My dear friend Arlette, whom I do not know, with whom I have yet to communicate, she of future culinary wizardry, commented on the Food Network in this post.
Well, I've been meaning to comment on that for, whoa, the longest time. Since I started airing my foodities online, like, say, around 1996, things have sure changed. I, at least, got no Food Network, though I think it may have been available; no, all I got was the Saturday and Sunday PBS afternoon cooking shows: Bibi Cooks Italian, Jacques Pépin et Fille, y'know the drill, maybe a little Julia here and there, maybe some Martin Yan.
God, how times have changed. I was one who literally bought the digital channels JUST for the Food Channel. But as Arlette so succinctly pointed out, it's all background noise now.
I watched Iron Chef when it WAS Iron Chef, in Japan, in 1991. In Japanese! I watched it as it suddenly exploded into North America, communicated with the original owner of ironchef.com (who knows where she is now, probably exorcised by Fuji TV or maybe Alton Brown's army of lawyers) and I've seen them all come and go. Jamie, from idiot British twit to ultra-superstar, met by prime ministers. That fuckwad Rocco di Spirito, with his own fuckfest reality show (God, how ancient history is that?)
Yep, seen 'em all. And while I admit that, like Arlette, the default channel is still the Food Network, by gum 'n' by gracious, the years have not been kind. Not in the goddamn least.
The pantheon of idiots is legion. She mentioned Paula Deen. Don't worry, dear, you don't have to even TRY to understand Paula Deen. There is simply nothing to understand. When there is nothing there to begin with, cue the cute music, cue the shaky camerawork, cue the lookatme factor. In her case, some absurd Southern schtick. But guess what: now everyone has a schtick.
Survivor begets "Survivor Vanuatu". CSI begets "CSI/Conakry." Forget it, Arlette, it's a losing battle and we're not winning it.
Face it, we'll always get dumbed down in the end with the Rachael Rays and the Anna Olsons and may god rest her soul, whatever the hell happened to her, Nigella Lawsons.
It's just the Law of Entropy, Arlette, dear; we're all doomed. The worst always comes to the surface and subsumes the weaker, more talented efforts. Blockbusters will always trump small films. The Arts & Entertainment Channel will always descend into Dog The Bounty Hunter over Captain Cook.
It is our fate and I accept it.
It is our fate, but I still despise Rachael Ray.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Japan
Oh God, it's Japan on the 15th. Faithful readers will shake their heads sadly.
Do you know just how much I do NOT want to go to Japan?
Do you know just how much I do NOT want to go to Japan?
Tomorrow
I love this place called Parthenon, just off Cote des Neiges, on Van Horne, I think.
I love to cook, but there are just simply things that you can’t do at home. I wander the aisles at Tzanet and gaze at the industrial ovens and grills and believe it or not, I scheme privately to myself, wishing there were some way to get one into my house (Christ, with my kitchen about as big as a Windjammer Cruiseline’s, you KNOW the best I’m going to be able to put out is a fairly tasty grilled hot dog).
And Parthenon simply makes the best grilled shrimp . . . as I type the words the smoky piquancy, the lemon aftertaste, the sheer knowledge that it should be accorded its own Food Group in the Pyramid . . . well, it makes me Lust.
And when I lust, it usually means, can I make it at home, myself?
So naturally, I tried. First off, I recognized what I don’t have, namely, a wood-burning oven, or charcoal, or whatever. No grill. So how to get that smoky taste, that indefinable shrimpicity?
I’ve become a tiny expert in these things because I’m so doomed in this pathetic apartment kitchen . . . I HAVE to find workarounds for this stuff. I know it’s not going to taste identical but I have to try my damndest to make it as close as possible because I simply can’t afford to go to Parthenon every time I need their shrimp.
So here is what I did, and I have to admit, (unseen hands patting back) it turned out okay. In other words, I’ll do it again.
First off, I had to duplicate the sleekness. There were Things on the shrimp which I can only interpret as batter and spices. Plus, the shrimp have to be gigantic. Like, mega-shrimp. (You might want to substitute small lobsters, but do shell and devein them nicely).
So here is what you do:
Ingredients
10 -12 very large shrimp, 12-14/lb.
