05.17.09
Posted in food-related musings at 03:37 by Dominique
Because I’m not busy enough, clearly. I just keep seeing recipes online and thinking that they look yummy. I kind of figure, since I’m injured and can’t exercise, if I have to cook my dinner instead of just ordering it I might burn more calories that way. Also, I really enjoy multitasking and being organized, which seems to be a very important part of cooking well. And of all the neighborhoods I could live in, Chinatown definitely has the cheapest groceries and makes it easier to experiment. Last week I tried my hand at Chinese rice cakes – the little oval ones – with pork and veggies. It was pretty tedious chopping up the big hunk of pork with my dull knife but overall it was as soothing as people always say cooking is. And the dish turned out quite well! My mom still makes it better but that was my most ambitious attempt at anything to date. I’m not sure what to make next; maybe this interesting broccoli sauce pasta.
Update: have now made several more dishes and they’ve all turned out very well, although so far only I have eaten them. The hardest part I find is the chopping. I can be fairly clumsy around knives – I accidentally stabbed myself last year with a prop sword (yes! a prop! in my defense, with a ridiculously sharp tip) so, desiring to keep all my fingers, I chop quite slowly. I’ve found that playing poker online while cooking forces me to speed up, though. Otherwise I have to bet with the knife handle or wet hands and the mouse area doesn’t always recognize that.
Another update: other people love my cooking too, yay!
Sites I’ve found helpful so far (thanks @TroyOrleans for foodgawker!):
foodgawker.com
amandascookin.blogspot.com
chaosinthekitchen.com
bigboldbeautifulfood.blogspot.com
epicurious.com
myrecipes.com
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04.09.09
Posted in food-related musings at 00:34 by Dominique
This isn’t really food-related but it’s bizarrely awesome. Isabella Rossellini has been making “Green Pornos” for the Sundance Channel, about the mating habits of various little beasties. They’re short and hilarious – she dresses up as each insect or animal! – and actually, I guess they are slightly food-related in that they kind of put me off my dinner. Just for a few minutes, though.
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10.08.08
Posted in food-related musings at 15:11 by Dominique
Yesterday, Mr. Bruni at the Times investigated how different treatment for men and women at restaurants is evolving. (I was impressed by how many people he interviewed for the article. I barely have time to eat out, let alone write about how it went – I don’t know how he does it.) I’ve noticed lately that some restaurants have stopped serving ladies first. Now, I don’t really mind, as no matter who gets food first we all have to wait until everyone’s ready to start. But it bothers me when servers seem to deliberately serve the men first. If you’re just going from left to right around the table, it makes sense to start with whomever is closest. If I see a waiter deliberately start with the same person every time then it’s really weird if that person is not the woman at the table. Especially if the restaurant insists upon all those fancy phrases like “pardon my reach” (seriously, it doesn’t bother me unless you clock me in the face, I’m always happy getting food) and “tonight we are offering [xyz]” (oh, so it’s free? Sweet).
According to proper manners, ladies come first. Through doors, in chairs, wherever. The places I hostessed at were very upscale and they told us to always give menus to the women first. It’s just common sense too. If you are at a nice restaurant it’s like being at a formal event. A gentleman in that situation would never greet a woman sitting down or not open the door for her. I know there has been some noise about how unfeminist it is to allow men to be gallant, but I personally prefer a man who thinks he should take care of things for me to a lout who lets me fend for myself.
Now, if the restaurant is more casual, it doesn’t matter. I completely see Apiary’s point in the article. Serving people in the most space- and time-efficient manner is perfectly fine. And I’m glad to see that many restaurants are moving away from the assumption that the man is picking the wine and paying for the meal. I remember the criticism of Momofuku Ko in the Wall Street Journal (can’t find the link, might be too old) and elsewhere that the surly chefs there were very obviously giving the male diners the heavier, some might say better, dishes. The man would get the short ribs – the woman, the chicken. It’s the same kind of sexist assumption when we order wine and the waiter gives it to the guy to try. If you really think about it, I should taste it, because the guy is more likely trying to please me than the other way around. In any case I think that’s more men patronizing women than being gallant, so that can go.
Basically, these are separate issues. One is substantive – money, wine, food for the table – and one is etiquette in formal situations. Proper manners should be observed at nice restaurants and equality is better otherwise.
