My New Home
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: Movin' on up, to the east side of the web
Topic: food writing biz
Sorry for the extra click, but Tripe Soup has moved here, hosted by WordPress, in hopes of increasing traffic and user-friendliness. Read and comment!

Blogs galore, and butter
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: yum yum yummy I got butter in my tummy
Topic: food writing biz

This new search thing lets you search blogs for recipes. Pretty cool.

www.foodblogsearch.com 

 
I see that Saveur magazine (my favorite magazine in the world) is celebrating my birthday month by featuring butter, my favorite food, in its March issue.  I can't wait to dig into it as soon as I can wrestle it away from my butter-loving hubby. Well, I guess my birthday month probably doesn't have that much to do with Saveur's timing...oh well...but I'm happy to see the luscious stuff finally get its due.

Are you a butter eater? An aficionado of fine margarines? A lover of spread? Click on Post Comment below and don't be shy.

 
Here's my own column on butter which saw print  November 30, 2006, in Ulster Publishing's newspapers:

Ravenous

Butter debauchery

"Eat butter first, and eat it last, and live till a hundred years be past."
--Old Dutch proverb

O wild, depraved and decadent butter, you are so creamy and so sinful. Years ago when the masses turned their backs on you for the sake of frugality, health and sensibility, I stayed staunchly by your side, keeping you constantly near, for purely hedonistic reasons. I just didn’t like the taste of margarine.

Now they’re saying that you’re not only tastier but better for us than margarine, that you’re a natural product free of trans-fats, preservatives, emulsifiers and stabilizers. Although there are still plenty of folks who prefer the new light trans-fat-free "spreads," I’ll stick to my butter, thanks, until they pry my cold dead fingers off those yellow sticks.

When the topic of garlic comes up, I’ve always said it’s my second favorite food, the first being butter. Butter is not really a food, you may argue, but a fat, a flavoring, but I can think of so few things it doesn’t enhance that I think it’s one of the finest foods anywhere. Is there any compliment better than “buttery”? To call a food that isn’t butter “buttery” or a piece of fabric or music or anything “buttery” is high praise indeed.

Love for butter is as basic as the sweet tooth we’re born with. All babies love it. When I was a kid there was always a stick on our family dinner table and my baby sister Katy used to grab it when no one was looking and stick fistfuls into her mouth.

Maybe it’s my northern European heritage that makes me batty for butter. Traditionally the peoples of the warmer Mediterranean climes looked down upon their barbarian neighbors to the north for being butter eaters. The ancient Greeks and Romans used it as a poultice rather than a food and butter didn’t keep well in the heat anyway. In Italy and France the countries are divided for the most part between the rich dairy dishes of the upper regions and the olive-oil-based dishes of the south.

Recently in a Manhattan supermarket I found nearly a dozen imported specialty butters from various parts of Europe. Although the idea of a “fresh” butter traveling across the ocean and sitting on a shelf for an unknown period of time did not prompt me to fork over the substantial cash for any of them, I do have memories of incredibly sweet unsalted butter on breakfast rolls and croissants in pensioni, B & B’s and petits auberges in Europe, butters I’ll take over any ice cream any day, butters that to top with fresh tart-sweet fruit jam seemed almost overkill (but I did it anyway).

The reason that that European butter is so good is not necessarily because it’s unsalted, as I once thought, or that the cows are special, which I’m sure they are, or that they eat special European grasses, which I’m sure they do, but that European butter has a higher butterfat content than our commercial butter generally does. By law our American butter must be at least 80% butterfat and so is usually just barely over that. In Europe the percentage is more like 85 or 86. Also, for more flavor many European butters are cultured, tweaked for more flavor by churning the cream more slowly and for longer and sometimes adding cultures and/or lactic acid.

