved off so much money for this and so much for that, that when it was time to prepare the wedding cake--tender sponge drenched in amaretto and cognac, a layer of praline powder, fresh summery fruit: berries, bananas, peaches, nectarines etc, layered in the traditional descending size circles, about 5 layers. It looked like a traditional wedding cake but was very fresh, iced with a stiff-ish cream chantilly, and decorated with more fresh fruit and edible flowers. So, having so much money shaved off the price of everything, at the last minute i discovered i had no money left in the budget to purchase any edible flowers. so. across the street was a HUGE flower garden, no one was home but i knew they didn't use pesticides. I sent my catering staff into the garden with baskets, and they came back laden.such beautiful gaily coloured nasturitiums. I layered and iced, smoothed the cream into a very architectural sleek finish, decorated with the fruit and flowers, it sat a short while as the room was getting ready, then i sent it out with serving utensils and a waiter. In perhaps 15 minutes or so the nightmare woman came into the kitchen. i thought: oh god not more complaints, what now? But she was sweetness personified and said: " I know I've been difficult, I can't help it. But the cake is just so outstanding I had to compliment you." nice, i was touched. i mean, too little too late but i did appreciate it. she continued: I loved the scrolling pattern etched into the icing, so artistic, and the little cruncy bits scattered throughout the cake.....". ice gripped my heart: there WERE no crunchy bits. the icing was meant to be flat. i whipped that cake back into the kitchen as fast as i decently could, and there, mostly buried in whipped cream, was an ARMY of the tiniest little snails, all winding around, probably getting drunk on the booze and drowning in the cream. i never told her of course. in fact, i've never gone public. I swear, we DID wash the flowers. i hasten to say i don't cater any longer, so any health inspectors out there, take note: i'm legal. and i must say this: the cake was fantastic. really one of my best! talk about secret ingredients. i must admit i had a few bad moments when i wondered if perhaps the snails weren't a poisonous type, but all was fine. whew. Marlena

Too bad I'm not famous enough for your list, I have an excellent one involving a miserable client, a wedding cake and an army of snails doing my getting even for me! Marlena

oregon, california, they're just not even close to the perigord, provencal, or italian truffles. and there have been sooooo many enterpreneurs and phds working on this....but you never know. wouldn't it be wonderful, if someone found a way to grow truffles easily, foolproofily, then the price would come down and we could all wallow, wallow, wallow, oh deep delicious sigh! x marlena

I LOVE this thread, am loving the photos of the food, the photos of the folks... and wondering when i'm getting back to new orleans. not soon enough i think..... x marlena when i was there about a year ago i had some course-milled grits that blew my socks off, with lots of tasso i think in it (commanders palace). i have been buying grits ever since, whenever i'm in the usa and have never come up with anything that good...not yet......mind you i have no tasso either though am awash with italian prosciutto most of the time.

The trouble with this thread is that whenever i read this i start making a list of burger places to try when i'm next in s.f. and then if i read it once too many times, i have to go out and buy the ingredients to make my own. i really make very good burgers. thickness is the key, and meatiness. all meat. unless i'm feeling oniony. and also, condiments, its all in the condiments for me at least. tonights burgers were served on mini-baguettes. fresh. hot. crisp. burger thick. juicy. i'm sooooooo full now. marlena

there are truffles all over the world, growing in such places as Britain, China, Africa, Spain, but the only trouble is that they just aren't delicious, or AS delicious (though i'm not sure about spain, i have heard good things about theirs) as the truffles in perigord, provence, northern italy, tuscany, umbria, even campania (irpino). too, croatia (istria) has truffles and some of them aren't bad at all....... in my experiences truffle hunting in france, planting a spore-impregnated tree doesn't seem to make much of a difference, except psychologically. whoever could come up with a method of planting a source of truffles would become a rich person....but so far, not much luck. there is an excellent eco-musee in Sorges, France, which can teach you much about the life cycle of the truffle. dogs are excellent for h unting truffles, they need to be trained. pigs come to it naturally but you have to whip that truffle away from the pig before they devour it, and that is hard with a big pig. thats why its usually small, say, 3 month old pigs that are used for truffle hunting. but i've even met people who don't use either dog or pig, but rely on their own methods. what are these? (i'm not telling....but well, we all have our own method). very exciting to sniff the soil when you've unearthed such a treasure from the dirt, its magic, pure magic. marlena

Too much cumin? Is that possible? Signed, Lover of Indian food ← I know, I never thought I'd say such a thing. i mean, i like sprinkling cumin and salt on my eggs, on my chicken, lamb, yogurt, soup, lentils, anything mexican, love it in a cheesey rice dish of almost any sort, love the seeds, love the powder, i think re: the ravioli in question, something went wrong in the recipe preparation that day. so i needed a few days off cumin after that. but its been a few days, and now.....well, its almost time to make dinner and i'm wondering what will go most deliciously with my re-freshed cumin desires. if anyone ever was to commission a cumin cookbook i'd vie to be the one writing it, i can tell you. but still, those ravioli were just not right. never mind. i mean, never mind because everything else was just so damned good (except for the croque legume which was merely okay). everything else had us turning cartwheels. now, i think that some cumin in the croque legume might have been interesting....... marlena

