This comment made me laugh:
"It's like watching Mario and Bittman's televised mid-life crisis."
Thank you, Lisa23.
Hi Dominic,
Thanks for snagging the book! Before I was The Amateur Gourmet I would eat frozen California Pizza Kitchen pizzas by the caseload; I'd make those Pilsbury cinnamon buns for a treat; I made a decent chili. But mostly I'd eat out, order in, very rarely cook at home. Amazing how much has changed in just a few years...
Adam
Ed, it just so happens that I had Brooklyn Fish Camp's fried clams just a few days ago. I found them perplexing. They were whole steamer clams with the little bootie still on, the whole thing fried so it looked a bit like a giant sperm. They paled in comparison to the fried clams I had at The Clam Shack (I must've gone there on a better day than David Leite). I much prefer Brooklyn Fish Camp's Oyster Po' Boy and Trout BLT.
Wondee Siam II has a terrific duck salad. It's almost like duck bacon mixed in with chiles and pineapple and cilantro and all sorts of goodies. I highly recommend it.
This is the best post title ever.
Trattoria Alla Madonna. That's the first place we went to when we got to Venice and it was fantastic and totally memorable. Really fresh seafood--I still remember the seafood risotto I had--and not touristy at all. Also, don't miss the Peggy Guggenheim museum when you're there. It's off the beaten track, but really cool. Another tip is to go to Mario Batali's site and check out his Italy picks--I'm sure he has a section on Venice.
I may try Mario Batali's lasagna with the homemade pasta dough. Could be too ambitious though--but the occasion is probably worth it!
I'd never reveal anything about myself--too dangerous!
Ok, I'm sorry but somebody has to make a joke about Liberace and sticky buns.
Thank you.
Lou, I actually agree with your feedback on that post---I'm here in San Fran and trying to blog as much as I can about my trip, while at the same time not wanting to spend too much time on the net when I could be out doing things. So I write posts like that almost like an e-mail--I re-read them once and click post without too much fussing over it. It's just a choice I make and for the most part my readers don't seem to mind.
The work I do for Serious Eats, on the other hand, I do spend lots of time on. And my book, you'll be surprised to see when it comes out, has gone through almost a year of editing---I've been revising, reworking, reshaping, rethinking each chapter so much that you may not even recognize the work as my own. That's because it's just a different medium.
It's funny, Livetotravel started this thread and then slammed me in the video section and slammed me elsewhere too, and then I clicked on my site because "Livetotravel" sounded familiar, and after doing a search I see Livetotravel's left 121 comments on my blog over the course of more than a year. Quite a lot for someone who hates me and my writing.
Well hello---I'm surprised to read some of the comments in this thread. There's been no break-up between myself and Serious Eats: I'm currently working on re-designing my site and temporarily took down the Serious Eats widget while trying to figure out how to clean things up. With the new Serious Eats format (with more focus put on blog updates) I'll now be writing one column a month; but, as someone pointed out above, this week will bring a new contribution from me---I'll let you be surprised.
As for my writing, I've studied writing from my first year of college, when I declared a Creative Writing major, to the two years of writing grad school I did at NYU where I did a masters thesis with Pulitzer Prize winner Marsha Norman. There are lots of ways to evaluate writing: you can look at grammar, you can look at sentence structure, you can look at the nuts and bolts and ignore the larger edifice. I consider myself a stylist more than anything else: I like to tell stories in an idiosyncratic way. Those who like my writing (and that group includes Michael Ruhlman, Ed Levine, Regina Schrambling--all of whom are blurbing my book) admire it because there's lots of life to it. That's what I do. And, if I may say so, many of the blogs that I find dull and off-putting are blogs with no life to them. You can grammar check and spell check all you want, but if your writing is dull, no one care's how much Strunk and White you've digested.
Graham--I'm surprised that you said what you said in a public forum where I'd be likely to read it. That's nice that your editor friend thinks my writing's a "train wreck," I'll keep my thoughts about your writing to myself.
Hello readers, thanks for the praise! A certified playwright is someone, like me, who spent two years in grad school studying playwriting. I think the reference, though, is a bit oblique so my bio will be clearer next week!
ALl the best, Adam
Are you people MAD? The answer is onion bagel--lightly toasted--nova spread, onion and tomato. Duh!
Cauliflower Penis.
(Just kidding.)
Prune's giant pear pancake is the best I've ever had. I highly recommend that.
Well I, for one, really enjoyed this video: it was great seeing Jane and Michael Stern live in action and I'm fascinated by the idea that ketchup does a disservice to a quality hamburger. I'll have to check this place out when, in my next life, I ace my SATs and get a scholarship to Yale.
Hey I'm from Boca Raton! My parents love the steak at New York Prime. I love the chicken pasta at Max's Grille. TooJay's has decent deli food. The bagels at Bagelworks (at least the way I remember them) are among my favorites (get the works with lox spread and whitefish salad.) Otherwise, Boca's a bit of a wasteland. Good luck!
Oops! No, Meg, sad to say that Glo's eggs Benedict does have Canadian bacon. Craig is furious that I forgot to mention that. Editors, please fix this immediately!
Esca! Esca! Esca! Hope that helps.
Ya, I think the final blow came in putting it in the oven. When it came out of the apple juice/cranberry juice mixture, after simmering for four hours, it was really tender and sweet and moist. I should've skipped the glazing step because the glaze was more like a paste and the oven was too hot with the potatoes and the duck fat. Next time I'll try an easier ham--if there is a next time!
Hmmm. Well here was the nature of our discussion last night: 20% is what we tip a waiter at a restaurant. This is for the work involved in serving an entire meal--a meal that often takes over an hour to complete. The job of delivering food is always the same: the same bag is carried to your apt regardless of how much you order. If you order $5 worth of food or $100 worth of food, it's the same work involved for the delivery person (give or take the extra weight of the bag.) If you order $10 worth of food, should you only tip $2? Similarly, if you order $100 worth of food, should you really tip $20? I think it's a complicated issue.
On my first date with Craig, my boyfriend, I had cassoulet at Lucien in the East Village. I recommend it highly, but I don't recommend having cassoulet on a first date. All those beans do not romance make.
I'm starting to appreciate darker chocolates. Recently I made hot chocolate with 60% bittersweet chocolate and added Grand Marnier because my friends are lushes. I thought it tasted fancy and was impressed with myself. But at the movies I'll happily eat a box of Buncha Crunch (Nestle Crunch Bar bits.)
So my local grocery store sells D'Artagnan truffle butter right next to the D'Artagnan chicken. I was thinking of rubbing this truffle butter all over the chicken, getting some under the skin by the breast, and sprinkling with salt and pepper--maybe stuffing with rosemary--and roasting at 400. Would that be good? How would you do it?
In the summer, all the magazines, TV shows and cookbooks espouse the joys of grilling. But I live in a tiny Brooklyn apartment with no yard: what are my options? Should I get a grill pan? Buy a portable grill and bring it to a park? How do you grill when you don't have a grill?
I'm trying to reconcile the Italian tendency to avoid milky coffee drinks after big meals with the tendency to consume cheese and milky desserts. Discuss!
With food delivery, do you tip a percentage like you do at a restaurant or do you tip a fixed dollar amount? My friends and I weren't sure when we discussed this issue last night.
The Amateur Gourmet's recipe for Susan Boyled Potatoes makes a dish that is "seemingly plain on the outside but on the inside an embarrassment of riches." They're stuffed with a pancetta-enhanced cheese fondue sauce.... More
Congrats Ed & Serious Eats team! It's amazing to think about how much this site has grown over the past two years. I'm proud to have been a part of it.