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Happy Father's Day


Dad,

Thank you for working so hard to take care of us, your children. Thank you for the sacrifices you made at such a young age in order to feed and shelter us. Thank you for your ferocious loyalty and love. Thank you for instilling in us the belief that hard work and passion is the most important element we can give to our life and work. Thank you for believing in us, no matter what paths we take.

Thank you for our curious sense of humor. Thank you for Sunday morning memories of the Funnies and donuts. Thank you for giving us the love of the grill, the ocean and swimming in the quarry.

Thank you for telling me that everything I do is magic.
I love you.

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What you think vs. What you do


To be twenty-something is to be an active dreamer. You think about bigger picture stuff (world politics, the state of the economy, the state of technology, the state of art and commerce, fame, fortune and all the organic bits in between) and try to figure out how you, the twenty-something, fit into this big, broad game of life. Some twenty-somethings are mover and shakers that seem to have already conquered the world, while others try on different personas and job opportunities like trendy outfits.

When I was twenty something, I was in the midst of trying on lots of different personas. I was a writer, a journalist, a comedian and a bartender living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I bartended at a tiny music club while struggling to figure out what to do with my life.

This was about when I first met Tony Maws. He was a sous chef at a fine dining restaurant and one of my late night regulars. He’d roll in at 1:30 in the morning with a bunch of rowdy kitchen guys and mouthy servers. They’d shout a flurry of desperate orders at me in hopes of beating the ticking clock of last call. Tony, with his long curly hair hidden behind a sweat-soaked bandanna, would shoot me an impish smile that could cut daggers through the dark and boisterous crowd of last-call ordering and put his request for a shot and a beer at the top of my priority list every time. After many visits to my bar (which always included a funny dance of gratuitous over-tipping and generous over-pouring), Tony and I became friends.

The thing about Tony that impressed me most was that despite all the whining and complaining of most of our twenty-something friends around us, he always knew exactly what it was he wanted to do. He’d tell me how he’d finish out “doing his time” cooking at the Blue Room in Cambridge, then work on the West coast, maybe spend some time in a kitchen in France and then, by the age of 30, he’d own and run his own restaurant. I remember the stunned feeling I had, that morning we shared a muffin and coffee at a local bakery, when he told me his plans for the future. His determination and drive made my head spin and made me wonder if maybe I should start thinking more about the direction of my life and less about “finding myself”.

Time passed and I started whittling down the many things I wanted to do and started focusing on one option: writing. In that time, Tony left town moved to Santa Fe and worked for Mark Miller at his highly celebrated Coyote Café in Santa Fe. Later, I heard through the restaurant grapevine that Tony went to France to work for Bernard Constantin at La Rivore in Lyon. I moved to Los Angeles to go to film school. Then, in 2002, I spotted Tony’s face on the cover of Food & Wine. I was happy to read that Tony had done just as he said he would. He was the chef owner of his own restaurant.

Craigie Street Bistrot

Living on the west coast as a film school student presented plenty of worthy distractions and even more financial obstacles to keep me from flying back east to try out the new restaurant of my long-ago friend. But then, after years of frustration over dead-end Hollywood jobs, I decided to move back home to Massachusetts for the summer to make some fast money bartending and waitressing at a busy sea-side restaurant and decide, once and for all, if I should give up on my dreams of being a screenwriter.

Strangely enough, one of the first things I did when I got back East was try to make a reservation at Craigie Street Bistrot. I was pleasantly disappointed when I heard a voice mail explain that the restaurant would be closed for the first few weeks of summer for “a well deserved vacation.” I smiled to myself as I hung up the phone. Without tasting a morsel of food or seeing his dining room, I already knew Tony’s restaurant would be unlike any other I had ever visited.

Booking a reservation

My east coast summer experiment offered many unexpected insights. I had changed. I didn’t fit into my small town. I thrived on the diversity of the city of Los Angeles. Most importantly, I realized that writing was in my blood—there was no avoiding it. So after a long and difficult summer in Newburyport Massachusetts, I was ready to move back to LA—for good. Just before packing my car up for the long ride west, I booked an early reservation at Tony’s restaurant for my sister and I.

Just blocks from Harvard University’s campus, Craigie Street Bistrot is a tiny place that requires patience in finding. Located on a side street in the basement of an unassuming brick building, the dining room of Craigie Street Bistrot is smaller than many of its well-heeled customers’ living rooms.

Chef Tony creates his menus daily, based on what is available from local purveyors and farmers. This is no little feat, considering the fickle New England weather and harsh winters Massachusetts suffers. Regardless of the season’s bounty or limited availability of anything beyond tubers and squash, Tony never fails to find inspiration for his ever-changing daily menu. Even when snowstorms strike and crops fail, his market fresh dishes are so delicious and thoughtful, diners often forget they’re in a small (albeit homey) and nearly windowless basement dining room.

