Jennifer Brizzi

I'm not going to try to be clever--just that I'm thinking of you and hoping you're not scared, that you are as brave and intrepid as you have likely been in other unpleasant moments of your life. As long as those bombs fly, and beyond, I will wish you safe haven and happy trails, and I will worry. Hang in there. Not because you have fans but because you are a great and beautiful person who loves and respects the people of the world in a way that makes me feel blessed to read the wonderful stuff that you write, and to watch--via CT and especially NR--how you bring the love of good food and good folks to us, so fiercely and so well.

My apologies for self-horn tooting and the current lack of pornographic food pix, but my blog Tripe Soup offers the perspective of a food writer struggling to make a place in the culinary literary world.

My favorite Vietnamese cookbooks are Mai Pham's Pleasures of The Vietnamese Table and Corinne Trang's Authentic Vietnamese Cooking. Also great are Nicole Routhier's The Foods of Vietnam, Alford/Duguid's Hot Sour Salty Sweet (Southeast Asian, not just Vietnamese) and Nancie McDermotts' Quick and Easy Vietnamese. When it comes to pan-Mediterranean food, I adore Paula Wolfert's passion for those cuisines, especially in World of Food, but her recipes can be a bit labor-intensive for someone just learning. Both Joyce Goldstein and Clifford Wright , mentioned above, are excellent. For Spain, try Pepita Aris or Penelope Casas. For Greece I love The Food of Greece by Vilma Liacouras Chantiles or anything by Diane Kochilias. For Italian food my favorite is Biba Caggiano, although most dishes are inspired by the Bolognese region she comes from, recipes are easy to make and always scrumptious.

Anytime a wanna-be cook asks me which cookbook to start with, I tell them Fannie Farmer. I have four editions (not all by Marion Cunningham), have been cooking for about thirty-five years and still refer to FF constantly. I love the comprehensiveness of her approach, have the Breakfast Book (wonderful), Cooking with Children (love that title!), and Lost Recipes, which I haven't looked at yet. Parenthetically, I've seen Cunningham in person a couple of times and think that besides my husband's Aunt Lina, she's the most gorgous woman of a certain age I've ever seen. Inspiring on many levels.

My husband asked me this morning if I wanted seal eyeball or seal brain for breakfast. But somehow neither idea makes me as squirmy as those Chinese needle's in Mr. Bourdain's ears in the pilot episode. Did I stay outside smoking too long or was Quebec City totally skipped over last night? Can anyone tell me? Jolly good show, though.

Yeah, Bizarre Foods of Asia was awful: one-dimensional, derogatory, transparent, no charisma, no drama, no humor--bleecccch--I had to turn it off after ten minutes, too nauseating. I'll watch Mr. Bourdain eat a thousand cobra hearts before I see this guy do that frog heart again. The pilot of the new season of NR was wonderful, loved every second. Beautifully filmed, hilarious, and oh, that food! And beyond the pure entertainment of watching Mr. Bourdain eat and talk, his clear love for the cultures he immerses himself in is always utterly delightful to watch.

How about those foods that smell vile but are a dream for the taste buds, foods that disprove the notion that our senses of smell and taste are linked like Siamese twins? Consider durian fruit, pungent fish sauce, or an oozy French cheese at its peak just before it rots. What is your favorite thing that your nose despises as much as your mouth loves?

Saugies rule. I miss them so much. To shamelessly quote my own self, this is what I wrote in my column last year about saucy weiners:

I'm glad to see that this thread I started is still going strong and that there are so many fellow-lamb lovers out there. I never did an official tally because the vast majority of repsonders have been in the pro-lamb camp. When I started the thread I was doing a lamb cooking demo and made so many batches of lamb stew I kind of OD'ed on the stuff, as much as I love it. So I took a little lamb break, but now I'm drooling for it again. I have four of the cutest natural local lamb shanks defrosting in the fridge, and I am pondering how to cook them. Probably a long slow braise over polenta. Any ideas for flavorings? I'd like to try something new besides my standard onion/garlic/rosemary.

