Corn Rules

On my way home from Berkshire Wordfest today, I passed a farmstand selling corn. Since I’d just been talking about my mother, I couldn’t help stopping to buy a few ears.

Corn was Mom’s great culinary triumph; nobody made it better. This was because Mom had a farmer who knew exactly what she liked – the youngest, smallest, whitest ears – and he went out to the field and picked them when she called. Mom would put down the phone, put a pot of water on to boil, and hurry over to his place. We’d shuck them quickly, and when we put them in the pot they were just minutes out of the earth. Mom never cooked them long – just a minute or so, to get them hot enough to melt the butter.

Today the farmer looked puzzled when I said that I was looking for the smallest ears, but he obligingly went through the pile, looking for what he called “the puny ones.” Most farmers leave the ears on the stalk too long, so that the kernels swell up until they’re starchy (my mother called that “horse corn”). When I stripped the ears I was happy to see that the kernels were pearly and immature. I dropped them into boiling water for a minute, slathered them with butter, sprinkled salt on top. Then I sat down and ate three ears, all by myself.

They weren’t as good as Mom’s. But they made me happy.

Kings of Pastry

Been thinking about this film a lot, since seeing it yesterday. It’s an intimate view into a strange, macho world that seems so foreign, so old fashioned. Watching those men struggle to win the Meilleur Ouvrier de France pastry title is like watching Olympic athletes training; they give it their all, for years, and then it comes down to three short days.

It’s a man’s world and in the first few moments of the film I couldn’t help remembering a meeting I had, years ago, with the women chefs of France. They were setting up their own organization, in opposition to the MOF. Because they are, of course, left out of the competition. It’s only for the ouvriers, not the ouvrieres; there’s even a point in the film where the chief judge tells one of the contestants to “man up” at a difficult moment.

But once I got over my feminist outrage – after all, in this country pastry has become very female-dominated – I started thinking about the competition itself. I didn’t want to eat a single one of those confections; not one of them struck me as delicious. They were so worked on, so complicated, so technique-driven. Every one of those pastries had been touched a thousand times. And every one of them had been constructed for the eye as much as the mouth. I’d much prefer to eat a piece of pie.

And I won’t even begin to get into how truly ugly most of those laborious pulled sugar constructions were, with their strange shapes, their atrocious flowers, their little birds and giant butterflies.

But mostly this wonderful film explains – although that is clearly not its intention - why there is a new food movement in France, a reaction against this antique tradition of technique. The young chefs have shaken off this world, along with everything it represents. Watching this film about the MOF is like watching a ghost go floating out of the room. I’m not sorry to see it go.

In the beginning of the movie President Sarkozy gives a speech in which he makes a populist case for the MOF as the triumph of the anti-intellectual. The work of the hand, he says, is as important as the work of the mind. And that, of course, is precisely the point; the new breed of chef refuses to accept that they are simply using their hands. The best modern food is not being created by people who are working to win the MOR, and the most interesting chefs aren’t creating old-fashioned set pieces. They want to appeal to your mind as much as your mouth. They want you to think about what you are eating.

Liquid salad with fried oyster and trout roe at Marea

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Har Gow at Chinatown Brasserie. Had lunch there with Ed Schoenfeld and Francis Lam. Eddie did convince me that these are the best dim sum in the city.

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Sweet, early, wonderful corn!

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Lunch with Marcus Samuelsson

When his assistant called a couple of months ago to set up the lunch, my first thought was, I wish I had an assistant and my second was, why does he want to have lunch with me? But all I said was, “yes, please.”

I’m glad I did. He’s a thoughtful person, and he’s at such an interesting crossroad in his life. We talked about the restaurant he’s building in Harlem and the online site he’s creating, aimed mostly at men. (An idea, incidentally, that Richard and I tried to sell to Conde Nast about 5 years ago. The point being that men cook differently than women, and there’s potentially a great magazine waiting to happen around that idea.)

But as we talked I couldn’t help thinking about the evolution of the chef. It’s so different being a chef today than it was 20 years ago. The modern chef is not a cook – he’s a brand. And he’s the head of an organization with the potential to be an entrepreneur, author, media personality, millionaire, and charitable foundation all rolled into one. If you had suggested that possibility when I began writing about restaurants, people would have asked what you were smoking.

Swedish hotdog with shrimp salad; lunch with Marcus,who inhaled it in about 3 seconds.

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Plateful of purslane. - picked in the rain. Crisp texture, lemony taste.

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Shocking price; I just had to take a picture. Imagine what they have to do to make chicken this cheap.

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Going Local

Just as the evening ended I dropped my phone into the toilet, and the pictures I had been so careful to take fizzled and drowned. But how could the photographs possibly capture this magical day?

I asked Jeremy Stanton to roast a pig for Michael’s birthday. I asked Cathy Grier to bring her blues band to play. I asked all of our friends to join us. And I prayed for good weather.

You know how sometimes things just work out? This was one of those times. Friends started arriving days ahead of time, and the house began to fill up with people and music. No matter which room you walked into, you walked into a fascinating conversation. Breakfast rolled into lunch, and suddenly it was time for dinner. The sky was clear. The weather was dry and balmy and hot. The bugs all magically flew away.

Jeremy arrived yesterday morning to build the grill and the spit, and immediately started destroying our (now greatly diminished) wood pile. His brother Sean raised the handsome pig (and the chickens we ate while he was still turning on the spit), and Jeremy and his guys picked all the vegetables on their way up here. Everything we ate – even the wheat that went into the flatbreads they cooked on the grill – came from within a few miles of our house.

The scent of the pig slowly turning on the spit was maddeningly wonderful, the fragrant smoke perfuming the air for hours. At midday Jeremy cooked the birds in an enormous pile of salt; when he cracked the salt crust the birds emerged looking sadly pale. But with a squish of grilled lemon they turned out to be fragrantly juicy and, bar none, the best chickens I’ve ever tasted. We stood there in the sun, tearing at the meat with our fingers, feeling like the luckiest people on earth.

Later I stood watching the little flatbreads puff up, going from discs to balloons in mere seconds. They were surrounded by onions, squashes, and potatoes, all glistening with oil and smoke. The children came to watch, their eyes going round at the sight of the fire, the breads and the now gorgously burnished pig.

The pork was succulent and soft – so fine. We drank Provencal rose, white Burgundy and a deliciously chewy Barbera. The sun began to set in a burst of color and the stars came out just as the band began to play. The littlest children had a cartwheel competition on the lawn. The rest of us danced with manic energy. Outside we were all so happy that we were drunkenly making new best friends. Inside a small group was fiercely debating the existence of Shakespeare. And then – suddenly – fireworks exploded into this clear night. Every community in the area was putting on a show, and up here on the mountain we could see for miles and miles. Color was bursting into the sky from every direction, and it felt as if the entire world had decided to celebrate Michael’s birthday with us.

It's too bad I lost my phone - and all the photographs I so dutifully took. On the other hand, I've got the pictures in my head - and maybe that's even better.

Salt-crusted chicken with garlic and lemon

Sent from my iPhone

Pig getting ready for the spit

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