Shaved ice gets fancy.

[Photo Credit: Life Magazine]

My mother, old Johnny Appleseed herself, loved to take us camping as kids. I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now, much to my wife’s chagrin. Emily is a country mouse and loves the idea of camping out underneath the stars. I’ve adopted the Woody Allen front, complaining about mosquitos and owls and nature.

About the only thing that sounds appealing about camping is making smores, and I don’t even love them either. I mean, what good are graham crackers anyway?  But some people are knuts for smores (fortunately, if I ever get a craving I don’t need to go camping to have ’em). My wife thinks they are heavenly.

What about you? Do smores melt you where it counts?

[Photo Credit: Sun-Sentinel and TLC]

This’d make a nice, quick lunch. Thank you, Mr. B.

Here’s the recipe.

Haagen-Daz Vanilla.

The perfect crime.

And while we’re on the topic of lemons…

Check out this recipe for creamy lemon gelato.

[Photo Credit: bell’ alimento]

This one is a must for all you loose-tea nyerds out there.

 A most excellent product.

[Photo Credit: cooking.com]

My mom has always loved music. She loves to sing and whistle (and even hum). Ma is game, too. She’ll listen to rock n roll, soul music, funk, jazz, and her “classic music.” But she’s never been a big record-buyer. When I was growing up, she had some Judy Collins records and Simon and Garfunkel lps, and of course, her Jacques Brel albums. Oh, how she looooved Jacques Brel. And we had an Edith Piaf record, too.

Most French-speaking peoples of my mom’s generation revered Edith Piaf.

I always think of Edith Piaf–of my mom singing in French, of Nuke Laloosh mistaking Piaf for a “crazy Spanish singer” in “Bull Durham”–whenever I hear Rice Pilaf. Edith Pilaf?

Sounds good, tastes good. Sometimes the French know what they are doing…

[Photo Credit: Janet is Hungry]

It might be way too early in the season for the good, fresh corn, but it’s never too early to think about Mexican corn on the cob.

Saveur has the recipe.

[Photo Credit: Bionic Bites]

For Jim Joyce…Bromo, baby.

Crying Tiger Pork

Yesterday, my pal Jon DeRosa hipped me to Jonathan Gold, a famous food writer from L.A. who won a Pulitzer Prize for his work a few years back. I’d never heard of Gold before but a quick goodle search of his columns for the L.A. Weekly was enough to hook me.

I went back into the New Yorker archives and checked out a profile on Gold by Dana Goodyear. Here is Gold at a Thai joint called Jitlada in a strip mall in Hollywood:

Gold started to reminisce about the spiciness of the species kua kling that Jazz had ever served him, the first day they met. “It was glowing, practically incandescent,” he said. “You bite into it and every alarm in your body goes off at once. it’s an overload on your pain receptors, and then the flavors just come through. It’s not that the hotness overwhelms the dish, which is what people who don’t understand Thai cooking always say, but that the dish is revealed for the first time–its flavor–as you taste details of fruit and tumeric and spices that you didn’t taste when it was merely extremely hot. It’s like a hallucination.”

I like spicy food but am a rank amateur when it comes to real spice. I’ve never tried anything as intense as kua kling but agree that beyond the initial shock of hotness, the flavors in Thai cuisine really develop and it is an incredible experience.

I also thought this was interesting:

Eating in the San Gabriel Valley, Gold has observed that, unlike in New York, where immigrants quickly broaden and assimilate their cooking styles to reflect the city’s collective idea of “Chinese food,” the insular nature of Los Angeles allows imported regional cuisines to remain intact, traceable almost to the the restaurant owners’ villages of origins. “The difference is that in New York they’re cooking for us,” Gold told me. “Here they’re cooking for themselves.”

I’m sure there are plenty of restaurants in New York that cook for themselves but I think regional cooking as a reflection of L.A.’s “I vant to be alone” sensibility makes all the sense in the world.

