marlena spieler

For me it was growing old... I can remember, in my youth, being able to eat tomatoes off the vine when my father grew them and my now-ex-husband would make homemade tortillas with bacon-laden refried beans that I would FILL with fresh cilantro. Somewhere in my mid/late twenties, the chemistry in my body changed and that is when the cilantro oversion occurred. I used to love the stuff and now it even smells rotten. When I cook Moroccan for other people, and I know the dish needs cilantro, I have to have others chop it for me - if I try to chop it myself, the smell lingers on my hands for DAYS and makes me nauseous. At the World of Flavors Conference, I started walking towards a table when my stomach began to reel - sure enough, I turned around and a few feet away were POUNDS of cilantro being chopped. So, to answer your question, nope - I'm not going to try the Steingarten technique! actually, carolyn, you could be allergic to it! if it makes you feel so horrible, and it came on after you had been exposed to it a number of times, sounds like an allergy to me! which means you don't need silly people like me telling you to try the steingarten method of getting to like it! yay!

my, testy, testy, aren't we! i shall now leave your foodblog and go sit in the sun and lick my privates. i'm behind schedule already. madeleine

Dear Madeleine, Good to meet you! Whenever Ms. Melkor gets up from her laptop I like to sit on the keyboard and e-mail my friends. Meeow, Rosie yes, yes, yes, I LOVE sitting on marlena's laptop! I have already totally screwed up the keyboard and she had to buy another one! Plus, I changed her email password (the b***h, please forgive me, had the name of a former kitty of hers and my jealous heart could not take it). i love tuna juice too. do you ever drink the melkors cappuccinos? I think they should draw a cats head on their foam. perhaps you could do one sometime to give them the idea. i think it would look wonderful. marlena has a grilled cheese sandwich maker that puts hello kitty faces on each quarter. shes really a good cat-mother, not a b***h at all, i was just so jealous).

does anyone know of a fabulous new york restaurant, preferably in the grammercy park area, or east village, though further afield is fine, that serves a marvelous dazzling menu, full of utterly delightful surprises and sensual thrills, that would also have enough food of this nature to make up a vegetarian menu? my daughter and her boyfriend want to celebrate anniversary, and he is a vegetarian. i know, i know, i've tried cooking bacon and roasting a chicken in his presence but it hasn't worked. now i just want to find a place to dazzle the kids. daughter is a cheese fanatic, loves truffles, they both love vegetables and pastas and whatever is unusual and spectacular. daughter has a perpetual hankering for good clam chowder, too, and i thought about mix, but i think we want something a bit more........well i haven't been to mix. so i don't know. i want to arrange ahead of time as best as i can, too, so that they are treated with great care and attention. you know, isn't it wonderful to go to a restaurant and feel important? I love it, and love arranging it for others when i can....... thanks,

Dear Texas and Rosie Melkor, You are utterly gorgeous, and rosie: i think i might be related to you! we could be sisters! same white ruff of fluff. i am totally in love with my owners (as they call themselves, they haven't cottoned on that i'm the one running the show). you look as if you are too. meeow, meowwww, me-ow, madeleine spieler-mclaughlan ps: my food blog: today i ate a big fat bug. went deliciously with the crunchy accompaniment of iams chicken flavor. my superb tipple was a saucer of full fat milk, the champagne of dairy beverages.

True, but "15" isn't a pub, and given that Jamie is banging on about "Know your source" etc, one wonders if this means that he has as much credibility at the restuarant as in the case of his "They should stop feeding the kids shit", whilst selling it for Sainsbury's? i know, i hate hypocrisy.

yes, buying food from the back of the car with no questions asked. old pub tradition, i used to go down to my local and some guy once came in with half a cow and started cutting up steaks on the counter. jamie is very personable, very charismatic, but as far as food knowledge in a growing sense of any depth, forget it. he's cute. but he has taken the place of other food writers and broadcasters who actually have indepth knowledge, and there are other restaurants with good food and attitude, for much less money. i also don't like the whole feeling of if you are over a certain age then what are you doing with this young, happening, modern food (and why aren't you at home making sponge pudding with delia). ageism and food: alive and well and stupid. i went to a party at jamies fifteen and the drinks (cocktails) were really wonderful. don't know if they are on regular menu. as far as moby's vaguely italian meal costing more than a flight to bologna, hear hear. i was once invited to lunch at river cafe and decided instead to go for lunch and shopping in italy. my friends at r.c. had lunch, i flew to genoa, ate lunch, did a great shop, and came back. I had change, they did not. (okay, i went ryannair). but still...........

