A Few Of My Favorite Food Blogs, Part 1

The community of food bloggers is quite amazing. We've got professionals taking a break from their speed racks, newbies making their first stir-fry, vegans and carnivores, molecular gastronomists and hardcore traditionalists. I thought I'd start out the new year by sharing a few of the food blogs that I regularly read, whether it is for inspiration, recipes, photography or a chuckle. There are many more than will fit in a single post, so I'll make this an occasional feature of old favorites and new finds. Feel free to use the comments to let me know of other blogs I should check out!

In no particular order:

Chadzilla - Chad is a chef in a Miami hotel, where they do some pretty insane avant-garde food. The writing is often personal, about his team, the thrills and challenges of a large restaurant, and the "Paradigm" dinners that they create, with lots of snapshots of intriguing dishes. Check out these 5-taste "peacocks".

Foodbeam - Fanny is a wildy energetic, enthusiastic, and altogether charming 23-year-old pastry chef in France. I've followed her journey through school, internships at famous patisseries, and even gainful employment :). As if cranking out hundreds of buche de noel wasn't enough work, she also makes and sells art, takes amazing photos, and spreads joy throughout the blogosphere. Keep an eye, she's going places.

Frantic Foodie - Keren writes both for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and on her own site. If you eat in Seattle, you need to follow her for the latest on restaurants and special events, plus some great recipes. She's got a real talent for connecting people and sharing the news, so if you've got food-related info in the Puget Sound region, definitely holler at her.

An Obsession With Food - Derrick and I are both programmers by day and cooks by night. His posts are thoughtful and varied, but with a particular focus on wine - which makes sense given that he teaches a Fundamentals of Wine Study course at UC Berkeley, which I wish I could take. I liked his recent suggestion that a tactile, shared appetizer plate creates conviviality for your guests.

Ideas In Food - If I were on a dialup connection (the Internet equivalent of a desert island), this might be the blog I'd bring with me. Alex and Aki's site is aptly named, because they generate more ideas and questions before breakfast than most of us do all day.  Celery leaf gnocchi anybody? One of the most influential blogs for molecular gastronomy, but their food is grounded in flavor and texture combinations that please, not merely surprise. Their plating is stunning too. I'm even more amazed that they've been able to keep up the posting with their recent arrival.

I hope this list was useful! Let me know what you think, I'd love to share more of favorites.

Madeleines With Munchkins - Baking With Children

Madeleine cookies - or really, teacakes

My goal for this post is to write about madeleines without mentioning Proust (again).

Mini-me is obsessed with those little packets of three madeleines sold at the Starbucks' register, so I asked if she'd like to make them at home some day. Of course the answer was yes. Remembering that Heidi of 101cookbooks had run a madeleine recipe over a year ago that looked intriguing, we opted to follow hers rather than Joy of Cooking (or more research).

Looking now, I see the recipes are dramatically different! Joy calls for no lemon zest(!), double the flour to butter ratio(!), uses pastry flour instead of all-purpose, and uses baking powder where Heidi uses none. I guess I'll have to try this version next for comparison. I'm pretty sure the pastry flour at least is a good idea, for a more tender crumb.

They definitely turned out great, it was all we could do to not scarf the whole batch the moment they cooled off. Just the right amount of lemon flavor, and a tender/chewy bite.

Sarina pointed out that they are more like a cake than a cookie, and in fact Joy refers to them as a teacake. The beating of the sugar & eggs is very much like a sponge cake.

Although madeleines seem like a good thing to be a purist about, I could imagine using lime, grapefruit or orange zest instead. You won't catch me making Thai-spiced madeleines with coconut foam though!

Kiddo really enjoyed measuring ingredients, watching the mixer, folding the batter together, and filling the special pan. We brought half the batch over to the neighbors and that was fun too. I think madeleines will be in our regular repertoire because they are really easy but when you offer them to guests or give them as gifts, they seem kinda special!

Here are Amazon links for basic or super-deluxe pans if you want to try your hand at them. I probably wouldn't buy non-stick or silicone because they likely won't brown as well. Just use a good brand of pan spray or butter, they come out easily.

Munchkin filling the molds

On "On Vegetarians"

Naomi, my buddy over at GastroGnome, just published a piece about vegetarians, more or less in response to Taylor Clark's Slate article on the subject. I was going to reply to her in comments, but I think I have enough to say that a full post is worthwhile. Which is of course to say I disagree with her a bit, but in a friendly blog sorta way :).

