FoodWords Between Deadlines
Wednesday, March 27
Chicago Chefs Vow to Pass on the Bass
This week, chefs in many of Chicago's highest-profile restaurants are taking a pledge not to serve any Chilean sea bass until the fish, which is neither Chilean nor a sea bass, until the fish population is allowed to recover. Like swordfish, orange roughy and redfish before it, the fish formerly known as Patagonian toothfish swam in relative obscurity until it was discovered, promoted and found on menus all over. Now, it too has become overfished and a favorite of poachers, and the once-hearty fish that tipped the scales at 200 pounds now barely registers at 20 pounds. Read the story from the Chicago Tribune and then go out for a salmon dinner, which is much better for you anyway. (eDiets.com has a story today that salmon is one of the 10 best foods for women.)
posted by Unknown10:26 AM
Tuesday, March 26
A Peek Behind the Curtain at Michelin's Guide Rouge
How does the Michelin Man find all those great restaurants? If your travel taste is so rarefied that you can detect the shifts and waves that add a star here, deduct one there at restaurants over le tout France, you'll enjoy this piece from Business Week magazine that purports to peer into the mysterious process in which the guide, published by the same family business that makes tires (or tyres, for our English cousins), demarcates the state of French cuisine and causes joy and misery throughout the land. Plus, it's fun to read.
posted by Unknown
Friday, March 22
Hot Gossip in the Food-Editor Job Shuffle!
Now, here's something you don't see every day in the frantic world of media gossip: As reported Thursday, there's a shakeup in the food-editing world at the very pinnacles of newspaper food journalism: A former Talk magazine editor is going to be the New York Times' new food editor, while the Times person is moving to take Russ Parsons' place as LATimes food editor. But, as the NY Post reported Friday, the ex NY-er will be joining her boyfriend at the Times, who also is a food writer. To avoid the appearance of nepotism, the boyfriend won't be reporting to the girlfriend but to a neutral third party, the LATimes' deputy managing editor and an exNYT'er himself. All of this sounds like just so much inside baseball, but to those of who just watch the gods relocate themselves on Olympus, it's a fun spectator sport.
posted by Unknown
Wednesday, March 20
In Praise (Or Not) of 'Taste of Home' UPDATED
Do any of you read this magazine? It makes a big noise about being different from the usual food magazines because it uses only recipes from readers; in other words, real people, not those snotty East Coast editors who are too skinny for words and wouldn't know how to use a tub of Cool Whip on a bet. Personally, I am not a fan, although I know many are (even a couple of you!). I find it hard to read, and it's a little too just-us-girls in the writing style. But, as this New York Times article shows, (it's written by confirmed New Yorker Regina Schrambling, who manages to look only slightly askance at the magazine and its solidly Midwestern staff and surroundings) the magazine has a devoted readership and reflects its readers. I loved the paragraph that says the magazine opened a Taste of Home restaurant to divert its groupies from visiting the offices. The main reason I don't read it is that one of its readers ripped off a recipe that won a prize in the Wisconsin State Journal's old cookbook contest in 1989 or 1990 - the reason I know she ripped it off is because I rewrote the recipe based on an extensive phone call with its originator, and the version that appeared in the magazine didn't even change my somewhat colloquial wording. Still irritates the heck out of me, but it was a great recipe: Blueberry Stuffed French Toast. Mmmm!
Update! The reason for all this East Coast interest in a distinctly middlebrow foodiemag is that Readers Digest had been rumored to be interested in buying it for $700 million. The rumor came true and the sale was announced on Friday. Seven hundred million?? That'll go a lot farther in Greenfield, Wisconsin, than it would in New York or LA.
posted by Unknown
Wednesday, March 13
Top Story: Silicon Valleyites can recreate favorite pricey restaurant dishes at home
The heady days of four-figure dinner checks are a memory for many newly unrich tech workers, but that doesn't mean they have to resort to mac and cheese from the ol' blue box. The San Jose Mercury-News has taken extreme pity on these poor folks who now must learn to shop for food and wash dishes like the rest of us and some tips for recreating the taste of the high life at home, such as substituting a sirloin tip or chuck roast for that thick steak, buying monkfish instead of lobster, choosing a soy-based "caviar alternative" instead of the fishy real stuff, making do with truffle oil instead of truffles and the like. Now, I dunno. This sounds a little Marie-Antoinetteish, don't you think? Perhaps the Merc's corporate tongue is planted firmly in its cheek, but it sounds a little to me like one old duffer at the country club leaning over to the other and saying, "Yes, old boy, it's sad that you had to give up the limo, but I'm sure you'll get used to driving yourself in the Lexus."
posted by Unknown
Tuesday, March 12
Farewell to the Cake Lady
Some of the best newspaper reading is on the obituary pages. The Boston Globe's obit page featured this story of the Cake Lady, a woman in Newton, Mass. famous for her luxuriously frosted cakes. It recounts in affectionate details how she painstakingly detailed cakes for everyone from the birthday boy down the street to President John F. Kennedy to Dr. Benjamin Spock, whose cake rode belted in its own cabin seat, ticket and all, to a party in New York City. What are you doing with your own life today to make your obit worth reading?
posted by Unknown
Catfight Over Chef Comments - on International Women's Day
Isn't it depressing - people who say women will never achieve equality in this world until they can stop attacking each other got more material for their side in this exchange between a female British member of the European Parliament (what I think a Euro MP is) and one of England's leading cookbook authors. The MEP jokingly commented on some of Delia Smith's quick tips, giving the impression -or, giving a bunch of guys looking for a catfight the impression - that she was knocking Delia Smith's recipes as out of date and not recognizing time pressures on real women. Glenys Kinnock apologized, saying it was all a joke, and Delia brushed it off, but of course, the prospect of two women fighting on International Women's Day is just too appetizing to ignore.
posted by Unknown
Friday, March 8
Community Cookbooks Honored
I know, you have enough cookbooks. But if you have room for one, or a few, more, here are the winners of the McIlhenny Co.'s 2001 Tabasco Community Cookbook Awards. There are overall winners, regional winners and Hall of Fame entrants. Don't know if one criterion for winning is not including any recipes made with cream of mushroom soup. Check out this story, and I will in the meantime hunt down a link to the Tabasco news release.
posted by Unknown
Thursday, March 7
Aisles of cultural exploration
There's one thing you won't find anywhere in all the thousands of square feet of your favorite Super-Shopper Mega Hypermarket food store: the kind of close-to-the-ground cultural experience you get when you walk down the crowded, tilting, wooden aisles of your local ethnic grocery store. In my town, it's the new Mexican and Asian stores that pop up on street corners and in old buildings nobody else wants. You won't find all the modern conveniences we've gotten used to in the typical American supermarket, but then you also won't be able to choose from 20 different kinds of coconut milk or jasmine rice at Wal-Mart, either. If you really want to know a culture but can't fly over for a visit, walk around a grocery store and talk with the people who work there. Even if you don't know the language, and they don't know yours, you'll be able to get your point across.
posted by Unknown
Wednesday, March 6
posted by Unknown
Friday, March 1
IHT: Fusion! The French break loose
Yes, another Patricia Wells column from the International Herald-Tribune. This time, she chronicles a Parisian restaurant that breaks the time-honored rules of cuisine which dictate when, where and how one may order one's meal.
posted by Unknown