oh me oh my, poor mudpuppie and carolyn tillie: cilantro! my beloved cilantro, is your nemesis! I can never dazzle either of you with a plate of something wonderful, and by the way, buried in cilantro. can you not try the jeffrey steingarten method of tasting 8 times? my step daughter did this and became a cilantro lover and her life is now full and fullfilled, at least cilantro wise. i love it so and can't imagine other people not being able to enjoy....... here is my culinary hit list: chitterlins and their french cousin, andouillettes......... christmas pudding margarine, horrible fats, anything cooked with them and i hate salad cream/miracle whip too. with a passion! but how could anyone dislike a vegetable? (okay, maybe i'm not a big fan of the parsnip or brussels sprout.......).......

Testicles!!! Some say Yum! Before I met him, when my husband was training for his accounting career in london, he went from business to business doing the books etc and brushing up his skills. one of his employers was greek cypriot, and paid him not in money, but in pigs testicles! When I asked: but no salary? he didn't give you money? Husband answered: no, I just loved the pigs testicles, couldn't get enough! (serious obsession issues; he went through a stage of victoria sponge obsession, too, one year. and has been known to go on a three meal a day beetroot-a-thon periodically).

a curious remark in lieu of the whole mad cow episode in european history, borne out of bad animal husbandry as a means for profit and cheap meat in britain, then exported to the rest of the world in feed once that became outlawed here in britain. America has not had mad cow until recently, and then it has so far, thank god, only been one cow (and that imported from canada, no doubt fed on the imported from britain grain). and when that one cow was discovered, it was dealt with promptly, which is not what happened in britain nor even in Europe...until recently i hasten to add, at this point in time a revolution on animal husbandry has occurred to a large degree because of mad cow, and then foot and mouth. anyhow, when i was inspecting several prosciutto makers in Parma and they realized I was American, one of my "hosts" took me aside and said: "You know, your USDA protects you extremely well, they have very stringent policies and standards, higher than anyone elses." in france, and italy, i always feel i am eating meat that was raised with love, because i have visited so many farms there and see the small-scale production. but that is a tradition rather than food hygiene standard, and in fact, many of the traditional methods of farming and artisanal food making is under threat from the EU standardizing of food hygiene laws. how do you feel about foie gras? thanks for your time on this forum,

emily lucchetti is a star baker. when i first met her and tasted the little titbits she had prepared i think i proposed marriage never mind that i am totally straight and married, and i believe she is too. but could you imagine having someone in your very own home just rustle up these delicacies....... come to think of it that is exactly what i do, rustle up delicacies, but mine are savoury. very savoury. and sometimes. sour. and increasingly lately, alas, very very bitter. not my food, just my mood. anyhow back to the star of the show. the book. whilst i haven't worked from this book her first one when she was the pastry chef at stars was a long-lived fave on my bookshelf, and i am not a sweets-maker. emily lucchetti has a very good attitude and it rubs off on the reader. suddenly you start thinking: yeah, a layer of chocolate ganache and well, maybe a little bit of.........passion fruit sorbet? in my kitchen, right now, that sort of thing........

I've always felt bad mentioning it because everyone seems to love Zuni, so i figured i had just hit an offnight, or several offnights or something was wrong with me. but I've had about three meals at Zuni and three mediocre meals at Zuni. I didn't even like the atmosphere because i felt that the wait service had decided we definately weren't cool enough to be special (and the whole pleasure of eating out is being special......well and eating fab food, and getting a buzz, and not doing the dishes, lots of pleasures i guess). I haven't had the burger there which everyone raves about and which i must try one of these days. and i'm allergic to shellfish so didn't eat oysters either. cheeseplate: ho hum. chicken: sorry no somersaults but that might be because i'm a bit of a chicken-roasting queen myself. otherwise i don't remember anything at our table any of the meals, except the pall of dissappointment. and i wasn't even paying for any of my visits, which, even though i try to be objective, sometimes influences my feelings. but i wanted my hosts to have a great time on their buck and the food, atmosphere, kinda let us all down.

