taste
Let's talk food, from restaurants and recipes to farmers markets, food issues and wine. Lee Svitak Dean, Rick Nelson, Kim Ode and Bill Ward will start the conversation.
resize text 
find us on Facebook
follow on Twitter
subscribe via RSS
Posts about On the national scene
For last-minute shoppers of hard-to-please cooks
Posted by: Lee Svitak Dean Updated: December 24, 2012 - 11:16 AM
You've only got hours to shop if you're still hunting for a Christmas gift. (Really, you still have shopping left?)
If you've got a cook with an attitude (think "more naughty than nice") -- or at least one that doesn't mind crude and rude in a sense of humor -- any of three new books may strike a fancy. Two of them are by anonymous writers.
A reprint of Anthony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential" -- what's billed as an "Insider's Edition" -- is out with Bourdain's handwritten comments, though the notes are few, far between and generally not very insightful. A press release says that 50 pages are annotated. (That includes many lightweight comments such as the one at left.) The handwritten intro -- three pages of scrawl, would have filled less than a single page of type, so "annotation" is a bit of a misnomer. Still, his story of what he calls the "culinary underbelly" holds up amazingly well after 12 years, though a few historical references may be obscure to up-and-coming cooks who are unfamiliar to such references as Hunt and Liddy or Patty Hearst.
Bourdain's memoir of his time in the restaurant biz is always blunt, often crude and definitely opinionated. He set the tone for many other food memoirists that followed.
Tired of Anthony Bourdain? Then perhaps Ruth Bourdain may be to your liking. The anonymous Twitterer, a parody mashup of Anthony Bourdain and Ruth Reichl, has come out with a book, "Comfort Me with Offal: Ruth Bourdain's Guide to Gastronomy." The title is a takeoff of Reichl's memoir "Comfort Me with Apples." The book is as irreverant and crude in its humor as Ruth Bourdain's 140-character (or less) thoughts found daily on Twitter. Let's just say that there's very little I could quote from the book for a newspaper blog. Who is Ruth Bourdain? Well, New York magazine and I (as reported a year ago) think it's Robert Sietsema, restaurant critic of the Village Voice.
Have a "Fifty Shades of Grey" fan on your list? "Fifty Shades of Chicken: a parody in a cookbook," may be the gift for you to present. This, too, has a pseudonym for an author, FL Fowler (who else?). The book offers vignettes of Miss Hen, a young "unexplored" chicken, at the mercy of Mr. Blades, the cook, who teaches her the pleasures of being whipped up for dinner. It is a one-note joke carried through 50 recipes, which include Mustard-Spanked Chicken, Hot Rubbed Hen, Extra-Virgin Breasts, Spatchcocked Chicken and many more that will make the occasional cook blush, with food porn pictures of the recipes, plus the occasional Chippendale shot of the cook.
Buyer beware: Choose carefully if you're gifting any of these books.
The most brutal restaurant review ever
Posted by: Lee Svitak Dean Updated: November 15, 2012 - 10:58 AM
Photo from Food Network
Look out, Marilyn Hagerty. (You remember her, surely, the restaurant reviewer from the Grand Forks Herald who attracted national attention with her review of the Olive Garden?)
Her review is likely to be overtaken by another talker for best-read, this from Pete Wells, restaurant reviewer for the New York Times, who wrote a blistering commentary of Guy Fieri's Times Square eatery, Guy's American Kitchen & Bar -- and did so entirely in the form of questions.
"Has anyone ever told you that your high-wattage passion for no-collar American food makes you television's answer to Calvin Trillin, if Mr. Trillin bleached his hair, drove a Camaro and drank Boozy Creamsicles? When you cruise around the country for your show 'Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,' rasping out slangy odes to the unfancy places where Americans like to get down and greasy, do you really mean it? Or is it all an act? Is that why the kind of cooking you celebrate on television is treated with so little respect at Guy's American Kitchen & Bar?" Wells wrote.
Later, Wells asked, "Is this how you roll in Flavor Town?"
We will see. Will the tourists in Times Square notice?
UPDATE: Poynter (the journalism think-tank in Florida) interviews Pete Wells about the review.
Papaya tree mystery at the White House
Posted by: Lee Svitak Dean Updated: October 24, 2012 - 12:25 PM
At far right, the papaya tree in a pot. Photos by Lee Svitak Dean
As I was weaving in and out of the vegetables in the White House garden in September, on a tour with the Association of Food Journalists, a small tree planted in a pot caught my eye.
Like everything else in the garden, it was labeled for easy identification: "Papaya."
"How odd," I thought at the time. "A papaya tree in D.C.? Must ask why it's here."
Cris Comerford and Bill Yosses, White House chefs
Then the tour, led by White House executive chefs Cris Comerford and Bill Yosses, moved on to look at the corn and squash off in the corner. I turned my attention to a bird house on the perimeter of the garden. Could it be a bluebird house? (It was actually a security camera disguised as a bird house.) Trailing behind the chefs, distracted by the occasional bee from the nearby White House hive, I continued to snap photos and took notes and, before long, the tour was over.
Not until I was tweeting about the garden later in the day did I remember the tree. (No live tweeting is allowed on the White House grounds for security reasons.) One of my photos showed the tree in the distance. "WH garden found in corner of South Lawn, includes seeds from Thomas Jefferson plants. Papaya tree at right," I noted on Twitter.
Then a direct message on Twitter stopped me: "It's a fig tree in the WH garden BTW."
Oh no. How could I make such a mistake?