Here is Gold’s 99 Essential L.A. restaurants. Dig ’em, smack.

[Photo Credit: Jitlada.com]

The Silver Moon Bakery on 105th street and Broadway is: expensive, friendly, just a little bit pretentious, but most certainly delicious. I had an apricot brioche the other day. Cost me three bucks and it was so worth it. Worth waiting on line for and worth going back for that alone.

Ya heard?

[Photo Credit: The Wandering Eater]

Ted Berg’s blog always has something for me every time I stop over. Yesterday, he posted a classic AP Photo of Hideki Irabu who was arrested for Second-Degree Awesomeness earlier this week (I don’t usually take delight in another person’s misery, even a public figure, but I’ve always felt warm-and-fuzzy for Irabu’s misadventures–he was the one true degenerate on a Yankee team filled with boy scouts).

Then came  a post about some of the craziest–nasty or delicious, you decide–food I’ve ever seen.

Check this out, from a joint called Ditch Plains:

Whoa, Daddy. That’s hectic, man. Or “Mad hectic,” as my wife would say.

Oy and vey.

[Photo Credit: Always Hungry]

I was in the Village last night and needed something to tide me over…what better than a slice (or two)? So I hit Famous Joe’s, just off 6th Avenue, which moved locations from the corner of Carmine and Bleeker not too long ago to the middle of the block.

Joe’s is open late and has a wall filled with pictures of celebrities–Adam Sandler, Leo DiCaprio. It’s not my favorite slice in the city, but a representative one, indeed. You sure could do worse.

I took my slices and sat in the little park across the street along with many others who were enjoying their slice in the warm evening air.

[Photo Credit: LA Pizza,  Go Planit and Julie Lim]

It took me almost thirty years to connect with avocados but now that I have it’s hard to remember life without them. When I was growing up, my mother would cut one in half, remove the pit, and then drizzle olive oil and red wine vinegar over them, add salt and pepper, and eat them just like that. I am game to try them in just about any way now, but I usually have them just like Ma did.

Here’s a quick rundown of avocados from Saveur.

[Photo Credit: Travelling Yogi]

Meanwhile, at the food court…

Is a Shake Shack worth waiting on line for forty minutes?

You tell me.

Okay, so the next time you are in the area, do yourself a favor and hit Szechuan Gourmet, which is on 39th Street between 5th and 6th. I went last night with my friend Mark who has been several times for lunch. He told me it’s considered “the best Szechuan outside of Flushing.” All I know, is that it was wonderful, whether you are up for adventure (Duck Tongue w/Sich. Pepper Corn-Scallion Pesto, Fish Head w/Napa, Bamboo, Cellophane, Smoky Wok Tossed Frogs) or not.

We had a standard appetizer, Szechuan Pork Dumplings w/Roasted Chilli Soy, and they were far and away the most delicious dumplings I’ve ever had–delicate, flavorful with some kick. They were so good, we didn’t let the waiter remove the extra sauce when the dumplings were gone. They seemed to appreciate that, but I wasn’t kidding. I wasn’t giving up that goodness without a fight.

Most of the customers were Asian, large tables of nine, ten people. The wait staff alternated between being polite and dismissive but they were never rude. I love that unpretentious attitude (you can ignore me some cause I’m a gringo just don’t be a jerk about it). It got me to thinking how wonderful Chinese restaurants can be, what a staple they are of New York Life.

Say word.

[Photo Credit: Parla Food]

The Times on Stoner Cuisine. 

[Picture by Bags]

How about a fried green tomato blt? Why the hell not?

Since we are still riding high from a sweet win, why not get right to some eats. Buddy of mine has been watching Treme and got to hankerin’ for some Hubig’s Pies, a New Orleans specialty.

I’ve never had one. They look sweet, gross, n’ great. Hu-dat?

[Photo Credit: YatBazaar]

Here’s a great cookbook from Fuchsia Dunlop.

Peep the review from Tigers and Strawberries.