marlena spieler
-
Posts
1,109 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Store
Help Articles
Posts posted by marlena spieler
-
-
Chiens interdits!!!!!???????
aw, takes the fun outta havin a coffee..........
by the way, for better coffee, peets style coffee, go to rose bakery in the 9th and buy a bag of union roasters (get their revolution blend or see what other coffees they have on stock at the moment. really great coffee!).
-
GARLIC!
of course. life cannot proceed without it. my life anyway.
-
nights and jobs like that....well, you can't make em up. and you gotta leave town afterwards pretty much sure thing.
my catering days (totally illegal-kitchen catering days i might add) were filled with such merry tales. once all of our food got eaten by deer! (staff left if for about 2 minutes on top of our catering vans. beautiful trays laid out and eaten down to the last little leaf, by a gathering of marin country deer.
then there was the time that,catering a wedding, my client (also rich parent of family friends) asked me to do the event and demurred on a contract saying that surely i could trust her. big mistake. i was left without enough money to pay for the fresh flowers for the big wedding cake (fresh fruit, creme chantilly, crushed praline, divine) so i sent staff into the park across the street to pick gaily coloured nasturtium. the cake looked more gorgeous than ever, and bitch-client agreed finally, it was the first thing she liked at all, and said she especially liked the texture of the little crunchy bits (?) and the lovely scrolls-curlique marks drawn in the whipped cream(?). I didn't know what she was talking about and a closer inspection revealed that tiny snails had rambled out of the flowers and crawled all over the cake!
oh, i could go on, such as the time i had to stash three big salmon in my bathtub on ice and my cats nibbled off their fins etc. and i had to camoflage the salmon with well made mayo and cucumber slices. or the time ....no no no i can't go on. don't even ask about the bone doctor convention, or the conference of llama owners and the vats of spilt spicy peanut dip.
but lets say that your image of your (fired) bartender on the dance floor with a bottle of booze in his hands rings uncomfortable and familiar bells in my memory.
thanks for your tale......and i wonder why i don't cater any longer!
-
i went to a very festive and swank party in a restaurant in london's chinatown, imperial china. to get there we walked through a doorway and then over a little bridge over a creek filled with koi fish.
i ate: lots of roast suckling pig. and adorable little dumplings shaped like fish and then steamed. a little bit of peking duck.
and watched chinese acrobats! and saw three performances of the lion dance, i love a good lion dance. drank 3 mai tais. and had to catch the train home so alas, had to give the wee-hours karaoke a miss.
anyone out there in paris? i heard that the tour d'eiffel is to be illuminated in red, the chinese colour for good luck and prosperity!
gung hay fat choy, egullies!
-
several years ago at epiphany i was visiting my late friend, lionel poilane. he gave me one of his galette des rois. before then i wasn't really fond of pastry, strange but true, i was more of the filling person. lionel said: i'm going to give you one of my galette des rois, and i got excited thinking about the almond filling, shame on me. and lionel said: its all about the pastry not the filling, so i'm giving you one that is not filled at all!
And that pastry was one of the best pastries ever, so buttery and crisp on the outside buttery and tender within. i immediately knew what the fuss of puff pastry, indeed any kind of pastry, was all about. it was an epiphany in many ways.
the galette des rois was fabulous. and of course, i'll always think of my dear friend whenever i pass by the poilane windows this time of year.