Two eggs, lightly whipped
1/4 cup shallots, minced
1/4 cup garlic, minced
1/4 cup corn starch
1/4 cup flour
Salt and cracked black pepper (in the flour and corn starch)
Method
Shell and/or devein the shrimp. Brine them for an hour or so. Rinse and drain thoroughly. Pat dry. Dredge each shrimp through the eggs, then through the flour/corn starch mixture. Skewer the shrimp on a wooden skewer so it doesn’t curl while cooking. Proceed with all the shrimp. Now sprinkle the shallot/garlic mixture on the shrimp and turn to encrust thoroughly. Don't worry, those bastards had a marriage agreement with the eggs so they'll stick, trust me.
Heat a grill pan on medium for six minutes. Place the skewered shrimp on the grill pan, watch carefully, turning every three minutes for about nine minutes, or until all sides of the shrimp are no longer translucent.
Drizzle with lemon juice. Serve on Greek rice with tsaziki and toasted pita (sheesh, you want me to give away those recipes as well? Tomorrow. As they say in Athens, tomorrow).
I love to cook, but there are just simply things that you can’t do at home. I wander the aisles at Tzanet and gaze at the industrial ovens and grills and believe it or not, I scheme privately to myself, wishing there were some way to get one into my house (Christ, with my kitchen about as big as a Windjammer Cruiseline’s, you KNOW the best I’m going to be able to put out is a fairly tasty grilled hot dog).
And Parthenon simply makes the best grilled shrimp . . . as I type the words the smoky piquancy, the lemon aftertaste, the sheer knowledge that it should be accorded its own Food Group in the Pyramid . . . well, it makes me Lust.
And when I lust, it usually means, can I make it at home, myself?
So naturally, I tried. First off, I recognized what I don’t have, namely, a wood-burning oven, or charcoal, or whatever. No grill. So how to get that smoky taste, that indefinable shrimpicity?
I’ve become a tiny expert in these things because I’m so doomed in this pathetic apartment kitchen . . . I HAVE to find workarounds for this stuff. I know it’s not going to taste identical but I have to try my damndest to make it as close as possible because I simply can’t afford to go to Parthenon every time I need their shrimp.
So here is what I did, and I have to admit, (unseen hands patting back) it turned out okay. In other words, I’ll do it again.
First off, I had to duplicate the sleekness. There were Things on the shrimp which I can only interpret as batter and spices. Plus, the shrimp have to be gigantic. Like, mega-shrimp. (You might want to substitute small lobsters, but do shell and devein them nicely).
So here is what you do:
Ingredients
10 -12 very large shrimp, 12-14/lb.
Two eggs, lightly whipped
1/4 cup shallots, minced
1/4 cup garlic, minced
1/4 cup corn starch
1/4 cup flour
Salt and cracked black pepper (in the flour and corn starch)
Method
Shell and/or devein the shrimp. Brine them for an hour or so. Rinse and drain thoroughly. Pat dry. Dredge each shrimp through the eggs, then through the flour/corn starch mixture. Skewer the shrimp on a wooden skewer so it doesn’t curl while cooking. Proceed with all the shrimp. Now sprinkle the shallot/garlic mixture on the shrimp and turn to encrust thoroughly. Don't worry, those bastards had a marriage agreement with the eggs so they'll stick, trust me.
Heat a grill pan on medium for six minutes. Place the skewered shrimp on the grill pan, watch carefully, turning every three minutes for about nine minutes, or until all sides of the shrimp are no longer translucent.
Drizzle with lemon juice. Serve on Greek rice with tsaziki and toasted pita (sheesh, you want me to give away those recipes as well? Tomorrow. As they say in Athens, tomorrow).
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Not Paté Chinois
Comfort food . . . I’d like to shoot the progenitor of that term. Some savvy marketer, no doubt. But what it implies is that French Fries, for example, are uncomfort, but that macaroni and cheese is comfort. What do they mean? Foods that Mother made us? My mother was a lousy cook. There was nothing comforting in her food, love her though I do.
Could they have meant “simple”? As in, not foie gras or feuiletté de ris de veau au sapins crû? Doh. We get it. Anyway, I hate that term, so I won’t tell you this recipe is comfort food. It’s just goddamn food.
