marlena spieler

last year when we were visiting friends in zakynthos, we stuffed zucchini flowers with fresh cheese mixed with a bit of grated kefalotyri, and i'm thinking an egg, nutmeg and chopped parsley. dripped them in a light batter than crisp-fried in olive oil. they were sooooo good! you're so lucky ot have zucchini blossoms available! i love the fruits and veg of greek summer......all the luscious tomatoey eggplanty things, and also the watermelon, peaches, and cherries are delish. marlena

I LOVE BASSET HOUNDS, you are so lucky! i once spent a little time in the village of apt in provence, at the first truffle market of the year, the one in which they set the prices for the season, anyhow, there was a woman with wonderful truffles who gave me a little lecture on how to hunt them: it involves a sock and a truffle, the first day you play with the sock and the truffle. the second or so day you throw it further, and keep playing. by about day 3 or 4 you bury the sock and truffle under the living room rug, and let doggy root for it. then the next day you take the game outside, and repeat, throwing the sock further and further, then you lightly bury the sock, and i'm not sure the exact segue into the dog digging for the truffle but you get the picture, oh yes, and each time they doggy fetches the sock and truffle you give it a little sniff of salami, or maybe a taste, this was a few seasons ago and we were drinking quite a bit of wine. only one thing better than a basset house would be a truffle hunting basset hound. you know perigueux and the surrounding area is famous for its truffles and hounds, and everyone has their own methods. ditto for parts of italy. i've always wanted to truffle train a pooch. good luck! marlena

This is Great!!!! you star, you! Marlena

they sell montgomery's cheddar on at that little fromgerie i forget its name, on rue st antoine near the metro for ile st louis. montgomery cheddar is worth travelling to the big city for.

i'm so glad you loved Piperade! Its one of my favourites, too. i always feel like i'm in a restaurant in france, in the very best way....wonderful food and wine list, thoughtful service. i wish i could walk through its door right this moment. x m

i vaguely remember that it was very daring, and exciting in concept (ie the dishes were very modern and out there) and also very chic (the small plate concept, diana's passion for the place).

thanks I spoke with turnips this morning, and they might have it when I get back, i'll check again with them then. i'll also ring mountain food co and talk with Yun. I've learned a lot about purslane, wish I had more than the 500-700 words allowed for my article, and more than the recipes they're running. have i said that i love purslane? can hardly wait to cook my way through it, well if you can call making salads cooking, as i'll be doing that too. really looking forward to it, and feel gratitude for your help. x marlen

Dear Spam, could you tell me which other salad goodies are in the mix with the purslane? thanks. and Dear Matthew Grant, thanks to you for your turnips at borough market tip. i'll give them a ring tomorrow. so far, all, in my quest for purslane, no one has returned my calls (though i haven't yet run Lola's to get the number for the purslane). I'm off to malaysia later next week, and am hoping when i get back towards the end of the month, that i'll be able to get puslane then. i might have to revive this thread then!

i want to thank everyone who has contacted me about farms and foragers--morfudd, i shall call you at lolas for the number of mountain food co. i've been leaving phone messages and emails all over the place, but so far, no answer about purslane. i suppose i shall go up to london and do a turkish supermarket crawl which should bring me luck eventually. i did of course, check all the weeks in my garden, but for some reason, purslane hasn't popped up here, at least in the years i've lived in this house. it never dawned on me to plant it funnily enough: my delight has always been finding it as a weed! marlena

thanks helenjp and nimzo, planting it is a great idea, and i should do that for personal use, but i need it to test recipes for a newspaper article i'm working on. am thrilled to be writing about purslane, but desparate to get the fresh stuff in time to test my recipes. article is time sensitive, though truthfully i've made so many different things with it over the past years i could probably get away without testing. its just that i want to really push and do something special. and as i only have space for three recipes, want to experiment and make them really unique. exciting. cause i do find purslane exciting. x thanks again, marlena

though its a little early in the season, i'm looking for purslane. I usually hit the turkish shops in green lanes and kingsland/dalston, but not sure if there is any around yet or if its too early in the season. anyone seen it out there? shops......or any particular patches it grows really well.....all sources appreciated! i've got to find some, and would prefer for it to be by the end of may.....i live in hampshire not too far from either petersfield or portsmouth, but will travel up to london for it..... thanks in advance, marlena