Those of us who are loony for cooking may sport an apron that says "Kiss the Cook," a pima cotton chef's jacket with our name embroidered on it, or just whatever we happen to be wearing when we enter the kitchen. It's clear that a lot of us here on eGullet are really good cooks, from love of the sport and lots of practice, even without true chef status. Are we chefs anyway, because we make such damn good food? Or are we just good cooks? I just explored this in my blog and wondered what my fellow food-crazy folk who don't happen to have degrees from culinary schools like to call themselves in their secret dreams...cook, chef, or... (fill in the blank)__________?

This looks incredibly good. I have had this dish a few times in various places, but what I had in one particular restaurant (don't laugh--in Poughkeepsie, New York) was divine, and the memory has stuck with me--a perfect soul-soothing juxtaposition of smooth velvety tofu and sweet pork. Now thanks to your clear instructions, I can make some.

I'd like to unload: Great Taste-Low Fat Pasta, Time-Life Great Taste-Low Fat Chicken, Time-Life The Joy of Healthy Pasta, Joe Famularo The Joy of Healthy Grilling, Joe Famularo Cooking Light Cookbook 1992 (which got the Most Insulting Award among the gifts I received for Xmas in 1993) The others I mentioned previously have been taken, and I edited them out.

I remember scungilli fondly from my years in Rhode Island, where you could get nice lemony scungilli salad at every deli counter. I loved it and it's one of many foods I miss from Rhode Island. Can't wait to read chrisamirault's blog. Once when I worked in a restaurant there, I was in the walk in and on a high shelf there was a jumbo can of canned scungilli, not yet made into salad. I tasted it, and it was like the foulest rubber band! Taught me the value of a good marinade. Never had it fresh.

A mention on my lamb lovers survey inspired me to do another survey, on octopus. I think it is wonderful stuff, vastly underrated in the U.S. I've had Japanese, Italian, Greek, Spanish and Dominican versions that were "to write a poem," as my mother-in-law Maria would say. I can't find it much these days, since I left Brooklyn, but when I can I cook it into a red wine/tomato pasta sauce or marinate it into a citrusy salad. I avoid rubberiness by dunking it three times in boiling water (I think I got this from Spain expert Penelope Casas) and then by simmering the flesh with a cork bobbing along in the water next to it. Then it can be rendered even more yielding in texture by its subsequent stewing or marinating, evolving into something tasty and tender. Squid was unpopular until we started calling it calamari and frying it, but I don't foresee the same fate for octopus. "Pulpo" doesn't have the same ring to it, and grilled or stewed or saladed octopus is likely much better than fried would be. Have you tried it? Did you like it? Do you cook it?

I have a lot (around 400), and I share a tiny house with a fellow packrat and two madly clutttering children. So cookbook storage is a real problem for me. I seem to be unable to get rid of any of them and they just keep expanding, like lava. They are definitely in the all-over-the-house category. The largest proportion is upstairs on a five-shelf free-standing bookcase in the small square upstairs hallway. This houses the French, Spanish and Italian collections as well as other ethnic cuisines, (Romania, Afghanistan, etc.), single subject books and "literary" food writing. Books I haven't read yet occupy three shelves of a whole wall of books in the living room, which is made of those cheap shelves on brackets, you know, the kind you put up yourself. I have nightmares that the wall will fall down one day as there are thousands of books on it. It doesn't seem quite secure and I'm not exactly Jill Fix-It. There are about a dozen under the kitchen counter for easy access, half a dozen on a baker's rack in the dining nook, ditto under the bed, ditto on a side table next to the couch, a box full in the barn, reference type tomes on a small bookcase in the downstairs hallway, even a few in the kids' room pretending they're kids' food books. The bathroom is where I draw the line. If anyone keeps cookbooks in the bathroom I don't want to hear about it. Well, at least I got column fodder out of my cookbook problem. Look forward to seeing where everyone else keeps their cookbooks. What a great thread!

