Megan Blocker
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Posts posted by Megan Blocker
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I use them fairly regularly. For cutting up chickens, for kneading compound butters together or a beurre manie, or mixing hamburger for burgers to name a few of the times I use them.
Oh, man! I love mixing buttery stuff with my bare (CLEAN!) hands. I love the feeling. I would never use gloves.
I feel like I've just revealed something somehow incriminating.
On a side (but still hygienic) note, while I never wear gloves, I have really long hair (growing it out for Locks of Love) and I always keep it tied back when I cook.
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Chris, I made this duck dish for Christmas dinner - it's a braise but it leaves the skin exposed and crispy. You could easily convert it to chicken (and just butcher your whole chicken at home). It can be made partly ahead, if so desired.
It was also super-tasty, BTW...obviously an important bit to note.
ETA: The Gourmet Cookbook has a slightly different version with leeks and carrots...
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I just finished Toast by Nigel Slater over the holidays. I bought it on a whim - I think it came up as a suggestion on B&N when I was buying some cookbooks as Christmas gifts, and I just added it to my order. Turns out, it's a pretty good book. It's written in short bursts, each section a recounting of a memory tied to a specific food. These little vignettes follow Slater from about age 8 or so to his early 20's, with a concentration on adolescence.
One of the things I liked so much about the book (and have liked about Ruth Reichl's work, particularly Tender at the Bone) was its emphasis on the links between taste, smell, and memory. For me, scent and taste have always been the two senses most likely to set off an explosion of recollection (I know I'm not alone here.), and so it was easy to put myself in Slater's shoes when he approached his material this way, even though I had no real idea of what it was like to grow up as a boy in 1960's England.
All in all, I'd definitely recommend this one. An extra bonus: it's written in those short sections, which makes it ideal for commuting or bedtime reading, since you don't have that I'll-just-finish-this-50-page-chapter angst.
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Oeufs au caviar, roasted tomato soup with gougeres, polenta with wild mushroom ragout, and Jean-Georges' molten chocolate cake. We're going veggie - we have someone coming who keeps kosher (Salmon roe is dairy kosher, apparently!), so vegetarian is just the easiest route. Also doing some cocktail finger food, simple stuff, crudites, parmesan-onion toasts, stuff like that. Pretty low-key!
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I like my small glasses and not-too-huge coffee cups. What can I say? I'm a sucker for the visual, and the proportions are just so much nicer...
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Mon dieu! Best foodblog pairing ever!
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Bacon, duck fat, schmaltz - any kind of animal fat - makes the sprouts delightfully nutty. I like to roast a double helping and use the leftovers in pasta the next day with a bit of red onion, bacon, and creme fraiche.
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I don' think there's any way to answer the question until you decide what you do want to say. What is "the point" that the other books are missing?
[boy did I dislike Waiting, btw, so the field is still clear for a decent book, as far as I'm concerned.]
I just remember not liking her at all...though maybe that wasn't the point?
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Mayonnaise, you might want to pick up Waiting, by Debra Ginsberg. I read it a long time ago, but I remember it being a pretty effective memoir of waitressing. May not be as much dedicated to the craft as yours may end up being, but I think it might help you crystallize your thinking in terms of what you want/don't want your book to be.
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...Inwood?
Raji, one of the best parts of the profile (and by best I mean most entertaining), in my opinion, is the exchange Shafrir recounts between Chodorow and his PR rep (they're discussing just what you mention - the effect of The Restaurant on his reputation):
“I’ve had thousands of people stop me—it’s unbelievable, the number of people—and say, ‘You know what, in the beginning they made you seem like an ogre, but after I watched the whole show and after I really saw what was going on, you were 100 percent right.’ I never had one person say to me, ‘You screwed over Rocco.’ That never happened,” Mr. Chodorow added.“Oh, you’re so sweet!” said Ms. Bakhoum. “He’s a mushy-mushy.” She said this in the cadence normally reserved for babies and poodles.
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Just curious, but did you expect that French people only use proper language? And yes, some French words might seem straitforward enough, but alot of times the use of a word depends entirely on context. Goes for English words as well. For instance, the F word can be used to add emphasis, as a verb, or also as an insult.
I dunno, I guess since I've been speaking French pretty much my whole life it's not really any surprise to me. I must say though, there have been some funny moments working in kitchens. I've worked with alot of French chefs, and at times have been the only other French speaker in the kitchen, so I got to hear alot of stuff none of the other staff ever would.
No, not surprised - I'm a (used to be fluent, now not so much) French speaker. I'd never really thought about the issues with learning a language in an environment where "taboos" weren't clear, though - that part was what really struck me.
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I saw this great post from Ms. Glaze today (actually posted on Saturday), all about the colorful (I suppose they're not Anglo-Saxon, so our usually euphemisms won't hold) language she's learned in the kitchen. And, of course, how she's discovering that these phrases are a bit more taboo out there in the streets:
The other night on one of my days off, I ordered a cocktail at an upscale restaurant that I had never heard of before. It was a mixture of rum and spirits with fruit juice. It sounded interesting but a little too sweet for my taste. I asked the server if it was dégueulasse (deh-guh-lass), which I thought meant 'gross'.I hear it all the time in the kitchen and I just assumed it meant bad or unsavory. I just wanted to know if the cocktail was good! I really upset the server who stormed away after correcting my French and telling me never to use that word in public. How was I supposed to know? The word means 'filthy'.