His dishes engage the eater to try something new. House-Cured Greek sardines with
preserved lemons and pickled peppers challenge the typical fish and chips eaters while meat lovers are given a chance to experience a little snout to tail eating with the Organic Smoked Hangar Steak with
bone marrow, smoked beef tongue ragoût, shiitake mushrooms, foie gras onions, parsnip purée. To finish, there may be a mind bending Verbena Ice cream or bruleed Warm Sweet White Corn Grits with hazelnuts and dried fruit compote.

Beyond being delicious, Tony’s food is political. In the dead of winter he refuses to succumb to the urge for ripe tomatoes flown in from Chile and finds inspiration in what is available. Tony’s commitment to stay faithful to local farmers across Massachusetts and neighboring Vermont and New Hampshire not only supports local agriculture in the most difficult months, but also helps to quietly educate his customers about sustainable agriculture and cooking only with fresh and seasonal produce.

Intelligent Cooking

Beside the numerous awards Tony and his restaurant staff have won, one of the most inspiring thing about Tony and his staff at Craigie Street Bistrot is their unyielding commitment to responsible dining and intelligent consumerism. Tony not only cooks great food, but he’s actively engaged in a political and philosophical way of cooking that goes beyond just local eating. Tony creates his seasonally driven dishes from local ingredients that have been raised responsibly and with the greater good of the environment and the eater in mind. Tony may not be the first chef in America to think that local and seasonal cooking is the only responsible
way to run a restaurant (thanks Alice Waters), but he is a powerful spokesperson for responsible consumerism in agriculture.

If you don’t believe me, just read Tony’s thoughtful and intelligent response to a disgruntled customer here. Most chefs are passionate, but few are as thoughtful, political or philosophical about food. With so much about the global economy seeming to be beyond an individual’s control, it’s good to see someone take a stand for a local food economy.

Dream big and make a plan

Now that I’m in my thirties, where I stand in the world makes a whole lot more sense. I know who I am, what I want and what I care about. Despite the years and the thousands of miles, it’s amazing to realize Tony and I actually still share a lot in common. We are political eaters. We love food and are committed to creating great dishes that are not only flavorful but are socially respectful of local agriculture.

By deciding what we eat, or where we eat, we let our dollars do the talking. To quote my new favorite author Michael Pollan, political eating really can make a difference. “At least in this one corner of your life, you will have begun to heal the split between what you think and what you do, to commingle your identities as consumer and producer and citizen.”

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Bread rises, Hope falls


Despite a minor win, the 1999 and 2005 gold medal winning American team has lost its gold medal ranking to the French in the 2008 Baking World Cup competition.

Team France ended its 12-year losing streak when it rose to the top with its high scores in three out of four categories of bread baking. The French dominated with their authentic light and crusty baguettes, elegant Viennese pastry (yeasted sweet bread) and an elaborate bread masterpiece dedicated to the female form in an haute couture doughy outfit. The American team won the Pastry competition, but the sweetness of their high scores was not enough to overcome the bitterness of walking away without even a single medal. Bakers from Taiwan finished second and Italy won bronze. The two-time winning American team and 2002 Japanese champions finished without any medals.

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Gettin’ me the Zankou


Zankou Chicken has been on my mind a lot lately. Call it an unhealthy obsession or a fast food craving flare up—whatever it is, I’ve suddenly become inflicted with the need to eat some take out hummus and chicken. Fast.

It all started when I drove by the original Zankou Chicken on Santa Monica Boulevard on my way East to Silverlake Wines a few weeks ago. As I spotted the classic red and black sign in a non-descript mini-mall, my sensory memory was flooded with the exotic tastes of Zankou Chicken. I could taste the tart pickles, moist chicken, creamy hummus, nutty Tahini and the soft bite of the velvety garlic paste even though it had been years (seven to be exact) since I had been to a Zankou. When I discovered my husband had never tasted the food, our fates were sealed. We were going to Zankou sooner than later.

Just last week, Hans and I were able to take a leisurely mid-day break and head east for an inexpensive lunch at Zankou Chicken. For those unfamiliar with the Middle Eastern fast food chain, Zankou Chicken is a Lebanese and Armenian family-run restaurant specializing in fresh ingredients and spit fired meats. Their mission, according to their website, is to serve fresh ingredients and authentic family recipes at an affordable price to their customers.

And serve great food for a low price, they do. For less than ten bucks you can get a soda and a Chicken Tarna plate with the works: marinated and flame-broiled chicken, sliced up and served with pita bread and sides of tahini, oil and paprika-topped hummus, fresh radish pickles and a side of their famous secret garlic sauce*.

