red grapes revisited

what's in my fridge? 07/29/06

the sam adams is actually renting space there for a friend's easy access when he works at my building. the grapes are delicious this time of year. that thai paste i use when i make curry coconut chicken once in a blue moon. okay i just outed myself - talked smack about having fancy chef's knives to chop garlic, and there's the jar of pre-minced cloves i bought out of sheer laziness. authenticity, my arse, eh? hee hee.

ave mario

slate magazine recently had an article questioning the "somber" style adopted by gourmet magazine regarding its cover photography.

i think the style is more reverent than depressing... there is such the new 'cult of personality' that suddenly surrounds chefs and all things culinary, thanks to education from public television, beautiful celebrity cookbooks spun off from food network 24/7 and the millions spent on fabulous/not so fabulous new restaurants; there has been a popularizing of once-exotic ingredients and utensils... (i remember being laughed at in college because i actually had a garlic press among my random thrift-store kitchen acoutrements. now i'm press-less but have some really wicked kitchen knives to chop garlic by hand = much more craft and art, right?)

this is one of my shots that i took in my kitchen. is it depressing? good, because i was in a sad mood when i shot it.

but seriously, i think that we're all getting a little too sophisticated for the lame, straight-on, full focus shots above-the-menu at the noodle shop in the mall. (unless you are a certain japanese bistro in scottsdale.)

cooking has become so commercialized, so even wal*mart sells satay skewers (under horrid flourescent lighting i might add)

as chefs get more and more sophisticated, as restaurants spend more and more money decorating their spaces so that the guests enjoy the exact experience the proprietors want to pair with their food and wine, we need to be able to show that reverence and complexity that everyone has given to very basic needs.

waste not want not

an earlier post referenced "the soul of a chef" - i'm finally getting towards the end and came across a stunning passage. thomas keller (see previous post dream dinner) recalls how he once asked his purveyor to send him live rabbits instead of well, parts. he wanted to learn how the freshest food was actually killed and dressed. he relates a startling session with the bunnies, how they screamed louder than the milk pitchers at fair trade coffee at central and portland. (baristas there please reference previous post!!!) but the respect he gained for the food he was creating exponentially increased. his obsession with never wasting anything useable from any item of food...

his head sous chef talks about a stage at a michelin rated french restaurant where he was in charge of cleaning and dressing $11.00/pound produce. where he quickly learned the respect necessary for such a commodity. returning to the states, he treated $2.90/pound asparagus the exact same way, out of respect that he learned for the entire process, the entire goal of beautiful nutrition, the entire goal of doing his best at everything.

eat food that makes you cry when you taste it because it's beautiful. not for convenience... i've driven by THOSE stockyards in texas along the interstate. but the places that actually understand what they do to lives, have respect for them, and use all of the lives that they take with dignity and grace.

the basics of intense gourmet cooking can be directly applied to real life. pay attention to the basics. don't waste what you are given, at any price. clarity trumps complexity. cleanliness is next to alice cooper-ness. take pride in every move, and make every move perfect grace. love what you are creating.

hell hath no fury like a frother scorned

ATTENTION STARBUCKS EMPLOYEES:

Microfoam is a byproduct of heating milk with a steam wand on an espresso machine. The quality of microfoam is actually a very fine emulsion of denatured milk protein and air, that has little or no visible bubbles. The qualitative opposite of microfoam is macrofoam, which has visibly large bubbles.


this is what cappucino foam should look like. dense, v. small bubbles, and should float a beer bottle cap. it should not burn the crap out of your mouth. the coffee should be thick but smooth and rich.

to make the perfect foam, place more milk than you will need into the pitcher (to ensure you have enough time to make sufficient foam before it all scalds), submerge the steamer wand and turn on the steamer. immediately start moving the pitcher up and down, alternately submerging the the wand and then drawing it back up just under the surface until you hear the sound of the milk foaming. continue bouncing the pitcher, keeping your hands on the outside to feel for the temperature increasing. if it's too hot for you to hold, it's too hot for someone to drink. (duh @$^$%@!) keeping the wand near the surface of the milk creates the thickest, largest amount of foam. as soon as the sound of the wand in the milk starts to change, you have begun to alter the chemical composition of the milk and it's DONE.

a cappucino has more foam than a latte. basic basic basic.

where can a girl find a decent cup of coffee in this town??!! despite caffeine-induced hopes dashed by chain and independent coffee shops alike, after terrible tongue burns from poorly trained baristas who try to save time by leaving the milk for a cappucino under the steamer screaming worse than jodie foster's lambs, while they just push a button to pour shots.... there are a few phoenix establishments that actually know how to make the perfect foam.