But Brigitte commented that it was Paté Chinois (before I made it). It is most definitely not that Québecois abomination, I can assure you. French Canadian food is usually some bizarre hybrid of fur trappers’ roadkill and some odd food idea from Ancient France, but it sure don’t have a lot to recommend it. Poutine? Yecchh.
So, this is Shepherd’s Pie, people, a dish with a very old provenance, and it sure doesn’t come from China. Plus, I made sure I put my goddamn stamp on it — after all, I’ve made it about a thousand times and I just keep improving it.
Ingredients
Sauce
1 1/2 lbs. stewing beef, ground in grinder or by the butcher
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
30-40 small pearl onions, peeled
5 large shallots, thinly sliced
4 tablespoons worcestershire sauce
5 large cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup chopped oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes
1/2 cup dry white wine
2 tablespoons crème fraîche
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup demiglace sauce or substitute Knorr demiglace sauce powder
1 can corn niblets
Parsley
Salt and pepper to taste
Potatoes
3 large russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 2-inch cubes
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1/2 cup of shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup of grated parmigiano-reggiano
1/2 cup of crème fraîche or sour cream
2 tablespoons compound herb butter or butter/parsley/thyme/rosemary mix
Salt and pepper to taste
Method
Sauté pearl onions in some olive oil on medium until browned and slightly soft, about 10 minutes. Remove from pan and set aside; sauté shallots until translucent, about 6 minutes. Add garlic and sauté a further two minutes. Remove shallot-garlic mixture and place with pearl onions.
Grind beef, or if already ground, stir in the garlic, worcestershire sauce and sun-dried tomatoes, combining thoroughly. Heat more olive oil in the pan and sauté the ground beef mixture until it begins to lose its pinkness. Add the wine, crème fraîche and chicken broth and stir well. Cook on medium heat until the liquids have reduced by half. Add the demiglace or about 4 tablespoons demiglace powder and cook until slightly thickened, about ten minutes, stirring constantly. Add shallot/onion mixture and combine well. Add corn niblets and about 1/4 cup corn juice from the can (for the sweetness). Add chopped fresh parsley and salt and pepper. Taste often during the cooking; a bland and/or salty filling will not make a good pie.
Place filling in a large rectangular Pyrex baking dish. Pat down into an even layer. Place in the refrigerator or freezer to cool down to a cool/cold temperature.
Put the cut potatoes into a large pan of slightly salted water. Bring to a boil. Set timer for about 20 minutes. At the end of the 20 minutes test the doneness of the potatoes with a fork. They should be completely soft with no resistance.
Drain in a colander. In a large metal bowl, combine the cheeses, garlic, crème fraîche and herb butter. Using a potato ricer, rice the potatoes into the bowl. Combine thoroughly, adding salt as necessary. Add pepper.
When the sauce is completely cold, smear the mashed potatoes on top very carefully with a fork so that they form an even layer. Use the tines of the fork to make attractive patterns. Preheat the oven to 450 and place the pie in the oven on the middle rack. Watch it carefully; it should start browning within 20 minutes. If it starts browning too quickly, reduce the heat to 350. If it’s not browning quickly enough, increase heat to 500, but watch carefully. It only takes 60 seconds to burn.
After about 30 minutes, remove from oven and carve into rectangles. Serve with a good Girondin from Bordeaux.
Thoughts on No Longer Being a Vegetarian
I was a vegetarian for, I think, at least six months this year. Not only a vegetarian, but I didn't eat any wheat as well. No pasta. No bread!
It was completely by choice, but how did I feel then and how do I feel now? Do I feel like a prick because I eat hot dogs, the messier the better? Do I feel less healthy? Well, yes and no.
I recently had a steak sandwich and I was so fucked up the next day that I realise that it's a stomach-learned skill to eat stuff like steak. But I love steak! I had a steak blog, ferchrissakes!
But, mark my words, I also had a vegetable blog.
You can gaze at these two extremes of the pendulum and you can ponder. How has it affected my eating habits? After all, I'm living proof of both experiments. I have to admit that I'm still parsing the data.
One thing I can say is that for me, giving up meat and wheat was not hard at all. It was very interesting. I discovered many things that I had ignored in my omnivore days, namely lots of rice dishes, but also rice noodles, quinoa and cooked fish, which I used to hate (love sushi, hate cooked fish, go figure).
