Le Fork Du Fest

Fork Fest Review

Le Fork du Fest

NUMBER 17

December 2007

Chez Sandra

Bonjour madame et monsieur, or as they say it in Montreal, “bonjour, what can I get you?”
But enough about the all the wonderful food that we ate in Montreal and let’s move on to the real meat of this issue––our last “entourage sur la table.”

Will the lovely and talented Mademoiselle Huang, please, passe en avant and get up here and bring that there fella, monsieur “play it again” Sam, with you. Merci.

Sandra et compagnie, in the true French spirit of chance de pot, had everyone bring a little something and she made up the main course of a lovely “vegetarian stew, with sweet potatoes and poblano chilies and black beans and orange juice and lots of aromatics, with polenta triangles, garnished with avocados.”

But of course, zat was not all. No, not at all.

Mssrs Yoshida and Giordano, provided the lovely green salad of various colorful and tasty ingredients, including jicama, cayenne pepper, and l’orange.

Carole (Ca-rhollllllll) brought the frittata—the never-ending frittata that I am still eating today—it’s the new rice dish here at Rue 10 (and, okay, she’s getting real good at it)

Karin brought the lovely, ever-changing Uma, and her lovely eyes, but a chocolate cake, courtesy of Citizen Cake.

Karl’s company was sadly missed as he was somewhere out of highway five, counting lane reflectors all the way to Los Angeles.

And so the night went, Sandra, Sam, Carole, Karin, Carmine, Hideo, Bob and the lovely Uma, giddy, gurgling and holding everyone’s attention, late into the night––until about, what, 10 p.m., when, for better or for worse, the revelry was put to an end; the desserts were boxed, the booze, corked, and the laughter squelched and the little Uma, tucked into her car seat for the ride back across the bridge.

And now, weeks have passed and passed and I am harassed and harassed, “Finish Fork Fest, before Christmas.”

Future Feasts

Where has all the food fun gone? Who will step up to the plate, approach the stove, the counter, the recipe books and proclaim themselves the next dinner hosts?

Meanwhile, as the tension mounts within the ranks of willing chefs, each chomping at the chance to grace the pages of Fork Fest (“James Beard? We don’t need no stinkin’ James Beard”) I shower you with bits of this and that…here in Carole’s Kitchen as well as Karin’s, we’ve all had one or two boxes of a variety of veggies from Mariquita farms:

http://www.mariquita.com/

And while they don’t do home delivery, you do get to mingle with other fresh veggie fanatics and try things like purple carrots, which taste just about like orange carrots, but yeah, they’re purple.

Check out their website for the next time and place of the mystery box delivery. See you there.

Tasty Bubbles

After having discovered Veggie Wash, back on our 2003 trip to Viet Nam, it has taken me this long to finally buy a bottle at Trader Joe’s. You’d think, with the quality and let’s not forget, the handling that fruits and veggies get here in the local Asian markets, that we would have bought up cases of this stuff by now, but no. And while I am on the subject of soaps…

A few weeks ago, I was apartment sitting and my friend had left a pan of rice on the stove, which I ignored for a few days and no doubt, he had too. By the time I lifted the lid, the rice in the pan, was covered in a yummy gray dust of mold. I tossed the mold, washed the pan and for extra cleanliness, I decided to add a few dollops of detergent and let it sit for a while.

Days later, I decide that I’ll cook up some of the bacon in the fridge. I plop it into the pan, heat it up and I get this creamy white froth and I’m thinking, maybe the bacon is no good—it smells clean though, lemony almost—and then I figure it out. Ha!

So I clean out the pan, cook and burn some bacon, which only makes it better, but I’ve got a scorched pan, which I again, decide needs some soaking agent. I decide this time to use only water and days later, I grab the pan, and yes, water, water, everywhere. Duh.

For further culinary reading—since you just can’t get enough of Fork Fest—try Bill Buford’s article in the December 3, 2007 issue (The one with Santa in the helicopter) of the New Yorker. He mentions, at length, and for this reason, I won’t bother—details of the chef and restaurant we both enjoyed, Restaurant Au Pied de Cochon. All I can say is make your reservations now and smile at every little piggy you ever come in contact with.

Bon appétit.