• drip: 7th street & sheridan ... might take a while to get to you because the staff is all so neighborhood and friendly, but with the kicky atmosphere you won't mind hanging around a while.
• paisley violin: grand avenue ... i'm only bitter because their move last year put them outside of stumbling distance from my house.

best of: burgers

best cheap burger in arizona:

bear wallow cafe in alpine

the meat is so tender it seems like you could actually use a spoon to eat this sandwich. comes standard with mayo packets, and with what are probably the soggiest fries in arizona.

bear wallow cafe
Hwy 180 - South side
Alpine, AZ 85920
right at intersection of 191 and 180 in alpine
the best gig in town for breakfast, lunch or dinner

right next to great little stayover spot: alpine cabins

restaurant quantum mechanics

why do we love to go out to eat? what is the romance the draw the beauty of a menu, where one can walk into a room, ask for a certain thing on a list, and expect to receive that thing... as described... as expected?

quantum mechanics and chaos theory ... divorce rate and throw-away consumerism.

where else can i go these days, and feel reassured that something i'm told is going to be a certain way actually exists in physical reality? the news media?

i think this might explain why people get so incredibly upset when they go to a restaurant and things are not up to par... we want to escape to a place where things are perfectly done and where we feel important... almost magicians... we ask AND we receive.

if i go to this restaurant, i get reality reassured to me in multiple ways:

1. description, decor: does it look the way i've been led to believe? wow, actually yes.
2. menu: is the cuisine similar to what i've been led to believe?
3. actual dish: does my plate actually represent what i've been told to expect?
4. service: someone will take care of me... better odds than family these days.

this is also great proponent for the CMC.. the Certified Master Chef exam at the Culinary Institute of America... because doing things in an actually universal way is somewhat comforting today. relativity, morality-wise, has destroyed a lot of this world's spirits and drives, but the culinary world will have an actual standard to strive for and acheive.

the only string theory i want to wrap my head around is the perfect al dente tagliatelli wrapped around my fork.

(why have we no Einstein today, but we do have a Thomas Keller?)

anything-tini

glassware is absolutely key to the 'biz. a martini is basically a frou-frou way of asking for a shot of hooch, put it in a "i 'heart' st. petersburg" shot glass, and it's a shot of vodka. but you put it in that angular tall stemmed glass with some bleu cheese stuffed olives, shakey shakey, and suddenly it is ab-fab rather than just a crap shot of skyy. martini glasses also make for ultrafancy dessert dishes; i've seen lots of chefs try to extend the martini glass's use into appetizer-land, but ceviche pressed up against clear glass just looks like green tinged brains, so don't do it.

wine glasses are just as important as martinis, and the stem-less trend might work in little italy and be called au-ten-tik, and it would totally work if you're serving the 5.99-er but if you actually are buying a $100+ dollar bottle of wine, and you know what it's supposed to taste like, and want to actually taste it that way, ask for different glasses if you're served stemless from some hip-dip lounge... the heat from your hand will actually affect the temperature of the wine, and if the restaurant's "cellar" is worth it's salt, the thousands they spent on it is worthless if first-daters' sweaty palms make all their wine mulled.

there is a reason for all these different shapes and sizes of glasses... champagne flutes encourage all those bubbles that get you messed up faster on new years and turn the night into "amateur night"... (will tirade on those nights on a later post... )

beer steins with handles... not as chic to look at, but in the arizona heat, when someone invariably wants to sit on a patio, their fingers won't heat up the suds as fast. our hands are 98 degrees on the inside... beer is really good at 45 degrees... do the math. those steins on "cheers" are not just nostalgically pleasant.

the forms of things make things taste different. that is a given in cooking, otherwise we could just eat a piece of pig cut straight off the hog. beverage culinary arts are just as important, and your favorite bartender (and bar manager) need to know that the appeal of alcohol is, at higher pricelines, not solely the fuzzy factor, but the actual culinary factor as well.

and make those martini glasses make it really pretty too.

breakfast to go

the soul of a chef

wonderful book by michael ruhlman - three parts featuring the intensity of the chef's experience from different perspectives... i've already had to renew it from the library twice, and usually i throw books down in an afternoon or two. but this one, this one i want to savor. the romance, the intangibility of the whole dining experience.

fortunately he has a few more books to consume...

hell's kitchen

...yes it really is that difficult.

but whatever cooking school graduated that sara girl must have been like online or something.

heather has got it... the drive, the ego, the leadership... she's really the only one of the lot who i could actually see captaining a million dollar house. the editors cut out so much of the dinner services tho, it's hard to really pick out what the issue is, beyond just plain incompetence - not knowing how to cook a steak. not knowing what risotto is supposed to look like. calling it a game.

dream dinner

www.frenchlaundry.com

authenticity