Butter is what’s good about so many things, from simple lusty garlic bread to snails steamy with shallots, garlic, parsley and brandy. What’s skate?, what’s brains?, without brown butter, a butter cooked until its milk solids turn a toasty nutty brown. Its cousin black butter is a very dark brown, not black. The paler milder beurre blanc (white butter) is an emulsion of butter with wine or vinegar, and bercy butter has shallot, white wine, bone marrow, parsley and lemon juice. Then there’s lemony Hollandaise. A popular French technique chefs love is to “mount” a sauce with butter by finishing it with a flourish of butter at the end to add gloss, body and flavor.

More simply, a pat of butter is the only way to scramble an egg, as far as I’m concerned.   

And then there’s butter rum flavor and butter pecan ice cream. Butter in piecrust makes for best flavor but a less flaky crust than lard or shortening. It’s essential for the best cookies and cakes. There’s hot buttered popcorn that smells like the movies, whether you’re there or not, and homemade bread fresh from the oven slathered with butter. "Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts," said the late James Beard.

There are luscious compound butters spiked with herbs to dot on plain grilled meats or fish, or Indian butter chicken with ginger, garlic and spice. Niter kibbeh is an Ethiopian clarified spiced butter just as good on potatoes or rice as on the spicy exotic Ethiopian dishes that I love to cook. Smen is an aged Moroccan version.

Larousse Gastronomique suggests coating butter balls in breadcrumbs and deep-frying them to accompany poached fish. The equally decadent Italian-American Alfredo sauce is made merely of sick amounts of butter with cream and cheese. I’ll pass on that one. Recipes for mashed potatoes call for obscene amounts of butter, too, like two sticks to a pound of spuds or some such, a philosophy I don’t subscribe to, spiking mine with olive oil often, and using only a tablespoon or two of butter unless it’s a holiday.

I usually keep whipped salted butter in my fridge for toast, for easier spreading, plus sticks of unsalted butter for cooking, in order to control the salt content of my dishes, although it doesn’t keep as long as salted butter.
“Light” butter has water, gelatin or skin milk added. I don’t go there. Just use less. Ghee and clarified butters were invented in the absence of refrigeration to keep butter longer by removing the milk solids but they remove some flavor, too. They are great for sautéing, though, with their much higher smoking point.

There are the original butters before cow (butter happened thousands of years BC, the original made in goatskin pouches), like those of yaks, sheep, goats, mares, donkeys, camels, buffalos, water buffaloes, llamas and reindeer.

Unsalted butter can be stored in the freezer to keep better, but wherever it is it should be well wrapped to keep off flavors from getting in. Some swear by watery ceramic butter bells on the counter; some say they encourage mold. Some English people shell out 34 pounds for the ButterWizard, “the world’s first fully portable Temperature Controlled Butter Dish, which both heats and cools regardless of ambient temperature, ensuring your butter stays at the perfect temperature for spreading – anytime, anywhere.”

Although I often said in my foolish twenties that there was no such thing as too much sex or too much butter on a baked potato, I’ve since learned that a little bit (of butter, that is) can be just enough, disagreeing with butter-eating world record holder Donald Lerman who ate seven sticks in five minutes.

Naughty or nice, when it comes to the creamy spread for your December bagel be naughty and go for the butter. It’s holiday time, live extra large: buy a jewel for someone who deserves it, eat Krause’s chocolate ‘til you feel ill, eat three dozen escargots at Le Canard Enchainée or a fat tub of good butter from Ronnybrook. Whatever you do to be decadent, eat more butter.



 

 

 

Horn tootin' and a simmering cephalopod
Mood:  happy
Topic: food writing biz

For the second year in a row, Greenbrier gave me a Special Mention in their annual scholarship contest towards attendance at their acclaimed conference for professional food writers. This one was for a Fred Thompson scholarship of $1000, where I didn't win but scored high and received a very nice congratulatory e-mail from Greenbrier founder and leader Toni Allegra. So next year I will have to try yet again, and in the meantime try to do some damn good foodwritin'.