My French friends at the table burst out laughing after the server vanished and then they explained the word to me. They thought my little colloquial version of ‘gross’ was funny. But there I was totally in the dark wondering why I had just caused such a reaction to the extent that the server was replaced by another young man.
You really should click through and read the post in its entirety - it's hilarious. Turns out (though I never had any doubts, myself) that French kitchens use "bad" language as often as those elsewhere. Being a connoisseur of bad language, I applaud. What do you think?
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Doree Shafrir profiled Jeffrey Chodorow in yesterday's Observer. At the outset, she summarizes his near-term plans...
There are his investments in two new restaurants on Broadway and 77th Street: a 90-seat Malaysian-themed coffeehouse with Fatty Crab co-owner Zak Pelaccio (who also runs Mr. Chodorow’s Borough Food & Drink on 22nd Street) and a 150-seat restaurant with Ouest’s celebrated chef and owner Tom Valenti, which Mr. Valenti told The Observer will be “open all day and all night. There are no grown-up bar-slash-restaurants up here.”Then there’s what Ms. Bakhoum termed a “classic American steakhouse concept” in the Empire Hotel at 64th and Broadway. (“We’re just going to try to make phenomenal creamed spinach,” Mr. Chodorow said.) Mr. Chodorow is also planning on opening China Grills in Denver, Fort Lauderdale, Hawaii, Dubai and Moscow, as well a Kobe Club in Miami sometime next year. In Los Angeles, Mr. Chodorow is bringing the Citronelle chef Michel Richard from Washington, D.C., to help open a new incarnation of Mr. Richard’s old L.A. restaurant, Citrus, which closed in 1998. He also has two restaurants opening in hotels in the Dominican Republic, and what he calls a “big Italian project” in New York.
Finally, there’s his collaboration with racy men’s magazine Maxim for a series of Maxim steakhouses; the first will open in Atlanta early next year and he’s scouting for a New York location.
Quite a bit on his plate, no doubt. So many of the projects seem like theme restaurants, though, and Shafrir does touch on the question (raised in the piece by Eater's Ben Leventhal): are these really the kinds of places that will work in New York?
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I'm doing homemade brioche loaves this year, along with Bonne Maman jams. Not the easiest to ship, but it's all for local folks!
Gourmet had a whole section on food gifts in their November issue, some of which looked awfully tasty and neat. (Not online, though
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I do not have a car, therefore I am immune.
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Any tips for securing a reservation (days that are typically easier to get in, dialing techniques
, etc.)? My friend Faith and I want to Zipcar it up from Manhattan, and would be up for either lunch or dinner...ETA: Turns out, not so hard. Just scored a reservation for Friday, December 21st. Woo-hoo!
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I'm a fan of Kingsolver's fiction and agree with her sentiments about eating locally. But I could not finish this book. I became weary of being preached at. The actual mechanics of what her family did was interesting, but the other stuff, I just tired of. Maybe it was because I'm already aware of most of the issues she was writing about.
I did finish the book, but I agree.
Ditto.
And now that I'm almost finished with The Omnivore's Dilemma, I think I know what bugged me about it. The preachiness combined with the memoir made it almost too personal, too insular, too inapplicable to anyone else's life. That's a huge contrast to Pollan's book, which is so thoroughly researched and manages to be intimate without getting personal. It's not about his wife, it's not about his kid, it's about his own thinking and discovery. Maybe it's the difference between a novelist and a journalist.
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But you may want unsmoked bacon - like pancetta or D'Artagnan's ventreche - also available in slabs for home cutting.
Which you can get at Dean & Deluca, Chelsea Market, and Schaller & Weber, to name a few. Citarella, definitely.
And, yes, lardons are just bacon cut a certain way.
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I am afraid so - she also likes canned mushroom soup better than Nana's! In her defence she loves duck, lobster and crab but only the duck is likely to appear on her plate here!
Kraft dinner is just a totally different dish - I love it, too, but it's a different kind of comfort food. It tastes completely different from homemade, so it's in it's own category rather than being a pale imitation. At least in my experience.
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They had pre-sliced apples at the supermarket the other day, and the lady that was giving out the samples had to use a knife to get the packages (one for each slice!) open. Why not just use the knife to cut the apple on a cutting board and reduce chances that you'll cut yourself while cutting open the packages?
How did pre-sliced apples not turn all brown and icky?
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Ce'nedra, those prawns look excellent. Did you make them at home? If so, would you consider putting the recipe in RecipeGullet? I, for one, would make copious use of it.
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I feel like it's now the right season to start thinking about making this. Maybe I'll do it for a November dinner party...
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Oooooh, this makes me want to go book a Zipcar and hit some farmers' markets!
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"The food of thy soul is light and space; feed it then on light and space. But the food of thy body is champagne and oysters; feed it then on champagne and oysters; and so shall it merit a joyful resurrection, if there is any to be."
- Herman Melville, Pierre, or The Ambiguities
I just love that one, and have completely stolen it from my best friend, Louisa - we share a love of champagne, so now we share a motto.
Whole Chicken for Winter Weekday Dinners
in Cooking
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How long does it take on average, Susan?