For $8.50 there’s the Shawerma plate: marinated, spit-fired beef sliced up and served with all the fixings. For anyone looking for a great meal for a low price, Zankou chicken is an excellent find.

Zankou Chicken
1716 S. Sepulveda (Santa Monica and Sepulveda)
310.444.0550

*For a great description of what people have gone through to find out the ingredients of Zankou Chicken’s secret garlic sauce (and get the behind the scenes information on the “Zankou murders”), be sure to read this months’ Los Angeles Magazine.

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The Bakery World Cup


For many foodies, watching sports hardly ranks as a favorite weekend activity. Unless, of course, one counts the hours spent on the food network cheering competitive cooking shows like Iron Chef, Hells Kitchen and Top Chef.

After three long years of waiting, the Olympics are back. (No, not that Olympics.) The Bread Olympics, or the Coupe De Monde De Boulangerie, begins tomorrow in Paris. From March 29th until April 2nd, twelve international teams representing the worlds finest bakers will enter the heat of the battle at Europain to see who will bake the greatest breads in the world. In just eight hours, three team members from each of the 12 participating countries, must compete in four specific categories of baking:

Bread (baguette and specialty bread making), Viennese pastry (sweet, yeast risen pastries), Savory (sandwiches and savory rolls) and Artistic Presentation (artistic masterpieces based on country symbol). Organization, teamwork, degree of difficulty and team member competance will all be deciding factors in the judges’ voting.

The American Team, coached by bread maven and La Brea Bakery founder, Nancy Silverton, is this year’s gold medal defending champion. The American team, sponsored by the Bread Bakers Guild of America), consists of Chicagoan Peter Yuan, owner of La Patisserie P , Solveig Tofte, Baker/Chef of Turtle Bread Company in Chicago and Dara Reimers a baker and Pastry arts graduate of Notter School.

Go Team!

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Spring has sprung (out west, that is)

Growing up in a place so close to the sea, every winter was brutal. White winters lingered for months and months and the Atlantic winds constantly slapped our faces with air so cold that pink-red rashes appeared on our pale cheeks every time we stepped outside. As the winters waned, slush appeared–a thick snow mixed with salt, sand and dirt—and soaked our clothes in less than a second if we had the misfortune of touching it.

Eventually, we kids all knew, winter would end. The slush would melt and prove once again that grass really could stay alive under a mammoth snow bank and that streets were made of black pavement and not grey ice. We anxiously awaited the firs sign of spring to peel off our parkas and watch icicles melt.

For me, the first sign of spring was the first bloom of bright yellow daffodils on the still snow-covered lawn. Then, it was the coming of the fearless crocuses that grew despite the inevitable, life-ending cold snap that would always come. Though the days grew warmer, it would be months before the local gardens would be ready to produce any fruits and vegetables.

June would be the first month for our local road-side market stands to open with a lean offering of peas, beets and spinach. In Massachusetts we would have to wait for the sweltering days of summer until the U-Pick strawberry farm or pick your own apple orchards would let us come in and fill our bags with produce. Some kids longed for summer camps while I craved plump, juicy strawberries fresh and warm from the sun-drenched earth. Now that I’m all grown up and living on the west coast, I’m happy I don’t have to wait that long. Thanks to the amazing southern California climate, strawberries (juicy and in an abundant flavors and styles) are available already. So are blackberries, blueberries and gorgeous citrus fruits.

Going to the Farmer’s market is wonderful, but if you are like me and miss the childhood glories of picking the fruits and vegetables yourself, there is an organization that wants to make that a little bit easier for you.

Thanks to my friend Leah at SpicySaltySweet, I’ve just learned about the wonderful organization, Eat Well. In conjunction with Sustainable Table, Eat Well, a free online directory of thousands of family farms, restaurants, markets and other outlets that offer local, fresh and sustainable food in the United States and Canada, creates a guide to the seasonal foods that are available in every state. Just click on this and you’ll find a listing of the foods that are in season in your area.

For Southern Californian’s like me, you might be interested in going to Pickyourown.org to get up to date information on what farms have available and what local farms allow people (and kids) the chance to pick their own produce. PickYourOwn.Org also has lots of tips on canning, pickling, and how best to prepare for a day of picking.

Thanks to my new favorite website, I’m looking forward to a day trip to a strawberry field for a day of picking!

