A Full Belly

two days with jim leff, chowhound

Chowing down with the hound. The Boston Globe's Joe Yonan spent two days with Chowhound's Alpha Dog Jim Leff and has this article to show for it and maybe an extra pound or two—by my count they sampled food from at least eleven different places. Great read, very inspiring, but be warned that you will probably be very hungry well before you get halfway through reading it. Make sure to have something tasty at hand!

On another note, one of the few non-food related things they discuss is Chowhound's money problems: "Since Leff doesn't sell advertising* or charge users, the site is regularly short on cash for server bills. The proceeds from two recent guidebooks, to New York City and San Francisco, helped, but a few months back Leff had to issue a plea for donations on the boards. He has plans to make the site more self-sufficient but won't say more."

As someone who's done design work and loves Chowhound, I have to say that I think a lot of their server issues could be addressed fairly easily if Leff was willing to rethink the way the site is set up. "On Chowhound's notoriously difficult-to-navigate website, there is a search function for those who don't want to scroll through the seemingly endless messages, but to Leff the scrolling is part of the magic. Searching is for people who want Chowhound to be Zagat: a reference rather than a celebration."

I understand how he feels but at the same time, as my friend Finn pointed out to me, Chowhound's Manhattan and Outer Borough pages are so long (posts at the bottom are up to three months old) and have such large filesizes (Manhattan currently weighs in at 4.1 MB, the size of a good length, high quality mp3) that we both frequently get bored before they finish loading on our broadband connections, or worse, they will sometimes just time out and stop loading. Chowhound gets over 800,000 visitors a month, just imagine how much bandwidth gets used up if even a fourth of them load the Manhattan page twice a week. And I know hundreds if not thousands of people must reload that page multiple times a day, every single weekday.

I was talking to a Chowhound-loving designer/programmer friend of mine almost a year ago about this and discovered that a Chowhound redesign was at the top of both our dream projects lists, maybe even pro bono. Someone please tell Jim Leff: we get the site, we'd treat it lovingly and do it justice!

This is incorrect: a few pages on the site do have Google ads. Tsk tsk, Mr Yonan.

disaronno amaretto commercial

If, like me, you've been hating Disaronno's ubiquitous "Pass the Pleasure Around - Ice Cube" commercial since it first aired in 2003, you should know that no one hates it as much as my friend Skot:

Anyway, she closes her eyes as she sucks on the phallocube. And here's where the commercial truly knocks it out of the park. Because right then they cut back to ghoul, who is again totally rooted to the spot watching this wanton display of oral gratification. He's stunned! He can't believe this chick! And then he smiles the most alarming, simian smile ever caught on video. The smile slowly starts at the corners of his mouth and crawl horribly up towards his terrible face. It really is impossible to describe; in overall effect, imagine how the Tall Man from the Phantasm movies would look if he were very slowly getting an erection. It's the kind of face that says, "I sure would like to date-rape you . . . but I don't think I can wait that long!"

Bad ad aside, Disaronno is tasty stuff and has long been the most popular of amarettos. Amaretto happens to be my favorite liqueur but I didn't know till just now that it's possibly the oldest of them all, dating back to 1525 when Bernardino Luini, a painter from DaVinci's school, was commissioned by a wealthy businessman to create a fresco of the Madonna for a church in Saronno, Italy. Luini's search for a model ended when he found a beautiful innkeeper, whom he of course ended up having an affair with; she created amaretto as a gift for her lover. "Disaronno" means "from Saronno" and supposedly the recipe hasn't changed since 1925; the famous beautiful square-cut glass bottle is not original but was designed by a craftsman from Murano.

History lesson aside, kind AFB readers, please feel free to buy me an amaretto sour or two if we're ever in a bar together. I thank you sincerely in advance but note that I reserve the right not to do untoward things with the ice cubes!

 

where to get your curry fix now?

