marlena spieler

I like kasha knishes. marlena

Southerners eat a lot of fabulous GREENS! Okay, maybe they're cooked with a bit of salt pork or bacon, but i mean, eating lots o' greens got to account for something in the health sweepstakes. i think it is the whole modern fast food thing that is to blame. surely there must be some health giving properties to gumbo, and grits? surely? and jamalaya? well, at least there is awhole lotta greens, and my god are they good! marlena

ps: yeah, definately mourad at Aziza, wonderful wine service (and pairing wine with middle eastern inspired food not always such an easy task), so imaginative yet suave and seductive the food, esp and surprisingly the desserts ( i don't have a real sweet tooth but was rocked to bliss by several of their offerings). marlena

i'm a big fan of destino these days, esp the quinoa risotto, and esp if he's making it ith shitakes, though the green onion one is good too. tell him i said hello!

I think I might be related to your brother! marlena, (who is about 99% garlic, from childhood on.....)

Mazal Tov, Daniel! Marlena

oh, my friends, my friends, this is what i get from not reading egullet more regularly! i'm flying in to s.f on sunday, and haven't yet forumated any plans at all, but I COULD have flown in a few days earlier and gone out to eat with you all!!!!! anyone want to go with me somewhere delicious? I'll be around until...7th feb. i can hardly wait to get on that plane. i am thinking about a nice pickle soup at old krakow on west portal when i arrive, i'll have to have someone ring ahead of time, its only on the menu some times. bon appetite tomorrow, if that is when you're all going, marlena

hear, hear, jason. and i thought the piece was written extremely well too. i could hear kims voice loud and clear, and i could smell and taste it all. i felt like i was in a barbecue disneyland, and it ain't right to my taste, neither. but damn, i could do with a few good ribs right now. marlena

I LOVED it! ate there about 6 months ago, thought it was like eating in europe, in france, loved the cheeseboard, and of course: the foie gras, the fish with chorizo, the bread......really loved it. marlena

not a restaurant in the el bulli definition, but a fabulous eating and full of barcelona life experience, truly yummy, and lively, is el quim de la boqueria, in la boqueria market. there are a number of good tapas bars in the market, pinxto comes to mind, but i love el quim de la boqueria for its fried artichokes, its aubergine tortilla, its dishes of eggs covered with baby squid or tiny little fish (eels?) sort of a fishy huevos ranchers, though no tomatoes. lots of garlic. yum. i like tomato bread to go along with whatever i'm eating. and alcohol for breakfast, of course: perhaps some wine would be good but i went for beer. tell them i sent you, after i went there a few times they pulled out a handful of business cards and the cards turned out to be from foodie colleagues in california/ny. on the other hand they might not remember me. but they did tell me that i spoke spanish/catalan well and i didn't have the heart to tell them that its only when the subject is food and ordering a meal, can I wax lyrical. anyhow the market is fantastic, so you must go and go and go again, and when you're there, eat at le quim. also antonios in the back is a proper restaurant that serves funky traditional food. i ate some meatballs there that still make me cry and try to remember what was in them, how can i reproduce them.

i forgot to mention to remove and discard lime halves from the marinade before you add the marinade to the pan for sauce. enjoy! x marlena ps yesterday i made miso and tofu soup for dinner. chicken broth heated with diced tofu, then with some thinned white miso stirred in. scatter with sliced green onions and eat in a big bowl with a spoon. feel healthy. tomorrow i feel a nice chicken paprikash coming on.

