Food for Thought

The third course chapter of Kitchen Confidential recounts Tony's series of jobs after graduating from the Culinary Institute of America.  From the fading glory with a view of the Rainbow Room to the Apocalypse Now atmosphere of Works Progress, then later to the slow failures of Tom's and Rick's Cafe, etc. Along with an increasingly fat paycheck, his stories of the various kitchens he worked in include lots of objectionable language and an atmosphere not unlike prison with macho posturing and threats.  He jumped from one restaurant to the next, building up colleagues and industry secrets. During what he calls the 

For as long as I can remember, every Thanksgiving me, my mom, dad, and sister would pile into the family car and drive to my uncle’s house while listening to Arlo Guthrie’s song Alice’s Restaurant. The 18-minute 34-second song tells the story of Guthrie’s arrest on Thanksgiving Day as well as his experience as a draftee reporting to the New York City induction center during the Vietnam War. The song has become as much a part of Thanksgiving to me as turkey and gravy and my uncle's amazing baked clams. Before, during, and after the song my parents always provide a running commentary, interjecting with vignettes about 1960s counter-culture, the draft, and even one 

Welcome back to the Reader’s Den.  This month we are reading Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential.  Jenny’s post from last week gave us some background on Bourdain.  We are progressing in the book onto the second course now, which outlines “what strange beasts lurk behind the kitchen doors” as well as several don’ts Bourdain has learned from working in the industry for so long.  While he freely admits that good food “is about risk,” he also can’t overlook some truths he’s found out along the way.  Below you'll find some of his anecdotal rules for eating out. 

Welcome back to this month’s Reader’s Den, co-led by Jenny Baum and Ursula Murphy, about Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly.

Welcome to this month’s Reader’s Den!  This month we’ll have a discussion co-led by Jenny Baum and Ursula Murphy about Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. Please feel free to comment or bring up anything relevant to the book in the comment section.  We'll try to address and facilitate discussion as it comes up. 

Every morsel in The Manga Cookbook is so freaking cute and delicious looking I couldn’t decide what to cook. This kind of copious edible cuteness must be how the Bento box came to be. The bento is a combo of small treats stuffed together attractively in a box or tray. In fact, stuffing the tray is compulsory, as the bento is meant to be portable. If there’s even a little space in the box, contents will shift and the omotenashi (eating with the eyes) will be ruined. In any event, I was compelled to make a variety of adorable things:

Why does the Dorot Jewish Division have in its cookbook collection a booklet of pectin recipes? After all, pectin—a gelling agent used in making jams, pie fillings, and jellybeans, among other things—may be very useful in confectionery, but it's hardly a staple ingredient in Jewish cookery. Yet one particular manufacturer of pectin played a fateful role in the life of a certain Jewish family during World War II.

Here in the Dorot Jewish Division, we have over 400 cookbooks that were published outside the United States: from Canada and Mexico, South America, Asia (including Israel, of course), Oceania, and Africa (including a cookbook from Melilla, the city on the north coast of Morocco that's actually part of Spain).

Many people have a favorite summer food. My favorites are hot dogs and frozen Charleston Chew candy bars. For others, hamburgers, ice cream, and watermelon are as much a part of the summer months as fly swatters and bathing suits. But as an avid home cook in a cramped and often sweltering apartment kitchen, it can sometimes prove challenging to find satisfying dishes that don't cause frustration or perspiration.

While I've taught a number of classes about how one would begin culinary research at the New York Public Library, I understand that people can't always make it to midtown in the middle of the day, nor does everyone live in New York. For those reasons and more, I've put together a brief tutorial on how to begin culinary research at a library and I will attempt to make this as universally applicable to other libraries as possible. 

Manischewitz, Hebrew National, Wolff's Kasha, Empire Kosher Poultry--it's no surprise that these companies have produced Jewish cookbooks over the years. But advertising booklets have been around since the nineteenth century, and lots of (non-Jewish) companies have tried to attract Jewish customers with recipe booklets, a wide array of which can be rediscovered in NYPL's Dorot Jewish Division.

Working in a research library has its advantages. I've met lots of interesting people, encountered fascinating objects serendipitously, and wandered around the deep crevices of a landmark building.

With so many menus in the New York Public Library collection, it's not uncommon for me to stumble upon a gem I've never seen before. The menu featured here is one such example. Had a patron not requested this 1975 dinner menu honoring James Beard and Julia Child a few months ago, it would still be sitting in its box downstairs. But thankfully the request was made, and I was introduced to this charming item. The dinner, which was sponsored by the Wine & Food Society of New York, was held on Halloween night at the Pierre Hotel. And in addition to a traditional menu of food offerings, the organizers wrote creative "recipes" for both Julia and Jim, wherein the ingredients 

While Bernie Madoff spends the rest of his life in prison, his wife Ruth will have plenty of time to work on a second cookbook. Yes, a second cookbook. Ruth Madoff edited a cookbook in 1996 called The Great Chefs of America Cook Kosher, which has garnered its own bit of controversy. Ruth, along with her friend Idee Schoenheimer, is credited as an executive editor of this spiral-bound work, although according to an article in the New York Times a few months ago, the book is really the work of food writer Karen MacNeil. In the article, MacNeil (who is credited as editor of the book) claims she was paid to write the entire book...and did.

Forget Restaurant Week, October is Restaurant Month at the New York Public Library with three public programs that explore the past and the future of restaurant culture. We start things off on October 10th with Spain's master molecular gastronomist Ferran Adria discussing A Day at elBulli - a new book that documents a day in the life at Adria's restaurant. From dawn until way past dusk, A Day at... gives readers a way to experience elBulli without having to make a reservation. Farewell to Quenelles: Changing Restaurant Culture in New York, will be held on October 15th, and will bring together food writers and scholars Paul Freedman, 

At a recent discussion sponsored by the Historic Districts Council on New York’s historic restaurants and bars, Matthew Postal, architectural historian and co-author of Guide to New York City Landmarks, surprised many in the audience when he mentioned that only a handful of restaurants in New York are designated as landmarks by the Landmarks Commission.

Restaurants whose interiors have been designated include the now-departed Gage and Tollner’s in downtown Brooklyn (it was recently a TGI Friday’s and may soon be a Starbucks!), the Crypt (now Wolfgang’s Steakhouse) in the old Vanderbilt Hotel on Park Avenue, the Oak Bar and Oak Room in the Plaza Hotel, the 

My refrigerator door holds a lot of stuff: butter, condiments, pickled shallots. Taking up the most real estate, however, are cheese nibs: those pieces of cheese you don’t feel justified in throwing away, but you never seem to eat again. They look okay - no visible mold - but you can never fully remember how long they’ve been sitting there. Parmigiano Reggiano or Pecorino Romano I keep for adding to soup (although I often forget about that too), but the softer cheeses, the French or Spanish cheeses, those outstay their welcome.

Recently a friend was telling me about a great little recipe from Jacques Pepin’s Cuisine Economique, which puts to good use those nibs 

Judson Kniffen
Theater Director
New York City

Cookbook: Bistro Cooking by Patricia Wells.

Why do you like it?: On my desert island there is room for lemon tart, potato and celery root gratin, leek terrine with truffles, and oxtail stew. And despite not knowing her personally, being stuck on a desert island with Patricia Wells very well might be my idea of heaven. In Bistro Cookingher recipes range from a ten minute sauté to a three day stew. The ingredients are simple and affordable. I trust each recipe to the letter. Never has she let me down. I bought the book for the desert chapter