Cézanne's Still Life with Apple

"I wish to astonish Paris with an apple."

-Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)

Nip into more astonishing food quotes here.

Labels: artists, food quotes, Friday, fruit

"Palpating, crackling, splitting on the grill,
Boudins whistle louder than blackbirds in April."

-Paul Harel

Find more crackling food quotes here.

Labels: food quotes, Friday, writers

Arguably...

The Recipe Rock Star tutorials continue. We've covered mise and one focused minute. Now let's have a look at those ingredients....

Lesson 3: Quality is delicious

There's a reason packages of Doritos have an ingredient statement the size of Oklahoma. There's a reason top chefs increasingly choose to cook seasonal produce. And there's a reason why you should seek out the best possible ingredients you can find.

The reason is simple: fresh, seasonal ingredients taste better. Furthermore, delicious components make the meals you serve more flavorful.

At risk of offending anyone who's ever studied virtue ethics, let's compare a delicious appetizer to Plato's concept of the ultimate happiness: eudaimonia. To achieve ultimate recipe happiness we combine virtue (aretē) and knowledge (epistemē).

Let's examine bruschetta, for instance. It's thin slices of high-quality bread that's grilled or toasted, rubbed with the cut side of a halved clove of garlic, drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil and topped with some freshly diced garden tomatoes. Maybe you toss some chopped basil on there. Maybe a sprinkle of salt and a fresh grind of pepper. Maybe you gild the lily with a pinch of grated Parmesan. Regardless, it's tangy, crunchy, juicy, luscious wonder. In season, bruschetta is simple, delicious and perfect.

Now imagine the same preparation, but substitute slices of lightly toasted Wonder bread, drizzle it with vegetable oil, top with a shake of garlic powder, a supermarket tomato like the ones you get in January, a sprinkle of dried basil and a pinch of Kraft Parmesan Style Grated Topping shaken out of the little green can. Revolting. And yet, what's the difference, really?

The difference is quality. This is why bruschetta should not be attempted in the winter. You achieve something close to an appropriate look for the dish, but it tastes nowhere near as wonderful as it should.

The downside? Fresh, seasonal ingredients are more expensive and tend to go bad rapidly. They don't ship well. They don't stay "Good Thru 2009." Because the packaged foods business requires low cost and long shelf life, those products don't generally use the highest quality ingredients, so they tend to lack flavor balance and subtlety. Manufacturers end up compensating for the natural flavor dimensions with long lists of salts, sugars and nitrites.

But you're not a manufacturer and you don't need to produce food that will survive twenty years past the apocalypse. You're making good food for yourself and those around you. And you achieve that recipe awesomeness by hunting down the best ingredients and preparing them with your excellent cooking skills. Voila! Edible eudaimonia.

In Lesson 4, we'll pick up some tips from the pros.

Labels: advice, Recipe Rock Star

"Then all day long until sunset we sat dining on a bounty of meat and fine wine, and then we went to sleep on the beach."

-Homer (circa 8th Century BC) in the Odyssey

Labels: food quotes, Friday, hedonism, napping, wine, writers

Entremet mise en place at Tabla

This is lesson #2. Missed lesson #1? It's back here.

Recipe Rock Star Lesson #2:
Mise will change your cooking. And maybe your life.

In my experience, professional cooks populating the high-end kitchens of America love to butcher the French language. It's how we poke the 800 lb gorilla.

You see, back in the day, it was the great French chefs — Escoffier in particular — who codified, modernized and organized the professional kitchen. Yes, Escoffier elevated the trade from random gangs of drunken knife-wielding degenerates roaming the kitchen to orderly lines of drunken knife-wielding degenerates working quietly at fixed stations with swanky French titles. Titles such as "Garde Manger," "Sous-chef," "Saucier" and "Grilliardin" which deteriorate into bastardizations like GM, Sous and Grill.

With a little imagination, the interested amateur can probably parse the original Frenchy intent of the titles. It may not be so easy to determine why cooks are so worried about their mise (meez), a word that sounds more like baby talk or nonsense than what it really is: the most important thing at a cook's station.

Mise is pidgin kitchen-French for "Mise en Place" (MEEZ ahn plahs), a phrase that literally means "setting in place," and philosophically means that everything is in its place and you, the cook, are locked, loaded and ready to rock.