6th St Curry Row not so Curry anymore. Used to be 6th St between 1st & 2nd Avenues was the place to go for Indian food in the East Village (at least, if you weren't Indian); WhatISee has photos and even a diagram showing how there aren't very many Indian restaurants on the 6th anymore. Hey, there's still the brightly lit Panna II, just around the corner on 1st Ave between 5th & 6th, super cheap takeout place Punjabi Deli on 1st St between 1st Ave and Avenue A, or just go uptown a mile to Curry Hill. [via Eater]

super taste

Robert Sietsema reviews Super Taste hand-pulled noodles, on Eldridge. Recommended by Sietsema, after the place was recommended to him by Calvin Trillin? You know I am so eating there sometime in the next week, right? Hand-pulled noodles with beef + pork dumplings, bring it on.

(Mike King of Twenty Bucks a day visited Super Taste recently and enjoyed himself, saying "score one for the cheapwads!")

you think you're chocolate but

Annie: Chewing Gum (music video). One of my favorite pop songs of 2004: "I'm gonna tell you how it's gonna get done/I'm just a girl that's only chewing for fun/You spit it out when all the flavour has gone/Wrap him round your finger like you're playing with gum"

diy chewing gum

Glee Gum's Make Your Own Chewing Gum kit. "And it's really easy: Soften the chicle gum base, either in the microwave or on the stove. Then you add the sugar, corn syrup, and the flavor packets, knead it a little, and WOW! You've made your own gum!" $10 gets you enough to make 50 pieces, refills are $6. [via kottke.org]

faking it

One of my most traumatic eating moments ever came a few years ago, when a vegan friend lured me to a vegetarian restaurant in Chinatown by saying something like, "You have to try the fake kung pao chicken! It tastes just like the real thing!"

I'll spare you the unpleasant details, but let's just say that since then I've become exceedingly wary of meat substitutes—tofu is great but when it's tofu, not dressed up trying to be something else. (And don't even get me started on the abomination that is seitan, may it never cross my lips or the lips of anyone I care about again.)

Anyway, Slate's Dahlia Lithwick did a fake meat roundup way back in 2001, subjecting herself and her friends to all sorts of pork, beef and turkey substitutes. Some products did well (Lightlife's Steak Style Strips had testers saying things like "close to steak," "beefy," "wow I'm converted."), while others tested the limits of friendship (Worthington's Savory Slices was the worst of show, with comments like "tastes like eating suede," "something removed in a doctor show," "oh, my God," and "you've got to be kidding."). Lithwick closes her piece with this:

"One hates to be a reactionary, but sometimes absolute relativism is an evil unto itself. Plunging neck deep into the world of meat alternatives made it clear that the good Lord may have put cows and soybeans on different ends of his great classification system for good reason. Pigs rarely aspire to be asparagus. And wheat should not strive to be meat. With enough sauces, and marinades, and spices, a filament of gluten can pass for a strip of steak. But no one should be forced to eat three full courses of products that are all, as one of the artists among us observed, shaped either in circles or blobs. And no one should have to choke down stringy, tasteless, or chewy morsels just because they are coated in a sauce that might once have coated something at McDonald's. Call me a food fundamentalist, but the land in which meat and tofus collide is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there."

It's been four years since she wrote that, people. Four years! Has food science advanced any since then? Are there any new fake meat products that won't make dedicated carnivores like myself ill? Tell me about them, or share your tales of bad fake meat experiences in the comments.

black pudding is not a pudding

Silly me, never having had one I've always assumed from the name that a black pudding was, you know, a pudding, but it turns out it's actually a sausage: "Black pudding, as made in the UK, is a blend of onions, pork fat, oatmeal, flavourings - and blood (usually from a pig). As long as animals have been slaughtered to provide food, blood sausages like black pudding have been in existence. Sources indicate that the corpulent sausage had its origins in ancient Greece, and Homer's Odyssey makes poetic reference to the roasting of a stomach stuffed with blood and fat."

Those of you who love black pudding but no longer eat meat can rejoice, as The Real Lancashire Black Pudding Co's recently developed V Pud, vegetarian black pudding that supposedly tastes close to the real thing. Not that there are many Filipino vegetarians, but I wonder if anyone can make a vegetarian dinuguan...

[via eachman.com]

science vs stoners

Scientists figure out what causes the marijuana munchies. Maybe next they'll explain why munchies and White Castle sliders go together like... Harold and Kumar. [via The Morning News]

love

Money quote from this recent story about Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon:

"The 77-year-old politician was released from the hospital Tuesday, two days after a mild stroke, and got an earful from his doctors about losing weight. But aides said he has not yet decided whether he will resist his love of all things meaty."

