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October 20, 2006
What should I do, a colleague asked, about being assigned dishes by his mother to bring for Thanksgiving? The problem is that mom's idea of a feast day meal has nothing to do with his and his wife's idea. Hers is old-fashioned and he and his wife want to make something more modern. The two also want to help his mom, who has a big crowd coming. He wanted to know what to do.
Make the dish her way, I advised. When you take over the holiday responsibilities, make the food your own way. There's too much else in the world to worry about.
I could open a psychoanalytic practice that deals exclusively with Thanksgiving. Perhaps because readers know I'm usually at the other end of my phone, they begin calling in early November. Some want me to recreate a dish that ran in the Food section before we were all born. Other callers are looking for something a late mother made; they're searching for a taste from childhood. Many are cooking for the first time because they've taken over the task and they're worried that they're not up to it.
Most of the concerns, of course, have nothing to do with the table. They have to do with memories (not all good), responsibilities, and family. When I hear this in their voices, I have to wonder if there's a Thanksgiving equivalent to bah humbug.
Posted by Sheryl Julian at 06:57 PM
October 19, 2006
Every year, Warner Farm in Sunderland is home to Mike's Maze. It's a corn maze, but with a twist. The winding pattern carved into it is also an extremely lifelike portrait (if you consider green and leafy lifelike). Whom did they picture this year? Surely you recognize this beloved former Cambridge resident. Julia Child would have been honored.
Posted by Devra First at 04:50 PM
October 19, 2006
I can't remember the last time I ate dinner on front of the TV. After wine and a few nuts (my latest fascination is with roasted, salted nuts made in a cast-iron skillet), we eat dinner without television.
But that doesn't take into account a playoff game
and the finale of Project Runway
on the same night. So I loaded up a big tray, poured the wine and water, took big napkins, and settled in. Nothing was disappointing, though flipping back and forth between the two with a fork in one hand and a glass in the other took a whole new skill.
Posted by Sheryl Julian at 04:25 PM
October 19, 2006
My daughter is calling from Shaw's supermarket. I'm at my desk and she's standing in front of the Asian products. "What was it I needed for peanut sauce?" she's asking. This is several days after an earlier conversation when I found a sauce in Nina Simonds' "Asian Noodles" and read it to her over the phone.
Of course, she had been in the car at the time, and wrote nothing down. Nor had she made the sauce that night. "Hoisin sauce," I say, after racking my memory. "They don't have it," she says. I can hear her walking around and others in the store talking.
"Well, give me a minute and I'll find another recipe. Or you could go over to Super 88." "No, that's too far. How about this bottle of Thai peanut sauce? Will that work?" she asks.
I'm busy, she's impatient. But this is how young people are learning to cook these days. It begins with a phone call -- often from the supermarket. I sigh, she signs off, and the bottled product wins the day.
Posted by Alison Arnett at 03:44 PM
October 17, 2006
Louisiana-born Colleen Rush has just written "The Mere Mortal's Guide to Fine Dining," a book that many people I've eaten dinner with need. She tells you what to do in a restaurant -- not just which fork to use, but how to be gracious about the entire experience. She writes with little asides, some called "Eat This" and "Lagniappe," which point out things like where foie gras is from and what the problem is with Chilean sea bass (most isn't sea bass, but rather Patagonian toothfish, which is dwindling).
She discusses ordering. "Restaurants are not above using psychology to steer you into ordering higher-profit dishes," she writes. She maintains that those are listed first and last on the menu, because that's what diners read thoroughly.
There's real etiquette stuff here. As in, don't push your plate away from you when you're done and never stack for the waiter. And put utensils, including the handles, on the plate when you're done.
Another hint: "When in doubt about any table manner matter, glance around the table or dining room and copy your host or the classiest act in the place."
Lots of fun here. Pop quiz: In a restaurant if something is set down before you on a tiny plate, what is it called?
Alas, we can't turn the blog upside down to give the answer. It's an amuse bouche (mouth amusement) or amuse gueule (palate amusement), meant to delight you.
Posted by Sheryl Julian at 08:11 PM
October 17, 2006
In the last decade or so, votive candles, those little flickers of flame in cute glass holders, have taken over the restaurant table. There's almost no place without them -- cozy neighborhood to fancy steakhouse. Cheap to buy, short enough not to get in the way of people talking, and cute; they seem the perfect solution.
But to those of us who walked in Catholic church processionals carrying votives, they invoke mixed emotions. For one thing, I associate them with Gregorian chants and long lines of little girls in white, not with steak frites or tuna tartare. Then there's a memory of the girl in front of me in one long-ago ceremony getting the flame too close to her tulle veil. Her uncle vaulted over the back pew, and put the blaze out before she was injured. That was the last time we ever carried live flames.
And to tell the truth, it's been a close call at restaurants when the servers move the votive candles around to find room for a dish, practically shoving them off the table. Or someone leans over to pour wine and nearly flambees his or her sleeve.
So I've been happy to notice that these flameless votives (these are from Ambria) seem to be catching on. It seems a good way to light up the night without burning it to ashes.
Posted by Alison Arnett at 05:15 PM
October 16, 2006
I hate messy fridges, and I'm always telling friends how to store things so they keep well. Like: put washed lettuces in a zipper bag with a paper towel on the bottom. Same for rinsed grapes. Label containers. Nothing earth shattering here. Last night, when I tucked the last of my lunches for the week into the fridge, I decided that the brimming shelves looked like an ad. For what? An obsessive cook, of course.
I've taken out the middle shelf of the fridge so I can stack things high on the bottom. The blue-topped containers on the right of the top and bottom shelves are my lunches (if you put vegetables on the bottom of the container and lettuce on the top, they stay for many days). Moving left on the bottom shelf you get to several baggies of grapes. These are to pop into the lunch bag.
Next, in the black pot, is my new favorite soup, pureed cauliflower, ready to heat. Under the pot is a big container with roast chicken left from last week (food has to be really off in order for me to toss it).
I have more eggs than I need (far left), but you never know when a baking urge will hit so I keep plenty on hand.
By the end of the week, you'd think an army had invaded. The shelves are bare. That usually means that friends stopped by around dinner and we opened the fridge and started pulling things out. It's always nice that there's lots to work with.
Posted by Sheryl Julian at 05:15 PM
October 16, 2006
National Dessert Day slipped by us -- actually I wouldn't have known it was Oct. 14 except for an email about it. But what's the need for a day? It seems to me that every day is dessert day. Just ask restaurateurs how desserts are selling. They'll tell you that sales are strong.
Anyway, the marketing survey firm NPD Group announced that apple pie and chocolate cake are the biggies for the fall season. Why chocolate in fall? Chocolate for all seasons, I guess.
My dinner guests last night seemed enamored of a pear fool I found in the latest Gourmet magazine. Adapted slightly from the Spotted Pig, a hot-hot-hot gastro-pub in New York, the fool was a breeze to make. I poached pears in white wine and spices and then whirred them to a puree in the blender. Then I whipped heavy cream and a tiny bit of powdered sugar, adding my own touch of a couple of tablespoons of creme fraiche to give the cream a tang. I layered the puree, drizzles of the poaching liquid, and the whipped cream in a footed glass bowl. It made a pretty dessert, and even though it wasn't apple pie or chocolate, it garnered rave reviews.
Posted by Alison Arnett at 04:30 PM
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