-
I wrote a column (in San Francisco Chronicle) quite a while back in which I gave a Sound of Music Party. To be honest, many of my parties end up a sound of music party if given half the chance, but this one was with the whole thing: taking roles, re-enacting the show, singing our little hearts out. my secret ambition is to do it in salzberg. but meanwhile.....
i wanted to serve fammenkuche, the thin pizza-like pastries of Alsace, but had bad results in my testing. (i have since heard that alsace, in addition to have the most michellin starred restaurants in france, also is the home of the new trendy food: sushi made from sauerkraut. i have no comment until i try it myself).
i served sauerkraut, and though i make a super schnitzl, i really pride myself on my shcnitzl though i make it once or twice a decade, i made spaetzl with wild mushroom cream sauce which surprisingly was very good with the sauerkraut. I think the recipe in the paper was only for the sauerkraut, but any spaetzl, porcini creamy sauce, and sauerkraut should be hunky dory.
and Rachel's cake sounds delish.........though i think eclairy things with lots of cream would be good too if not completely authentic.
wouldn't it be wonderful to have an egullet sound of music, omigod, i would travel for that. and we'd have to promise no fighting about who gets to be who.
-
Todah, Rabah,
I am soooo interested in Israeli olive oil and promoting it. when i lived in the galilee a million years ago we had wonderful olive trees and made beautiful oil. every so often i come upon excellent israeli olive oil but have a hard time finding it in england or usa.
as a food writer and broadcaster, i could like to at some point, organize a press trip to israel, to introduce food writers from abroad to the excellence of so many israeli products and ideas: the olive oil and fabulous cheeses, such as feta (which is sold and adored in california). if you know of anyone who can help out, let me know. otherwise, i'll just keep my eyes open and one of these days it will happen.
i'll definately check out Taboon in new york, as i go through there every couple of months. could you email me and let me know when they DO open?
do you know murray's felafel on 1st and about 16th? i think he makes super zchug, and his felafel is very good too, and his soup.
-
House of Bagels out on Geary makes bagels that are pretty close to what New York Bagels USED to be.
definately, yeah!
and go early in the morning when they are boiling and baking, and you can watch the guys boiling next door, and eat the bagels hot and chewy and fragrant fresh out of the oven.
last trip to new york ( i live in england) i brought back a dozen onion, garlic, everything, and plain bagels from ess-a-bagel on 1st ave which are pretty good. i stashed them in my freezer, and alas, i have just eaten the last one. whattami gonna do now?
they have bagels here, but they are not nice bagels. i'd better stick with toasted pain poilane for breakfast, pain poilane being the most wonderful bread i know.
x
marlena
-
oh my friends, my dark chocolate bordeaux-loving friends, i am not alone! I LOVE bordeaux, dark choc please.
with dark choc california brittle, or light milky choc california brittle, a second in line........
but now that i know about candied chocolate covered ginger...........
by the way, am i the only one who loves to sniff and smell the box after all the chocolate has been eaten? mmmmmmmmmm
-
wow, i thought i was the only person who did eurovision song contest parties!
only problem is that i can't get people to pay proper attention to the food, they get so involved in the music/etc.
marlena
ps remember sonia, and better the devil you know........that was a pure eurovision moment. oh, but there were so many, after abba, i mean. last years turkish entry was belley-swirlingly fab, and i did love dana international singing his/her heart out for israel......
-
ah, mrs woman, the fish and chips of the north are beautiful it is true, you are so right, though i might carry on and on and on about the east end being the fish n chip spirital if not material homeland......
its funny because there are places ooop north where fish and chips are the only good things to eat. too many places sadly. but they are soooooo good there. even when made ahead, and soggy, etc. and even when the malt vinegar is not real malt vinegar.
my husband worked in a caff in morecom (sp?) when he was student and waxes lyrical about the fish and chips of that area during his university days at lancaster. and when my daughter lived in liverpool, fish and chips were pretty much the only good thing to eat.
and i've found the fish and chips north of the border, up in scotland absolutely gorgeous, no doubt because the potatoes are divine, the fish excellent, and the oil just properly disgusting. and because the weather is cold, and because we are usually very very hungry.
as for me, tonight, i'm making hungkar begendi, the turkish mix of aubergine, bechamel and cheese.
i've got a fridge full of aubergines thanks to a big shop on ridley road market last week. nothing i like to do more than potter around in the kitchen with a buncha aubergines.