Vietnamese-ish Lime Chicken with Bamboo Shoots and Savoy Cabbage Make the caramel and keep it on hand to add a luscious depth to many vietnamese dishes, such as long simmered caramel pork. This makes about half a cup of caramel. To make the caramel: In a heavy bottomed pan heat 1/2 cup sugar over a medium even heat until the sugar melts and turns golden. While the sugar is melting, stir it every so often so it goldens evenly. And also while it is cooking, bring about half a cup of water to the boil. it will evaporate a bit; you will use 1/3 cup of it. When the sugar is melted and golden, working quickly, take it off the heat and add the 1/3 cup of boiling water slowly. it will sputter and be scarey, so stay out of the way. stir it if you can with a wooden spoon so that the sugar caramel dissolves. sometimes i have chunks of a sugary substance ie not all of it is dissolved; then i return it to the stove and a medium heat for a few moments, cover and leave to dissolve hopefully. you want the liquid to get lightly browned, well kind of golden brown, but if it goes just that little bit too far it becomes bitter. Now for the rest of the dish: To serve 2 people, double it if you want to serve 4 4 chicken thighs, bones removed but skin attached 2 stalks lemongrass, peeled of its hard outsides and thinly sliced 2 tablespoons above caramel About 1/2 teaspoon chinese or vietnamese 5 spice, plus a little extra, as desired when you are stir frying juice of 1 lime, and save the rinds to pop into the marinade too, for their scent 1 tablespoon sugar 2 cloves garlic, chopped or sliced about 1 tablespoon chopped fresh ginger 2 or more, to taste, tablespoons light soy sauce (or half soy sauce and half fish sauce), or to taste 1 tablespoon vegetable oil 1 carrot, diced 1/2 onion, diced 1/2 smallish to medium sized savoy (curly leafed) cabbage, diced About 3 tablespoons chicken broth, or as desired Cut the boned chicken thighs into 1 inch sliced strips and then each strip into several pieces so that you have chunks with skin attached. it might be easiest if they are partially frozen. combine the chicken with the lemongrass, caramel, five spice, lime juice, lime shells, sugar, half the garlic, half the ginger, about half the soy sauce/fish sauce, and set it aside, covered, to marinate for several hours in the refrigerator. when ready to prepare, remove chicken from refrigerator. heat wok or heavy large nonstickish (such as calphalon) frying pan, and add the vegetable oil; stir fry the carrot and onion with the reserved garlic and ginger, then remove to a pan, and add the cabbage and stir fry for a few minutes to wilt; add the chicken broth and cook together for a minute or two longer. Remove to pan with the onion and carrots. heat the pan again, and remove the chicken from the marinade. save the marinade to make a sauce with it. wipe the chicken pieces if you like, i did n't bother. place the chicken pieces skin side down on the hot pan and let them sizzle and brown, over medium highish heat; the fat should render out of the skin but if it doesn't, add a little extra oil to the pan to encourage browning. when chicken is lightly browned and dark in some places, pour in the reserved marinade, cook a minute or so, then add the reserved vegetables and their jucies and cook together. if mixture is too liquidy, cook over a high heat for several minutes. if it is too dry, add a little more chicken broth. to really concentrate the juices without overcooking chicken and vegetables, remove them to serving platter and reduce the juices in pan to an almost essence. you don't want to thicken these juices with cornstarch/cornflour as if you were making a chinese stir fry. while it is stir frying togehter at the end, season with a sprinkling of five spice if desired, and also a drizzle of soy/fish sauce. serve right away. hope you guys enjoy, the recipe is directly from my notes, so not tested and retested as for a cookbook or column. but i can promise i'll be making it again one of these days. i was going to serve it with a watercress puree but ended up putting watercress in the leftover fried rice the next day.

lemon lemon lemon lemon lemon. from sicily. delish. also lime, good ol roses lime is okay, though it has too much jellied stuff and not enough limey stuff. still, love it. marlena

Dear Blovie, Carrot-T, and Toliver, love you guys! and Toliver you are so right, need a new agent, and in fact don't have an agent at all in uk. was dumped by my former agent (jamie o's agent, only interested in lifestyle tv now, and counting the money from jamie of course). sigh. i shall be carrying my phone and pager at all times, in case anyone in telly land has a place for little cookin marlena.....just pick up that phone. (and wouldn't an egullet-tv or egullet-radio be cool!) in the meantime, my vietnamese chicken was divine. i haven't written it up yet, but basically it was a marinade of vietnamese caramel, light soy, lime juice and zest, five spice, ginger, garlic, and lemon grass. i used thicken thighs boned and cut into strips with the skin still on. stir fried it so it got dark and crusty and gorgeous, and added bamboo shoots, diced carrot, garlic and ginger, and half a head of diced savoy cabbage. a little bit of stock as i did the stir frying. the edges were all gooey and gorgeous. if anyone wants recipe when i get it tapped out, just ask and i'll email it along. x marlena

perhaps fair, but perhaps not. i live so far out in the countryside and you never know with the trains etc, its a big shlep. and i often don't know ahead of time if i will have a deadline that prevents me from getting away and devoting a whole day to going up to london. and you sound so cranky about it, that i think: there are lots of nice people to go to new tayeb with, and who value my company and know that sometimes I just can't get into town no matter how much i might want to.......... so have a great time at new tayeb, who wouldn't, but i'll be with people who are more flexible and value my company. x marlena