Dear Hungry for Knowledge, Never spent much time in the NE Kingdom of VT, but I grew up in the SE Kingdom (Putney, Brattleboro) and spent most of '78 to '85 happily in Burlington (party shack on Pine Street). Would love to eat chez you for Easter--your lamb lardooning sounds like it would get me swooning. I miss Vermont and I agree with you that "lamb fat is sexy food!" I see you have only 2 posts on eGullet so far. I enjoyed this one and look forward to seeing more...

I'm so pleased to see so many responses to my survey and so many people as crazy for lamb as I am. I thought we lamb-loony types were the minority, but now it seems that on eGullet anyway the lamb disdainers are vastly overruled. I'm so glad I inspired so many people to cook some soon, too, but after a week of recipe testing and eating demo swapout leftovers I think I'll wait a week or so to cook some myself. And thanks to you I'll have lots of ideas for tasty new ways to do it. Here's my column and blog entry on lamb.

I've been writing about lamb lately and did a chef demo with it this weekend. When it gets cold out I really crave it. But I heard that while we each consume 66 pounds of beef a year, we only eat one pound of lamb. I know my annual consumption is way higher than that, but I know a lot of people who hate the stuff. Why? Are our taste buds that different? Some of us hate and some of us love cilantro, okra, etc., other foods that don't seem to invite indifference, only either passionate detestation or infatuation. Do you love lamb, or hate it, or are you one of the indifferent few?

I ain't fancy. Vermont Bread Co. Organic Multigrain Bread, Cabot extra sharp cheddar, Cabot unsalted butter to grease the cast-iron skillet. It just doesn't get any better than that. Unless tomatoes are in season and I can get a slice of perfectly ripe heirloom to add. Then I have to add slivers of cheap muenster to hold it all together: cheddar on one side, muenster on the other, fat tomato slice in the middle.

I loved every second. It feels so good to laugh that hard for an hour. I love all the Bond allusions. My daughter was born in Hanoi four years ago so it was awesome to revisit though Bourdain's eyes. I wish I could master taping on my VCR so I could save it for her--it's the truest, best insight into the culture of her birthplace I've seen anywhere. Bourdain does all the stuff I wish I had the guts to do when traveling, and I'm not just talking about squeezel and cobra hearts. I mean going deep into the hills and eating with people who probably have never seen a westerner. That bun cha (pork and pork meatballs with noodles) is amazingly scrumptious. I'm pretty sure we ate it at the same place Mr. Bourdain did. I've tried to make it myself but it's not nearly as good. Yummm.

I despise Ranch. I'm not generally a picky person but the very odor of the stuff makes me gag: the sourness, the dusty dried herb notes...yuck. Maybe my aversion is merely a holdover from my months in the kitchen at Carbur's restaurant in Vermont, where we mixed and served it, quite literally, by the gallon. Ms. Spieler's homemade version sounds quite good, though, but failing that I'll stick to good oils and vinegars, with the occasional restaurant calorie splurge on bleu cheese...

I like variety, and buy a different kind each time, but my favorite is Bite Size Shredded Wheat. Not too sweet, great mouthfeel and texture, softens in the milk without getting too soggy. Chinese rice bowl, teaspoon, 1% or 2% milk. Also, in the wintertime I love to cook teff grain as a hot cereal and eat it with a splash of maple syrup. Excellent! Dark brown, creamy, flavorful..try it and you may, I say.

I got a free issue, too, and I enjoyed it, even the parts not about food like the family who adopted kids from three countries, and the two gay guys with triplets. Pretty cool, Penzeys!

Dog ribs in Vietnam. No, not on purpose. On the menu they were just called "ribs."

Unfortunately I spaced the Paris show last week, but I totally loved Iceland last night. I laughed so hard I cried. I loved it when Mr. Bourdain brandished his Zippo and requested "Freebird!" after the a cappela trio sang. Jolly good show!