What the place I’m about to link you to is like, but I do have some thoughts about it based on the name. One of those thoughts is that if you are located in the United States and the name of your establishment includes “public house,” then you’re probably douchebag central.
As you were.
Go ahead, follow that link and read it. Then come back and tell me how you’re going to get anything significant from adding 2 small garlic cloves and a half-inch piece of ginger to the water in which you “wilt” spinach. “Oh,” you say, “but the recipe called for the dish to be lightly seasoned with salt and pepper! Surely that will give the wilted spinach some flavor?” Fuck you, my hastily constructed straw man. Look, I know the New York Times is my go-to place for scorn, but what the holy hell is going on here? Just read what the author of the recipe said about it:
I desperately wanted a pile of fresh greens and washed a pound for four people. The method was something I’ve come to think of as an oil-free stir-fry: I cooked a large handful of spinach at a time in a half-inch of boiling water, adding a touch of garlic and ginger and swirling the greens with tongs. As soon as they were barely wilted, I transferred them to a serving dish.
That’s not a stir-fry, David. That’s boiling spinach. You’ve boiled spinach in very lightly seasoned water. Congratulations, and thank you so very much for the recipe. I’m waiting for the follow-up article in which you provide variations such as carrots boiled in lightly seasoned water, leeks boiled in lightly seasoned water, water boiled with lightly seasoned water or possibly kale boiled in lightly seasoned water. What kills me is that the recipe is billed as “oil-free spinach with ginger.” Oil free indeed. As if oil is a bad thing? I use the word “fuck” too much, I know. But fucking hell…
Tanis, if you’re such a glutton that post-Thanksgiving all you can manage to stuff down your gullet is steamed fish and “lightly boiled” spinach, then I’m terribly sorry for you. I’m not sorry for your editors at the New York Times, who apparently don’t know their ass from a bowl of lightly boiled spinach. (tip: your ass is the one that’s not green and watery).
Update: God bless my pointed little head, I just realized that the author of the recipe above was the source of an earlier post I wrote about frying oysters, in which I expressed skepticism about the author’s ability to cook. I’m both embarrassed that I didn’t realize I was criticizing the same guy, and slightly gratified that I appear to have been correct about Mr. Tanis. So it goes.
I very nearly eliminated the New York Times Dining & Wine section from my newsreader this evening, because I so rarely find anything there worth reading. Then I realized that a fair portion of my content here comes from making fun of the NYT Dining & Wine section, and I reconsidered.
Root opened recently in the space formerly occupied by Feast. I’ll be writing about it in the near future; in the interim, here’s an image of the restaurant’s “KFC” wings – Korean-style fried chicken wings.
No, not me. Rather this is an image that I took recently at an event which I will discuss tomorrow in my Haute Plates column. Enjoy.
I received an email this morning from a fellow with Pilgrim Studios, the folks behind reality shows like American Chopper, Top Shot, Ghost Hunters, Swamp Loggers, and others. I can’t say I’ve ever seen any of those shows apart from a few 20 second clips on the Soup, but that’s not a judgment on my part. The email I received involves the search for a… aw just read it:
PRODUCERS SEEKING CHARISMATIC NEW ORLEANS CHEF OR FOODIE FOR HIS OWN DATING SHOW
Are you a chef, restaurateur, foodie or gourmet who is ready to find the love of his life? Pilgrim Studios (www.pilgrimstudios.com) is looking for a single, attractive and charming culinary enthusiast to be our featured bachelor on a new, unscripted show for a major cable network.
If chosen, you will be featured on your own series and have the opportunity to date a select group of amazing women who share your love for great food and the culinary arts. You MUST have a strong background in cuisine (food writers and connoisseurs welcome as well!), and be the kind of man who thinks that there’s nothing sexier than a woman who can cook her way into your heart.
If this sounds like you, and you’re ready to make spectacular meals with the perfect woman, then contact producers TODAY! Email CulinaryBachelor@gmail.com with your name, age, location, a recent photo and a brief description of why you’d be perfect for this show.
Deadline to submit is November 9, 2011! Producers are waiting to hear from you NOW!
Anyway, if you’re interested, the email address to which you should direct your efforts is above.