I've been trying intermittently to break into food television my entire life. I get very close esp with BBC and then bang: im a girl, bang: i have an american accent (apparently sounds cheap) and on and on and ond. but you know i was born to cook in public, and i'm funny! and i am enthusiastic! and one of these days please god while i still have teeth and can eat! i was recently speaking with a television producer who came to one of my classes and said: you are an aquired taste, not mainstream like everyone else, and food television wants exactly that: mainstream. too intellectual and it ain't gonna wash in the midwest. when i watch foodnetwork by and large i think: ick i can do better, i can do better, but then the producer said: thats the point. they don't want better, they want to sell advertising to the masses and the masses are mediocre. anyhow, i'm goin into my kitchen to braise some vietnamese caramel chicken and drown my sorrows in bamboo shoots with a little chicken broth and watercress puree on the side. its that kind of autumn evening...... marlena

I ate at Ouest and thought Chef Hawksworth creative in all the ways I want a chef to be, and thoughtful, as in: I had the feeling that whatever he was preparing for me was for ME, and his dishes just sublime, there is no other word for it: sublime. i remember especially a warm saffron scented tomato tea. and a divine tomato gazpacho chockful of cilantro if i remember correctly. i'd love to go back, if only i had an excuse to go to vancouver! i might just park myself in West and stay the duration, though i might wait until next tomato season as british columbia tomatoes are too too divine. in the meantime i get the odd press release of menus etc and follow the flavours vicariously. cheers, marlena

marin or marin county bagels are also very good. i forget their name exactly but they are an offshoot of house of bagels. many supermarkets in marin carry them.......... marlena

It certainly was........"The Day of the Jackal"

house of bagels is fun to watch the bagels a boiling......and there is a guy behind the counter who is very entertaining in a san fran kinda way.....and i like the bagels as long as they are fresh but they're not new york bagels, except on the really good side they ARE small enough to be bagel-ish not the huge puffy feh things..... i like house of bagels! meanwhile, amanda berne wrote in last weeks sf chronicle about a deli and i think she mentioned that the bagels were v good. i think its got a name something like east west deli, on polk street or environs....check out the sfgate website, it was last weeks paper i think....... marlena

just wanted to add: Jack and Jill: what terrific hosts. un grand merci, and I can still taste the utter refreshment of the apples fresh from the tree, pressed into sweet tart fragrant juice. also, the chocolate challah was amazing. the day felt as if we were players in a movie, is there a screenwriter out there to write the script? it needs to be done--see the photos and i'm sure you'll agree! marlena

