I drove myself a little bit crazy last week in a quest for authenticity. I did research, crowd sourced my father and uncles, dithered, and fussed in search of an ‘authentic’ elegant Dutch meal to celebrate the Abdication/Enthronement of Queen Beatrix/King Willem-Alexander*. Then I went ahead and did things like roasting my Brussels sprouts with balsamic, and adding garlic and rosemary and orange zest to my Hazenpeper. I also threw in a splash of buttermilk to my Hete Bliksem for a touch of creaminess. I did this mostly because I couldn’t help myself, and because I thought they would enhance the dishes, even if the additions were inauthentic. This, however, begs the question of what we mean when we say ‘authentic’. Read the rest of this entry ?
Posts Tagged ‘pork’
Last Monday Google announced the beta release of GoogleNose*. I wish that it was live so that I could have shared with y’all how good my kitchen smelled last week. I kept walking back into the kitchen on Monday night to stand over the pot of simmering beans and just inhale deeply (okay, also to warm my hands up in front of the gas flame, because this is the winter that will not end, and it was cold). Read the rest of this entry ?
I have been feeling somewhat excessively negative lately – I think it’s a combination of not enough sleep, the dragging tail end of winter, and irritation that I don’t have a day off from work until Memorial Day – so rather than talk about all the things that are annoying me with the food world, I’m going to talk about the things making me happy. Read the rest of this entry ?
I know I’ve said this before, but I believe that there are certain foods you have to have been introduced to at a tender age, and then grown up eating to really appreciate. Marmite/Vegemite is one of them – I was clearly too old by the time I was introduced to it in middle school because I continue to think it’s one of the most revolting things you can put on bread. Ambrosia Salad is another – which I cheerfully embrace in all its mini-marshmallow & canned mandarin orange glory, although I admit that I’d be hesitant to call it a salad per se. It’s possible that baked beans on toast are another thing that you have to have been introduced to at an impressionable age. Read the rest of this entry ?
If you’ve been paying any kind of attention to the world of food news this week you’ll probably have seen the study from Stanford which suggests organic food isn’t any more nutritious or better for you than what you can buy at your average supermarket.
Reactions to this have ranged from shock, to horror, to disavowal, to quiet schadenfreude. Read the rest of this entry ?
There’s a new ‘diet’ making the rounds that seems to primarily consist of fantasizing about food that you then don’t eat. Okay, so there’s a little more to it than that. The idea, as far as I can tell, is that if you think about whatever it is that you’re craving – a burger, an ice cream sundae, an enormous plate of macaroni and cheese – and you visualize yourself eating it, and imagine the tastes and smells in Technicolor detail you’ll then stop craving it. Imagining the experience is, apparently, enough to satisfy the craving. Read the rest of this entry ?
My office runs a Super Bowl pool every year, and every year I get asked multiple times if I want to participate. I get tired of finding clever non-offensive ways to say no (in my office an unexplained ‘no’ is not an acceptable answer). Most years I don’t even know who’s playing – although this year I did because it’s impossible to live in Boston and not know that the Patriots have made it to the Superbowl. This year my standard response was that I didn’t care about the Super Bowl, but if someone wanted to handicap the Oscars I’d be in like Flynn. Nobody too me up on my suggestion. Read the rest of this entry ?
There are three things you need to know before I tell this story.
Firstly, my father is generally a fairly dignified person. He’s more Yes, Prime Minister than Monty Python. This means that on the occasions that he’s not, it’s disproportionally funny, and the event tends to live on (and on) in the collective family memory. Read the rest of this entry ?
In the mid 1980’s we lived in Hong Kong for 18 months during which period we somehow managed to have enough time to visit Malaysia, the Philippines, Japan, China, Macau and Singapore. On the apparently rare occasions that we were at home, we used to meet my father at noon every Saturday and go have Dim Sum. We’d meet my father at his office, and then cross through a public garden which on a Saturday was full of brides in bright red wedding dresses having their wedding pictures taken (possibly Statue Square?), to the Dim Sum restaurant at the top of the neighboring office tower. Read the rest of this entry ?
Fair warning, I am about to horrify everyone of Italian descent and anyone born south of the Mason Dixon line (except my mother who doesn’t like grits and therefore doesn’t care).
Polenta and grits are the same thing.
I know, I know, I’ve just committed some kind of heresy, but that doesn’t make me wrong. Don’t believe me? Let’s analyze this. Read the rest of this entry ?