supper, brit-style.
so tonight was the big dinner at st. john, fergus henderson's little shrine to all that is good about english food (and yes, english food can be good. but definitely not in loughborough's dining halls, that's for sure). everytime anyone'd asked us what we'd planned to do in london during our stay, the only thing i could manage was, "well, i made restaurant reservations." and of course, they never knew what the heck st. john was. henderson (as noted in a previous entry concerning his cookbook, nose-to-tail-eating: a kind of british cookery) is regarded as a master of offal, and we all know how much i love the stuff. i might have overdone it this time, but it was well worth it.

to start, connie had the pig's ears and watercress salad (crispy shredded bits of the meat with dressed greens and capers), i the roasted bone marrow and parsley (a st. john specialty, made with veal shanks, served with moistened sea salt, parsley and capers, and two generous slices of toast), and chris had the "carrot, boiled egg, and aioli," which, to our surprise, was exactly that: two raw carrots, tops attached, one boiled egg in shell, and a heap of garlicky mayonnaise. while chris claims this was indeed the best boiled egg he's ever had, perfectly cooked yolk and all, and while the carrots were very fresh and, er, full of carroty goodness, it was still sort of laughable. (the server laughed when he brought the plate as chris greeted him with a quizzical look and asked under his breath, "how the heck do i eat this?")

mains: i ordered the lamb sweetbreads with chunks of ham and broad beans (or favas, as they're known here); chris had the snail, chickpea, and sausage stew; connie had the duck breast with radishes. all very good. my dishes were both incredibly rich and intense. connie's duck was perfect, one of the best duck preparations i've had in the past couple of years. both breast and attached leg were perfectly, perfectly cooked, a lovely, juicy medium-rare throughout. yum. none of us understood the radish bit though? radishes? boiled radishes? maybe some radish greens, but these were just such a bland and insubstantial counterpoint to the meat. chris' stew was very tasty (though he claims he's made something similar at home). though the portions were appropriately and moderately sized, i was nearly undone by the overwhelming nature of my food.

luckily, i passed on the last few bits of sweetbread in favor of dessert: peach and almond tart with jersey cream. the server commented on the excellence of the peaches ("highly unusual here," he noted) when asked to choose between the tart and the chocolate pot (a pudding that chris enthusiastically recommended), and indeed, the tart was so good that i slogged through my incipient nausea to finish every last morsel. (the jersey cream was sooooo incredibly fatty. it had the texture of pastry cream. soooo good.) connie and chris both had the buttermilk pudding with fresh raspberries. we quite mistakenly took this dessert for just another version of panna cotta, but no, this was so light and refreshing, (connie says,"lemony" and "palate-cleansing"), and the raspberries were both impressively large and delicious (rather rare to get both at once, i'd say). we drank a saint chinian '99. whatever that is. the interior is surprising wash of white on white but low-key and spare and very likeable. service was top-notch, relaxed, friendly, and just enough hinted irony to keep us guessing. overall, a solid meal. and very reasonable -- about £40 a head, including wine and tip.

karma comes and bites me in the ass.
or so connie claims. i still feel guilty for yesterday's posting, but this was compounded by this scaryass dream i had last night in which i was actually shot.i didn't die, but i didn't wake up immediately either, and i recall feeling pain in my dream and actually falling to the ground within it from the impact of the shot. insane.

how kickass is the tate modern?
we started off the day at camden market (which has expanded considerably since my last visit), and managed not to buy anything (which must be due mostly to the hot weather we've had here). there's some fascination with chinoiserie and some japanese cartoon character called "pucca".
oops. more later. internet cafe is closing.
posted by winnie at 7:11 PM

so this is what it feels like to be in a vice.
it's our first night in london after a frenzied couple of days in loughborough (about 1.5 hrs north of the capital city by train, near leicester and nottingham), and travel has been fairly exhausting. all the people that are encouraging connie to go to the uni because they want to visit her should think again -- it took us about 24 hours to reach the campus. true, we had to fly through montreal for our cheapass fares, but for some reason, the hop across the pond seemed especially long. i know i've exaggerated about being wedged between a fat man and a screaming baby before, but dude, this flight, i sat next to most ridiculously ginormous woman. i mean, we're talking morbidly obese. orca fat. "sat next to" is probably not the correct phrase -- i think "sat under" is more accurate. she'd twice requested a seat transferral from the flight crew as she wanted two seats, but she got half of mine instead and the nice stewardess gave her a seatbelt extender. i wanted to take a picture of her arm while she was asleep to illustrate this anecdote, but my sense got the better of me. thought it would be rather tasteless. her forearm was as big as my head! her thigh as big as my torso! skin in all its elasticity and capacity is truly a wondrous organ. while whale woman was very nice and did her part to pass along my tray and such, i was put off by her lovely vomitous odor. as was connie. we estimate 400-some odd pounds. and yes, she was american.

