kitchenlog

writing

2010-08-07T20:35:00.000-07:00

it seems like the only think i can focus on lately is writing. day after day, i sit and scribble or type and sometimes it's beautiful and sometimes it's crap but it's always fulfilling.

testing

2009-09-05T02:36:00.000-07:00

testing

2008-12-12T02:36:00.000-08:00

testing

Plug

2005-12-05T11:07:00.000-08:00

This is one of the most well-written announcements I've read in a long time.

David Burke at Bloomingdale’s
David Burke, veteran chef and inventor of the Cheesecake Pop and the Smoked Bacon Flavor Spray, is almost as well known for his zany packaged foods as for his whimsical, inventive cooking at davidburke & donatella. This week, the culinary showman gets a new stage at Bloomingdale’s, where he’s opening a two-part operation along the 59th Street corridor. The full-service Burke Bar Café will be open for breakfasts of chocolate-covered Cheerios and “bags o’ donuts,” morphing into a café at lunch and wine bar at night, with a list heavy on half bottles and fifteen selections by the glass. Expect such Burkisms as “cheeseburker” sliders, spicy potato-chip pizza, “millionaire’s meatloaf” with lobster whipped potatoes and lobster bordelaise, and roasted “angry hen in law”—most of which will also be available to go next door at Burke in the Box.
1000 Third Ave., entrance on 59th St.; 212-705-3800

"cheeseburker"! "angry hen in law"! The guy just does not run out of ideas. Although a "smoked bacon spray" sounds fairly disgusting to people like me who want the real thing - I tried it and I'm convinced. Spray that stuff on potato chips, spaghetti, steak, you name it and it tastes just like bacon. Desserts are fun too. If you're in New York, be sure to check it out. I've taste tested my way through a whole host of items and it's all good, I promise. You can even see me at work from Bloomingdale's men's departement where there's a window looking into the kitchen!

this just in

2005-11-22T15:17:00.000-08:00

I am the new Sous Pastry Chef at Fiamma Osteria, New York. I'm proud to be there. But if one job wasn't enough, I have another! I am also helping David Burke open David Burke at Bloomingdale's, a new fast/casual concept with lots of bells and whistles. Stay tuned for more restaurant news, right here, on kitchenlog, where we might not be punctual, but at least we're precise.

job offers

2005-11-16T09:57:00.000-08:00

last week i was about up to my nose in distress about jobs and this week i have several great offers. some buzz words include:

"quarterly bonuses"
"paid vacation time"
"full benefits, including 401K"

not to mention decked out kitchens, pleasant work environments, friendly fellow employees, and good management.

i was telling a friend about my latest trail experience and explained my feeling of being in the kitchen like playing an instrument or typing on a keyboard. you just put your hands on the keys and, without looking, know how to move to make words appear on a screen or music fill the air. when i walk into kitchens now, regardless of size or appearance, i can just find my way around. so comfortable, it feels like home.

ahm

2005-11-14T16:12:00.000-08:00

hello? is this thing on?

how to cook rice:

fast & easy
1 cup rice
2 cups water
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

combine ingredients in medium-sized pot. bring to boil, lower heat to very low, cover, let cook for about 15 minutes. taste a grain to test for doneness.

persian pollo
1 cup rice
3 cups water
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon butter

wash and rinse rice three to five times in warm water. drain well. boil water in medium-sized pot, add drained and washed rice. cook until a grain is soft to the bite. drain. place rice and 1/2 cup water back into pot with salt and butter, cover, and cook over low heat until done. cook a few minutes longer for the crispy/crunchy (word i only know phonetically) "tad-eek".

once, i lived with a girl who thought this was the only way to cook rice:
-open box
-dump package into pot
-follow directions on box

interestingly enough, i couldn't figure out how to make rice this way; it turned out terrible.

i'll get to the lobster and bread later. right now i have to finish up an article about fesenjan.

first this, now that

2005-10-26T08:16:00.000-07:00

first, women had the notion that the way to a man's heart was through his stomach.

refreshingly, now there is this new tidbit from charles addams' book of food cartoons:

Two women are in a kitchen where a man lies dead on the floor. One woman says to the other, "Hilda, you've got to give me your recipe."

green stew

2005-10-24T13:23:00.000-07:00

i'm staying with my cousin, shadi, in greenpoint, brooklyn. we are surrounded by polish delis, spanish mom & pops, and the manhattan skyline. not too shabby.

