Manolo’s Food Blog

Manolo says, here are the few links to the things culinaria that may perhaps amuse.

The Best Baguette in Paris

Pig Candy

Reading Rachael Ray

Manolo says, the Manolo he has the very complex relationship with the Rachel Ray.

On the one of the hands the Manolo finds the Rachael Ray to be supremely annoying, in the same way that the Manolo finds the Katie Couric to be annoying, which it is to say, that the Manolo disapproves of the bossy/bitchy person who hides behind the perky/nice exterior.

Yet, at the same of the time, the Manolo finds that the Rachael Ray she has the trainwreck quality; it is the rolling disaster, and many persons are injured, but you cannot take your eyes off of it.

And yet, on the third of the hands, there is this evidence from the Willamette Week Online.

In town to tape segments for another of her shows, Tasty Travels, Ray had already bought five pairs of shoes before spending time at the Pearl Bakery and Powell’s….

And so one must suspect that the Rachael Ray loves the shoes, and the loving of the shoes, it goes far with the Manolo.

And yet, on the fourth of the hands, there are the “cookbooks” in which the Rachael Ray suggests the making of the ultra-rapid meals out of the mundane items like the frankfurters and the canned sawdust, things you would serve to your family if you hated them.

And then there is the elimination of the Tony Danza, which, yes you feel sorry for the Tony Danza, such the befuddled and mostly harmless character, but this, is it not the sort of televised mercy killing? Something that ends the suffering?

So, as you may see, it is the love-hate-hate-love-disgusted-by-appalled-by sort of the relationship, in which the Manolo still finds that he cannot cease watching the Rachael Ray, if only to see what latest atrocities against fashion and common sense she has committed.

Manolo says, 100% Pure Silicon!

Manolo says, finally, the Manolo’s much anticipated Food Blog, it is here!

The Manolo trusts that you will find in this place much to entertain and amuse you.

Indeed, the Manolo himself, he has many reasons to be pleased with what is, and will be happening at this blog.

In the first of the places, the Manolo he has managed to secure the blogging and editing services of his good friend, the Mr. Henry, who is, in the grand tradition of the Manolo bloggers, the possessor of the powerful and entertaining writerly voice. Even the better he knows the food and cuisine, and has the discriminating and refined tastes that mark the person of quality.

Although, do not take the Manolo’s word for this. Instead, read the Mr. Henry’s introductory essay, Mr. Henry’s Appetite.

In the second of the places, the Manolo has been lucky in convincing the Jason of the Stormhoek Winery to write about the wine for this blog.

The Jason he is not only supremely knowledgeable about the wine, he is also one of the geniuses behind the amazing success of the Stormhoek Winery, the wines of which will be introduced to America later this year, introduced with the most unusual campaign: 100 Geek Dinners in 100 Days.

In the third of the places–or perhaps this it belongs in the first of the places–the Manolo most pleased because he has finally the place where he can talk about the second great love of his life, after the shoes, and that is the food.

It is not the secret that the Manolo is something of the gourmand, and the food and the drink are often the topics of his undivided attention.

And so what could be better than to have the special place where we may come together to enjoy the fine food and drink and the pleasant and amusing company of our friends.

When Mr. Henry has sushi one of the first things he needs to decide is what he is having. That is, what he is having to drink with tonight’s sushi.

As an appropriate accompaniment to sushi, sake is an obvious choice, and as it happens there is a perfectly respectable bottle already open in Her refrigerator. For lunch, green tea is always advisable because at this point in the career of Mr. Henry’s liver even half a beer at lunchtime leaves him feeling as if someone had thrown the sea anchor overboard. Forward progress is impeded and, heaven knows, he needs to be getting along with his life goals each and every day, and this includes afternoons.

Scotch is Mr. Henry’s personal favorite with sushi and with nearly everything else, for that matter.

A healthy pour of Oban or Talisker over ice cubes made from filtered water (more genius from the engineers at Sub-Zero) provides an ideal imbibational choice – strong enough to cut through the lingering fire of powdered wasabi, yet without the sugars of wine or the starches of beer.

White rice is as close to library paste as Mr. Henry’s educated palette will accept. When the short-grained is served chewy and lightly vinegared, however, scotch efficaciously clears away any lingering bits of hamachi or maguro, leaving the mouth ready to greet the next wiggling arrival.

When you elect to switch away from wasabi-based sauce toward a bit of eel, however, you need a more powerful cleansing of the palette, a thorough and abrupt alteration, the commencement of a new chapter in the evening’s unfolding novella. Here is where your choice of drink is key, and here is where you can change your whole meal, indeed, your whole approach. You might even say that your choice of drink determines your cultural identity, your very ethnicity.

Memoirs of a Sushiphile, Part I

Manolo says, to inaugurate this new blog, here is the post that marrys the Manolo’s two great passions, the food and the fashion, although what is shown below is not exactly to the taste of the Manolo.

These pictures they are from the Fall 2006 collection of the designer Jeremy Scott. Let us be generous and say that perhaps he is striving to be whimsical, rather than ridiculous.