i'm sorry. that was really mean. but you weren't crushed under her enormous girth for some six hours.

okay, i'll get back to the britons later. pics and commentary galore.
why does everyone here wear yankees hats?
and why do they listen to such horrible dance music?
posted by winnie at 5:44 PM

been running across a lot of really weird but hilarious stuff lately ...

first off, the group fannypack's oddly catchy first song camel toe (lyrics | mp3) has been running through my head a lot ... i mean, who could not love a group called fannypack?? the rhymes are also pretty funny.

the latest issue of this x-men spinoff called x-statix teams up one of the lead characters (doop) w/ one of the most revered characters in the x-men universe, wolverine, in a mini-series w/ the first issue called "the pink mink". in this series mutants anticipate future contracts instead of future battles, and the cover alone of this issue makes me want to rush out and buy it. will prob. have to wait til i catch up on everything else x-men related i'm reading right now, though, heh. (cover picture courtesy of uncannyxmen.net.)

and to further confirm how weird japanese people are, here are pictures from the st. patrick's parade in tokyo (????) and clothing you can buy for your cat (last link thanks to austin).

posted by fwc at 9:46 AM

mexican? ha.
went to the mexican sandwich company in park slope last night, and it was about what i expected. those chowhound posters were getting all excited about this place, but i think i'm beginning to realize that anything the slopers have to say should be discounted (by like 50%). it wasn't terrible, just mediocre like so many other places over there (save for blue ribbon and al di la). and sorry, bub, but just because you use a tortilla doesn't make your food mexican. especially if you're using duck confit. we had the white bean and chorizo "gourmet quesadilla," and shit, there was a lot of garlic in that thing. we're talking 40-60 whole cloves in a 12" pizza-like thing. i'm not exaggerating in the slightest. i think garlic does funny things to my gastrointestinal system. and it definitely doesn't make me too popular on the subway. (i noticed that on every train i've been on for the past 10 hours, there's been at least a 2-seat radius of empty seats around me.) oh, but on the upside, the red snapper tacos (with mango salsa, natch) were excellent.

score, pt. one:
thanks to my craigslist obsession, i snagged all these awesome french classics for five, yes, five bucks. now i need a big dictionary.

score, pt. deux:
but even better, on my way down through tribeca to pick up these books, i stumbled upon this amazing little straight-out-of-neverending-story cookbook store. the lady specializes in antiquarian, rare, and out-of-print volumes, and she had a truly astonishing collection. i mean, first editions of de groot. larousse gastronomiques from, like, 1924 or something. there was even this intriguing book called bite ("a new york restaurant strategy for hedonists, masochists, selective penny pinchers and the upwardly mobile"), by gael greene, the new york magazine food writer with the horribly supercilious prose. this little collection is all about eating well in new york, and apparently, she's alot older than i'd originally thought -- she recounts stories about soule and other really old-school establishments. i was tempted, but i like her about as much as i like LA times' david shaw -- that is, not much (ugh ugh ugh).

admittedly, this shop is a lot less reasonable than kitchen arts & letters and the choice a bit more limited, but i found this utterly beautiful series of italian cookbooks while browsing. they were published in the late 70s and are bound with corrugated cardboard. there are all these color illustrations in each one and these illustrations are not only stylistically and graphically really fucking cool, but they look like they're handpainted. i paid way too much for one, but now it is the most gorgeous thing i own. each volume is titled "[italian city] in bocca" ([city] in the mouth), and my copy is for piemonte. (there was also roma, toscana, marche, and something else.)

all the text is in italian, but there are english translations of the recipes. the pages are made out of heavy unbleached stock (with all those fun pulpy bits in them). i would've gotten the roma one as well, but these books are ridiculously, ridiculously expensive. i only justified buying it because it felt like i was getting a serious piece of art. some of the books have little italian quotations or song lyrics about food. even the typography of the index is brilliant.

and no, i'm not telling you where this shop is.

update to recent boston photos. mmm. i could go for a cannolo now..
posted by winnie at 8:43 PM

my part time occupation as a vessel for media continues ... most recently:

the man who knew too much (1956): the 2nd hitchcock i've seen. wasn't very good, but i guess for the time it was pretty thrilling.

pj harvey: stories from the city, stories from the sea: good, but didn't bowl me over. has a duet w/ thom yorke. i like pj harvey but i don't need to run out and get everything she's ever done. still, she's respectably high on my middle interest level music people list.

zadie smith: white teeth: a novel: not sure about this yet. i'm into the 2nd section, but it still feels like exposition. maybe the whole book is character sketches? still, at the very least the writing is engaging, and winnie points out that this was written by a 21 year old = wow.

