{Eating, Travel}

Food is Love

1.28.10
bouillabaissephoto by george billard

Friends often suggest I go into the catering business, but the thought makes my skin crawl. I find it hard to imagine feeding people I scarcely know (and possibly don’t even like). Yet nothing gives me greater pleasure than cooking for those I love. Cooking is my gift, and sometimes it can make a nice present. My last night in LA, I was lucky enough to be able to celebrate the birthday of a good friend, someone who has known my family for nearly 40 years. She let me into her kitchen (a cook’s paradise, amazingly organized and well stocked) and I did my thing. Knowing that Santa Monica Seafood was nearby, I decided to make a dish that would take advantage of all that fresh, gleaming seafood. The result was this warming but relatively light bouillabaisse, the classic French fisherman’s stew. It contains a mix of ingredients typical of Provence: seafood, garlic, tomato, saffron and fennel. Although some will say it’s not truly bouillabaisse without the rascasse (scorpion fish), I say hooey. Use whatever firm, white-fleshed fish you like and throw in all manner of shellfish, including scallops, clams, mussels, lobster and shrimp (in the shell, preferably). It’s about what’s fresh, and what you like best, of course. Read the rest of this entry »

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{Eating}

Soup’s On

1.18.10

soup


You asked for soup, you got it. This rich and creamy combination of kabocha squash and fennel is a wonderful winter recipe from Suzanne Goin. She’s an LA-based chef and I really recommend her cookbook, Sunday Suppers at Lucques. (I hope to eat at Lucques, or at AOC, her other place, when I’m in LA later this week.) This is a hearty vegetarian soup (although you can make it with chicken stock) and along with some cheese and salad I think it will leave you quite satisfied. As a general rule, I want to encourage you to play with recipes. Don’t get all hung up if you don’t have exactly what is called for (this is not baking, after all). Don’t have stock on hand? Use water. No chiles de árbol? Try a pinch of cayenne pepper. Can’t find the creme fraiche? I’ll bet you’ve got a dollop of sour cream or Greek yoghurt. Go on, let your freak flag fly.


This recipe is also a good template for other vegetable soups. Roast or steam or braise whatever you’ve got—broccoli, spinach, cauliflower, sweet potatoes. Sautee a flavor base in oil and/or butter: garlic, shallots, onions, maybe some celery, parsley, carrots. How about some herbs? Thyme, rosemary, bay leaves. Maybe even some stronger spices like cumin, curry or saffron. Now add some stock or water and your cooked vegetables and let it simmer together. Puree it all in your blender, or right in the pot with an immersion blender. Garnish it with something: croutons or toasted nuts for crunch; a squeeze of lemon or a dash of balsamic vinegar for brightness; a drizzle of pumpkin seed or extra-virgin olive oil. It’s easy once you have a bit of a formula to follow, right? How about carrot soup with ginger, garnished with pumpernickel croutons and sea salt? Or broccoli soup with lemon zest, a hit of anchovy paste and some parmesan swirled through. Or cauliflower soup enriched with a little cream, with fried shallots sprinkled on top. You can also whip up a pistou, whizzing together green herbs, lemon zest, nuts and oil into a sort of French pesto that’s wonderful stirred into soups. Read the rest of this entry »

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{Eating, Health}

Meat, the Fuckers

11.19.09

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I love animals and I love meat. It’s a mind-numbing conundrum and one you can read all about in the news these days. From the works of  Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser and now even the novelist-turned-nonfiction-writer Jonathan Safran Foer, many of us have come to know a lot more about factory farming, industrial agriculture, our government and even our own hearts than perhaps we wanted to. And let me say right off the bat that I’m aware I’m writing from a position of privilege. I can afford to buy the boutique meats that let me breathe easier. But if you learn even just a little bit about factory farming—about how we’re forcing ruminant cows to eat our government-subsidized surplus of corn, thus destroying their digestive systems and making them so ill they need to be shot up with the antibiotics that are ultimately destroying our own health; about how the amount of methane gas released from factory farms far exceeds air pollution from cars—you know the answer is not just different meat. It’s less meat. In a perfect world, no meat. But this isn’t that. Still, for your own health and for that of the planet, it’s not a bad idea to consider building your diet around legumes and whole grains and vegetables. Invent a new paradigm for your plate, beyond the antiquated notion of meat, starch, vegetable.

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