Choire writes in with another foodie suggestion:
what you REALLY want to do once in your life is make your own "mother sponge" -- capture some wild yeasts outside, and blammo, you've got your
own tamagotchi, basically, which needs feeding and care. it really only takes a week to raise before it can go dormant in the fridge, with weekly feedings-- and it makes REAL sourdough, not that blechy SF sourdough. and any good baker should do it once. it's both incredibly easy and incredibly hard, but REALLY the most satisfying bread experience EVER.
It sounds scary, but I'm going to trust him on this one.
If you're into food, and wondering, "what the heck should I do next?" check out the [UK] Observer's list, The top 50 things every foodie should do.
To celebrate OFM's fiftieth edition, we asked some of our favourite bon viveurs what they considered most essential to do before they died.
Amazingly, I've already done ten of the items they've listed! Is that because I'm a "bon viveur"? Maybe a little, but also I've liked cooking and food for a very long time. Of what they've recommended, I've already completed the following:
3) Dismember a chicken
I learned this last summer when I was working at a restaurant. Our chef said everyone needed to know how to break down a chicken. Now I do. I haven't done it since.
6) Dine at the French Laundry
May 2002. I can't imagine you're reading my site and haven't read my review, but if that's the case get thee to It's All About Finesse immediately! Now start saving your dollar a day!
18) Shuck an oyster
I first learned this in 1994 on Cape Cod, where indeed just as they recommend, I enjoyed 'wild native oysters, from a forgotten oyster bed'. I last shucked two dozen for my family at Christmas.
20) Wolf down a hotdog on Coney Island
July 4, 2003. I ate one. Japanese super-eating legend Takeru Kobayashi ate 44 1/2 in twelve minutes. A photo of Kobayashi in action!
24) Be cooked for by a legend
(See #6)
32) Shop till you drop [at La Boqueria in Barcelona]
When I visited Barcelona in October, 2003 I spent many hours exploring this amazing market, though I never bought anything because I was staying in a hotel and had nowhere to cook.
33) Catch your own dinner
They recommend deep-sea fishing for tuna in Barbados. I went fishing for bluefish off Nantucket in August, 2003 and cooked up the riches for dinner with my family. Bluefish is my favorite, and I think one of the best meals you can eat (but only if you're in the northeast of the United States in July or August) is bluefish baked with breadcrumbs, butter, and lemon; steamed sweet corn, with butter and salt; and boiled red potatoes. If you don't have strawberry shortcake for dessert, with real whipped cream and homemade shortcake, you haven't gone all out.
39) Visit Pierre Gagnaire in Paris
I did this in June 2003. For some reason, I never wrote about it. Drat, I wish I had.
40) Bake a loaf of bread
I can't even remember the first time I baked a loaf of bread, but it must have been around 1986. I started my culinary adventures in the baking arena (cakes and sweets) before moving into the savory world of cooking. Of course, the Guardian says, "If your loaf is a true San Francisco-style sourdough then all the better." And I say, "No!" Yuck. I don't like sourdough. I had enough "San Francisco-style sourdough" when I lived in San Francisco to last my whole life.
47) Kill a pig
The last on the list, I did this over the 4th of July weekend, 1994. Some folks I knew in college had a little tradition of doing this. At a farm in New Hampshire, we (by which I mean a friend named Danny) killed the pig and bled it. Then we all took part in gutting and skinning it (writing now, it sounds more "Lord of the Flies" than it was). We roasted it in a pit for a very long time, and the result was the best thing I'd ever tasted. I had never liked pork before that, and I didn't for a very long time after. But everything we ate that day was incredible.
They also recommend that you:
9) Pick your own [mushrooms]
But I've never done this. I had a class in college called Plants and Humanity and we learned from our biology professor never to pick mushrooms in the wild. He said it was too dangerous, even with books and training, because the possibility of making a mistake was too great. I learned a lot from Prof. Ellmore, and to this day I still recall much of what he taught, so I'm going to trust my gut and skip the picking of wild mushrooms. The 39 remaining items could easily take the rest of my life as it is, I don't want to end it prematurely by eating a Death Cap!