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You know you’re a food blogger when–

1) Every meal inspires you to write.
2) Every meal requires a camera.
3) You are unavailable to meet or talk with friends because you are too busy to writing or photographing food.
4) You cook and re-cook several recipes a week in order to “perfect them”.
5) You read newly published cookbooks first, then you’ll start on best selling novels
6) You’d be more star struck if you ran into Mario Batali, Orangette, the Barefoot Contessa, Anthony Bourdain, Gordon Ramsay, the Amateur Gourmet, or Chocolate and Zucchini than if you saw a movie star at your local restaurant.
7) Spending an hour on the computer food blog hopping is like taking a multi-vitamin. It’s a daily requirement.
8) News about restaurant openings makes your heart race.
9) Going to said new restaurant is considered a fact finding mission.
10) You read a blog and suddenly you’ve dropped everything and are in the kitchen cooking up that very same dish. Because you crave it.

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Brown Butter is on everyone's lips

If you’ve recently found yourself in the dairy aisle of the grocery store unable to locate a delicious something called “brown butter”, you are not alone. There are lots of people out there, even smart food professionals like my friend Nick, that don’t know exactly what that lovely, nutty liquid is.

But don’t worry. Just this week, it seems, there are suddenly a ton of food bloggers out there just chomping at the bit to talk about brown butter and what exactly one should do with it.

B+H=BB*
(Butter plus heat equals brown butter.)

Brown butter is, essentially, butter that’s cooked just before it burns. Put it in pastries and they suddenly taste a lot better. Drizzle it over Italian spaghetti with fried sage and you have one of the simplest, most elegant pasta courses ever. Pour it on fresh from the garden vegetables and potatoes and watch people’s eyes roll back.

And now, thanks to Michael Ruhlman, author of the amazing book The Elements of Cooking, and a number of other bloggers weighing in on the subject, there’s plenty of information to be had about the glories of brown butter.

Check out the following great blogs:

Brown Butter can be broken down to its elemental parts to make some really cool stuff.
Use it to make an amazing cake by Suzanne Goin that’s so good you’ll swoon over it.

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Adam Roberts is hot.

Back in high school I was a bit of a weird kid. I was an undefined artist. I wasn’t easily categorized because I never excelled at one thing. I was a photographer, an Olympics of the Mind science team member, a singer in chorus, an actor in every school show, a marching band dancer and flag spinner. I didn’t do sports. I was an average student. I liked to read but didn’t study. In the Madonna crazed 80’s I dressed like a bobby-sock girl from the 1950’s. Me and my closest friends were called “band fags.”

Once I got out of my small hometown and broadened my horizons, I began to realize that all my geeky artistic friends were some of the coolest people I knew. Unlike jocks and prom queens stuck in their glory days of senior year in high school, artists evolve and grow into their personas yet. Tilda Swinson may not have been the prettiest girl in the Oscar auditorium on Sunday night, but she certainly did exude a gloriously individual kind of beauty. Didn’t she?

So where am I going with all this? Well now that I’m an adult, I don’t have as many hang ups about being popular and what people think about me based on my looks. I am what I am and as far as I’m concerned, as writers go, I’m not that bad looking.

Which brings me now to my food blogging hero, Adam Roberts (AKA the Amateur Gourmet). Adam, most would say, is a nerd. He’s a nebbishy, fast-talking, glasses-wearing gay guy that likes to cook, sing, make musicals with eggs and writes show tunes about lasagna with his NY Broadway show loving friends. He’s got one hell of a sense of humor and he’s not that bad looking. What’s more, in the food blogging world, Adam Roberts is supremely cool. He’s so cool to food bloggers like me, that we’d call him HOT and then do a big double snap thing around our head once or twice. That’s how cool he is.

So when Adam recently became a virtual Food Network Star as the on-line host of the “FN DISH”, I rejoiced. Each week Adam interviews Food Network stars and gets the inside scoop of what happens behind the scenes– and in the kitchens of–the Food Network. The interviews are funny, pleasantly uncomfortable, and totally watch able. Finally, food blogging pioneers have not only found success in publishing (with the publishing of Julie and Julia, Chocolate and Zucchini’s book, and Orangette joining Bon Appetit) but now are joining the mucky-mucks of the television world! Hooray!

FOOD GEEKS UNITE!

On the Food Network Website, however, the tone of the comments left by FN Dish viewers is quite negative. “Where’d you get this guy?” a number of viewers asked. “The show is great,” one person wrote, “but why don’t you get someone more good looking?”

I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. Suddenly, I was back in high school watching one of my “band fag” friends get beat up by a thick-necked football jock. Who were these people? How could they not know how cool the Amateur Gourmet is? How could they be so cruel? So populist? Surely in the food world not everyone has to be good looking to be popular. Right?

In the name of all things right, I urge you to pay a little visit to the Food Network site and watch some of Adam’s shows and leave some positive comments about the FN Dish. Adam is a representative of food bloggers and food blogs’ power to connect to thousands of food-obsessed people through the printed word. Not the pretty face.