Our politics are very, very different but I bet he'd like my new favorite t-shirt.

[via dirtynerdluv]

egg(nog)stravaganza

If you like eggnog but are too lazy to make your own, today is your lucky day as I've found not one but two eggnog roundups for you to read and consider when doing your holiday food shopping:

New York Magazine's Taste Test: Eggnog sampled seven brands of eggnog and liked two (Organic Valley and Southern Comfort), as well as sharing the Waterfront Ale House's tried and true recipe.

Slate's Which eggnog is best? tried six brands of eggnog and two online recipes, one round sans alcohol and one with. Organic Valley did just okay this time (Southern Comfort didn't make an appearance) but the real winner was this Epicurious eggnog recipe.

If you'd rather make your own eggnog and, like me, prefer an Alton Brown recipe to any other, here's the Good Eats eggnog recipe. There are instructions for both cooked and uncooked versions, so you can make whichever you prefer.

They've also got an eggnog ice cream recipe up but if waiting 10 hours to eat the fruits of your labor seems excessive to you, you can also purchase seasonal limited edition pints of Häagen-Dazs and Edy's at the grocery or corner deli. Baskin-Robbins has eggnog as a seasonal flavor in-store but no love from Ben & Jerry's.

Still can't get enough eggnog? Starbucks offers Eggnog Lattes this time of year (you can always make your own version of it at home) but I think my favorite eggnog product has got to be Philosophy's old-fashioned eggnog 3-in-1 shampoo, body wash & bubble bath. $18 on their site or at Sephora, you'll get clean and smell good, and best of all: no risk of salmonella!

ferran adrià's el bulli cookbooks

Two hours north of Barcelona and only open six months out of the year, Ferran Adrià's experimental flagship El Bulli is widely considered to be the best restaurant in the world. So, as you might well imagine, it's rather hard to get reservations and even if you can get them you'll have considerable travelling costs, but for a few hundred dollars each you can get Adrià's El Bulli cookbooks off of Amazon and have fun in your own kitchen. Each hardcover book is "filled with full color photographs, presents not only El Bulli's unparalleled recipes, but also an analysis of their development, philosophy, and technique" and is "presented as a boxed set that includes the main volume, along with a detailed Users Guide and an interactive CD that contains each recipe, numbered and catalogued by year."

El Bulli: 1983-1993, the first volume, is only available special order and at its list price: a whopping $492. Most expensive cookbook ever? I sure think (hope?) so, but if you know differently please let me know.

El Bulli: 1994-1997 is slightly cheaper than its predecessor but still also going for its list price of $450. Third volume El Bulli: 1998-2002 is currently deeply discounted from $350 to $220.50, so if you're an Adrià fan or know someone who is, that probably makes it the El Bulli cookbook to pick up this season.

(Free Super Saver Shipping, if that helps!)

[via kottke.org]

réveillon

French for revelry. Regina Schrambling: "Food is almost religion to the French, but never more so than at the holidays. One of the most alluring traditions from a country that invented foie gras and perfected chocolate is réveillon, the late-night feast on Dec. 24, the early-morning feast on Dec. 25 and, for good measure, the anytime feast on New Year's Eve or Day." Say what you will about the Church (I know I do!), but Catholic countries do not mess around when it comes to eating. [via The Morning News]

it's hot chocolate for me all the way

Starbucks Christmas Lattes: What the hell? The Village Voice's Nina Lalli cries coffee abuse: "Now that the holidays are upon us, [America's flavored coffee movement] is at its annual aggressive peak, with even the burliest of men ordering up Grande Skim Eggnog Chai Lattes and Tall Peppermint Mochas with whipped cream. A horrible thought popped into my head recently. Am I the weird one? Is my "small coffee with milk—no sugar" a sign of my utter party-pooperness?"

the ten bird roast

If a turkey stuffed with a chiken is a turkducken and a goose stuffed with a turkey and a chicken is a gooducken, what's a turkey stuffed with a goose, duck, mallard, guinea fowl, chicken, pheasant, partridge, pigeon and woodcock? That's ten birds, people!

