27 Jul 2012
by scolgin
in Cooking Tips, Recipes, Video
Tags: butter, Delitia, Escoffier, France, haute cuisine, Land O'Lakes, Nobu, Parma, recipes, sea bass
Did you ever play that Desert Island game — you know, the one where someone asks you what 10 albums you would choose if you were marooned on a desert island? I like to play this game with food. Which 10 ingredients would I want if I was stranded on a desert island? And high upon my list would be that glistening, glorious gold of the dairy case: butter. I could make a palm frond taste good so long as I had butter.
I’d been meaning to put my infatuation for beurre to words for some time now. Sitting here eating my leftover grilled chicken from a few posts back — basted on the barbie with melted butter — I got thinking about just how important this simple, elemental ingredient is. More
22 May 2012
by scolgin
in Recipes
Tags: bouillabaisse, bourride, fish, France, french cooking, Nice, pan bagna, recipes, soup, soupe de poisson
Bonjour!
While browsing the fish aisle at my favorite Japanese market the other day, I spotted a package of fish bones. Always one to be attracted to the stranger items in the refrigerated section, I added it to my basket.
There really aren’t that many things you can do with a package of fish bones. The most obvious is a French-style fish soup. And since my father was coming for lunch a couple days later to celebrate his 87th birthday and French fish soup is one of his favorite things, that’s what I decided to do! More
10 Apr 2012
by scolgin
in Observations, Video
Tags: 60 Minutes, baguette, CBS, cheese, France, French, French Paradox, red wine, wine
I remember seeing a segment on “60 Minutes” many years ago that affected me deeply. It was titled “The French Paradox,” and explored why the French — who eat butter, stinky cheeses, duck and other fat-rich foods with Dionysian abandon — had heart disease rates far lower than the United States and other developed countries.
The segment focused on two factors. The first, of course, was wine. The French consume more wine than any other people on earth, and there have been many studies linking lower rates of heart disease with moderate consumption of wine, red wine in particular. But it was the second factor that was even more intriguing to me, and where I had a moment on enlightenment. It was lifestyle. More
24 Feb 2012
by scolgin
in Observations
Tags: Big Bear, cooking, food, France, skiing, Sur la Table, utensils, wooden spoon
I’ll admit, I’m a bit of a creature of habit. I find a shirt I like, and I wear it a lot, for a really long time. I’m like that with kitchen utensils, too. So it was with great alarm that I recently realized I couldn’t find my favorite wooden spoon.
After my knife, the wooden spoon is the most important tool in the kitchen. If a man’s home is his castle, and the kitchen my throne room, then the wooden spoon is my scepter. Sometimes I hold it when I’m not even cooking, like a security blanket. More
29 Sep 2011
by scolgin
in Observations, Starlets, Yoga Students & Quinoa (stories)
Tags: carnivore, France, Germans, harvey's guss, Italy, laboratory, meat, SPAM, vegetarian
Some friends of ours had German guests visiting, and were going to take them to In & Out Burger. “I hope they have soy burgers,” said friend Amanda. “Our friends don’t eat any meat.” I suggested she get them regular burgers and tell them that they were soy burgers, and that they’d made incredible advances in soy technology. Germans are gullible that way. Suffering a national cuisine inferiority complex with France and Italy as neighbors, they’re likely to act overly knowledgeable and tell you they already knew that.
Meat grown in a lab
I was reminded of one of my younger sister, Siobhan’s, bouts of vegetarianism when we were teenagers. I was trying to get her to eat a chicken breast, and she was protesting. “They don’t have to kill the chicken,” I said, “they just cut the breasts off and they grow back. Like a lizard’s tail!” She glared at me. She also wasn’t buying my contention that to get chicken broth, all you had to do was wring the live chicken out over a pot. (More like “juicing” a chicken.) More
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