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A couple weeks ago, Serious Eats published an article on the clam and black bean sauce noodles at Fung Tu. They interview Chef Jonathan Wu and follow him step by step through a dish that is “a simple one, and easy enough for home cooks to adapt to their kitchens.” There’s enough detail in the article that you can figure out most of the recipe, but there’s no actual recipe published. (Not surprising, I don’t blame Wu at all for not wanting to make it that easy.) Moreover, the steps Wu follows make about 12 servings of noodles. I don’t know about you, but I usually don’t cook for quite that many mouths in one sitting.

Squid ink spaghetti, grilled calamari, sesame, fresh green chickpeas (!), crisp, mussel broth, pepper flakes

“Fire four halibut.”
“Four halibut!”

A warm evening in May, and flowers were blooming inside the wood accented dining room of Gramercy Tavern. It was early for dinner, but students were already gathering with their families, a parade of graduation gowns mingling with power suits and little black dresses.

So you want to cook professionally and think you have the mettle to work your way up the line? Or you’re a culinary student who’s looking for an internship to get real world experience? Welcome, young stagiaire!

A stage (rhymes with corsage) is the French term for an unpaid internship or apprenticeship, where a trainee volunteers in a kitchen in order to learn new techniques. This can apply to inexperienced cooks, or to experienced professionals who want to learn new cuisines. Ferran Adria’s El Bulli was flooded with applications from aspiring stagiaires, for instance, all of whom were at the top of their fields in their home countries.

I always thought it would be an earthquake that would be the end of Los Angeles. Or a meteor shower. Zombies even. Black plague. Aliens. But sharks? Come on!

If you aren’t familiar with Sharknado, it’s the made-for-TV movie about sharks that get caught in a hurricane and rain down terror on an unsuspecting L.A. I’ll be the first to admit this isn’t Citizen Kane, but if you enjoy so-bad-it’s-good movies along the lines of Snakes on a Plane, then you’ll probably like Sharknado. And if you don’t have a fine appreciation for the kind of movie that you drink to, then clearly you have misplaced priorities. 😉

(With apologies to Edvard Munch)

At this time of the year, the produce aisle at the Food Coop is just bursting with color. Yellow tomatoes! Magenta beets! Purple broccoli! I’d been considering doing a series of meals using only ingredients of the same color. Then, a friend sent me this NPR article on art-inspired food. Presto! I decided to recreate “The Scream” in edible format. The results were quite palette-able, if I do say so myself.

I’ve been writing about what a tremendous struggle it is to fight boredom when you eat the same thing every meal, and how desperately I was craving something new (preferably greasy and cheesy). In reality though, all of the temptations I’d encountered in social situations during the week paled in comparison to what I faced yesterday, and in the end, the person who finally broke my Soylent fast had no idea that he’d done it.

Photo: Traci Cappiello

It’s day 4 of Soylent week, so I’m over halfway through the experiment. Last time, I posted in a state of relative euphoria over my newfound productivity gains. Let me tell you, the closer you fly to the sun, the harder you crash into the ground.

On day 2, social obligations kicked in again. I went to an event with free food and drinks, and turned everything down. I met with old friends and tried not to stare at their sandwiches. I met with new friends who kept offering beer, and explained that yes, I do drink, just not today, and no, I don’t have a problem with alcoholism, I swear. I met someone for the first time and casually asked if they were familiar with Soylent, and they said that it sounded like a terrible, ridiculous idea.

One day and three meals into Soylent week and I have to say it’s been awesome.

Last night, I made a week-long batch of Soylent. For 21 or so meals, my food will come from this container. It’s a little weird for me to eat shelf-stable food (aside from the milk), and probably the first time I’ve “cooked” a meal that’s intentionally not seasonal.

Last month, the New Yorker published a piece on Soylent, a shelf-stable powder that can be mixed with water to become a meal replacement. “The End of Food,” the headline screamed, “Has a tech entrepreneur come up with a product to replace our meals?” Unlike Slim Fast and similar products, Soylent claims to be nutritionally complete, the only thing you’ll need to eat (er, drink) for the rest of your life (which hopefully will not be shortened due to diet). Also, it was invented by a bunch of young engineers who subsequently launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to manufacture Soylent for the masses. $755,000 later, we are that much closer to a humanity that doesn’t have to think about food ever again. This despite a name that was intentionally chosen for dark humor.

The less photogenic dishes (sauces, knife work) are omitted, but otherwise this gallery gives you a pretty good sense of what you’ll be cooking in the Culinary Techniques class.