margaret weis, tracy hickman: fire sea: i have a soft spot for trashy fantasy, but i think this series is one of the most inventive and worthwhile. the first four books take place in four diff worlds with only a few recurring characters, and then in the last three books people from all four world begin interacting. incredibly ambitious and really sets a high standard for the epic fantasy genre. this is the third book in the series and although in general their writing is a little too long, the images and ideas tend to be very memorable and at times somewhat thought-provoking. haven't read the following four books in ages, but i'm working my way through them.

last thought: bjork is putting out way too many dvds: 2 documentaries, several more live concerts, and a boxed set of 5 live concerts. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ... bjork is def. not someone who changes much live, so this is def. bjork overload. sort of disappointing. oh well.

posted by fwc at 12:07 PM

all the little kiddies in brooklyn are wearing light-up sneakers. (i thought this fad had passed in '92. would've thought that there'd be something a bit more sophisticated in place -- pda-phone-sneaks maybe? oooh, or shoes that, rather than inflate "the pump"-style, deflate to conform to your feet for, uh, a more streamlined silhouette?)

i'm back in brooklyn, but here's a little rehash.

the yangs make dinner:
friday night, my sister made ribs, and i rustled up some veg. yes, these ribs are the deservedly famous yang recipe that my sister has incorporated from my mom's repertoire. she's tweaked it to fit her own tastes (saltier, fattier), and i'd say they're pretty damn near perfect. i challenge anyone to find better.

the raw slabs after connie's massaged in the salt, pepper, shitloads of minced garlic, soy sauce, and honey.

mmm. i'm getting hungry just looking at these. and yes, they're swimming in liquefied pork fat. i guess that would be lard. or, as one of connie's assistant bball coaches prefers to call it, "delicious dipping sauce."

not the greatest picture, but here's one of the sides i made. swiss chard. the little dice are chard stems and apple. i was winging it, and it was actually quite unexpectedly good. the ginger-glazed carrots suffered, however, and they're best forgotten.

more pictures from this trip to boston.
posted by winnie at 1:25 AM

read my first ever issue of the paris review yesterday, this one themed

crime:
a feature in which
thuggery
muggery
skulduggery
saturnalia
malfeasance
slaughter
regicide
pesticide
burking
croaking
jugulating
garroting
marplotting
and other
high crimes
are discussed and analyzed.

we love it already, no?

there's also an excellent short piece at the beginning of this issue, "the installation," by brian evenson. truly a macabre little work and well crafted.

but the highlight of the whole thing has to be italo calvino's "american diary: 1959-1960." here, the author has recorded his [very amusing] exploits as a ford foundation scholar living for the first time in the U.S. -- and, more specifically, new york city. he ends up setting up residence in the village and hangs out with fellow luminaries and contemporaries. it's really fascinating to examine history through his observations -- i never really thought about what an exciting time the late 1950s must have been, a veritable hotbed of intellectual and creative activity. he visits giancarlo menotti at home in mt. kisco (and menotti, i did not know, actually lived with samuel barber! apparently they collaborated on operas and the like.), runs in the same circles as william styron and erich maria remarque, and parties with the beats, commenting that ginsberg and the posse are filthy and have disgusting beards. he hears later from another ford scholar, the spanish poet arrabel, that at home, the beatniks are very clean, "they have a beautiful house complete with a refrigerator and television, and they live as a quiet bourgeois menage and dress up in dirty clothes only to go out." i love the part where calvino checks out wall st. and is very impressed by the ibm 705 at merrill-lynch, marvelling over its ability to "read all of gone with the wind in three minutes and copy the book on a tape as wide as your finger." (later, he visits the ibm headquarters and sees some of the prototypes that mark the beginning of the computer age. very nerdy and very cool.) calvino also watches color tv for the first time and gets all excited about a commercial hawking spaghetti sauce. he gets upset that his latest book, the baron in the trees, isn't getting much support in the U.S., and notes that the three top-selling books out at this time are the new faulkner, the new penn warren, and some book about hawaii by a guy named michener (ha). i dunno why, but i feel like it would be so incredible to be living at a time when faulkner's putting out books. (it's sort of difficult to realize the worth of something unless it's proved itself through the test of time, i think. hard to determine whether jonathan safran foer or michael chabon will make as important a contribution to literature as, well, calvino or faulkner.) oh, and one of the best entries in this diary recounts how he and another writer get these hot actresses to take them home after a party (and are, naturally, so psyched about getting some ass) but nothing comes of it. the girls turn out to be russian-jewish actresses and lesbians. all things that don't bode well for calvino, apparently. okay, now that i've laid down the synopsis here, i'm sure you'll go run out an find a copy of the PR straightaway.

lifted for the first time in 6 months and i am so laughably weak. i had trouble dressing this morning and my butt has been clenched for like the past 12 hours. continual butt-clenching is a very strange sensation, i must say.

