Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

01-07-2006

We Interrupt This Paris Love-Fest…

Sandra Purins is the lucky winner of an autographed copy of The Great Book of Chocolate.


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The Menu For Hope II raffle raised over $17,000 for UNICEF to aid the people of Pakistan. Big thanks to the many generous people, like Sandra, who contributed in our effort. I'm thrilled to be able to take you (wherever you are!) to my favorite ice cream place in the world for a few scoops of my favorite flavors.
May I suggest chocolat amer and caramel?...that's what I'm having!

Sandra...email me...I'm getting hungry!

Read the whole post by daveleb26 in Uncategorized | Comments Off
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01-06-2006

4. Fish boots

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Certain sections of gangway at Chanh Hung market are covered with thick cut grass or leaves. I think this is to prevent wellington boot wearers from slipping on ice or water. I like detail shots. Wellies and grass are key details of this market. Some wellies are white, some black. The white are a bit Sex and the City, but they're what Saigon's chic fishmongers are wearing this season....

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01-06-2006

Award Season

I'm one of the last to mention this (ironically, since I was one of the judges), but Kate has posted the nominees for the 2006 food blog awards. It was extremely difficult to whittle the many nominees down to a mere five in each category. Sometimes it was difficult to pick a top 10! Food blogs have taken off, and there are many talented writers and photographers hanging out their shingles. We read through zillions of posts and looked at gajillions of photos. I for one added several new blogs to my RSS Reader. Look through all the nominees, and you will too. Go. Read. Vote. Support the food blogging community that brings you so much pleasure.

And if you're caught up in the blog award frenzy, go nominate your favorites for the Bloggies, the ultimate award for our chunk of the internets. They even have a food blog category, which they introduced last year. The more nominations a blog gets, the more likely it is to show up in the final round.

Fed up with awards season? Check out Anil Dash's insightful and somewhat cynical take on all the self-congratulation.

Read the whole post by Derrick in Uncategorized | Comments Off
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01-06-2006

Les Fromages du Jour

As you may know, I've been nominated for the Best City Blog. Someone wrote that I wasn't really writing enough about Paris to be qualified, so I thought I'd better get on le stick about that!

The pressure! Le pression!
Hmm, what's very French and very Parisian that I can write about?

Um...How about my lunch...?


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Yes! That's a few slices of my pain aux ceriales from Le Grenier à Pain paired with some delightful cheeses that I discovered when visiting one of my absolute favorite fromagers here in Paris this morning.

Disclaimer:
I confess to a secret and unfulfilled ambition.

Except for working outside in the icy-cold winter and freezing my bourse off, getting up at a godawful hour, and lifting heavy wheels of cheese, my fantasy job is to work as a fromager. Being surrounded by big wheels of cheese and small pyramids of goat cheese, the smell of all those gooey, runny, and nutty cheeses...it all makes me delirious with pleasure
Ok, I guess I could deal with lifting the wheels of cheese, but getting up at 4am?
Now that's another story...

As a fromager, I would make recommendations to les clients. "Qu'est-ce que vous desirez, madame?", I would ask, ready to council the customer. (Using my perfect French, of course...this is my fantasy, remember?) I'd slice and wrap a fine selection of cheeses to serve to her her family after a well-prepared supper of roast pintade and pommes des terres rôti with a fine, crisp Sancerre or gravely, full-flavored Pomerol.

We'd make witty banter about Johnny Halliday and socks with whimsical cartoon figures on them while I selected a few fine cheeses, perhaps a dead-ripe Camembert de Normandie and a Corsican Brin d'Amour, covered with fragrant mountain herbs.

Ah, je rêve...

I visit many cheese shops, oops, I mean fromageries here in Paris. I search for shops that have unusual cheeses, since many of the best ones seem to focus on a particular region or type of cheese like les chèvres or fine mountain cheeses from the Savoie.

Although many of the outdoor markets have people selling cheese, I've found none better than N. Caillère at the Popincourt Market in the 11th arrondissement on the Boulevard Richard Lenoir. Twice a week, the two cheery women who run their stand never fail to prompt me to discover a cheese I've never tasted.
Such as this triple-crème Délice de Saint-Cyr...


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Triple-cream means the cheese has a minimum fat content of a whopping 75% (although that percentage refers to the amount of fat in the solids, and most cheeses are about 50% water and 50% solids...still, it ain't no rice cake.)
Although I ate it at it gooiest best, at room temperature, the cheese left a sweet, suprisingly cool aftertaste.

They also had a lovely, and well-aged Comté de Jura, a marvelously-nutty, full-flavored cheese made from raw cow's milk and is the most widely-produced cheese in France.
And it's popular for good reason; it's always excellent and pairs well with most other cheeses on a cheese plate as well as both white and red wines.


