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January 24, 2007
Williams-Sonoma has done it again. You can be a French boulangere and offer guests hot croissants in the morning, using this pre-cut croissant dough. For $39.95, you get about three pounds of dough, or 18 croissants.
You'd look like a fool to serve hot croissants with ordinary coffee, so something like this:
is certainly in order. And it's only right to present them as thoughtfully as possible on this:
My own whole grain toast with yogurt on dishes an Italian friend calls "toilet bowl Ginori" seems so shabby.
Posted by Sheryl Julian at 05:07 PM
January 24, 2007
As the Globe reported earlier, Kevin Federline, Britney Spears's babydaddy and wannabe rapper, is starring in a commercial for Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company to air during the Super Bowl. It's part of their "Life Comes at You Fast" series.
The ad -- spoiler alert! -- starts off with K-Fed as a rap star. Turns out he's only dreaming, though: The commercial soon reveals he's really working at a burger joint. (Click here to see him in the studio rapping "Nationwide... Nationwide is on your side." Is it my imagination, or does he look a little embarrassed?)
Pretty funny, huh? Not to the National Restaurant Association, which is trying to get Nationwide to kill the ad.
Association president and CEO Steven C. Anderson writes in a letter to the insurance company:
"We hope that ... Nationwide will not be airing such an ad that would give the impression that working in a restaurant is demeaning and unpleasant. An ad such as this would be a strong and a direct insult to the 12.8 million Americans who work in the restaurant industry."
K-Fed a fry cook? Don't insult the hamburger flippers!
Posted by Devra First at 04:39 PM
January 24, 2007
A colleague (well, actually it was co-blogger Sheryl Julian) sent me a link to PrimeTime Tables, a new service that promises to do for restaurants what ticket brokers do for the Red Sox.
It works like this: You want to go to Blue Hill or BLT Steak in New York tonight, but you don't have a reservation. By paying a fee --hefty, if it's close to reservation time -- the service guarantees you a table.
Essentially, you're paying to make a reservation, from $35 to up to $450 for a premium annual membership. The site lists prime spots in Manhattan, and has Boston listed, although no restaurants pop up so far. EGullet, the foodie website, has a long string arguing the pros and cons. It seems that when you use the service, you have to go to the restaurant under an assumed name and not mention PrimeTime Tables. Very cloak and dagger (or very restaurant critic).
This, along with Frank Bruni's long and excellent piece today in the New York Times' Dining Out section about the deification of chefs and the humbling of the paying diner, and one begins to ponder a rebellion. Is eating out worth all this fuss?
That's a question I'll bring up for discussion when I go out for dinner this evening.
Posted by Alison Arnett at 04:16 PM
January 23, 2007
Magda Mehdawy, the stunning author of "My Egyptian Grandmother's Kitchen," watched her own grandmother cook the dishes in this volume. She begins with Egyptian culinary history, writes extensively about cupboard items (legumes, vegetables, spices), even explaining which of these should be refrigerated. And then the recipes start, many with a photograph: boiled tripe soup, crushed broad bean soup, green mallow with poultry, mashed okra with beef, Alexandria-style liver, pintail duck with marta seasoning, bean sprout koshk, lentil fatta, fried vermicelli with sugar. All fascinating, but too difficult to think about making.
Everything's in metric measurements!
This could be the most amazing book for Americans because we don't know much about this cuisine. Some dishes seem to have a vaguely Turkish flavor. There's bechamel sauce in unlikely places, which is surely English. Instead of oil, many recipes call for ghee, an Indian ingredient.
A good editor and a recipe tester could do wonders here to make Medhawy's book user-friendly.
Posted by Sheryl Julian at 07:45 PM
January 23, 2007
One of my favorite places to eat in Providence is Nick's on Broadway. Until recently, it was a teeny tiny diner, seating maybe 15 people. The best place to sit was on a stool at the counter, which was almost on top of the kitchen. There was enough room between the counter and the stoves and sinks for a few chefs to stand. It was amazing to watch the choreography in that narrow space.
But though the setting was pure diner -- blue counter, blue checked floors -- the food was not. Nick's only served breakfast and lunch: frittatas and buttermilk hotcakes with real syrup for the former; sandwiches of seared duck, pear, and blue cheese and fantastic burgers for the latter.