Did I miss stuff like hamburgers, pizza, pasta, bread, steak and hot dogs? Sure. But it was not insurmountable at all. I think one thing that was on my side was that I didn't have any issues with those foods. I wasn't out to make any statements or go on any diets. I just simply gave them up to just give them up. No agenda at all.
So it was just as easy to slide right back into omnivore-mode. Yes, now I crave hot dogs at 4 a.m. or am jonesing to make some fresh-pasta XtravaGanZa but it wouldn't bother me if it all went away tomorrow and the vegetable blog came alive again. Or the steak blog, for that matter!
Wouldn't bother me at all.
Anyone for a shrimp blog?
It was completely by choice, but how did I feel then and how do I feel now? Do I feel like a prick because I eat hot dogs, the messier the better? Do I feel less healthy? Well, yes and no.
I recently had a steak sandwich and I was so fucked up the next day that I realise that it's a stomach-learned skill to eat stuff like steak. But I love steak! I had a steak blog, ferchrissakes!
But, mark my words, I also had a vegetable blog.
You can gaze at these two extremes of the pendulum and you can ponder. How has it affected my eating habits? After all, I'm living proof of both experiments. I have to admit that I'm still parsing the data.
One thing I can say is that for me, giving up meat and wheat was not hard at all. It was very interesting. I discovered many things that I had ignored in my omnivore days, namely lots of rice dishes, but also rice noodles, quinoa and cooked fish, which I used to hate (love sushi, hate cooked fish, go figure).
Did I miss stuff like hamburgers, pizza, pasta, bread, steak and hot dogs? Sure. But it was not insurmountable at all. I think one thing that was on my side was that I didn't have any issues with those foods. I wasn't out to make any statements or go on any diets. I just simply gave them up to just give them up. No agenda at all.
So it was just as easy to slide right back into omnivore-mode. Yes, now I crave hot dogs at 4 a.m. or am jonesing to make some fresh-pasta XtravaGanZa but it wouldn't bother me if it all went away tomorrow and the vegetable blog came alive again. Or the steak blog, for that matter!
Wouldn't bother me at all.
Anyone for a shrimp blog?
Friday, December 5, 2008
My $450 Recipe
When I was in France earlier this year, I had it in my mind that I would write a cookbook. I wasn’t exactly sure what kind of a cookbook I would write, but I had in mind something that reflected how I liked to cook; namely, all day, with sometimes quite complicated recipes and hard-to-find ingredients.
I’m the type of cook who will either abandon a recipe right in the middle of cooking it because I’ve forgotten a crucial ingredient, say, galangal, or I’ll just march right out there in blowing snow to go get it. Aside from pastry and dessert making, I love to go to the ends of the earth to find ingredients. I hate substituting “in a pinch.”
So my modus operandi was usually to cook on a Saturday, doing the shopping that morning and then cooking all the rest of the afternoon, watching cooking shows while I cooked and leisurely sipping Cuivrée, and that’s what I wanted this book to reflect. It was to be called The Saturday Cook.
To this end, for a month in France, I was busy assembling recipes from everywhere; the Internet, my own cookbooks, and then I went out and bought cookbooks in French at the bookstore in Bordeaux and started picking recipes that I liked and translated them into my MacBook laptop. I made a few, too, and sometimes the results were spectacular. I even went as far as to design the first few pages with my own food photography; I was well on the way.
Alas, when I got back to Montreal, one day I was playing the guitar along to some jam tracks on my laptop and it started stuttering, so I did what I normally do to balky machinery: I hit it. The rest can be guessed.
I trashed the hard drive. All was lost. I replaced the hard drive but the guy who replaced it said there was no way he could get any data off the old one. All that effort, all those translations, that whole month: gone. But I wasn’t about to give up. I took the hard drive to a data-recovery service in Montreal operated by a really nice Russian guy. But data recovery is not cheap. It took him a month and in the end he was only able to rescue 27 text files. It cost me $450, and there was only one recipe that was recovered that I either didn’t already have duplicated somewhere else or that I could track some version down of on the Internet.
Here’s the list of some of the recipes (that I had miraculously emailed to someone before the hard drive crashed) that I intended for my book, and at the end there’s the recipe that I made in France that was so spectacular that I wrote it down. It’s the only one that survived . . . a $450 recipe.
