Thursday, June 19, 2003

Fuck you, Souffle aux Amandes, I trounced your ass!  Boo-yah! Souffle aux Amandes is just a vanilla soufflé with some ground-up almonds added.  It is not difficult to make – they never are.  Though actually this one didn’t turn out just great.  It didn’t poof as much as it should have, because I’m sure I didn’t beat the egg whites sufficiently well.  I didn’t chill my beaters and bowl beforehand, nor did I use my balloon whip and do it by hand, nor did I use my big fancy copper egg beating bowl because, um, I don’t have one.  Also, I didn’t have enough vanilla.  Also, I got started late because as we were eating the ad hoc spaghetti amatriciana I whipped up using leftover ham – it is far too salty to eat as anything but an ingredient in something else, it’s good for that, but at this rate I’ll be eating this ham when I’m sixty-four – we got hooked on the Clint Eastwood special.  Also I’d been engaged a bit of mild drowning of my sorrow over Eric’s imminent departure, again.  So it wasn’t great.  But I did the motherfucker.  Only three more soufflés to go, and one of them’s chocolate.  I plan on finally using some of the fancy-dan chocolate April sent me. Meanwhile, tonight I braise ham alone. Did y’all see the food section of the NY Times yesterday?  Amanda Hesser splashed Oeufs en Gelee on the front page.  I’ll admit it looked prettier than mine.  But even Amanda couldn’t actually make it sound like it tasted good.  Oh, and to make up for a short post, I would like to direct those who don’t know him already to the writings of Jeffrey Steingarten.  I’m reading his second book, “It Must’ve Been Something I Ate,” right now, and it makes me crack up like a crazy person on the subway regularly.  He is, no question, a piece of shit elitist snob.  But he is also on a vendetta against food-phobes.  Reading his defense of MSG (in his essay “Why Doesn’t Everybody In China Have A Headache?”) or the enormous lengths he goes to (often by traveling to Italy or Paris) to scientifically disprove the existence of food allergies (which he manages to do, most of the time) is an absolute joy.  If you have not read him, seek him out.  It’s important.   9:04:11 AM    comment []