Yes, I’ve been back for a month… oh okay, six weeks if you’re being, y’know, exact and stuff… and finally I’ve unearthed all my photos. This delay probably means they now fall into the same category of chronological etiquette as the postcards I meant to send you but somehow overlooked, and then didn’t even mail from the airport and blame on the Royal Mail like everyone else does when I saw you before they arrived. I got a little snap-happy, especially in my gran’s vegetable garden, so I think I’ll post them in albums and then if you’re at all interested in what a raspberry patch looks like after a gale (gory), but less intrigued by the original cockle shop in Berwick, you can peruse at your own pace. Coming soon, therefore, in installments: What I Did Last Summer.

glorious wall of canned meat products courtesy of chotda

Dear lovely spambots who left me 387 comments while I was away in France,
I’m tickled pink to come back to such a mountain of feedback and you’re all just darlings to take the time to write. I’m going to mention a couple of things, though, just so you don’t get your feelings hurt if your little comment doesn’t quite make it through the approval process. Don’t be discouraged: it’s an overcrowded field, and these pointers are just to get you on track about the sort of thing that makes us more ‘particular’* types just sparkle with delight.

Things I am not:
• an acne sufferer
• a World of Warcraft player
• susceptible to generic “you go” exhortations
• an Apple geek or any other form of software engineer
• able to translate arabic, but thank you for thinking I might be
• the owner of an iPhone (™ and please note the capitalization – details matter, dears)
• an erectilely disfunct gun enthusiast yearning for bondage gear and dog clothes
• German
Just in case you think I’m being a bit beastly, here’s an anonymous gem that came oh-just-so-so-close to hitting the mark:
“In his fissure donnybrook, San Mateo County Chief Deputy Neighbourhood [sic] Attorney Steve Wagstaffe painted Alvarez as a deleterious felon who basic brutally worn out another teenaged man at the Villa Taqueria, shot at May minutes later to avoid wealthy aid to penal institution on a parole breaching and then stood over the fallen gendarme and executed him. Cheers.”
It’s quite enchanting really – as if Kerouac got extra drunk and churned out a dime novel. But sweetie, can we try and stay a little more on-topic? I’m having a hard time relating this to a post on the perfect frying pan. I’ll give you an E for Effort, with a side of Must Try Harder.

Keep at it, kids. You’ll get it!

(*This is a play on words. I can do this, you cannot, unless it’s very, very clever, which this example obviously isn’t. It’s my blog and I decide.)

wheeeeee…

Remember our little anarchist chum? Well here he is rushing down to the shops, ready to take his righteous place on the shelves. July 1st is d-for-democracy day, when all vegetables shall be equal in the eyes of EU regulation. Well, almost all, and almost equal – some are still more equal than others. But it’s progress, citoyens.

Lured by the idea of a cheap night out, Natasha and I went to the 3rd Annual New York Food Film Festival last tuesday. Free admission, free mutton barbecue and cornbread, and a string of short films about food all selected, as the MC pointed out, to entertain rather than lecture. We laughed, we clapped, we text-voted, we ate barbecue, and we froze our butts off on the water taxi beach in Long Island City. (I for one refuse to give up my seasonally appropriate outdoor pursuits in the face of this ark-buildingly wet abomination of a summer.)

barbecue pit to the left, big screen to the right, and frostbitten foodies between admiring the view

There was one educational note for me: I’d never had native wild ‘rice’ before, and the team behind “The Sacred Food” handed round samples; it was delicately delicious, with none of the husky, chewy texture I associate with the genre. It’s under threat as a natural resource from ‘improvement’ measures (eye roll), so watch the film and then buy some from the people fighting to protect it.

“The Sacred Food” by Jack Pettibone Riccobono (dur: 6 mins)

On the flip side, I’m guessing from what I overheard around me that the mutton was a new experience for many others. If the Dynamic Duo of Jamie Oliver and Prince Charles (ye gods) have their way back home, it’ll be the Next Big Thing – that is, as far as the Brits are concerned, in the category of “everything old is new again”. According to my favorite film of the night, “Mutton The Movie”, mutton in America is pretty much the geo-specific preserve of northern Kentucky church barbecues and their tourist-luring spinoff festivals; we ate as many portions as we could get away with, which, thanks to the nice relaxed people dishing it out for RUB. was a lot. It was delicious, and if you want to explore further, why not have a look at His Royal Highness’s helpful hints on the Mutton Renaissance web page. Also, talk to your friends from India, Pakistan, Morocco, Egypt, the (ahem) Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region… you get the picture.

“Mutton The Movie” by Joe York and Matthew Graves (dur: 17 mins)

There was also a hilarious animated short called “The Food Hypnotist” by Orrin and Jerry Zucker; it’s not viewable online, sadly, but their website is here.

