russ parsons

Geez, you mean using high quality, fresh, locally (or artisanally) produced ingredients (ie shopping) is more than a trend? I was hoping to move past that. (Insert appropriate emoticon.) no apologies necessary. i once spent a week (in a fiat uno) in northern italy with a very prominent wine writer who argued the whole time that alice ought to be shot for taking credit for what good cooks in the rest of the world have done since time immemorial. he's got a point, but still, what is de riguer in one country can still be revolutionary in another.

steve, mr/ms thing, i agree that what we now call california cooking is mainly about shopping. where we might part company is that i don't think that's a bad thing. cuisine exists on many planes, from subsistence feeding, to home cooking, to regional, super-regional and then, finally, haute cuisine. i'd put california cuisine at the regional sometimes veering into super-regional category. at its center, it is about serving delicious food with a minimum of intervention. (a spin on the alice/shopping story--i once spent an interminable lunch with her with the scion of a VERY IMPORTANT french champagne house; he kept insisting that what she was doing wasn't cooking, but "arranging"). my personal theory is that this is so because we have such great ingredients that it doesn't take much effort to make them delicious. i also think, on a more serious level, that there is an aesthetic at work here, much the same as in the craftsman era, where the beauty of simplicity was the goal. And much the same as the craftsman era, i think a lot of the california cuisine aesthetic is a reaction to the "decadent" overelaboration of most of the culture. Put most simply, i guess, if you're buying all of your ingredients from sysco, you really need to work hard to make them taste good. california cuisine is more about the blatant statement: "we're not buying from sysco." at this point, i need to emphasize that i'm idealizing the food. this is what it's like when it works. if i had to judge "california cuisine" by what i've eaten at less successful imitators, i'd be skeptical, too. you can make the parallel between brasserie and three-star dining in france, if you like. i prefer that between italian regional cooking and alta cucina. but then i would, because i have yet to have an alta cucina meal that was totally satisfying--almost entirely the only bad meals i've eaten in italy have been at "progressive" restaurants. it will be interesting to see where we wind up in 20 years, or even longer. i'm sure people will still be appreciating a simple plate of good, artisan-made bread and cheese. i'm not sure they'll feel the same way about foam (though i have to say, steve, that the foam i had on a dessert at zaytinya was one of the first where i understood its attraction; usually it makes me think i've really pissed off one of the line cooks).

come down to long beach and go to taco loco: magnolia between PCH and anaheim. freshly made corn tortilla wrapped around tripas, al pastor, and asada. oh my.

don't be too sure. alice's insistent persona gets to be a nag, but she can be a lot of fun. though, probably, not as much as jeremiah.

i could have been clearer. most people keep their clippings, at least some of them. i've got a drawerful. but when it comes time to write my memoir, i doubt very much that i'll quote from them. repeatedly. the first couple of times tower does it, it sails past, but it gets so repetitive and so insistent .... "see, i'm not the only one who thinks i'm great ... so does this publicist from the Oriental." i was talking to someone who made the interesting point that if tower had stuck to the menu chapters about his education in cuisine and how it developed (which are really quite marvelous and, i'm quite sure, written by himself", it would have made a much stronger case for his position as a seminal figure than the book actually does.

i'm with bourdain on this one, kinda, and with a twist. i think tower was enormously important, but was doing something other than what we recognize today as california cuisine. look at his menus and i think you'll see that he was doing something quite different, much more intellectual and much more experimental (not to say better or worse). i think what he contributed was an aesthetic appreciation for what was truly good, rather than what was merely good for you, in that rather precious berkeley sense. and he did it at a particularly important time. when chez panisse was teetering on the brink of becoming something more than just another commune restaurant, he pushed it over the edge. alice is someone with strong vision and ideals, but she has never made any secret of the fact that other people do the cooking. in the "menu intermezzi" chapters that tower sprinkles through, you can see quite clearly how he caught up to the crowd very quickly and then moved past it. but what he left behind was an increased appreciation for cuisine. not that he lived up to his promise at any of his future restaurants, at least not consistently. the book is a fascinating grotesquerie. not just for the gossip, which is vile and mean-spirited indeed, which makes you want to take a shower when you're done and which is perfectly delicious fun in that awful car wreck kind of way. the thing that amazed me most about the book was how someone who seems to have it all--so good-looking, so talented, so charming, so intelligent, at various times so rich--was also so insecure that he turns out to have saved every press clipping that was every written about him. at one point, he quotes a press release from a hotel he's doing a guest gig at. how pathetic is that?

christ hollywood, i can't remember what article i wrote last week, much less which thread i contributed to last month. seriously, i was wondering if people had anything beyond the usual suspects (santa monica seafood; fish king; etc.). they'll be covered, but i want to make sure i'm not missing the one great spot everyone knows about but me.

