Sunday, October 29, 2006
The Stork Club's Chop Suey
I was just rereading my last diary entry on chow mein (don’t ask why), and realized that I hadn’t deleted the “see page tk” references that were in my manuscript. This does prove, however, that that text came directly from my manuscript. You might, I thought, be curious about those cross-referenced recipes. I can’t find the Longchamps recipe right now – I know I have it, but it is not in my computer. But I do have Sherman Billingsley’s Chop Suey recipe here, and I have a few more words on the subject of chop suey. So let me share.
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Friday, October 27, 2006
Chinese-American Chow Mein
I just got an email from an Israeli reader. She is a native of New York, and she bought a copy of Arthur Schwartz's New York City Food on Amazon.com. (By the way, if you order a book, any book, CD or DVD by clicking on the Amazon logo on my website, I get a tiny, tiny commission that helps pay for the maintenance of the site. Also, whenever I highlight a title to connect you directly to Amazon, I also get a miniscule commisssion. But every penny helps.) The book is waiting for her in NYC. She'll get it when she visits her family. Meanwhile, she wanted to know if it has a recipe for chow mein. As a kosher vegetarian with nostalgia for old-time Chinese-American food, she would like to make it for herself and family. I have to say it is the perfect dish for vegetarians and for those who keep kosher. It may be Chinese, but there is nothing trayf about it, and it can easily be served without any meat or poultry product. (For those of you not in the tribe, trayf is the Yiddish word for forbidden food, foods that are not allowed according to Jewish dietary laws.) [more]
Monday, October 23, 2006
History Repeats Itself
My October “Cook at Seliano” group has just left after a week full of cooking, eating, drinking, laughing, and very interesting cultural and gastronomic touring. Baronessa Cecilia and I always like to change the program, if for no other reason than to keep our own enthusiasm high. On this trip, on one of our two excursion days, we took the group to two ancient Roman sites – excavations -- that are much smaller but, we think, even more impressive than Pompeii and Herculaneum, which is where all the tourists go. Neither of the sites we visited get much traffic. In fact, at one site, Stabiae, we were the only visitors. At both, the villas are so complete you really get a feeling for how the rich lived.
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Thursday, October 19, 2006
Personal Appearances
SELIANO COMES TO WESTFIELD, NEW JERSEY
I was playing with Google Earth a while back. That’s the website where you can, through a satellite camera, focus in on any place on earth, even your own house. I put “Tenuta Seliano” in the search engine and, astoundingly, I got the Classic Thyme cooking school in Westfield. That’s because I have brought Seliano to Westfield before. I suppose I should write to Google Earth and tell them that Tenuta Seliano is actually in Paestum, Italy. By the way, if you go to Paestum on Google Earth, and you know where to look, you will find Seliano, easily identified by the large pink villa on the property, in 1943 and ’44 headquarters for Allied Force officers, and the very blue, large swimming pool.
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Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Trouble in Bari
I was feeling so much better about Bari until the moment I was attacked.
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Monday, October 9, 2006
Letter from Seliano
If you are reading this for the first time, you could have been reading this 10 days ago, when I sent this diary entry out as an email to my so-called newsletter subscribers. So, to be among the first on your block to read me, please sign up for the newsletter by putting your email address in the box above.
Thanks,
Arturo [more]
