We Are Never Full

As with a few other fellow bloggers, we were lucky to receive one of my favorite “blog freebies” to try recently – truffle products by La Boutique de la Truffe.  Cha-ching!  As some know, for most of us, blogging will barely help us buy a cup of coffee at a year’s end – that is if you have an ad up.  When we get offered to test out powdered sauces (gag) we usually pass, but when truffles were offered I jumped up and down like a little schoolgirl.  I know truffles seem to be that annoying foodie buzz word that gets all us food-lovers screaming like Beatles fans in the 60’s, but I still say they are worth the hype.  It is obvious we like them – a lot.  You’ll find truffle recipes all over We Are Never Full: like here and here and here. And if you indulge and buy something from La Boutique, it is an investment and one that will pay off in big flavor that really can not be duplicated any other way. Continue Reading »

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La Cupertina, at the corner of Cabrera and Godoy Cruz in the charming Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo Viejo, is reputed to have the best traditional Tucuman empanadas in the city. And, certainly, they are rather good. So tasty, in fact, that we bought a dozen for carry-out the day we left Argentina and nursed them carefully all the way back to our freezer in Brooklyn to enjoy nostalgically a month or so ago.

Replete with savory pastry and chicken, cheese and beef humita (a stew of grated corn kernels, beef, hardboiled eggs, raisins and olives, but more about that in a later post) fillings, we were strolling arm-in-arm along the streets of our own neighborhood when we came across one of the glories of Brooklyn life: a selection of books put out for free on someone’s stoop. Among them was Así Cocinan Los Argentinos (How Argentina Cooks) by Alberto Vázquez Prego — a more timely find would be hard to imagine — and, of course, we immediately grabbed it. Continue Reading »

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Sometimes there is just no reason to be extra creative and come up with your own spin on a dish.  Sometimes you just have to follow a recipe exactly as it is.  Sometimes you have to trust that the least amount of ingredients and cooking time is just right – no need for tweaking or fiddling with.  And sometimes, and only sometimes, do you just have to believe the hype. Continue Reading »

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We’re going to make this one short and sweet — the Phillies, my beloved Philadelphia Phillies, just couldn’t do it this year.  What was even worse was that they played the Yankees and I live in New York City in a new apartment building surrounded by Yankees fans.   I just couldn’t face to finish watching the final game as the Phillies handed their World Championship title to the team with not only the richest ball players (who have won the World Series 26 times before) but also to a team filled with wanna-be celebrities (ahem, A-Rod – here doing what he does best, looking in a mirror and kissing himself and, ahem, Jeter) and actual celebrity “fans” and girlfriends (if I had to see stupid Kate Hudson, Jay Z or Rudy Giuliani one more freaking time…). Continue Reading »

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Turning rustic country fare into a slick restaurant best-seller has become so hackneyed these days that finding a post-modern reconstructed pot-au-feu for $45 in a hot new city dining spot can’t be far away. However, (and while we may be wrong) it might be a while before this garlic and wine soup hits high-end eateries — and not because it’s not restaurant-grade food, but rather because it’s the kind of dish that seems like it can neither be adapted nor re-imagined in a single way that wouldn’t detract from the original.

Do not to be discouraged by the glut of garlic called for, even if you’re cooking for those suspicious of its myriad charms. For, while it is unavoidably redolent of the “perfumed rose”, the flavor is mellow rather than aggressive, far cleaner than you might reasonably expect, and altogether heartier than a simple garlic and broth concoction would suggest. Continue Reading »

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Perhaps surprisingly given that we’ve been deluged with guests for the last month, we haven’t actually cooked for them much, or at least, cooked anything we’d dare post. As anyone who’s been a host knows, having guests is an exhausting experience, but especially so when you’re playing the role of tour guide too, so here are two simple side dishes instead of something that required more lengthy preparation. Continue Reading »

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Chicken and Waffles.  Two foods that many obsess over individually but wouldn’t even think to pair together.  Why, I wonder?  Have you ever dipped your crunchy piece of bacon into your pancake syrup, even if it’s accidental?  How about some fabulous thai sauces that have that sweet sticky flavor paired with some fried calamari?  What about any dish with sweet, salty and crunchy combination?  If you’re a nonbeliever, please, believe.  One taste of Chicken and Waffles and it quickly gained a top 10 spot on my “Death Row Last Meal” list.   You know you have one too. Continue Reading »

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Immediately after putting down Fat of the Land, I opened Toast, UK food writer Nigel Slater’s memoire of the food he grew up eating in suburban England in the 1960s. There are few threads linking these two books together — food being perhaps the sole aspect — but something in Slater’s introduction caught my attention, expressing, as it did, what I had enjoyed most about Lang’s book:

“When a cooking writer pens his autobiography, it is invariably written with a fresh-baked, rosy glow. Tales of baking at their mother’s knee is [sic] what is expected.”

Fat of the Land could have fallen into this happy cliche of cooking recollections penned simply as sweet pablum for a reader not wanting to be challenged. Instead, the author details his chronological development as a foodie — both generally and specifically as a forager — in a way that rouses the reader to head for the hills in search of our dinner, or at least, to consider doing so. Through humorous anecdotes of his coutrship and marriage, this book is a refreshing and entertaining read about the author’s ”food awakening” as a complete lifestyle change, rather than the achingly dull tales Slater descries. Continue Reading »

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