eat drink one woman

I'm immersing myself in Julia Child this week -- first by reading the new Judith Jones memoir and next by going to this panel discussion on Julia Child at the NYPL this Wednesday, Oct. 10. Judith Jones' book is a fascinating read for anyone who enjoys reading cookbooks. She discovered Julia Child and championed her masterwork, Mastering the Art of French Cooking; she was also the editor for Madhur Jaffrey, Lidia Bastianich, Edna Lewis, Marion Cunningham, and lots of other cookbooks you probably have in your kitchen. Jones talks about how Mastering the Art of French Cooking and The French Chef really changed the culinary climate of the country -- whereas before, home cooking was a chore best knocked off in as little time as possible (sound familiar?), Julia Child encouraged people to indulge in spending time, energy and brain power in the kitchen.

So I've been thinking, what will be the next culinary revolution in the home kitchen and who will be its hero? Will it be the gastrolabs of Wylie Dufresne, Will Goldfarb, Grant Achatz? The slow, local romance of Alice Waters and Dan Barber? The real world test kitchens of blogging home cooks like Chocolate & Zucchini, 101 Cookbooks, The Wednesday Chef, Smitten Kitchen?

I'd like to predict that the next revolution will happen when every kitchen gets a computer. Soon, you'll be able to put recipes together for a meal or a party and have the computer not only spit out a shopping list, but know which ingredients you already have in the pantry, order the other ingredients for delivery, or tell you the nearest place that has the obscure ingredient in stock. You'll be able to program the dietary restrictions and allergies of all your friends so that red flags will be sent up for incompatible recipes.

You'll be able to adjust all recipes automatically for number of servings, altitude temperatures, or to fit the equipment we have on hand. The computer will be able to give you a minute-by-minute game plan for every dish in a single list of directions, complete with hands-free, eyes-free audio recipe instructions. It'll show at the touch of a screen how to tournedo a vegetable, how to butterfly a chicken, etc. How about cooking seminars, where you can follow the audio and visual of a pro chef in real time, with TiVo style pause and rewind? Or family recipes, recorded and handed down as video clips?

Does the idea freak you out? It's a total Jetsons fantasy which is so close to becoming reality. Don't get me wrong, I totally believe in slow food cooking methods. I mean, I still can't really bring myself to trust the food processor. But I would love having a computer in the kitchen for auxiliary memory and computation.

***

This is the only clip I could find of The French Chef in a lazy YouTube search. It's hard to believe that roast chicken was not as ubiquitous as it is now. They're apparently going to show lots of old clips at the panel on Wednesday, which I'm looking forward to.

Name: Deb Perelman

Occupation: Reporter

Borough: Manhattan

Relationship status: Hitched

What did you eat today?

One of my miniature bagels with a tiny bit of butter. [Your husband is a lucky, lucky man. --Ed.]A small coffee from the cart outside my office.

What do you never eat?

Fish. I thought I'd get over my aversion to it one day but I'm beginning to think it will squick me out for all eternity. Also: beets, chai, 99 percent of teas, cilantro except in rare circumstances, power/cereal/luna/anything bars and those tri-colored pastas. Wow, I better stop here or people are going to think I'm picky or something.

Complete this sentence: In my refrigerator, you can always find:

Eggs, butter, yeast, some fruit my husband has determined inedible because it has actually ripened and a few containers leftovers of an indeterminate age we're in a standoff with, waiting for last month's blog entry to throw itself out. Hasn't worked yet, but we're a hopeful bunch.

What is your favorite kitchen item?

It's like asking me to choose a favorite child! Cover your ears, okay? Mommy loves you all equally: Mandoline, digital scale, our g'normous Staub cocotte and its twin, a one-cup version that does nothing but sit there looking cute all day.

Where do you eat out most frequently? Le Singe Vert or Momoya on 7th Avenue, though lately it's been Tia Pol on 10th.

World ends tomorrow. What would you like for your last meal?

I want to eat at the Bread Bar at Tabla. I want one bite of every single dish on the menu, a bowl of spiced popcorn, two pomegranate gimlets and a vanilla bean kulfi pop. Would it be great to leave this world buzzing with inspiration? Or at least gin?

Why not both? Visit superstar Deb at her incredible, edible website, Smitten Kitchen.

