Simple truths

"Culinary art is not solely the making of a sumptuous dish; not at all! It can be magnificently achieved in preparing the most common and simple dishes.

"Do you think it is easy to prepare a fried egg without the white being tough, the yolk heated but not overdone? Have you often had fried potatoes golden brown to a turn, creamily soft inside and crusty? And the ordinary pot-au-feu of our grandmothers. Have you often tasted it with appreciation and surprise? That is when it is deliciously perfumed, soft and juicy but still firm.

"The triumph of cooking is to be able to produce the simple things so that they taste as they were meant to."

James Beard in "Delights and Prejudices"

"Appetites..."

"From the cooks in the kitchen, local island women, I ordered curried chicken or lamb stew or fried conch fritters, depending on my mood. If they were not too busy, they let me watch as they cleaned redeye fish or gutted chicken cavities, wiping scales and blood across their apron fronts and singing songs about the island, about whalers out to sea and the heartbreak of poor Josiah Moody, abandoned by his cheating wife.

"When I joined in singing the parts I'd learned, they chuckled. 'Funny child! Don't you have better things to do than watch a bunch of biddies work!' I shrugged and then shook my head, which only made them chuckle more. 'Will you sing the one about the fisherman's daughter?' I would ask.

"Usually they gave in, sometimes sharing with me the hunks of papaya or toasted coconut they munched from bowls. Then when they tired of singing, I carried my plate to the bamboo love seat against the wall of the hotel.

"I took tiny swallows of soda and poked at my conch or chunks of lamb, trying to make my supper last, passing the time until the dinner crowd thinned and I could rejoin Mother."

Pamela Moses in "The Appetites of Girls: A Novel"

Bowl-ed over

Goodness in an oversized Korean rice bowl.

Dessert first

Because life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.

Pie necessity

"We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie."

David Mamet

Liking potatoes

"What I say is that, if a man really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow."

A.A. Milne

American meat

"I have never eaten hamburgers like them. Even cold, there was the intense sweetness of the bun and the juicy meat of the patty and the punch of the pickles. This was what America meant to me: food with a certain shamelessness, lunch with its knickers around its ankles."

Jay Rayner in "Age of Innocence" in "Best Food Writing 2014"

"Cooked"

"So maybe the reason we like to watch cooking on television and read about cooking in books is that there are things about cooking we really miss. We might not feel we have the time or energy (or the knowledge) to do it ourselves every day, but we're not prepared to see it disappear from our lives altogether. 

"If cooking is, as the anthropologists tell us, a defining human activity - the act with which culture begins, according to Claude Levi-Strauss - then maybe we shouldn't be surprised that watching its processes unfold would strike deep emotional chords."

Michael Pollan in "Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation"

Having the peach

"Avoir la peche

"Having the peach

"Having the peach means being in top form, in high spirits, with a lot of energy. It is an informal expression that is used in casual conversation only.

"This expression appeared in the 1960s, and may have evolved from the word peche as slang for the face or head.

"You may also encounter these related, but somewhat less refined, variations: avoir la patate (having the potato), avoir la frite (having the French fry), and avoir la banane (having the banana)."

Clotilde Dusoulier in "Edible French: Tasty Expressions and Cultural Bites"

Soul food

"A soul-food restaurant on an isolated corner in West Oakland was not part of the plan. But then Phil and I moved to the neighborhood. 

"Phil insists that he bought our home based on the 'vibe'. (Acting on gut is a quality we share.) 

"It wasn't until after we had moved in that we discovered there wasn't even a place to get a cup of coffee within walking distance."

Tanya Holland in "Brown Sugar Kitchen: New-Style, Down-Home Recipes from Sweet West Oakland"

Making bread

"No yoga exercise, no meditation in a chapel filled with music will rid you of your blues better than the humble task of making your own bread."

M.F.K. Fisher

Good "Bread"

"This obsession with good bread turned into a little hobby of mine. As I was traveling, it became sport to search out the best possible bread in every city I visited. 

"I made sure to eat my breakfast in the cafes that offered the best bread. I learned that cafes that offer excellent bread tend to have the best of everything else. A restaurant or cafe that is not investing in good bread is without a doubt cutting corners on quality elsewhere. 

"Bread is the first food a restaurant serves to a customer. Why would any restaurant ever want to spoil the experience by offering anything less than the best in the first bite?"

Malin Elmlid in "The Bread Exchange: Tales and Recipes from a Journey of Baking and Bartering"

On "Bitter"

"We can probably all agree that Fernet-Branca, rapini, citrus zests, and beer are bitter, but I became more aware of the diversity of what we think of as bitter when numerous friends, all working in the food world, sent me suggestions for foods to include in the book. 

"While I agreed with most of their ideas, some surprised and even shocked me. Among them were Camembert, celery, cucumber, Campari, Belgian Chimay cheese, eggplant, lemons, pickled onions, rhubarb, Seville orange marmalade, sorrel, coffee, and white Chateauneuf-du-Pape wine. 