Perfect for wearing to the Sons of the Italy Columbus Day Ball!

If the soda jerk, he gave the Manolo the huge cone with only the two tiny scoops, the Manolo he would send it back and demand the new one.

Mayor McCheese, The College Years.

In quick succession sometime early in the 90’s, as if impelled by a master plan, Manhattan streetscapes began to display sushi houses on every other block.

What only the truly initiated noticed, however, and here you are fortunate to be reading the reportage of Mr. Henry, an old Japan hand, was that most of these new houses were not under the management of Japanese persons. Indeed this fact was proven when shouting expressions in his increasingly fluent Japanese to the wait staff elicited only silent, baleful stares, responses that could not be explained by reliance on hackneyed clichés of oriental inscrutability.

No, clearly these persons of Asian extraction were participating in an elaborate masquerade not of their own liking. These were Chinese and Koreans, most of them fresh arrivals to America, and their dreams of striking out boldly in the land of opportunity had gone terribly, terribly awry.

It is no secret to you, Mr. Henry hopes, that the Chinese and Korean nations loathe the Japanese, and there are sound, historical, grudge-bearing, vengeful reasons for such enmities. How odd, therefore, to see ancient hatreds so quickly buried in the quest for gainful employment. How much more odd it was to see those enmities buried with regard to food, that most intensely personal and immutable of identity markers.

In the 90’s most of our sushi chefs, however, remained of Japanese ancestry principally because entrance into the ancient, venerated guild and training in its special knowledge requires years of grunt work and an uncle in the business, precisely the same hurdles facing an aspiring electrician or plumber in the greater New York area. Notwithstanding this cultural and, yes, racial legacy, however, strange things began happening to the fish. Slices began to get bigger.

A piece of sushi should be a one-bite experience. The incisors do not participate. The entire edible object, glistening with fresh omega-3’s and not dripping with excessive shoyu and wasabi (dip a corner — don’t dredge the thing, please, please, please) is placed as far back in the mouth as the fingers – yes, the fingers – will allow. Use your chopsticks to grab a pickle or a slice of ginger but the true sushi-meister uses two or at most three fingers of the right hand only.

Did sushi originated as an accompaniment to drink, the heavenly eastern equivalent of the beer nut or the pretzel? Who knows? Mr. Henry is not here to render decisive opinions on the arcana of Japanese culinary history, and if he were to do so he would probably incite hate mail from frustrated, underpaid academics.

Sushi is, you will admit, a predictable experience. It cannot suffer from uneven charcoal broiling. It is either sublime or else for hygienic reasons you should not be ingesting it.

After painting the bathroom all day, or to be perfectly accurate, painting the bathroom trim and corners all day, Mr. Henry is not about to stand up at the stove.

Mr. Henry adores his stove, mind you, his new Dacor hot-air convection oven (the 30” all-gas EGR 30 range with the ceramic radiation broiler – pure heaven on earth), without which the newly renovated chef’s kitchen would have no center, no bottom, no focus loci. But he just cannot face the idea of thinking about, of conceptualizing, of planning a meal.

Cutting a line between Decorator White semi-gloss on the ceiling and Vanilla Milkshake eggshell on the walls made significant demands on his hand-eye coordination abilities and as for his planning capabilities, well, these are never at their best when his hands are paint-flecked and aching. Mr. Henry is beat, and worse, so is She, his loving wife whose energies are without measure.

When Mr. Henry refers to his new Dacor convection oven, by the way, a remarkable home resource, he is stretching the possessive just a smidge. The Dacor, like the other appliances and indeed like the whole apartment, belongs to Her. (The Turkoman carpet, however, is Mr. Henry’s by right of its masculine design and because he bought it for his back office back when he had a back office as well as a secretary, a front office man, a bookkeeper, and the like. Let’s not even get into it, shall we?)

Manolo says, Guacamole!

As one would imagine the Manolo he is not immune to the tropical charms of the finely-crafted guacamole. Indeed, it can be among the greatest of the appetizers, if done well.

Avocados, lime juice, the finely-diced red onion, chopped cilantro, the salt and the pepper, and perhaps as the Manolo has done here above, the little chopped tomato. So simple.

Of the course, the secret it is entirely in the quality of the avocados. Bad avocados, bad guacamole. Good avocados, good guacamole.

The Manolo, he is happy to report that the avacodos for this particular guacamole they were fine. Yes, fine, but not superior. For that one must be close to the source, perhaps in the charming town of the Carpinteria, where the living it is easy, and the heavily-laden trees offer up fruit to whomsoever can reach up from the sidewalk and pluck them from the branchs.

Oddly for the Manolo, however, the single best guacamole he has ever consumed it was in most unlikely of places: downtown Tucamcari, in the New Mexico, at the tiny, unassuming mom-and-the-pop restaurant called the El Toro Cafe. The dish it was the “guacamole salad”, presumably because it came with the chopped iceberg lettuce. It was and remains perfectly memorable, with the sort of vegetable-fatty richness and flavor that the Manolo has never again experienced.