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07.28.08
Posted in food-related musings at 03:12 by Dominique
I live in a buzzer-less building, and believe me, it’s really frustrating trying to get food delivered. Since I moved down here in December I don’t think I’ve actually had takeout for that reason – except today, when I remembered SeamlessWeb. I used it a lot with the English Ex, who never met a technological advance he wasn’t ready to embrace immediately. Somehow I never thought of using it here. I have to admit – Seamless rocks. You don’t have to make yourself understood to someone who barely speaks English, you can use your credit card without ever taking it out of your wallet, and most importantly, you can make sure the restaurant knows the guy has to call when he’s outside. I can’t count the number of times FedEx has been completely befuddled by that simple concept.
Seamless is great if you know what kind of food you want, even a specific dish. You can sort by cuisine, estimated delivery time, restaurant rating, price, minimum for delivery or do a search. Unfortunately, if you’re just browsing, it’s not quite as user-friendly. The site doesn’t allow right-clicking to open a restaurant’s menu in a new tab, so when you’re clicking around trying to figure out what you want, it can get tedious going back and forth from the restaurant list. But I’ve only been annoyed by that a few times, plus I’m very finicky so it’s probably less of a problem for most people.
I really like how they’ve worked out deals so that many restaurants offer discounts, at least the first time you order from them through Seamless. There’s even a pickup option that was just added. Inside the menus themselves, you can see how people have tagged them, leave your own notes on dishes and see what the most popular ones are. It’s also good for making sure you don’t get all excited about what you’re going to order and then finding out oops, the place is closed. (That happens to me a lot. It’s disappointing how many takeout menus don’t have delivery hours on them.) Seamless never lets you order from a place that’s closed and shows a little reminder on top of the page if the kitchen is about to wrap up. Though I wish they’d make it possible to open more than one menu at a time, it’s a great system and lets me be a hermit and have food delivered to my door like everyone else.
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05.23.08
Posted in food-related musings at 18:09 by Dominique
I got a write-up in Grub Street today because of the whole Craigslist date thing, which was super exciting. I was hoping they would someday magically notice how wonderful my reviews are, but this’ll work too. I’ve been working really hard these last few weeks trying to catch up posts to the present day – I was about 30 behind only 2 weeks ago, now I’ve got 4 left – and I expect I’ll finish that project tomorrow before dinner at Ko. New readers, thanks for dropping by! Stay tuned for a few more reviews, coming right up.
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04.11.08
Posted in food-related musings at 04:15 by Dominique
My neighbors had a delivery today. I know, because an old lady banged on their door for about ten minutes until I said “What the hell?!?!” and opened my door. She was their grandmother, dropping off food (as all Asian grannies and aunties do – it does not matter how awful, stinky, unwanted or impractical the food is – by god you’re getting it). When the neighbors came home I gave them their plastic bag. The matriarch insisted on giving me some of the stuff, to which I initially said “No I couldn’t possibly” until I realized they were zong zi.
For those of you who don’t speak Mandarin, zong zi are those sticky rice things wrapped in bamboo leaves that usually have part of a soy sauce-marinated hard-boiled egg and some pork and maybe dried shrimp. They can be amazingly good. I thought these would be like that. My mother always told me how the tradition of zong zi arose from some commoner foolish enough to woo a princess in the bad old days – Daddy Emperor threw that upstart in the river, and the kind-hearted women in her court threw him leaf-wrapped sustenance, to give him an edge over the fishes, until Daddy stopped being so mad. I think the peasant ended up marrying the princess, persistence being highly valued in China. [Wikipedia has a slightly different story. This is probably why my mother is not a qualified Chinese school teacher.]
Unfortunately, the zong zi I had just now would not have sustained the courageous young man. It was all peanuts! I hate peanuts combined with other food. (Reese’s Pieces are just tolerable, and for barely one piece, if that.) Now, if the zong zi had the other stuff it’s supposed to have, I’d just pick out the peanuts and ignore them. But this was an embarrassment of peanuts. There was only maybe 20% more rice than giant peanuts. Now I know why the Mrs. next door was so eager to get rid of grannie’s food. I was expecting a delectable treat, and instead, I had to pick out all the peanuts, dunk the rice in so much hot sauce my mouth is still on fire, and spit out the peanuts I didn’t see. No, grannies, no more peanuts!!!
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04.07.08
Posted in food-related musings at 19:25 by Dominique
I noticed this article on Eater.com (LA), and these are my two cents about it. I want to say first that his L’Atelier is one of my favorite restaurants in New York, although I probably can’t afford to go back any time soon. Also, I imagine that his feeling about ignorant people criticizing him is probably akin to how I feel when tone-deaf dummies try to tell me things about music, so I do see and sympathize with where he’s coming from.
“John Curtas: What is your opinion of food/restaurant bloggers and the impact they have on the dining-out public?