-
oh, one more little suggestion:
if you're in islington, there is a wonderful afghan restaurant there, i forget its name. cheap cheerful delish. unfortunately their bread is available only at night. i had a curry with pumpkint that was super.
oh course i also forget the name. but right on the main drag when it goes to the right (as you come out of angel).
x
marlena
-
[Off hand, do you know when the last 'authentically' Jewish East End chip shop survived until?
having been an east ender for fifteen years (and for the past 3 a boring hampshirite) the answer is.......
i don't know.
the east end changed so much. when i got there it was still bombed out from the war. i used to joke that there were three jews left in the east end and that when my daughter and myself moved, the number was reduced by two. i don't think i was far off though the east end, at least parts of it, are quite trendy these days, so i'm sure there are new jews here and there.
my favourite place when i was there, and i miss it desperately, was the cypriot place near our warehouse flat in poplar. but truthfully ALL of the chips shops were good, fish and chips was pretty much all that anyone ate, that and the occasional kebab, pie, and mcdonalds. eels not as popular as once were........but that peas porridge pretty rank after its been simmering too long, and also the "likker" or parsley sauce for the meat pieces kinda icky. but the fish and chips: mmmmmmmmmmm.
i like my fish light and crisply battered, totally tender and sweet fish inside, and my chips big and fat and kinda limp from a quick wrap up in paper.
and okay, malt vinegar and salt is the only way to go. but here is a confession of a yuppie fish and chips condiment: and its deliicous.
I sprinkle my fish and chips with truffle vinegar and flaked maldon sea salt.
Please don't tell anyone, especially anyone from the north.
and does anyone out there agree with me? fish and chips are just not the same without a bit o' ink from the now outlawed newspaper? maybe thats the flavour the truffles in the truffle vinegar replace for me??
-
i meant frying fish, not drying it. sorry........
-
As I understand it and have written in my Jewish Heritage Cookbook, the portugese jews brought the art of batter/crumbling and drying fish to britain, and a japanese foodwriter informed me that the portugese had in fact got this technique from the japanese (the portugese were great explorers at this point).
portugese jews, sephardic having originated in spain most likely but coming from holland due to the expulsion, made their way back to england after jew-free centuries (basically since the York massacres), anyhow portuguese jews settled in the east end of london. there is still a little cemetary there where if anyone answers the door, you can visit. anyhow, they brought the technique of frying the fish.
then when the east end filled up with jews from eastern europe etc and the beginnings of the sweat shops, the fish were paired with the fried potatoes and though i've heard english say it just made sense to fry them, i'm sure the french pommes frites were in inspiration. i mean, i find them inspiring at all times!
fried fish and chips caught on because it was filling, calorie filled to fuel and warm workers who were cold and exhausted, and they were wrapped in paper--old newspaper being free-- so that the workers could take the meal back to their work and not stop. also, the fact that it is pareve, that is, neither meat nor dairy which cannot be combined in kashrut, had a big effect in winning its popularity.
from the east end jews to the rest of britain this dish's popularity spread.
and i don't know about anybody else, but is it only me, or are fish and chips just not right outside of the UK?
-
ps: the east end was the jewish area.
ps ps: it was wrapped in paper (the original was newsprint) so that they didn't need to use a plate and could keep on working while they ate.
ps yet again: some people, my devoted eater of an uncle for instance, maintain that fish and chips without newsprint just doesn't taste the same!
-
interestingly enough, i just gave a talk in which i discussed the fact that fish and chips were not originally british, and in fact put it in one of my books. My observations reached a slightly different conclusion however. Apparently, Portuguese Jews making their way from Holland where they had settled from the persecution of the expulsion brought the art of frying battered fish from Partugal where they had brought the art of frying the fish as a variation of the Japanese tempura (according to a Japanese food writer friend). Anyhow, when the fried fish reached the east end of london, and all of the sweat shops of what was then (and still is somewhat) a garment district, they added the potatoes. They found that the combination of fried fish and fried potatoes provided the needed calories to feed the hungry workers. And, being fish and potatoes, there wasn't kashrut to worry about.
does anyone out there realize that british jews fry their gefilte fish?
