Memorable (and sometimes Miserable) Meals and Chefs

Together, you and I have dived into some pretty dark topics lately, and so…in order for us not get a lethal case of psychic nitrogen narcosis (the bends) we’re taking a little culinary diversion today:  The Good, the Bad, and the…Is this an entree or an hors d’oeuvre  …Huh?

I’ve had a pet peeve going on for a while now.  It involves gourmet meals at restaurants which I can only afford when someone’s dying or having a birthday.  These are the ones that have the little dollar signs after their names to at least give you a chance to bail out.  If you ever see  $$$$$+ well, you’ve been warned.  Now, that’s bad enough but c’mon, I’m old-school and I’m a guy.  I’m likely to come in from a hard day, hot & sweaty and say something on the order of, “Hey Pam, I dropped three maples and two oaks today. Cut ’em into firewood, too.  What’s for dinner?”  In other words, once in a while I want some really good food and a good ole plate-full of it.

dsc_2717_jpgStrangely, however, there’s an equation in up-scale restaurants that is starting to get weird.  The up-scalier the place, the bigger the plates are and the tinier the portions.  For a bunch of years now, the cool hip thing is to put a beautiful but TINY serving in the middle of this giant plate.  By tiny, I mean seriously tiny.  I had one course in which  there was a small teaspoon in a little cup. There was some kind of brown fluid, a tiny purple flower, some sprigs of (grass?) and three berries surrounding it.  AND….then they used the whole rest of the plate as a canvas on which to squirt abstract patterns of different fluids.

pic_cuisine_4Some of them might do Jackson Pollack proud...but once again, being a guy, my mission that night was to come in, sit down, have a drink, and then actually eat something.  Oh!  Oh!  I just remembered possibly the most difficult concept for me to wrap my peanut-brain around.  On one of the tributes to the chefs, a chef in California served:  Big white plate and in the center of it was a cluster of grapes…without the grapes.  Just the stem…not even sure that’s what you call it.  In our house we call that garbage and throw it in the disposal.  Maybe he was being ironic…

Ohhh, Henry, that’s so quaint, but you’re truly missing the point.  Am I?  If you were to take 20 or 30 of those teaspoons of things I can’t recognize and put them in a bowl, it might be a pretty tasty soup or something.  As it is, it’s $15.95 for a teaspoon of…who the hell knows what it is?  That’s expensive.

SmokedSalmonAmuseNot terribly recently, we went to an up-scale French bistro in our area.  I ordered Salmon Truffles, pronounced Troof…rhymes with  Floof and….Spoof.  I love mushrooms but I’ve always been too cheap to pay $900.00 a pound for a brown fungus that a large pig has rooted out of the ground.  That night…the Troof arrived.  The whole thing was the size of a large strawberry, pink and flaky.  I gazed down at the plate and asked, “Where’s the troof?”  I was very tempted to say, I want the troof, the whole troof and nothing but the troof, but Pamela can read my mind and across the table she quietly shook her head.  Turns out the troof were the little things that looked like three brown fingernail clippings…little fingernail clippings at that.  After the $$$$ meal, I must confess, we drove into New Hope and ordered a large sausage-and-pepperoni pizza from Nicholas.  Oh God, it was good.

TWEEZERS and a LOOP: If you watch the Food Channel, or any of the food specials on TV, you’ll actually see how these chefs make their tiny entrees.  They…(I’m not making this up) use tweezers, a light like you see in the dentist’s office and sometimes…sometimes...something resembling a jewelers’ loop.  After a day of chainsawing, or plowing out a half-mile driveway in a blizzard (and saving my neighbors) or re-graveling our driveway, a tweezers and a jeweler’s loop isn’t funny.