and then! shadi's friend stops over with gifts from her grandmother in the form of gorme sabzi - otherwise known as "food of the gods". not be confused with ambrosia salad, this is a hot, bitter green based stew with beans and chunks of tender beef. it is, like all other good winter things, served hot with fragrant basmati rice. we started with two large frozen chunks of this stew, packaged with love from the kitchen of a grandmother in texas, and here, only two days later, we only have 1.25 frozen blocks of stew left. it requires a bit of muscle and sweat to hack off enough stew to satisfy (we are operating sans microwave here in brooklyn), but it's oh so worth it. so if no one hears from me in a few days, it's because shadi and i have died in a fight for the last of this green gold.

i am searching for a middle eastern grocery store in new york. any help would be appreciated.

emulsion sauce

2005-10-20T08:14:00.000-07:00

my life is like an emulsion sauce. one minute it's perfectly blended, the next it's separated and broken, fat bubbles rising to the surface, with a texture of old ketchup.

here's a good emulsion minute: a contact through jack (the third party of dean & deluca) leads to a fun and lively phone conversation with a woman who worked at dean and deluca for 11 years and knows people at all the finest restaurants in the city (per se, jean-georges, cafe gray, etc.) and now i'm about to email her my resume which she is not only going to forward to said people, but also personally-recommend me for open positions. oh, and she's friends with johnny iuzzini, the pastry chef at jean-georges.

hi, i'm almost famous.

and i'm going back to wd-50, this time with her for a dessert tasting next week.

pina colada

2005-10-17T22:45:00.000-07:00

1 part pineapple juice
1 part malibu coconut rum
ice

shake, pour, drink. repeat if desired.

here's the scoop: i've been busy working (of course i gave my job notice, an open-ended sort of notice where they can tell me when they don't need me anymore which can be as soon as next week or as late as the end of the month). and preparing for this meeting i have with dean and deluca tomorrow.

they requested that i prepare a pastry item for them to critique.

back from the dead

2005-10-10T23:35:00.000-07:00

has it only been a week? it feels like it may as well have been a year. i quit my job today and it feels so good. economic uncertainty? no place to live? that's all just fine as long as i can erase these visions of dying in that restaurant kitchen because i'm too afraid of any kind of uncertainty.

also: next week i'm meeting dean and deluca. THE dean and deluca. at their studio no less. (and, for people like me who only think of studios as shoebox-sized apartments, this is a working artistic-type studio: a large open space where ideas and creativity flow like energy through invisible and invincible wires.)

you're wondering how i went from looking forward to going back to my old job to dreading the thought of it? yes, and so am i. but that's a story for another time.

hungry for pollo and the smells of home

2005-09-29T16:09:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've felt homesick. My medication: cooking and consuming as much Iranian food as I can. While I was in Chicago, my mother spoiled me with kuku and eggplant stew, and now I'm working on mastering some recipes on my own.

Here's one for Adasi Pollo, which, while not too time consuming, still requires multi-tasking, as do all good meals.

1 lb. Basmati rice, soaked in water for several hours
20 oz. water
1 T salt
8 oz lentils, soaked in water for several hours
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 lb. chicken, cut up
2 medium onions, sliced
healthy pinch of saffron
6-8 oz. raisins
2 tablespoons butter
salt and pepper to taste

Bring rice, water, and salt to a boil in a medium-large pot. Cover, and cook until semi-soft. Meanwhile, boil lentils with enough water to cover by 1 inch.
Heat oil in pan, and cook chicken and onions until they turn golden brown, stirring to cook onions evenly.
Drain and rinse rice. Return rice to pot and cover with water.
When lentils are just cooked, add to the rice. Add cooked chicken and onions, saffron, raisins, and butter. Season with salt and pepper. Cook until rice and lentils are tender.

Serve with warm pita, and top individual portions of rice with a pat of butter.

Very few meals taste good the next day; this is one of them.

Gabrielle Hamilton

2005-09-24T22:50:00.000-07:00

The New York Times published an essay by Gabrielle Hamilton, the chef/owner of Prune in the lower east side. The restaurant makes a great brunch and has a cult-like following for the inventive yet comforting food that she serves. If only she had gotten his story...

surprise, surprise

2005-09-23T00:50:00.000-07:00

As I'm on a wireless connection now, I have been unable to upload anything to the website I pay for. I'll keep the frustration down to a minimum; this blog is about the kitchen, not the web.

