Blog Posts by bon appétit magazine

Paris: A long time ago when I learned why Paris was such a good town for lunch, I loved an old line from a Belmondo film: "café, pousse-café, cigare." You ate your way through an entrée (as in entry: the first course), main dish, cheese, and something sweet.

The important part came next. After sipping a rich short coffee, you ordered a glass of any dark liquid with a name ending in "ngac." Finally, the waiter brought a heavy wood humidor of Cuban cigars.

Connoisseurs believed a cigar to be as vital to a good meal as a fork. Not everyone loved this sacrosanct ritual. For many, downwind of an odiferous Churchill is not a great place to be. But in a city that treasured epicurean extremes, laissez-faire carried the day.

The first Parisian no-smoking rules were pretty much French-style. Cafes posted signs with those red circles and a slash across a cigarette. Usually, however, you couldn't see them for all the smoke.

Then it got better. Anyone who wanted to could avoid

Read More »from Eating On the Edge #27: Smokeless in Paris

On a recent trip down South, a friend and fellow food lover said he had something for me to try. After some rustling in the pantry, he produced a large Mason jar containing big wedges of cucumber pickles. "Pickles," I said with some disappointment. To be honest I was expecting something a little more exotic, say pickled squirrel or opossum. But, he assured me, these were not just any pickles, these were the pride of Kingsport, Tennessee where locals call them "Johnny Cash" pickles.

According to my friend, June Carter Cash (Johnny's second wife) and her legendary musical family were from the nearby town of Maces Spring, Virginia. The couple frequently traveled through the area to visit her family and Cash soon discovered the pickles made by Darrell Falin and family of Blountville, Tennessee. He fell in love with pickles and frequently made special trips to the Falin home to pick up a few jars for the road.

Thankfully, you can still buy pickles from the Falin's at their home

Read More »from Hello, I'm Johnny Cash Pickles

Look for sesame oil in the Asian foods section of the supermarket.

Prep: 20 minutes
Total: 2 hours 25 minutes (includes marinating time)

Servings: Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Ingredients

1/2 cup dry Sherry
1/3 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons ketchup
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 tablespoons minced peeled fresh ginger
1 tablespoon Asian sesame oil
1 (1 1/2- to 1 3/4-pound) flank steak

Preparation

Whisk first 6 ingredients in 13x9x2-inch glass baking dish. Add steak; turn to coat. Let marinate at room temperature 2 hours, turning occasionally.

Preheat broiler. Transfer steak to broiler pan. Drain marinade from dish into medium saucepan; boil 3 minutes. Broil steak until cooked to desired doneness, about 4 minutes per side for medium-rare. Using tongs, transfer steaks to platter; let stand 5 minutes. Cut crosswise into thin slices and serve, passing cooked marinade as sauce.

Click here to read reader reviews of this recipe.

Related Links from Bon Appétit on Read More »from Recipe of the Day: Asian-style Flank Steak

Hollywood has the Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG), Golden Globes, and Academy Awards. Cookbook authors have their own triple threat-James Beard Awards, International Association of Culinary Professionals Awards (IACP), and Gourmand World Cookbook Award. Yesterday's Gourmands, held at the Olympia Theatre in London, kicked off the season presenting awards in 40 categories from 45 countries. According to a press release, "The US, the UK, Germany, France and Spain have the largest numbers of cookbooks qualified on the shortlist . For the first time there are cookbooks from Antigua, Benin, Botswana, and Bangladesh." Unfortunately, winners have not yet been posted. As soon as they are released, I'll let you know.

Next up are the this week's IACP awards from New Orleans, followed by the Beard Awards June 6-8 in New York.

For a list of Bon Appetit's favorite cookbooks of the year you can listen to podcast #65 featuring executive editor Victoria von Biel and myself. A few of our

Read More »from Cookbooks of the Year

Cheese with fish-it's an ongoing debate in the food world.

A few years ago in an Italian restaurant in New York I was enjoying a fabulous orecchiette with anchovies and hazelnuts when my friend asked the waiter if she could please have some Parmesan grated over it. "No. No cheese with fish," he barked and walked away. I had to side with the waiter.

However, while visiting my family in Connecticut last week, I had lunch with my dad at Bricco in West Hartford. Near the host stand was a blown up cover of Esquire's March 2008 issue which featured Bricco's Grilled Lobster and Cheese as one of the best sandwiches in America. Needless to say, I had to try it.

Dad and I had a wonderful green salad with shaved fennel and blood oranges, a thin, crisp, and delicious pizza spread with fig jam and scattered with Gorgonzola and prosciutto, topped with a nice handful of arugula. And, of course, the Grilled Lobster and Cheese sandwich.

It was outstanding, packed with perfectly

Read More »from Would You like Cheese with Your Fish? Bricco's Grilled Lobster and Cheese Sandwich

Ten or so years ago, when I first spoke at The Greenbrier Professional Food Writers' Symposium, someone in the audience said, "I don't think anyone grows up wanting to be a food writer." I wasn't sure that was true a decade ago and I know for sure that it's not true now. These days, lots of people want to be food writers-and, if you're reading this blog, maybe you're one of those people who wants to make writing about food your life.

If that's the case, it's not too early to think about attending next year's symposium.

The four-day symposium, organized by Antonia Allegra and always featuring Don Fry as the in-house writing coach, is in its 19th year and the program just keeps getting better. It's jam-packed-there are panels, small-group talks, individual and group writing workshops and coaching sessions and lots of time for everyone to just get to know one another.

I know the picture below doesn't make it look like we're working, but given that we went from 8 am to

Read More »from Food writers of the world unite at The Greenbrier Professional Food Writers' Symposium

(MIXED SALAD)

Servings: Makes 6 Servings.

Ingredients

1 large carrot, peeled
1 small head Bibb lettuce, torn into bite-size pieces
1 head radicchio, torn into bite-size pieces
1 large fennel bulb, trimmed, cut crosswise into 1/8-inch-thick slices
5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice or red wine vinegar

Preparation

Using vegetable peeler and working over large bowl, cut carrot into long thin ribbons. Add lettuce, radicchio and fennel. Drizzle olive oil and lemon juice over salad and toss to coat. Season salad to taste with salt and pepper.

Click here to read reader reviews of this recipe.

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Read More »from Recipe of the Day: Insalata Mista

Paris: Here's a bulletproof guide to doing Paris markets. Go early. Bring a big basket. And learn to say in any accent you choose: "Je suis un ami de Da-vide."

That works particularly well at the fabled Sunday morning Bastille market, just outside David Lebovitz's door. Every cheese slicer, terrine slinger, oyster shucker, and fish flinger greets him like a lifelong pal. But friend-of-David status reaches its true heights when it comes to matters of chocolate.

For those few who don't know, Lebovitz was a pastry chef with Alice Waters in Berkeley before he decided life had bigger challenges. His amusing and skillfully done dessert books set him free, and he has settled in Paris where eating well is serious business.

Truth-in-packaging requires me to declare that I am not only un ami de Da-vide and but also a sometime colleague; we jointly conduct the Great Chocolate Tour in Paris each May. But I'm the silent partner who wolfs down ganache when everyone else is sagely

Read More »from Eating On the Edge #26: How to Eat Well in Paris