The Manolo says, if you are perhaps stranded in the Tucumcari (and who has not, at some point, been stranded in the Tucumcari?) then you must visit the El Toro. He suspects that the guacamole could never again possibly be as good as it was that one time (nothing is ever as good the second time), but the traditional New Mexican food was good enough to justify the visit to this unprepossessing place.

Mr. Henry is not one for sauces.

After three forkfuls of even the finest sauce, he longs for the pure and free flavor of the meat, fish, or fowl. Here in the home of the brave, the cradle of individuality, are not sauces an Old World affectation? Have US Customs agents been vigilant about their importation? Does the National Security Agency monitor wine reductions, veloutés, or Catalonian foam?

In case they are monitoring him, Mr. Henry wants to say he believes law enforcement authorities are doing everything necessary to protect our values. Heck of a job, guys.

Prairie American virtues include bristling at authority, a feisty disregard for convention, and a consequent culinary approach characterized by rugged unfussiness.

Ours was not a nation constructed on false sauces!

Isn’t our most fundamental right the right to be left alone? And doesn’t that extend equally to the evening entrée?

Mr. Henry rests his case.

To be sure, he can imagine the Founding Fathers enjoying a side of cranberry relish, a shining illustration of American ingenuity. And then, of course, there is gravy, that quintessential English invention, one that survives contentedly today in the South.

A Mr. Henry dictum: Gravy is not sauce.

Shall we move on?

The topic of salmon is broad. At the local fishmongers Mr. Henry found Norwegian wild salmon, Norwegian farmed salmon, Norwegian farmed organic salmon, and his special favorite, Norwegian double-smoked cured salmon. The choices, you will admit, were overwhelming and he hadn’t even left Bergen.

West Coast and Alaskan salmon have a wild, weedy, sharp flavor that Mr. Henry has always found off-putting. But then Mr. Henry gets lost in the wild weeds of San Francisco, both physically and metaphorically. There is something out there he just doesn’t get – proper highway directions, for example, or the general tenor of conversations. The scenery is too beautiful, the harvest too bountiful.

He is reminded of a warm morning once spent in the souk of Meknes choosing bunches of the most aromatic mint on earth. Ahhhh, Mr. Henry’s memories are long. Best to stick to Norway. You can’t really get lost driving in the hinterland there because the country is entirely composed of coastline.

In serving dinner to old friends who had not graced their table in a decade or more, Mrs. Henry and her obedient consort decided that for the entrée broiled Norwegian organic salmon seemed a safe bet. It is fresh and plentiful in the market, reliably palatable, and attractively colorful. Unlike pale monkfish that belly-flops across the plate, salmon stands up smart and pink.

The Korean grocery on the corner offered asparagus, super-model thin, which after tossing with a touch of olive oil and coarse salt we placed under the ceramic radiation broiler for two minutes. The result was an irresistible finger-food — a slightly crisped, succulent, nutty sweet grass.

Our wine was a delicious Austrian grüner veltliner by FamilieBauer, refreshing, inexpensive, and cold.

A sourdough French baguette amply satisfied our limited demands for starches. Broiled baby Brussels sprouts offered roundness and verve. The meal now demanded a theme, both in flavor and in color, and the decision of sauce for the salmon loomed large.

A fresh dill sauce hurriedly purchased from the deli counter turned out to be a verdant horror. Its principal ingredient was mayonnaise and the shocking intensity of green color made Mr. Henry shudder even to try it. His old standby yogurt and sour cream dill sauce, although perfectly tasty, always had a disappointing tendency to roam around the dinner dish as though seeking converts to its particular belief system. This evening’s grilled asparagus were each too, too perfect to permit the joy-ride of an uninvited dill sauce.

It is at times like these that Mr. Henry shows the stuff of which he is made. Grit and education, abrasion and lubrication in equal measure, led Mr. Henry to re-imagine sublime salmons of yesteryear. There had been no fresh dill in the market. The salmon was out of the oven awaiting its flavor accessory, its organizing theme.

Only minutes before serving time he seized upon a new solution –- pure, unadulterated, organic, grass-fed, Natural by Nature sour cream — straight from the tub.

After all, what goes better with smoked salmon than sour cream?

[Philadelphia cream cheese is a horror. Mr. Henry is sorry to have to say it, but there it is. In the long run it does no good to sweep these things under the rug. Mr. Henry strongly believes that it is best to be open and honest about processed cheese spreads of any distinction. They are a national embarrassment, a cultural character blemish, and he cannot say this often enough.]

And if sour cream is the perfect accompaniment to smoked salmon, could it not also work with fresh?

It could, and it did. Its working-class sourness suavely partnered the rich sweet fish.

Was the serving of “plain,” if you will, sour cream seen as a failure of the imagination? Ha! On the contrary. This particular sour cream with every homespun, handmade bona fide, with deeply rich texture and the perfect blend of tartness, sweetness and umami could not have been bested by Escoffier’s Army of the Republic. American sour cream was triumphant.

De l’audace! Encore de l’audace! Et toujours de l’audace!