best of this and that

now that we're rapidly approaching the start of a new year, everyone seems to be compiling lists of what they liked best about 2007. a google search for "best of 2007" yielded results ranging from best websites of the year to best blogs of the year. i also stumbled upon a wonderful collection of the lists over at the list-loving website fimoculous. here are some best of lists i enjoyed:

frank bruni's 10 best new [NY] restaurants:
1. momofuku ssam bar
2. soto
3. anthos
4. insieme
5. park avenue winter/spring/summer/autumn
6. resto
7. 15 east
8. allen & delancey
9. pamplona
10. mai house

rex sorgatz's best blogs of 2007 that you (maybe) aren't reading

1. twitter and tumblr
2. ill doctrine
3. vulture--[one of my personal favorites, this is what he writes: New York Magazine is a perplexing contradiction. It is probably the best magazine on the newsstand right now (Wired is the only competition), but it also has an editorial voice that is occasionally annoying in its sense of privilege and entitlement. On its worst days, I call this attitude "Aggressively SoHo" -- as in, it surpassed believing that NYC is the center of the world by declaring the epicenter somewhere south of 14th St. and north of Chambers St. When my bestest friend Melissa (disclaimer!) said she was co-launching this blog (she has since moved onto Rolling Stone), I was worried that this voice would ring through on its cultural coverage. But the opposite has happened -- Vulture has kept the best parts of New York Mag (the nuance, the design, the clever), while leaving the Aggressive SoHo Tude at the door.]
4. smashing telly
5. jezebel
6. snowclones
7. frolix-8: philip k. dick
8. emo+beer=busted career
9. the "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks
10. a brief message
(this list actually continues on, reaching about 30 blogs, all of which i could not post here, so i leave that up to your questionable curiosity.)

slate's best movies of 2007
1. 4 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days
2. the diving bell and the butterfly
3. the host
4. killer of sheep
5. persepolis
6. ratatouille
7. there will be blood

another best of list

um, i kind of like this guy. who is he? i stumbled on this post of his through 15 minutes to live. in it he lists the best films of the 90s (as well as a few from this decade thus far) and he's pretty much on point. he even lists david lynch's pilot episode of twin peaks in there. um--amazing!

a little bit of "bourg"

once upon a time, i heard about a little thing called restaurant week, which occurs twice a year, i believe, at participating restaurants in new york city. apparently during this special time of year, one can enjoy a prix-fix meal at some of the city's nicest restaurants for even nicer prices. what i've heard is about $20 for a 3-course lunch and $35 for dinner.

admittedly, i am somewhat embarrassed to be writing this post. after all, it openly revels my somewhat ridiculous obsession with food that has only grown even more ridiculous in recent months. while in prague, our travel writing class covered food writing and we read an excerpt from a book entitled "a cook's tour" by hip chef/novelist anthony bourdain, who is currently the chef at new york eatery les halles. enthralled with the excerpt, i borrowed the book from the teacher and basically devoured it. the book chronicled bourdain's trip around to world tasting exotic foods in different cultures. he participated in a pig slaughtering and subsequent feast in portugal, he sucked down like oysters on a fishing boat off the coast of france, and at one point ate the still-beating heart of a cobra while in cambodia (which he claimed kept beating all the way down...) so, after finishing that book, i became even more obsessed with cuisine.


(chef anthony bourdain)

on a lonely stroll in paris one day, i stopped at shakespeare and company and found an equally lonely copy of another bourdain book, this one called "kitchen confidential" about his experiences in the culinary "underbelly" of new york. i'm just about finished with this one and my taste for food is only becoming more extreme. reading this guy's words about gourmet food is practically making me give up my lifetime seafood ban (there hasn't been much progress--i didn't take a bite of shrimp on two separate occasions, though.)

anyhow, so...restaurant week: a little birdy just told me that its happening in new york from july 10th through the 14th. i haven't been able to find out much information about it online, yet, but lists of participating restaurants should be available soon. reservations are suggested. i can't figure out where i want to go--who knows if i'll even be able to get in anywhere. i'm thinking gramercy tavern... shoutout to "bourgie": are you in?

Our Sunday Supper

This weekend, I tried my hand at Suzanne Goin's actually famous braised beef short ribs recipe from my favorite cookbook, Sunday Suppers at Lucques. As expected, the ribs turned out splendidly, and the rest of the meal was a success as well. I was having my boyfriend's family over for dinner at my apartment for the first time, including his parents, his sister, and her fiance. I was prepping for the occasion all week, pouring over cookbooks, scribbling menus and grocery lists, and rotating between the kitchen for work and the couch for napping. I was very excited about my menu and thrilled to be cooking from Goin's book again, which I had previously taken out from the library and had a tough time returning it, even three months late. Anyway, I am still reeling off my exhaustion and am not keen on typing out the recipes here. However, I will gladly give them to anyone by request and can suggest you look at the re-typed recipes I found via google, although be warned that they are mainly adapted versions of the original.

