"Bad people doing bad things is not interesting. What I find interesting is good people doing bad things." - Amy Bloom
Friday Links || Blue Apron, Magic & New Books
Happy Friday!
This weekend, I’m seeing this magic show at The NoMad. Yes. A magic show at Daniel Humm’s culinary temple better known for its truffle-stuffed chicken for two. D and I are really, really into magic. (C'mon, it's magic!) Our last magic show was a big production on Broadway, and this is a more intimate salon. The magician's name is Dan White. He had a show on the Travel Channel called White Magic and was also Kanye's "magic consultant" on the Yeezus tour. There will be about 30 people in the audience and you betcha we’re going to sit as close as possible.
Then on Sunday I’m seeing some family visiting from Seattle. A month or so ago, I went to a signing with Carol Weston, who wrote the girls' bible Girltalk: All the Stuff Your Sister Never Told You and planned on giving the copy to my cousin who’s in middle school. After I told my mom that the book talks about drugs and sex, she nixed the idea. So now I’m reading it -- and actually learning a lot. :P
This week I also started at a new yoga studio in my neighborhood called Align Yoga. It specializes, obviously, in spine issues. I love a good yoga sesh, in part because it stretches and shakes out the kinks. So far, I’ve loved the wall work of this class. There was one pose where I was doing a child’s pose… but up against the wall so my feet were towards the ceiling and my fingers grazed the floor. And another pose where a strap was wound behind my back and around my feet. Picture an omega sign… but upside down. That one ruled.
On Tuesday, I went to a reading by Deanna Fei, author of A Thread of Sky and, most recently, Girl in Glass. You may have heard Deanna’s story last year, when the CEO of AOL caused a firestorm when he referred to two “distressed babies” as the reason employee benefits were being cut. My stomach turned then, and it totally wrenches now. I’ve never winced so much at a reading (as in, the words were heart-breaking and powerful).
I’m in awe of Deanna’s (and her husband Peter’s) strength.
And speaking of books… I got a bunch of great blurbs this week! I'll be updating this Facebook album as they come in. Here are some of them…
And last, this week I tried Blue Apron for the first time! I've always been a bit snobby about these meal delivery services. I can come up with my own recipes... I feel like a kid with a condescending "creativity kit"... but I kinda liked it! One, I probably never would have thought to make these dishes on my own. And, two... it is a pain to pick up ingredients sometimes. There's only one place in my neighborhood that sells tarragon (not one of my regular places). And I can only get breakfast radishes at the farmer's market... which I only go to on Sundays. Plus, it helped that my friend works there so I got a free week...
See above for a summery corn chowder, which I made exactly as the recipe said. I would have preferred fewer potatoes and some kind of protein -- chicken or shrimp would have been great. I modified the eggplant pitas by baking -- rather than pan-frying -- the eggplant. I also gave the same flour/spice/panko/yogurt treatment to some okra and broccoli because my shipment had only two tiny eggplants -- not the 1 lb the recipe needed. This one wasn't my favorite. I think it needed more grease. The original recipe was probably a lot better.
All in all, I probably wouldn't do this regularly, but might do a couple weeks during the year, just for fun. I'm also curious about Ritual (formerly Sweet Roots) and Plated. Have you tried any of these services? What did you think?
Hope you have a great weekend!
Book Club Bites: Salade Nicoise
There’s an important scene in Food Whore where Tia is feeling lost. Her personal life and secret life with Michael Saltz are starting to clash and she’s not sure how she'll sort it out.
Her friend asks her to grab a bite and they go to a nice-ish deli near Washington Square Park. You know, one of the ones with a decent salad bar. As she’s thinking, she absent-mindedly adds items to her container: arugula, tuna, mustard, olives… until she makes an accidental Salade Niçoise.
“I mixed and tasted and went back for other ingredients until the tuna salad was near perfect. It was filling and bracing and pickled. It didn’t taste like bodega food at all. The simple act of cooking and tasting calmed me like nothing else.”
Surprise, surprise, I also love Salade Niçoise. The appeal is its remarkable harmony. Every player is assertive: fragrant tuna, briny olives, meaty haricot verts, plush hard-boiled eggs, spicy arugula. And yet together, they harmonize. The salad surely doesn’t need cheese or bacon, both auto-tune for salad, ways to increase tastiness by masking the ingredients. This is hearty and flavorful, with each component keeping its integrity.
In my mind, the defining characteristics of a Salade Niçoise are: boiled potatoes, blanched haricot verts, Niçoise olives, hard-boiled eggs, and high-quality tuna. Other people may want to put anchovy in there, but to me, olives and tuna add enough saltiness. Once you have those ingredients, you can really play around with the rest. The recipe below doesn’t have precise proportions -- just mix and match, salad-bar-bodega style.
