Tomato Kumato

When I first came to France, I was fourteen years old. A few nights before I was set to leave, my mother made a reservation at a New York restaurant called Artisanal, famous for their cheese. We had cheese fondue, and I will always associate that restaurant, that fondue, that foodie memory, with the beginning of my adventures in France. In fact, right before I started boarding school, I insisted that we go back: that restaurant would always feel like an embarkation point for me. A place where new things started and old things could be remembered and left behind.

What I didn’t realize was that my little sister does the same thing.

Seven and a half years after that first trip to Artisanal, my sister went going to the same restaurant right before she embarks on the same trip to France. Apparently, it has become the quintessential place to go any time anyone in my family goes abroad… something my brother calls an “Emily-thing.”

I’m not usually terribly impressed with cheese when I come back from France… I usually find them kind of one-dimensional. I have yet to find some great Camembert, but some of the cheeses that they brought back from the restaurant, like the gouda, goat and one hard cheese that I loved but didn’t get the name of, were just as complex and delicious as things I eat in France.

I realize that I’m probably going to recieve some sort of diatribe telling me about great Camembert that can be found in the States, and while that may be true, I’m happy enough to have found another kind of cheese I like in the States. Even if there are great American Camemberts, I may have to leave Camembert in France: it too has memories I associate with it, like baguette sandwiches I eat when walking through the city I now call home, seven years after my first trip to France and my first trip to Artisanal.
Artisanal

2 Park Ave
New York, NY 10016
(212) 725-8585

www.artisanalbistro.com

I don’t usually write about my other blog, Travelday, on here: I know that travels and food tend to cross a lot, but I try to keep my posts on the two as separate as possible, otherwise I start to feel repetitive. But I need to draw attention to one post over there where I wrote about my first experience trying mulled wine.

So much of a food experience is where you try it. Drinking mulled wine in the freezing cold in Janvry is one experience. Drinking mulled wine in the warmth of my home is another. This recipe for mulled wine had all of the taste and spice of the mulled wine that I tried in Janvry, but it just wasn’t the same drinking it at home.

If you make this wine, try to make it on a day when the air smells like snow. Try to make it on a day where you just can’t get warm, no matter how hard you try. Make it and let it wait for you while you go about your day outside, and when you get home, fresh from the cold, make yourself a fire and a hot cup of this. Maybe then it will taste for you how it did for me on that cold night in Janvry.

Mulled Wine (adapted from Gourmet)

8 whole cloves
4 whole black peppercorns
4 (3- by 1/2-inch) strips fresh lemon zest
4 (4- by 1/2-inch) strips fresh orange zest
1.5 liters dry red wine (two bottles)
1/2 cup kirsch
1 1/2 cups water
3/4 cup sugar
1 (3-inch) cinnamon stick
1 vanilla bean, halved lengthwise< br/> 1 orange, cut into slices

Place all ingredients except orange slices in a large stock pot and heat over low heat for fifteen minutes until infused. Add oranges. Ladle into mugs and serve.

See Accidental Hedonist for a new recipe!

Hello Readers! I am happy to present my very first guest post from a writer named Jamie about Christmas food traditions around the world. Merry Christmas!

Christmas Food Traditions Around The World

This holiday season, as you dust off your Christmas dinnerware and start planning your holiday menu - why not consider bringing a little international flavor to the table? While we here in America might serve up a delicious Christmas turkey or honey baked ham, people around the world celebrate the holiday in very different ways. Here are some traditional Christmas dinners from around the world.

Germany

While a traditional German Christmas Celebration might last for 3 days, starting on Christmas Eve, the main meal on Christmas Day consists of a roast duck, goose or beef filet served with potatoes, dumplings, red cabbage and sprouts. Other popular German dishes include macaroni salad, suckling pig, weisswurst, reisbrei (porridge), lebkuchen (spice bars), and several types of bread (stollen).

Mexico

The main Christmas meal is served on Christmas Eve and varies, depending on the region of the country. Commonly served items include a wide variety of local fruits and vegetables including citrus fruits, jicama, beets, bananas, peanuts. In some states, pozole is served. Pozole is a stew made of either pork or beef with hominy in red chile sauce. Menudo is another commonly made stew that is made with beef tripe, hominy - in a chile sauce. The desert of choice is atole - a thinned hot chocolate-like pudding with fried buñuelos (flour tortillas sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar).

Poland, Ukraine

In many Eastern European countries, an elaborate 12 course dinner is served - one course for each of Christ’s twelve Apostles. The dishes are served on Christmas Eve and are all meatless - as there is a fast coinciding with the holiday that lasts through Christmas Eve until Christmas Day. In Poland and the Ukraine, the meal would start with Kutia, a sweet grain pudding. Poppy seeds are used symbolically throughout the meal because they represent abundance and prosperity.

