Quotable Tuesday: Brillat-Savarin Philosophizes

Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.

I chose this oft-cited, super famous quote by oft-cited, super famous gastronome and godfather of all food writers, Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, for two reasons. First, it is the longer, more nuanced version of the folksy phrase "you are what you eat" - it's familiar for a reason. Because it's true.

Of course, the added texture in the Brillat-Savarin edition evokes something a little more elaborate than the traditional American phrasing. Growing up, my interpretation of "you are what you eat" went something like this: "if I eat my vegetables, then I'm healthy, so I'm good." It had nothing to do with enjoyment or appreciation, just a vaguely Puritanical sense of obligation to be a better person through healthy eating.

Examining the quote in light of today's ethical eating discussion brings out some of the same feelings in me (just modify "vegetables" with "locally grown, organic and seasonal"). But I am nearly positive that wasn't Brillat-Savarin's original intent.

Which brings me to the second reason why it's appropriate to kick off the "quotable" feature with this particular phrase. Brillat-Savarin eloquently (and briefly) captures something that I try to explore through blogging: how food defines us as individuals and cultures (and how we make food choices based on our backgrounds).

Ultimately, it sounds like Brillat-Savarin was the very first food anthropologist...

Quotable Tuesday: Santa Claus

"Will you come visit me in Florida, Santa?" - Madison Wnek

Last night, Cooper and Jen and Bill and I took the kids to the Towson tree lighting. The ceremony itself was fun, but not all that exciting (it's great to watch the lights go on, but it really only takes a few seconds) but the real fun came a few hours after the event was over.

See, Santa and Mrs. Claus arrived at the end of the ceremony. Ever since Halloween ended, Dixon and Maddy have been talking nonstop about Santa Claus. I have heard "ask Santa for that PLEEEEAAASE?" from Dixon about fifty times a day since the end of October. Maddy even has her very own personal elf, Sugarbelle, monitoring her behavior in anticipation of Santa's arrival. They grasp the commercial nature of the season. Not surprisingly.

So we expected a lot of excitement at the first glimpse of the real Santa. Dixon and Maddy were ready and waiting, perched on Bill and Cooper's shoulders, chattering away about Santa Claus when all of a sudden, Santa's firetruck approached (lead by a holiday-themed Ben Franklin, for some reason we couldn't quite grasp). We expected screams, squeals, wiggles.

We got...nothing. Dixon and Maddy both just sat, perfectly still, staring at Santa and Mrs. Claus. It's possible that one of them managed a faint wave, but that was about it. No words and definitely no desire to give Santa a hug or to say "Merry Christmas".

Which was fine. We didn't want to push it. But as it turns out, maybe they were just hungry.

While all the less fortunate parents followed Santa into Ridgely Ferrin to chat about Christmas lists or whatever, we hightailed it over to Strapazza and found a booth (and tried to remember how people fit in that restaurant when it was just the one room - it was so small!). We ordered the kids some pizza and the grownups some wine, got some crayons from our very sweet and abused waitress, and settled in for some dinner and possibly even conversation.

Then, about an hour into dinner, it happened. Santa and Mrs. Claus rolled through the restaurant, just making the rounds, handing out a few candy canes. At this point, comfortable in their seats and fortified by pizza, Dixon and Maddy were finally ready to talk to Santa. And they certainly did. Waving hello, shouting "Merry Christmas", generally squealing "Santa! Santa!" like tweenie girls at a Jonas Brothers concert (as an aside: Jonas Brothers, least appropriate Cowboys halftime show ever?). In short, they were excited.

And Santa and Mrs. Claus, well, they delivered. Lots of "ho ho hos" and reassurances to Maddy that Santa would, in fact, find her at her grandparents' house in Florida.

Dixon's still glowing this morning.

Oh, and the food? It was good. So was the service (and believe me, I would've been dreading waiting on our table - three kids under three? No thanks.) But all of that paled into comparison to the big Santa sighting.

Quotable Tuesday: Eat Drink Man Woman

You rely on your feelings when you cook, not your taste buds.
- Old Wen

Cooper and I watched Eat Drink Man Woman on Sunday - after years of hearing that it's a great movie about food. And it is. We both really enjoyed it, though I wish I hadn't been trying to do work and watch at the same time. It's one thing to do that with a movie in English. It's another to shift your eyes back and forth between subtitles and a computer screen. I ended up carsick.