dinner and a movie, wang-style:
so for joyce's birthday (and arthur and taymour and max), austin organized a little shindig with "matrix, reloaded," followed by dinner at mantra, the french-indian place in the ladder district. (the last and only time i've been there was for a review i was writing for the tech, and that was maybe 2.5 years ago.) we had a limited menu since the party was pretty sizeable, but i got the seared scallops with black trumpet mushrooms, endive, and red pepper chutney (which tasted remarkably like this sauce my mom makes for shrimp out of heinz ketchup); seared veal tenderlon on (a very sweet) truffle sauce with some tiny asparagus spears, shallots, and a "potato thoran," which, i guess is a medium dice of the tuber, all glommed together by a really strong, really turmeric-y curry; and the white peach creme brulee with a few orange, grapefruit, and lime supremes. all of it was very ehhh. and service was awful. i mean, i know most of the 26 people present looked like kids (and i guess are, given that a great many are still under 21), and it was a very late (10:20) seating, but just because we're young and because everything is pre-paid doesn't mean that the food should be rushed and the waitstaff so fucking snotty and inattentive. it was really unacceptable.

but to compensate, i revisited my new favorite boston diner this morning with mark, charlie's sandwich shoppe, and got their down 'n' dirty steak 'n' cheese omelet. a big tasty huge mess on the plate and probably not so good for me, but shit, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
posted by winnie at 11:02 AM

the current [june 2002] issue of wired has a page on mit hacks. apparently, a new book on the history of this subject is being put out by the mit museum. one i didn't know about:

"1992: in an elaborate escapade called Cathedral of Our Lady of the All-Night Tool, Lobby 7 was converted into a pagan basilica, complete with pews, altar, confessional, and tablets of hexadecimally numbered commandments ("Thou shalt not divide by zero," "Thou shalt not exceed the speed of light"). In MIT-speak, a tool is a study-aholic."

fantastic. overheard on campus today:
girl a: have you seen john lately?
girl b: no, he's been holed up in course 6-land. he slept two hours in the past two days. isn't that crazy? i dunno how he does it.
girl a: [admiringly] holy shit. that's hardcore.
posted by winnie at 2:35 PM

i'd forgotten what a sanctuary the public library is for me. i just went to the brooklyn public library (the central location, near grand army plaza, the museum, and the botanical gardens) on tuesday for the first time ever and spent the entire afternoon there. it is still very much a place for me to bury my head in books, just as i used to as a kid. and the bpl central is pretty frickin amazing. they've got a whole wall of foreign language publications -- and not just the shitty french translations of michael crichton nonsense, but beckett plays, calvino, mallarme, borges.

[warning: the following is a little heavy on the introspection. so if you're already feeling a bit bored by this entry, i would skip it.]

the thing that i love about the library is the feeling of permanence. all the classes i took first term senior year seemed to grapple with the problems of memory and of the fleeting nature of life. i remember this particularly with to the lighthouse and portrait of the artist as a young man: how does one make a mark on this world? who will remember you once you're gone? every time i walk into a library, i feel like i've found a place where people are remembered, where what they've said and done are preserved, cherished even. i browse the shelves and find comfort in all the books that have long been out of print, that have probably only been picked up by a few people. but here they are, they offer themselves: "i have something to say." you walk into a barnes & noble, and sure, there are the shiny, newly published, highly touted, top-of-the-bestsellers-list must-reads brazenly displayed in strategic locations throughout the store. but with all this shite thrown in your face, it's difficult to just stumble across, say, de groot's in search of the perfect meal. and forget about finding colman andrews' catalan cuisine or michael lee west's books (both of which, i'm happy to say, sit on the BPL's shelves).

there's something anxiety-inducing about these bookstores. i mean, how do you decide what to spend your money on? i may arrive with some notion of what i want, but i often leave empty-handed with a longer list in my head. there's no anxiety at the library though: if it's there, i'll take it. and then it's only a matter of schlepping it home.

there is always something familiar about a library, the worn bindings of the books, a certain mustiness. that library smell. (although, the boston public library has that unfortunate addition of eau d'homeless man.)

anyway. enough about that.
posted by winnie at 12:50 PM

i woke up, and the sky looked like this:

and i wanted to go back to sleep.
posted by winnie at 9:20 AM

i'm burned out on pop music (pop in the sense of "popular," and not d5 or 50-cent or whoever the hell's making all the little teenyboppers swoon these days; so this includes all the usual indie rot i make a habit of). to remedy myself, i have put on bonynge's recording of verdi's "la traviata," with sutherland and pavarotti. god, it gives me shivers. i think this is the opera in "pretty woman." the one that almost makes vivian (julia roberts) pee in her pants. as well it should.

after a god-knows-how-long period of fallowness and utter lack of motivation, i have been booted back into a flurry of creativity. or creation, anyway. here is my foot:

no, my legs are not growing peculiar thatches of hair. and yes, the foot's that funny looking in real life too. i just haven't drawn anything in a while. takes some getting used to.

