Quick, run right over to Tapas and Couscous to see pictures of a sheep in a bucket! And sheep in advertisements! Aw.
Meanwhile, in Turkey, they’re trying to be more “European” and rein in the Eid frenzy, according to the Turkish Daily News (login: roving; password: gastronome). How disappointing.
Eid greetings to everyone!
Maybe I should start a new blog called All Lamb All the Time, because that’s what this is starting to sound like. AV is in Morocco, and Eid al-Adha (lit., “feast of the sacrifice”) is in a few days. AV explains, briefly, what it’s about, and how to buy a live sheep, and how to get it home.
Here’s what the sheep will look like in a bit, and here’s AV’s more detailed description of Eid lamb treatment (scroll down to “News from abroad”), from this time last year, in lunar-calendar terms.
Ah-ha. I forgot all about this, me being authoritative on The Azumano Travel Show on KPAM radio in Portland, Oregon, back on November 12. A little clipped, but fortunately they edited out some of my more meandering answers. Here’s the link directly to the sound file.
I did another interview prior to that, but I can’t seem to find it. I know you’re on the edge of your seat…
Because I often glaze over about two-thirds of the way through Frank Bruni’s restaurant reviews in the New York Times, this is exactly what I need: Bruni’s most winning bons mots and terrible puns, pulled out and mocked, and even illustrated with pictures! Lots of boob jokes too. Perfect for the short-attention-spanned.
This is, as Lil’ Kim might say, a fas-kinating book: Portraits of families all around the world photographed with all the food they eat in a week. At the moment, the pic I like most is of the Madsen family of Greenland, with their full array of usual prepackaged semi-junk foods…and a small brace of arctic geese (not yet cleaned) flopped in the middle of the table. They look pleased as punch, and one of the kids says her favorite food is narwhal skin. Rock on, Greenlandic kid! Oh, except I guess I should sound disapproving of eating whales.
This is the second project by the same photographer (and his writer wife). The first one was Material World, which is pics of people with all their physical belongings in front of their house. Meaning, all their furniture, appliances, etc. Everybody, everywhere has a TV. (Just like everyone, everywhere eats a surprising amount of packaged food–except in Bhutan and Darfur.)
The logistical work of these two projects is kind of boggling. Peter and I (well, I) have talked about doing the food photo, just to see, but we get bogged down in technicalities. We did at least to agree to have the designated week not include a lamb roast. Though that would show those Greenlanders a thing or two about fresh carcasses.
So I get a little email last week, alerting me to something clever someone’s concocted re: Thanksgiving.
This doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens just enough for me to assume it’s some tedious PR thingy. But I scan it, I click the link, and…oh yes. Someone seems to be living my fantasy over in Oregon. (What is it about Oregon these days? Must be the wine?)
See, it’s these genius bohemian types running a secret restaurant. And listening to groovy music. And carving stone. And making wine. And having naked barbecues!!! (OK, the carving stone part I’ve never really fantasized about, but everything else fits like a glove.)
Here’s what they are planning for Thanksgiving:
At Sub Rosa we’re always turning ideas inside out just to see how they look from a different angle. Take Thanksgiving for instance.
The American Indians had held harvest celebrations for centuries before the Pilgrims showed up. America’s early settlers had a rough go of it and ended up ill and starving. The generosity and compassion of the First People saved our ancestral butts. Let’s take it back just a little further in time to find the real inspiration for this idea – no, not to Leif Erickson, but to Christopher Columbus.
Chris was looking for India and spices when he ran into the outer shoals of the Bahamas. Spice wise, it is not that hard to make the bridge from our traditional Thanksgiving dinner to an East Indian Thanksgiving meal.
Pumpkin pie leads the way to India – nutmeg, ginger, allspice, cinnamon, cloves and baked pumpkin. If you know your Indian food, you instantly recognize these as staples in the Indian kitchen and key ingredients in your mom’s favorite pumpkin pie.
So you jack that up with crystalized ginger and a cardamon whipped cream and you are sailing straight towards Kerala, a province at the tip of India. Cumin rub on the bird; stuffing with dried fruits and cinnamon; Horseradish mashed potatoes; Cranberry chutneys gone to Bombay and back all help turn your American standards into East Indian delicacies.