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Chef Crush Confidential: Dario Cecchini

Over the past few years of living in Los Angeles and working in the restaurant industry I’ve become very aware that it takes a very specific kind of person to make me star struck. I’m nonchalant as rock icons shop at the local farmers market, blasé* when movie stars eat pizza at my restaurant, and giggle at the B-List actors hanging out at the neighborhood mall. But God help me when a famous chef or Food Network personality walks into the room. Get me a few feet from a great chef and I suddenly become a blabbering idiot.

(*With the exception of the appearance of Barbara Streisand, Bruce Springsteen, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen or any of the cast of The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and The Wire)

Take for example the night Gordon Ramsay came into the restaurant. The minute I saw Ramsay walk in, I almost swallowed my tongue, whole. Later, I tackled a busser, just so I could clear his table. The night that Scott, the Hell’s Kitchen sous-chef came in I spit on myself while describing a dish. I shudder to think what the poor man thought of that. Another, equally embarrassing time, I rubbed a note in my pocket while I waited on one of the Top Chef contestants just so I wouldn’t blurt out “you should have won!” during his meal. You should of heard me the day I waited on hand-crafted meat king, Paul Bertolli. That time I got a case of the stutters and c-c-c-could barely make it through a s-s-s-sentence.

So when Nancy Silverton told me that Dario Cecchini, the world’s most famous butcher was in town and planned to have lunch at our restaurant, I hoped that my previous visit to his butcher shop in Panzano, Italy had inoculated me from my chef-crush sickness.

Not so much.

MEETING THE MAESTRO

Let’s go back to 2007. After working several months at Mario Batali and Nancy Silverton’s newly opened restaurant, Pizzeria Mozza, I got engaged. My husband to be, Hans, shares my love of food, so it didn’t take long for the two of us to decide to get married at a vineyard and honeymoon in Italy. Hans and I thought that perhaps a part of our honeymoon would include a visit to Dario Cecchini’s butcher shop after reading Bill Buford’s New Yorker articles on becoming a butcher (“Carnal Knowledge”) and later, his captivating non-fiction account of working in Batali’s kitchens in “Heat”. So when my culinary guru Nancy S. sat me down and gave me the list of MUST VISIT restaurants and life changing pastry shops, I listened. And when Nancy insisted that we make the drive through Tuscany in the direction of Dario Cecchini’s butcher shop, we knew we had to go.

So with our list of restaurants and well wishes from Nancy to Dario, we packed our bags and flew to Italy. After almost a week in Florence, my new husband and I followed the voice of our GPS lady to our eastern destination. We followed the insistent voice through the twisting mountain streets of Tuscany and all the way to the little hillside town of Panzano. By the time we parked our car on a steep side street by the tiny town square, it was mid-afternoon and we were ready to eat some freshly butchered meat. Thanks to the long, Italian lunches of shop keepers and locals, we had an hour to kill before Antica Macelleria Cecchini (the Ancient Cecchini Butcher Shop) opened.

The day was Saturday, a crisp October day, and we took our time as we walked the perimeter of the town center—maybe half a block in total—as we watched the locals bundled up in scarves buy hot sandwiches from a truck and families eye clothing vendors shelves of socks and bargain garments.

When it was time, we walked up the cobblestone street to the open door to Dario’s shop. An older man with a bowling ball sized belly sat in a chair by the open door reading his paper. Once inside, we were surprised to find that we were the first and only people in the shop. As we waited for the store to come alive with customers and employees, no one was behind the counter, we scanned the shelves of the shop and ogled the contents of the display cases. Behind the glass were gorgeous salumi, plump sausages, sumptuous cured and freshly butchered meats and a breathtakingly large bowl filled with whipped lardo. With or without Dario’s presence, we were in heaven.

What pushed our happiness over the top was discovering the food covered table behind us. Unlike any butcher shop in America, at Antica Macelleria Cecchini almost all of the prepared foods are offered to the customer free of charge. The table held baskets of rustic bread lined with fat arms of rosemary, wood bowls of oil-soaked black olives and a butcher’s block lined with slices of prosciutto and salumi. While I struggled with understanding the etiquette of the butcher’s table (were we to pay to sample? Do we help ourselves?) my husband wasted no time in pouring himself a glass of Dario’s house red wine and piece of bread slathered in the whipped lardo speckled with Tuscan rosemary.



Behind me I heard a booming voice, loud like a ship’s horn, blasting orders to the man reading the paper. Behind the counter was a rather tall and imposing man in a black leather vest and a red bandana knotted around his thick neck. His short hair stood straight up off the top of his head, making him look like a devil from Dante’s poem, the Inferno. With the hands and broad shoulders of a super hero, this man was clearly Dario Cecchini. He was everything Bill Buford said he’d be.

