russ parsons

i look at rachael ray as a kind of foodie gateway drug. some of the people who start out watching her may move on to shows/books, etc., that i find more "serious." for that, i say good for her. too often in food we tend to look at things in ways that are so absolutist that they allow room for the one or two perfect instances and everything else is garbage. personally, i think it's kind of cool that someone cute and young and lively is even interested in cooking. that's quite a change from when i started 25 years ago and most people seemed to regard the kitchen as a prison of soul-destroying drudgery.

for italo-freaks, one of my favorite references is the "grande enciclopedia della gastronomia illustrata". it has not been translated, but for those with rudimentary kitchen italian, it's not too tough to figure out. published by readers digest (of all things), it is like a new larousse for italian food, with great color art, good cultural sidebars and wonderful recipes (drawn from lots of good books, including jeanne parola's big book on naples. it's a little hard to find, but can be ordered online sometimes.

here here! "talismano" is a wonderful book, full of great ideas for those willing to ferret them out. unfortunately, the english translation was done pre-foodie and a lot of compromises were made along the way.

i reviewed it a couple of weeks ago, too. i thought it was surprisingly good--it sounded like the kind of project that could have gone off the skids in dozens of ways, but it was satisfying. full version

← just for the record: that's a badly edited quote. i believe it was mimi who said that, not me. zakarian may be a wonderful guy, but i have never met him, nor eaten his food.

they are a major pain in the neck. i actually had a tree in my back yard but pulled it out. the fruit is fine, but certainly not my favorite. but they are about 1/2 seed by weight, meaning that anything you do with them, you spend an inordinate amount of time cleaning.

look up the definition of "pyrrhic victory."

just to be clear: i wasn't in any way intending that as a criticism. just a warning about the dangers of tacking a big bullseye to your back. but i wonder how his walk-in will be?

quick question for the "any publicity is good publicity" crowd: do you think this latest installment in the psaltis saga would have been posted if not for the book? i'm not talking about any kind of organized "get the kid" movement (hard to picture mimi as part of any organized movement). but if Psaltis hadn't already positioned himself as the equal and judge of keller and barber, would people have been a little more understanding? i hardly think that just another bad meal at the beard house would have been worth mentioning.

i think part of developing a sense of humor about yourself is having teh shit kicked out of you in public a couple of times. i'd say dougie's well on his way. i think that's part of what rubs so many people the wrong way. to put it mildly, psaltis is no ducasse. someday he may turn into a ducasse, we don't know. but as for now, he's a guy trying to work his way up the ladder. and i don't think even ducasse today would have written quite so highly about himself as psaltis did in this book.

isn't there a difference between telling tales on yourself and telling tales on other people? i think if psaltis had shown a sense of humor about himself or even a sense of humility, the reaction to his having left out inconvenient facts wouldn't have been nearly so strong.

personally, as an occasional texan, i don't think southerners know anything about bbq either.

I can’t believe this thing is still going on. Having skimmed the book now (didn’t really find it repaid a careful reading), can I make some modest proposals? 1) Doug Psaltis is undoubtedly a talented chef, though, judging by his work history, possibly not as talented as he might think he is. And he does seem to be frustrated that those with whom he has worked in the past did not share his opinion of his abilities and run things just the way he thought they should be run. Anyone who has managed talented people has probably run into this situation, and it can be very frustrating for both sides. I once hired a very good writer who insisted in their first staff meeting that the food section immediately switch to metric weights for all of our recipes. I am sure that when this person writes their memoir that my reaction will not be recounted favorably. Perhaps they were right. 2) It is only human nature that when we are recounting to ourselves our personal histories, that there is a tendency to … shall we say “elide” … certain unpleasant facts and circumstances. Writing, by and large, is a thing done alone. For beginning writers, it is sometimes hard to make the connection that this thing they do alone will soon be on very public display. And certainly not that they will be pored over like some Vatican tract. Let this be a warning. 3) I have to say that the people who have impressed me the most through this whole affair have been Psaltis himself and Keller. Psaltis because he as much as admitted in front of an angry mob that he might have omitted important information. That shows a level of character that, frankly, I didn’t find in the book. And I respect Keller’s refusal to join in the “he said/she said.” As I recall, he did say that that Psaltis was there at an extraordinarily difficult time for the restaurant and everything may not have been running exactly as he would have wished it (and also for the record, I believe Psaltis’ complaint about the walk-in was that it was disorganized when he got back from his night off, not, as has been repeated here “filthy” and certainly not as a normal state of affairs). please resume your food fight.

this is something i've given a lot of though (writing recipes for a living). i think a lot of how your write a recipe depends on your intended audience. writing for the experienced cook, you can assume a certain amount of knowledge and shortcut your descriptions. but if you're writing for a general audience, up to a certain point, the moreinformation you supply, the better. this is bound to irritate more experienced readers, but so be it. remember that we're writing more and more for people with less and less kitchen experience. personally, i thought the recipe writing in the zuni book was brilliant. it may have been a little extreme, but the way she described how things looked, smelled, tasted and felt at every important stage of the recipe was very reassuring to inexperienced cooks. and i think it also teaches even those with more experience about the importance of using all of your senses when cooking, instead of blindly following the measurements and timing of the recipe.