I’m three weeks late to the party on this one, the result of bookmarking things that interest me with abandon and then having to go back and wade through them all. But more importantly, this is wonderful news from Albany: New York State money will no longer be spent on the insanity that is bottled water. The nail on the head:

“Taxpayers have spent billions of dollars to ensure that we have clean drinking water supplies,” said Governor Paterson. “If we are going to make such significant investments, we should reap the benefits and use that water. Our efforts will serve as an example for local governments, businesses and residents to follow.”

The press release as a whole is well worth reading. And just to hammer that nail home, here’s one of my favorite images.

There’s full information about the genius of the q-drum and its designers on their website and on the Cooper-Hewitt Museum website.

(Image hoiked entirely without malice from the newspaper article where I first read about the q-drum, details of the source lost without trace, and no disrespect intended in its totally unauthorised use.)

Recipe for success: a bunch of friends, a sunday afternoon, a four bar crawl with mac’n'cheese cook-off, and free samples. Who won? Who knows. But I’m looking forward to the next one.

Miss A demonstrating with her usual élan the perfect balance of macaroni and monogram during the Great Greenpoint Mac Off.

When the boardwalk was vapors-inducingly crowded one blazing day last summer, we ducked into Astroland and bought cold beers and hot Italian sausage. Lulled, I guess, by the premature Coney Island obituaries of the year before, I didn’t take this photo thinking of souvenirs. I was just revelling in how good the sausage and beer tasted, and appreciating how relaxed and smooth the cook was on his grill despite the mayhem and cotton candy around him. (And seriously, shades? That’s soignee.)

But now that’s that, for real this time. For the last couple of weeks pictures have been popping up of the demolition of Astroland – rocket ship, Dante’s devil’s head and all. Well, not quite all: they’re leaving the Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel, and Thor Equities say they will be bringing in new rides. I relish a little tradition with my hot dogs, however, and the fact that Astroland is getting the Extreme Makeover treatment doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t want to buy my sunstruck snacks from just another plastic franchise. I like the idea of that grill grate being slowly seasoned with carbonized sausage particles since the park first opened in 1962. I like the idea that for four decades a sausage and a cold beer were the flavor of surviving a ride on the Top Spin, or of my first grown-up birthday party in New York, or of a cheap date or a family day out, and they were enough – delicious, in fact – just the way they were. Overly romantic nonsense? Maybe. But why are we so afraid to let anything get old any more?

frangipane tart with blueberries, cherries, raspberries and a heady dash of optimism

The grand launch of t&t’s pickles (with bloody marys) had to be postponed. The mother of one of the t’s started trying to leave Portland, Oregon on the Monday before Christmas, and finally arrived four days later. However, a rescheduling has been promised once everyone has recovered from holiday travel trauma, so watch this space. There Will Be Pickles.

It’s cold out there, it’s a little mad everywhere, and the holidays are upon us. I hope everyone is taking a break from the wide world to relax over food, with conversation. Emphasis on the relax part: holiday feasts are much more fun if they are not solo performances, so set aside your inner prima donna and delegate to the nearest and dearest. Early and often.

Coming soon from the particulars: the bloody-mary-buoyed grand launch of t&t’s pickles, and adventures in unearthing several generations of family kitchenware as I move into a new apartment. Yee-haw, 2009.

anarchist parsnip wins right to self-expression

The European Union’s Agriculture Commissioner has finally repealed Common Agricultural Policy standardization requirements for 26 fruits and vegetables, opening grocery shelves to free-spirited carrots and nonconformist cucumbers. The rationale behind the regulations in the first place was that existing trading standards across all the member countries had to be brought in line with each other when the EU was first formed. In retrospect it seems clear that the price has been a shocking level of food waste, and space-maximizing convenience for the shippers and supermarkets at the expense of choice and education for consumers.

The Agriculture Commissioner, Mariann Fischer Boel, says on her own blog “It makes no sense to throw perfectly good products away, just because they are the ‘wrong’ shape.” Ms Boel is a farmer herself and makes it clear that taste comes first, especially in the face of soaring food costs. I can only assume that this shift will also clear another obstacle for small, less mechanized farms and organic farmers who have had to watch their knobbly veg be discarded or sold for “processing” at a lower price.

Of course, the USDA has its own fantastic reams of rules and regulations, including a 14 page pdf (downloadable, for a little light reading) on the appropriate curvature for American Greenhouse Cucumbers and instant outlaw status for our wee friend on the right in the photo up there. But worms are turning, heirloom tomatoes are leading the charge, and we’ll see what our shiny new President-Elect has to say about all this. I wonder if he’s heard Michael Pollan’s clarion call for common sense (see below)?

In the meantime, in the interests of all our sanity, and of maintaining our appreciation of the wonky, go and visit Uli Westphal’s gallery of beauties, all rescued from the scarlet letter shame of being “non-standard” and transformed into luscious glowing pin-ups.

… let it be this one. Michael Pollan lays out the case for a paradigm shift in our production of food. His arguments for the critical need to reestablish local abattoirs deserve particular attention. Meat processing is still all too shielded by our careful ignorance of “how the sausage is made”, but in my book, livestock deserve at least the same respect as those heirloom tomatoes we’ll talk about at the drop of a reusable grocery bag.