Regardless, the food's beautiful and the story's strong. Turns out, everybody from Dana Stevens to Anthony Bourdain was right.

Meal Recaps: The Past Few Weeks

It's a busy week, so apparently I'm kind of ditching my daily format. So no scrambling around my magazines and books and websites for a Quotable Tuesday quote this morning. Instead, some housekeeping. I've done a lot of eating over the past few weeks and it's time to report back.

In chronological order:

The Modern: As previously mentioned, about a week and a half ago, I went to New York with Missy and Sarah and Gilly as a semi-bachelorette celebration for Missy (sans veil or candy necklaces). Friday we went shopping and on Friday night we had dinner at The Modern, the restaurant at the MOMA.

The MOMA is one of my favorite museums ever, and I'd heard great things about The Modern. It did not disappoint. The space is open and busy but cool and if we'd been eating before sunset we'd have had an amazing view of the sculpture garden, as we sat next to a wall of glass (our reservation was at 9:30 - that's what happens when you make plans the week of).

The service was impeccable - attentive but not annoying - and the food was pretty fantastic. A few highlights:

- My pre-dinner cocktail, the Modern Martini, was a combination of cilantro-infused Tanqueray and fresh lime juice. Crazy intense and certainly only for people who already love cilantro. But refreshing, too.

- Amazing gifts from the chef, including tiny blue cheese purses and smoked salmon and caviar bites, among other things. I can't say no to an amuse-gueule.

- I loved my first course, which was a surprisingly rich sweet pea soup with a parmesan tuile and barley that added interesting texture.

- So much foie gras. Sarah ordered a foie first course and I had the foie gras and squab "croustillant" as my entree. It was so delicious, so rich, so savory...and almost too much. I could barely choke it all down.

- A thousand desserts, including little cookies and candies and something off the menu itself. I was trying to find something light, so I opted for maple ice cream with apple, pear and quince marmalade. It was not so light, but it was fantastic.

- A little citrusy breakfast bread, given by the hostess as a gift upon leaving. So thoughtful, right?

So that was The Modern. The next morning, I got up early and took a train back home, then went to my parents' house for my grandmother's 90th birthday party. That was a bit of a shift in gears - if dinner Friday night was fresh and modern, dinner Saturday was as traditional a family dinner as possible. Stuffed mushroom caps and cheese and crackers, grilled tenderloin with bearnaise, Julia Child scalloped potatoes with onion confit, a baked creamy spinach concoction and yellow cake with chocolate icing for dessert. I made the potatoes and mushrooms and spinach - all successfully, fortunately. The mushrooms and potatoes I could pretty much do in my sleep, and I'd made the onion confit a couple of days ahead of time, but the spinach I sort of made up as I went along. Fortunately, it didn't turn out either dry or cold or overly soupy. Luck, mostly, I think.

Since then, I've also made this red onion soup. It's not as good as my regular onion soup, courtesy of Jacques Pepin, but it was pretty good. It needs more salt than you'd guess, though, and could probably do with an extra shot of cheese.

Over the weekend, I did some additional cooking, with a helper. But that will be another post...

Quotable Tuesday: The Building Blocks

"Good design is a renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need and beauty to produce something." - Paolo Antonelli, MOMA

Well said.

And the same, I would say, is true for food. Maybe the technology is simpler (or more widely accepted), and the understanding of cognitive science is more intrinsic than explicit, but I think it's fair to say that a truly great meal is as many unseen layers and influences as a revolutionary, say, bottle opener. Or building. Either one.

Quotable Tuesday: Lifestyles

Dean & DeLuca co-owner (he is also Joel Dean's partner) Jack Ceglic, on the beginnings of the couple's friendship with Giorgio DeLuca:

Joel and I liked a certain style of living and we shopped and ate and did things a certain way. Giorgio seemed to fit right in with what we did.

I'm still reading The United States of Arugula (I'm devouring it, really, but it's got so much detail that I'm reading very slowly). It continues to kill me, I think it's so great.