Asian Tomato and Mushroom Chicken (à la Marengo)
Asian Vegetable-stuffed Beef Rollups in Teriyaki Sauce
Balinese fried chicken
Beef Rendang
Bucatini with Prosciutto and Feta
Burmese beef and potato curry
Burmese chicken curry
Chicken Jalfrezi
Chile dogs with homemade chili sauce on Knackwurst or Frankfurters
Chile-garlic dip
Cucumber-Garlic Raita
Cucumber-Shallot-Chile Salad
Farfalle with roasted cherry tomatoes, goat cheese and kalamata olives
Fresh homemade pizza å la Luzzo’s in New York
Ginger Beef
Hmong curry
L'Express Raviolis Maison (fresh raviolis in a hunter’s mushroom sauce)
Late-night Leftover Pasta with prosciutto and parmesan
Linguine with Prosciutto, Gorgonzola and Basil
Magret de canard with honey dijonnaise
Nachos with four cheeses, pancetta, garlic, olives and jalapenos
Thai Green Chicken Curry
Pacific Rim Kobe Steak Salad with Sesame-Ginger Dressing
Penne with Chicken, Feta and Dill
Pita Rapture with chicken or beef, peppers, onions, lettuce and cilantro with a Caesar dressing
Quesadillas with three cheeses, bacon, jalapenos and cilantro
Seekh Kebab (ground beef on skewers)
Sri Lankan Cucumber salad
Sri Lankan Mulligatawny
Sri Lankan pork curry
Szechuan-style Chile Shrimp
Tandoori-Style Chicken Burgers with Cumin Yogurt Sauce
Thai Beef “Mussaman “ curry
Thai Beef and Basil Flat Rice Noodles
Thai Spicy-sweet Roast Chicken
Tomato-Onion-Chile Salad
Yang Chow Basmati Fried Rice
And the $450 recipe:
Asian Tomato and Mushroom Chicken
Ingredients:
6 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, halved lengthwise
1 medium onion, cut in thin crescents
4 medium very ripe tomatoes
8-10 shiitake or matsutake mushrooms, thickly sliced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup cilantro, finely chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons Sambal Oelek
3 tablespoons Mirin
1 cup chicken broth
5 tablespoons sesame oil
3 tablespoons peanut oil
Method:
Brine chicken in 4 cups warm water with 4 tablespoons salt and 3 tablespoons sugar for 15 minutes. Remove from brine and pat dry.
Heat 3 tablespoons sesame oil and 1 tablespoons peanut in large nonstick frying pan on medium-high. Brown the chicken one one side in hot oil: about 7 minutes. Turn and brown other side for an additional 4 minutes. Remove from pan and set aside.
Add 1 tablespoons sesame oil and 1 tablespoon peanut oil and sauté mushrooms until water has completely evaporated and mushrooms have reduced by half and are browned on both sides.
Remove from pan and set aside. In remaining oil, fry onions until limp, about three minutes. Add garlic, sauté two minutes. Add tomatoes. Sauté about 5 minutes; add back mushrooms. Sauté another 5 minutes, then add chicken, Sambal Oelek, mirin and chicken broth. Stir to combine. Simmer covered, for 10 minutes. Add cilantro and simmer for 5 minutes.
Serve over basmati rice.
I’m the type of cook who will either abandon a recipe right in the middle of cooking it because I’ve forgotten a crucial ingredient, say, galangal, or I’ll just march right out there in blowing snow to go get it. Aside from pastry and dessert making, I love to go to the ends of the earth to find ingredients. I hate substituting “in a pinch.”
So my modus operandi was usually to cook on a Saturday, doing the shopping that morning and then cooking all the rest of the afternoon, watching cooking shows while I cooked and leisurely sipping Cuivrée, and that’s what I wanted this book to reflect. It was to be called The Saturday Cook.
To this end, for a month in France, I was busy assembling recipes from everywhere; the Internet, my own cookbooks, and then I went out and bought cookbooks in French at the bookstore in Bordeaux and started picking recipes that I liked and translated them into my MacBook laptop. I made a few, too, and sometimes the results were spectacular. I even went as far as to design the first few pages with my own food photography; I was well on the way.