yesterday we hopped into the car and drove 160 miles EACH way, en route to Jackal10's annual apple-pressing (and feasting). I"m going to set the scene: but first, first this is what we did on the way. We stopped near standsted in Mountfitchet Castle and Norman village which is nice in the way that these recreations are nice but what is fabulous is the collection of rescue animals they have living on the premises and the fact they sell bags of food to feed them with. they have the oldest dear in captivity (dolly, 1986). all of the deer liked me a great deal, including sweetpea who grabbed the bag of food from my hands, and also there was the fattest sheep in capitvity, lamby annie. for her, i had to buy a new bag of food. i enjoyed climbing the hills and being followed by lots of deer and sheep and ducks and geese and chickens. i'd like to be remembered that way, like a little wild animal goddess. anyhow, this was such a wonderful start to a beautiful day. we parked in a field and walked through the trees to Jack's apple pressing. It was like walking into a village celebration several hundreds of years ago in that the celebrating was taking place surrounded by gardens and everything was a hive of activity: the pizza oven was going full force with people concocting their own pizzas, and the apples were whizzing and pressing by a team that consisted to a large extent of a couple of little boys, little hard working little boys who were soooooo excited by the whole thing, throughout the day they were climbing trees, picking apples, shlepping heavy baskets of picked apples, whizzing and pressing, and then pouring it into bottles, and every so often a little fellow would nip over to the table carrying a glass jug filled with sparklingly fresh apple juice. he's cry out: apple juice is served, and we'd drink a big glass, and it was DIVINE. Jack had loaves of his breads, which were spectacular. especially the onion and raisin one and i kept thinking: having a bread maker nearby must make like very nice. when a person is not a breadmaker by nature (me) one can only admire the passion and skills of someone who is (Jack). His pizza dough was lovely, but I got a little distressed making my pizza so when Dan Lepard arrived, I commandeered him and in his good nature he rolled out a nice thin crust from moi. I topped it with a little tomato, olive oil and cheese, and a lotta garlic. oh and a whiff of chorizo. just a little. It was soooo good: dough by Jack (a hellova dough maker) rolled and baked by dan (a hellova baker) and eaten under a tree by myself (a good little eater). Every so often Jack brought something new and amazing to the table. the tarte au blettes was the best ever. i had to close my eyes with the first bite, the first buttery crusty outsides delicately sweetness insides tarte, i had to close my eyes because i was purring. i had to close my eyes cause i didn't want any distractions from the joy of that tarte. i wrote to my friend in Nice this morning telling her about the tarte cause Nice is a tarte au blettes kinda place and she's often said she never had one to knock her socks off. I told her my socks were firmly gone. I was a little late for the roast pork, but managed to snatch a few bites here and there, and i also snagged a few morsels of fatty bits for two lovely fat cocker spaniels, lucy and nuooshy. they said: thanks thank s thanks in that doggy way. they licked my hand. well it was covered in pork fat. in a little while, jack brought out two magnificent beef roasts, gorgeously black and blue: they had cooked in the aga slowly then flashed a bit in the outside oven, and to say they were the best meat experience of my life may not be exaggerating at all. I can't think of a better one. my only regret was that i had to leave just as the second one was coming out of the oven. also that i didn't have a taste of the cheddar which looked magnificent. i suppose i could get in my car for the 160 mile each way drive, but as jack said: no leftovers! a word must be said about Jack's pizza oven: it is huge and roasts meat beautifully but its also shaped like a little house and looks very sweet. And the top is covered with earth and a bed of thyme plants, the warmth from the oven encourages the luxurious growth of the thyme. and i guess its convenient too for making those pizze! There were about a hundred or so people millling about happily, through the orchards, and the garden and the kitchen the most amazing kitchen: huge and looks out onto the garden, all i wanted to do was come and cook. i thought: it must be so cozy in the winter when its raining or even in the snow, the aga all warm and the room so airy, and the big table in the middle so inviting. jack took us through his gardens, the apples, the pears, the white raspberries and golden beetroots, the rainbow chard and purple plums, the last of the basil and the climbing vines of pumpkin.......... Mitchell Wood House is like an alternative universe, almost a wonderland of growing things and cooking passions, and sociability, and it was such a pleasure to be at Jack--and Jill's!--annual celebration. I hope we behaved ourselves well enough to be invited back. on the way home we nibbled on the 3 plums that I scrumped from the tree....(okay okay it was four, and two apples. 160 miles is a long way.) please forgive me, they were delicious. Marlena and Alan

oy, why have i been so distracted that i didn't pay attention to your blog until today? its so gorge-eous! i feel very luck indeed to be coming to your apple pressing and as we have only recently been bitten by the gardening bug, husband wants to roll around and romp in your rainbow chard! two questions: what time is it? if we don't hear from you soon--i'm leaving house this afternoon for weekend--we'll show up around 1pm and hope its the right time.......and......question two: do you eat trayf? (as i have a fabulous jar of lardo wrapped around chestnuts in a honeyed sauce from tuscany and it is divine, and would love to offer it up to you as gift. please tell me if you don't eat this sort of gift, or if you prefer this sort of gift stay far away from you and yours!). can hardly wait to come to your apple pressing, so many different types of apples, and we'll tell you all about our apple forays to wisley, and to west dean, and we are becoming the soft of garden visitors who just munch our way though the acres, like eager rabbits, nibbling and nibbling. i hope people don't start putting up fences to keep US out though i would completely understand if they did. see you sunday! ps i can hardly wait to see what you have for dinner tonight! x marlena