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Category Archives: Travel
Cooking On the Road (Tools I Traveled With)
If you're on the road and will be cooking in unfamiliar kitchens, what are the essentials you cannot afford to be without? Thomas Keller once told me he always brought three things, kosher salt, string, and his pepper mill. Everything else, a restaurant kitchen was likely to have. But what about when you're traveling to a rental house, as I did last week. A rental house you count on providing you with one crappy non-stick pan, a small plastic cutting board, a cheap pot just big enough to cook a box of spaghetti in, and an array of dull and serrated knives.
Donna photographed the tools I brought with me to Key West to cook 9 consecutive dinners for 16 people. A ...
Waiting For Donna
Race week in Key West is a massive boondoggle for me. I wake, look out at the water, drink coffee, write until noon, personal writing, then head to the house where I cook for 12 to 16 people every night.
I straighten the kitchen, throw away a few forgotten red plastic cups with limes floating in them, make a list, do some shopping, prep what can be done ahead (make some sauces, or a stock, pick and blanch green veg). Then I go back to my room at The Galleon, condos right on the docks, and have some coffee and write and re-write some more.
The boys return from being on the water and I put ...
I straighten the kitchen, throw away a few forgotten red plastic cups with limes floating in them, make a list, do some shopping, prep what can be done ahead (make some sauces, or a stock, pick and blanch green veg). Then I go back to my room at The Galleon, condos right on the docks, and have some coffee and write and re-write some more.
The boys return from being on the water and I put ...
Also posted in Food Adventure, Food Culture, Food Writing, Writing Tagged key west, photos, refection, writing 16 Comments
Book Tour Blessings
I hate book tours. I hate leaving my house. But years ago when I was interviewing David McCullough for my book Wooden Boats, he noted how he hears that from authors all the time and said in his typical exuberant way, and with that inimitable voice, “I love book tours!” It helps that he is universally adored, of course, and is a fine and generous man fawned over wherever he appears. But I thought of him on my return from Durham and Chapel Hill where Anton Zuiker—communications director for Duke Medical Center 9 to 5, and journalist, blogger, husband, dad, angel and friend at all other hours—masterminded a book tour stop for me, in honor of ...
Also posted in Books, Eggs, Food Adventure, Restaurants Tagged Anton Zuiker, David McCullough, Dorie Greenspan, Kojo Nnamdi, Lantern, Monica Bhide, North Carolina, NPR, The Great American Cookbook, The Monti, The State Of Things, Watt's Grocery Comments closed
Chicago, XOCO & Chocolate
I'm such a homebody, I dread book tour trips and typically stress about them, and I nearly always return thrilled to have gone and surprised and amazed by what I encountered. Last week was Chicago and the schedule was so tight that I took a taxi from O'Hare straight to the Chicago Tribune's test kitchen where Monica Eng, formerly a food reporter now on the investigative beat, reverted to her former purview to join me in making an easy Coq au Vin from Ruhlman's Twenty (I forgot how good it was till I tasted it—haven't made it since Donna took the pix). I had time for a quick lunch after across the street at The Purple Pig (pig ears and the artichokes), excellent casual place recommended by a twitter friend.
That night there was ...
Also posted in Books, chefs, Desserts, Food Adventure Tagged Brendon Edwards, butcher & larder, Chicago, chicago tribune, chopping block, emilia juocys, John Peters, Nightwood, Paul Kahan, Rick Bayless, Shaw Lash, The Bristol, The Publican, XOCO Comments closed
Travel Bites
Also posted in Article, Food Adventure, Food Culture Tagged new york times, top foods, Travel, What to eat in the city Comments closed
Simply Ming: Revising the Dump-and-Stir Format
For years I’ve wanted to devise a new way to present how-to cooking information on a show. There's a reason why they've been dubbed dump-and-stir; because they’re inherently rote. Given that there are only about twenty things you need to know to cook just about anything, it’s inevitable that presenting a few of those techniques is going repetitive after oh, 40 or 50,000 shows. Yes, people are pushing the format. Michael Symon does a good job with Cook Like an Iron Chef. Others are trying to put cooking info in the framework of a story, adding layers of media.
My old friend from Cooking Under Fire, Ming Tsai, invited me out to be part of his ninth season of "Simply Ming," a how-to, yes, but always interesting, always informative, with travel, and knowledgeable guest chefs (look for ...
Bocuse d’Or—Post Game
Just returned to snowy Clevelandtown, a twenty-two hour haul from Lyon via Heathrow and O’Hare, thinking all the while on the Bocuse d’Or competition and feeling bad for Team USA, and wondering what to make of it all.
“This was a tough one to swallow,” Chef Kaysen wrote in an email, hours after the competition. “I think I need some months to really draw all the inspiration that was seen there. I realized in the beginning of the day after seeing both Denmark and Sweden that we did not play the game—we went there and did our food, we did what we thought was right because we loved it so much, but clearly there is a defined game in the way that food that ...
Also posted in chefs, Competition, Food Adventure Tagged all-clad, Bocuse d’Or, Chef Kaysen, france, Geranium, Joshua David Stein, lyon, Rasmus Kofoed Comments closed
