Memorable Culinary Moments:

stock-photo-full-tray-of-desserts-64820749A year later….the very same place that made the troof:   Had a predictable dinner, realizing we’d probably slip out to Nicholas afterward only….that night the gods smiled down on our tiny party.  As the gal in the French outfit made her way toward us with a HUGE tray of  really expensive desserts to pick from…she tripped.  She went down!  The tray careened onto our table and deposited twenty or thirty fluffy expensive desserts on the table and my suit.  The little French gal turned pale.  The owner of the restaurant came out instantly (we knew him).  He began apologizing profusely in broken English and asked what way he could make things right.  I asked him to please bring us four spoons.  It really happened.  Didn’t have to go to Nicholas that night.

Watching an Episode of Iron Chef:  Wish they’d bring that series back.  Loved the premise!!!   Three great chefs fight it out in real time with ingredients that are disclosed only that moment on the air (a bit skeptical of that but it doesn’t matter).  What’s cool is they pick any old crap for them to use.  Lettuce and apples.  Rutabagas and pork chops…stuff like that and you have to design a whole meal around those two ingredients.  The night I’m thinking of was octopus and…I think it was peanut butter.  What the show directors hadn’t counted on, however, was that the octopi (octopuses?) had a different plan in mind: ESCAPE!  It was a nasty gory fight and I do remember one chef chopping tentacles and having the tentacles crawling out of the frying pan.

Giada-De-LaurentiissShort Takes:  Giada:   Well, she’s very pretty in a scary kind of way.  I always feel like she might bite the lens off the camera if it wanders too close.  And her culinary range seems…well…pretty limited.  If you took garlic, olive oil and mushrooms out of her menu, the show would shut down.

6a00e55503a4a388340147e156f0cc970bJulia Child:  You have to have some silver hair to remember her.  She introduced haute cuisine to America…and in black-and-white TV.  Sometimes, well pretty often, it seemed like she’d had two or three belts of the Dom Perignon before she went on.  Things fell on the floor.  (Five-second rule applied then) and it’d get thrown back in.  GREAT recipes, plus she didn’t need designer pans, designer knives, $20,000 stoves or $30,000 granite counter tops.  It just boggles my mind that she was able to make fantastic meals without them……..

sandra-lee-head-shotSandra Lee:  I really gotta give her credit for no pretense whatsoever.  Very attractive blonde who believes a low cut blouse, candles and a really good martini will take you far.  And she’s right!  If you’re a guy, it’ll take you really, really far.  What was funny and strangely endearing was she’d pick something like a bucket of KFC fried chicken, put it on a cookie sheet, slather it with some white wine, a little brie, some extra seasonings and then pop it in the oven for ten minutes.  “Your husband will sing out, ‘Great food, Honey!'” and she’s right.  No pretense and consequently no nasty comments.  In this fast-paced world she was the queen of short-cuts.

29656_grilled_paella_mixtaDon Quixotes’:  Now this is how it’s supposed to go!  Tucson: Pamela and I were just married and I’d bought her turquoise-and-silver earrings and necklace for her birthday.  She wore a slinky black wrap that fit her tightly everywhere (in the good way.)  We drove out to what looked like a hole in the wall in the middle of the desert.  Don Quixote had great reviews and we gambled my tiny lieutenant’s pay check on it.

Inside a room right out of Casablanca, we ordered pallella and a pitcher of Sangria.  They sat us at table right next to a tiny wooden stage.  A Spanish trio came out, accompanied by a flamenco dancer, who looked sorta like Pamela and danced in a blurred staccato.  Fantastic!  Little did they know, however, that Pamela had been a ballet dancer with Harkness and…knew flamenco.  For a couple minutes there was not one, but two stars on that stage.  Then a round tray the size of a Hoola Hoop was making its way toward our table  It was heavy, smokey and sizzling.  Oh God…  We shared it with some people next to us and still brought some home.  I’ll never forget the night, the dancing, the amazing food and I don’t think anyone in the place even knew what a tweezers was.