Recently Nick's moved to a (slightly) larger location. The new Nick's on Broadway is still on Broadway, and it just started serving dinner. We went on Saturday night, and, well, it was a disaster, er, I mean a work in progress.
The few minutes we were given as a wait time stretched into an hour. We sat at the bar and watched the work in the kitchen, at a slightly greater remove now. An entree was sent back. Another soon followed. A man at the end of the bar stormed out, saying, "You just lost a customer!"
The young chef-owner grimaced, wiped his brow, smiled at us weakly. A while later, he sent over an antipasto platter on the house. Still later, he came over to talk to us. He looked like he might fall asleep on the counter. It's hard having a new baby.
Finally we got a table. The length of time between courses felt interminable. The room was freezing cold. When it arrived, the food was a mixed bag. Duck and beef appetizers were delicious. A gnocchi dish was an unpleasantly cheese-and-bacon-heavy jumble. Scallops were cooked well but served in a dish that bore little resemblance to the menu's description. Pork was dry and accompanied by unpleasantly pumpkin-pie-spiced sweet potato polenta.
At the end of the meal, the waiter brought us complimentary spoons of white chocolate mousse. It was heavenly. I don't even like white chocolate.
I really want Nick's to succeed. The chef is talented, and he clearly cares about the food. But the dinner service has a long way to go. (Meanwhile, the lines for weekend brunch are still out the door; I don't even have the heart to brave them till it's warmer out.)
Hopefully soon, bigger will also be better at Nick's on Broadway.
Posted by Devra First at 12:13 PM
January 23, 2007
Throughout the day, the delightful co-op student who opens my mail drops food samples on a chair behind my desk. A box of crackers, a bag of chips, a bar of chocolate, nuts, a sweet onion, a new cereal. The things with no trans fats but lots of chemicals are given away immediately. Chips, nuts, and chocolates are banished after one morsel. Occasionally something strikes my fancy and I take it home to try.
And so last week I tucked a 3-inch box of Das Caramelini Artisanal Caramels into my satchel. About 10 p.m. when the need for something sweet struck like lightning, I opened one.
Wow!
These 3/4-inch chocolate squares are made with tiny bits of toasted walnuts, a little ancho chili oil, and some paprika, with fleur de sel dusted on top. There's no nutritional information on the box, nor a website. Don't worry. Your intrepid reporter found them here.
You can buy them online: a 4-ounce box costs $5.99.
DAS, welcome to my kitchen!
Posted by Sheryl Julian at 10:49 AM
January 22, 2007
This
Plus this
Equals...
Last night, the Sauce team (off duty) went to James's Gate in Jamaica Plain to watch the game. Being the Sauce team, though, we needed to eat first.
Advised by the former JP resident in our party to go with pub classics, we mostly ordered the (seemingly) innocuous likes of turkey burgers, fish 'n' chips, and soup.
The burgers and fish were fine. But when the soup arrived, it tasted like Campbell's cream o' creosote and tomato. Had someone been using our bowl as an ashtray? Because this had the flavor of a pack's worth of cigarette butts.
No, the waitress explained, it was smoked tomato soup.
A lump of coal -- in a pot of potage -- to James's Gate for making tomato soup inedible.
(And a double raspberry for our after-dinner tea. The mugs of water arrived lukewarm; when we asked for hot water to brew our bags in, the mugs came back even luker. At last we've found a kitchen staff we can honestly say doesn't even know how to boil water.)
Posted by Devra First at 03:56 PM
January 22, 2007
Finding whole fish has been difficult at local markets, but lately Whole Foods and other purveyors have begun to offer more than just trout, specifically small red snappers, sardines, and lately Mediterranean branzini. Restaurant chefs have discovered this small sea bass because its size and delicate flavor work well for single portions. Usually you'll see it on Italian menus, roasted or sometimes flash fried.
I bought two at Whole Foods, really about enough for three people. I looked through one of my favorite Mexican books, "Cuisine of the Water Gods" by Patricia Quintana. A spicy chili sauce from Tampico and a stuffing of tomatoes, onions, olives and pimentos made an easy and great-tasting dish. All that it needed were a few soft, warm tortillas and a salad.
Lovely, except for presentation: The fish drooped off the edge of my regular-sized plates. In restaurants, whole fish are usually served on oval platters. If I continue on my campaign to serve whole fish, I might have to go buy platters. As anyone who cooks knows, there's never an end to the dishware you need.
Posted by Alison Arnett at 12:11 PM
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