Category: Links

Forkin’ A: Profanity in Print

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First, can I just say that it’s total bullshit that the only person who got to say ‘fuck’ in Julie & Julia was Stanley Tucci? I applaud Julie Powell for bringing female profanity to the bestseller list. I didn’t realize what an issue this was until mine and Tamara’s cookbook got its cover profanity euphemism (not even real profanity) cutesified, while men continue to get to write On Bullshit and Drink, Play, Fuck. (To be fair, though, at least inside the book we still swear plenty.)

And those of you who know me know that actually, I don’t swear all that much. Only when I’m really fucking pissed. Or excited. And occasionally when it might be funny.

Anyway, on to the matter at hand: Forking Fantastic! (nee F-ing Delicious) is in my hot little hands! A solid month before the proper release date.

That means you still have a month to trot on over to Amazon and preorder your copy. You know you want to. By the time it comes out, the weather will be good and autumnal, just right for baking the bad-ass ham we have in there.

And can I point out that this is almost certainly the only book on the market to use the phrase “like potluck, but for your ass”? Thank you, thank you, for your appreciation of my contributions to the English language. A check is most generous.

And finally, on the same profanity trajectory: There is going to be hella more Momofuku in my life! Not only is David “Foulest Language Ever Documented in the New Yorker” Chang’s cookbook coming out, but a new Momofuku is opening in midtown, in the Chambers Hotel, with a Vietnamese slant, no less. That is conveniently right on Peter’s commute back from John Jay and a dangerously short hop from Astoria. Expect us to weigh twice as much this time next year.

(BTW, in our cookbook…we have a bastardized version of David Chang’s miso butter. I’m just saying bastardized because it’s fun to say, but really…I think it’s a much better way of making it. Serious.)

Hurricane Katrina Anniversary: Read/Watch This

Four years ago, Peter and I were in a car in Nevada, driving through the driest wastelands imaginable and listening to the horrible news on the radio: New Orleans engulfed in floodwaters. It was riveting and awful to listen at such a remove. I think the only time we laughed was when they interviewed a Dutch hydrologist, who, in typical Dutch fashion, just simply could not understand how the Americans could fail to keep their lowlands dry.

Eventually our radio signal petered out, as we arrived at the gates of Burning Man. We spent the rest of the weekend wondering if New Orleans would still exist when we finally left our desert party.

Barely. And of course the news had only gotten worse by then.

We visited New Orleans in 2007, with friends who had the wisdom to get married in such a fine city. People were still traumatized, of course. But the spirit of the city was there. And very few people, driving very few cars, made it a wonderful place to ride a bicycle. Also because the people on foot weren’t shy about flagging you down to give you restaurant recommendations or ask, “You get that hat at Meyer’s?” (Peter’s hat, alas–not mine.) I wrote this then.

All a lot of preamble to say: read fellow Lonely Planet writer Adam Karlin’s essay in World Hum, “Yeah You Right: A New Orleans Manifesto.”

That should then spark your appetite for something a little meatier, and you should run to a bookstore and get Dan Baum’s Nine Lives. Dan (I can call him that, because I admit, I am friends with him and his razor-sharp editor of a wife, Meg Knox) has an excellent ear for New Orleans linguistic detail, and tells a beautiful story. The book isn’t so much about Katrina–it doesn’t get to that till near the end of the book–as about what makes the city so remarkable and resilient.

Even if you don’t buy the book this instant (though you should), click over to the Amazon page and look at his author photo. Yes, he got that hat at Meyer’s!

And for more on the flood itself, watch Trouble the Water. I was lucky enough to see this with the directors in attendance, along with the woman who shot so much of the footage on her video camera during the flood. And her boyfriend. And her baby. It’s gripping, and even though it documents a shocking failure and tragedy, has an amazingly positive outlook.

And perhaps after all that, you should buy yourself a plane ticket, especially if you’ve never been. And eat a po’ boy at Parkway for me.

