You’ll notice on the left side of the page, above our Flickr pool (which is so awesome, by the way; thanks to all of you uploading pictures!) you can now follow my Twitter feed. So now there’s an extra reason to visit my page a thousand times a day: you can see what I’m doing EVERY SECOND of EVERY MOMENT of the day. What am I doing right now? I don’t even know, I better check my Twitter feed. I’m all atwitter with Twittering. Thanks to Ben my old/new programmer for setting this up!
It’s the last time I’ll mention it, promise! But check out the left side of my page now: you’ll see YOUR Flickr pictures staring back at you. Yes, I am prominently featuring The Amateur Gourmet Flickr Pool on the main page of the blog. Which means your dinner, your lunch, your breakfast, your snack can be featured for all the world to see with just a couple of clicks. So please: upload your food pictures to my pool. I want to see what you’re eating; I’m obsessed with you and everything you eat. Deal with it!
First of all, let’s give credit where credit is due: look at the “c” I put in the word “Provencal” in this post’s title. That “c” has the appropriate squiggle in it; I copied it from the Wikipedia page for Provencal. What does that squiggle denote? I have no idea, but the squiggle is there and who do you have to thank? Me, that’s who.
Second of all: lamb’s neck. Are you grossed out? You really shouldn’t be. I first ate lamb’s neck at the offal dinner Chris Cosentino cooked at the Astor Center last year (watch video here). Unlike the raw venison liver I consumed, or, for that matter, beef heart tartare, the lamb’s neck was the least forbidding of the dishes served; on the plate, it looks no different from a braised lamb shank (except for the shape) and it tastes twice as good. Why? It’s a fattier cut of meat.
This post doesn’t really involve food, though it takes a detour to Jean-Georges by way of Ssam Bar. Instead, it concerns two prominent figures from this blog who you’ve known and loved for as long as I’ve known and loved them; namely, Diana, my close friend and former roommate, and Mark, Craig’s close friend and film school classmate. We introduced these two back when Craig and I first met; specifically, we introduced them over drinks at Pastis after Diana came to dinner with my parents. Since then, we’ve shared manymeals, we’ve travelled together and, last Monday, we celebrated their engagement.
This is baking weather, peoples. What better on a chilly day than to fill the apartment/house/shack with the smell of something baking in the oven? Nothing better, I say, nothing.
Last weekend I had you make a chocolate cake and many of you came through; but this time I bet even more of you will join in. Why? Because those cookies you see above are maddeningly awesome; they come from the brilliant Smitten Kitchen website (seriously, is there a prettier website alive?) and the cookies are, to quote Michael Jackson, devilishly good. Let me put it in pretentious foodie terms: the salinity of the salt plays off the sweetness of the white chocolate, and the oats create a texture that is substantive without being heavy. And I took ’em out a bit early so they were actually pretty chewy (which I like) not so much crispy. So I guess you could call ’em “Deb’s Chewy Crispy Salted White Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies” but that’d be a mouthful.
Your assignment: make the cookies. Here’s the recipe: the recipe. Take a picture of yourself or your loved ones with the finished cookies and upload the pictures to the Amateur Gourmet Photo Group on Flickr and prepare to see yourself on the blog on Monday. Millions of people will ogle you and talk about how sexy you are and how much they love your cookies. What could be better?
Have a salty, chewy, white chocolate-filled weekend.
Oh, The 2nd Ave. Deli. Remember how much I loved it? I blogged about the original here, here, and here. It was my favorite New York Deli; more inviting than Katz’s, less touristy than Carnegie. And then it disappeared and became a Chase Manhattan Bank.
When the new one opened up on 3rd Ave. and 33rd Street I was dubious. To state the obvious: who wants to visit The 2nd Ave. Deli on 3rd Ave? Second of all, how can you transfer the magic of a New York institution to a completely different venue? That just doesn’t happen; you can’t relocate The Museum of Natural History, you can’t relocate The 2nd Ave. Deli. I stayed away.
We all know that the first rule of real estate is “location! location! location!” Apparently, though, it’s also the first rule of New York friendships. Want to see a lot of someone you really like? It helps to live in the same borough.
Take my friend Lisa, for example. There was a time we both lived in Chelsea and when we lived close together we made videos about bulimic tomatoes and miracle almond cakes. Then I moved to Brooklyn and she moved to the Upper West Side. We still see each other, of course, but we’d see each other a lot more if she came to her senses and moved to Brooklyn or if I came to my senses and moved back to Manhattan. Either way, the point is that Lisa has a boyfriend named Eric who I hadn’t met yet and so we made a date to meet for Indian food on Sunday so Craig and I could meet this Eric character.
I’ve known many people who want to be famous, but very few think about the kind of fame they want. For those of you who secretly crave fame, however big or small, may I suggest that you strive for food blogger fame? It’s a really good kind of fame. 99 out of 100 people have no idea who you are, and those that do know who you are like you for reasons that are based entirely on your work. The best part, though, is that people will want to cook for you. Isn’t that the best? I mean if you’re a famous novelist, what do you get? A free subscription to The New York Review of Books? Who wants that when you can have Kim Spurlock cook you dinner?