* * *

Today I've been cooking octopus, in preparation for some queries to magazines on this oft-unpopular item, sweet and succulent as it is. I thawed, rinsed and drained a 2 and 1/2 pound critter, and although not as purple and curly raw as I wanted it to be, it was still pretty in a gnarly kind of way.

 

I seared it and it threw off a lot of liquid, turning curly and purple as a good octopus should. Then I simmered it in red wine, garlic, onion, olive oil and oregano, with a bay leaf and cinnamon stick thrown in, cooked it for an hour, then another hour until the lot was brown and thick and murky. Hubby cut it up while I was off interviewing a cook for a story, and then it got tossed with linguine. Sublime, no, but worth some work. I'll keep you posted.

P.S. I can't get this pic to be smaller on the page--technical difficulties--guess I'll have to rename this entry "Octoporn." With all those big fat tentacles, it's for octopus lovers only! 

Unwrapping the Mysteries of the CIA
Mood:  hungry
Topic: food writing biz

I toured the CIA today. Lucky me, their Hyde Park campus is only 20 minutes from my house so I can go anytime I wanna. I haven't yet tried any of their popular restaurants other than the Apple Pie Cafe, but I've been for a graduation and a couple other events. I know about four of the teachers and a couple other employees, but no current students, as they ship 'em in and out pretty quick.

The atmosphere there is exciting, infectious. This was my second tour, the first about 11 years ago when we first moved to the area. The main building, Roth Hall, is gorgeous and high-ceilinged, in a former life a glamorous seminary. I love to peruse the amazing library, whose periodical collection was not as comprehensive today as I recall but maybe some of it was moved or they cut down on their subscriptions. They used to have every food magazine ever published (very useful for food writers), but I didn't see hide nor hair of Saveur, Gourmet or any of the biggies today. I was proud of myself in the bookstore, though, whose incredible and vast collection never fails to thrill me. I didn't buy anything, not even any of the seven-dollar cookbooks.

What I love best about "the Culinary," as we call it around here, is that it's all about food, every aspect of food. It's just food food all the time, kinda like my life. The tour made me want to don chef's whites and a toque and be a student there, stuffing as much knowledge into my brain as it will hold.

Food writers take note: an excellent source of summaries of current articles about food, with links, is at the ProChef SmartBrief newsletter, which you can have e-mailed to you daily. It's been an invaluable resource for me for keeping abreast of what's going on and what topics are being covered in newspapers and magazines.

 

 

 

It's official! I'm going to the IACP conference!
Mood:  celebratory
Now Playing: happiness, bliss, excitement
Topic: food writing biz

I'm so thrilled--I've decided to go to the IACP conference in New Orleans in April!!! Definitely cannot afford it but it seems worth it in terms of knowledge gained, contacts made, etc. And interesting, fascinating and fun. It doesn't look like I'll have a lot of time to soak in NOLA ambiance, as about 20 hours a day are scheduled for the four days I'm there, but it promises to be a wonderful experience. Emeril's gala is just too expensive for me, but I'll see scholar Jessica B. Harris, of whom I'm a big fan, and agent and media trainer Lisa Ekus, kind and good food writer John T. Edge (he wrote me a nice letter a couple years ago), and Mai Pham, who wrote Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table, one of the all-time best books on Vietnam and its food.

And my  new friend Jessica Bard is going to the conference, too. Jessica is a way cool, sociable, delightful, and very talented chef, teacher, food writer and stylist for Fine Cooking and other magazines who just happens to live nearby. After a brief e-mail correspondence we finally met and had lunch together on Tuesday, it was a real treat to meet her.

 

 

I wanna go!! Please please please!
Mood:  on fire
Now Playing: I promise to be good if I can go...
Topic: food writing biz

It's that time of year again--time for the annual conference of the IACP (which in my case stands for the International Association of Culinary Professionals, but there are also the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists, the International Association for Cognitive Psychotherapy, the International Association of Canine Professionals and the International Association of Chinese Pathologists. Really).

