People & Culture

Thanksgiving is less that two weeks away. Believe it or not, for someone who enjoys cooking as much as I do, this year will be the very first Thanksgiving I have ever made a dinner myself.Growing up, we always went to my grandmother’s house for an awkwardly formal meal. You could always hear the sound of cutlery on the plates and people swallowing. She’d make oyster dressing and because her husband was diabetic, there was no sugar in the whipped cream.

You know the fish is fresh when you watch the guy behind the counter stun it with a mallet before he takes it in the back to clean it for you.Manila Oriental Market just opened in the outer Mission a week ago and it’s a destination for fresh fish. They have tanks of live clams, oysters, crab and rockfish. There’s also quite a selection of shrimp, whole fish on ice and items like fresh sardines and fresh (not frozen) squid that rarely show up in supermarkets.

Amy is clearing out her kitchen on the Upper East Side. She’s posting a variety of brand-name kitchen items here including a white Williams-Sonoma corner cabinet, a Bodum electric grill and a Moulinex Julienne Machine.My pick is her collection of vintage hammered aluminum cookware. My great-grandmother cooked with pots like these. Take look at her post here.And don’t forget to post your own listings at The Kitchen’s classifieds by clicking the yellow button to the right.

Don’t let the name confuse you. While Bowery Kitchen Supplies does maintain a “to the trade” location on the Bowery, their main retail operation is in the Chelsea Market.Bowery Kitchen Supplies serves the Food Network, which has studios and offices in Chelsea Market. Though I’ve never seen a celebrity chef perusing the aisles of Bowery Kitchen Supplies, pictures on their website prove Alton and Emeril are fans.

Museum stores aren’t top of mind when it comes to shopping for kitchenware, but don’t forget about the MoMA store, the retail arm of the famous New York modern art museum. The store charges itself to help us find “design for living” and they do a pretty good job of it. The best find for cooks in the MoMA Store doen’t come from their kitchen section. Instead, look for their special department for Muji, the Japaneese “no logo” company.

Peter Reinhart’s instant classic The Bread Baker’s Apprentice (Ten Speed Press), bears the subtitle of Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread, which is an apt description of his thorough yet friendly introduction to bread making. Reinhart is a teacher who is passionate about bread, and this voice comes through on every page.He begins with a fascinating story about his discovery of the delayed fermentation technique in bakeries in Paris.

Wander through Park Slope, Brooklyn and you’re sure to find some great food: prosciutto from the butcher, baguettes and cookies from a bakery, and a surprisingly wide selection of olive oils and other gourmet pantry items at Key Foods supermarket.Foraging the neighborhood for ingredients can be a fun way to shop, but sometimes a time-crunched host needs a reliable all-in-one gourmet shop stat. That’s Blue Apron Foods.

Restaurant orders can be as distinctive as fingerprints. A one-of-a-kind friend of ours would always line up “a white wine, a coffee, a glass of water—and something to drink,” as soon as he sat down. Same holds true for Jake (John Belushi) and Elwood (Dan Aykroyd) of The Blues Brothers (1980). Recently sprung from Joliet Prison, Jake, along with his brother, Elwood, is on a mission to come up with the cash to save the Catholic home where they were both raised.

“You going to drink this here, or are you going to take it home and rub it on your chest?” It’s the cocktail to end all cocktails. In The Nutty Professor (1963), nebbishy chemistry instructor, Julius Kelp (Jerry Lewis), goes all Jekyll and Hyde when he mixes himself up a strengthening potion with some startling side effects.

What doesn’t go with champagne? Used to be, you were just supposed to have it with things like caviar as an apéritif, with seafood for dinner, or eggs for brunch, but deep-fried foods, Asian dishes, and even popcorn have all become fair game. In The Seven Year Itch (1955), we get an early, trail-blazing precedent. It’s a hot August in New York.

“Annie, there’s a big lobster behind the refrigerator. I can’t get it out… Maybe if I put a little dish of butter sauce here with a nutcracker, it will run out the other side.” Lobsters bring out a strange range of emotions. Here, in one of the many memorable moments in Annie Hall (1977), we get a dizzying, scuttling display. The scene is a scant 1 min.

Thanks to my accidental discovery of the International Ice Cream Association this week as I researched various ice cream related issues for this month’s Best Lick! Ice Cream Contest, I now know a bit of ice cream history. Fascinating stuff; here’s a summary: It seems ice cream can be traced back as far as the second century B.C. Good ol’ Alexander the Great was known to enjoy snow and ice flavored with honey and nectar.

Adieu to Stacey and her April poetry posts: The passage excerpted here isn’t poetry, though it did inspire a poem worth reading. (W.H. Auden’s “Tonight at 7:30”). Auden dedicated his poem to M.F.K. Fisher, who wrote the following prescription for gastronomic perfection. It comes to mind because those who are doing “The Cure” will soon be hosting dinner parties. It’s good to keep these rules in mind, even if one disagrees with and breaks them.

From Stacey: “Here’s a terrific poem from Brooklyn-by-way-of-Texas poet Shanna Compton. Many may have read it when it first ran in Gastronomica. Like cream, it quickly rose to the surface where poet Paul Muldoon scooped it up for his Best American Poetry 2005 (Scribner). It is a terrific example of how writing about food so often gives way to something else entirely.”To Jacques Pépin Touch mewith your impeccably clean hands.Go ahead: Say beutter, instead of butter.

Nothing says ‘spring’ like ramps. The first time I encountered ramps was when I’d just finished college lived with a couple who graciously took me in to their house in a suburb outside of New York City for a few months while I hunted for an apartment of my own. That spring I was treated to the fruits of David’s labors; he would regularly comb the forest floor for culinary morsels, most notably, ramps.

Sometimes a romantic dinner in means bringing the restaurant home. In Rear Window (1954), socialite Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) has a tray from the 21 Club brought downtown to her boyfriend’s, L.B “Jeff” Jeffries (James Stewart), Greenwich Village apartment. Laid up with a broken leg, Jeff watches in bemused amazement as Lisa unveils a nice Montrachet rosé, broiled spiny lobster, and one of 21’s signature checked tablecloths.

The subtitles call them crullers, but they’re known by many names: beavertails in Canada, churros in Mexico, zepoles in Italy, and malasadas in Hawaii. Every cuisine seems to have its own version of this classic street food of fried dough served hot, with a light dusting of sugar.

Introducing a new Guest Writer: Nora will be contributing pieces on food and drink in cinema. Her feature, “The Celluloid Pantry,” promises to feature off-beat films not typically known as food movies (“no Big Night, Babette’s Feast, super-recent or super-commercial”). Nora has an ever-growing collection of over 500 DVDs, so you can bet she won’t mess around. Welcome, Nora!

CookingByNumbers.com is an ingenious little UK-based site that will put the contents of your refrigerator and pantry into a formula and spit out recipes so you can cook with what you already have. Brilliant! Tom Tuke-Hastings, the site’s creator (and author of The Art of the Vodka Jelly) says “Don’t bother going shopping, let’s cook with what you have.” Amen.