Fair enough. Always delighted to oblige. Now if you’ll just hold still while I put you outside….

very large hawk moth taking a momentary break from its attempts at self immolation to indicate its menu preferences

before…

Florence’s father came back from the Camargue with the most beautiful cherry tomatoes grown by one of his hunting buddies, a very muddy and happy bird dog, and four gorgeous wild ducks, which he insisted on giving to me. He removed the guts for me, and offered to clean them further, but I was due back in St Tropez and so breezily said that I would pluck them and finish the job. My experience of plucking game birds prior to this consisted of plenty of quail (which are so tiny they don’t really count) in Louisiana and Texas, and a few pheasant in Scotland – but I figured that now was as good a time to figure it out as any, and I certainly wasn’t going to say no to such a generous offer of fresh duck.

more »

above: a mussel farm in Normandy at low tide, below: Jez’s Famous Saffron Moules

Speaking of things washed over by the tide, moules de bouchot were another new discovery for me this summer. They’re on the smaller side, with boldly orange meat, a firm texture, and a distinctively strong sweet flavor. These mussels are grown on tall wooden pilings, or bouchots: it’s a method of aquaculture that was discovered by accident and is (bewilderingly) only seen in northern France, where an Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC) has been granted for those grown in the bay of Mont-St-Michel. These posts don’t just act as bivalve corrals, they also allow the thick ropes of shells to be exposed to the air and the sun at low tide; this gives moules de bouchot their particular flavor and slightly thicker shell. Délicieux!

Yes, thank you, I had a wonderful summer working in France. Well, OK. It wasn’t all work.

from left to right, top to bottom: café liégeois at Sénéquier, Françoise Ferry’s fabulous quince and vanilla confit, fruit and flowers in the Place des Lices market, roasted cherry tomatoes, ‘far breton’ made with fresh cherries, Mont Caume from Le-Revest-les-Eaux, fraises des bois also in the market, beet and pink grapefruit appetizer.

Oh yes. A mad busy month, including a hilarious surprise birthday/culinary class/cook your own dinner party, and a really fun evening being a “congratulations on the birth of your baby” present*. Now I’m trying to get everything organized before I leave for a 10 week contract in France. Do you like how nonchalantly I said that? I am, shall we say, a little excited at the thought of being let loose in coastal Provence with 12 to 20 people to feed every day. I should be able to post updates from there, depending on the availability of a computer and of moments in which to draw breath. And if neither are accessible, I’ll be taking plenty of notes and pictures to bring you, gentle reader, a cornucopia of French deliciousness once I get back to NYC in mid September.

In the meantime, some tid-bits from the past week will follow.

(*No, I didn’t have to tie a ribbon round my neck: friends of the new parents gave them a Particular Gift Certificate for a tasting menu with wines. It was a first for me that the object of the celebration wasn’t an active participant in the feast, but we like to make allowances for the sleep requirements of those under 6 months and we had just as good a time with her on the other end of the baby monitor. I also have no doubt, having met her parents, that she will be trying everything on the menu the minute she figures out the business end of a spoon.)

We’re up. And hopscotching, if not exactly running. But thanks to the ministrations (and eternal patience) of genius Jeremy, this journal is getting pummeled into shape and will be finished soon.

In the meantime, enjoy the content, brush up on your Portuguese by deciphering some of the original formatting, and don’t worry, because we won’t be green for long.

And yes these posts are chronologically a little out of whack, but hey, I’ve been saving them specially for the occasion. Let’s just pretend.

UPDATE No more green Portuguese! We love Jeremy.

(ring, ring)
me: Hello?
DWR: Hi. This is Design Within Reach, the Chelsea studio. We need chair cookies.
me: …..?
DWR: You know, for our “Re-imagining the Chair” event. We need iconic chair cookies. 150 of them.
me: No problem.
DWR: And can they be iced? And at least some of them sparkly? It is Christmas, after all.
me: But of course. Now where did I put that exacto knife?

Students from the Illustration Department at Parsons were given Bellini chairs to, well, re-imagine. Bradford Shellhammer has a great photo set of the results of their creativity, the reception, and the cookies with their full-size compadres, here.

It was really fun to play with the silhouettes of different famous chair designs to see which would make the strongest shapes for the cookies. (No disrespect intended to messrs Jacobsen, Panton, Bellini and Vignelli by recreating them in two-dimensional cookie dough. I mean heck, Eames and Saarinen didn’t even make the cut.)

A combined Halloween, pumpkin patch and birthday party for the fabulous Floyd. I think the adults outnumbered the kids: at least we served way more pomegranate and champagne cocktails than we did juice boxes but maybe the under-tens had false IDs.

little devils’ eggs

iced pumpkin spice cookies on lollipop sticks

candy apples coated in caramel, milk chocolate, white chocolate and sugar sprinkles….. just to make sure