Pho! Sacramento has very good pho places. right on broadway near the tower theatre is a lovely little place: pho bac. and tower theatre has great films too. if you have a chance, though, head out to little saigon which is in a characterless stretch of stockton blvd, all vietnamese (and a little mex), endless rows of restaurants and a whole shopping center. there is a banh mi shop that i always mean to stop at. i second the bon air market for sandwiches. i had a liverwurst on wholewheat there every day for about a year, once. and then i moved away.

when i lived in crete, they only added potatoes when they didn't have enough eggplants, ie in the winter. in spring sometimes there was a layer of artichoke slices which made me very happy. yes, the spicing: i also like more oregano, cinnamon, cumin and allspice than is normally added, but it depends on where you eat it. if you eat it on an island that had a spicy past, voila, you'll get these wonderful spices. and if you eat it at my house, voila: you'll get these lovely spices. and lots of em.

moussaka, i've always had it with lamb, or lamb and beef. moussaka is an interesting dish. the version we most commonly know of layered eggplant, sometimes another veg such as potatoes, zucchini, artichokes, etc, and a topping of bechamel and cheese, dates only from around the turn of the twentieth century when a passion for french cuisine sort of wafted by: hence the bechamel topping. otherwise, moussaka is a traditional dish of eggplant, onions, tomatoes in a stew, something layered, sometimes stewed, sometimes with lots of other vegetables added, and stretches from the balkans through turkey and the middle east. i love probably every version known to humanity.

when i hear such phrases, i shiver with glee. am i the only one to find the word: "gelee" very sexy? savoury or sweet, its so light and full of flavour possibilities yet nothing to weigh one down....sheer soaring flavour, kinda like flying without an airplane. the idea of the winter fruits, glazed, geleed......so simple so complex so exquisitely elegant. i don't think there are other cultures who gelee and glaze so beautifully.........at least not on this side of the english channel. ah, but anyone who is in san francisco and has a hankerin for pate des fruits, elizabeth faulkner at citizen cake makes the most divine pate des fruits, especially the passion fruit ones. AND she has a cute little doggie too! (yorkie).

yes yes yes, i'm brave enough to stand up and say: Let's hear it for the poodles! Poodles of the world, Stand up for yourselves (and they do stand up very fetchingly). As for French Paradox, sorry: I should have made some indication that my tongue was in my cheek when i mentioned the whole paradox thing. I'm sure eating lots of vegetables helps the whole diet thing too, along with the walking and general energeticness of life. the whole variety thing, and not eating butter on their bread for dinner.....

i can't cope with bugs, brains and bugs and hate myself for this vestige of squeamishness. chicken feet, calves foot, cockscombs all seem very pedestrian to me. not wacky, perhaps, but fairly unusual was the bowl of sheep-eye (well sheeps head, i was given the eye as a sign of friendship i think) soup with egg-lemon was a bit of a shocker when it was placed in front of me. But very delicious! rich, smooth, subtle........still, the texture did put me off, and next time i'll eat it without the eye.

At a recent conference I attended, Marion Burros made an emphatic statement that Britain had no advertising for Childrens foods (ie aimed at children, high fat, high sugar, chains, etc) (not sure if it was just for television or other media too that the claim was made). This is emphatically NOT TRUE. Britain has a problem with junk food aimed at kids too, and childrens diets in britain is not something to emulate. Regardless, I can't stand really slopping reporting. I did cry out and say it was wrong--involuntarily, I just can't abide by false statements and claims--but was told not to interrupt, that questions and answers would come later. Of course my question was never answered. I thought: how could she base a whole talk with this being a goodly part of the premise if she didn't even bother to check it out. I don't like junk food adverts for kids either, but don't pretend that it doesn't exist outside of America and don't make statements that are blantantly wrong.

list of favourite sandwiches: peanut butter and marmite--yes yes yes! grilled cheddar and kosher dill or even sweet dill.... Sharp cheddar and brandsten pickle with a handful of cilantro, slice of tomato potato chips added to any sandwich esp egg salad and cress pan bagnat what could be better breakfast sandwich: buttered sourdough or rye toast, topped with slices of garlic or onion. this is a breakfast to wake up to. strong coffee on the side. tuna with red pepper mayonnaise. husband likes soft bacon sandwich on soft buttered bread (so that butter melts). i being the yank, prefer the bacon crisp, and sandwiched with lots of tomato, lettuce, and mayo. olive, green onion and egg with mayo. i'm so hungry and we have no bread in the house at all. in fact, we have nothing except two huge rutabagas (husband eccentric shopper, must go self). but i have a big round of pizza dough rising, and a hunk of smoked ricotta cheese given to me the other day by a little man from calabria who was about 4 feet tall and about a hundred years old. i think i might soon have the makings of some kinda sandwich. yum.