Yes, it's that time of year again, depending on where the conference is being held, for me to wish and want and long for something too expensive for me to justify going. I went in 2000 when it was in Providence, because I could drive there and had a friend to stay with. I met Julia Child and various other important food people and it was a wonderful experience, one big four-day high to be surrounded by thousands of other people fascinated with food. This year it will be in New Orleans in April and I'm dying to go hobnob with people just like me, plus an assortment of editors, agents, publishers and people passionate about food and the outrageous potpourri of New Orleans.

Oh, there just has to be a way... 

P.S. Happy Birthday, Melissa Brown! 

 

Baaaa...
Mood:  don't ask
Now Playing: more cooking demos
Topic: food writing biz

Lat year I swore off doing cooking demonstations, because the preparation was too overwhelming. But like the parties I swore off a few years ago and still throw once a year or so anyway, I'm glad I didn't give up doing cooking demos. They really are a lot of fun, albeit stressful for an introvert such as myself, but it's tons of fun to spout off and share my love of cooking with other people.  I never used to think I could do cooking demos because I didn't think I could cook and talk at the same time, but if I find that if I plan every last detail ahead of time, I don't screw up more than once or twice per demo!

This is my third season of doing demos at the Dutchess County Fairgrounds, during the Dutchess County Fair and now this weekend at the New York State Sheep and Wool Festival, where I'm limited to lamb and sheep cheese, which is fine with me, because I adore both. Tomorrow at 3 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. I'll be doing a pecan-crusted rack of lamb, accompanied by circles of acorn squash with sage butter. Here I am last year, on the upper left, doing either Lambie Pies or Lamb on a Stick--I did both last year, with two recipes during each demo. Be there or be².

 

 

 

Curly & Purple
Mood:  chatty
Now Playing: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MILES!!!
Topic: food writing biz

I love unnaturally curly veggies like the okra in this column, Okra ode, or this eggplant I picked up at my CSA yesterday, along with these gorgeous purple tomatillos.

My website www.jenniferbrizzi.com remains, after two years, a work in progress, as I continue to learn and struggle with it. I just learned how to put some frames and tables in it, in an attempt to clean it up and make it look better, but it still won't do what I want it to. I'm trying to move this blog over to the site too so everything is in one place. I doubt it will ever be perfect.

Thinking of taking a web design course to get me out of the house and  into civilization. I found myself envious of my son this morning when I dropped him off at his bus stop, that he would see so many people today. It's glorious to have 7 1/2 hours a day without the kids so I can get stuff done, but other than my husband's visits home at lunchtime, it's kinda lonely.

Two weeks til my next cooking demos, at the New York State Sheep and Wool Festival--think I'll wrestle a rack of lamb, but not sure just how yet... 

 

 

Cooking Demo time again...
Mood:  silly
Topic: food writing biz

This week at the Dutchess County Fair I'm demoing cast iron cooking--hope the folks over at that booth that sells cookware won't be pissed! Audiences have often asked me why I use all that cast iron instead of something more cheffy. I'm just crazy for cast iron; watch for my column Friday about why. I'll be doing the same demo Wednesday and Friday at 11:00 a.m.

Mostly Traditional Southern Fried Chicken

One-Bowl North/South Cornbread

 

Be there or be².

Ten Sweet Years
Mood:  happy
Topic: food writing biz
This month makes ten years as a food writer for me, since my first food column "Jenny's Food Focus" came out in the May 1997 edition of the Hudson River Sampler. I've been doing columns ever since, through "Good Food," and now "Ravenous."

I was once asked if I was afraid of running out of topics, with so many columns to write so regularly. I haven't run out yet and don't foresee it ever happening. Writing about food, tasting it, thinking about it and cooking it, are a joy and a delight, most of the time, and food is a subject I know I'll never tire of.

So after ten years I'm waiting to turn into an overnight sensation. Maybe a few more decades are needed...