This quote, which I just read last night, fits in with an overall theme in the surrounding chapters - the emergence of "lifestyle" as a marketing tool and frame of reference. In retrospect, I suppose it's obvious that at some point, marketers and journalists were going to latch on to this idea of "how you live", and it also makes sense that people weren't always defined by their lifestyles. Even thinking in terms of lifestyle is really a luxury afforded only to those who feel relatively safe and are beyond subsistence living. Even in the US, that's still a relatively new phenomenon.

But from my perspective - not only was I born in the mid-70's, as the lifestyle train gathered steam, but I'm also in marketing - it is kind of hard to image the world before Dean & DeLuca peddled uber-expensive olives to rich city people, knowing that even if they didn't like olives, their aspirational approach to life would encourage them to buy.

New Year, New Look, New Content

The new year is the time for changes, right? Last year, just about this time, I decided to ramp up the posting here on Mango & Ginger, and I created a little bit of an editorial calendar for myself. After a year of Trendy Mondays, Quotable Tuesdays, Artsy Wednesdays, Old School Thursdays and Dictionary Fridays, I took stock of what I wrote in 2009, and I've decided to make a couple of new changes.

The first one, probably the most noticeable, is the new header. I love the one the minx designed for me last year, but for some reason I'm just feeling a little minimal these days. Maybe it's because my house is stuffed full of so many toys that all of my dreams of having a fabulously streamlined interior have been shattered. If I can't have it in real life, at least I can embrace virtual minimalism.

Those of you who are especially observant may also notice another change in the header: the subhead. I've ditched the research and added a little design. I find myself thinking and writing more and more about design lately, and less and less about research, so the change seemed natural.

And, with that, here's the new weekly calendar for M&G posting:

• Trendy Monday (Same as before)
• Ideabook Tuesday (I'll feature one of my houzz.com ideabooks and write a little about design)
• Artsy Wednesday (Same as before)
• Old School Thursday (Again, same)
• Thursday Links (Just a handful of links to stuff I find interesting)
• Entertaining Friday (Entertaining tips and ideas, party recaps, etc.)

So there it is. Happy 2009!

Quotable Tuesday: Julia

It's so beautifully arranged on the plate - you know someone's fingers have been all over it. ~Julia Childs

I'm in the middle of (finally) reading The United States of Arugula. Don't ask me why it's taken me so long to read it - I can't believe it myself. It's the kind of book that's all but written for me, and every night when I put it down, I'm a little bit depressed that I didn't write it myself.

My self-involvement aside, the book is a great reminder that before we were subjected to Rachael and Sandra Lee and whoever else, there was Julia. She was charming and funny and a little bit awkward and very real.

And I can't imagine her ever getting a TV deal today. What a shame. Doesn't it make you wonder what potentially amazing cooking personalities are out there today, being kept off the screen by the lure of a "$40 a Day" marathon?

Quotable Tuesday: Crabby

If Baltimoreans have a Holy Grail, I once said in a review, it would be the perfect crab house. - Elizabeth Large

It's Crab Week on the EL blog and, not surprisingly, everybody's full of opinions.

As for me, if I'm having crabs, I'd just rather not go out. I like my own crab cakes better than most restaurants, and the best crabs I've had in the past few years were ones that our friend Clancy caught in the Severn, then steamed at his parents' house.

When we go to the beach in a few weeks, we'll have crabs again. In true hunter-gatherer spirit, the boys will all go crabbing with Gary-Down-the-Boatyard (so named because that's how he introduces himself on the phone: "Hi, this is Gary-Down-the-Boatyard. Is Cooper there?"), then we'll steam the crabs back at home. It's a perfect end-of-vacation dinner.

I am so ready to go to the beach.

Quotable: Also a Book Review of The Art Thief

"An old professor of mine once said, 'If you had a Mondrian in the kitchen, you would burn the soup.'"
-Gabriel Coffin in Noah Charney's The Art Thief

First of all, no, I don't have any idea what the quote is really supposed to mean. The character saying it even admits that he doesn't know what it means. I guess he just thinks it sounds cool. Which it sort of does. But I also think it's supposed to be derogatory - and I love Mondrian. So I can't get behind that.