The Lanesborough is shortly to be serving Queen's tea, in honor of Her Majesty's birthday. I'm not sure exactly what this is, though am booked for the 18th May. I believe they will be doing this special tea until the end of the summer. Marlena ps will report on it, post-tea, the 19th.

thats the place that is sort of, like, in a former barn? and has the most divine grilled thing (a big oven right in the middle of the place), and the chairs are not very comfortable? i remember fab: potatoes, sausages, peppers, roasted cheese. the owner is very gregarious, and the decor kinda silly. but i loved that place. was the place called la stalla or la stella? you're right: remarkable.

i always bring a lemon or two--one for transatlantic leg to ny from the uk, two for the flight to sf from the uk. the lemon is to squeeze into tomato juice with ice, worchestershire sauce and tabasco, sort of a virgin mary. i don't like to drink alcohol on long flights, and the lemon juice, and plenty of it, seems like the only fresh and invigorating thing on the whole plane. sometimes i take raw red pepper, too, as its fresh and sweet. and i usually have a bar of chocolate just in case. and on any flight from nyc i'll have a pastrami on rye in my backpack. too many things taste weird on flights, so i like a little selection of not too smelly foods, or crisp and soft and sweet and sour flavours and textures. cause i never know how bumpy it will be, or how much of the inflight meal i'll feel like eating.

hi april! Swede: that is what they call rutabaga here in the UK, too. I was told it was because it is a popular Swedish vegetable, though i don't think that many brits give it a thought, as the swede is so popular here now, they might as well call it a brit! my husband loves swedes, but i'm less keen. i like the little white turnips better, for their bitter edge whereas i always think that swedes have a slightly sweet edge. which is okay, a turnip for everyone and every taste! so, the middle eastern pickles are bright pink; they are turnips that have been pickled with a beet or two in the mixture; the pink colour gets paler as the red/pink colour works its way into the turnip. The turnips taste pickley, and are pretty crisp, and are the most refreshing thing to eat. salty, briney, pickley. yum. also, do you know about the polish pickle soups? basically, a nice meat and/or meat and cream and vegetable soup, with a bunch of shredded or chopped dill pickles added towards the end. this is such a great thread, i've learned something very important. now i have to make myself some brovada (not sure about spelling as have deleted that part of message...). i must learn more about the food of friulli now, have long been a fan of frico, but now: pickled turnip in soup. that is what i personally call an alluring thing. one of my dissappointments in life is that my daughter is not as pickle-crazy as i am. i keep buying her different kinds of pickled vegetables and she just laughs and says, well she's not so crazy about pickles but that was really nice. i wonder where i went wrong, but she's perfect in every other way. my husband, too, is not crazy about pickles and pickled vegetables (here in britain we have fabulous pickled onions!) so i must eat pickles with others, and sometimes with strangers. i'll eat pickles with anyone who has the passion. x marlena

hathor and april: gorgeous fermented turnips! i'm also a big fan of pickled turnips. do you know about the middle eastern ones, they are pink with beetroot, and so invigorating? they look like little jewels, or gems, when you cut them up into tiny cubes. also, at artisanal restaurant in nyc not long ago i ate a sauerkraut of rutabaga (which is basically a type of turnip, at least considered here in the uk) and it was terrific! i've been meaning to experiment with making it myself since then. this is such a good natured and tasty thread!

not wanting to sound bitter and twisted, but from my recent bout of watching american food television, it seems that there is a big disconnect between cooking and good food. cooking is the new entertainment...okay, but there doesn't seem to be much good food around? isn't the purpose of watching someone cook on television so that we can 1. see something divine that we ordinarily wouldn't be able to 2. learn to make something divine, or useful, or just good. 3. learn stuff about this divine food or how to get the ingredients, and i'm also in the camp of enjoying a bit of sillyiness and wittiness in the kitchen on the screen. but its all about...looking good on telly. and i hate to say it, dumbing down. after my recent bout of food network watching, sometimes after a few programs i would just feel kinda sick thinking about what the chefs/presenters/cooks made. something is wrong here? what worries me is that people are going to stop thinking that eating well is a good thing, cause they are losing the capacity to differentiate. they think that its all....well, semi homemade and made in minutes and whatever. of course, now i wish i could share my own adventures with food on the little screen, i'm not saying that this isn't a desire of mine. but in this way: it is to share the whole good eating thing, my discoveries, the wonderful things that are so delicious that i wish everyone could taste. okay and i'm a ham too. but obviously a ham who needs an agent....anyhow, i wish everyone out in tv land would eat really nicely, and enjoy it, and i don't see that all of this food programming is making either the way we eat, or the food programming, very good. a culinarily sad marlena