MtAoFC: BFD

mtaofcThere, I said it. I really have never been at all swoony over Julia Child and Simone Beck’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I don’t typically bring it up in public, because then people shoot bloody daggers out of their eyes at you for speaking ill of Saint Julia, and they also then assume that you cook nothing but tuna-noodle casserole.

So let me be clear: Julia Child is perfectly delightful, and did a world of good for this country and its food culture. My father still speaks in hushed tones about the bad old days in the supermarket, when the only mushrooms you could buy were in a can. And I know and appreciate that the French have a fantabulous culinary heritage, and we should all learn to eat and drink in such a thoughtful way.

But MtAoFC is just not all that. I have never, ever flipped through it and thought, “Ooh, I’ll cook this.” In fact, I think the book has only served to reinforce my prejudice against French food, and how annoyingly special it seems to consider itself. Whenever I read a recipe in MtAoFC, I find myself thinking, “C’mon–really? Is all that shit necessary?” And you know I am not a dump-and-stir Rachael Ray type. I like spending time in the kitchen, and look for reasons to do so.

So it was interesting to read this little Julia Moskin book review in the New York Times today.

Moskin points out the fundamental problem with MtAoFC: it’s restaurant cooking. Child studied at a school for professional cooks (Le Cordon Bleu), and that’s what she relays in the book. As Moskin says, and I have said, restaurant cooking is wildly different from home cooking. Restaurant chefs prize consistency, perfectly velvety sauces and manically regularly cubed vegetables, and they have an army of people and gear to make that all happen.

Because of this, I have always been deeply skeptical of all restaurant cookbooks. But I guess I just don’t give enough of a crap about French food to ever have noticed that’s the same reason why MtAoFC rubs me the wrong way. I mean, sweet Christ, I have only peeled pearl onions once in my life, for a Greek stifadho, and I think that just might be enough.

And of course it’s great that the country is currently in the throes of Julia love, and people who’ve never cooked are inspired enough to march out to buy fatback and red wine and all that.

But how many people are going to get halfway through the boeuf bourguignon recipe, with every pot and pan dirty and no more counter space left and dinner still hours away, and say, “This is what cooking is?! Get me the hell out!” (Or, heaven forbid, they’ll cook the aspic.)

Moskin in the Times reviews a different French cookbook, I Know How to Cook, which focuses on home cooking skills. Totally hateful title, and ghastly chick-y cover, but even so: this one might finally get me on board with the whole French food thing.

Oh, and OK–I feel I should admit that in mine and Tamara’s forthcoming cookbook, there is a recipe for cassoulet, perhaps the pinnacle of ridiculous overrated Frenchiness. And the recipe references MtAoFC–which is, in fact, a very good reference…which is not the same as a very good book to cook out of. (I think we can safely say that whatever French business is in that book was Tamara’s idea.) But we worked hard to make sure the cassoulet isn’t just blindly following some overly complicated restaurant-y procedure. And as a result, I will probably never eat cassoulet again…

Preparing for Reentry

Back in the New York orbit on Sunday, finally. Gingerly dipping my toes in the current news.

Why does this not surprise me? I have long suspected food allergies were way overblown, especially for kids. File under Things I Have Always Believed to Be True, only because the Told You So file is already overstuffed, and nobody ever seems to read the stuff I put in there.

Mexico photos to be posted shortly…

Pollan on the Death of Home Cooking

I’m still in Mexico, and will be posting about that in a bit (once Peter leaves and I’m left to my own devices in the evenings).

In the meantime, don’t miss yet another fantastic article by Michael Pollan: Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch.

As usual, he manages to say everything I’ve been saying, but without ranting or getting depressed. The real tragedy of the current state of home cooking, in my mind, is that people who now want to learn to cook have virtually no home cooks to learn from–only fancy chefs. Home cooking is a very different skill set from restaurant cooking, and not nearly as intimidating as TV cheffery makes it seem.