Alas, when I got back to Montreal, one day I was playing the guitar along to some jam tracks on my laptop and it started stuttering, so I did what I normally do to balky machinery: I hit it. The rest can be guessed.
I trashed the hard drive. All was lost. I replaced the hard drive but the guy who replaced it said there was no way he could get any data off the old one. All that effort, all those translations, that whole month: gone. But I wasn’t about to give up. I took the hard drive to a data-recovery service in Montreal operated by a really nice Russian guy. But data recovery is not cheap. It took him a month and in the end he was only able to rescue 27 text files. It cost me $450, and there was only one recipe that was recovered that I either didn’t already have duplicated somewhere else or that I could track some version down of on the Internet.
Here’s the list of some of the recipes (that I had miraculously emailed to someone before the hard drive crashed) that I intended for my book, and at the end there’s the recipe that I made in France that was so spectacular that I wrote it down. It’s the only one that survived . . . a $450 recipe.
Asian Tomato and Mushroom Chicken (à la Marengo)
Asian Vegetable-stuffed Beef Rollups in Teriyaki Sauce
Balinese fried chicken
Beef Rendang
Bucatini with Prosciutto and Feta
Burmese beef and potato curry
Burmese chicken curry
Chicken Jalfrezi
Chile dogs with homemade chili sauce on Knackwurst or Frankfurters
Chile-garlic dip
Cucumber-Garlic Raita
Cucumber-Shallot-Chile Salad
Farfalle with roasted cherry tomatoes, goat cheese and kalamata olives
Fresh homemade pizza å la Luzzo’s in New York
Ginger Beef
Hmong curry
L'Express Raviolis Maison (fresh raviolis in a hunter’s mushroom sauce)
Late-night Leftover Pasta with prosciutto and parmesan
Linguine with Prosciutto, Gorgonzola and Basil
Magret de canard with honey dijonnaise
Nachos with four cheeses, pancetta, garlic, olives and jalapenos
Thai Green Chicken Curry
Pacific Rim Kobe Steak Salad with Sesame-Ginger Dressing
Penne with Chicken, Feta and Dill
Pita Rapture with chicken or beef, peppers, onions, lettuce and cilantro with a Caesar dressing
Quesadillas with three cheeses, bacon, jalapenos and cilantro
Seekh Kebab (ground beef on skewers)
Sri Lankan Cucumber salad
Sri Lankan Mulligatawny
Sri Lankan pork curry
Szechuan-style Chile Shrimp
Tandoori-Style Chicken Burgers with Cumin Yogurt Sauce
Thai Beef “Mussaman “ curry
Thai Beef and Basil Flat Rice Noodles
Thai Spicy-sweet Roast Chicken
Tomato-Onion-Chile Salad
Yang Chow Basmati Fried Rice
And the $450 recipe:
Asian Tomato and Mushroom Chicken
Ingredients:
6 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, halved lengthwise
1 medium onion, cut in thin crescents
4 medium very ripe tomatoes
8-10 shiitake or matsutake mushrooms, thickly sliced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup cilantro, finely chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons Sambal Oelek
3 tablespoons Mirin
1 cup chicken broth
5 tablespoons sesame oil
3 tablespoons peanut oil
Method:
Brine chicken in 4 cups warm water with 4 tablespoons salt and 3 tablespoons sugar for 15 minutes. Remove from brine and pat dry.
Heat 3 tablespoons sesame oil and 1 tablespoons peanut in large nonstick frying pan on medium-high. Brown the chicken one one side in hot oil: about 7 minutes. Turn and brown other side for an additional 4 minutes. Remove from pan and set aside.
Add 1 tablespoons sesame oil and 1 tablespoon peanut oil and sauté mushrooms until water has completely evaporated and mushrooms have reduced by half and are browned on both sides.
Remove from pan and set aside. In remaining oil, fry onions until limp, about three minutes. Add garlic, sauté two minutes. Add tomatoes. Sauté about 5 minutes; add back mushrooms. Sauté another 5 minutes, then add chicken, Sambal Oelek, mirin and chicken broth. Stir to combine. Simmer covered, for 10 minutes. Add cilantro and simmer for 5 minutes.