I'm really more of a center cut girl, but this is genius -- every piece is a corner piece. Looks like a good pan for baking Thanksgiving stuffing, or a crispy potato galette, or maybe a nice, crunchy mac and cheese.

Quince are coming into the Greenmarket! Raw, they're dry. They're rock hard. They're covered in gray lint. The astringency sucks the moisture right off your tongue. But cooked -- genius! That dry, grainy flesh, so sweetly perfumed, soaks up the white wine and vanilla in this sweet-tart, syrupy quince butter. Though the green ones have more pectin, choose ripe, yellow fruit for this recipe. I've riffed on the ingredients in a Claudia Fleming recipe my friend Julie recited to me once. The result is a rosy, speckled compote just sweet enough to spread on a piece of warm toast with salted butter. It's also excellent spooned over a little bed of ricotta cheese. I can't stop eating it.

Note: Vanilla beans can become an expensive habit, but there's no substitute. I got mine from Penzey's in the Grand Central food market -- 3 big, moist Madagascar pods come in a resealable test tube for $6.89. I hear SOS Chefs on Ave. B has great vanilla.

Quince-pear butter

5 large, ripe quince
white wine
water
1 vanilla bean
3/4 c. packed brown sugar (more or less to taste)
1 bosc pear

Peel, core and roughly chop the quince. Put quince in a saucepan with enough wine and water to cover (1 part wine to 2 parts water). Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean. Add beans and pod to quince. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes or until the quince is soft. Mash the quince with a fork til the fruit is spreadable. Add the brown sugar. Peel, core and thinly slice the pear. Add to the quince butter. Simmer for 15-20 minutes longer til pear is tender. (It'll be thick and lava-like. Scrape the bottom of the pot regularly with a rubber spatula so it doesn't burn.) Cool and refrigerate. Makes about 4 cups. Keeps for about 1 1/2 weeks (but I don't expect this batch to last me for more than five days).

Cutlets, I love you, I read you regularly, but I gotta stand up for the lady M.F.K. What you call treacly, precious and brittle, I would call feminine and melancholy. The woman knew how to string words together with economy and style. I'd love to be 1/10 of the writer she was. Besides, comparing her to those other writers is like comparing white asparagus to a great hamburger (or a plate of char kway tiew, or escargots en pots de chambre). All are good for different reasons. You don't like white asparagus, fine. But overrated? That's a little harsh.

Name: Kurt Wolf Langer

Occupation: Activist

Borough: Brooklyn

Relationship status: None

What did you eat today?

Ham and cheese on rye, salt’n’peppa kettle chips, coffee

What do you never eat?

Eyeballs, Chinese food

Complete this sentence: In my refrigerator, you can always find:

Home made pesto

What is your favorite kitchen item? Mortar and pestle, cauldron

Where do you eat out most frequently? Jackson Heights / Woodside

World ends tomorrow. What would you like for your last meal?

Champagne and oysters with THC-infused lemon sauce, pumpkin soup with opium cream, warm beet and goat cheese and spinach salad with balsamic Owsley LSD dressing, prawns vindaloo with peyote masala, fruit soup with vodka, spring lamb chops with magic mushroom reduction glaze, cheese and PCP plate, crack-cocaine and cardamom dusted warm chocolate soufflé with home-made vanilla ice cream, Louis XIII cognac and a clove cigarette.

So I couldn't tell you where Paul Liebrandt's restaurant will be or what he has in store for it (won't be Italian food), but I can tell you what I hope winds up on the dessert menu. Liebrandt made a bunch of cocktails for a Ciroc vodka demo I went to, the best being a lemon meringue stinger -- an ice cold (Pacojet-ed) vodka lemonade topped with hot Whip-it lashed egg white foam (egg white with with lemon juice, gin, and simple syrup, heated in the whipping canister to 160 degrees in a water bath). High temp meringue on the upper lip, icy tart alcohol on the tongue. Not the kind of thing you want to drink a whole martini glassful of, but a fun trick that you could recreate it at home as a final dessert palate cleanser.

As for the vodka, I didn't try it straight because, well, I drank a whole martini glassful of the delicious stinger on top of several lethal liquid nitrogen-caipirinha sorbets. I was down for the count by the time the straighter cocktails came out. I'll let you know how it goes when the bottle gets opened.

