Posted by Allison Hemler, September 3, 2008 at 8:30 PM
Yesterday, we awed at Anthony Bourdain's daughter's food loves. Today, Robert Pincus, a blogger at Gourmet, reflects on his toddler's preferred tastes at the farmers' market: crusty bread, pâtés, and goat cheese. He observes:
She’s being pickier, tossing that lovely bread on the ground, so I open the bag of Dungeness crab claw meat I bought as a surprise for my wife. I give Squishy a bite. She laughs out loud, then starts grabbing. Six claws, about $8 worth at $34 a pound, are gone in less than five minutes. Don’t get used to it, little girl.
After a previous visit to the Santa Monica Farmers' Market, he also feeds her green garlic risotto and fresh mozzarella. While I'm sure Pincus' daughter will eventually start loving grilled cheese and PB&J, for now she continues the trend we're noticing: very young children happily consuming high quality ingredients, by eating what their parents eat. However, these kids will probably not be gastronomes for the rest of their lives, as SE reader condiment notes: "at 18 months, a child will eat almost anything, including the contents of the catbox if you're not vigilant."
Posted by Hannah Howard, June 19, 2008 at 3:15 PM
Why am I always dousing my eggs in hot sauce while my dad winces at the faintest chile heat? Why do I believe beets embody deliciousness while they rank at the top of your "utterly disgusting" list?
Prize-winning veteran journalist Bruce Feiler weighs in on this question and a host of others in a fascinating article Gourmet story about the fast-changing science of taste. Flavor chemist Terry Acree from Cornell University says, "Flavor chemistry is finished." He explains:
“Flavor chemistry is finding the chemical molecules that are important to aroma and taste. We spent decades doing this. But the other side of the equation is what’s been missing: how these chemicals interact with our bodies. That’s the part we’re getting to now.”
And they are getting there, thanks to big breakthroughs, many accelerated by the decoding of the human genome in 2003. By isolating the genome's individual taste receptors, scientists can begin to understand how we respond to every flavor known (and perhaps unknown) to humankind.
Posted by Ed Levine, November 13, 2007 at 7:15 AM
Ruth Reichl has become the first rock star food writer. I know, because when I walk down the street with her, people ask her for autographs. From her stints as a restaurant critic, first for the Los Angeles Times and then for the New York Times (where she became famous for her elaborate disguises to elude recognition in restaurants), she created the story-based, narrative-driven restaurant review. Now from her perch as the editor in chief of Gourmet, certainly the best known of the food glossies, she has succeeded in making a formerly stodgy magazine utterly contemporary without losing its gravitas and relevance. We caught up with her on the phone a few days ago to talk turkey. We found out there's hell to pay if you bring a dish to her Thanksgiving. And she couldn't disagree more with Christopher Kimball about how to approach turkey day.
Find out what Ruth Reichl is cooking at her Thanksgiving after the jump.
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Posted by Ed Levine, July 30, 2007 at 3:00 PM
Tim Stark of Eckerton Hill Farm, a genuine Greenmarket superstar farmer (and former management consultant by way of Princeton), is writing a memoir due to be published by Doubleday in 2008.
Presumably to help him meet his deadline, Gourmet magazine is publishing what it is calling Stark's blog. It's not a blog, it's really more like a series of journal entries, but it is informative, smart, and frequently amusing.
My favorite post to date had Stark moving a snapping turtle off the road near his farm in Pennsylvania. Grabbing the snapping turtle by the tail, Stark ushers it to safety, and then implores his readers to do the same if they find themselves in a similar situation.
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Posted by Lia Bulaong, May 3, 2007 at 12:15 PM
Gourmet's 2 Guys (a.k.a. Alan Sytsma and Ian Knauer) are starting a new series of posts investigating underground supper clubs, secretive reservation-only dinner parties run by chefs and hosted in private residences and rented spaces whose waiting lists are longer than The French Laundry's:
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