Croissant in the City

I collect coffee mugs, each one is different. I was thinking of building a shelving unit of some sort that I could hang on the dining room wall as an art piece with all the mugs, each in it's own little cubby. This one from CB2 is perfect, though I would probably need about 6 of them.

Every celebrity chef under the sun now has a cookbook. I usually have to dig through all the celebrity chef cookbooks at the store to get to the really good, relatively unknown cookbooks, buried behind them. 

In this recent Wall Street Journal article, it is mentioned that celebrity chefs write their cookbooks as if they are cooking in their restaurant kitchen. Too many steps, too much use of expensive equipment, too many ingredients. I want the cookbook from the chef who writes as if cooking in his restaurant kitchen. 

Janky low-quality cookbooks are a dime a dozen. When I pick up a Thomas Keller
or David Chang
cookbook, I expect a level of quality. It's not a cookbook I will most likely cook from every night for dinner, but I'm buying their incredible experience in the kitchen, in recipe form. 

I'm still planning on getting TK's new book and I already bought Momofuku. If you don't like these books and the recipes they offer, don't buy them. Personally though, I think that's your loss. 

When I was in LA last weekend, I wandered into a shop on Abbot Kinney that had at least a hundred cake pedestals in a variety of sizes. My heart leapt at the sight! I was going to buy at least 5 of them. And then I saw the prices tags. 

The smallest cake pedestal was 8" and cost $68. The pastry gig doesn't pay that well and there is no way I can afford a $68 cake stand. 

Logging onto one of my favorite websites (and stores), Anthropologie, I found a cake stand that is cute, has a cover and fits my budget. $24? I'm sold!

I've moved past my denial. Hand-whipped cream through my anger. Bargained with the fates for the return of Gourmet. Eaten whole pints of dulce de leche Haagen-Dazs in my depression and have finally arrived at the acceptance. Gourmet is gone. 

While I subscribe(d) to both, Gourmet and Bon Appetit, I honestly have never given Bon Appetit as good and thorough a read as I always do with Gourmet (typically pulling the tattered copies from my purse a month later when a fresh and shiny copy arrived in my mailbox). 

This article is from the Los Angeles Times about the editor of Bon Appetit, Barbara Fairchild. While not overly in-depth, it is nice to know a little bit about Ms. Fairchild, seeing as I've read all of Ruth Reichl's books and feeling a special kinship to her.

Just from the brief article, I like Barbara Fairchild a little more than I have in the past when reading her editor's letter at the beginning of every issue. 

Perhaps Bon App will replace Gourmet as the tattered food mag always in my purse. Perhaps. 

This quote comes from the Wall Street Journal article written about David Chang and his new book from his restaurant Momofuku
. I like how he describes the restaurant industry and why he chose to write his book in the tone of his true voice instead of sugarcoating it and making the restaurant industry sound pretty and clean.

Mr. Chang says the book's tone is a conscious attempt to capture the brutal, gritty and exhilarating tone of the restaurant kitchen. "There are so many more f-bombs and terrible things that happen in restaurants. It's an ugly, nasty business, the cooking world. It's hard, hot and grueling. Other books choose not to document this," Mr. Chang says. Prettifying the restaurant business and the world of food is fundamentally dishonest, he says, which is why he includes the recipe for a pig's head torchon (a cylindrical pâté) with instructions to "grasp that fact" that "pigs have heads."