I think people lose sight of the fact that chefs should be ultimately in the pleasure business, not in the look-at-me business.
Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. The.
Just believe me when I tell you that the city is beautiful – and not in the oppressive way of, say, Florence, where you’re almost afraid to leave your room because you might break something.
Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn.
Deuki Hong and Matt Rodbard have given us a deep and important look at the people, places and cuisine that are reshaping what we want for dinner. Koreatown thrills with flavors that will change your life.
I love the saying “Nobody likes a dirty old man or a clean little boy.
Shortcut.’ The word filled me with dread. When has a shortcut ever worked out as planned? The word – in a horror film at least – usually precedes disembowelment and death. A ‘shortcut’ almost never leads to good times.
It’s why Ronald McDonald is said to be more recognizable to children everywhere than Mickey Mouse or Jesus. Personally, I don’t care if my little girl ever recognizes those two other guys – but I do care about her relationship with Ronald. I want her to see American fast-food culture as I do. As the enemy.
Hot, salty, crunchy, and portable, the previously awful-sounding collection of greasy delights can become a Garden of Eden of heart-clogging goodness when you’re in a drunken stupor, hungering for fried snacks. At that precise moment, nothing could taste better.
This book is about street-level cooking and its practitioners. Line cooks are the heroes.
Jacques Pepin’s La Technique.
Life without stock is barely worth living, and you will never attain demi-glace without.
What most people don’t get about professional-level cooking is that it is not all about the best recipe, the most innovative presentation, the most creative marriage of ingredients, flavours and textures; that, presumably, was all arranged long before you sat down to dinner. Line cooking – the real business of preparing the food you eat – is more about consistency, about mindless, unvarying repetition, the same series of tasks performed over and over and over again in exactly the same way.
And I’ve long believed that good food, good eating is all about risk.
We are, after all, citizens of the world – a world filled with bacteria, some friendly, some not so friendly. Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafes and McDonald’s? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taqueria’s mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head? I know what I want. I want it all.
I talk about these mysterious forces all the time with my chef cronies. Nothing illustrates them more than the Last Meal Game. You’re getting into the electric chair tomorrow morning. They’re gonna strap you down, turn up the juice and fry your ass until your eyes sizzle and pop like McNuggets. You’ve got one meal left. What are you having for dinner? When playing this game with chefs – and we’re talking good chefs here- the answers are invariable simple ones.
A mama’s boy, loner, intellectual, voracious reader and gourmand, Dimitri was a man of esoteric skills and appetites: a gambler, philosopher, gardener, fly-fisherman, fluent in Russian and German as well as having an amazing command of English. He loved antiquated phrases, dry sarcasm, military jargon, regional dialect, and the New York Times crossword puzzle – to which he was hopelessly addicted.
I believe celiac disease is a very serious ailment, and if you’re diagnosed with it, I’m pleased that there are now gluten-free options, but these people who are treating gluten as, you know, an equivalent of Al Qaeda are worrying to me.
With my little short-shorts a permanent affront, I was quickly becoming a sullen, moody, difficult little bastard.
It was not a pretty sight, all these pale, gangly, pimpled youths, in a frenzy of hunger and sexual frustration, shredding bread.