We tried a fab, affordable white at Jadis this week -- Henry Brochard "Les Carisannes" Sauvignon Blanc 2006 from Loire. Light and crisp, it has a nice passion fruit aroma to it. Very summery. Would be great with a light, ladylike lunch of salad, bread and cheese. Or maybe with a Brazilian fish mouqeca and rice. Yum.

My friend Francis said it tasted like Umbungo, a fruit drink popular in England in the 80s. I couldn't tell if he thought that was a good thing or not.

Went to eat at Butter on Wednesday, hosted by my friend Wirt who cooks in Alex Guarnaschelli's kitchen. Because we all went with Wirt, we got extra TLC and a few bonus nibbles from the kitchen, so this is not going to be a review.

Disclaimer aside, if you're interested, here's what I have to say about it. People think of Butter first and foremost as a celeb hive. They don't discourage this reputation -- visit the a href="http://www.butterrestaurant.com/">Butter website and the first thing you see is a video of Paris Hilton on Letterman talking about how it's her favorite place to eat. An accolade like this might otherwise turn me against a place since:
1.) Where the celebs go, the lame wannabes follow
and
2.) I wouldn't ask a Mormon how to make a martini, so why should I take restaurant advice from someone who, clearly, doesn't eat?

But Wirt tells some great celeb stories, one of which is that Paris Hilton:
1.) Always brings flowers for the chef when she comes in.
2.) Couldn't be more gracious to the staff
and
3.) She eats. Yes, she really eats! And she tips really well.

And I believe him. It's plausible, don't you think? Yes, she courts attention, but that doesn't mean I should dismiss her as substance-less, right?

And so, here we are at Butter, a place with serious food that sometimes gets lost in the Page 6 shuffle. Alex Guarnaschelli is a true Greenmarket fanatic. I saw her there days after the birth of her daughter, Ava, chatting up her farmer friends and swooning over scallions. Butter's food reflects that passion -- a tower of onion rings is made from the Paffenroths' sweet Kelsae onions; panko-doused crispy oysters are nestled on a dill-fragrant tartar sauce and showered with edible purple flowers; sweet late summer fennel is roasted and transformed into a nourishing soup. I loved the cup of velvety watercress soup with its tiny truffled brie sandwich -- so dainty and pinky-in-the-air. My favorite entree was probably the slow-cooked pompano, enrobed in creamy beurre blanc atop a bed of Greenmarket sweet corn and greens -- light yet rich, it's the perfect transition dish between summer and fall.

And what a lovely room. Curved, lofty arches with woodgrain wallpaper are stacked horizontally against a lightbox image of a birch forest. Plush booths line the walls under low lights, punctuated by massive bunches of spindly, hunched branches. The room recesses endlessly -- it's like the Holland Tunnel under an enchantment spell by Galadriel. We were there on a Wednesday and the room wasn't loud -- in fact, all of the tables seemed to have that rare air of privacy that can be so hard to find in New York. It would be a great date restaurant.

Prices aren't insane (apps are about 16, entrees about 28), and portions are actually quite generous. I'm serious. And if you've got room at the end of the meal, get the raspberry beignets dipped in creme anglaise -- puffy little sugar-coated rounds with seedless raspberry coulis, they're what jelly doughnuts better be like in heaven. For your sake, I hope the dessert menu hasn't changed by the time you read this.

Butter
415 Lafayette St. at Astor
6 to Astor Pl.
(212) 253-2828

I'm from California, and I am still easily impressed by some of New York's wonders. Take fall, for example. It came on Friday, maybe Saturday -- snap! Just like that. Like somebody just flipped the fall switch. Like we were on a crowded subway train, and as we pulled into the station, fall just snatched summer's still warm seat from right under our noses. And I went from wishing the berries, peaches and tomatoes could last 4ever to remembering, hey, you know, I miss the taste of hot coffee. And cinnamon sugar. And won't that walk be nice tomorrow?

Tonight, I made a late dinner of a cold roasted sweet potato. I ate it on the subway on the ride home, its skin and flesh the colors of New England autumn and the D train. I enjoy these kinds of selfish/monastic meals most in the fall. I'm not in a rush to go from summer's sensual bounty to winter's sluggish fat padding. I'm just taking a break and fortifying myself for the long haul, thank you very much.