the new crochet pattern i've worked out over the last couple of days. not the greatest picture, i know, but if you can't tell, it's a mitred pattern. lots of front post-double-triple-crochet. (which sounds like a new figure-skating combination, but actually isn't that physcially challenging.) it got slightly fucked up, but i kinda like it.

another fantastic excerpt from our friend, mark kurlansky, in salt:
"In 1682, John Collins, an accountant to the British Royal Fishery, wrote a book called Salt and Fishery, Discourse Thereof, inspired by his seven years at sea ... During this time, he was obliged to eat badly salted meat, evidently rotting, which he said 'stunk.' This experience, he said, 'begat in me a curiosity to pry into the nature of salt.' Among his many recipes was the following for curing salmon. The recipe would still be good today, assuming a fifteen-year-old boy were available for long periods of jumping."
posted by winnie at 10:36 PM

just finished reading a collection of short stories, essays, and "parables" by borges called labyrinths ... although the essays were dense and a little too philosophical for my taste, the stories and parables were quite amazing. here's one of the parables i particularly liked. got it from some random person's livejournal site.

The Witness

In a stable that stands almost within the shadow of the new stone church a gray-eyed, gray-bearded man, stretched out amid the odor of the animals, humbly seeks death as one seeks for sleep. The day, faithful to vast secret laws, little by little shifts and mingles the shadows in the humble nook. Outside are the plowed fields and a deep ditch clogged with dead leaves and an occasional wolf track in the black earth at the edge of the forest. The man sleeps and dreams, forgotten. The angelus awakens him. By now the sound of the bells is one of the habits of evening in the kingdoms of England. But this man, as a child, saw the face of Woden, the holy dread and exultation, the rude wooden idol weighed down with Roman coins and heavy vestments, the sacrifice of horses, dogs, and prisoners. Before dawn he will die, and in him will die, never to return, the last eye-witness of those pagan rites; the world will be a little poorer when this Saxon dies.

Events far-reaching enough to people all space, whose end is nonetheless tolled when one man dies, may cause us wonder. But something, or an infinite number of things, dies in every death, unless the universe is possessed of a memory, as the theosophists have supposed.

In the course of time there was a day that closed the last eyes to see Christ. The battle of Junin and the love of Helen each died with the death of some one man. What will die with me when I die, what pitiful or perishable form will the world lose? The voice of Macedonio Fernandez? The image of a roan horse on the vacant lot at Serrano and Charcas? A bar of sulphur in the drawer of a mahogany desk?

- JLB, from Dreamtigers, translated by Mildred Boyer
posted by fwc at 10:46 PM

two things i have to try (thanks to chowhound):

natto. a very traditional, very commonly eaten japanese food item made of fermented soybeans. (tim asks, "isn't that what miso is?" no, timmy. actually, miso is made by inoculating either steamed rice or barley with a particular fungus, and this is then fermented into the yeast mold called koji, which is added to steamed soybeans and fermented further.) for natto, the soybeans are first steamed and then inoculated with a bacillus and left to ferment in a heated environment (and sometimes tied up in straw). natto is one of those foods that are considered "challenging," particular for western palates. upon fermentation, it acquires a really fetid odor and a slimy texture complete with strands of goo that stick together like a spiderweb. of course, like all foods that are probably less aesthetically pleasing than we might like, natto possesses many nutritional benefits. (and i will forgo the list of vitamins here, since i'm not trying -- nor do i want -- to be some kind of dr. weil.) given time and effort, one can acquire a taste for natto. a googling of "natto" yields many amusing websites. i much enjoy the pictures on this one.. its uses are many, and one could potentially consume this stenchy treat at all meals of the day, but one guy claims that if you order a natto handroll (with a shiso leaf) in a reputable sushi place, they'll know right away that you're not some gaijin-poseur and will be much more inclined to give you the real goods.

balut. this is a snack from the philippines: a half-grown (18-day old) duck embryo is boiled within its shell. this is then consumed straight from the shell, beak, feathers and all. the filipinos claim this is an aphrodisiac (as most asians are wont to do with many of their, ahem, "delicacies"). balut is also popular bar food. don't check out this link if you're (a)easily grossed out, (b)a card-carrying PETA member, (c)hungry, or (d)all of the above. apparently, the result is a very a intensely ducky soup (although the posters on chowhound said they had chicken).

in both cases, natives will eagerly offer their beloved foods to foreigners just to see what sort of reaction they can provoke. i do that sometimes. also, this insistence on the nutritional/virility-increasing value of such foods only reminds me of how, when i was really young, my mother would push a plate towards me or extends her chopsticks towards my mouth, some unknown substance suspended between the tips, urging me, "eat it. it's good for you." after being taken in by this a few too many times, i learned to be wary. (happy mother's day, mom!) it's funny that now, i willingly eat all the foods i loathed as a child. i even likekidney and lima beans now. there's also a sort of masochistic side to asian eating (not asian-eating, mind you. that's just wrong.) -- the claims that eating bitter melon (or live, still-beating cobra heart) will make you stronger, i wonder if they mean physically or mentally?

