marlena spieler

I know, I know. I couldn't really choose either. . . though both at the same time is a bit demanding...depending of course on the dish of the day....

Thank you for full description, Mr Fat Guy! Have you ever prepared one? I'm not crazy about all the sous vide stuff going on, i don't think it is always successful though i do understand it is a toy that many chefs love playing with....but your description of the way the egg behaves when you dig into it is very fetching indeed! Dufresne's dish--slow cooked egg, parmesan broth, crisp indian sev, tomato powder and chives-- sounds totally divine! thanks again, marlena

just read a quote from Wylie Dugresne one of my favorite chefs, about the slow-cooked egg and how it is a current chefs' obsession these days (though i'm sure his slow cooked egg in parmesan broth was on the menu about two years ago once when i ate at wd-50?). anyhow, because i have not tasted it and because the dish--the egg in parmesan broth, with tomato powder (a personal favorite of mine) and chopped chives (i eat them by the spoonful) sounds so good, I was trying to finish my vicarious enjoyment of the dish by imagining what the slow-cooked egg was like. Can anyone do a good description? I"m thinking? soft yolk? (when i cooked an egg on the sidewalk during last years hot season, the yolk cooked but the white stayed gooshy). firm white? soft everything? firm everything? I must know all. am becoming a bit obsessed myself, and i haven't even let myself near the eggs yet! i am hoping they are on the menu when i next breeze through nyc i can tell you...... thanks in advance, marlena

eat a potato pancake at the konstablerwacht market (sp?) and also a crisp thing juicy wurst there too, the kind that comes with a slab of sour dark bread. eat frankfurter green sauce with potatoes wherever you can find it, and try a creamy onion soup that i found a few places. also, of course: herring. herring on buttered rolls. heaven.

a chunk of ham, cheese, and pineapple on toothpicks. a la cher in the movie mermaid, or am i hallucinating myself into her movie? i LIKE chunks of ham, cheese and pineapple together. in fact, i have a similar mixture in my grilled cheese book (the recipe is the austin powers shag a delic in case anyone is asking): basically ham, cheese and pineapple held together with mayo and a touch of pickle relish. to do a cheesey melt with it, keep the cheese out of the mixture and use it as a topping, then under the heat and melt. whoosh. yum.

now that its post christmas you can get the after christmas sales for shortbread! walkers is always good, easily available and nicely priced. duchy originals also makes certain shortbreadish cookies; they are made for them by walkers by the way. most shortbreads made in scotland are sublime, as are their tins.

for panini press, i recommend the Krups panini press: the right weight and heft, a good heat level....nonstick......easy to clean...... i used it when i did radio and television promotion for my book Grilled Cheese: 50 Recipes to Make You Melt (Chronicle books). (gratuitous plug, sorry). anyhow, wherever i went with the panini grill, my interviewers and eaters both were happy. i wish i still had it now==couldn't take it back with me to the uk. at home i just use a heavy frying pan and another heavy frying pan on top, to weight the sandwich down. marlena

Fat Guy, Raoul Duke, you two must be psychic! in fact, my posting came about through a conversation with a greek friend who lives in athens; we were talking frappe and greek/turkish coffee, and the modern coffee worldwide trends, and hey! I said: lets do a posting on egullet and see whats goin on! as far as greek food, fat guy, i agree with you big time! YES. food in greece is getting better and better all the time, every day, they are getting really excited about their own foods and how good they can be (though there is still some silliness going on with "modern" restaurant foods and trends, and there are of course, still, indifferent taverna food too....but the passion for regional cuisines, for seasonality, and the excellence of cheeses, the rediscoveries of historical and traditional ways,and the eschewing of many of the new ways such as chain store bakery breads which have lost their soul (and been replaced by traditional village wholemeal breads, made the time honored way) ... i recently spent a couple of weeks back to back: first in greece in chios and athens, then in naples and sorrento: both were superb eating experiences as usual, neither better than the other. very exciting.