The Food Section Guide to Holiday Gifts

The Food Section Guide to Holiday Gifts.

MUST BE WILLING TO EAT WEIRD FOOD ON CAMERA

Not afraid of eating live bugs or octopus? You could be cast for an upcoming episode of CSI:NY (filming will be in LA).

wake up to bacon

The bacon-cooking alarm clock does what it says: cooks a piece of bacon to wake you up. Mmmm, bacon. [via The Hedonista]

chez pim: A Menu for Hope II

Pim hosts the second annual A Menu for Hope II to raise funds for for the victims of the earthquake in the Kashmir region of India and Pakistan. Donate $5, and you're eligible for the raffle drawing for a gift of your choice, and there are some excellent gifts to choose from. As of yesterday, over $3400 has been raised. I donated and hope to be become the 'honorary owner' of the first ewe lamb born on farmgirl's farm in 2006!  View the complete menu of fabulous prizes, then go and donate now!

CoffeeGeek - How to Use a Press Pot

CoffeeGeek - How to Use a Press Pot. Don't skimp on the grinder or the beans. Includes handy photo illustrations.

SF California Culinary Series

SF This week the Mechanics' Institute presents the California Culinary Series, Three Evenings of Cookbooks, Conversation, Recipes & Tastings. Cosponsored by Villeroy & Boch. Featured cookbooks include: The Niman Ranch Cookbook: From Farm to Table with America's Finest Meat, Boulevard: The Cookbook, and The Bar: A Spirited Guide to Cocktail Alchemy.The series starts tonight with rancher Bill Niman and SF Chronicle Food Writer Janet Fletcher, 6:00 p.m. at Villeroy & Boch, 61 Post Street. For reservations by phone, call the 'Events Line' at (415) 393-0100.

Food at the borders

dumpling men 14
Originally uploaded by themexican.

Fuchsia Dunlop reports for The Observer on the rare and unusual culinary delicacies of China's Xinjiang province. Xinjiang is the largest and most northwest province of China, bordered by  Tibet, Qinghai, Gansu, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan, Uzbekistan, Tadzhikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India and home to 47 ethnic groups including the Uygur. Not surprisingly, the food and culture of the region is heavily influenced by its western neighbors. The photo above illustrates this beautifully: naan and dumplings, and I'm guessing sheep hanging in the background.

Dunlop's report on this region is worth a read. She's also the author of: Land of Plenty: A Treasury of Authentic Sichuan Cooking.

Related:

• Wikipedia entry on Xinjiang
• Browse photos of Xinjiang on Flickr
• Economist article on the political and economic changes underway in China's "wild west", courtesy of The Opposite End of China blog.

Champagne Brownies

In case you haven't been following along, Lovescool's Kelli has made the leap from blogging about sweet things to starting her own bakery business, Amai Bakery. Congratulations! To celebrate, go order a box of her champagne brownies: "We use Callebaut 99% dark chocolate, Valrhona cocoa and real champagne to give this classic brownie an unexpected twist. Our champagne brownies are perfectly moist and chewy (not too fudgy, not too cakey), with subtle hints of champagne running throughout the dark chocolate cake."

Top 10 Candy Gift Ideas from Candy Addict

Candy Addict: Top 10 Candy Gift Ideas

Ruth Reichl on Chinese food

eGullet conversation with Ruth Reichl on Chinese food on NYC (emphasis mine): "Which is all a long way of saying that after living in California, it's hard to get very excited about Chinese food in New York. We just don't have the kind of monied, sophisticated Chinese eaters who support great restaurants."

And on the absence of Chinese restaurants in the Michelin Guide: "This is a subject I could go on forever about: Basically, Americans are racist about Chinese food. We just don't think it should be as expensive as western food. When my friend Bruce Cost had a great Chinese restaurant in SF, one of the reviews actually said, "What makes him think we should pay as much for Chinese as French food?" And he was buying from the same purveyors as Chez Panisse." [via kyu]

Charles and Marie: Normann Funnel

Charles & Marie are self-described "lifestyle navigators" offering exclusive, "limited lifestyle products and the best-of-the-best from all over the world" via their website feature, Soup du Jour.