it's also interesting to note how the real hurdle for most westerners in asian cuisines is texture. we seem to have a particular fondness for comestibles that are squishy, sticky, gooey, slimy, or extremely chewy (and sometimes all these things at once). the infamously malodorous durian and stinky tofu are problematic for me. not to eat -- they're delicious -- but when one considers how many asians, particularly those like my parents, find cheese totally unpalatable. this, i think, is more a texture problem than taste. there aren't really that many dishes in the chinese repertoire that are creamy. and yet, i would think that the pungency of some of the more renowned cheeses would be a plus.
posted by winnie at 5:57 PM

this cartoon is for winnie's benefit:

posted by fwc at 5:42 PM

i think my whole hand is green:

this is one of the groups of sprouts i transplanted last weekend. i was really worried that the trauma of being uprooted and then plunked down in foreign soil (i mean, wouldn't you be traumatized too?) was too great, but they seem to be doing just fine. i took these guys (cilantro) to tim's house, and they actually seem to be faring better than their buddies back home:

which is not to say that these herbs are faring poorly. just that the ones at tim's are much taller and leafier. in front, more cilantro, middle is borage (fuzzy cucumber-y leaves that grow wild along the roads of rome. great in salads, claims the seed packet -- they sprout in like three days and grow insanely fast), and back is tarragon (though i don't remember any tarragon i've ever seen having forking leaves, which these are starting to do). and in case you don't recollect, these are how small the sprouts were a couple weeks ago:

these are new cress (and a stray parsley) sprouts. mmm. can't wait to put them in a sandwich. there's something strangely reverse-oedipal (or something) about the way i treat my plants. i mean, i could sit and watch them grow for hours, and i'm really stoked about their rapid development (esp when one remembers how ill-fated the herbs were that i grew in cambridge last summer), but they're basically headed for my dinner plate. am i like a mother hamster? would i eat my young, given the chance? um, right.

and a gratuitous (but not overly, if that's possible) picture of one of ruby et violette's delectable cookies (this, i think, is the "perfect." a very excellent chocolate chip cookie):

i dunno if i've already mentioned this previously, but jeffrey steingarten makes a completely valid point in it must have been something i ate about how everyone should be able to make chocolate chip cookies at least as good as the ones the toll house cookie recipe yields.unfortunately, that's very rarely the case (too dry, too bland, too salty, too crumbly, too soft, too hard, etc.). while toll house cookies are by no means the end-all, be-all of chocolate-chip cookies, i would claim that they are good -- even very good. so cookie makers should all be able to make very good cookies. so why the hell don't they? a question for the ages.

people think of everything
nell, the associate producer i've been working for these last couple of weeks, pointed me today to this little sub-genre of millinery. there used to be a hats of meat site, but apparently it is no more. we all should mourn the loss. um, ham anyone?
posted by winnie at 8:37 PM

dinner last night (edited from my posting on chowhound):

after an unexpectedly long and grueling day at the office, i finally got to meet up with tim on his one day off this week for a meal. i finally got back to the neighborhood around 10:30, and luckily, bacchus is open until midnight. after all the reports on chowhound, i've been anxious to try it (particularly since i'll be moving two blocks away from it very soon). they only just opened three weeks ago.

as noted previously, the owners are very, very friendly and very nice. we sat in the front near the window, and it was not until a dozen people emerged from the back an hour in that i realized there's a (charming) little backroom as well. it was pretty empty, but it was also late and weirdly misty outside.

started with the steak tartare and pate de campagne. both were good, the pate great even. tartare didn't have the overprocessed problem that plagues most places, but was heavy on the cornichons (and filler in general). and i was craving some gaufrettes or lay's or something to scoop it up with instead of slathering it on the (very good) bread they brought over. (a side note: the butter here is remarkably good, in that we both marvelled over its sweetness and lovely dairy purity.) pate comes with cornichons, a little ramekin of decent mustard, and some great little pickled pearl onions. drank some stella we'd bought from the deli around the corner.

i had calf's liver with caramelized onions and garlic mashed potatoes. very, very tasty -- this liver is actually better than the liver i had at al di la a couple of months ago: just enough of a crust to balance out the iron-y flavor. tim's hangar steak was _PERFECT_. he ordered it rare, which the cook handled just right. i have to say, i haven't sampled a piece of beef this delicious in quite some time. the cabernet sauce was totally unnecessary, so toothsome was this steak. his fries, a substitution for the gratin dauphinois, were also great, rivalled only by heights cafe's.