Youch, this is tooo weird, even for me! though i know that coffee enemas were all the rage for awhile...... i like to TASTE my caffeine. yum yum yum. thanks, gifted, anyhow, and you are right: i did say that i was interested in knowing all.....esp the claim that this works against cellulite and lowers skin cancer risks. maybe i'd better look into a nice bar o' joe........

Sneakeater, a million thanks! I'm totally into tea cocktails now........and I am knowing I'm not alone!

oooooh, sounds like just the thing i'm looking for. hope to see you soon, x m

thanks slkinsey, let me be clearer: 1. it can be anywhere, i'm just curious at this point. 2. both: i like the idea of buying them at a bar, but also perhaps a cafe if it is nonalcoholic, or making it ones self? thanks for the advice, i'll post something in the cocktails forums too, marlena

anyone notice any trends in coffee drinking, making, roasting, enjoying, wherever you are living? should i know about it? tell me all......

Admin: Threads merged. anyone know where i might find tea cocktails, perhaps in a fashionable trendy place? perhaps green tea based? or other unusual tea bases? i love iced tea and am thinking that cocktails featuring them are a delectable thing and i aim to find me some.......

marlena says very humble-y to carrot top: a million thank yous for your kind words, of which i especially love the comment: that I have been "always a food writer". you are too too right, though even when it didn't dawn on me, when i thought i was an artist and would one day be a famous artist with much to offer the world, even then as a self-absorbed teenager, i was writing recipes in my artists sketchbook, the things i was tasting as i was travelling for inspiration, in that way that the writer henry miller (who i admired hugely) did. i was much younger and much stupider then henry miller, however. which i'm kind of grateful for, because otherwise, i might not have been brave enough to scribble the words that became my first cookbook. i was as obsessed with food as henry miller was with sex. whether in gourmet, or on the road, or speaking with someone from a strange and far off land, or even in my own garden, everything i discovered foodwise was such a treasure, every little discovery a delicious morsel that i knew--in that overexcited adolescent way--would enrich my life forever. this has turned out to be correct in fact! our food worlds were much different from our mothers, and from their mothers, and this generation is no different in that their experiences and expectations and tastes are different from ours. unlike in (continental) europe where there is more of a tradition......but even there, even there...... i worry that in general both in the usa and europe there isn't enough care for good food writing, that there is too much hype, much attention to celebrity at all costs. not enough care for good food either. that people won't know the difference. meanwhile, i look forward to my next meal. as always. (right now its pureed winter vegetable soup, a good antidote to christmas celebrating). Your story is touching, marlena. A window on the world, showing more windows on the world, endless vistas, really, in ways big and small. Interesting, too, for to my mind, you just were "always a food writer". I guess I thought you had been born a food writer. The genesis of how these things *do* happen are most fulfilling to imagine. You reminded me of MFK Fisher, too. And Julia Child. How women find themselves in unusual spots, sometimes odd or slightly disconcerting spots personally, from the ways in which we (at least in the past) have followed the men in our lives to places as their supports. MFK followed her then-husband to France, Julia the same - and both found things unexpected there, that were "just for them". A sideways, winding, mysterious path. I wonder if the next generation of women who write about food will do the same, finding this sort of surprise unexpectedly, or whether they will mostly just start out clearing their own paths from the very start. . .

I too discovered a cache of Gourmets during a time when I had moved to a culinary wasteland, had a baby to tend to and no friends or other stimulations in the area. During baby's naptime my fave thing to do was: hot bath, big mug of milky tea, and a plate of either m and ms or fresh sliced mango. And a small stack of Gourmets. I remember one ussue whose cover photo showed a photo of a Greek harbor I had once lived in; i could even see my little window on the world up there on the right hand side. Reading it was redolant of memory and greek flavors. i'm thinking: was that the moment i decided to become a food writer? There were so many things between the covers of the many issues i relaxed my way through, absorbed in all of the wonderful things i would taste or make, someday. the places i would go too and if i never went there, at least i could cook the dishes people ate there..........the late elizabeth lambert ortiz wrote appealingly of mexican foods (and later generously offered me a quote on one of my mexican books). i remember reading about truffles and wondering what they really tasted like (no doubt the reason that now i'm always pitching articles to write about truffles. I love them so!and want to share that love....). Reading through the August 2006 literary supplement of Gourmet was a delight. very personal writings, autobiographical in style and very evocative. And Laurie Colwin: like so many other food writers, I too was a big fan. She wrote honestly, observantly, humorously, and deeply, all the while making it look light and breezy. And she always got me eager to cook and eat whatever she was writing about.