RECIPE:
Dressing: Using a mortar and pestle, grind three cloves of garlic with one tablespoon of salt until pasty. Add to a bowl along with ⅓ cup of olive oil, 1 minced shallot, the juice of 2 lemons, 1 tablespoon of Dijon mustard, and black pepper to taste. Whisk and set aside.
Boiled Components: If you have the time, you might as well cook everything in the same pot of boiling water (as opposed to having three pots at once, which is somewhat wasteful and adds a lot of unnecessary heat to your kitchen -- critical if you’re making this in the summer).
Add water to a large saucepan and heavily salt. Bring to a boil. Add purple potatoes and four eggs. After 7-10 minutes (depending on how you like your eggs), remove the eggs and cool them off in a bowl of ice water. Add trimmed haricot verts and cook for 2 minutes. Remove and add to another bowl of ice water. Check potatoes with a fork -- the cooking time depends on the size. Remove when a fork easily slips in, with no “crunch” sound.
Before you assemble, cut the eggs in halves or quarters. Cut the potatoes into bite-sized pieces.
Classic Components:
Tomatoes - I like Kumato because they’re sweet and not too tart. But any tomato will do. Cut into wedges.
Radishes
Cucumber - English or mini. You want a compact cucumber that isn’t too watery.
Olives - I used oil-cured black olives because they are one of my favs. But Niçoise olives are the classic.
Herbs - scallions, basil, chervil
Wildcard Components:
Beets
Fiddlehead ferns
Microgreens - here, I used mustard micro greens
Pickled Cipollini Onions
Assembly:
On a large plate, arrange a bed of arugula. Add your other ingredients. Top with high-quality olive oil-packed tuna. My favorite is this yellowfin tuna from Ortiz. You can buy it at Whole Foods or Zingermans. (True, you can’t find imported Spanish tuna at a bodega salad bar. But just go with it.)
Drizzle with dressing and serve.
How to Pick Your Agent
So you wrote a compelling query letter. Sent out your partials and fulls. You got one offer, told the other agents, drummed up some excitement -- and ended up with multiple offers.
Congrats!!! This a great, great place to be. I know you’ve spent a lot of time being the desperate one saying, “Pick me, pick me!” -- and there will be plenty of times you will be in that position again -- but now you are in control of this realm of your destiny. It's a biggie.
To start, your agent is your voice and champion. The publishing world will learn about you and your book through this one person. You need to trust her (or him) 100%. If you don’t, you’re done for. Seriously. There are so many things to worry about in the publishing process, and worrying about your agent should not be one of them. That's like worrying about your spouse or your babysitter or your therapist. In the best case, you lean on them without hesitation.
The agent-author relationship last years and relies on great communication, mutual respect, and a shared vision. How do you get there? Well, here are the things I’d think about:
Check their record -- both them personally and their agency. Dig deep in the company website. If you haven’t already, get a subscription to Publisher’s Marketplace and look at all their deals in the past couple of years. Google them and look at five pages of results -- at least. Ask yourself: are these books similar to mine? Is this agent/agency respected in the industry? Would I be proud to say I am represented by XYZ or does it make me feel uneasy?
What’s their vision? Take my book. It can go a lot of ways. Young adult, new adult, women’s contemporary fiction, chick lit. It can be romance and maybe you can make the case that it’s literary. It can be a pitched as a young woman’s story of ambition in NYC, or the story of a mixed-race woman trying to find her place in the world. When an agent extends an offer to you, they have at least a loose gameplan in mind. But does that gameplan match up with what you want for your book?
This is a bit of a balance. The agent knows more than you’ll ever know about the publishing industry. Her opinion counts for a lot. But there can be numerous -- and equally valid -- interpretations of a work. Make sure her interpretation is cool with you.Personal chemistry. I met with every agent who gave me an offer, a somewhat unusual request. But I’m glad I did it. For me, emails and phone only tell you so much. If you’re in NYC or live close to your offering agents, you might want to meet them in person. I wasn’t judging their vision or credentials -- you can get that more concisely elsewhere. I was looking for the intangibles. Could this person be my friend? Are they good listeners? Do they seem “with it”? Do they glow when they talk about my book or is it just another widget to sell? Again, you want to be 100% comfortable with your agent, so if meeting them face-to-face gives you peace-of-mind -- do it. (PS: All of the agents I met with were great in person.)
How close are you to submitting? Does the agent think the manuscript is good-to-go? Will it need one month of revisions… three… five? Will she give you detailed notes in a timely manner or is she backlogged and won’t get around to it for another two months? I’m not saying what the “right” answer is here -- that’s for you to decide. Maybe a year of revisions prior to submission is the best thing. Maybe waiting two months for your agent’s time is worth it because she’s the frontrunner in every other respect.