Worst Meal?  Easy!   Happy Daze Pizza: a new pizza place in Tucson.  Question:  How bad can you screw up a pizza?  Answer:  Pretty bad.   We had a couple of beers while we waited.  Pizza arrives.  I start sniffing and looking around.  I checked the bottoms of my shoes and shook my head.  Pamela did the same. You know what I’m talking about.  Sniffed in the general direction of the pizza and Pamela’s eyes got big and round just watching me.  You really shouldn’t make a pizza with rancid cheese.  Strangely, with three dachshunds at home we figured we could at least give someone a treat that night.  Brought it home.  Squeakie hid under the coffee table.  Wouldn’t come out.  Dingo ran into our bedroom.  Charlie, the brave one, finally walked onto the pizza, sniffed it, flopped-over and began rolling on it.

campingAlmost Heaven…  It was the 70s, Tucson, AZ, and we’re up at about 10,000 feet on Mt. Lemmon with our dogs and some good friends camping.  John Denver’s singing Rocky Mountain High on a cassette player in the Shelby and Dave and I are out getting firewood to cook with and to keep us warm.  The culinary tools for what is to be a heavenly evening: Cast iron skillet, matches, bottle of Jack Daniels, one large bulging joint, some eggs, bacon, marshmallows, two packages of Sarah Lee brownies…and eight packages of chicken breasts..approx 50 pieces.  Sky gets dark.  John’s singing louder now and the chicken is sizzling.  At 10,000 feet the air is thin but crystal clear. STARS, meteorites, a couple of satellites trundle by and I begin to understand what ole John is singing about.  Yeah, this just what you think.  A bit of Jack Daniels, cold air, one big doobie and we managed to wipe out ALL the chicken, then ALL the brownies, followed by ALL those delicious marshmallows!  All I remember now is that it was a great night.  Yes, we inhaled.

One last remembrance of things past:  Me chickening out.  Stationed in Tokyo.  Got orders to fly to Osan, S. Korea for a secret Tempest inspection.  At 35,000 feet commencing our descent to Osan, I smell what absolutely has to be the worst septic problem I’ve ever encountered.  It was BAD.  I turn to SMSgt Hunt, my right-arm on the Tempest team and looked question marks at him.  “It’s not what ya think, Captain,” he grinned.  “Really?  Smells like septic to me.”  “Nope.  It’s called kimchi.  It’s a delicacy.  We’ll have some when we land, Sir.”  “…..You wanna bet?”  It’s that old farm-boy mentality I was raised with.  If it smells like shit…best not to be spooning it into your mouth.

Henry

jamie-oliver-ted-talkP.S.  Here’s a  TERRIFIC  TED video…on Food.  If you haven’t watched it, observe how to give a seriously  kick-ass lecture…  https://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_oliver

P.P.S. As always, if by any chance you’ve had a memorably good or memorably bad meal while you’ve been residing on planet, Earth, write in and let us hear about it.   If you’re undecided…memorably BAD is always more fun!  

12 Responses to "Memorable (and sometimes Miserable) Meals and Chefs"

  1. Phil Kaufman says:

    We all have had good, bad, funny and awesome restaurant experiences. Vertical food is my ‘beef’. Expensive does not mean good. As a vegan…don’t roll your eyes…I prefer my cooking to most eat outs or take away. Trust me, with my two cast iron pans, I can make awesome veggies and the calories never reach in the high triple digits. Kimchi is sometimes made with those stinky little dried fish and smells like toxic land fill. I love good kimchi made strictly vegan…no fish. It has the same tastes like sauer kraut and kosher dill pickles. It is actually healthy for you for its probiotic qualities. I eat ONLY what I like not because it is good for you.

    • Henry Harvey says:

      Not rolling my eyes. With a bit of creativity, a veggie burger can taste as good or better than it’s beefy cousin. We do that a lot. And Pamela is an avid mushroomer. We have many vegan meals with hen of the woods and chicken mushrooms, (guess what they taste like) Mitake mushrooms, etc. But we also love a good lobster, grouper, trout, flounder, crab, mussel, too. Different strokes as they used to say. We have a couple of couples we hang with, where for some strange reason the wives, run a super-tight ship. Hubbies can’t have any meat at all. When we guys get together, though, we make up for it. Gotta be able to bob and weave.
      Henry

  2. Henry Harvey says:

    You forgot Emmeril Lagasse!
    Theo. H.

