Heights Eats

Based on high praise from Dine-O-Mite and other sources (see the first line of this review), Sarah and I recently purchased Momofuku by chef David Chang and Peter Meehan. The book is intriguing to say the least, full of great-sounding recipes and witty banter.

I could reprint the recipe for the salad above (on p. 162 of the book), but a set of numbered steps and ingredients isn’t really necessary. Just cut up fuji apples into large cubes (or thin wedges), coat them with kimchi purée (I pulsed it in a spice grinder) and lay them on top of a 2:1 combination of greek yogurt and maple syrup. Top with bacon (or smoked jowl, if you can find or make it), and argula dressed with olive oil, salt and pepper. The apples can be left in the kimchi from 1 minute to six hours in advance, depending on how intensely you want the flavors to penetrate.

This turned out great even with substandard Giant Eagle apples and decent supermarket bacon, … continue reading

I just finished reading David Lebovitz’s The Sweet Life in Paris. It’s a great book, full of sharp (often self-deprecating) wit, astute cultural observations, and very good (often surprisingly easy) recipes.

The root of good humor is serious issues, and the book is grounded in loneliness, alienation and the quest for good food (if you don’t think this is serious, ask Parisians). Lebovitz first realizes he’s become Parisian when he puts on a fresh ironed shirt and nice pants just to walk downstairs to deposit a bag of trash. Apparently clothes are continually judged there. He also refers to a series of commercials for a newspaper, Le Parisien Publicite, which humorously portray Parisians’ self-centeredness. At the same time, he continually humiliates himself as he inadvertently mangles the language, e.g. a one-syllable mistake that leads him to repeatedly refer to a male body part without realizing it.

The interspersing of recipes is not only useful but … continue reading

I finished reading Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto a few weeks ago. I definitely planned to blog on it but had no idea where to begin. The subtitle is “Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.” These directives are much trickier than they initially sound, hence most of the book being devoted to them.

“Eat Food” is perhaps most central, because Pollan does not consider much of what we consume today to be food. His first directive is “Don’t Eat Anything Your Great Grandmother Wouldn’t Recognize as Food,” which eliminates a huge portion of what’s in the middle of any supermarket. One’s great grandmother, he points out, might look at Go-Gurt and ask “Is it a food or toothpaste”? (148)

Another useful adage is “Shake the hand that feeds you” (160) i.e. buy from farmer’s markets or CSAs. The low quality of America’s soil (due to a focus on maximizing short-range yields) … continue reading