for a piece i'm working on: where are your favorite places to buy fish and why.

look jfl, you're in la. get over the bagels already and serve corn tortillas (you can't imagine how long i've waited to tell somebody that).

interesting post steve. a couple of points: 1) you're absolutely right about the claudia fleming book and i should have said something about it. i gave it a rave review when it came out last year. that and lindsay shere's old "chez panisse desserts" are the books i turn to most often these days. 2) i think it's important to remember that most books (not the ones you buy necessarily, or even the ones that get talked about on this site) are published for amateurs, not for professional chefs. i would be very surprised (actually, disheartened), if there were very many cookbooks you learned something from. on the other hand, it's obviously a huge mistake to assume everyone buying a cookbook has your level of expertise. rose beranbaum's book is probably a good example. most pros i know kind of sneer at the cake bible for being full of high ratio recipes. but as you've seen on this thread, there are a lot of home cooks who swear by it. 3) that said, i am curious about your comment re: nancy silverton, flo braker, et al, being out of fashion. food and fashion is interesting ... frequently maddening. while i admire the desire to keep pressing forward and trying new things (as long as they don't involve foams .. at least as most chefs use them), i also believe that the highest compliment any dish (dessert or not) can receive is not "wow, i never thought of that" but "wow, that's delicious". ideally, it would be both. the two chefs whose desserts i most admire probably fall at opposite ends of the spectrum. michel richard is always finding new ways to explore texture and flavor. when i ate at citronelle this winter, he had a dessert called jolie pomme that was a ball of green apple sorbet studded with vertical "fins" of apple slices that had been candied and dried to the texture of thin sheets of glass. there were enough of them that it almost looked like a hologram of an apple with a solid sorbet core. amazing. and delicious. on the other hand, i don't think i'll ever have anything that tastes better than one of nancy silverton's freeform peach tarts. nothing inventive going on there--a dough that's kind of a rough puff, a mound of sliced peaches--but each element is perfect and the overall effect is to make you appreciate a very common dessert in a new way. i may be going out on a limb here (as usual), but fashion needs to reinvent itself every season to move product, of course, but also because it is by its very nature not very satisfying. our connection to our clothes are temporal. food on the other hand, we eengage on a very visceral level. of course, this is from a guy who has spent 20 years writing about food and still wears jeans. so take it for that for what its worth.

haven't had them in a long time, but a place called brooklyn bagel used to make great bagels. it was in what would now be considered north korea town, say beverly around western and vermont.

i'd never used bread in my gazpacho either until i was testing recipes for a review of janet mendel's "my kitchen in spain" last year. there is something to be said for following a recipe as written every once in a while. it notonly called for bread, but a lot of it. basically, puree soaked bread and garlic in the blender. add chopped tomatoes and puree. with the machine running, add olive oil until the color changes from red to brick-orange. add sherry vinegar and some water to taste/thin. salt. garnish with diced cucumbers, peppers, croutons, etc. (i really like a little blob of goat cheese). adding the bread gives a really voluptuous texture. i now serve gazpacho at least once a week.

steve can answer this better than i can. but i find her somewhere between the american classic hominess of nancy silverton (albeit, perfectly done) and the more experimental chefs. more than cobblers, but not necessarily chocolate arrows for garnishes. i'd say classic, clean, and up to date.

i have a copy of the galleys on my desk. i think there's still some last-minute work being done on it, but if it lives up to what is promised in the earlier work, it should be amazing. actually, it's just the baking book i've always wanted: it takes things systematically and explains how things work. sherry is a great pastry chef and it should be pointed out that my friend martha rose shulman is doing the ghosting on it. for what it's worth, i probably should disclose that it is edited by rux martin, who is a friend as well and edited my book. you can take my advice wiht a grain of salt, if you'd like.

once again, all you riesling lovers: get thee to corti brothers, at least via phone. i've gone through a case of old rieslings, 1990 kabinett, 7% alcohol. absolutely the perfect summer evening wine.

it is worth pointing out that if you've got some rock-hard peaches that you just don't want to have laying around the house, those are the best kind to make jams and jellies with. they are higher in pectin (the enzymes associated with ripening haven't begun to break it down, etc. etc.). though the idea of making jam with the fruit i had from frog hollow is pretty much obscene (i know it when i see it). to emphasize from badthings post: sugar and flavor are not the same, but i did find they were linked at the extremes. great peaches all had high sugars and horrible peaches all had low. unfortunately, it's the stuff in the middle we have to deal with most of the time.

i've been hearing great things about the farmhouse.