Denmark

The Danes have a big Christmas Eve dinner as well - serving roasted pork, goose or duck. The meat course is served along with potatoes, red cabbage and gravy. For desert - a rice pudding with an almond hidden inside. Whoever finds the almond wins a prize!

Finland

Joulupöytä is the name of the food board served at Christmas in Finland. It’s similar in nature to the smorgasbord from Sweden. This traditional food board contains many different dishes, the main dish being a large Christmas ham. Fish is also served with the ham, as well as casseroles with liver and raisins, potatoes, rice and carrots.

France

In France, Christmas Eve is celebrated with a réveillon, which is a long dinner party. Commonly served dishes include goose or duck liver (foie gras), oysters, smoked salmon, lobster, roasted duck, goose or turkey with chestnuts and stuffing. For desert, the French serve a cake known as a La Buche de Noel, or Christmas log.

Netherlands

The Dutch host an evening-long event known as a “gourmet,” where small groups of people sit around a gourmet-set and use their own little fry pan to cook their own small portions of food. This sort of DIY approach was borrowed from Indonesia, a former Dutch colony. The host of a “gourmet” will have diced vegetables, meats, fish and seafood all prepared and ready to cook. Sauces, salads, and fruits are also available. Not everyone celebrates Christmas in this manner however; some Dutch celebrate in a more traditional way with roast beef, duck, rabbit, pheasant or ham.

United Kingdom and Ireland

Christmas dinner in the UK and Ireland typically consists of a roast turkey or goose, with ham, roasted potatoes, roasted veggies, stuffing, pigs in blankets, apple sauce - all served up on some fine Christmas dinnerware. And for dessert - Christmas pudding!

Why not start a new family tradition this holiday season by introducing a new dish or two to the menu? Thanks to Real Simple Magazine for some of these ideas. It’s really interesting to see how people all over the world celebrate the holiday. Show your family and friends just how worldly you are with one of these non-traditional American Christmas dishes. Who knows, you might even start a new Christmas dinner tradition of your own!

Sorry I don’t have pictures of this genius idea, but they were Alex’s Christmas present, and they were devoured pretty quickly.

I had made peanut butter sandwich cookies with Nutella a few months ago, but as I was cleaning out my pantry, I saw a nearly finished jar of marshmallow Fluff and had a stroke of genius: replace the Nutella with Fluff!

Fluffernutter sandwiches are apparently a predominantly East Coast thing… my roommate from Seattle had never even heard of the slightly bizarre concoction. My father, however, had made these sandwiches for us forever, so I was very used to them when I was growing up.

Fluff is something I never crave when I’m home, but the second I’m in France, it becomes unavailable, and somehow I end up persuading my mother to bring me jars of the stuff, along with American chunky peanut butter. Leave it to me to turn a perfectly normal French guy on to one of the weirdest American sandwiches.

Somehow, Fluff (pronouced “Floof” in French), has become one of Alex’s favorite foods, so I knew he would love these cookies. Feel free to use your own peanut butter cookie recipe: the cookies from this one come out sort of flat, which works for sandwiches, but they’re not that pretty on their own.

Fluffernutter Cookies

For the cookies:
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup plus 2 tbsp. chunky peanut butter
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup sugar
2 eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Combine the dry ingredients and set aside.

Using a wooden spoon, combine the butter and peanut butter until well mixed: there should be no visible butter. Add the vanilla and sugars and mix well to combine. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Add the dry ingredients and stir until combined.

Using a tablespoon, make equal portions of the cookie dough. Roll them into balls between your palms (wet hands help), and place them on a greased baking tray. Using a fork (again, a bit of water helps), create hatchmarks in the tops of the cookies. Note: they WILL spread. Make sure to give them lots of room.

Bake cookies 12-15 minutes, until golden brown. Cool completely.

For the sandwiches:

Pair off the cookies so that they are in sets of two that are approximately the same size. Place one tablespoon of Fluff on one side of a cookie, and use its pair to flatten it down and create a sandwich. Note: Fluff will become softer and ooze, so make sure you serve them with napkins!

I define myself by what I do: I’m a writer.

So when I suddenly find myself uninspired, unable to come up with any words or anything worthwhile to say… needless to say, I feel trapped. And I don’t know how to define myself anymore.

Somehow, writing about writer’s block always seems to make it a bit better, but I know it’s redundant, so I really try not to do it. This time, though, it had gotten pretty bad, so I decided to give it a go.

There’s no better dish than this one with which to come out of my slump. I made this squash, bacon and goat cheese pasta a few weeks ago, and it was absolutely incredible. The combination of flavors was phenomenal: I don’t usually keep bacon in the house, which I know is blasphemy in today’s bacon-obsessed food blogging world, but I’d consider buying a pack just to make this dish.

I highly recommend using tagliatelle or fettuccine… the mouthfeel of the ribbons of pasta with the creamy squash sauce is to die for.

