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A factor I didn’t consider when I made my menu plans for the week (I’ll be cooking Colombian and Costan Rican food, and trying to make desserts from the Baleares, Bordeaux and Croatia). Fortunately Ramadan lasts a whole month, so I have time to get in the spirit of the season 🙂
I’ll be cooking a Chinese Muslim dish next week, the only one I could find, and then I’ll look for some typical Ramadan food. I remember that when I was in Morocco (over fifteen years ago), the iftar menu was pretty standard. It had some lentil soup, a hard boiled egg and a very sweet pastry – I don’t remember if anything else. I’ll look it up and try it.
If you know traditional Ramadan food from any other country, please let me know.

You’ve heard it over and over, from both expert cooks and people who have barely stepped into a kitchen: “never cook with a wine you wouldn’t drink”. I think few commands have frightened people off the kitchen, or at least off cooking with wine, than this one. While there are many drinkable wines under $5-10, it’s hard to predict whether the one you chose will be one of them, so if you follow this mantra chances are you’ll end up spending much more money on the wine that you’d otherwise want to. And all for nothing, because the truth is, cheap wine makes GREAT cooking wine.
I’ve been cooking with 2-bucks-chuck pretty much since it came out. I won’t drink it unless I have to, but I find it perfectly fine to flavor sauces, braises, stews and marinades. I very seriously doubt that anyone would be able to tell the difference between a dish cooked with a $20 award winning wine and one with chuck – once you heat them up and combine them with other flavors, cheap wine improves magnificently. Indeed, that’s what NY Time food writer Julia Moskin found out, when she decided to test the premise by making identical dishes both with good wine and cheap wine – she couldn’t tell the difference in the finished dishes.
And it’s not only cheap wine that makes great cooking wine – old wine is also good for food. I pretty much never finish a bottle of wine when I open it – so I keep the leftovers in the fridge for when the muse inspires me to cook. In my experience, wine will still be good for at least two weeks after you open the bottle. Just make sure to put the cork back before you put it in the fridge.

Last night the kids were at a sleepover and Mike and I went to see Julie & Julia. I had read great things about the “Julia” part of the movie, and I was vaguely interested in the “Julie” part, as my friend Lola had followed the blog way back then and really enjoyed it. Alas, like everyone else said, that part of the movie was pretty “blah”. Julie looks for a gimmick for getting rich/famous as a writer, lucks into a good one, gets rich/famous as a writer while spouting some nonsense about being saved by Julia or becoming a better person through Julia. A pretty weak dramatic arch, if you ask me, and one that the actual Julia Childs does not seem to have bought into. Indeed, she seemed to think, correctly IMHO, that it was just a stunt. But hey, more power to Julie, right? Too bad she didn’t wait until Julia was at least dead so as to not mock her on her face. But as Julie herself acknowledged in the movie, she is quite the egocentric person.
The Julia part, as everyone said, was wonderful – and yes, I hated not seeing Meryl Streep/Julia, more on the screen. I thought that Mery Streep was great in mimicking Julia’s accent and joie de vive, though I’d like to have seen more complexity to the character – which I’m sure could have been shown if they’d cut the Julie story out of it.
In all it was a sweet movie, nothing if not fluffy, but enjoyable enough. I did not get out of it wanting to cook or eat French food (the way you drool over Mexican food in Tortilla Soup), though that duck at the end seemed like a fun challenge.

I’ve been enjoying watching Top Chef Masters – in particular this last show, in which the winners of the last six previous episodes competed against each other by making each other’s signature dishes. Part of what I’ve enjoyed is getting to know the chefs, some of whom were completely unknown to me.
I’ve been rooting for Hubert Keller, the chef-owner of Fleur de Lys, a restaurant that I’ve gone to a couple of times. I loved the food last time, though the service and timing left much to be desired. In any case, Hubert is local and seems like a very cool guy, he has these big, puppy dog eyes and gives an aura of happiness. He is also clearly very secure on himself and his cooking, clearly he has mastered both technique and flavor profiles, and yet you don’t ever see him boast. I think he is the true master.
And yet, I was very surprised on how well Rick Bayless has done. I’ve seen some of his shows and I have not been particularly impressed by him. Part of it is that I’m prejudiced about a non-Mexican becoming the voice for Mexican food in America – mostly through his television programs. It seems sort of unfair. It’s difficult to believe that there aren’t Mexican chefs that are just as accomplished. I’m also prejudiced against the true cooking abilities of television chefs. Clearly there are some who are marvelous cooks, such as Jacques Pepin – his techniques are so beautiful and effortless, you know the end result must be great. But others seem too young, too inexperienced to be the experts they proclaim themselves to be. And of course, some are truly grating (Joanne Weir in particular). Until this show, I would have put Bayless in that category. He seems quite arrogant about his knowledge of Mexican cuisine and enunciates too much when he speaks. But seeing him in the last two shows has made me change my mind. For one, I learned that he was in Mexico working on his PhD in Anthropology when he fell in love with cooking. That indicates to me that his primary interest is, or at least was, on the Mexican people – that he wants to know about them (even if through their cuisines) and that he probably does have a respect for Mexican culture that was not apparent to me before. In other words, maybe he is, indeed, paying an homage to Mexican cuisine by bringing it to this country, instead of just stealing it for fame and profit. The other thing that impressed me is that he clearly is a good cook who understands the fundamentals of cuisine. He won by making an Italian dish, after all, something you wouldn’t expect from him.
My suspicion of TV chefs also made me wonder about Michael Chiarello; but I’ve been impressed by his modesty (even though he did say he was going to win the show). Clearly he understands his own limitations (while Keller, for example, doesn’t seem to think he has any).
I was happy to see Anita Lo do so well. I hadn’t heard of her before the show started, but it’s nice to see a minority woman do so well (in particular given this). Her food seems really interesting as well. I think it’s really hard to do fusion food well, it requires an intense knowledge of several cuisines, great technique and creativity, which I think many fusion chefs don’t have. I’d love to go to her restaurant.
I have little opinion of the other two chefs. Suzanne Tracht didn’t seem to have much of a personality. I loved Art Smith’s personality, but I think I may be partial to teddy-bear gay guys.
Anyway, I can’t wait to see what happens. And I’m still rooting for Keller.