As expected, I immediately became star struck. Gl
assy eyed and frozen like an Italian marble statue, I could do nothing but stare at Dario as he bantered with two gentlemen newly arrived at the store. I forced myself to grab a jar of house-made mostarda and a package of profumo dei Chianti off a shelf so I could give something for my strained brain to do. I pushed my purchase across the counter and smiled weakly as he rang up the order. I paid without saying a word. Luckily, my inability to speak Italian kept me from revealing the entire extent of my weakness as a star-struck foodie.

As I shuffled out the door, my courageous husband (an Italian speaker) introduced himself to Dario in order to pass on a message from our mutual acquaintance. I was surprised to watch Dario’s expression change at the simple mention of Nancy Silverton’s name.

“Naaaaaaaancy!” Dario grinned and threw up his arms.

When my husband explained that we were on our honeymoon, Dario hugged us both. “Braaaaavo!”

Through all of this, I maintained my inability to speak. I nodded like a bobble head.

Dario grabbed a jar of mostarda off the shelf, wrapped it in butcher paper and handed it to Hans. “For Nancy,” he explained. As we left the store, Dario called out to us in Italian—“I’m coming to LA soon! Tell Nancy I’ll come by the restaurant!”

VALENTINE’S DAY GIFT

Long after we returned to the states from our amazing honeymoon, I wondered when we might see Dario. Months passed and then, just last week, I heard that the famous Dante quoting butcher was spotted at the Santa Monica farmer’s market. It was said that Dario would be lunching at my restaurant on Valentine’s day. Of course, I immediately rearranged my plans for the day and invited fellow blogger, Leah of Spicy, Salty, Sweet, to join me for lunch at the restaurant.

With a box of chocolates and chocolate covered fruits from Susina Bakery clutched to my breast (more about the girls later), we patiently waited for a seat at the Pizza bar. Leah and I sipped crisp Fiano and kept an eagle eye on the door.

An hour passed, and still no Dario. Once seated, my very tall co-worker quickly swooped in to take our order. As he cleared our empty wine glasses he did a double take when he looked at me.

“Woah,” he said, eyeing my low cut dress. “Never seen those before…The girls are out in full force today.”

Well when the world’s most famous butcher comes to town, a girl has to represent. I might not be able to speak a lick of Italian, but the girls will do all the talking for me.

And talk they did. When Dario finally arrived (wearing a canary yellow down vest and matching yellow clogs) I swooped in. Doing my best hand gesturing, I mimed a “thank you”, a “great to see you again” and then shoved the box of chocolates into his hand. Leah, god bless her, saved me from the awkward silence and swooped in with her camera and snapped a picture. Thirty seconds later, we were back in our seats and I was hyperventilating.

I had done it.

I was, for the first time ever, a certifiable groupie. And, thanks be to sharing no common language, I was able to cover up my apparent star-struck symptoms.

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Knife Skills Illustrated

Sometimes when I pick up my chef’s knife I get a sort of stage fright. Everything will be going along just fine with my dicing of an onion and then all of a sudden it happens. I try to focus on the vegetable or the fruit I need to cut, and suddenly my attempts to clear my mind of judgement fails and I have to stop. I can’t cut a thing. Even though there’s no one in my kitchen checking my knife sills, I can feel the presence of a great chef judging me.

I think it was last year when my knife skills problem started.

It all began when I saw this one episode of THE NEXT FOOD NETWORK STAR. It was the show when Iron Chef Morimoto tests the hopeful TV chefs with a quick challenge. He hands the contestants a chef’s knife and a fish and tells them to filet the thing.

It was horrifying what happened next. In this pool of talented food professionals, most of the contestants couldn’t filet the fish. One or two skilled people were able to de-bone the fish in just a few minutes, but all the other kitchen jocks just destroyed the fish. It was embarrassing. One woman did such a bad job Morimoto couldn’t even look at her.

He just stared at the messy pile of wasted fish and frowned. “Uh, basically,” he said, “you have no knife skills.”

And that, as they say, was that.

Now every time I step up to my chopping board, I hear Morimoto saying the very same thing to me.

Over and over again.

“Uh, basically, you have no knife skills.”

No matter how swift (“Uh, basically, you have no knife skills”) or how uniformed my technique (“Uh, basically, you have no knife skills”), I feel Morimoto’s critical gaze checking my work. Sometimes, even my husband says the dreaded phrase (“Uh, basically, you have no knife skills”)—just to mess with me.

But all of that is over now.

Thanks to the Cooks Library and swell guy named Peter Hertzmann and his book Knife Skills Illustrated, I’ll be slicing my onions like a master.

This book is my new bible. Whenever I’m ready to slice and dice, I pick up my Knife Skills book and get reading. The pages are full of great illustrations that make learning knife skills from a book absolutely possible.


