Come on, tell the truth now. If you knew someone who had direct access to Ferran Adria’s brain, wouldn’t you ask the occasional teensy weensy question that requires an essay in response? I did feel a little guilty bending the ear of former El Bulli insider Katie Button, especially since she and her partner Felix Meana just opened Curate in Asheville, NC to uproarious acclaim, and we all know how life upends itself during the cadence-establishing birthing period of a restaurant. The problem was, however, that I kept staring at these beet roses in the Phaidon-published tome A Day at elBulli, and my life became singularly-possessed by the notion of perfecting them.

When I finally decided to dash off an email to Katie asking if she’d be willing to share the technique, I fully expected her to either

a. not reply

b. reply with regrets that the technique must remain secret, or

c. tell me how they did it, then kill me by Fedexing me a package of anthrax disguised as a shipment of rare methylcellulose. Read more

*horror of horrors, this post is light on pictures.. It’s so rife with soul-bearing and topic traipsing that I didn’t feel a set of images would have enough unification to tie-in the words. Not one to leave you high and dry, however, if you are a good little reader and make it all the way to the end, you will be rewarded with a short video created by The Wind Attack, featuring Salty Seattle, and showcasing a project conjured by The Chocolate of Meats and Sippity Sup with participation by their friends, Joy the Baker and Out A Thyme.

If the little Linda in this shot knew how great last week would be, she would've been grinning from dimple to dimple

Last week was one of those “pinch me” weeks. First I got to meet my idol, my muse, my longtime inspiration for all things nouveau cuisine- Grant Achatz. Then I had the surreal experience of watching myself on television on a super fantastic program called Food(ography). I made madcap recipes for the Food(ography) crew and they chose to feature a particularly fun one, mozzarella balloons. As it turns out, on the same night that my episode of Food(ography) aired, another wacky new television show called Marcel’s Quantum Kitchen featured mozzarella balloons too, with a different outcome. The star of the show, Top Chef Marcel Vigneron, attempts the balloons and decrees that they “aren’t feasible.” Well Marcel, if you’d like a lesson, my kitchen is your kitchen.

The real icing (duck fat) on the cake (rillettes) however, was discovering that the reigning queen of food, Ms. Ruth Reichl herself, had featured a blog post and recipe of mine on her website. As I said on my facebook account when I first heard, “that’s like god asking to make out with you.” Read more

*I’m on this week’s episode of Food(ography) on The Cooking Channel. It airs several times throughout the week (March 20-31) and I’d love for you to check it out. See schedule for showtimes.

*Pinch me! Ruth Reichl wrote about the blog post you’re about to read.

Oysters invite prosaic use of metaphor the way Robert Pattinson melts the knees of 13 year old girls across the globe. The locked mollusk is both hideous and beautiful at the same time, and captivates the pens of many great, era-transcendent authors. Tom Robbins says that “eating a raw oyster is like French-kissing a mermaid.” Perhaps the greatest oyster author, MFK Fisher, wrote that “an oyster leads a dreadful but exciting life,” in her introduction to the challenges an oyster faces in the early days of existence. I will resist the urge to add my metaphors to the great canon of oyster literature, but if one should slip out, it’s not my fault as I’m currently under the spell of sea that a dozen Olympias brought to me. Read more