-
Marlena who is married to A Scotsman replies:
och, you've not lived until you've had a good haggis! aye, every year we go to scotland to celebrate burns night, thats rohhhhbbbbbbbert burrrrrrrrrns night. we address the haggis, dance at the ceilidh and have a whisky-soaked time.
burns wrote the poem extoling the virtues of turning the odds and ends of the meat into something delicious, and when he died in 1796 the edinburgh literati honored his memory with this ritual feast, the piping of the haggis, drinking of whisky, and reciting of the poem "Ode to the Haggis"
if anyone should happen to be passing bridge of allan, in stirlingshire, the royal hotel do a festive robbie burrrrns weekend........the rooms are totally tartanized of course. and folks such as robert louis stevenson, the beatles, et al have stayed there.......the little main street shops decorate their windows for robbie the national poet.....with displays of books, whiskey, a wee mouse..........
and lest i get off the point too much, good fish and chips at the allan water fish and chips shop at the end of the road. buy they to take away and eat them outside sitting on the bench overlooking the river. a couple of pickled onions with the fish and chips never goes amiss in my book.
Once my scottish husband flew over to california and when he opened his suitcase--his huge and heavy suitcase, there were no clothes at all! all that was there were cans and cans and cans of haggis.
now i dont know how good a canned haggis is, mercifully, we managed to give the stuff away as gifts (and even harrods sells a canned haggis).
but the good stuff in the stomach casing, the savoury meaty graveyish stuff, hey, who cares if its lungs etc. and who even knows what the etc is. all i know is that it is delicious, DELICIOUS! (and actually there IS a vegetarian version, though i've not had it, always going straight to the meat of the matter.)
and once you have that haggis, don't forget the neeps and tatties. and wee dram of course.......
Aye, here's to the "Great Chieftain o' the puddin race...."
Marlena MacSpieler
-
the frantic search for and then the supreme pleasure when i bite into the best baguette, best fromage, sip strongest coffee
--------
Oh I don't know about the coffee. One day in Paris and I'm yearning for an Italian or Spanish espresso.
-------
I didn't get a chance to fully explore this development the last time I was in Paris, but there are lots of Spanish influences showing up all over and plenty of Jambon Pata Negra. If you're eating like a hip Parisian, you're probably ordering a plate of bellota ham this week.
well, its hard to get a good caffe in parts of italy, too. and funnily enough, one of the best coffees you can get in paris is from britain( hand roasted by the two finest coffee roasters i know, jeremy torz and stephen macatonia who trained at peets in bay area). in cafes though it is touch and go; when you find one you like, you gotta stick with it. i've had super moroccan coffee with orange flower water sprinkled in it, righ on the rue des rosiers. and also the coffee at cafe bricolage is very nice. cute decor too.
being married to a flaneur, cafe drinking is an important part of our conjugal existence.
Exactly! the cuisine of Paris is ever changing, ever evolving with regional as well as global influences; despite its codification and high standards, it is not a museum piece. it changes.........
-
ps:
in addition to the japanese there are lots of turks.
and an adorable kitten crawled round my feet last visit. i think it will be bigger now, i haven't been there in months.
-
There are good Turkish restaurants in Paris?? Please don't tell me near the Saint Michel area...
theres a sweet little turkish place i like near the pompidou, sort of kitty-corner from the hotel de sejour one of the cheapest and most cheerful hotels in all of paris (and so well placed). the restaurant seems to be owned by japanese, and seems to have a japanese cook in the kitchen, i forget the name, perhaps its antalya.
along the rue faubourg st denis is it, there are lots of very cheap turkish places, where everyday a different humble meat and vegetable stew simmers in front of the de rigeur doner kebab roasting and turning sometimes appealingly, sometimes slightly frighteningly (its germs i'm thinking here), where there are communcal tables, and where a jug of cold water is always on the table and glasses for the pouring.