I received an email recently from Maurice Graham Henry, proprietor of Dining In France who'd had dinner at Per Se recently and wrote to share some incredible news.
I had dinner at Per Se last night, and I had the good fortune to see Thomas Keller again.
He asked me anout my website DininginFrance.com, and I told him that I was recentlay able to recover a write up on The French Laundry (listed on my French Laundry page) on archive.org from 2002....written by 'the woman with the French Laundry Fund can'. Thomas remembered immediately, but he never knew that either of you had ever written about the experience. FYI Michael has been working at Per Se since it was opened, and I told him also. He (saying to me, "I tell people about that story all the time!) also never knew about your web postings.
How amazing that they remember! And how cool that Michael is at Per Se. I'm hoping to go there later this year, and perhaps I'll get to have him as my waiter again!
New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni has a funny article today entitled, Forget the Specials, Explain the Restroom. He talks about the confusion taking place in many restaurant bathrooms in New York City, including those at such high-end spots as Per Se and The Modern (the new restaurant at the MoMA). I can concur with many of his observations.
...I couldn't figure out how to trigger the electronic-eye sensors above the commodes, motion-detecting flushing mechanisms with enough of a delay that you were sometimes asked simply to trust in a cleansing aftermath to your departure. I've encountered religions with less daunting leaps of faith.
I couldn't figure out how to tell whether commodes were occupied. Neither, apparently, could anyone else, because whenever I was using one, someone in the communal area would rattle the door, not to mention my composure.
And I couldn't figure out why, in restaurant after restaurant, the attempt to relieve oneself turned out to be anything but a relief.
I always panic when, instead of simple labels like "Ladies" and "Gentlemen" or pictures of a man and a woman, they put those gender symbols on the door. I have to stop and think, "Which one does Austin Powers wear around his neck?" and then when I get the answer, I open the opposite door.
In the various parts of Europe I've visited, I've noticed two great things about the restrooms: 1. They put pictures on the door, which are easy to comprehend no matter what language you speak, 2. When you lock the door to your stall (which is really your own private compartment! Nice!), it rotates a little colored panel on the outside of the door to red. So when you enter a restroom, you look at the doors and see either red or green, and voila, you know which are occupied. New York restaurant designers, please take note!
Shortly before I left for France I ordered Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook: Strategies, Recipes, and Techniques of Classic Bistro Cooking. Now that I'm back and desperately craving all things French, I've dug into it, and wow! It's great! Not that I've made anything from it yet, but it's so readable (especially if you're a fan of his writing) and also so authentic.
My eating adventures last month in Paris really broadened my French culinary horizons -- and vocabulary -- and I found I recognized so many of the dishes that fill the book. Plus, he's just so frank, I find it refreshing, especially when it comes to discussing French food, which tends to receive some stuffy (or worse, insulting) treatment in the wrong hands. The back has a glossary to help clear up any confusion the reader may have about unknown terms. My favorite definition? That for my old friend foie gras:
FOIE GRAS: The fattened liver of a goose or duck. Unfortunately, an endangered menu item with the advent of angry, twisted, humorless anticruelty activists who've never had any kind of good sex or laughed heartily at a joke in their whole miserable lives and who are currently threatening and terrorizing chefs and their families to get the stuff banned. Likely to disappear from tables outside of France in our lifetimes.
Also spot-on:
CREME FRAICHE: Expensive French sour cream.
I'm heading back to New York City later this week and I'm going to eat at Les Halles. Not only has the cookbook piqued my interest, but also my apartment in Paris was right at Les Halles, the old central marketplace of Paris turned horrid underground shopping mall. It seems only fitting that I make a visit, and partake of the glories of the French table once again.
