Culinary Muse

Free Jazz this Weekend

I remember the last time the Fourth of July fell on a Wednesday. It was during the high flying Dot-Com daze. It never occurred to anyone at the company I was working at, full of twenty something’s, that we would come to work on Monday and Tuesday. Some even took the entire week off. Those were the days. 

Even if you have to return to work on Monday don't let it stop you from pretending the holiday has already started. If you want to get in the swing of summer the best way to start is to attend this weekend’s FILLMORE JAZZ FESTIVAL. Great talent, good food, fun shopping. And it is FREE! The largest free jazz festival on the West Coast. See you there!

More helpings of Ratatouille!

One day and counting.  Here are a few appetizers to keep you satiated until tomorrow's opening of Ratatouille:

EMILE'S WORKOUT

EMILE'S MAGIC TRICK

NINE MINUTE PREVIEW

THE OFFICIAL YOU TUBE CHANNEL for many more previews!

San Francisco Summer Days

A summer day in San Francisco. Real fog pouring in through the Golden Gate. Now That’s Summer! Poor tourists wearing shorts and T-shirts. Even when they are told that it will be cold and foggy they just can’t grasp it. How could a summer day be cold? Isabel and Bob the Boxer sit in the window and watch the tourists as they slip down the steep hill, hanging on to each other for warmth and security. A baseball cap flies off of a young man, he runs after it and is smart enough not to put it back on until he gets off of our windy hill.

Vacation means more time in the kitchen for us to create chocolate treats. Yesterday it was chocolate pudding from scratch. Today it will be a new recipe that GHIRARDELLI's ad agency sent to me along with a star cookie cutter and lots of delicious dark chocolate. They are donating $100,000.00 to the MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION. Bravo, Ghirardelli! Our review later... In the meantime we cook, we sew, we stroll down to Polk Street for slices of pizza for lunch from ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK PIZZA, I get my Blue Bottle Cappucino from CAFE LAMBRETTA, Isabel gets a chocolate chip cookie from Lotta's Bakery.  Summer is good.

Coffee Crunch Cake arrives at Lotta's

Lotta's Bakery promised to bring back the great old bakeries of San Francisco's past.  And what greater bakery was there than Blum's and Fantasia?  Both brought to you by the genius and hard work of Ernest Weil, creator of the real San Francisco Treat: Coffee Crunch Cake.  Lotta's is now baking the cake by special order only.  Treat yourself!  Lotta's Bakery, 1720 Polk Street (between Clay and Washington), 415-359-9039.

La Cocina, Congratulations!

LA COCINA will be featured in the business section of tomorrow, June 23rd, New York Times.  Writer Laura Novak will be looking at the business model of La Cocina as a small business incubator. Read the article here.

The Culinary Muse is proud to be on the advisory committee of La Cocina. Check out their booth at the Ferry Building Marketplace tomorrow morning.  We usually start our morning with a hot cup of Morning Glory Chai before we start to shop. 

Meet David Lebovitz, The Perfect Scoop

The Perfect Scoop arrived in my house a couple months ago. DAVID LEBOVITZ kindly asked his publisher, Ten Speed Press, to send me a copy. Life has not been the same since. Meal planning now centers around which frozen treat we are having for dessert. Or, better said, the dessert is dictating the dinner. If I am in the mood for a creamy pasta meal, then dessert has been espresso granita (page 146). A big bowl of salad greens tossed with a vinaigrette means that we indulge in Creme Fraiche Ice Cream (page 59). It’s all about balance, isn’t it?

I had put off buying an ice cream maker for a long time. First of all, where was I going to store it? The kitchen counters and cupboards are full. And I knew that if I stored it in its box in the linen closet it would never get used. Then there was the guilt factor. Too much ice cream might not be what our waist lines needed. But common sense prevailed.  How could I not try out such wonderful sounding recipes even if it meant more appliances. Besides that, I had a credit at Bed, Bath and Beyond that was screaming to be used.

The best thing about David’s book is that he has included recipes for sorbets, granitas and frozen yogurts that feel just as indulgent and delicious as his ice cream recipes. And what a great help it has been to know that the strawberries that I have been buying at the farmer’s market will never go bad in the back of the refrigerator. This is a great frozen dessert cookbook that you will be so pleased to have.

David is having a book signing tomorrow, June 22, at FOG CITY NEWS, 455 Market Street, noon to 1 pm. He is a delightful, funny man who you will fall in love with. By the way, David is also the author of the best handbook for chocolate afficionados, The Great Book of Chocolate. This is my ‘go-to’ reference whenever I need to brush up on my percentages or locate a fine chocolatier.

Ratatouille by our Guest Reviewer

If you were at Chez Panisse last night wondering how to get a bottle of Perrier or at the Laundry savoring your dinner of small plates I am sorry but you missed the food event of the year. Saturday night found me at the Northgate Theater (a location perhaps not previously known to foodies) in Marin for the Sneak Preview of Pixar's Ratatouille. The story of Remy, a sleek blue rat with the soul of a gourmet combined with the talent of a Bernard Loiseau, and his partnership with a scullery worker by the name of Linguine. Linguine is a young man with a need to express his soul and heart through food. But, alas, he has not the ability or talent.
From the first frames of Remy's family of scurrying rats to the flood that leads Remy to the sewers of Paris to the last credits, Remy is a rat not a Mickey Mouse. Still I liked him, he is nothing if not French. His French shrug is a wonderful answer to Linguine's question 'can you cook?' It says perhaps a little 'not much'. Then more 'well you know I am not bad, in fact even superb'. Then the last reading of this most Gallic of movements "together we will form a partnership that will set the Paris food scene alight." All that in a shoulder shrug from a rat.
This movie is loaded with emotion and movement. The color and look of the actors (characters), of course the food, the muted color and textures of Paris in the early morning, afternoon and night are beyond anything I have seen on a screen up to now. The food looks as though it has been prepared by Philippe or Traci. Rich onion soup, ripe red grapes, smelly Fougeru and Tourr'ee de l'Aubler cheeses, Sauce Ravigote that you can taste, and bread up until last night I had found only in Paris.
For any foodie who has been exposed to a food critic the scene near the end where Remy prepares his specialty for Paris food critic Anton Ego (voiced by Peter O'Toole), who is known across Paris as the "Grim Eater", is worth the price of admission. I have a hard time remembering any actor responding to food with such expression. Well maybe Nicky Henson in the Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones. For those of you who may have missed that 1976 film the scene of Tom seducing Nellie while eating a chicken leg should not to be missed.
Forget what you thought you knew about rats, the Paris sewers or French chefs. If you are seriously into food (if you read this site you must be) you will want to see this film. For those of you at the Laundry or CP last night it's not too late. The film opens around the Bay Area on June 29th.
Click here to see the trailer.

WELCOME RATATOUILLE!

Your Culinary Muse film critic will be attending a sneak preview of what promises to be the Cinematic Food if not the Food Event of the year. I am, of course, speaking of the sneak preview of the film RATATOUILLE! (rat-a-too-ee).  The Ratatouille review will be published Sunday morning in time for breakfast coffee and croissants.