Earlier tonight I went to a business meeting at wd-50, the swanky hide-out for wiley and sam (chef and pastry chef) who come up with crazy and delicious things like fried mayonnaise and saffron cotton candy. After a three course meal, the chefs and I had five courses of dessert. As if that wasn't enough, we went to another restaurant after that, at 11pm, to have even more dessert. I think this was my "welcome back, now we're going to work you to death" meal.

Tasting notes:
A zucchini gaspacho lacked depth; the grainy texture made me miss tomatoes.
Corned duck on rye crisps channeled Katz's deli with charm and elegance.
Fois gras with passion fruit scramble reached for the moon but fell among the stars.

The pastry chef enjoyed his pork belly with black soybeans, one of two dishes that has been on their menu since the start.
My skate with eggplant raisin puree and fried rice was so salty and sweet; but unmemorable.

Celery sorbet with toasted rice and poached raisins refreshed the palate.
Tomato sorbet with powdered olive oil and parmesan was brillance in a bowl.
Warm peach with white beer foam and granola could have been better.
Local strawberries with parmesan ice cream surprised and delighted.
Milk chocolate parfait was too easy, too obvious.

Afterwards, a taxi brought us to Bouley, the four-star restaurant turned three, across from the recently reviewed and new Upstairs, Bouley's mini upstairs cafe/bistro (which Frank Bruni recently awarded a surprising 2 stars). If the servers at Bouley continue to treat women like second-class citzens, the restaurant might as well lose all of its precious stars. I may as well have not existed; apparently, if there's a man at the table at Bouley, it is simply assumed that he calls the shots. Hi? What do I look like? arm candy? I mean, these people knew who we were, there was no need for pretension or sexism. I'd hate to find out what they would have done if I had come in under my own name. Turns out the server heard me complaining about him and confronted me about it. What can I say? You ignored me three times and spoke over me four! Also, the desserts were a sugar shock, terrible flavorless things. A chocolate tasting (enough dessert for three people on one plate) couldn't have been less creative. A corn ice cream and blueberry parfait combination was made "exotic" with soymilk gelee--tasteless soymilk gelee. In fact, it was like water, gelatinized. I could go on, but what's the point?

I start work again tomorrow.

the power of food and the web

2005-09-14T14:31:00.000-07:00

I stumbled upon the Julie/Julia project years ago, when I stumbled upon a lot of other good food-related blogs. Basically this woman, Julie, said, 'hey, Julia Child wrote this great book on French cooking and I'm going to cook my way through it - and - document it on my website.' Brilliant.

Besides almost sharing the same name as a great woman in American food history, she happens to write well. So, The New York Times hired her. And then she got a book deal. All because of a website and an idea. Go Julie!

.

This is going to be my last post on blogger. I'm working on a new version of my website and hope to have it up by the end of the week.

martha

2005-09-13T15:51:00.000-07:00

I used to call my admiration for Martha Stewart a guilty pleasure, but since her comeback, I've just been telling it like it is: She's awesome! She went to prison and is back and better than ever!

Except, her new show? It needs some work. Today, when guest David Spade began relating his story about making tater-tots, ("you take a pan, preheat the oven, open the bag, pour them into the pan and put it in the oven") Martha responded with, "So, are there potatos in tater-tots?" And even David Spade, who up to this point had been brilliant in deflecting Martha's characteristic unease with sly humor and punch-line ready comic relief, had to pause and check Martha's face for a hint of honesty. And there it was: Martha Stewart really didn't know if tater-tots had potatos in them.

I'm just not sure if she's made for live day-time television. Marketing execs and advertising moguls have certainly done a great job prepping her audience for the fun and funny that can happen when Martha Stewart doesn't get a chance to do another take. But in reality, when there isn't a teleprompter at the ready, Martha can't ad-lib to save her life. I'll give her another week. I'm sure they're already working to get Martha to look more natural on camera; right now, she may as well be a cat in water.

"khosh aamadid"

2005-09-08T13:56:00.000-07:00

You will have to excuse my phonetic spelling in Farsi, but I would just like to welcome readers from Iranian.com. And, give thanks to my wonderful aunt Mandana who, besides being an award-winning architect, makes the best turkey kababs.

the funny thing about work

2005-09-07T14:49:00.000-07:00

Right before I left for France I was just about as sick of working as I could get. There are only so many 12-15 hour days a gal can take, you know? So France was a welcome learning experience/vacation for me, and one I hope to repeat soon. And I'm loving spending some time with my family now, but boy do I miss working. I miss the rush, the excitement, the sense of preparedness, the potential, the money, and mostly the creative process. It's just not possible to create desserts of that caliber at home with home equipment. I have four notebooks full of ideas waiting to be tested out! Plus, dozens of cookbooks and stolen recipes, French magazines and restaurant menus.