sounds to me like a pretty straightforward guide to what qualities he values in wine, something that is always good to know when you're reading a critic. And though I like Anjou, I have a hard time regarding it as the "Shakespeare" of wine (or even Loire wine) I have always felt there was a great deal of hypocrisy about wine people's reactions to parker (whom i have met on occasion but would not pretend to know). the reason parker became important is that lazy wine shop owners relied on posting his scores as sales tools rather than hand-selling the wines themselves, thereby giving him an imprimatur he may or may not have deserved. In fact, as much as the wine industry howls about him today, more often than not you'll find the little "RP 92" signs liberally sprinkled through every store--and if a winery gets a good review, it certainly tends to show up in their press and point-of-sale materials (including, by the way, the ABC website). most of the other criticism of him seems to be along the lines of "if i were king": if i were parker, i'd praise ....; parker "hates" the wines i love, how dare he! hmmm, funny how the people who make this complaint have no problem bragging about how they hate the wines parker loves. turnabout is not fair play? parker is just one guy with a word processor. his taste is as valid as yours (if you have been tasting wine for the last 30 years, which i know a lot of you have). if his taste moves more merchandise than yours, it's just because more people seem to agree with him. or, in the case of wine store owners, because you've told people they should agree with him, when it suited your purpose.

i don't think i've ever cooked a complete dish from TFL, but i have used many of the elements and i find they frequently wind up becoming part of my standard repertoire (hello., sauce gribiche!).

one way to think about choosing between the two is how you serve: if you plate all your guests' food at dinner parties, you may want TFL. if, like me, you serve on platters, you're probably bouchon. it's formality vs. informality, rather than "better than." i've had great luck with recipes from both, credit for which goes to susie heller.

wow, great post anzu, i've never heard of that. as far as adam's question about muscat raisins on the stem--that is also a california tradition (probably borrowed), but it is so scarce that i've only seen it offered once or twice in the last 20 years. maybe if i lived in fresno or bakersfield i'd see it more often. as far as the question about why the lack of variety of grapes .... that goes to the whole paradox of california agriculture: for most of this century it has been set up to supply the most product for the least cost. only in the last 10 years or so has it begun to shift slowly, thanks largely to farmers markets, where growers can actually get paid a premium for good quality products--something that is almost impossible in the traditional flow of commodity agriculture. hey, somebody ought to write a book about that.

i'm pretty sure it's urbain-dubois that she was referring to. i don't believe it's been translated into english and i have to admit i'd never heard of it. but she sounded pretty convincing.

to keep the raisins golden during drying, they need to be sprayed with sulfur dioxide to prevent the oxidation that would turn them black. sulfur dioxide is not organic ...

is that the "great chefs" with the quentin crewe photographs? i love to look through that book, to see all the old lions back when they were pups. if you like that book, you might also like Roy de Groot's "Revolutionizing French Cooking", in which he visits the heroes of nouvelle cuisine, before it was called nouvelle cuisine (he irritatingly refers to it at "the new high-low cuisine" throughout). there's this great sense of excitement and discovery: like listening to the early demo recordings of someone who later became a great star.

the escoffier book is an interesting case. i'm not sure of the details, but i'm sure someone out there may be. there may have been an earlier book that escoffier "based" his code on. several years ago i did a piece on ranhofer's "the epicurean" that i then adapted for an article in the oxford companion to american food. in the pieces i remarked upon the similarity in structure (and in dish composition) between escoffier and ranhofer--the point being that ranhofer came first. a copy editor much more steeped in food history than i pointed out that there was another book that escoffier had based his work on, and that in all likelihood so had ranhofer. can't for the life of me remember what it was, though. i think bux's larger point is very important: escoffier's fame comes not so much from ground-breaking culinary innovations during his life, but because his "code" was relied upon and replicated by so many (mmm, usually mediocre?) chefs after he was gone.

good question: one i had to call the california raising marketing board to get the answer on. no, sulfur dioxide is not an organic treatment, so there is no organic golden raisin (standards may vary in other countries).

sorry, my reply was inexact. i was referring to the terminology, not the product. and it was skewed by just having answered a question from a reader who just moved from britain. yes: sultanas are golden thompson seedless raisins. but in the us, we call them golden raisins rather than sultanas. organic golden raisins, in this country, can have been treated with giberellic acid, which was the process that was specifically being asked about. as i understand it, this is not a permitted organic practice in the uk. to expand on that a little further, grape vines are also girdled to promote larger berry size (remove a strip of bark around the circumference of the rootstock). there is a very small amount of grapes that are marketed as "naturals" (usually at farmers markets), which have not been gibbed or girdled. these are exceedingly rare.

in the first place, i would dispute that point is forgotten--people who know food certainly know who he was. bocuse, troisgros, keller, they all cite him as important influences. granted he's not as famous as escoffier, but other than bocuse, who is? that said, i think escoffier is probably best known today because of his book, which was used as the "bible" for a couple of generations of chefs (if not for that, he'd be as forgotten as careme). as much as i like "ma gastronomie", it doesn't approach that level--and neither was it intended to.