  3. Phil Kaufman says:

    Pamela is one smart person. All types of Mushrooms are so key to our repertoire that running out is close to a crisis. We were eating shiitake mushrooms when they were only available dried at a few Korean markets. I do have fish at least once a week. One, I love it and two, it’s necessary even on a vegetable based life style. No fish is off limits to me. I’ll eat anchovies right out of the jar and cook my one fish meal a week with the rest. BTW, mitake is the most delicious mushroom out there.

    • Henry Harvey says:

      Hey again,
      Mitakes are GREAT and we have them on our property so the cost is…well…zero. Morels are good, too, their only drawback being they cost money.
      H.

  4. Henry Harvey says:

    Hey Theo,
    Didn’t forget him. He’s probably the one I’d pick if I had to have someone cooking for me 24/7. But there’s only so much space in an article. I love it when he decides to throw in another handful of garlic, “BAAM!!!”
    Henry

  5. Henry Harvey says:

    Hey Henry!
    Another MEMORABLE article.
    Next time you want to try a not so fancy but good spot to eat…Country Place on 313.
    Call us, we’ll take you.
    Nothing fancy, but you’ll love being pleasantly surprised by your check.
    Happy Sunday.
    You’re reads are the best way to start a day.
    Watched the Jamie Oliver lecture before and get just as worked up each time .
    Pam Farrior

    • Henry Harvey says:

      Sounds like a terrific plan! Sometimes the essays/blogs go a bit dark, sometimes a bit technical…and no one can like ’em all. My goal is to entertain a bit, and maybe slip in a little info here and there. Jamie Oliver is really amazing. Saw him do a whole gourmet meal, cooking on an open fire outside. Good man!
      Henry

  6. Henry Harvey says:

    Hi, your latest blog has me until 1:30 am. Should have started earlier with yours. It was so funny, you have a great sense of humor, I can see you smelling your shoes. I ate bulls’s balls in Spain once and didn’t know it until I finished, tried to bring it up, but it wouldn’t come, thought it was good until I was told what I ate, then I ate something else covered with horse dung, you are supposed to take it off but no one told me. Well it didn’t kill me but I won’t do it twice, got to go or will never get up tomorrow morning, Phyllis

  7. Henry Harvey says:

    Ohh Phyllis!!! I’d give a thousand bucks to have been at that meal! And right back at ya regarding the humor. You can’t have a great sense of humor if you haven’t suffered a bit. I believe we both qualify in that category. Other than the kimchi, the closest I’ve come to eating something with horse dung is…(inadvertently) smoking pipe tobacco laced with camel dung in my travels. The funny thing is, it smelled and tasted…pretty damned good! Pamela loved it and we bought about a half-pound’s worth. Loved it when someone would stop me and ask, “What’s the interesting tobacco you’re smoking?”
    Wish you lived closer, Phyllis.
    Henry

  8. mo says:

    Hi Henry,
    A few nights ago, at a wedding party dinner, I met an 86 year-old gentlemen in a very good physical shape and in a acceptable health condition. He was talking about the good old time foods, and that they were all generic, and natural, and beneficial to health. Then he said that ” forty years age he had a dental gum tissue cancer, and lost most of his teeth. At that time he went to England and had some surgery. Then a doctor told him that if you want to get rid of any more surgery and be healthy again you better eat one or two carrot with one boiled onion each, and every day!. He said that he did so and he still doing it and he got good results, and he believes that this formula is good for all C type disease. This was strange to me, and a very memorable food for him.
    be healthy and live long!
    mo

    • Henry Harvey says:

      Hi Mo,
      That’s a diet I haven’t heard of before! I’m still trying to get used to two readers saying I really have to eat kimchi. I guess I have some catching up to do. Thanks Mo, and my very best to your family.

      Henry

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