i once went to parma with a few chefs, including fergus henderson. we went to the annual prosciutto festival. one of the things that i felt very affectionate towards was the abundance of pig artwork on the ironwork, stonecarvings, buildings etc throughout the city. parma is a town which really loves its pigs. marlena

hi swisskaese/michelle! wonderful to be in touch with you again! i too have drunk boza, in bulgaria, though i wasn't keen on it--kind of sour, and creamy, with almost a whiff of rope or carpet, but then maybe that was just the place we were staying, the people who made it. i love turkish cherry juice, though: esp on a hot hot day, drunk from the man at the marketplace who carries a big sort of tank of cherry juice and fishes it out with a ladle into a glass, and puts some crushed ice in too. mmmmm--so totally refreshing and full of cherry flavour. my grandmother used to drink it for her arthritis, i must remember that when my hand hurts. its a good excuse anyhow, any excuse to drink cherry juice is good with me. i've had the fermented turnip juice with beetroot drunk with raki as a chaser, too, which i loved, i guess its like drinking raki and eating pickled vegetables/meze, but my husband does not drink, and he likes the pickley turnip juice as a substitute for alcoholic drinks. x marlena

when we were in stow for the british cheese festival awhile back--hrh/pow attended that year--, we had a great meal at the royalist, good local cheese course. added attraction of being the site of one of the oldest pubs in britain.

RAchel, Jason, I'm totally LOVING this thread! the story about ray nagin just made me smile! its wonderful reading this, as reassurance that N.O. lives, and that the food is as good as ever....... touching heartbreaking stories.......and i'm really interested in your pesach project........ bon appetit, mes amis, Marlena

one of my most memorable dining experiences, right up there along with alain passard's l'arpege and charles phams excellent slanted door in s.f., was sitting on a crumbling cement terrace, jews and arabs alike, eating the most divine hummus in the world: freshly cooked, tender, with a splash of green zchug-ish sauce and a pile of raw onions. one of my silliest and most unendurable dining experiences was a 'tasting menu' (tasting was right, no one could really have eaten it, one taste was enough, served in the most pretentious of manners) at a chateau in bergerac, france, last summer. wines were wonderful though.

fish and chips at the bridge of allan, get em to go, and eat em sitting on the bench that overlooks the river allan. if you need some foam, i recommend foaming at the mouth....no, just kidding. the fish and chips are brill. required drink: irn bru. och, bridge of allan is a braw wee toon, stay in the royal hotel where robert louis stevenson wrote something, there is a sign of all the famous people who stayed there. clive ramsay's food shop and deli are delightful, and there are antiquarian book shops....in edinburgh i like the scotman's lounge, live music every night and you're almost guaranteed to see a kilt. andrew fairlie of gleneagles, by the way, was a winner of the Roux scholarship in the early 80s, an excellent competition for young chefs that I am pleased to be a part of each year. slainte, marlena but i'm thinking: i love scotland, husband is scots. i love the way the air smells and the way the people are funny and friendly. i love their accents. but i wouldn't go there for fine dining necessarily. drink whiskey. sail the sea. go to Eigg and watch the wild horses cavort over the beaches. and if you go, say hello to Scruff for me. only about 57 people live on the island. and the eiggmen are famous for their parties.

i recently tasted Brandt beef and thought it wonderful! in fact, just thinking about it makes me feel all slobbery in the happiest possible way. very juicy and beefy.

personally, I'm kind of addicted to the fermented turnip juice that the Turks drink. its bright pink from beetroot, and tastes like pickle juice. you can get it spicy or not spicy, and it needs to be drunk icey cold. omigod is that the best thing on a hot sultry day. i've shared it with many in the us, though few share my enthusiasm. but then again, i love anything pickled and sour too.