Anyway, this quote is mostly an excuse for me to write a post about this book. I've been reading it for a month now and have just finally read enough of the pages that I can consider myself finished. I am relieved.

I really wanted to like this book. On the surface, it appears written for people just like me. Charney is an art historian and he obviously knows his subject. The book's set in Rome and London and Paris and involves Old Masters and Russian Suprematists and professors, art historians, experts, curators, investigators...it's romantic and intriguing.

And boring. The plot itself is interesting. At least, it would've been interesting if somebody had summarized it for me in 3 minutes. Or it could have been interesting in the hands of a different author - or really just a more assertive editor.

Unfortunately, despite the vivid locations and exciting lives of the characters, Charney relies a lot more on telling readers about the plot than showing anything. Really, I think this is largely an editing problem. He also allows his characters to pontificate on art history theory. Some of it was kind of interesting, but this isn't a textbook for my Methods class. It's a commercial novel. Somehow I doubt lectures on iconography and on Minimalism as an anti-icon statement have that much widespread appeal.

There is a lot of food, though. These conversations have to happen someplace, so several of them take place in restaurants and we get to glimpse what fictional Parisian detectives like to eat. So that's kind of cool. Unfortunately, because the dialogue is so stilted, during these scenes, I couldn't help but imagine that the characters were merely acting out conversations the author actually had with his friends. I picture Charney sitting in a brasserie or whatever, looking professorial (maybe some tweed, definitely elbow patches), glass of wine nearly spilling in one hand, while the other gestures wildly as he gives his grad school friends a crazy-eyed lecture on the readily apparent meaning of Malevich.

I know his type.

That said, I hope he does write another book. Just maybe with a different editor.

Quotable Tuesday (and Last Night's Dinner): Bastille Day Hangover

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.-Ernest Hemingway

I'm blatantly cheating here. I've used this quote before. I just like it so much. But since I am cheating, here's another quote I like (even though it's not about food):

In America only the successful writer is important, in France all writers are important, in England no writer is important, and in Australia you have to explain what a writer is."-Geoffrey Cottrell

It's the morning after Bastille Day, so I still have the French on my mind. We celebrated last night with salad and croque monsieurs, and elephant ears for dessert, courtesy of Barefoot in Paris. It was not a light meal. Thank God for the salad because the croques monsieurs were cheesy and salty and creamy and so rich all the way around. But fantastic.

And to drink?

Domaine de Fontsainte rose. During a regular trip to Wells on Saturday, I got into a long conversation with the owner (who might be Dixon's biggest fan). He recomended this $10 rose, saying that a lot of people have been shying away from the roses since they're, well, pink and a little too visually reminiscent of white zin. But, he insisted, they're really great.

I'd read a lot about roses this season - about how drinkable they are and that they're ideal for summer with or without food. They're not expensive, so I couldn't see any reason not to give it a try. Glad I did, too, because Cooper and I both really enjoyed it. Sort of stuck between a white and a red, the rose is as refreshing as a sauvignon blanc but its (nearly) as interesting as a pinot noir. Plus, great with food. Especially piles of cheese, like we ate last night.

I think I'm going to pick up some more today.

Quotable (and Researchy): Urbanspoon's Lattes & Obama Analysis

My statistics professor might be rolling over in his grave to hear me say it, but there's a mild but real correlation here!* States with more latte-purveying Starbucks stores are more likely to have gone for Obama. - Ethan at Urbanspoon

Today's a big day for a certain couple of Democratic Presidential nominees. So could there possibly be a better time to look at consumer consumption and voting patterns? Of course not.

Fortunately, since I'm lazy, the super-stats foodies at Urbanspoon have done all the heavy lifting necessary. If you're looking for some fabulous cocktail party conversation fodder, look no further. This is the post you've been waiting for.

Without giving anything away (because the post is totally interesting and should be read in its entirety), there's one really big surprise. At least, to me it was a really big surprise. And I've been to Wyoming. Vermont, it's not. Or it wasn't in 1989, anyway.

Go. Read it now. See, interesting, right?

Quotable Tuesday: Romeo & Juliet

Marry, sir, 'tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers. Therefore he that cannot lick his fingers goes not with me.
- Second Servingman to Capulet

True enough. This is why the Top Chef judges always say, "Did you TASTE this before you sent it out?" when something's really, really bad. Right?