Shorter and faster isn’t always better. The important thing is to look out for a level of care. Will this agent work with you to give your manuscript the best possible shot?Experienced/busier or younger/hungrier. Another case where there’s no clear answer. There are pros and cons to both. However, if I had to pick, I’d younger/hungrier… and at a good agency. I’ve heard many horror stories of authors who went with splashy agencies and agents, only to be sidelined by the agents’ bigger, “more important” clients. A young agent at a great agency has time, tenacity, and -- if need be -- the expertise of her more experienced colleagues.
Is she a decision maker? An extension of the above. If you choose to go with someone who is younger/hungrier, see if she is a decision maker. Can she accept books on her own and negotiate deals? You want an agent who can be nimble and decisive. Otherwise, you might have to rely on two levels -- the agent and her boss -- and that can lead to lag time and potentially missed opportunities.
Responsiveness and professional polish. This is my deal maker and breaker. Assuming you're not bombarding her with emails, does the agent reply promptly during this pre-signing time? I’m not talking anything crazy -- maybe 24-36 hours (and nothing on the weekends). And if they’re slammed, a “hey, I’m swamped now, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can” totally works.
If they’re not responsive now -- during the time when they’re supposed to be wooing you -- then that’s a bad sign. If there are typos or a general flakiness about deliverables or calls -- that’s a bad sign. Look, we all make typos or get late on emails or whatever -- but if the emails read as unprofessional to you, then they’ll read the same way to editors.
And, last... an author-agent relationship is a very close and specific partnership. Many agents are smart, professional, and experienced. But if you're lucky enough to have a choice -- make sure you find the right fit with your particular work, style, and goals.
Sunday Writing Inspo - Lorrie Moore
“A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.” - Lorrie Moore
Friday Links || 7.24.15
Happy Friday!
This weekend, I’m planning on honing some recipes for a Food Whore cookbook (yes, you heard that right… a special addendum that might be five or so recipes). I’m also writing a piece based on this article in the New York Times that'll be published elsewhere not here. (I have experience in this realm because I was the Community Director of HowAboutWe.com for awhile.) D and I are also going to Aruba in a couple weeks... so I maaaaay need some new summer dresses.
Anyways, onward to links and things!
This past Monday, I had a w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l time chatting with about twenty-five YaleWomen about writing and finding an agent. I was joined by my agent, Stefanie Lieberman, who also happens to be a Yalie. (The next question people ask -- did the Yale connection help? Well, I didn’t seek her out because she was a Yalie, and I don't think I got a leg-up because I was a Yalie. But I think it did contribute to why I signed with her over the other offering agents. A different kind of assortive mating, I guess?)
I met lots of great people, across the board: a lawyer, actor, magazine writer, economist, academic, recruiter, a woman who worked at the Algonquin circa the famed Algonquin Table. Not everyone was a writer, but everyone was curious about the rather curious publishing process. Definitely a night to remember and cherish.
When you’re not “actively” doing something, do you listen to music? Or podcasts? Or do you let yourself sit with your thoughts? I’m more of a former and latter, but I want to get into podcasts more. Selected Shorts is one of my favs and I liked these two food-themed ones: Cannolis and Carroll (not, as I previously thought, about cannolis in Carroll Gardens, but a story about cannolis and another by Lewis Carroll) and Food Fantasies: Peas, Pancakes and Pretensions, with stories by Lydia Davis, Nora Ephron… and Gustave Flaubert.
My second book is set at a culinary school, and I was struck by this article by Eater: Three Charts that Prove Why Culinary School is Not Worth It. The numbers are quite compelling, but of course there are other things at play: perhaps you want to be a private chef, not a restaurant chef, in which case you’ll earn more. Or perhaps you’re forty-years-old and want to learn the basics quickly and efficiently (as opposed to, say, working at a restaurant where you’ll only learn their cuisine).
My friend Alice just launched this amazing clothing line called UNIFORME. Here’s part of her mission statement, which I love:
I aim to make simple, beautiful garments that are seasonless and easy to wear; impeccably tailored, luxurious clothing at a price within reach. I worked with patternmaker Nicolas Caito to develop seven interpretations of the classic white button up, accompanied by a simple tee shirt and three styles of bottoms. The pieces were inspired by the uniform dressing and consumption more typical to menswear, to buy less and buy better. That is, to make well-considered purchases based on the design, materials, construction and longevity of a garment.
Get 20% off during this pre-sale time with the code FRIENDSANDFAMILY. I’m craving this piece. (And, fun fact: the lookbook is shot in Pleasantville, my hometown!)