two of my favorite (modern, non-tourist) restaurants in athens are: oikea, which is kinda homey and looks like you might be in new york or marin county, and which has had a bit of a change in the attitude (for the worse) since their redecoration, serves up yummy trad faves, sometimes with a twist. their tyropites come covered with a thick layer of crunchy sesame seeds: divine. reasonably priced. absolute fave is papadakis: run by a remarkable woman from the island of paros, whose food is greek island food prepared with a delicacy and attention to detail that might just whisper, training in france (which is true). her chickpeas are amazing, all seafood and fish dishes fantastic, and her bougatsa, made with special butter from crete, unmissable. fragrant and delcious homemade liqueurs to end the meal. also, don't miss the fish stew ladled over crumbled up dry rusks. simple white-walled decor, pricey but worth it. both are in kolonaki. i don't have the contact details at hand, but do somewhere in my files. so if googling doesn't help, contact me again and i'll dig them out. kali orexi! (bon appetit!).

most probably the latkes made in the middle ages were made from matzo meal, or cheese. if cheese, they were of course not made with poultry fat. there was many latkes making the rounds in the old days, pancakes made from wild greens were a big favorite.....interestingly, i was just on the island of chios last week and ate pancakes made from wild greens (horta) that the other jew and i immediately bit into and exclaimed: Horta latkes! what i like best with my latkes of any kind, is greek yogurt. its thick like sour cream, and tangy so a wonderful refreshing counterpoint. and i cook my latkes in olive oil. going back to the original situation of the oil. i've been in other areas of europe, where they don't eat latkes for chaunkka, such as paris where they have all sorts of delicious sweet cakes for the celebration. and fried pastries of tunisia, and loukomades/fried dough balls of greece........

aren't you nice! (wish i had checked this thread on a recent visit to alba and environs, as i would have loved to have met up. looking at those beautiful tajarin reminds me of the beautiful ones i forked up in the langhe, and how delicious they were, and how kind and friendly the people i met were......) x m

don't you think that potato gnocchi deserve: truffle cream! (made with fresh white truffles, of course).

saffron tagliatelle.....tender and golden, with strands of zucchini all bathed in cream.......(with a grating of parmesan, natch) where do we stand on thick luscious cream. ooops, tapped in at the same time, so i'd say, substitute crab for the zucchini and continue as we were?

does anyone remember Taste magazine? (in its glory years that is, before it was bought and sold and slid downhill to a sad death).

hmmmm. i've gotten confused. ither we are following truffle honey in which case i'll say: gorgonzola. or...... we are following foie gras (ahhhhhh) in which i'll say: two kinds or even three kinds of grapes all together! (deglazed in the pan with a little late harvest wine.) two or three kinds of grapes, in combination

i like to include raw cashews, which i then brown in the pan, with black mustard seeds, in an Indian=style lemon rice: (lots of lemon at the end). So........ lemon pilaff.

was supposed to do thanksgiving in paris, then my friend got a hernia, cancelled our evening and accepted an invitation from another so that the event could take place in someone elses kitchen! i must be the only american pining for the thanksgiving that i haven't had for years and years and years, in fact, all of the years i have lived in britain. in fact, i'd travel to paris and cook a turkey for anyone out there, for free! (except its obviously a little late now and i've got other plans for thursday). i even have a sad little 3 to 4 person turkey waiting in the wings which i will foist upon my british husband, and try to drag one or two of the locals out to eat it (along with my fresh cranberry sauce, sprouts with hazelnuts, etc). but no pies, alas i'm not a pie maker. happy holiday all! and despite all, i look forward to my little turkey, and will gather up autumnal leaves in an effort to do some childhood-inspired table art....... x m