Quotable Tuesday: Food for Dancers

"Before I was born my mother was in great agony of spirit and in a tragic situation. She could take no food except iced oysters and champagne. If people ask me when I began to dance, I reply, 'In my mother's womb, probably as a result of the oysters and champagne - the food of Aphrodite.'"
-Isadora Duncan, American dancer (1878-1927)

Sigh. How times have changed. I wonder what it means for Dixon that oysters and champagne were some of what I missed most while I was pregnant...

Quotable Tuesday: Le Petit Prince

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

I have a little bit of a Petit Prince obsession. I have a copy of the book - in French - even though trying to read in French gives me a headache. Poor Dixon has no choice but to let a Little Prince doll hang out in his room (it was a gift from my sister). It's next to his Little Prince bookends (a gift from my friend Alison).

It's such a nice, simple, sort of lovely book and my favorite quote is the one above. Of course, none of it has anything to do with food.

But I started thinking about the book last night because I was thinking about my French classes in high school. Junior and senior year, I had this teacher named Mme. Hamerstrom. She was so funny - kind of a goofy lady who was always smiling and who had crazy red hair. She had pretty much no control over her classes (and I had her for French IV and AP French - not exactly classes populated by the biggest troublemakers in school). She had endless patience, though, and never seemed more than exasperated when we called her at home to admit that we hadn't paid any attention all semester and really needed her help to study for the exam. (We really were good kids. She just made it easy to take advantage.)

Junior year, to get an A in her class, we had to read Le Petit Prince and come in after hours for a small group discussion on the book. I'm pretty sure I actually went to that study group wearing a bathing suit, just so she'd know that I was anxious to get out of school so I could lay out.

Somehow, despite my active effort to not learn anything, I ended up really enjoying her class, I have a passable knowledge of French (reading it, at least - I have a terrible accent) and I developed this Petit Prince obsession.

And here is how this is about food: Mme. Hamerstrom let us have fetes in class at least every other Friday. Sometimes more frequently. Fete day meant that we didn't have to do any work, and we got to eat leftovers from my friend Mandy's job at Vie de France, as well as other nominally French treats we brought in.

One of those treats, though, was pretty legitimate, and it's something I still eat. One of the girls in class, Sarah, had just moved to the US from Belgium and she'd spent some time living in France, too (her French was waaaay better than ours). During our first fete, she brought something so simple that we almost laughed at her, except that a) she told us that people actually ate it in France and b) it tasted really good.

And when I say simple, I mean really, really simple. All she did was slather some chocolate frosting (out of a can) on a baguette.

Healthy? No. But really pretty amazing. It's delicious and, for whatever reason, I was daydreaming about that exact snack last night. Which got me thinking about Madame and her crazy good-heartedness...and Le Petit Prince and his childlike existentialism.

Quotable Tuesday: Moderation

"Moderation. Small helpings. Sample a little bit of everything. These are the secrets of happiness and good health." - Julia Child

Out-Frenching the French, huh, Julia? She said this long before American women were devouring the French secrets to staying thin (the ones that don't involve cigarettes, anyway).

This is as good a time as any to report back on my "miracle soup" leek-eating experiment, inspired by the original French Women Don't Get Fat book. I'll make this quick: it sucked. I totally failed. As it turns out, the instructions for the soup (really just a leek broth) are kind of vague and they don't seem to yield nearly enough broth to cover the prescribed cup every 2 or 3 hours for 2 days.

I actually did last for most of the first day, drinking the broth every couple of hours (it tasted like weak onion tea) and eating a small amount of leeks twice during the day. I like leeks, so the taste wasn't a problem. But my outrageous hunger was. By about 4 pm, I was literally nauseous and weak. I thought maybe I was getting the flu - that's how I felt.

Then I remembered that - oh RIGHT - I had barely eaten anything all day. And that I don't do well with self-discipline. So I decided that it's OK to fail sometimes. And I ate a big bowl of pasta.

Honestly, though, I'm not sure how much weight I really would've lost after only 2 days. I'm not layered in water weight, anyway, so how much can a quick fix really help?