I spoke with the new pastry chef at work today, Richard Bies (who was at The Spiced Pear in RI just before taking the job at DBD and was featured in a Pastry Art & Design Magazine article earlier this year). We're looking foward to working together later this month. In the middle of all this, David Burke is opening restaurants all over the country! Tell all your friends!

oatmeal cookies

2005-09-07T13:53:00.000-07:00

I have these distant memories of going to outdoor barbecues and picnics among large groups of friends. There was always a big fold-out table full of the dishes everyone brought, and next to it, a card-table of desserts. At least three different kinds of potato salad made their proud appearance, along with some pasta salad, fruit salad served in a carved out watermelon, and whatever trendy recipe someone had found in last month's Better Homes & Gardens. The most memorable were these tortilla rolls which pretty much consisted of spreading cream cheese and dried herbs on flour tortillas, rolling them up tightly, and then slicing into little bite-size spirals. Cute, but bland. Dips, crudities, and various flavors of chips rounded off the meal.

But I was always there for the dessert and spent plenty of time analyzing each item. I posed three important questions to myself before adding a slice or piece to my dinner-sized paper plate (I don't believe in the smaller dessert-sized plates). 1) Does it look fresh or did they make it last week and just decide to bring it to look generous? 2) Did they make it from a mix (or worse! buy it from the grocery store!?) or was it really homemade? 3) Does it contain fresh banana, oatmeal or dried flaked coconut?

Sigh.

Yes, the truth is out. I used to restrict my dessert intake by avoiding things I didn't like. I still don't like raw banana, but at least I can proudly admit that to being the only thing I have tried (and tried, and tried) to like but failed. And just because I don't like it doesn't mean I haven't created successful desserts from it. Dried flaked coconut is a strange, over-processed and over-sweetened product, and anyone who has ever eaten fresh coconut knows that. I don't completely avoid it anymore, but I think it serves very few purposes and is really best in coconut macaroons where one cannot substitute fresh. I once had a (strange, embarrassing) phobia of all things considered "healthy" once-upon-a-time (tofu, soybeans, wild-rice, oatmeal), and I firmly believed that the Oatmeal Raisin Cookie was simply a dieter's Chocolate Chip Cookie. And for me, no cookie could compete with the Chocolate Chip.

Incidentally, in France, they sell Chocolate Chip Cookies. Terrible, dry things baked in molds so that they are perfectly round, they look sad next to the palmiers and petit fours. The bakeries who sell them label them "cookie" which made me chuckle since the French word for cookie is "petit gateaux".

So, avoiding the 7-layer bars, and anything healthy looking, I would load my plate up with one version of chocolate cake after another, brownies, pie, and cookies of all kinds. A tall cup of milk was all I needed and I sat down somewhere quiet to taste everything. And now that I think about it, I wonder how many really good Oatmeal Raisin Cookies I must have missed out on all those years.

In college, I lived at a vegetarian co-op for awhile which inevitably cured me of the health-food fears. One day some nice girl made Oatmeal Raisin Cookies and I grabbed one before I headed out the door. I ended up being late for class because I decided to go back for a couple more.

Oatmeal and Raisins are great. Oatmeal and Chocolate is great. Oatmeal and coconut, ginger, dried apples, dried cherries, currants- actually just about any dried fruit or nut is great with oatmeal. Spices, honey, tea, peanut butter... the list goes on. But Oatmeal Cookies with either Raisins or Chocolate Chips are the best. After experimenting with dozens of recipes, I finally came up with my favorite in my junior year of college. Soft, buttery, with a hint of salt, cinnamon, and fresh ginger. But then, everything was turned upside down again by a professor of mine.

Senior year I took all of these independent study courses to really focus in on my major and the type of research and writing I wanted to be doing. One of the courses was loosely titled Food Journalism. The professor, Elliot Shapiro, had been my instructor before and knew my style well enough to adapt to new reading material and helped me complete a writing portfolio I can still be proud of. Our meetings were casual and one week, he brought me these absolutely out of this world homemade Oatmeal Cookies. Buttery does not begin to describe their taste and texture, but buttery they were. Buttery and thus lacy, yet crisp around the edges. He had used both chocolate and raisins for a successful and refreshing raisinet effect, and after I had one, and then another... and then another without noticing it, I had reached the bottom of the plate and gotten crumbs all over my papers! I think he was happy I liked the cookies.