“Joël Robuchon: They can be helpful and they can be dangerous. Dangerous because anyone can write anything, even if they have no training or experience and don’t make any sense. Genuine gastronomic critics bring a lot of experience to the table and you must respect that, but too often the internet can be used as a revenge tool by people who have something against the chef or the restaurant. But the public doesn’t know when a review is being used as a way to ambush a restaurant. Too many restaurant critics these days are like me when I’m criticizing a soccer coach; I might have my opinion, but I don’t know that much.”
It is certainly a danger of the internet that people with axes to grind can keep them safely out of sight behind the anonymity of the web. But I think any review longer than “the food sucks” makes it very difficult to grind that axe without giving yourself away in the details. And for sure, there are plenty of people out there who don’t know much about food. But unless they lack taste buds, does that mean their opinions are worthless? Whether their palates are sophisticated or not, the chef’s aim was to please, and if s/he didn’t, that is a valid reaction.
The soccer coach analogy also doesn’t really hold up for me. Soccer is something a few people play very well, a lot of people follow, and many people don’t know much about it – eating is something everyone does and almost everyone has decided opinions on. If I watch Liverpool lose to Manchester United, and I blame the coach, no one should listen to me, since I have no idea what I’m talking about. Maybe Liverpool made a valiant effort but were overpowered, maybe a few players were not on top form, maybe it was too muddy on the pitch, etc. If, on the other hand, I say the linguine alla vongole was bland, with rubbery clams and too little sauce, those are concrete things that I experienced. To an extent it is my opinion, but it’s not nearly as subjective as my view on a soccer game.
Now, I agree that many people “have no training or experience and don’t make any sense”, but I think there is room for the opinions of more than just gourmands. I started this blog because I got tired of reading esoteric theses yammering on in the impenetrable style of Derrida. I believe that, as a well-educated, curious person, my detailed opinion about the food I eat is useful to someone. If I didn’t like the shrimp, and explain why, I think that might help someone when they’re deciding about a restaurant. I don’t think Mr. Robuchon would turn away a table at one of his exorbitantly expensive restaurants on discovering that they were not “true gourmands” under his definition – it is them he is trying to impress, so their opinions still matter.
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Posted in food-related musings at 18:20 by Dominique
Let me count the ways.
1. It perks me up without making me feel like I’ve done a big line, the way coffee does, and despite having as much caffeine as one cup.
2. All three varieties – regular green tea, peach and berry – taste yummy.
3. It is so much faster than brewing green tea, plus no messy tea leaves to deal with afterwards.
4. It comes in nice slender cans that are easy to finish quickly while on the train.
5. The six-pack is designed for efficient, fast access and minimal use of space.
6. It’s cheaper than the coffee I’d otherwise get: $6.49 for a 6-pack at Target vs. about $3.50 for a tall Starbucks latte/frappucino/macchiato. It’s also about half the price of Red Bull (in NYC, at least), which is $2.50 a can.
Of course, if you’ve read the Wikipedia entry or any other debunking pages on it, you know that three cans of Enviga a day do not speed up your metabolism as claimed. But at 5 calories a can, I don’t really care if it’s negative-calorie or not. It makes me happy and productive when I’m drooping and apathetic, and I like the pretty silver cans.
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12.06.07
Posted in food-related musings at 13:58 by Dominique
I adore hibachi/teppanyaki. Throw some meat on a fiery surface with lots of sauce and I’m a happy girl. I especially love the fried rice with crazy amounts of butter. Somehow beef, shrimp and lobster taste so much better cooked on a giant metal stove. I could do without the cheesy show, but the food tastes so good. So I don’t understand why these places keep going out of business!!!!
There was an upscale one on the upper east side maybe three years ago, which I tried to go to but it had just closed. I should have known when their phone sounded disconnected. The Boyfriend took me to Asia Hibachi in Gramercy in August, but then it was closed by September. It was really yummy and the chef was good at his tricks. I wanted hibachi again in October so we used Citysearch, which said there was one more in Tribeca. Of course when we called their phone was also disconnected. The only remaining option is Benihana, which is very cheesy and not as good, I recall from my hometown of Pittsburgh.
The only reason I can think of that good hibachis wouldn’t be able to stay in business is that maybe most people don’t want a guy juggling knives and setting things on fire when they’re on a date, out with clients, or trying to impress someone, regardless of how good the food is. I guess that makes sense. It makes me very sad though. I hope that another hibachi opens up soon – I don’t need the show, you could just cook the food on the giant griddle…
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