The one good thing that came out of the whole experience, though, is that I became extremely conscious of just how much of Dixon's food I eat during the day. Apparently I take at least one bite of pretty much everything that goes in his mouth. Since then, I've avoided that, which means I've avoided a bunch of random calories.

Plus, Dixon's probably happier with me, too.

Quotable Tuesday: How Salt Is Made

The production of premium salt takes time and attention to detail. Each small batch of sea salt requires weeks of hand panning and grading to produce the perfect grain. Our quality is a testimonial to the artisan nature of this age-old craft.

Black sand beaches are raked smooth with handmade tools of bamboo and palm. Copper vessels sprinkle seawater over the waiting beds. The seed of sea salt has been planted.

The equatorial sun bakes the sand into crisp flakes which are harvested in the cool of the evening. In the flakes of sand the salt has been preserved through evaporation.

Fresh water is poured over the black sand to create a pure and natural brine.

The brine is filtered and left to evaporate in traditional palm wood tables. The resulting grains of salt are rebrined and evaporated to ensure pure white sea salt of the highest quality. - Big Tree Farms, Bali

Cooper's mom just stopped by to pick Dixon up for a walk, and at the same time she brought me a nice little surprise. Her friend Jane, who volunteers with her at the Cylburn Aboretum, was born in Bali. They'd been shopping together once when Patsy bought me some sea salt, and Jane remembered that I'm into fancy salty things. So when she ran across this Balinese fleur de sel at Whole Foods (packaged in a hollow coconut!) she bought it for me.

Is there any better kind of surprise?

The salt flavor is intense, almost meaty, and when I taste something like this, I can't help but comment on how drastically different it is from traditional table salt. It's almost hard to believe they belong in the same family of foods.

Am hoping, now, that I find some radishes at the farmer's market this afternoon. I've been meaning to serve Barefoot's radishes with butter and sea salt for a few weeks now...and this is the perfect time.

Quotable Tuesday: More Rain, More Soup

“To feel safe and warm on a cold wet night, all you really need is soup.” - Laurie Colwin

It's raining. Again. So I think we might have soup tonight. Again.

I'm all for fall, and we've had great weather this year. Sunday, in particular, was amazing. But I'm a little bit over the rain right now. We have things to do today. Things that apparently include making soup. Or buying some - the easy way out is sounding pretty good right now. Thank God for Atwaters.

Quotable Tuesday: Out of Season

If you're lucky enough to be Irish, you're lucky enough. - My neighbor's bumper sticker

Maybe it was a walk down the street last week that, for whatever reason, inspired me to make the least end-of-summer meal I could imagine. Or maybe it was just that I was feeling ready for fall (and it was rainy last week). Either way, last Monday, I made this beef and stout pie, touted in a recent Williams Sonoma catalog.

Stilton, beef, carrots, onions, Guinness and a pastry crust. How totally seasonal of me.

But, you know, it was pretty delicious - especially the leftovers. Maybe not the ideal dinner for a humid day, and maybe about ten times as much food as Cooper and I could eat on our own, but the dish had flavor.

Unfortunately, it was also time-consuming, and I've made beef stews that taste just about exactly the same, but that didn't require an entire afternoon chained to the stove. I'll modify this recipe to make again, I'm sure. But maybe next time I'll wait until it actually is cold outside.

Quotable Tuesday: Rachael Ray. She's Got Our Young, Too

Also, feel free to make these same recipes if you are way older, too. I am 35 and I still make them all. - Rachael Ray, in Cooking Rocks! Rachael Ray's 30-Minute Meals for Kids

The very first recipe in this book, which I can't ignore because it glares at me, with its cartoony fonts and wide-mouth smiles, every time Dixon and I go to Barnes & Noble's kids' section, is for "hot dog pizzas and minute pickles."

The pizzas involve bagels, ketchup, hot dogs and "pre-shredded cheddar cheese" and the pickles are made with sugar, steak seasoning and cucumbers.

You still make this, Rach? For real?

If that's really the case, then, maybe I'll lay off. Because actually, eating her own food might be punishment enough for plaguing us with the catch-phrases, the abbreviations, the tight shirts, the voice.

Might be.