also along that street too is a terrific bakery where lahmajoun and very good ekmek is made in woodburning oven.
mmmmm......i smell some onion seeds (nigella) and sesame seeds, someone is eating Greek bread two inches from my face. omigod i gotta eat. right now.
x
-
(Marlena should be crowned Ms. Eurostar)
...........for most of us culinary touristas and not semi-permanent residents like yourself, we tend to seek French food we don't get in the US
Merci, Jason, for the Ms Eurostar title! I shall hold it close to my heart forever!
And, oh, I do understand the passion to taste everything French and Parisian that hits a person when they step onto French terre firma. It happens to me too: the frantic search for and then the supreme pleasure when i bite into the best baguette, best fromage, sip strongest coffee and sit in the most delicious wine bar, eat melting rillettes spread onto poilane bread, with a tarragony cornichon alongside, you get the picture.
And you're right, its because I am there so much, and when we get a bit richfooded out, i start yearning for spicy foreign exotic. (by the way, lebanese and turkish food is good in paris too. and the occasional fondue chinoise and Andalucian tapas etc ) (less success in the mexican department) Iand i not long ago had a beautiful piroshky in paris) and its even the only place outside of tel aviv that i know of where you can get barbecued foie gras, but the best, the best the best food in paris is of course the best French. If I were in Paris for a short time I wouldn't THINK of eating anything but! French food IS what being in France is all about, n'est ce pas?
And I LOVE the tradition and culture and pride in sharing it that goes with France/Paris' cuisine.
alas, we are not resettled there yet. Do any egulleteers know of an apt for let in paris: cheap and cheerful is the way i gotta go. short term so that i can get there and look for a long term place to live.
right now i know there is a rose-scented pierre hermes macaroon with my name on it. eurostar, you're my pal.
xxx
marlena la spieler
-
Oh, and ps to anyone who can't see eating anything other than French food in Paris:
French food is wonderful fantastic delightful (or can be) but can get heavy if you're eating out all the time. one just wants something light and vivacious and spicy every so often (ie something without duck fat or cream, too).
alsatienne, picarde, normande, bretonne, basque, provencale, bourguignonne, bordelaise, francilienne, auvergnate, corse... Quelle cuisine desirez-vous ?
And, there's plenty more of cuisines and specialties within France to be discovered and enjoyed.
It is such a typical comment that you made. And It is those comments that result in this France/Spain intoxicating, useless and unerving debate.
It's especially surprising coming from someone who seems to spend a fair amount of time in Paris.
Funny how cliches remain strong even in the face of reality...
sorry, my position stands!!!!!
whilst no one ADORES the much of the food of paris--and that includes the various regions and former colonial territories that are so well represented culinarily and humanly in Paris, there comes a time.......
there comes a time when a person, this person, this person who loves French food with great affection, tenderness, and respect, oh and of course lust too.....there comes a time when this person wants something spicy and light. something that might be:
pho. or italian pastas. or tandoori chicken. or MEXICAN FOOD (that is good mexican food). Morrocan or Tunisian or Algerian food.
yes i love French food totally unabashedly and without reservation.
BUT I'm just not a monogamous eater. and there aren't enough regional cuisines in France to keep me faithful. I just gotta nip around to the spicier fields occasionally.
But I always come home, so never fear.
i mean, after all, at home there is that delicous plateau des fromages.
-
Parsnips alla plancha?????
Am I the only person who hates parsnips (unless its simmering, just a tiny piece of it, in my grandmother's chicken soup).
so many other things delicious alla plancha. anything else delicious alla plancha.
parsnips?
feh!
marlena
www.marlenaspieler.com
Exotic Ice Cream in SF
in California: Cooking & Baking
Posted
Polly Ann's used to give free doggie ice cream cones to doggies! perhaps they still do!