When I returned to Minneapolis, I frantically read through the "American Garden," the new book by Michelle Obama on the White House garden and the nation's community gardens, searching for a mention of papayas. There was nothing, though there's a description of a fig tree now in the White House garden that came from the seeds of a tree Thomas Jefferson planted at his home at Monticello. I searched my photographs for any other shots that could verify what I thought was the papaya tree. Again, nothing. Doubt lingered. Perhaps I did confuse a label for a fig tree with that for a papaya, though even on a distracted day that sounded uncharacteristically careless of me.
Way too out of character, in fact. I called my buddy who had accompanied me on the trip, Nancy Stohs, food editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, to see if she had, by chance, photographed the tree.
Photo by Nancy Stohs.
She had. The proof was in the photo. The papaya tree was not only in the garden, but it was full of fruit.
Still, why would there be a papaya tree in the garden, which otherwise featured fruits and vegetables found in nontropical gardens: pumpkins and chiles, kale, tomatoes and blueberries.There had to be a story behind the papaya.
I sent emails to Washington, D.C., where I was eventually directed to the appropriate -- but anonymous -- administrative source.
The papaya tree, in fact, has been in the White House garden since summer 2011. It was placed there in a pot -- presumably because D.C. is not a tropical climate -- because the National Park Service thought it would be "interesting to have in the garden." The park service cares for the grounds of the White House, which includes the garden. The tree is brought inside the White House during the winter.
Photo by Nancy Stohs.
In the summer of 2011, the papaya tree had many flowers but no fruit. In 2012, there was plenty of fruit, as the photograph shows.
Case closed. Life can go on. There are home-grown papayas at the White House. My reporting skills are intact.
For more on the White House garden (and the bee hive, security camera and executive chefs), read this earlier story.
The security camera is inside the birdhouse.
The next James Beard Award winners
Posted by: Rick Nelson Updated: October 23, 2012 - 4:49 PM
The James Beard Foundation needs you. Well, your opinion anyway.
Winners of the foundation's annual restaurant and chef awards won't be announced until the evening of May 6, 2013, from the stage of Avery Fisher Hall in New York City's Lincoln Center. But now's the time to tell the foundation which restaurants and chefs should be up for consideration in 21 categories, including Outstanding Bar Program, Best New Restaurant, Rising Star Chef of the Year, Outstanding Pastry Chef and Best Chef: Midwest.
Go here and share your opinions. Registration is easy, requiring a name, ZIP code and email address. It's fast, and it's free. Deadline is Dec. 31st.
When the foundation's annual book awards winners are announced in New York City on May 3rd, e-books will be included in the same categories as print books, a first. "The James Beard Book Awards are designed to recognize excellence, and we'll be looking for it regardless of whether it comes on paper or on a screen," said book committee head Matt Sartwell.
In addition, the foundation's Restaurant Design award will now recognize two categories of entries: Restaurants of 75 seats and over, and restaurants of 75 seats and under. And for the first time, restaurants and chefs in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico will be eligible for consideration in the foundation's restaurant and chef awards.
Nominees in all book, journalism, design, broadcast media and restaurant and chef categories will be announced on March 18, 2013.
Casting auditions for MasterChef
Posted by: Lee Svitak Dean Updated: October 11, 2012 - 9:23 AM
Are you ready for primetime cooking? Want to face the wrath of judges Gordon Ramsay, Joe Bastianich and Graham Elliot before millions of viewers?
MasterChef is now casting for its fourth season and looking for amateur cooks with talent. An open casting call will be held Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Le Cordon Bleu, 1315 Mendota Heights Road, Mendota Heights 55120.
Keep in mind that this is a casting call WITH FOOD. You will need to bring a dish for the casting judges (who are not the same as the TV judges) to taste -- and it should be something that can withstand you being in line for a long time. There will be no place to warm food or to cook it before it is served to the judges, and there will be only a little time for plating. Contestants need to bring utensils for serving the dish. Wow, this sounds like a cooking challenge for the show itself!
If you can't attend the casting call, you can do a video and send that in (see details). Deadline for entries is Nov. 30, 2012.
More rules for contestants from the folks at Fox:
* Must be 18 by Jan. 1, 2013
* Cannot have worked as a professional chef in the past or present
* Cannot be earning income now from preparing fresh food in a professional kitchen.
* Must be available for nine weeks of shooting the show from January to April 2013.
Contestants are advised to pre-register before arriving at the event. In addition, there is an 11-page application form.
For application instructions, audition guidelines and other details, go to www.masterchefcasting.com.
And please, when you audition, do not bring with you fireworks, weapons, air mattresses or children. Those are on the list of forbidden items for the audition.
ADVERTISEMENT
recent posts
- D'Amico Kitchen checking out of Le Meridien Chambers
- For last-minute shoppers of hard-to-please cooks
- Sunday supper: Corn bread stuffing
- The search for holiday cookie tins
- Best cranberry relish ever
- Thanksgiving facts: calories, turkeys, cranberries and more
- A farmers market Thanksgiving
- (Really) last-minute Thanksgiving shopping options
- Best-of-the-best holiday cookies
- The most brutal restaurant review ever
- Charlie Awards winners announced
- Fitger's alters expansion plans
- Cookie contest: We tested, we tasted, we judged.
- Papaya tree mystery at the White House
- The next James Beard Award winners
- A 24-hour Madison eat-a-thon
- Now that's a pie
- Casting auditions for MasterChef
Post By Category
ADVERTISEMENT
inside the StarTribune
-
425 Portland Av. S.
Minneapolis, MN 55488
(612) 673-4000
- Company
- Subscriber Services
- Website
- Buy Ads
- Store
- Connect with Us
© 2013 StarTribune. All rights reserved.
StarTribune.com is powered by Limelight Networks
Newspaper Subscriptions
eEdition
RSS
Newsletters