Like this illustration, for example. Basically, I had no idea I was holding the knife wrong. According to Hertzman, if you want to have great knife skills, it’s all about the pinch grip.

I’m so down with the pinch grip.


This is not the pinch grip.


This, my friends, is me doing the pinch grip.

I have to agree with my new friend Peter, the pinch grip gives me way more control over the knife. Holding the knife like this hurts a little at first (tender hands of a novice), but very soon I’ll get a knife-skills-blister just like the pros! I’m so excited!

I’m so excited, I even took pictures of myself cutting brussels sprouts. Because I’m a big fat food blogging nerd.

I’m beside myself happy. There are just so many vegetables to be sliced. Multitudes of onions to practice on. I can’t wait to perfect the art of deboning a chicken! Just you wait Morimoto. I’ll have knife skills yet!

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The fighting continues…

I really don’t get what all these Bon Appétit readers are so upset about.

What I read on Josh Ozersky’s post on Grub Street, was a statement about Bon Appétit’s attempt to attract a younger, more hip audience by changing the typeface of their magazine. I read his skepticism and frustration with an old way of thinking and saw his challenge to Bon Appétit to think out of the box and to take more chances in its attempt to find a more hip readership. I read a post that suggested that maybe it takes a little more than all lowercase letters and a vowel’s monthly color change, to create a buzz that would appeal to a younger fan base.

But that’s what I read. Hundreds of other food-blog readers scanned Ozersky’s post and saw red. They read insult and accusation. They read Ozersky’s comments and felt he had slighted them for liking to cook at home.

Blame it on my potentially poor speed-reading skills or my single-minded need to find proofs for my personal opinions on the food industry, but I did not feel at the very least bashed by Josh Ozersky’s post. Instead, I got happy. Really happy.

Finally, someone was saying what I was thinking! These big glossy food magazines have gotten so big and lofty in their appreciation of “the bigger things” (more on that later), that they’d forgotten how to appeal to a much broader audience. They might say they want to skew younger but they’ve forgotten what “new” really means.

Ozersky mentioned the biggest problem the big-gun food magazines face is, is that they “will never be any hipper or friskier…because no magazine about upscale entertaining can ever speak to people that don’t have big houses and plenty of time on their hands”.

This, I think, is where people started to see red.

Sure, he said that the magazine appealed to people with money and was written for people who “ate in”. But isn’t that true? Isn’t Bon Appétit targeted for people who have the time and money to cook and appreciate food? Look at the ads between the stories and you’ll know exactly whom the advertising department is aiming at. These are people with great outfits, go on European vacations, have well equipped kitchens, don’t worry about their food budget (going to Whole Foods/Whole Paycheck doesn’t make them sweat) and most definitely like to throw extravagant parties.

Sure, people like me with six-figure debt (thanks film school!) read the magazine and diligently cook from it, but the glossy isn’t TARGETED for my financial bracket. Just ask my accountant. My financial bracket shouldn’t even spend the amount of money I do on food and think I’ll ever get ahead.

But back to Josh Ozersky. After he posted his little side bar about Bon Appetit, Grub Street post was immediately bombarded by angry readers’ comments. And boy were they pissed. They ranted and raved and stated that he was terribly wrong and that there was nothing antiquated about their beloved magazine. They said Bon Appetit was their bible and that it is written for everyone that loves food—regardless if they eat in or out.

Even my hero, the Amateur Gourmet, had something to say about the Grub Street post. He said the blog didn’t make him mad until he reached the end of the article. He wrote that Ozersky’s comment that Bon Appétit is for people who eat in” was what fired him up.

He said:

Personally, I see some truth to what he’s saying: cooking at home isn’t as exciting as going out…but you’re not engaged with the outside world the way you are when you wait two hours in the cold for your table at The Spotted Pig…. You may not find us in the glossy pages of New York Magazine, but you will find us at our kitchen table, laughing with friends, and digging into a slice of homemade apple pie. I don’t know where you’d rather be, but I know where I’ll be tomorrow night.”

I don’t think this is what Ozersky meant to say. In just this little side bar, Ozersky states that Bon App has lost its edge because it appeals to a class of people. What I think he’s saying is that in appealing to the rich it eliminates all of us. Bon App is a lifestyle magazine, not a recipe for a universal way of thinking about food.

As food lovers, we read about food because we love it. We love to think, taste and discuss it everywhere and anywhere. If you’re young and interested in food, or a food lover with a tight budget or a person who wants to know something new and extraordinary, you’re more than likely not going to turn to bon appetit for the scoop. You’re going to go to the Internet, or the Cook’s Library, or a number of different locations to see what people are saying.