"Aren't rhubarb and sorrel simply sour? Lemon is both sour - its juice - and bitter - its peel. Celery, cucumber, Seville orange marmalade, Campari, and white Chateauneuf-du-Pape wine all have bitter notes, but eggplant is rarely bitter today."

Jennifer McLagan in "Bitter: A Taste of the World's Most Dangerous Flavor, with Recipes"

Bad apple

Quandary


I was a little disappointed
in the apple I lifted from a bowl of fruit
and bit into on the way out the door, 
fuzzy on the inside and lacking the snap of the ripe. 

Yesterday it was probably perfect, 
I figured, as I held it out before me, 
soft red apple bearing my tooth marks,
as if I were contemplating the bust of Aristotle. 

I considered all the people 
who would be grateful to have this apple, 
and others who might find it in their hearts 
to kill me before slipping it into a pocket.

And I considered another slice 
of the world's population, too, 
those who are shielded from anything 
as offensive as a slightly imperfect apple. 

Then I took a second bite, a big one, 
and pitched what was left 
over the tall hedges hoping to hit on the head 
a murderer or one of the filthy rich out for a stroll.

Billy Collins in "Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems"

Going "French"

"Without question, my first few years at Chez Panisse, during the seventies, were the most formative for me. At that time, the air in the ad hoc kitchen was filled with new ideas, overgrown passion, and a fair dose of craziness. 

"From the day I arrived I entered into a space of organized chaos. I was working with people who had no background in the restaurant business, no experience cooking, and no real goal other than to serve some sort of dinner each night. Despite this lack of purpose, skill and organization, it had its own magic and miraculously - it worked! 

"Once the early days passed and the restaurant gained recognition and success, the level of creativity and excitement in the kitchen was never again quite the same. The unity we shared in those years, the fun, and the crazy youthful antics, couldn't be duplicated."

Jean-Pierre Moulle and Denise Lurton Moulle in "French Roots: Two Cooks, Two Countries and the Beautiful Food Along the Way"

"Huckleberry" hound

"I love the process of baking, of working with just a handful of ingredients, and losing myself in my hands while working to transform these ingredients into something beautiful and delicious.

"I love taking a box of perfect peaches back to the restaurant from the farmers' market and turning them into sheet pans of whole-wheat peach squares, or peach crumble, or fresh peach preserves. 

"When I'm baking, the finished product almost doesn't matter; once I get into the simple peaceful acts of scaling, mixing and scooping, I'm satisfied."

Zoe Nathan in "Huckleberry: Stories, Secrets and Recipes from Our Kitchen"

On having it all

"To me, having it all - if one wants to define it at all - is the magical time when what you want and what you have match up. Like an eclipse. A perfect eclipse is when the moon is at its perigee, the Earth is farthest from the sun, and when the sun is observed near zenith. I have no idea what that means. I got the description off a science website, but one thing is clear: It's rare. This eclipse never lasts more than seven minutes.

"Personally, I believe having it all can last longer than that. It might be a fleeting moment - drinking a cup of coffee on a Sunday morning when the light is especially bright. It might also be... a three-hour lunch with my best friend... Having it all definitely involves an ability to seize the moment... It can be eating in bed when you're living on your own for the first time...

"Having it all are moments in life when you suspend judgment. It's when I attain that elusive thing called peace of mind.

"Not particularly American, unquantifiable, unidentifiable, different for everyone, but you know it when you have it.

"Which is why I love bakeries. Peace descends the second I enter, the second I smell the intoxicating aroma of fresh bread, see apricot cookies with scalloped edges, chocolate dreams, cinnamon and raisin concoctions, flights of a baker's imagination, and I know I am the luckiest person in the world. At that moment, in spite of statistical proof that this is not possible, I have it all. And not only that, I can have more."

Delia Ephron in "Sister Mother Husband Dog (Etc.)"

Eating Italian

"The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you're hungry again."

George Miller

Saucy

"But the more sauces we make, the more it becomes clear that in French cuisine sauces are like jazz riffs: variations off a few basic themes. 

"By my own estimation, we've been through about fifty sauces so far. We've made them with red wine, white wine, Calvados, beer, Muscadet, Madeira and port. 

"We've thickened our arteries with a legion of cream and butter sauces: bechamel, beurre blanc, supreme, bearnaise, Albufera, hollandaise, mornay, tartar and a nut-brown butter version known as meuniere. 

"We've learned to make sauces from crawfish, tomatoes, mushrooms, mustard, herbs and coffee. 

"For desserts, we've learned honey, vanilla, passionfruit, chocolate, pistachio, cognac and raspberry sauces. Add to this a slew of jus and a list of vinaigrettes. 

"Today, our sauce will be thickened with blood."

Kathleen Flinn in "The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School"

Greenmarket

"To the people who sow seeds, pull weeds, carry water, nourish soils, pick rocks, tend flocks, lose crops, make cheese, catch fish, grind grain, hunt mushrooms, boil sap, get sunburned, get soaked, get stung, get bitten, get blisters, get tired, and get up so very early in the morning to feed New York City. And to the eaters who pay them to do so. Thank you."

Gabrielle Langholtz in "The New Greenmarket Cookbook"