The knives are sharp. The cast-iron pans are seasoned. The oven is preheated. The recipe is firmly implanted in the mind. Tongs are twitching. Ingredients are diced, sliced, blanched, caramelized, grated, marinated and whatever else they need to be in order to make the food happen. Everything is easily accessible in tidy, convenient containers. You are organized — physically and mentally — and there is no way in which you could be more ready for what you're about to do.

This, friends, is the concept of "mise en place." I watched far too many episodes of The A-Team as a child, so the vision of mise in my mind always returned to siege preparations that crack commando unit made three-quarters of the way into every episode. For you, inspiration may be different. Rachel Ray's organized set-up on 30 Minute Meals or mental reel of Rocky Balboa training to the tune of "Eye of the Tiger," perhaps.

The most important thing in attaining "mise" is thinking about how to make your own kitchen station as ready as possible before you begin a recipe. Are the tongs at hand? The colander? Invest in a set of small bowls or custard cups so you can place everything within easy reach.

If you have to dig for herbs at the bottom of the fridge and chop them in a hurry while the dish simmers away on the stove, you're far more likely to wreck the meal or chop off your fingers.

Once you're ace at "mise," you'll find it makes your whole life easier. Mise your bathroom. Mise your workout. Mise your desk. Mise your DIY projects. A little upfront mise makes you better at anything you do.

Thanks, Escoffier. Thanks for the mise.

In the next Recipe Rock Star lesson, we'll see why it's important to conjure visions of Plato while grocery shopping. Meanwhile, happy cooking!

Labels: advice, Recipe Rock Star

Just in from WhiteTrashBBQ, it looks like there'll actually be something yummy-smelling on the East River (for once).

If you happen to have some extra cash weighing you down, this actually looks tasty and educational — not to mention nice work for a non-profit and all that...

We'd like to invite you to The Baron's School of Pitmasters! A first for New York City and a benefit for St. Mark Sports Association, sponsored by R.U.B. Restaurant.

Paul Kirk, the legendary Baron of Barbecue, co-owner of NYC's R.U.B. Restaurant, Barbecue Guru, etc., etc., is coming to New York City to teach the Baron's School of Pitmasters.

• When: Saturday October 21, 2006 - Rain or Shine.
• Where: The Water Taxi Beach, 2nd Street and Borden Ave, Hunter's Point, Long Island City, Queens, New York.
• The What and The Why: This class is suited for the back yard BBQ enthusiast, the seasoned competitor, or those considering opening a BBQ joint (restaurant). The Baron will cover the basics of BBQing Brisket, Pork Butt, Pork Ribs, Chicken, and Sausage. He will also cover fire management, fuels, BBQ rubs and spices, BBQ sauce, contest presentation, among many other subjects.
• How much: $250 per person - CLASS IS LIMITED TO 40 ATTENDEES.
• What do I need to bring: You bring your cooker, fuel, cooking utensils and whatever you'd need to cook outdoors. We supply the rest. (Meat, spices, rubs, etc.)
• How do I get into school: Contact Robert Fernandez aka WhiteTrashBBQ or Matt Fisher aka The Hampton Smoker.

Labels: bbq, chefs, events

Bacon is cute.

Pop quiz, folks! How well do you know from whence your food comes? Well, if you're like most modern city dwellers, you probably have vague notions about farms and ranches.

But if you were exceedingly lucky (like me!) and grew up in a farm state and had the opportunity to attend the Minnesota State Fair this year, well... you might answer this entire quiz with absolute confidence.

In that case, you'd likely be the proud owner of your choice of seed-growing kits: soybean, sugar beet or sweet corn. (I went with the soybean, natch.)

Give it a shot. I ain't giving up my little baby soybean, but at least you'll either have a sense of smug certainty or some new trivia with which to impress your friends and coworkers (And I'm sure you'll soon agree that agricultural trivia is endlessly popular at parties).

Cycles of Agriculture Quiz 2006

1. Name a use for honey.
2. How many eggs can a mature ostrich lay in one year?
3. How do you tell the difference between hay and straw?
4. Name an insect that affects the growth of the soybean crop.
5. What is Minnesota's state fruit?

Ready for the answers? (Don't cheat, now. Cheaters only cheat themselves.)