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I'm in love most goat cheeses; I seem to like them all. With their smooth, dreamy-white interior and their soft, gentle aroma of the farm, it doesn't matter to me whether they're fresh or aged. It's a rare day at the market for me if I don't have one tucked into my market basket.


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This Tomme de Chèvre is from a small farm and is called Vendômois. Although the outside has the fine crust of mold, I was told the cheese is rather young and the elasticity and suppleness of the p&acurc;te indeed suggests less affinage, or cave ripening.

N. Caillère
Fromager

-Popincourt Market
(Tuesday and Friday)

-Place Réunion Market
(Sunday)

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01-06-2006

Converting the Prunophobe

My wife has one of those ingrained childhood associations of prunes with prune juice that has left her avoiding the fruit in her adult life. What's more, the marketing efforts by the prune industry to re-brand the fruit as...

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01-06-2006

Food Blogs in USA Weekend

USA Weekend will run a story about food blogs this weekend. They list their favorites, which includes the usual suspects, plus me, but I'm delighted to see Molly and the Too Many Chefs gang in the list. Welcome to readers from USA Weekend; thanks for stopping by.

It's been a little while since we've had one of our famous dinner parties. If you listen hard, you can hear my heavy sigh. Plus, we owe a few people. For the curious, here are some links to past favorites: my description of prepping for a dinner party, the 10-course meal we did in 2003, and Parts one, two,and three of our cat-sitter dinner. I guess I never wrote up parts four and five.

And here's a sneak peek at one course I want to serve at a dinner in the near future: Pork Fat Three Ways.

Read the whole post by Derrick in Uncategorized | Comments Off
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01-06-2006

A foodie’s guide to missing a flight at SFO

HkflowerloungeAs any self respecting foodie who missed her flight at SFO yesterday, I knew just what to do.  Hong Kong Flower Lounge.  That's what. 

So that's what we ended up doing.  After a midnight rush back to Santa Cruz from my place in the city to fecth my passport, we found ourselves yesterday morning at SFO two hours after we were supposed to because of a bit of confusion over the flight time change.  PizzettanightNo more flights to Mexico that day, we were to wait until the next day, this morning, to go there.

What to do, well, instead of going 101 North up to the city, we went South for about a mile, took the Milbrae exit and less than a mile away at 51 Milbrae Ave is one of the best dim sum houses in the SF Bay Area.

Then for dinner back in the city, we had a simple but wonderful pizza at Pizzetta 211.  Three pizzas and a salad and an apple/ginger cake later, we got home, full and ready for another try at SFO.  Keep your fingers crossed for us?

And while you are at it, perhaps you'll drop by the Accidental Hedonist and vote for Chez Pim's Truffle Don post, which has been nominated for the Best Post: Reader's Choice on this year's Food Blog Award.  Thank you thank you thank you.

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01-06-2006

Crab and Avocado Salad

I think I'm in love with this recipe. Short and easy to prepare (under 5 minutes after you set your ingredients), and also very tasty. If you want a bit of kick to this, leave the seeds in the jalapeno peppers.

Place the Crab meat in a medium glass mixing bowl. Add the jalapenos, Onion, garlic, tomato and cilantro. Mix well. Add the oil, salt and pepper.

Fold in the chopped avacados, being careful not to smash the salad. Mix in the lime juice. Either serve immediately, or cover and chill.

Serves 6

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Read the whole post by Kate Hopkins in Uncategorized | Comments Off
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01-06-2006

2005 Food Blog Awards - Vote Now!

The polls are open now over at the Accidental Hedonist for the 2005 Food Blog Awards. Kate has come up with a nifty little voting page, making it even easier for you to select your favourites in the food blogging world. We nominated Barbara of Tigers & Strawberries for her thought-provoking piece on eating meat and accepting the moral consequences, and we strongly encourage you to go vote for her. We are also nominated for the second time for the Best Group Blog. (Alas, that Best Photography award remains elusively beyond our grasp...) So if you'd like to show us you STILL really like us, please do hop over and give us a vote!

Our deepest thanks, as always, to Kate for organising this event so selflessly and competently. She deserves an award herself though she is modestly not included in the nominees!

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01-05-2006

Vote Your Heart Out

Ok, so I decided I'm not going to do a massive end of the year "Best Of" post because...well...I think I missed the boat on that. Instead, I'm going to point you over to The Accidental Hedonist where I've been nominated for not one but two Food Blog Awards: Best Food Blog Humor and Best City Blog. If you get a chance, why don't you mosy on down there and click my self-esteem up a notch. You should also vote for the many worthy contenders in the other categories. Also: if you get a chance, nominations are open for The Bloggies and there's a food category. Wouldn't it be fun to go there and vote for your favorite food bloggers too? I mean if you don't exercise your right to vote, you have no right complaining about food blogs raising taxes or raping your children. Be a patriotic blog reader and do as this post's title suggests: vote your heart out and have a great weekend!

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