The Gnome's first point was that if she's having a dinner party, she feels she is:

"... obligating myself to supplying a vegetarian option, which, in my book, should be at least as interesting and exciting as the omnivorous options. This means two things–1) if you are vegetarian you might miss out on my best dinner parties, because I simply don’t have interest in preparing an amazing pork belly stew with duck stock braised greens for someone who will not eat it and 2) Don’t tell me “you shouldn’t have” after I make you something amazing and vegetarian because the fact is that I should have. And beyond that I probably enjoyed the challenge of coming up with a vegetarian option and enjoyed preparing it. You are my friend, my job, as hostess is to feed you food which will please you. So please enjoy."

Now of course I'm not going to be upset if a host(ess) elects to make me a great vegetarian option. I'll be thrilled and honored and I won't say "you shouldn't have", I'll say "wow, thanks for going to all that trouble". But honestly, I don't expect it. I know my food choices are my own, and my main reason for coming to your house is to enjoy your company. So as long as there is sustenance and an adult beverage, I'm going to be perfectly happy.

Most of the time I find that there is plenty of vegetarian food at an omnivorous dinner. I'll just eat a double portion of the side dishes and salads and be perfectly content. So for me, don't feel obligated to go to extra trouble. Especially if you aren't particularly comfortable with vegetarian food. Your regular side dishes are going to be better than a desperate attempt to whip up a veggie entree that you aren't confident in.

Now to the bigger issue, which as Naomi points out is not really about vegetarians but what she deems "picky eaters everywhere", when they dine at restaurants. "If you don’t like the food, then don’t eat out", rather than ask for modifications to the dishes, is her advice. She says they are "from working in the restaurant industry, my biggest pet peeve."

Here we truly part company. I've worked in the industry too, and I'm an aspiring cook, so I hear these complaints all the time. And as a vegetarian with a wife who is severely allergic to all nuts, who dines out several times a week at restaurants both fancy and divey, I've been on the other side of the swinging door even more. I think there are four main flavors of objection, which I'll address separately.

Possibility - This is the easy one. Obviously if there is already beef broth in the onion soup or Pho, I don't expect you to make it from scratch just for me. Moving on.

Convenience - Cooks love to complain that the special orders slow them down during a busy service. And that can be absolutely true. I've had to walk off the line and go find tomatoes in a walk in refrigerator outside the kitchen to make a customer happy. No biggie. I think this is a judgment call. Obviously if it is going to have a significant impact on other diner's food, it is reasonable to refuse a request. But most restaurants can meet most requests without too much trouble, and I think they should when they can.

Cost - This to me is completely bogus. If my special request is going to cost the restaurant something, they should absolutely pass in on in the bill. Of course if it is an expensive meal, say $100 and they are giving me an extra 25 cents worth of aioli, they might elect to not worry about it. (And actually requests to leave something off mostly help a restaurant's bottom line.) Believe me, I'm never going to be offended if I'm asked to pay for extras. And naturally I'm going to tip a little extra if a restaurant has been accomodating.

Artistry - Now we come to the real rub. Many chefs feel that their dishes are exactly the way they want them to be served, and believe that any change would compromise their vision. Now as a cook myself, I can really, deeply relate to this. And I think it is mostly egotistical bullshit.

Oh I've got a vision for my food, and I really want you to dig it, to swoon at my feet in ecstasy, and to give you a new appreciation for an ingredient, technique, flavor, whatever that you have never tried or never liked before.

Here's the deal. Some diners really want that, to enter the chef's world and have a new experience. In fact that is always me, as long as it is vegetarian I want to try it. I like everything. But many people don't feel that way, and what is the big deal if they want to come to my restaurant and just eat something they know they enjoy? I haven't compromised my integrity. I've offered my vision to people that want it, and made as many people as possible happy.

So to the chefs who refuse to leave the kale off the plate of a pregnant woman who can't stand the smell, or the ones that won't leave the sopressata out of the saute for the otherwise vegetarian tagliatelle, I say get off your high horse. Of course it is your choice, you don't have to do it and I don't have to eat at your restaurant. But I sure wish you would reconsider.

There you go my Gnomey friend! A little rant back atcha.