oh, you guys, it sounds like your welcoming of year of the monkey, soooo good. i did treat myself to a selection of longevity buns. and enjoyed a very divine lion dance. gung hay fat choy to you all!

i like floyds hot lime sauce based on key lime and habanero chillies. floyd was a publisher who was once going to publish one of my books, but the publishing deal didn't work out. . the hot sauce on the other hand: fabuloso. not sure where you buy it, but anyone interested could probably contact the publisher : bay books in san fran, the guys name floyd. tell em marlena (roving feast in sf chron) sent you. meanwhile, loved the whole jewish mother food crazienss shtick, oh, why do my people have such meshuganah attitudes about food, and why can't they just enjoy, enjoy? my mother--and father, too, and well, basically all of my immediate relatives--think that anything that comes from my kitchen is poison. the reason being something other than the food i am sure. also because i use fresh herbs which parents are very suspicious of, and also olive oil which is also suspicious. they can cope with soy sauce because for some reason chinese food seems jewish to all except father who grew up with terrifying stories of what goes into the chinese kitchen. we on the other hand grew up knowing that anything with soy sauce, or hot sauce (we grew up in california) was the way to go and a definate improvement on anything else that was cookin in mom's kitchen. so you know, i always want to feed those i love, but with my family i should just give up. and i've written a pile of cookbooks. buy oh, still it hurts! if only they could love my food like others do........ i've even caught my mother telling my (grown) daughter: don't eat your mothers food, its not healthy. something ain't healthy, ma, but i don't think the food has anything to do with it. never mind. grandmother was fabulous cook. my uncle is still a legendary eater. and my aunt is a total legend in her own right, famous for her leftovers. she cannot leave a restaurant without leftovers and can't let anyone else. sometimes you might drive past their house and see a take away bag tied to their front door--friends are leaving their own doggie bags for her. she brings the little bits and pieces out for very eclectic lunchs. good fun. i think she will eat anything, a trait i admire in people anyhow two little titbits about grinding fresh horseradish for those knaidlach: 1. Use a gas mask. I discovered this trick after some very gassy student riots in Berkeley. 2. Or Forget horseradish entirely and enjoy your matzo balls with chile salsa. Used to do this at a cafe I once ran, we had a different homemade hot sauce every day, and fresh matzo balls every day, and kinda got addicted to the combination. Its very yummy, in the chicken soup too. use zchug for a truly jewish ta'am in the israeli eastern sort of way.

Perhaps eating with doggies in cafes and restaurants, instead of red wine etc etc, is the answer to the French Paradox?! Maybe the doggy thing is the missing piece of the puzzle. Personally, I think everything is that little bit tastier with a poodle sitting next to me........

ps: i've visited the sonoma foie gras people too and although their birds were living at a different location from their office, was totally well impressed with them, with their level of training and devotion and skills. and of course: I love their livers!

i think that anyone who thinks that foie gras is inhumane should spend some time with foie gras goose farmers in france. i've never seen such brilliant animal husbandry, and as far as cruelty, i mean to me--we're eating these animals. so we have to accept that right there its a hard thing if you love animals as i do. anyhow, the goose farms i have visited (in southwest france) had such a free-range lifestyle in idylic setting, with the force-feeding or heavy-eating phase only about the last 2 weeks of their lives. before that, its gorgeous sun-dappled fields, succulent green grass, happy farm stuff. and even during the stuffing phase, the farmer massaged their tummies so lovingly that i wanted to line up with the geese and say: me next! geese naturally stuff themselves before a long flight. their livers get fat. and not diseased as is often portrayed by media. no, if they stop eating like this, their livers go back to normal again. foie gras was originally developed by the ancient eygptians who noticed that when geese stuffed themselves like this, boy, did their livers taste good! i suggest an excellent book about foie gras, writting by michael ginor, published by wiley books.