And, last, the couture shows. I'm obsessed with the Elie Saab collection. Especially this lacy illusion netting jumpsuit avec cape. What did you think?
Book Club Bites: Pomegranate Lemon Bars
Lemon bars were one of the first things I baked -- from a box, of course, and I’ve repressed the exact procedure. Was it curd on top, or some sort of cornstarchy-sludge? Did I make it, or did I squeeze it out of a baggie?
It took me years to figure out that lemon bars aren’t hard to make at all. You probably have all the ingredients right now: flour, sugar, butter, and lemons. But for the best lemon bars, you need a lot of lemons.
I’ve experimented with other flavors: lime, lemon-grapefruit, and now this: a pomegranate lemon bar. I like the berried base that underpins this dessert. Citrus is a top-note flavor, while pomegranate is a mustier, base note player.
Plus, pomegranates are often on my mind so I had to incorporate them into a recipe. There’s a pomegranate on the cover of Food Whore but pomegranates don’t appear in the text of the book. Not once.
So why did I suggest a pomegranate for the cover? Well, they’re juicy, luscious, sexy -- all things I wanted my book to be. Not really in terms of scenes (don’t get your hopes up for back-to-back sex scenes), but more on a sentence level. Sentences can move with a sensual quality.
Also, I summoned some middle school Latin and loved the connection to Persephone and Hades. Do you remember that story? Basically, Hades tricks Persephone into eating a couple pomegranate seeds, sentencing her to a life in the underworld. Because of her love of food, she makes a deal with the devil.
And that… the pomegranate… is basically my book.
RECIPE: (adapted from Ina Garten’s lemon bar recipe)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Bring 1 cup of pomegranate juice to a simmer and reduce on low for ten minutes. Turn off heat and let cool.
In an electric mixer, cream 2 sticks of room-temperature butter and ½ cup of granulated sugar until fluffy, about 3 minutes. In a separate bowl, combine 2 cups of flour and ⅛ teaspoon of kosher salt. Slowly add to the mixer on low until just incorporated. Remove dough and roll into a ball on a well-floured surface. Press onto a 9” x 13” baking sheet, then chill for 15 minutes.
Poke holes into the dough with a fork (so it doesn’t bubble up), then bake for 15-20 minutes until very lightly browned (keep in mind that it will get baked again with the curd, so no need to go all the way now).
For the filling, whisk 6 extra-large room temperature eggs, 3 cups of granulated sugar, 2 tablespoons of lemon zest, ¾ cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice, ¼ cup of the reduced pomegranate juice, and 1 cup of flour. Pour over the crust, then bake for 35-40 minutes, until the filling is set. Let cool to room temperature.
Cut into squares (or triangles if that’s your fancy). In a food processor, powder ⅓ cup of dehydrated strawberries. Sprinkle on top with powdered sugar.
Index-Carding Your Way to a Finished Book
There are many strains of the dreaded Writer's Block, but typically it comes down to: what do I write next?
Now, some writers will want to "feel out" the direction -- and I do that, too! For a couple pages or so. But after a certain point, you might feel silly or delusional -- like running on a treadmill and telling yourself you're actually getting to your destination.
I'm all for letting your characters guide you (rather than having the story guide them like pieces on a chessboard). I'm all for creating original, surprising structures. And I'm all for writing exercises and playing around the character, dialogue, pacing, whatever.
But I'm also for clear planning. Setting goals. Not wasting time.
So I'm a huge fan of outlining. Here's a little vid that explains my index card love in some more detail...
Restaurant Critics 101: Ruth Reichl
Last week, we covered Frank Bruni, the New York Times restaurant critic from 2004 - 2009. Today, we’ll cover Ruth Reichl, the Times’ critic from 1993-1999.
Reichl has written many memoirs about her life in food, but her book Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise focuses squarely on her time as a reviewer. Here are some insider tidbits, many of which found their way in my book somehow:
As a woman who used to dumpster-dive in Berkeley, Ruth made it a point to represent all types of people (rich, poor, beautiful, plain), and all types of restaurants (ethnic places that veered from the white tablecloth French, Italian, and Continental cuisine of the day).
While Frank Bruni shied away from disguises because they made him look and feel silly, Ruth plunged into them, with wigs, makeup, wardrobe, manicures and entire personalities and backstories. Her first disguise was Molly, a Midwestern woman who wore an old but well-preserved Armani suit. Her mother’s friend Claudia, an acting coach, put it this way: “If you are intent on deception, you must go all the way; the restaurant critic of the New York Times can not afford to look foolish.”