I also love his point early on about the transubstantiation that’s central to cooking. It is a small art, and a small miracle, to transform ingredients. I talk about this a bit in the early parts of mine and Tamara’s cookbook, Forking Fantastic! (out Oct. 6, as if I’d let you forget).

More practically, cooking is perhaps the best arts-and-crafts project you can undertake–it’s done in an hour, and you don’t have the results cluttering up your house. But you still have the satisfaction of having completed something substantial, of having made something–which unfortunately is a feeling that’s very rare in a lot of our workdays.

Back

OK, I got back last weekend. But per usual, am under the deadline gun (5 min to write this before my official noon work hour starts).

Entertain yourselves with the new Cooking in Real Time episode, all about…whoo-hoo, sloppy joes!

And re: the book title, I am crushed we didn’t think of Ducking Felicious in time. This is why I need Josh and Larra on speed dial. (I was explaining the dilemma to a British couple in Spain, and that was their first suggestion. The Brits–they are a little wittier.)

Forking Fantastic it is, and I got the galleys a couple of days ago. The cute factor with the new title is a little high. Somehow, Forking Fantastic thong underwear does not have quite the same appeal as F-ing Delicious underwear. A whole marketing angle lost…

11:59. Spain pics in a few days.

Here Is Havana

Ooh, very promising: Fellow Lonely Planet writer, native New Yorker and generally perceptive gal Conner Gorry has finally started a blog about daily life in Havana:

Here Is Havana

Peter and I and a few other friends went to Cuba in 1996, I think it was. (Surely it’s OK to say this, and the statute of limitations has run out by now?) We were so mentally unprepared, it’s comical in retrospect. At the time, though, it was an extremely rough trip.

We didn’t fully grasp, for instance, that it would be impossible to get more money once there…and we didn’t know quite how expensive it would be. It was very difficult to get off the “official” tourist track, and the attendant 1-to-1 exchange rate. But even if we had, well, there wasn’t anything to buy with Cuban money anyhow. Our second week, we got by on one meal a day, and we rolled up to the airport with nothing but our exit tax in our pockets.

The situation was grimmest when it came to food. I still shudder when I think about the creepy, greasy fish we were served at the one restaurant we found where we could pay in Cuban pesos. My sentimental attachment to Communism was pretty well chipped away on that trip, when I realized that the system truly just failed at feeding people, much less giving them the real, simple pleasure that can come from delicious things to eat every day.

I hope this has changed a bit in years since. When we visited, farmer’s markets were just starting up, as a very controlled experiment. The few times we got fresh produce, it was fantastic. But, whoa, that was so not a trip about kicking back on the beach and eating fresh pineapple. Still, when I returned to the Dominican Republic, I was appalled at the slums and the advertising everywhere…and I really appreciated the pineapple on the beach.

So, looking forward to reading Conner’s reports, as it sounds like various policies have changed since I visited. I especially want to know about the food!

And another thing to read

I mentioned it back in the fall, but then I was just guessing at how enjoyable it would be. Now I know The Upper East Side Cookbook, by the lovely Parsley Cresswell, is the next volume to add to your shelves.

Poor Miss Parsley. She feels herself losing her toehold in the society of the Upper East Side. And I think, in these troubled economic times, we can all relate to that. Just yesterday, downward mobility was the subject of breakfast conversation.

Miss Parsley is inventive, though, and cooks and forages to save money, as well as to cheer herself up. And the recipes in this book are all quite accessible and delicious. But that hardly does the book justice–it’s really a wonderful document of NYC life, and I feel proud to have had a very small hand in it. (I know Parsley’s alter ego, and provided light copy editing services.)

Your copy, printed on demand, is available here. Or you can pick one up at The Corner Bookstore (91st and Madison) or Kitchen Arts & Letters (on Lexington).

Maybe it’s just the thing for Mother’s Day? You know, just to show that even though you’re actually not doing quite so well as your parents, you’re still managing to feed yourself…