we shared a slice of the tarte tatin for dessert, and while not especially great, it was respectable. could have used a greater ratio of ice cream to tarte, we think.

all in all, a winner. and so much better than the multitude of would-be bistros on smith and court. i can't wait until they get their license. and those guys with their great accents ("zees ees, what you say, ah, zee beet?"). i love them already. a very welcome addition to the neighborhood; i think i might become a regular.
posted by winnie at 4:52 PM

italian proverbs:

someone described as buono, come il pane ("good, like bread") has a heart of gold.
pane al pane e vino al vino: calling a spade a spade. literally, calling bread bread and wine wine.
al contadino non far sapere quanto è buono il formaggio con le pere: don't let the farmer know how good cheese is with pears.
botte buona fa buon vino: a good cask makes good wine.
chi fa falla, e chi non fa sfarfalla: those who act make mistakes; those who do nothing blunder.
chi lava il capo all'asino perde il ranno e il sapone: he who scrubs the head of an ass wastes his time and effort.
ne ammazza più la gola che la spada: gluttony kills more than the sword.
posted by winnie at 3:15 PM

i've almost been spurred into action. i would write an angry letter to merriam-webster, but instead i'll just refute the existence of such a stupid thing as:

Main Entry: Chinese restaurant syndrome
Function: noun
Date: 1968
: a group of symptoms (as numbness of the neck, arms, and back with headache, dizziness, and palpitations) that is held to affect susceptible persons eating food and especially Chinese food heavily seasoned with monosodium glutamate

this is one of the alternative entries offered when one looks up "restaurant." as steingarten and i both well know, CRS is just a myth concocted by those who are also supposedly plagued by the inability to eat dairy, pineapple, cilantro, or whatever the hell else they've made up.

another discovery in the upper reaches of hell's kitchen: island burgers & shakes. a respectable patty, done just as ordered, and a nice char-grilled taste and aroma that lingers on your fingers all day long. but no fries?!
posted by winnie at 12:24 AM

finally sat down and collected my thoughts on the various korean restaurants i've been to over the years ... here's what i came up with ...

note: these commentaries are a little stilted b/c i'm vegetarian. i.e. i make no comparisons about any of these places' korean bbq, etc. generally i order a pajeon (korean scallion pancake) and bibimbap (mixed vegetables w/ hot red sauce). i also generally know what the chopjae (clear noodles with stir fried vegetables) and dokbokki (spicy rice cakes) and such are like.

compared to the 3 places i've been in new york (all of which were quite good), i'd have to say that boston's korean eateries are generally on a lower level. one last comment, for korean groceries, check out lotte in central square (297 mass ave). now on w/ the reviews ...

best:
*** suishaya (chinatown, 2 tyler st): surprisingly good. i've been twice, the first time wasn't so memorable, but i went again recently and it's prob. my fav. of the korean restaurants i've been to lately. one of two korean restaurants in chinatown.

good:
koreana (inman sq, 154 prospect st): just reopened. the interior is nicer than it was, although our group of 4 ended up being seated right next to another group of 4 in an adjoining table, which was sort of annoying. o/w pretty good, although i found that i preferred suishaya.
wuchan (union sq): usually near the top of most people's list. need to go again.
the one next to wuchan (union sq): heh. i don't remember the name. people call it the jjajjang myeon place, b/c they have the korean black bean noodles which isn't really common. not bad, but need to go again.

average:
choe's cafe (957 comm ave): nothing special, but the waitress was better than average.
kaya (581 boylston st + 2 other locations): average. pissy waitress. andy sez that kaya has one of the best renditions of stir fried kimchi in town.
korea garden (central sq, 20 pearl st): average, but i haven't been in a while.
apollo (chinatown, 84-86 harrison ave): a little less than average.
shilla (harvard sq): a little less than average.

not bad (cheaper alternatives):
seoul food (porter sq, 1759 mass ave): i think this place is cheaper than average. the panchan (side dishes) were really subpar, but the food was good.
super 88 (1095 comm ave): in a food court, so it's fast foodish, but it's good.
porter exchange (porter sq): fast foodish. about the same as the restaurant at super 88 or a little lower in quality.

eh:
q-vin (545 boylston st): def. below average. the dok bokki and their kochujang (red bean paste) were really really sweet, i.e. not very good.
jae's (locations on columbus and also in inman): okay for what it is, i guess, which is overpriced americanzied generic pan-asian food. but why bother when you can get the real thing?

posted by fwc at 8:33 AM

ah, the master at work.

the culinary wasteland that is the 10 block-radius surrounding the food network is redeemed by two things, and two things only: wondee siam (thank you, anita) and ruby et violette. beef salad, pad kee mao, and the bestest damn cookies you ever wrapped your lips around.

go connie! she got the internship at nike. as tim says, "at least one of the yangs is gainfully employed." bah.