One of Ruth’s most famous reviews originally had two parts: one, a 4-star review when dining with her boss and his aristocratic wife, and another 1-star review when she dined as Molly. The Le Cirque review was eventually unified into one article with a 3-star rating. Ruth wavered between 2 and 3, but as her editor said, “It doesn’t really matter. The only thing that people will care about is that you’re taking the fourth star away.”
Restaurants offer a bounty (~$500) to anyone who spots the New York Times critic.
Though New York Times dining critics are anonymous, they wield immense power and social clout -- though is it for a limited time? You are, in a sense, a king or queen of New York. Celebrities and visiting dignitaries call for restaurant recommendations. But once you leave the post, the offers fall off. As Carol Shaw, Ruth’s friend and the secretary of the Living desk said, “You’re just a byline. Take a good look. The minute you give up the job, you become a nobody.” (Note: Likely not really the case. Look at Ruth herself, Frank Bruni, Sam Sifton… Mimi Sheraton! -- all with vibrant, dynamic careers -- and they can show their faces now.)
Ruth bought her designer disguises at various consignment stores, including Michael’s Resale, a shop on the UWS that only accepts garments that are less than two years old (unless it’s Chanel, Pucci or Hermès).
Though clothes started as a way to dine unnoticed, Reichl began to see how clothes could transform how you look at the world -- and how the world sees you.
Ruth often tussled with the idea of being a food critic. At one time, she was a cook and healthy-eating advocate, someone who always got the worst table and paid in cash because she didn’t have a credit card. At the New York Times was she just telling rich people where to eat and feel coddled? But in a column titled, “Why I Disapprove of What I Do”, she says:
Going out to eat used to be like going to the opera; today, it is more like going to the movies.
And so everyone has become a critic. I couldn't be happier. The more people pay attention to what and how they eat, the more attuned they become to their own senses and the world around them.
Ruth wrote that almost ten years ago… and those statements are truer than ever.
Chewy Chocolate-Mint Brownies
And so the paradoxical summer baking streak continues.
Well... what's paradoxical about chocolate mint brownies? It actually makes perfect sense to me.
I got this recipe from NYT Cooking, which I'm turning to more and more these days. (It's the email blasts, I think. I love an email blast that sounds like it's written by a real person, not a click-optimizing program.)
This recipe is adapted from Katharine Hepburn's brownie recipe but with a few important tweaks.
First, there are no nuts. These brownies are for D's birthday and he is anti-nuts in dessert (unless they're peanut). We will disagree about this until the end of time, but a birthday dessert is no time to be contentious. No nuts.
Second, I cut the already tiny bit of flour (1/4 cup) with almond flour. Why? I wanted to make this a practically flourless cake. And, see above, I also like nuts in my dessert but Dave doesn't. How to hide them...
Third, I browned the butter because browned butter begets better brownies (yes, that's how I say it in my head).
And, last, I added mint extract. Just the tiniest bit because you don't want this to taste like toothpaste! I had no way of knowing this in the beginning, but the mint extract does something interesting. This is no regular brownie. It's a cross between a brownie, fudge, and the chewy/candied part of a meringue. It's sticky yet chewy, rich yet... and that's where the mint comes in. The mint cuts the richness and brightens the flavor in the same way lemon or red wine vinegar might brighten a savory dish.
RECIPE: (adapted from Katharine Hepburn's Brownies from NYT Cooking)
Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Melt and brown butter in a saucepan. Add 1/2 cup of Dutch-processed cocoa then set away from heat, above five minutes. Add two eggs -- one at a time -- and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla and 3 drops of mint extract.
In a separate bowl, mix 1 cup of sugar, 1/8 cup of almond flour, 1/8 cup of regular flour, and a pinch of salt. Add to cocoa butter mixture and stir until just combined.
Pour batter into a greased 8" x 8" square pan. The brownies are very flat so don't worry if it seems like the pan is too big. Bake for 35 minutes, then cool slightly and cut into squares. Like all brownies, these are good warm. But because of the mint, they're also great cold.
Restaurant Critics 101: Frank Bruni
I have a go-to line when describing my book: the story of a girl who secretly writes the New York Times restaurant review because the real critic has lost his sense of taste. And every time I say that, 1 out of 3 times people will ask, “is it autobiographical?”
“Ha, I wish!” I usually say (though Tia goes through some hardships I’d rather not).
What happened, actually, was a lot a lot of research. I already had some front- and back-of-house restaurant exposure. That info is also relatively easy to get -- on TV, in chef memoirs, in pretty profiles in glossy magazines.
But the life of a restaurant critic? By its very nature, it’s a more clandestine field -- which is exactly what drew me to the topic in the first place.
So over the next couple months, I’ll be going over some of the real-life facts that informed my quite-fictional story. First up -- the most recent memoir from a New York Times restaurant critic: Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater, by Frank Bruni.