Ignoring the fact that the terms "lifestyle navigator" and "lifestyle product" are silly and non-descript and make me want to gag, Soup du Jour is a fun little concept, offering up a different product for sale every day, for only 24 hours, and often times it's something I can afford and imagine incorporating into my lifestyle, like today's Normann Funnel. Made from FDA-approved thermal plastic elastomer (flexible rubber), it can withstand the heat of boiling water and is dishwasher safe and its accordian design means it'll fit in my kitchen drawer. Sweet!

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade

Japan is fighting an invasion of giant jelly fish that has been devastating the fishing industry. Echizen kurage are 6ft wide and weigh 450lb, and have been filling and breaking fishermen's nets, or crushing and poisoning any fish caught in the net with them. The problem has become so serious the government has formed a jellyfish countermeasure committee and fishery officials from Japan, China, and South Korea will be gathering later this month at a "jellyfish summit" to discuss strategies for dealing with the invasion. In the meantime, the Japanese are trying to creating a market for the jellyfish, eating and promoting them as a novelty food.

NYC Kathryn's dinner at WD-50

02a Foie gras center
Originally uploaded by kathryn.

Check out Kathyrn's photos of the nine course tasting menu at WD-50.

Cast Iron Outshines the Fancy Pans - New York Times

Mark Bittman on the advantages of cast iron pans, including good tips on how to properly season and clean it. A 12-inch, pre-seasoned Lodge skillet is $24.95 only Amazon.com.

Recipe to try: Coconut Macaroons

Recipe to try: Coconut Macaroons à la Dahlia Bakery, courtesy of Orangette. " ...lighter than air, with a sweet meringue base to give it a chewy, fluffy interior and a shatteringly crisp shell."

for your favorite meat lover

The perfect holiday gift for your favorite meat eater: the piece of meat t-shirt from Threadless. On sale now for $10.

Pea shoots

Snow pea shoots or dou miao are in season now until early spring. I've seen them recently at San Francisco's Chinatown markets, but didn't buy any because I didn't know how to prepare them myself. A quick search this morning and I found EatingAsia's recipe for Hot and Spicy Noodles with Pea Shoots, and another recipe for a simple garlic stir-fry (scroll down to the second recipe on the page).

Eating China

Eating China is a new-to-me website and blog about Chinese food culture and history. Despite my love of other fermented foods (kimchi!) and beverages (beer!), the godawful stink of stinky tofu is still in the way of a real love affair between me and this unique dish. 

Chef's Knives rated

Excuse me while I continue to play blog catch-up, Cooking for Engineer's excellent review and ratings of Chef's Knives. Best bit of advice: "However, the purchase of a knife should not be based solely on its cutting performance. Other important factors to consider are up to the individual chef. Handle design may be the most important factor when buying a knife. If the handle doesn't feel comfortable, then chances are you won't be comfortable using the knife. A handle that feels comfortable in one grip may be uncomfortable when gripped another way. Unfortunately, this means I can't tell you which knife handle is best for you. I recommend going to a store where you can actually hold the knife. A store like Sur La Table, where you can practice a slicing motion on a cutting board, is your best bet for picking the right knife."

wine lists

Megnut: Overheard in the neighborhood. Or, you know you've left N. California when...

A Nice Cup of Tea by George Orwell

A Nice Cup of Tea by George Orwell: "When I look through my own recipe for the perfect cup of tea, I find no fewer   than eleven outstanding points. On perhaps two of them there would be pretty   general agreement, but at least four others are acutely controversial. Here   are my own eleven rules, every one of which I regard as golden..."

New food blog: The Kitchen

The Kitchen is a new food blog, part of the Apartment Therapy family of blogs, and  is "a site for people who like getting dirty in the kitchen, who care about where their food comes from, and who crave a source for news, tips, recipes, resources and above all, inspiration for cooking at home."

NYC The mess that is 13th and First

NYC On my most recent return visit to NYC I, too, noticed the mess that is now the NW corner 13th and 1st, formerly the home of my beloved Mee Noodles and Spanish American Food.

Chronicle's Top 100 Wines of 2005

The SF Chronicle's Top 100 Wines of 2005

NYC Joe's Best Burger

NYC Joe's Best Burger: the In-N-Out of the east coast?