1. cooking, food manufacture, beauty products, etc.;
2. 40-80;
3. hay is for feed, whereas straw is for bedding;
4. spider mites;
5. honeycrisp apples

Labels: quiz, State Fair

"American Danish can be doughy, heavy, sticky, tasting of prunes and is usually wrapped in cellophane. Danish Danish is light, crisp, buttery and often tastes of marzipan or raisins; it is seldom wrapped in anything but loving care."

R. W. Apple, Jr. (1934-2006)

Labels: food quotes, Friday, pastry, writers

Potato Recipe in Progress from the missginsu photostream at Flickr

I know how it works. It happens to me all the time.

You're paging through a book or magazine, or clicking around on the web, and there it is: an irresistible recipe, singing out from the page with a sonorous siren's strain. You skim the headnote. It makes your mouth water.

You clip it, print it, or scribble it. You stalk the ingredients and the equipment. You bar the door to the kitchen and warn away foolish intruders. You take up your tools and you look to the page for guidance. You chop. You toss. You fling, and you flip. And then, you fail.

Smashed to the rocks. Devoured by monsters. Your hard-earned money, precious time and good intentions splattered into a mess on the stove.

It's too watery. It's too dry. It's salty. It's greasy. It's boring. It's weird.

What went wrong? (Hard to say.) Can it be fixed? (Maybe.) Was it me or the recipe? (That depends.)

I've been working a lot with designing, writing and editing recipes lately, and I've been hearing a lot from people about what's gone well... and what's been disastrous.

I want you to be a virtuoso at the stove. I want your friends to be impressed with your savvy. I want you to be able to look at a recipe and say, "Pfeh! This won't work at all!" and know, deep down in your being, that you can make that thing so much better.

Most of all, I want you to be confident in your abilities and proud of what you make. You will not just competently, consistently produce delicious food... if I have my way, you will rock in the kitchen.

With these thoughts in mind, I'm launching a new feature: The Recipe Rock Star.

You'll be that guy who can play his way through a song after hearing it just once. But with food.

So! Let's begin.

Recipe Rock Star Lesson #1: Use the power of one focused minute.

This step will seem simple and stupid, but it might save you much in the way of suffering. (I know this from sad, sorry experience.)

Diligently gathering the your ingredients and lightly skimming the recipe isn't enough. You must take one minute of the time you've dedicated to doing this project and read every line of the recipe. Don't skim it. Read it.

I'm embarrassed to think of the number of times I've been stopped cold by a little note buried in step #6 that says "chill and marinate overnight" or "cure for 8 to 10 days" or "serve over cooked rice." (Rice!? What rice? Where did it tell me to make rice?)

I'll probably emphasize this again, because it's important. In the same way that not all advice is good advice, not every recipe is well-written. Many recipes published by seemingly reliable companies, cooks and writers are confusing, incomplete or overly vague. Just as often, recipes will be perfectly accurate, but you'll get snagged along the way by a missing piece of equipment (A fluted tube pan? What's that?*) or a serving suggestion tacked on at the end (the afore-mentioned cooked rice thing, for example).

Yes, you're excited to get going on the project. Just take one minute to stop, focus, read the instructions very carefully, and use your critical thinking faculties to check for anything suspicious.

The single, focused minute is a powerful investment.

In Lesson #2, we'll have a look at what cooks call "mise" (MEEZ). 'til then, happy cooking!

* These often go by the traditional brand name: "Bundt Pan"

Labels: advice, Recipe Rock Star

that crazy crepe chef from the missginsu photostream at Flickr

This just in from J... yet more evidence that each of us is insane in his or her own special way.

It is the Way of the Web to show us all things, even things we'd never have thought to seek. In this case, it was the Wikipedia entry for former supermodel Helena Christensen (known to me as "the chick from the video for Chris Isaak's Wicked Game"), which includes this entertaining observation:

"Whenever my head is like a maze, I turn to the easy things in life, the things that mean the most to me: sex and cheese. These things are connected. Truth be told, I love all cheese: French cheese, Italian cheese, even British cheese, but Danish cheese is the greatest. I get my best nightmares after I eat Danish cheese. Actually I've seriously thought about getting a cheese tattoo. A nice Edam on my shoulder, maybe."

I'm not immune to the charms of a quality cheese, but... gosh. Victoria's Secret underwear models tattooed in cheese. It's like the embodiment of a lonely affineur's wildest cheese-cave daydreams.

Labels: cheese, food quotes, J, weird