I’ve seen Frank Bruni speak in person and he seems like a great guy -- kind and funny, smart but also not above some gossipy snark. Here are some key tidbits that I found interesting and made their way into my book in some way or another.
Restaurants keep photos of key critics back-of-house. Here's a flyer that was sent to Eater.
Bruni would visit a new restaurant at least two months after opening. Earlier than that and the restaurant “might demonstrate a shakiness -- or, conversely, a focus, that wasn’t a reliable indication of what was to come.” Visits were spaced out at least a week apart. Bruni would often eat out seven nights a week, sometimes eating more than one dinner a night.
Bruni typically ate with three guests. Four apps. Four entrees. Four desserts. No duplicate orders!
The New York Times has an arrangement with American Express in which critics can use fake names.
Despite what you may think about competitiveness, restaurants share information, at least when it comes to critics: pseudonyms, frequent dining companions, photos and videos. If a restaurant manager spotted Bruni, he or she would often tell colleagues from neighboring restaurants so they could see him in-person.
Many critics say that even if a restaurant has IDed you, that doesn’t change the dining experience that much. The menu, the decor, the staff: you can only do so much on the fly. But Bruni says the feeling (if not the food itself) did change when he was “made.” A female waitress is swapped out with an attractive male waiter. Waitstaff get overly solicitous. Both Nobu 57 and L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon offered to do his dry cleaning after some relatively minor spills.
Bruni also had self-doubt. He would often ask himself, “How could I ever be 100 percent sure I’d given a restaurant a fair shake? How could I know I’d experienced and assessed it in the most accurate light?”
Unlike Ruth Reichl, Bruni only wore disguises for three restaurants: Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s V Steakhouse, Per Se, and Jeffrey Chodorow’s Wild Salmon. He just felt silly, his guests couldn’t stop giggling, and they were of dubious utility (he was IDed at Per Se).
There’s a LOT more to Born Round than restaurant review stuff and this one-note listicle doesn’t do it justice. It’s really a story about family, addiction, and caring for yourself. Definitely give it a read!
PS: Born Round's cover art inspired my own. I love the look of a besmirched tablecloth. Sometimes eating out isn't so glamorous...
Peanut-Brown Butter Blondies
Call me a contrarian. I grow my hair long in summer, cut it in winter. Order the fish at a steakhouse. Make salads in the winter... and bake in the summer. I don't know why!
Forget for a moment about the heat factor. To me, summer is about easy improvisational meals. Something on the grill. A picnic of finger foods. A cocktail of two ingredients, tops.
Baking, of course, is not improvisational. It's precise and fickle. You have to plan ahead because you can't easily substitute ingredients. But for some reason, I've had the urge to bake this summer. Just this past month I've made this tahini banana bread, these cornmeal currant thyme cookies, this "life-changing loaf", and now these -- peanut-brown butter blondies, like a cross between peanut butter cookies and toffee cake (ie: good in any season).
I adapted this from Martha Stewart's Cookies which organizes its chapters in the same way I think about cookies: light and delicate, chunky and nutty, crisp and crunchy, cake and tender, and so on.
Maybe one of these summer days I'll make these into ice cream sandwiches or sundaes (with some butter pecan ice cream as a comp... or strawberry ice cream for contrast). But for now, they're great au natural.
RECIPE: (adapted from Martha Stewart Cookies)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a 9" x 13" pan with parchment, then butter and flour. Melt 2 sticks of butter until a golden brown. Remove from heat and cool.
Whisk 2 1/4 cups flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, and 1 1/2 teaspoons salt. In the bowl of an electric mixer, use a wooden spoon to mix the brown butter with 2 cups of brown sugar and 1/4 cup of granulated sugar. Add the paddle attachment and turn mixer on medium-high speed, adding three eggs. Mix until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add 2 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla extract while beating. Slowly add flour mixture, then add 1 cup of roasted unsalted peanuts until thoroughly integrated. Pour into pan and bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean.
Excellent warm, room temp, or cold (we've been keeping them in the fridge... steamy weather mold is no joke!)
Sunday Writing Inspo - Georgia O'Keefe
"You have to be courageous to be a painter. Every day, I feel like I'm walking a knife's edge. And you can fall off -- but you fall off, so what. At least you made something true to you."
- Georgia O'Keefe
A Book Trailer!
Until I started writing a book, I didn't even know books had trailers. But they do! And a lot of them are amusing.
Like this Jonathan Franzen one in which he's grumpily disparaging book trailers...in his book trailer.
Or this one from Tim Ferriss that wins on action and style.