What really triggered all of these Oatmeal Cookie memories, though, was the batch of cookies I got to eat all day today. Homemade, soft and chewy with raisins only and plenty of rolled oats, they were the definition of comfort food. The world needs to eat more cookies.

dreaming of lentils and porriage

2005-09-05T08:49:00.000-07:00

my mom has been telling me these mouth-watering stories of iranian breakfasts. after i had a traditional week-day breakfast of warm pita bread, salty feta cheese and sweet dark tea, she told me the bread story:

our driver or someone from the household would wake up early in the morning to buy the bread. bread is not made at home, we leave that to the bakers. and they take it out of the ovens and place it into the driver's waiting hands, hot from the stones and coals on which it was baked.

i imagine the surface to be pebbled and crisp, toasted flour barely clinging to the dark edges, sandy to the touch, smelling of secret recipes. and when broken, a perfumed steam rising to meet the nose. the way she describes how she used to spread plenty of butter and sprinkle plenty of sugar on top before eating each snow-shoe sized loaf makes me hunger for her memories. using her hands to gesticulate the spreading, and her eyes to imitate the way the butter melts into the bread, we end up losing ourselves in the collective memory of this simplest of foods. and sadly having only grocery store pita with which to satisfy our imagination.

i like being reminded that france is not the only country who has historically placed high regard upon their bread; besides other european nations, we have to remember that the middle east is the birth place of agriculture, and primarily that of grain for bread.

today too, she expanded on iranian breakfasts, telling me about lentils with cinnamon (pronouced "adasi") and a hot porriage with turkey meat melted inside ("haleem"). a dent in the middle leaves enough room for a butter and brown sugar nest where i can just imagine telling myself to eat from the outside in to save the best part for last.

the cinnamon lentils are more common than the porriage, and a man on a bicycle is heard often in the mornings calling its name to neighbors and strangers who come rushing to their doorsteps to pay him for bowls of the hot treat. his mother or wife perhaps supplies his transportation with the food leaving him to deliver and he refuels as often as necessary. what a welcome wake up call in comparison to our garbage trucks! or the horn blowing of nyc.

from what i understand, the porriage is more of a specialty that needs to be started the night before to reach the proper consistency. she talked about how her grandmother prepared it. grains are simmered for hours and turkey meat is added, melting into the thickness, adding body and nutrients to otherwise boring hot breakfast cereal.

i will be doing more research on these iranian breakfasts, testing, and updating with recipes soon.

sweet home, chicago

2005-09-03T13:53:00.000-07:00

i'm home in chicago now, catching up on the r&r with plenty of home cooked food. the folks have all my favorites covered: from home-made chicken broth to lasagna (a much needed break from all the french food i've grown tired of/too accustomed to) to my mother's persian stews. i could write pages on this food - but maybe later. i'm too busy eating now.

amsterdam

2005-08-30T13:28:00.000-07:00

coincidentally, i am in amsterdam for 12 hours. i don't know a word of dutch; fortunatly, everyone speaks english. and i don't mean this as in, "oh, everyone in france knows english" - because that is a lie; and even if they know it, they are reluctant to speak it - i mean this as in all the signs are in english and everyone greets everyone else in english. thank goodness for that. if the stores were open i could read up on dutch, but it is the middle of the night here after all.

the airport is amazing. there is wireless internet connection throughout and all these different kinds of chairs and desks and laptop bars (where one sits at a high table on a stool and plugs one's laptop into the outlet, of course). you can even rent a personal office complete with desk, leather chair, computer, and all the trimmings of a standard office. after the relative technological retardation of france, i am fascinated by these conveniences. if only i had not packed my laptop plug in my checked baggage i could use it for longer than the life of my battery.

apparently my mother was in this airport some 20 odd years ago when she was around my age. this makes me happily sentimental.

although airplane meals have a negative stereotype, i think it's possible that american airplane meals are worse than those on international flights. i just had a great sandwich on a klm airlines flight from paris to amsterdam:

seven grain bread with raisins
unsalted butter
shredded carrots
dilled cucumbers
sliced guyere (or one of its cousins, perhaps emmenthal)

served with orange juice and tea. simple, but quite perfect for airplane food. i hope to make it myself again sometime. the raisins in the bread really topped it off. raisins and carrots are so good together, and then you've got your built in side dish of cucumbers; the cheese goes with the grains in the bread and the butter adds the needed lubrication. i wish i had another.