The Courtyard Grill is a Turkish restaurant that opened about a year and a half ago on Magazine Street near Napoleon. I’d been meaning to check it out for a while now, and I’m glad I did. You can read more about it in the near future, but in the interim, here’s an image of one of the highlights of a meal there:
House-made bread at the Courtyard Grill
Via the New York Times, which has become the object of my derision more than normally lately, I learned that you can now buy pre-formed parchment bags for cooking en papillote. The company, suspiciously, is Canadian, but at $3.99 for 10 bags it’s not outrageous. You could probably make 30 similarly-sized bags from a roll of parchment paper that costs a buck less, but that assumes you have hands and know how to use them, and who can assume that these days?
I started writing this post to make the point that if you can’t make a bag out of parchment paper, then you probably shouldn’t be cooking en papillote, but I found myself entranced by one of the comments on the product at Amazon.com. See if you’re not equally spellbound:
I LOVE THESE PARCHMENT BAGS!!! Brilliant, fabulous!! Simply fantastic shortcut for cooking. I saw them at the Fancy Food show, I got a few samples there thanks to the generous staff present, then, I cooked several things at home with the parchment bags. Fish is fabulous, vegetables luscious, and chicken comes out lovely. From what I have learned, they are a FANTASTIC SHORTCUT!! You don’t need any liquid to add, just aromatic herbs — fresh ones work the best, a little olive oil, salt and pepper. Then, pop the pack into a hot oven, and you have a lovely, fast, meal — and cleanup is just throwing out the paper!!! It just doesn’t get better. WIth three kids, a hungry husband, a job and more, these paper bags are now my favorite new cooking tools. THANK YOU FOR MAKING THEM!! Thanks for selling them on amazon.com.
Oh, I forgot — THE HOUSE DOES NOT SMELL OF FISH WHEN I USE THE BAG!!!!!
THE HOUSE DOES NOT SMELL OF FISH!!! IT DOES NOT SMELL OF FISH!!! PREVIOUSLY, MY HOUSE SMELLED OF FISH, BUT NOW THAT I AM USING THESE PAPER BAGS, MY HOUSE NO LONGER SMELLS OF FISH!!!! DEAR GOD THANK YOU THE SMELL OF FISH IS GONE!!!!!
I don’t want to suggest that comment was left by someone who also happens to have an ownership interest in the company that produces those bags. No, that’s a lie. I desperately want to believe that the person who left that comment either has a financial interest in PaperChef, or has children being held hostage by the owners of PaperChef. Because if that’s just some random customer? Oh dear.
Though who am I to criticize a woman who has found a way to rid her house of the fishy smell that previously dominated? Would I, in similar circumstances, not also be so grateful as to TYPE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS AND ADD EXTRANEOUS EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!! ? What I want to know is what the fuck this woman was doing to make her house smell of fish in the first place? Was someone forcing her to cook fish? Was the cod mafia all up in her shit? Does her kitchen window open onto a river where spawning salmon, crazed with lust, jump periodically into her cupboards, to remain hidden until they rot?
Clearly I should feel pity for this woman. Though perhaps not as sorry as I feel for the other commenter at Amazon:
These bags work ok; but don’t put too much liquid ingredients in them, or they fall apart at the seems. I made some baked fish in a white wine sauce and it was just too much liquid for the bag.
I believe that comment argues in favor of my point that if you can’t fucking make a bag out of parchment paper, perhaps you shouldn’t be cooking en papillote?
“I used to run a restaurant in Santa Fe, N.M., another far-flung spot for an oyster to show up. We garnered quite a bit of fame for the fried-oyster sandwiches we served at lunch. The reasons for their much-deserved success: the plump fellows were coated in flour and egg, rolled in soft bread crumbs and shallow-fried in clarified butter until crisp and golden. To this day, it’s really the only way I like to cook them. ”
The above quote is from the increasingly hilarious New York Times food section. David Tanis, whom I’m sure is a fine chef, should probably pontificate on things other than the best way to fry an oyster.
Perhaps that’s just me.
Red wine-poached pears with honeyed goat cheese quenelle and cardamom spiced-walnuts. For some reason, links to the images I post here are broken. You can always check my Flickr page for more and larger resolution images.
Hello, kids. I haven’t been updating here with any regularity for quite a while; long enough that the absence of posts has become the norm. But I also haven’t been writing Haute Plates for the last two months, and that has caused at least some of you to ask me why. I took a short hiatus, but it’s over. This Thursday, September 1, I’ll be returning to weekly postings there.
My first post back will include a bit about a restaurant that opened a few weeks ago, and where I ordered the food depicted below. Can you guess where I ate?
I won’t pretend that I’ll be updating this site all that often, but I will at least try to post some pictures every week or so. As always, feel free to drop a comment or send me an email if you have any questions.
Your pal,
Robert