- It’s All Under Control
When I have people over for dinner, I like to get as much as possible done the night before. There’s no reason to abandon the caterer’s methodology just because I’m cooking for four instead of forty. Comprehensive prep gives the illusion of effortlessness, and minimizes the likelihood of my slicing off a finger once the wine is flowing. (Revealing this on my blog probably shatters the illusion–but I don’t think my guests are reading.)
I’ve just packed a stack of Smitten Kitchen’s matcha shortbread biscuits (minus the almond essence) into a quart container. (They’ll be accompanying spiced lychees and vanilla pots de crème, both already chilling in the fridge.) Red Cook’s drunken chicken has been relaxing in its own aspic since early this morning–I plan to serve it skinless and shredded, mixed with shelled, quick-pickled edamame and showered in toasted sesame.
Once I’ve julienned my dried shiitake mushrooms, which I’ve been plumping in miso stock, I’ll start on the shrimp-and-carrot dumplings. I might as well deep-fry my shallots while I’m at it. Tonight’s work will leave me with plenty of time tomorrow for what’s really important: applying a ton of makeup.
- Wednesday Reading List #1
Until the New York Times dining section moves away from Anglo-flavored home cooking chronicles and paeans to locasnores (”this baking powder has so much terroir“), I’ll be compiling a weekly list of bits and bobs I’ve enjoyed in the past seven days.
- Stick To Butchering Meat
Spotted from a sidewalk café on Smith St, Brooklyn.Dear Budweiser Truck Artist,
You only had four words to get right, one of which was eight feet wide. The task didn’t exactly call for micro-level proofreading. How much merchandise did you sample before you painted this?
Yours, agog,
Michele
…
Call me a prig, a pedant, the grammar police. To my prescriptivist mind, these are compliments, if not blatant come-ons.
Yes, I collect crimes against language, and when I’ve assembled enough material, I explode into a rant. (I’m evidently not alone in this preoccupation.)
A tasty dish is a tasty dish, no matter how it’s spelled or phrased. But as far as first impressions go, a spelling or grammar error on an otherwise promising menu is like VPL on a YSL gown. Restaurateurs, you can do better.
I’m not interested in pillorying individual establishments for isolated typos. I’m concerned with industry-wide trends, the most irksome of which I am highlighting here. As always, I welcome additions to the list.
- When Boyfriends Cook
Even in our post-feminist age, every relationship has inequalities. A successful relationship is one that negotiates those inequalities, however fragile and intricate the balance.
For example, my boyfriend went to a better university than I did. Therefore, I use his varsity sweatshirt as cold-weather PJs and attend Harvard in my sleep. The solution relies, to be sure, on a fairly juvenile mindset (mine), but it works.
My boyfriend is a magazine editor. On the rare occasions (OK, sole occasion) that I have allowed him to edit my work, he has brought unprecedented clarity to my dense and labored prose. And that’s fine by me, because I know that when he gets home every night, I serve up unprecedented goodness on our kitchen table.
Every once in a while, though, he gets it into his head that he’s going to make dinner.