something that'll especially amuse joyce and tim. and probably my sister:
so today, i was sticking post-its all over a san francisco map for the associate producer of the batali show i'm doing research for. and every time i moved my head in a particular direction (it seemed downward), i caught a nasty whiff of something. and i kept trying to figure out what it was, if it were me or if there was some dead rat under my desk. it smelled like serious ass. i actually smelled fine, so i blamed it on the assoc. producer. after i finished the map, i took off running for the bathroom to escape the godawful stench. but in the bathroom, i still smelled it, so it had to be me! slightly weirded out and completely unable to determine the noisome source, i gave up. while washing my hands, i glanced in the mirror and saw some crumb-like thing adhered to my chin. dude, THAT'S what smelled so bad. i'm not sure what it was, but it's gone now. i mean, it stunk like the stinkiest piece of poo ever -- but it looked a pale breadcrumb. i don't even want to know.
posted by winnie at 9:14 PM

long live the queens!

finally, sripraphai:
it's actually not that far away (now, i just have to convince tim of this). and it's every bit at fantastic as they say. linda, ben, stoli, and i had the crunchy catfish salad, which was a supernal version of papaya salad atop lots of crunchy fried bits (which didn't seem much like catfish, but were damn tasty); tom yum soup, also the best i've had in new york -- or anywhere, for that matter; green chicken curry; beef offal soup, very much like vietnamese pho but without the noodles; some sort of pad kee mao-like thing with red peppers and ground beef. so so so good. there's a lovely little verdant courtyard outback that contrasts nicely with the very hole-in-the-wall, barebones front dining room, where everyone was seated today. i love this place. beyond a doubt the best thai i've ever had (and now, i'll just have to plan a jaunt to thailand). i'm definitely coming back soon. and i decided, i really love queens. none of the signs are in english there, and there was only one white person on the 7 train on the way there. she looked distinctly uncomfortable, but i guess that's what you get when you try to get to laguardia cheaply.
posted by winnie at 5:46 PM

oof. too much eating. but i can't help myself when it's so good.

wednesday: the tasting room.
i ran into the chef of 71 clinton a couple weeks back, and he spoke glowingly of the tasting room -- which i hadn't even heard of -- but we didn't get around to checking it out until now. this guy from daniel, colin alevras, opened up this place in the east village with his wife, offering an ever-changing menu of small dishes (which can be upgraded somewhat to entree portions if desired) and a really massive list of wines. it is a wine bar, after all. similar to troquet in boston, but less conservative. tim deems it a real wine geek's place. we started with an asparagus terrine, a tidy little paved square of stalk, held together with veg aspic, accompanied by some remarkably savory grapefruit supremes; the foie gras, a modest lobe with lemon jam and some winey-saucey thing underneath, garnished with a big ol' pile of chives; poached cod with spring peas in a cardamom-laced sauce (so delicious, and yet there was still string in the cod from poaching, and the peas were veryundercooked. still, i would eat this one again, and again);and oh yes, the squid with chorizo -- while very, very tasty, the sausage dice was too large i thought and overwhelmed the delicate squid flavor. but the textures were nice, and i felt like it was right idea. we got a large (relatively) portion of the braised rabbit, and nearly licked the plate clean. excellent ciabatta in the breadbasket. the room is small but unassuming. lots of exposed brick, dark wood, bicycle paintings. the service has to be one of the least pretentious in the city, just alot of enthusiasm and sincerity. alevras is the nicest guy. we had some champagne with the starters, glasses of dry and yeasty blanc de blancs, and a bottle of pinot noir with the rest of the meal. cheese plate: i remember only the sally jackson and the point reyes, but they selected three others that were superb, and the cheese came with thin slices of dense, nutty bread, pesto, honey, and pickled grapes. pickled grapes are now my ideal fruit pairing with cheese -- i feel like dried fruit just reinforces the dryness of some cheeses, and regular grapes, while acidic, don't have the smack of pickling liquid. for the perfect dessert to cap off such a spring-y meal, lemon tart. this is definitely our new favorite place to eat in the city.

tim cooked last night (and dammit, i wish i'd had my digital camera):
to start, olive oil-poached cherry tomato-fresh mozzarella-pesto tarts with arugula (dressed) garnished with prosciutto chips. both this tart crust and the ones for dessert were made with lard, which yields the most flavorful, flaky result (see march's saveur). the doughs are very similar, but the savory pate brisee lacks the sugar in the pate sucre (i guess that's obvious). then, he browned some halibut and served it with a ragu of favas, spring peas, onions, mussels and artichokes. dessert was strawberry-rhubarb tart with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a strawberry juice-reduction. sometimes he truly amazes me.

yum.

things i want to do: pickle (everything), make a pie, bake something from my maida heatter cookbook, make preserves.
posted by winnie at 11:02 AM