Back to work, doing radishes this week...

special mention for me
Mood:  celebratory
Topic: food writing biz
For years I have really really wanted to go to Greenbrier, the annual foodwriters' conference in West Virginia, which sounds to me like a few days of bliss on earth, hobnobbing with others as crazy for food as me, and who are making a living at it. Last year I missed the deadline for scholarship applications because of a messed-up link in my bookmarks. This year they extended the deadline and I barely got in with two columns, one on okra, the other on cephalopods. Lynn Swann, the coordinator, has been wonderful about answering e-mails and seems like an all-round good sort.

Well, I didn't get a scholarship, so I can't go, but they listed some special mentions in each scholarship category, and there were two winners of the Apicius scholarship, which awarded $500 towards the conference to "a professional food writer whose prose rings a clear voice and reflects the delicious joys of the table. In the spirit of Apicius, the first Roman to write cookbooks, the goal is to grant this award to that writer whose work will stand the test of time." After choosing two winners, the kind judges picked four of us for Special Mention and I was one of the four. The list.

This does make me very happy, even though I won't be able to go. Enough carrot to keep this donkey from giving up the food-writing thing, not that I really would, because I love it too damn much. But enough of a tease that I will keep trying until some day I get there. It's lovely that some judges who read 160 entries liked me enough to put my name down. Thank you, judges, you have made this food writer happier and prouder than she probably has a right to be, and hopeful that I can keep on doing what I love best after eating and cooking: writing about it.

Appearances
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: Me on stage
Topic: food writing biz
This past week I did two cooking demos at the Dutchess County (NY) fair and appeared as a tomato judge at a local farmers market. It was all lots of fun, although the demos were lots of work recipe developing and testing, planning, paperwork and washing dishes. My demos seemed fairly well-received, I was nervous as usual (that old public speaking bugaboo) but planned better this time, I think. I got some nice feedback from the audience on how good the food was and one couple said, "You're our favorite presenter," which tickled me pink.

Although I forgot to put the corn in the Grits Casserole with Corn in the first demo (Southern Sides with Fresh Corn), and the basil in the tomato sauce in the second one (Italian Ways with Zucchini), they seemed to go fairly well, not perfectly but okay with good and bad points. The second had a little too much dead air and "well, let's just pretend this is done," so I could move on--I'm hoping that better timing will come with practice.

My recipes are not for everyone, not innovative, wow 'em, cheffy nor wild. They're classic dishes with a twist, none of them terribly complicated, most yummy, and I think there is a certain audience for that.

Well, they have asked me back for the Sheep and Wool Fest, and maybe I'll do two recipes instead of three so I can focus and time them better--I have a couple months to figure it out.

And I may be doing some little farmer's market demos on hot plates, which should be a gas.

It is great fun though, and I think a good thing for a food writer to do. I'm seeking help and advice from experts on the nuances of food demos, on timing, recipe development, etc., so I can streamline and make them better, more entertaining. Lisa Ekus does a one-day media training for food pros that sounds wonderful but at $1800 for one day, $3000 for two, that will have to wait until I find a sponsor!

Oh, and a scrumptious heirloom "Mennonite" won the tomato contest, but I had to talk the other judges into it...

IACPconf/I wish I were there
Mood:  blue
Now Playing: CRANKY!!
Topic: food writing biz
Man, life as it is is good, but how I have wanted to go to this year's conference, in Seattle, of the International Association of Culinary Professionals. I went in 2000 to the one in Providence, RI, and it was so incredibly great that I wanted so bad to get to this one, too, and to see Chandley, my best oldest childhood friend who lives there, and a family--the Kaplans-- who were in Vietnam with us, getting another son when we adopted our daughter, and my second cousin Mary Ann Gwinn, who is book editor of the Seattle Times--so many reasons to go, but not enough cash, not enough child care.

