fauren

Eric Ripert Loves His Toaster Oven

I know I'm prone to making declarations of love on this blog, but please allow me to put my Fan Girl hat on for just one second.

You know Eric Ripert? Yeah, he runs that restaurant... what's it called? Le Bernardin? It has, like, three Michelin stars or something. Well, he's got a new site called Avec Eric, devoted largely to dispelling the complexities of cooking and making it accessible to bums like you and me.

I got my first glimpse of Chef Ripert when he served as a guest judge on Top Chef and was immediately enamored. Is it inappropriate to insert the term "Silver Fox" here? Well, he is once again bringing his velvety French accent to the masses on this site, which, charmingly enough, features only recipes you can cook in your toaster oven. Between that and an introduction like this, sign me up:

Great cooking doesn’t have to be complicated. High-quality ingredients and simple methods are all you need. Mix in some good friends and great locations and you’ve got a truly transcendent experience...

I have many such adventures planned for us. Over the next few months, we’re going to visit new places, meet new people and cook foods—some new, some familiar–together. I know we’ll inspire and learn from each other as we go.

I’ll share recipes and techniques and tell you my stories. And I hope to hear from you too. Come along with me. We’ll have fun, I promise.

Briefly, Dan Barber's Op-Ed in the Sunday NYT

Having gone home for Mother's Day to the land of the Boston Globe, I missed Dan Barber's insightful op-ed piece in Sunday's New York Times. Check it out here.

Dinner at Blue Hill, or: How I Learned What It Must Be Like To Be A Famous Person

It used to be I was just a glutton and that was that, but now I'm a glutton with a web site. Writing a food blog is a funny thing... all is well and good when I've got my foodie hat on, but when I'm wearing my "it's 10pm, I haven't eaten dinner, and all I have in my kitchen is some coffee ice cream, a packet of garam masala spices, and that jar of sugar-free candies my dentist gave me for my birthday" hat, I can't help but feel like a bit of a fraud when I get on the phone to the local Chinese place and order up some of those pork dumplings drenched in sesame sauce. Especially because that sesame sauce is probably just melted Skippy peanut butter.

Blogging about food also breeds the compulsion to photograph whatever I eat - if people can't taste what I'm talking about, they should at least be able to look at it, right? But this can be problematic, too. For one, most of my family and friends think it's weird. Also, there's no way to be subtle about taking photographs of my plate in the middle of a restaurant (and consequently, strangers also think it's weird).

Deciding to leave the camera at home can be hard sometimes, especially when it means that it'll take me more than a week to find just the right words to describe a particularly stellar meal, but that's exactly what's happened since Dan and I were lucky enough to enjoy a seven-course tasting menu at Blue Hill last Tuesday night.

Talking Water with Peter Hoffman and Fred Kirschenmann

Last night, I attended "Adventures in the Global Kitchen: Watering Our Breadbasket," a talk with Fred Kirschenmann and Peter Hoffman. It was presented by the American Museum of Natural History in conjunction with their current show, Water: H₂0=Life (an exhibit, I must point out, that was partially designed by my hunky boyfriend).

Hoffman, chef at Savoy in SoHo, spoke largely about local issues, explaining how New Yorkers' buying decisions can affect our water supply and describing State governmental efforts to protect our fresh water supplies.

A lot of this segment fell under the category of I Had No Idea. For instance: In 1997, the federal government sued New York State for failing to install a filtration system for its public drinking water. In response, rather than spending the money on building the filtration systems, the State reached a Memorandum of Agreement with the government to acquire land within the New York State watershed and implement protection efforts that would keep our drinking water drinkable without filtration. The five-year MOA was renewed in 2002 and again just this past July.

I always hear people talk about the quality of New York City drinking water, in that it's some of the best in the country, but I never realized that it was unfiltered. Turns out the watershed protection doesn't just benefit those of us who drink the stuff down here in the five boroughs; it's brought about some major successes for upstate farming, such as the Pure Catskills program from the Watershed Agricultural Council.

Kirschenmann spoke to the larger issues of water consumption and sound agricultural practices, along the way delivering some startling statistics.

Dan Barber, How Do I Love Thee?

Let me count the ways:

1. Blue Hill 
2. Blue Hill at Stone Barns 
3. The Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture
4. That MTV Extreme Close-Up picture of the wild boar testicles you showed to a packed auditorium the other night

Four. I love Dan Barber four ways.

This past Tuesday, Michael Pollan and Dan Barber gave a talk at the 92nd Street Y that was moderated by Joan Dye Gussow. The theme was Hedonistic, Healthy, and Green: Can We Have It All? When I walked into the lobby, the place was absolutely packed, and everyone seemed eager to make it quickly up to will-call so they could take their seats and rain silent praise down upon a couple of our greatest contemporary advocates for local and sustainable eating. I was no exception.

I didn't know what to expect, but the event was pleasantly free-form, with Gussow, Pollan, and Barber each giving a short presentation of sorts from the podium at the beginning but taking comfortable seats on the stage afterward to have a conversation about modern American eating habits. Pollan is fresh off the publication of his latest book, In Defense of Food, which sort of naturally led him to do much of the talking, but Gussow peppered the talk with some personal insight, and Barber forever endeared himself to me with his self-deprecating (and perhaps, at moments, unintentional) comic relief. I mean, after his detailed Powerpoint presentation about how he agonized over what to do with Boris, his wild boar at Stone Barns, when the animal was no longer able to... perform, I kind of had no choice but to love the guy.

Among other things, I came away from the talk feeling reassured that Pollan, who easily runs the risk of becoming a figurehead for whatever you want to call this movement toward more conscious eating choices, is still ceaselessly performing research and ready to not only share his findings, but to interpret and back them up.

Issues of elitism, class, and other impediments to accessing whole, healthy, and/or environmentally friendly foods came up a handful of times, too. I was really pleased to hear Pollan and Barber (whose restaurant is most assuredly guilty of "sticker shock," as Gussow put it) willingly acknowledge that such problems are very real, and also to hear them offer ways in which the public can help change that.

It was really encouraging to see the auditorium at the Y filled to the rafters with folks who are excited about what Pollan and Barber have to say. I may live in a neighborhood that's home to three regular Greenmarkets, a food co-op, and a few CSAs, but despite that (or quite possibly because of it), it's still sometimes hard to tell whether the things these guys and their peers are spotlighting are taking root with the general public. The turnout at this modest talk, however, made it hard to deny.

Video of the talk on the 92y.org blog
The first chapter of In Defense of Food