Julia Child

A movie of inspiration to the introduction of french food and the stories behind them, watch Julie & Julia.  Now I know what many people have said, they didn't like the movie or it wasn't what they thought the movie would be like or Meryl Streep didn't play an accurate portrait of Julia Child.  Well, despite all the nay-sayers, I quite like the movie.  I think Nora Ephron, the director, did a marvelous job capturing the picturesque times when Julia & Paul Child were in Paris (I myself have been to the French capital) and in turn did an equally good job at capturing the both the struggles and smiles of the life of Julie Powell and mastering Julia Child's French cookbook.  I read Julie's further adventures in her 2nd book about becoming a butcher, and she even said she liked the movie.

I remember when I was young, watching Julia Child on PBS with my mother.  Julia was wonderful; and still is wonderful on all her shows and in her books.  I would have loved to meet her, RIP Julia.  Julia & Jacque Pepin's show on PBS on Saturday mornings was one of my favorites.  I would watch every new show.  Julia would make a dish her way while Jacque did his own, but in the end they would both have delicious looking dishes and glow with big smiles across their faces.  What a joy it was to watch them.  At the time, so young, I did not know I wanted to be a chef, but playing "house" with my own plastic child-sized kitchen in the playroom with all my assorted plastic foods was always my delight.

When watching Julie & Julia, we can share in those "warm-'n-fuzzy-feelings" when we eat something, dare I say it, yummy, and our guests and ourselves (most important, self) love it.  Something as simple as sharing a glass of wine and my So You Had a Bad Day bread and cheese dinner is not only a comfort, but a relief that this will always be good and is most always better shared.  I think this is one of the main reasons I cook, I love that feeling.  Yes, you could say this feeling is just like a Food Dance.  However simple or complex your food may be, or your dance, just to know that someone else is enjoying it always puts a smile across my face.

So thank you Julia Child for being one of the first celebrities to begin my cooking inspirations.
And thank you Paul Child for these words: "You are the butter to my bread, the breath to my life, I love you."  Words of such beautiful wisdom can only for always be shared with one another.

ps. I forgot to mention, I have visited Julia's kitchen at the Smithsonian, and it was a dream. If you're in D.C. you must go!

Not Just Any Burger

There's just something about a burger that gets my mouth watering.  All those toppings, sauce, the fluffy bun with a side of thin and crispy fries and either an ice cold beer or a classic Coca-Cola.  But hold up, I'm getting ahead of myself. . . we must first start with the patty.
Now I know what most of you are thinking when you see those Burger King or McDonalds or even Wendy's commercials, "hell that looks pretty damn good and it's cheap, nice." WRONG.  First of all, yes we know it's cheap, that's what the dollar menu is, it's CHEAP.  But what the average consumer doesn't realize is what exactly is that burger?  Where's it come from?  What are those cows being fed?  Is this just beef in my beef patty?  Well, we probably don't really know.  You'd have to ask; good luck finding that information out because after all these movies like FOOD INC, the reporters usually can't find out everything because the mega-companies don't want to tell you.  Simply put, these cows are fed CORN.  Yep corn, it's in almost everything we eat in the grocery store.  Sad thing is, cows can't naturally digest corn so e-coli grows in their stomachs, yea not good :(
Want an easy on your wallet solution? Well here in Charlotte it's simple.  There's this family who has a farm in Kings Mountain, NC - the Proffitt's, and they raise their own grass fed cows.  Yea, you know that green stuff that grows naturally in nature with no pesticides, grass, weeds like dandelions, clover, and guess what hay, it's grass too.  Shelley then sends it to a specific butchering-plant where she tells the guys to make particular cuts for that weeks' orders.  You can get her email every thursday night and older whatever on the list as much as she has and pick it up at the Charlotte Market, Atherton market, Kings Market or at the farm.  Ribeye, New York Strip, London Broil, even marrow bones, organ meats, tongue, lunch meats like hot dogs and pastrami, as well as her famous 1/3 lb. - 4 pack pattys!