I am thinking of the crowds, thinking of the schmoozing, thinking of the tastes and smells and joy of being with thousands of other food-fanatics. In Providence I got to meet and talk to the recently departed and very sweet Sicilian food expert and actor Vincent Schiavelli, and also Clifford Wright and Julia Child, all of them pros and genuinely kind and friendly.

Alas, Child and Schiavelli will not be there this year. But I wish I was. It is all for the best, I know. I need to be here with my little ones. But man oh man how I wish I could be there, too. Cheers to all of you IACP'ers in Seattle right now. I hope you are having a fantabulous time.

Taste Your Own Tongue
Topic: food writing biz
If you want to be a food writer, there are three things you need to do, and none of them has much to do with food.

The first thing is just to be a writer. Forget about the food for now; that part will come naturally. If you truly love food, it will infuse everything you write.

To Be A Writer is a fine idea, like wanting to be a teacher so you can have summers off but forgetting about squabbles with administration or brats hurling blunt objects at the back of your head. To Be a Writer sounds like sitting at a desk all day dressed in PJs, sweats or nothing at all. To Be a Writer makes you imagine a long snaking line of people all gazing at you with abject adoration as they approach the table where you sit signing book after book until your hand cramps pleasantly.

But To Be a Writer actually means writing. And if you have always scribbled words on paper and banged computer keyboards, you are already a writer. If you have always had to write--rather than chose to write or wanted to write--and just could not keep yourself from doing it, if you are hopelessly addicted to writing, you are already a writer.

So keep writing. Anything: great literature, newspaper articles, how-to manuals, potentially prize-winning essays, journal entries, a blog, short stories or just witty, pithy e-mails to people who love you. Just write. Every bit of practice does you good.

And another thing. Read. Read not to emulate other writers, but rather to inspire yourself with the joy of words, and especially to stoke the fire of your lust for words. If you don't love reading, if you wouldn't rather read than just about anything else, maybe your love for words and the way they blend and simmer is not quite fervent enough to spend days molding them to sound like the thoughts in your brain, only better.

The last requirement for being a food writer is to follow your own tastes, not what's trendy or popular but what you love. If creating recipes for low fat vegetarian dishes gets you going, do that. If it's discovering what makes people tick, then follow around wildly popular chefs and crab fisherpersons and microgreen farmers and make your reader really get to know them. Or if you love how sexy food can be, or if strange foods from the other side of the planet stimulate your sense of adventure, write about that.

See food through your own eyes, taste it with your own tongue. Seize the aspect of it that excites you the most and let that thrill spill out onto the pages of what you write.

Sorrow in The Big Hard, So Hard
Mood:  blue
Topic: food writing biz
The last bit of summer has flown by breathlessly, August like the blink of an eye. Now summer is leaving and leaves are falling and fall is sooner than soon.

I am horrified by the situation in New Orleans and Mississippi, too much suffering and misery, too much of Bush's concentration on the wrong Gulf.

I visited New Orleans only once, for a week a few years ago, and I fell madly in love, such that the wild city has haunted me ever since, becoming a setting for a novel in progress, inspiring my cooking and eating, drawing me to want very badly to return some day. Now the suffering of its citizens, the destruction of its unique cosmopolitan and exotic charms, the beauty of its architecture, people, music, food....it is all immensely tragic, and I am reminded not so much of the recent Asian tsunami but also of 9-11: another irrevocable, unpreventable, uncontrollable horror. I have to have faith that the area will heal and rebuild, that all the homeless ones will find new homes, new lives for themselves.



On a more personal note, last week I did my cooking demo at the local county fair. Although I was surely nervous and my show did have its flaws, I was quite pleased with the way things turned out. The Goddess of Garlic couldn't make her afternoon show, so I filled in and was much less nervous. It was wonderful experience, overall, and I was glad that I could do it and I can't wait to do it again.



Words of inspiration came from the recently deceased 115-year-old Henny van Andel-Schipperof of the Netherlands, whose advice for longevity was to keep breathing and eat pickled herring. Good advice!