P.S. I am sorry in advance for any food writing clichés. I’m trying to get back in the saddle. Hey! Look. A cliché. Wow… I would fail 8th grade English today. My apologies. Try the pasta. Come back tomorrow and see if I can string together a couple of intelligent sentences. The End.

When I was about fourteen years old, my mother got season tickets to the opera for my parents, my sister and me. We would get dressed up one Thursday a month, and we would head out to see some of the greatest operas ever written at the Met.

I loved the opera. I loved the fact that it was one of the only places left in the city where people actually got dressed up–really dressed up–to go out. I loved the man who stood at the stairs with chimes to announce that the intermission was over. And, of course, being me, I loved the fact that my mother always picked incredible places for us to eat beforehand.

Once, we went to the restaurant at the Met. I don’t remember much of it… I remember thinking that it was very sophisticated and special, although if I went back now, I don’t know what I would think.

I wanted to order lentil soup. My mother told me that lentils were an “acquired taste,” and that I should probably pick something else. That just made me want lentil soup even more. Luckily, when it arrived and I had my first taste, I fell in love with the earthiness. My mother knows by now that anything that most people regard as an “acquired taste” (truffles, coffee, red wine, mushrooms…) is probably something I will love.

I’ve been making a lot of lentils recently, mainly because they’re one of those things that is seen as a “specialty” food in America but that runs at about a euro at your average French supermarket. I’ve found a lot of my favorite new recipes, like this Lentil and Chestnut Soup over at the blog of another Parisian (this time a native): Chocolate and Zucchini.

I loved the simplicity of this salad. I changed the original recipe a bit: I avoid bouillon cubes whenever I can because the MSG gives me a headache, so I opted, instead, to flavor the water I used to cook the lentils with the flavors of the dressing: balsamic vinaigrette, cumin and garlic powder. Instead of tossing the final product in the dressing, I just added a little bit of olive oil.

If you can handle MSG, I recommend cooking the lentils in the bouillon, if only because boiling balsamic vinegar leaves an odd scent in your kitchen for several days. Tastewise, though, my changes made for a delicious lentil salad that brought out the earthy essence of the légume… the thing I fell in love with when I first tried lentils at the Metropolitan Opera House.

I’ve always loved to bake for other people.

I had this dream of baking huge batches of things and selling them to people or contributing them to bake sales. I love to try to make new things. I love the smell of sugar and cinnamon baking away in my oven. I love the magic of taking a batter that’s three or four ingredients and baking it for just a few minutes to create something amazing.

The only problem? Baking is not as big a deal here in Paris. I can bake for my friends, but the idea of baking things to sell is not very well received here, even just for bake sales.

Which is why I’m going to take a page out of Ivonne’s book over at Cream Puffs in Venice: I’m offering my services to anyone in the New York area for Christmas cookies, cakes… you name it, I’ll bake it. Contact me at tomatokumato@gmail.com, and we can discuss what you’d like and when you’d like it.

Merry Christmas!

I had read about Mont d’Or somewhere on the web, so when I found the prepackaged cheese-as-a-meal at my local grocery store, I had a vague idea of what it was. It also had an impressive sticker announcing the fact that it had won the “Innovation Trophy” in 2005. I threw it in my basket without much thought, and it sat around in my fridge for an embarrassingly long time before I finally pulled it out and decided to see what all the fuss was about.

“I’m making the cheese,” I called out to my roommate.

“The cheese?” She called back. Suddenly, it was daunting.

There was no reason to be worried, though: the Mont d’Or is easier to prepare than Easy Mac. The instructions are written right on the package, on a paper sticker attached to the whole package. Along with the cheese (500 g of delicious double cream), you also get a pot to bake it in, and the following instructions, translated haphazardly by yours truly:

Place the Mont d’Or and the box it comes in (without the cover) in the ceramic container. Make a few slits in the top of the cheese and pour in 2-3 tablespoons of white wine. Bake at 200 degrees C for about thirty minutes. Put the whole thing directly on the table and eat the soft cheese with potatoes.

I did as I was told. I took this, which looks a bit like a fat brie with a much softer, downier rind, used a knife to make a few slits, and covered it quite liberally with white wine. I stuck the whole thing in the ceramic container and baked it while I boiled a few potatoes and arranged some cornichons on a plate. When it came out, it looked like this:

My review?

Definitely worthy of the trophy.

The cheese is mild… somewhat like raclette cheese. My favorite part was the crispy crust, which was very different in taste from the rest of the cheese. The contrast was quite welcoming after two or three helpings over potatoes. However, the impressive part is that it stays melty for a very long time. We had a spoon in the pot that we used to serve it over our potatoes and pickles, and the cheese never congealed the whole time we were eating. We weren’t able to eat the whole thing (no matter how much we wanted to), but the leftover made excellent pasta sauce the next day.

If you have the chance to try this, please do!