Or this one for Michelle Hodkin's The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer. (As D so helpfully suggested, "just put some softcore porn in your book trailer like this one!")
Well, here's a start to Food Whore's multimedia debut. This is just to whet your appetite (sorry, sometimes on-the-nose food language cannot be avoided). There are no shirtless young men or white male writers complaining... but it does have some sexy chef action per certain FW scenes. Hope you enjoy!
Tahini Banana Bread
For some, this is a breakfast cake or something to nosh with afternoon tea. But if your family is like mine and doesn't like anything too sweet, then behold the perfect dessert.
I made this for my Dad's birthday last weekend because it has all the hallmarks of a Tom-family classic. Fruity, nutty, not too sweet. This is a banana bread with a velvet cape, made luscious with sesame and tahini.
To be totally honest, I also made a coconut-mango panna cotta that was a complete fail. I used coconut sugar with the coconut milk, so that layer was an unappealing medium-toned brown. The top never evened out, so it had a lumpy look to it. And then, it never completely set!
So we spooned the failed panna cotta over this dessert, and that added a little fruit and moisture. But I wouldn't recommend it.
RECIPE: Adapted from El Rey's Sesame Banana Bread, from Bon Appetit
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Toast 2 tablespoons of white sesame seeds in a dry skillet until fragrant, about 5 minutes.
Blend 4 very ripe bananas to a smooth puree. In a separate bowl, mix 1 3/4 cups cake flour, 3/4 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt. In an electric mixer, whisk 2 large eggs, 1/2 cup vegetable oil, 2 tablespoons of tahini, and 1 tablespoon vanilla extract. Add 1 cup of dark brown sugar and 1 cup of turbinado sugar and banana puree. When well blended, whisk the dry ingredients. Fold in toasted sesame seeds.
Pour batter into an 8" x 8" cake pan and sprinkle with 1/2 cup of sesame seeds. Bake for 60-70 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. Let cool completely in pan, then serve.
Friday Links | 6.12.15
Hey there... it's Friday!
This past week I took a little break from blogging. Next week, I'm workshopping the second 20-page installment of my next book (tentatively titled THE COOKS) and I was working pretty intently on that. I've also been thinking about how to create the best possible content for you guys -- quality/quantity? Food/fiction (or fashion)?
As the book launch approaches, there's also a lot more to do: galleys to send, emails to write, people to meet, events to plan. There's the private writing and the public connecting. Now have to figure out where this blog fits into that...
So, expect some tweaks in blog frequency -- perhaps 1-3 times per week? I'll be picking up the slack on Twitter on Instagram.
But on to links!
This Sunday, I'll be attending the #BeABoss food and fashion event, hosted by Taste the Style and Local Creative. Panelists include female restaurateurs, mixologists, designers, shop owners and more. Ladies getting things done, on their terms. I'm there.
I've also gotten more involved with two great groups: YaleWomen, a group of female alums (undergrad and grad) who come together for chats about life, work, and art. The second is Books for Asia, an amazing organization that sends over 1 million books a year to locations in countries in need. Not so much Japan and South Korea... but places like Nepal, Thailand, Pakistan. Everything from children's books to academic texts to novels. I'm planning two events with tthose organizations this summer. Expect invites soon!
I aspire to cut a mango like this.
This cookbook process post from Heidi of 101 Cookbooks got me thinking about my own process. It should come as no surprise that Heidi – who was on the vanguard of beautifully photographed food blogs – is very hands on with the layout and flow of her book. This is not the sort of thing you want to improvise.
But when it comes to fiction, it seems we have a bias against outliners. I know I posted that EL Doctorow quote (“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way), but to be honest, that's not how I do it.
Why the stigma? People think that an outline takes the romance out of writing (nope). It means you're following a formula rather than feeling the rhythms of the story and characters (not at all). Outlining is for genre writers, not literary writers (um, snobby much?). To me, there's nothing romantic about fumbling in the dark. I know too may authors who start writing a novel, only to realize that it's “not going anywhere“. But then, you've lost the energy to turn back, or – even more heartbreaking – to just delete the past 50 pages and start over. If you knew where you were going... wouldn't that be better?
I'm not sure outlining works for everyone. But if you want to storyboard – do it! Personally, I think it's very hard to create a sound plotline with believable characters while also creating artful and beautiful sentences. So – my advice – give yourself a break and plan it out.
What do you think? Are you an outliner or not?
RECIPE: If you're grill-less like me, grease a grill pan. Mine is Le Creuset. Set it on the stove and heat until very hot, when a splash of water immediately sizzles and evaporates. (Otherwise, just heat a real grill as you do.)
Slice a peach and plum. Lay on the grill along with some cherries and cook until grillmarks show, about 2 minutes on each side.