To truly love food, one must understand all the aspects of it. There is taste, aroma and texture. There is personal style, history and traditions. To be wise, one must be well read, well versed and experienced. Bon Appétit has served its purpose in the early years. Back when the magazine was first published, the articles were edgy. It did take chances. The magazine was a bible for my mother’s generation and brought to a new level of culinary appreciation to millions of men and women. But now it’s the 00’s and Bon Appétit isn’t cutting edge any more. The Internet is. Google searches lead readers to the answer to almost any culinary question.

I cook at home. I obsess over ingredients. I study cookbooks. I eat in inspiring restaurants. I work in one. I read Bon Appetit.

But the fact of the matter is, I still don’t LOVE Bon Appétit. I never have. And the reason I don’t love Bon Appétit is because I’ve never felt like that magazine was written for ME. I might not have a big house, a big budget, all the right shaped pots and pans the recipe calls for, or the state of the art stove, but I can most certainly appreciate the articles and recipes. If these flagship magazines don’t change the direction of their editorial content, they won’t have the staying power to change the culinary lives of next generation of readers.

But we’re all selective readers, I suppose. We see what we want to see.

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jumping the shark


When TV shows lose their way, the viewing public sometimes says the series has “Jumped the Shark”. It’s a funny way to say that something that was once entertaining has become droll, trite and nothing but a waste of time. Usually, not long after “jumping the shark”, the show dies a miserable, lonely death. The origins of the phrase “Jump the Shark”, of course, comes from a dismal season finale of the show, Happy Days. It was the episode when the Fonz had to jump a tank of sharks on his motorcycle. It was a lame trick and didn’t make any sense and the viewers weren’t interested in watching aliens (Mork from Ork) or Fonz try to fight unnecessary foes. It became clear after the shark episode that Happy Days no longer had anywhere they could go with their characters or plot lines. The show was going through the motions and nobody cared anymore.

And so it is with food magazines.

According to the NY Times, Bon Appetit announced it would be “courting younger readers by adjusting its logo”. You see, from now on starting in January, Bon Appetit will be bon appetit (oh! how hip!) and the “O” in Bon Appetit will be a different color than the rest of the letters every month.

Every month the o will be different? Really? Oh, Barbara. It’s going to take a lot more than turning the title of the magazine to lower caps and changing the color of your “O” ever month to make the kids want to read your magazine.

How about hiring someone young? How about allowing freelancers like me (ahem) a shot at a column every once in a while?

I don’t know why this surprises me. I’ve known ever since 2003 when the October issue of Gourmet came out that something bad was about to befall the big guns of food publishing.

Maybe you remember the cover. The image was so out of place you might have stopped dead in your tracks in the check out lane. I recall dropping my bag of muffin mix and gasping an audible “Oh no!” when I saw it. It was the cover that decried “CHEF’S ROCK!” and featured a handful of chefs (LA’s own Suzanne Goin, Eric Ripert , Scott Conant and Laurent Gras) dressed up like rock stars and playing kitchen equipment instead of instruments. The cover made no sense, had no accompanying story that justified the cover and appeared to be quite honest, desperate to appear hip.

Back when Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazine were introduced to the American reader, there were a plenty of exciting things to report on. There were unexplored cooking techniques (deglazing! sous vides!), unknown ingredients (lemon grass! Harissa!) and culinary traditions to be adopted from around the world. Bon Appetit wrote about chefs before celebrity chefs existed. Gourmet magazine explored food before there were Food centric networks and culinary blogs. But with the powerful force of the Food Network and the multitude of self-published blogs, these figureheads of the culinary publishing world have lost their relevance.

For a fresh angle, I’ll go to Amateur Gourmet, Orangette.blogspot, or Spicysaltysweet.com. I’ll pour over my Bill Buford New Yorker articles and the gorgeous food reporting of Saveur. I will continue to love me my Jonathan Gold, Patrick Kuh of Los Angeles Magazine and a handful of LA Times food writers (not snide Leslie Brenner, that’s for sure). I’ll watch TV food stars and read my Waverly Root, my Marcella Hazan, my Best of Food Writing collection or any other of my weekly purchases from the Cooks Library. I’ll read and read and read, but I more than likely will flip through the bon appetit. It’s rare when I get swept up by one of their stories. Even more rare is when I actually cook one of their epic dinner party recipes.

It’s true. Things are getting competitive in the culinary publishing world. Perhaps the antiquated icons of food publishing will collapse under the weight of their ancient ideas and arcane way of doing things. Maybe they never will. But as I look at the current state of food publishing, I can’t help but think there’s another way to make room for more innovative publishing concepts. Surely there’s room for a few more great food stories.

So until my big break as the next great food blogger, I’ll continue writing, keep on waiting tables job, carry on trading stories about great meals, and always, persist in finding the next great dish.