Serve over basmati rice.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Notes On A Cold Day
Note #1
Went to Basi tonight and reviewed it. It was amazing. We were the only people in the place and it was like being in First Class. I'd feel bad that the business was slow but the owners (Maurizio and Lynn) assured us that during the summer, everything explodes. So it's like owning a ski shop . . . you just have to learn how to twiddle your thumbs for six months of the year . . . the other six, put on the battle gear.
Review to follow, with pictures, on montrealfood.com.
Note #2
I sold an electronic device on eBay today to a fellow in Italy (I'm a huge eBayer with now 690 transactions and 100% good feedback to my credit) and I found he didn't quite understand my emails, though his English seemed pretty good. So I went to the machine translators, because although my French is pretty good, it's sometimes hard to extend that to Italian. But he was amazed at what I came up with. I had to parse out all the machine-translation crap by translating into Italian, then translating that back into English, then figuring out what the machine had fucked up (like "the my PayPal account") and, using my knowledge of French grammatical structure, correcting it. So, here's an example email, translated entirely from English into Italian, which I don't speak, by machine, then corrected by me:
"Il prezzo di conquista era dollari US (US $365.00) ed il prezzo di trasporto è Canadese $85, quale uguaglia l'americano $67, così, viene nei complessivamente Stati Uniti $433.00.
"Sono spiacente che il costo di affrancatura in Italia è così costoso ma è oltre mio controllo.
"Mio PayPal indirizzo di posta elettronica è tonbo@montrealfood.com.
"Mi auguro che tutti ha senso!
"Ciao bella
"Nick"
I don't know, I had no idea how to end the email since "best regards" or "cheers" rendered nonsense, so I said "ciao bella", which I thought I heard Jamie Oliver say a few times. However, the machine translates it back as "Hi, beautiful . . ." Hope Guido (his real name!) doesn't get any ideas.
Well, he seemed to understand . . . do you? (Copy and paste into your favorite machine translator and find out!)
Note #3
I've become the owner of an Architectural Digest spread. Since Brigitte moved in with her furniture and impeccable taste this weekend, this is what my living room looks like now. Sorry, don't have a before picture, but you wouldn't have wanted to see it anyway . . . (click on picture for bigger version)
Went to Basi tonight and reviewed it. It was amazing. We were the only people in the place and it was like being in First Class. I'd feel bad that the business was slow but the owners (Maurizio and Lynn) assured us that during the summer, everything explodes. So it's like owning a ski shop . . . you just have to learn how to twiddle your thumbs for six months of the year . . . the other six, put on the battle gear.
Review to follow, with pictures, on montrealfood.com.
Note #2
I sold an electronic device on eBay today to a fellow in Italy (I'm a huge eBayer with now 690 transactions and 100% good feedback to my credit) and I found he didn't quite understand my emails, though his English seemed pretty good. So I went to the machine translators, because although my French is pretty good, it's sometimes hard to extend that to Italian. But he was amazed at what I came up with. I had to parse out all the machine-translation crap by translating into Italian, then translating that back into English, then figuring out what the machine had fucked up (like "the my PayPal account") and, using my knowledge of French grammatical structure, correcting it. So, here's an example email, translated entirely from English into Italian, which I don't speak, by machine, then corrected by me:
"Il prezzo di conquista era dollari US (US $365.00) ed il prezzo di trasporto è Canadese $85, quale uguaglia l'americano $67, così, viene nei complessivamente Stati Uniti $433.00.
"Sono spiacente che il costo di affrancatura in Italia è così costoso ma è oltre mio controllo.
"Mio PayPal indirizzo di posta elettronica è tonbo@montrealfood.com.
"Mi auguro che tutti ha senso!
"Ciao bella
"Nick"
I don't know, I had no idea how to end the email since "best regards" or "cheers" rendered nonsense, so I said "ciao bella", which I thought I heard Jamie Oliver say a few times. However, the machine translates it back as "Hi, beautiful . . ." Hope Guido (his real name!) doesn't get any ideas.
Well, he seemed to understand . . . do you? (Copy and paste into your favorite machine translator and find out!)
Note #3
I've become the owner of an Architectural Digest spread. Since Brigitte moved in with her furniture and impeccable taste this weekend, this is what my living room looks like now. Sorry, don't have a before picture, but you wouldn't have wanted to see it anyway . . . (click on picture for bigger version)
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