You want great Sichuan? Then take the train (take the train) to Flushing and look no further than Spicy and Tasty.

In a television interview in 2002, Larry King asked Julia Child which foods she hated. She responded: “Cilantro and arugula I don’t like at all. They’re both green herbs, they have kind of a dead taste to me.”

“So you would never order it?” Mr. King asked.

“Never,” she responded. “I would pick it out if I saw it and throw it on the floor.”

I’ve long considered cilantro, what we used to call coriander, to be the Steely Dan of herbs–you either love it or hate it. For the longest, I didn’t dig it at all, but since I’ve learned to appreciate and desire Thai, Vietnamese and Mexican cuisine, I’ve also learned to appreciate, and even crave, cilantro as well.

There’s a fun piece in the Times today by Harold McGee about how cilantro: 

“I didn’t like cilantro to begin with,” [Jay Gottfried, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University who studies how the brain perceives smells] said . “But I love food, and I ate all kinds of things, and I kept encountering it. My brain must have developed new patterns for cilantro flavor from those experiences, which included pleasure from the other flavors and the sharing with friends and family. That’s how people in cilantro-eating countries experience it every day.”

“So I began to like cilantro,” he said. “It can still remind me of soap, but it’s not threatening anymore, so that association fades into the background, and I enjoy its other qualities. On the other hand, if I ate cilantro once and never willingly let it pass my lips again, there wouldn’t have been a chance to reshape that perception.”

[Photo Credit: Pinch My Salt]

What else?

[photo credit: yehwan]

The classic is still classic even if modern editions don’t include the recipe for simmered porcupine.

Amanda Hesser explores some recipes for a spicy organge salad, Moroccan style. Mmmm.

From the vaults, dig this classic 2006 Harper’s magazine article by Frederick Kaufman, Debbie Does Salad: The Food Network at the Frontiers of Pornography.

There’s a fun piece in the Times today about food bloggers who like to take pictures of what they eat:

Dig ‘um (smack).

[photo credit: Edith Zimmerman]

Before I left New Mexico, I watched my sister-in-law make a simple red chili sauce. She put a selection of chiles in boiling water, covered them, turned off the heat and let them sit for close to an hour to reconstitute. Then, she removed the chiles from the water, cut-off the stems, and got rid of any seeds. She put the chiles in a blender, along with a little bit of onion and garlic–enough for flavor but not enough to overpower the chiles. Then salt, and a small amount of the water to help blend. Finally, she strained it, and man, it was lovely.

Ballpark favorites…

I don’t know from wide variety of chiles and peppers that exist in the world but out here they reign supreme. I’ve heard that chile can be addicting and after trying my sister-in-law’s Chilaquiles yesterday I think I understand why. The dish is simple–toasted corn tortillas covered with a radiant-looking sauce of New Mexico Red Chile covered with grated cheese and some raw onion and served with eggs and re-fried beans.

The chile sauce had some spice to it but not overwhelming heat–instead, I really tasted a deep, complex flavor. The addiction part is no joke because my mouth is watering just thinking about it.

Em’s sister has bags of chiles in her freezer. The chiles are reconstituted in hot water before pureed into a sauce.

Happy Eats with my brother-in-law…with a side order of Matzoh.

So I’m out here in Albetoikey, New Mexico for a few days visiting family with the wife. It’s like being on the light side of the moon, man. I hope to have a couple of good meals, and although the famous Hatch Green Chiles are out-of-season, my sister-in-law has plenty on hand–she freezes them every fall–and I’m all about trying them because heads from New Mexico are crackheads for their Green Chiles, B.

Some words (and recipes) from the master, Jacques Pepin, in a long interview at Powells.com:

We had to go to school at that time until age fourteen to finish primary school. Certificate étude. I was doing fine in school. I’m saying that only in that I didn’t have to leave school. My brother didn’t, and he became an engineer. But I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to go into the kitchen and cook.

I liked the hustle, bustle, excitement, the sweating and yelling of the kitchen. I liked it very much; my brother didn’t. The other choice I would have had maybe was to become a cabinetmaker because my father was a cabinetmaker, doing fancy furniture, which we call ébéniste in France. And I still like to work wood. I was in Claudine’s house yesterday, looking at a table I did a few years ago. Pretty rough, but it’s still there.

I like to work with my hands, and I feel that anyone involved in food has to become a craftsman first. A technician. That doesn’t mean you have talent. It just means that you are able to move very fast and do things properly in an orderly manner, in a miserly manner. Certainly if you’re a jeweler or a carpenter or a surgeon, you first and foremost have to become a technician, to have the manual dexterity to dominate that trade. If you happen to have talent, now you have the know-how in your hand; you have the means to express this and bring it to a higher level.

If you look at the reverse: I know young chefs who have a lot of talent, but they’re technically very bad. The food doesn’t come out the way it should. I can do an analogy with my painting. I’ve been painting for thirty years. I do illustrations in my books. But I have never spent, like a professional painter, five hours every day in a studio, working, working, working, so I don’t really have much technique. I start a painting and sometimes it comes out halfway good, and I’m the first one astonished. Often I get disgusted because whatever I have in my head, my hand is not able to express it the way I want. I’m not good enough technically.

My favorite part of the Passover seder is when you get to eat the bitter herbs—horseradish on a piece on Matzoh. Sure to clear any congestion, if you do it right. Here’s two of my cousins and me last night, loading up:

And paying the price (notice me pouding the table):

Whoa, boy.

Those in the know understand that I’m talking about gefilte fish. And no, I’m not even going to post an image of the brownish grey lump of mashed whatever, cause I’ve got a heart. What I love is how gefilte fish  is traditionally served with a piece of carrot on top, as if that would salvage it–never mind the gelatin (shudder).

As kids, my brother, sister and I were expected to eat what was on our plate. Jewish side of the family, Catholic side of the family: same rules. At home, but especially when we were guests. I became a master at putting a spoonful of creamed spinach, or in Belgium, steak tartare, in my mouth and then gulping it down with a big swig of water. Fun, it was not.

There were two things that we were spared, however: lobster and gefilte fish. The former because it was too expensive and too good to be wasted on the likes of us who didn’t care for it, and the latter because, well, I guess because our elders had compassion.

But hey, that’s just me. I know some perfectly reasonable people who love gefilte fish. As for me, bring on the matzoh ball soup.

The MAN:

Kalustyan’s:

Cheap it ain’t, but if you don’t feel like schlepping out to Queens, it’ll do the trick.

I love coleslaw because its one of those salads that can be prepared in a seemingly endless variety of ways. I especially enjoy cabbage with caraway seeds or flipped with Asian spices and flavors. Or at a barbeque shack or a Jewish Deli. 

Oh man, I just dig me some coleslaw, period.

Momofuku’s famous pork buns:

Yeah, they are worth the trip. And if you are on the go, pop into the Milk Bar for ’em. You won’t be sorry.

[photo credit: Amuses Bouche]

I really dig this lady (and her cookbook too).

Last week, I wrote about a wonderful Tuscan kale salad I had at Resto.

According to someone in the know, Nevia No, a greenmarket goddess, has the goods at the 14th street farmer’s market.

Ya hoid.

[Photo Credit: New York Magazine]