The Dinner Recipes:
Appetizer: Curried Nuts
Greens: Gujarat Green Beans
Starch: Horseradish Mashed Potatoes
Curried Yams with coconut milk
Turkey: Cumin and Coriander spice rub
Condiments: Cranberry Chutney
Cucumber Raita
Stuffing: With raisins, cinnamon, almonds, celery and of course, bread
Dessert: Chiffon Pumpkin Pie with crystallized ginger galore
Garam Masala – Classic Indian spice mixture
Here’s a little Indian music to listen to while you prepare the meal and feast on the dinner. Click to play.
Prep Music:
Ashwin Batish – Bombay Boogie
Ashwin Batish – New Delhi Vice
Habib Kahn – Indian Blues
State of Bengal – Walking On
Bally Sagoo – Indian Dub
Yerida Gunginalli – The Drink That Has Gone Up
Zakir Hussain and the Rhythem Experience – Rap-anagatum
Dinner Music:
Ravi Shankar – Vilambit Gat in Teental
Ry Cooder & V.M. Bhatt – Meeting By The River [needs volume]
Thievery Corporation – Lebanese Blonde
Talvin Singh – Light
Habib Kahn – Triangle
Habib Kahn – Raindrops
Ustad Sultan Khan – Rag Bhupali
Sounds good to me.
Omigosh, Amelie is in Japan. Which I knew. But she’s staying in a capsule hotel! Ack. Why this is on my life list, I have no idea, but it seems so nifty and efficient. And, to judge from the pictures, just as sleek and space age as I’d hoped.
Did I mention this already? (Rhetorical. I’m too lazy to look back, but I’m 99% sure I didn’t.) It’s an all-Astoria blog, with resto openings and closings and gossip and the whole bit.
It alerts me to the fact that Malagueta, the Brazilian place on 36th Ave where I think I had my–oh Jesus–28th?! birthday, is in the Michelin guide to NYC. Which is great, and great for them, but then the whole Michelin operation is brought under the interrogation lights when I see that both Brick and 718 are listed. Which are two of the biggest faux-bistros in Astoria (apologies to Brick staff, considering recent tragedies), and at 718, Tamara and I got a pizza with a dead fly on it besides. AND we got sullen talkback from the waitress and the kitchen when we complained about it. 718, you are dead to me. (I like saying that.)
For real bistro-ness, I second, or 82nd, all the votes for Le Sans Souci on Broadway past Steinway, even if they did chuck our duck confit that time. (I was going to link to that story, but now I can’t find it. What if Blogspot is slowly chipping away at my entries? I get anxious enough thinking about all the things I’m actually forgetting, much less those being lost into tech wormholes.)
Heidi sent me this link. She’s building the guy’s house or something. It took me several tries to get over the “unicorn flower” title (in lower case like that), and the pink-on-pink color scheme.
But now I’m actually looking at the words (which are in purple), and they’re interesting. Very hifalutin food experience this guy is living, but always fun to read about, and not precious at all. (Man, am I tired of those “today I made a beautiful croquembouche, and here is a beautiful photo of it, and that’s just how beautiful my life is” food blogs.) I think what sold me was this guy’s explaining why he always carries three Sharpies when he’s working in the kitchen: “having an extra sharpie around is like having a spare crackpipe in your pocket that you can just give away to your friends without asking for it back.” Classy.
A couple entries back, when I slagged off those Dream Dinners people, this woman left a comment, backing up my accusation that DD customers were just freakin’ wimps. She’s a single mom with three kids and two jobs, she says, and she manages to cook dinner all the time, for god’s sake.
So I click over to her blog, Cooking with the Headhunter–and, damn, she also manages to keep an insanely detailed and beautifully photographed blog on top of it all. I knew we were on the same page when I saw the photo of her freezer–full of a side of beef (named Reggie) and almost half a pig (aka Archie). Aww.
But now I feel like an incredible slacker. Not only can I barely muster cooking dinner these days, I can barely blog about it. Must start using freelance office time more constructively.