for those who are interested, my piece on the search for perfect peaches ran today. peach story

i'm coming to this conversation way late. but i happen to have just had cross my desk an uncorrected proof of "italian cuisine, a cultural history" by montanari and alberto capatti. it is not only secondary, but translated, but it appears to be very serious in that italian fashion (a chapter on"the formation of taste").

kind of true. but the last time i was up there i found a great little bookstore that had the most charming hans christian anderson museum upstairs. as a fan of small/oddball museums, this was a treat. also, this being summer, check out the solvang farmer's farmstand between solvang and buellton.

if i were looking for a pretty spot for a splurge meal, i'd much rather spend my money at bastide. i've had lunch there twice and both were pretty terrific. and sidney poitier was at the next table for one of them. as for thai, i'm afraid i must have been mis-ordering at jitlada. it was the place EVERYONE went in the '80s and early '90s. today i prefer renu nakorn in norwalk (now there's a quintessential la day ... lunch at bastide, freeway to norwalk for dinner!), or palms thai, which has very good food plus/despite having the thai elvis on friday and saturday nights.

I've got my order in so I'll spill the beans. Darrell Corti has a stock of what he calls "mature german wine" that he's selling through his Corti Brothers grocery store. I bought a half-case of one (1993 Ayler Kupp Kabinett from Dr. Heinz Wagner) last week. I've already re-ordered another half-case of that plus of another (this time a spatlese). those of you who appreciate older riesling will not need to be told that this is one of the great aging grapes. at 10 years, the ayler kupp kabinett is not quite fully mature, but its character has rounded and smoothed, it is slightly sweet on the palate and unbelievably perfumed. i find a hint of pine bough in mature rieslings. this one isn't quite there, but you can sense it coming. oh, did i mention it's only 7% alcohol? if this isn't the perfect summer aperitif wine, i don't know what is. oh, did i mention it's $12 a bottle? (916) 736-3800 usual disclaimer: of course i have absolutely no commercial interest in mr. corti or his wines.

at least a couple of hours. it ain't the french laundry and santa barbara ain't napa valley.

nothing to eat in cambria. but there is a nice garden store, heart's ease, if you're into that sort of thing. closest decent restaurants, probably Old Port Inn in Avila beach. pretty good fresh fish (they're on a commercial pier, so you can look at the fresh catch as an appetizer). decent local wine list. in Paso Robles, there's Bistro Laurent, which is decent french food (in honesty, a little tired), but a very good wine list that usually offers some really special things from local wineries. in santa barbara, definite yes for wine cask (you can buy the wine at their wine store next door and they charge something like $1 to pour it for you). very good food. and of course super-rica. i also like pane vino in montecito, if you're careful to ask just what is good today and show some interest, i've eaten extraordinarily well there.

i'm coming to this a little late, but indulge me (i'm right now writing about peaches, again). 1) with many fruits, including peaches, it's important to understand the difference between maturity and ripeness. maturity is the developing of sugar. it only happens on the tree. ripeness is ... well, the best way to describe it is "becoming delicious." you can have a perfectly matured peach that is rock hard. ripeness is when the peach begins to soften and become fragrant (technically, the cellulose walls in each cell begin to break down, allowing the mingling of chemical compounds that create more complex scents and flavor). peaches will ripen off the tree, though, it must be said, rarely as well as they ripen on the tree. and, as someone pointed out, ripeness carried to extreme is rot. so the conscientious peach farmer's race is between developing full sugar and ripeness and still having something the customer will be able to get home without excessive bruising. this is covered ad nauseum in my book. 2) it's easy to get caught up in the blizzard of peach varieties, such as suncrest. in fact, there are more than 90 commercially important peach varieties grown in california. frankly, for the most part i rarely pay attention to variety. trust the farmer. farming is a devilishly tough business, as demanding and creative as cooking and some people are better at it than others. a poor farmer growing a great variety will produce poor fruit. a great farmer growing a mediocre variety will produce very good fruit (they would never grow a poor variety, but sometimes they might have to grow varieties that might be less than stellar in order to hit a certain harvest window between their great varieties). We don't get Frog Hollow down here, except by airmail. My peach hero is Art Lange of Honey Crisp. But there are also several other good growers who show up at local farmers markets. a word about farmers markets: sure, there's a lot of hype about them and about some of the growers. But think about this--a farmers market is one of the only ways a good farmer can differentiate himself from a bad farmer. If he goes the normal commodity route, his fruit is mixed in with the fruit of several other farmers who may or may not be as talented or conscientious and he gets paid the same as they do. so approach farmers markets with a skeptical eye and always trust your taste. but i don't understand people who don't blink at $8 desserts complaining about a spectacular $2 peach. was that long-winded enough?