Alice Waters has gotten into pr trouble by stating that she’d want her last meal to be shark fin soup – apparently unaware that sharks are caught, had their fins cut off and then are thrown back into the sea to die. Now that she knows, she’s changed her mind.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/mbauer/detail?entry_id=44654&tsp=1
It seems a bit surprising that she wouldn’t know about the horrible treatment of sharks in the first place, but then again – how much of the food we consume is from animals that have been horribly treated? Sometimes I think the only ethical choice is to be a vegetarian – too bad I don’t like vegetables.

I would never have guessed that they have cooking videogames, but apparently there are several out there. The skills they “teach” seem to be quite basic (e.g. how to shake salt into ground beef to make a hamburger), and I wonder how they can be in any way more helpful than watching a food show on TV. But hey, to each its own.

I was just thinking that one of the reasons that I like cooking so much is that I am a very careless person. I rarely pay much attention to the world outside me (a horrible trait for a mother), and I’m the opposite of meticulous. That means that I often skim through a recipe, missing ingredients and steps. Indeed, I seldom look at the directions for a recipe before I start cooking (I guess this also means I’m pretty confident in my ability to do anything the recipe would call for). And often I just glance at the ingredients, forgetting to buy one or two. Sometimes I send my husband to buy them (poor buy), others I just improvise or do without.
But cooking is forgiving, often very forgiving. Often times a missing ingredient will not make a huge difference, same thing for a missed step. Forgotten spices can be added later, salt fixes a thousand mistakes.
Baking is not so forgiving, some people insist that it calls for exactitude and sometimes that’s true. But a few weeks ago I made a cheesecake that called for five packages of cream cheese and I forgot one. It was just as good. Still, I enjoy cooking much more than baking.

I’ve always wanted to have an herb garden. Herbs are impossibly expensive at the supermarket (usually around $2 for a package, and you can’t buy them in smaller units) and you don’t tend to use them that much. But I’m a terrible, neglectful gardener – or rather, I’m not a gardener at all, so I’ve just mumbled and grumbled about wanting an herb garden and never really did anything about it.
Then, a few weeks ago, my 7-year-old daughter Mika started saying she wanted to plant vegetables. I figured if she was planting, I could be planting too, so I cleared out a section of dirt by the front porch and planted some rosemary, sage, chives and basil, plus some thyme and oregano in a pot I already had. The kids, meanwhile, planted some veggies in the back yard.
We’ve been meticulous about watering them every day – and they are finally paying off. The herbs are doing beautifully and actually starting to expand. Hey, the moment may come when they fight each other off 🙂
Here are some pictures I took this morning. We’ll be cooking with our herbs all week long (tonight I’ll be making some pesto). I’ll post recipes, if warranted.





And here are some of Mika’s veggies & fruits:


And finally, some blackberries we’ve let grow:

The last issue of Food & Wine magazine has an article about the “best new chefs” and a picture of 11 of them in the cover. Mika, my 7-year-old, took a quick look at it and noticed “there is only one girl”. And indeed, she’s right. There are also no noticeable minorities. Do you need to be male and white to be noticed as a chef in America? Or are only white men becoming chefs?
Top Chef, the Bravo TV reality series, seems to have little trouble finding a good number of women and minorities for its show (though most winners have been white males) – so I don’t believe that good, new women & minority chefs are not there, perhaps they are just not cooking at the “bistro”-style restaurants where many new chefs establish their reputations. Or perhaps they are cooking more ethnic cuisine.

Food & Wine Magazine has an article in its latest issue on the question of whether meats should be salted before they are cooked. There are few issues that are as controversial in the area of cooking. Some cooks are convinced that if you pre-salt meat, it will dry out. Others think that pre-salting greatly enhances the flavor. Harold McGee, the food scientist author of On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, for his part, states that while lots of salt will dry meat, “the small amount of salt used to season food has a hydrating effect: Salt helps the cells hold on to water”
But that’s all theory. What’s actually the truth when you hit the skillet? Food writer Oliver Schwaner-Albright set to find out. He got some meat, salted some a day ahead, and the other right before cooking. Then he roasted chicken and pork ribs, seared steak and braised lamb shanks. The results? Inconclusive.
The pre-salted chicken was more flavorful and moist while the pre-salted ribs were awfully dry. There was no consensus on which steak was better, but the pre-seasoned lamb was definitely more delicious than the other one. So no golden rules, it seems that what works best will depend on the type of meat and preparation. Oh well, I’ll have to continue salting by instinct (or recipe) 🙂