on the way to paris from nyc, i had a decent breakfast type meal on iceland air. it was an omlette, with potatoes and ham. not terrible, but nothing worth expanding upon. the plasticware it was served on was very stylish though. reminded me of modern scandiavian design; complete with a silver tinted plastic spork.

i have so many photos to edit and publish it is overwhelming.

last day in france

2005-08-29T08:28:00.000-07:00

today is my last day in france. a recap in numbers:

number of cases of citrus fruits i supremed: 9
number of pineapples i peeled: 7
number of lemons or limes zested: 26
number of recipes for biscuit culliere i made: 3
number of petit fours i ate when no one was looking: dozens
number of petit fours i ate when someone was looking: several
number of times the chef told me the recipe was a secret: 4
number of people who had heard of chef david burke: 10
number of people i worked with who spoke english: 4
number of meals i ate out of a vending machine: 1
number of frais de bois eaten: handfuls
number of spots on my chefs coats: 3
number of lemon tarts eaten: 14
number of millefeuilles consumed: 15
number of baguettes purchased and only half eaten: 5
number of baguettes purchased and eaten: 1
average price per baguette: .90
number of pain au chocolate eaten: 45
number of pain au raisin eaten: 40
number of absolutly disgusting staff meals eaten: 10
number of decent staff meals: 22
number of times i chickened out before going into a fancy restaurant: 3
number of times i was hungry in paris: 4
number of times i was hungry in barcelona: 0
number of glasses of wine drunk: 10
number of boxes of chocolate eaten: 3
number of plates of steak frites eaten: 7
number of different types of cheeses consumed: i can't remember
number of cheeses i disliked: 0
number of snobby waiters: 0
number of snobby salespeople: 1
number of times i had to ask for butter with my bread: 5
number of hours i wasted at robuchon: 20
number of chefs at georges blanc: 10
number of walk-in coolers at maison troisgros: 6
number of meals left to eat in france: 2

i am looking forward to coming home.

maison troisgros

2005-08-25T07:45:00.000-07:00

so today is my first day at maison troisgros.

the kitchen is so spacious and beautiful sometimes i catch myself (or, more likely someone else catches me) staring out at it from the pastry department in awe. i plan on drawing it out on paper and saving it for when i open my own place. also, i will be taking lots of photos.

renee would be excited to know they have summer pudding on their menu right now. oh how seasonal the menu is. practically everything has lemon verbena on it, though. candied verbena, verbena syrup, verbena ice cream. interestingly, the first thing i did was make a recipe for ice cream. normally places start me out with cutting fruit or supreming oranges. i also wear a really tall hat; other places gave me silly deli-style hats. chef david has fans here.

the chef, michel troisgros, is nice. i work with the sous-pastry chef who speaks english and has worked all over the world: the u.s., england, netherlands, monaco, etc. and wants to move to st. john after some time at troisgros.

even the locker room is pleasant.

also, this is just another kitchen where they know this french song by a group called elmer food beat called "daniela"; i am not entirely sure what the lyrics mean but it has a catchy toon that everyone starts singing when i walk through their space. "ooooh, daniela-la-la-la"

today, i exploded a bag of citron creme in the cryo-vac, a vacuum packer sealer machine that i do not know how to use. apparently though, it happens from time to time. the big problem was that i didn't know how to turn it off, so the stuff went everywhere. blegh. i wanted to crawl into a hole. no one got mad, they just kind of made fun of me in french. oh well.

but, the question i am still trying to figure out is how, but how do they get away with charging so much for each dessert? these are the same strawberries, raspberries, and mint i've seen elsewhere. the flour and sugar haven't changed; they may gild things a bit here and there with ample use of gold and silver leaf, and the chocolate work and skill is all very advanced. but i just don't know if they are better than, say georges blanc. the style is far more modern, but technique and product are the same as far as i can tell. they all use only silver spoons to put sauce on plates and make perfect, perfect quenelles. it is a bit disappointing to learn that one has possibly reached a limit. look, there is a pile of fraise de bois and that is the best the strawberry is going to get. maybe if i picked them myself or they had been sprayed with rose water while they grew... maybe i am looking for the wrong thing. going from one three star place to another is jading and confusing me a bit about what is the best.