Hehe, this tarte is the only thing in the menu that really knocked me off my chair. I also tried the risotto in my son's plate and it was perfect, perfect risotto. I had a taste of the ravioli and they were outstanding. But still I think that 73 euros for 2 is a bit overpriced for a few vegetables, even surrounded by hazelnut sticks and yellow plastic. But that's my own boeotian opinion and I may not be a natural Passard fan after all. ← i loved the place, and having dined at l'arpege regular price thought the price a bargain, but...most of the dishes knocked me over--we tasted the whole menu as there were five of us--except for the croque legumes which was just too dry and dull, and the ravioli. the ravioli were really horrible in fact, too much cumin, and the soup was too strong in a cabbagey way. i'm thinking that as they were doing some of the dishes slightly differently each day, different juice cocktail of the day, etc, that maybe the ravioli on our day were prepared differently. none of the five of us at the table liked them, or finished them. whereas with the rest of the dishes, i'm ashamed to say that.....we......came as close to licking our plates as manners would allow us. marlena

Actually, it was my MOTHER who was (and is) a picky eater. i would be eating something so happily--tongue comes to mind--and she would see me eating it, then stick out her tongue disgustingly, taunting me with: its a tongue, you're eating a tongue! I still feel sick when faced with tongue, but more like shell-shocked traumatized. we never ate things like eggplant salad, and if someone brought them over my mother would throw them out quickly. as a result i never got to taste the delicious things in the family repertoire that could only be eaten at events in which other people were cooking or bringing things. my brother and i went in opposite directions foodwise: i am pretty much enthusiastic about most things except allergic to shellfish. he wouldn't eat anything except for chinese food, luckily he lived in china. though after living in india for about 4 years he wouldn't eat anything except for indian food. i think he just didn't trust food, and felt that western food was very dangerous, as clearly my mother viewed all food as dangerous unless it was preserved, canned, and cooked past all signs of succulence. if she saw me eat a rare steak (i like em reallll rare), or worse, steak tartare, i think she would scream and grab the plate away, or start making imitations of a cow to upset me. marlena

but i'm sure there was an editorial a year or two ago about a photography session, with details etc about what was going on, the food etc. i mean it all sounded like it was being styles pretty much like other food photog sessions. also, the choice of ingredients for the shot: the plate. the steak. the grill marks. the vegetables. the stiff way the little slices of meat or whatever are laid alongside. the accompaniments to the steak are franky not only unappetizing but pretentious. anyhow, i have a thing about cherry tomatoes on the vine anyhow, having been told about them as a marketing tool rather than any boon to deliciousness or sign of freshness. its just that the photo is cold. stark. pretentious. uninspired. just the facts, ma'am. and i wonder if this is a statement. ie a reaction against the overly styled lavish photos of other publications or time.......or what is the psychology behind it? maybe they had a reason but it went wrong? i'm sure that the gourmet editors, at least one or two might be lurking, so maybe they can join in with an explanation of what they were trying to put across to the readers? marlena ps i'm with you: no whatshisface playing with a whisk on my covers, nor whatsherface. i want a cover that promises me delight. (some of the old covers of places as well as food did just that.......) something with some interest and content....

yes, or beauty/beautiful food as elitism, and the photos therefore a stance of: "we are so down to earth we don't need/want our food to be beautiful..." the thing is, a simple tomato can be the most beautiful food on earth. a slice of bread, a leaf of lettuce. an egg. and i don't think these snobby foods. unless they're kitted out within an inch of their life. in the gourmet photos foods were almost focussed on in an effort to make them ugly, perhaps in the mistaken idea that that was a way of bringing "real" food of the people to readers of gourmet? A reverse snobbism? somehow something has snapped and it smacks of insincerity. image over passion. perhaps its a reaction to the gastro-porn photos that have been the brunt of criticism, perhaps they wanted to mark themselves as different in this regard. whatever, appetizing as an adjective is not one i'd use for that cold hard steak and boring vegetable cover. .......and i don't like models with my food either, though i do kinda like seeing a bit of debris after eating, or food that is being eaten in process...sometimes...you know, a broken piece of bread, a plate of cassoulet with a fork and some signs of eating action having occurred....i like a bit of reality to intrude on my perfection...but you know, a sensuous reality, not a cold hard unadorned steak reality. and also why are there several slices of meat on the edge of that steak? is it to imply that the steak has been cut into? but the steak looks like it is made from plastic, and i didn't see a spot from where the steak would have been, could have been, cut (but i only saw the cover in the photo right here, not in person). here's what i do like to see in food photos: real food, real luscious appetizing food that i can almost smell..... marlena