I love these pattys!!  (I have gotten my family and a few friends addicted to them too; they're that good.)

There's just something about grass fed beef pattys.  For one thing, grass fed burger pattys don't shrink up like corn-feed beef.  When you ask for a 1/3 lb burger that's what you get.  Also, the meat tastes well like meat should, "meaty".  Like the meatiest steak you've ever tasted or really delicious dark beef broth, oh man.  Simple ingredients make these burgers shine.  Shelley even sells spice rubs you can use on these burgers or use your favorite (my family likes costco's steak seasoning or World Market's beef seasoning, salt pepper and some cayenne or paprika work great too.) Heat up your grill super hot, oil it, and these babies only take 2-3 minutes per side.  You do NOT want to over cook these burgers. A perfect med-rare to medium is just what you want.
Now that you've cooked the burger, top it with anything you like on a nice soft, but toasted bun.  I love potato bread or a Weagman's fennel seed roll, sesame seed bun is fine too.  And now for the toppings.  We already know I love bacon, mmm.  Ripe avocado mash (just mash with a fork because slices tend to slide off when eating), real caramelized onions (low and slow is the way, yellow sweet onions work best), fresh sweet tomato slices, lettuce (arugula, butter lettuce, or plain old romain), aoili or mayo, mustard, ketchup, bbq sauce, cheese - can't forget the cheese (muenster, provolone, cheddar, blue, brie, feta, goat cheese even).  You name it, it will probably taste good.

So there you have it. I love grass fed burgers, especially Shelley Proffitt's because they come pre-packaged 4 each, all 1/3 lb.  Now that's (sorry Alton Brown, but I can't resist) GOOD EATS!!

Eat Local.  Eat Fresh.  Grass fed is always better. Eat Meat.

Serene Beauty

The sweet sensation of a kiss.

She twirls around in a circle, the dress rippling over her long legs in the calming spring breeze while gazing upon the diamond clarity of clear skies, she whispers sweet nothings into our ear.  Her voice is bold with passion but velvety like the texture of her silk dress gliding across our clean skin.  Blackberries on nearby bushes blossom with luscious ripe juice, bursting with flavor.  Her lips taste of summer-time cherries just picked off the trees enjoyed while laying in the over-grown tall grass.  She is as smooth as polished silver and as vibrant as the mid-day's sun shining through a church's praised stained glass window.

K I S S. . .

a lasting impression.

A glass of kisses from our young Cabernet Sauvignon.

Simplistic Ingredients

When ingredients are presented in its most simplistic forms with just a dash of seasoning, the outcome is delicious.  We don't need to load on the heavy spices or pounds of sauce to make our food taste like something.  What we should be doing is using spices or sauce to enhance the flavors of the ingredients, not cover it up.  Farm-raised, Free-range, Organic, In-season are all words we hear in the grocery and markets today; it's the craze.  But what we, mostly Americans sorry to say, don't realize is that this has always been the craze.  It's just fact that simple, home-grown, local ingredients are better.  When visiting Europe this past summer (2010), the Europeans (Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria) always use local, fresh, cream-of-the-crop ingredients.  They resource out to farmers whom they know how to grow the best of that product whether it be cheese or proscuitto or lettuce or pasta, it's who the people are represented in their food.

With that said, last weekend (March 26) I cooked a 3-course Italian dinner for a family and their friends from an auction they won from the Charlotte Rotary.  I made a simple "Italian" dinner for them using ingredients which I only lightly enhanced to bring out its flavors.  Below is a picture of the salad: Baby Arugula, Goat cheese, Seared Strawberries, Proscruitto, and Pistachio Dust in a Orange Balsamic Vinaigrette.  Simple ingredients = abundance of flavors.  (The dinner party loved it.)

Making your own food from natural ingredients isn't hard, just combine what you like.  In this spring salad, these were ingredients I liked and that the hosts said they liked.  A little bit of sweet, some peppery flavors from the arugula, tangy from the cheese, salty from the proscuitto and pistachios, and an over-all mouth appeal when dressed in balsamic vinaigrette. Light, simplistic.