The peaches will get the best sear (they are the driest and you can see the black against the orange pretty well). The plum is too wet to sear but it will emit the most wonderful, surprising smell. And you will feel guilty about grilling perfectly delicious cherries ($7.99/lb!), but they will be even juicier after a kiss of heat.
How long did it take you to write your book? The timeline.
The #1 question people ask me: How long did it take to write your book? The answer is a year and a half. But it took me five years to get a book deal. How?
Here's how it went down. Writing a book is a test of endurance. And in my case, how often you can age your main character up and down without strangling someone.
Sunday Writing Inspo | Salman Rushdie
"And in the best of the old yarns, the ones we ask for over'n'over, there are lovers, it's true, but the parts we go for are the bits where shadows fall across the lovers' path. Poisoned apple, bewitched spindle, Black Queen, wicked witches, baby-stealing goblins, that's the stuff."
- Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh
Friday Links | 6.5.15
Happy Friday! This week, I’ve been saddled by one of those hot-to-cold weather sicknesses. I went out on a cold misty morning in a little silk summer dress and that did me in. But I’m almost 100% and looking forward to the weekend. Tomorrow, D and I are leaving for PA for a hiking + poker + writing retreat trip. D is a big poker player, and every once in a while we spend the night at a casino -- he plays, I get a massage, do a little shopping, and write. It’s a pretty good deal.
Here are some things that caught my eye this week:
Smog meringues. Meringues are 90% air, making them a major flavor component. A group of scientists created smogs from London, Atlanta, and L.A. using “precursor ingredients” (those three cities represent three very different types of smog. Beijing, for example, is London-style and Mexico City is L.A.-style). Well, do they taste any good? No. As Edible Geography says, “our hope is that the meringues will serve as a kind of ‘Trojan treat,’ creating a visceral experience of disgust and fear that prompts a much larger conversation about the aesthetics and politics of urban air pollution”.
Restaurants add reservation cancellation fees to the menu. This is a hot, hot topic but nothing new (see Grub Street, Eater). As Pete Wells writes:
Whenever I give up my credit card number and am told I’ll be charged for bad behavior, I hear several messages, none of them warm and fuzzy. It says that I’m not trustworthy. It says that the restaurant sees me as a revenue source before it has had a chance to treat me like a guest. It says that a reservation isn’t an appointment with pleasure; it’s an obligation to be kept.
Though at the same time, restaurants need to safeguard themselves from over-enthusiastic diners who book and dishonor reservations willy-nilly. An empty table means lost revenue, rejecting would-be (and ready to eat) customers.
I used to work in the world of high-end reservations and can tell you that many restaurants don’t want to charge or chastise you. A place like Carbone (where there is a $50 cancellation fee) is busy every single night. You might think, what’s the big deal? If I don’t show, then someone else will take my place. Sure. But that also means that the host/ess has to juggle people around. Maybe there aren't people waiting because everyone thought you need reservations. Tables will have to be rearranged. “Guaranteed” revenue becomes “if they decide to show up” revenue. If you get a table for 2 or 4 on a hot night, at a hot time, then you took it away from other people who thought ahead to make a reservation. Restaurants wants to make people happy (while also making money) and no-shows hinder both of those goals.
And speaking of high-end restaurants, I found Ruth Reichl’s impromptu dinner at Per Se so charming. You go for a drink, then you stay for some apps, then all of a sudden you have a whole meal.
Remember that HarperCollins Bloggers Fall Preview I wrote about last week? Here’s a behind-the-scenes look from BookChickdi at some of their picks.
And finally, some house lust. This house in Missoula, Montana is STUNNING. Who needs the Hamptons?
Sweet Potato Roasted with Coconut
This is more hefty than a snack, more slight than a meal. And that's a good thing.
On Tuesday nights I go to a writing workshop and leave the house around 6:45. I probably could eat a full diner, but I don't want to be too full during class. I also don't want my hunger to distract me. (I've never been the type of person who can just "forget to eat". What? My whole day revolves around eating.)
So the other day I made this as a pre-class snack -- one sweet potato, roasted with coconut oil, topped with Maldon sea salt and coconut flakes. Like these soy-mirin-sesame glazed yams, this is a lovely blend of sweet and savory. I was inspired by coconut curries with starchy potatoes, yams, butternut squash. Maybe next time I'll make this with curry, but not before class. It's one thing to stain your own writing with curried fingers. Quite another to stain your classmate's.
RECIPE: Preheat toaster oven to 450 degrees. Prick sweet potato with fork, slice into rounds, and rub with coconut oil. Roast for 15-20 minutes, or until a fork can easily slip into the slices. Sprinkle with coconut flakes and sea salt.