[Photograph: Nick Kindelsperger] The club sandwich is a tall wonder containing turkey (sometimes chicken), lettuce, tomato, bacon, and no less than three slices of bread, all cut into quarters and secured with frilly toothpicks. I was so ready to have a gleeful romp with the American classic that I even bought the special toothpicks and a bag of chips to dump in the middle. You can't imagine my high spirit as I sat down to this light dinner. Nowadays the sandwich is bastardized because it is usually made as a three-decker, which is not authentic (whoever started that horror should be forced to eat three-deckers three times a day the rest of his life)... — James Beard on the...
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Shucking clams is no easy task. Julie of Kitchenography bought 50 clams and created her "own personal clam shucking boot camp." It wasn't easy, but once they were all shucked, she was in the free and clear. Although she technically broiled James Beard's baked clams, they're still every bit as delicious. I would actually prefer to broil them because it's faster and I want my bacon ASAP. Julie also links to some helpful videos on clam shucking if you have a hankering to learn how....
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For those of you too young to know about James Beard, he was a food writer, cooking teacher, and television food personality who in many ways legitimized American food. He wrote many wonderful books, including this week's Cook the Book, Beard on Food. Who was James Beard and why should everyone passionate about food know about him? Here's Mark Bittman from the book's introduction: Other people gave your recipes, sometimes detailed (Julia Child), sometimes spare and functional (Craig Claiborne). James Beard gave you logic, emotion, history, and consideration. He gave you confidence, and he let you relax. In a time when serious cooking meant French cooking. Beard was quintessentially American, a westerner whose mother ran a boarding house, a man...
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"Pigs are very beautiful animals...There is no point of view from which a really corpulent pig is not full of sumptuous and satisfying curves." - G.K. Chesterton The pig is "an encyclopedic animal, a meal on legs." - Grimod de La Reynière "I've long said that if I were about to be executed and were given a choice of my last meal, it would be bacon and eggs. There are few sights that appeal to me more than the streaks of lean and fat in a good side of bacon, or the lovely round of pinkish meat framed in delicate white fat that is Canadian bacon. Nothing is quite as intoxicating as the smell of bacon frying in the...
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5:57 PM: Mario Batali is not nervous. 6:01 PM: Jean-Georges Vongerichten looking dapper as usual. 6:05 PM: Cokie Roberts is an extraordinarily gracious and charming host....
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I'm going to be blogging live from The James Beard Awards tonight. It starts at 5:45, and when there's something noteworthy going on on-stage I'll be posting (photos, stories, anything my Treo allows me to. Anything you want answered or explained just let me know....
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