The menu:

Wild Mushroom, Young Onion, Gruyere, and Applewood Smoked Bacon Tart (adapted from Goin's tart)
Mozzarella topped with Olive Oil and Sea Salt, served with warm, crusty bread (This was intended to be burrata, but it turned out that the cheese I had purchased was already spoiled! Boo!)
----
Homemade Pumpkin Ravioli with Sage-Hazelnut Butter
----
Braised Beef Short Ribs with Swiss Chard
Served with Root Vegetable Mash & Horseradish Cream
----
Billy's mom brought an amazing Coconut Cake with Chocolate Chunks

Quick roasting cippolini onions with salt and thyme.

Seasoning the thyme-marinated short ribs with salt and pepper.

Browning the meat.

Caramelizing the mirepoix -- the base of the braising liquid.

Adding balsamic vinegar, red wine, and port to reduce, then adding beef stock.

Covering the meat in the braising liquids. Now it goes in the oven for 3 hours!

Wilting swiss chard with the cippolini onions.

Mashing the orange zest-flavored root vegetables.

The Italian diligently making pasta sheets after a failed attempt the day prior.

Breaking out the ravioli attachment for the first time! Pumpkin, parmesan, ricotta, and nutmeg filling.

Success!

The most delectable and surprising tart. Puff pastry topped with a ricotta-creme fraiche base, topped with sliced gruyere, then sauteed wild mushrooms, green onions, and thick-cut bacon.

Pumpkin ravioli topped with browned butter, crispy sage, hazelnuts, and parmesan.

Platter of ribs, sitting atop the chard and topped with the braising liquid.

Dinner!

The End.

my favorite thing about hollywood...

its very easy for me to name my favorite things about la, mainly because there are so few of them. yeah, there are the items that pop up on everyone's lists like in'n'out or amoeba records, but there are a few specialties in l.a. that i adore. unfortunately, i cannot give all of my secrets away here, however i will disclose my favorite summertime event in l.a. and that is the saturday night cemetery screenings organized by Cinespia.



held at the infamous hollywood forever cemetery (where miss marilyn monroe is one of the buried), the evening is an homage to the old drive-ins of the 50s, except instead of parked cars everyone parks their asses on a big, crowded lawn and picnics while an old film is projected up onto a wall. they even have a liquor license, so bottles of wine are present all around. its basically one big party--kinda like a block party, but with movies and in a cemetery, especially since they have djs spinning before and after the screening.

anyway, this weekend inaugurates the summer season and the first film is robert altman's "the player". if you're in or around hollywood, you should check it out. i've seen tons of movies there, from "chinatown" to "the tale of the sierra madre" (i also had one weird date-that-i-didnt-know-was-a-date experience there,) and, regardless, its always been a good time. especially if you bring take-out italian food and steal a bottle of wine from your parents (i mean, i was in high school...)

Music Moments in film

I am partial to lists. Best Of's, Top Ten's, whatever you got.

This one hit home: Cameron Crowe's Top 10 (Or So) Music Moments in Film

A few clips:
+Cat Stevens - Don't Be Shy (Harold & Maude) **light-hearted, perfect from springtime happiness
+Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells (The Exorcist) **so cool
+Aimee Mann - Wise Up (Magnolia) **this scene is unreal... how did he do this?!
+Caetano Veloso - Cucurrucucu Paloma (Talk to Her) **beautiful song, a perfect scene

newspaper fun

today's sunday edition of the new york times churned out loads of fun reading, featuring a special oscars section with a remarkable amount of worthy articles. one of my favorites was an article on the production designer jack fisk, whose name was on my mind this week as i discussed the similarities between p.t. anderson's there will be blood (more on that later!) and terrence malick's days of heaven (one of my favorites, just released by criterion. fisk was the production designer on both of these films, which share a remarkable scenic landscape and are dominated by symbolic imagery. the article discusses fisk's designing style, comparing it to daniel day-lewis's method style of acting and also discusses his early work in the business, specifically mentioning his relationship with david lynch--my current obsession. read it!


jack fisk's sketch for a house designed for there will be blood

there was also this interesting article on sound design in no country for old men and a nice piece on into the wild, which i forgot about since i saw it so long ago and my memory is clouded with my recent completion of krakauer's into thin air.

there was also a faux oscar prediction (of nominees, not winners) laid out by the times' three film critics: a.o. scott, manohla dargis, and stephen holden. i wasn't too pleased with all of the choices, especially noticing that they were the critic's ideal nominees, not their reality based predictions. i mean, casey affleck's amazing role in the assassination of jesse james, which was one of the most memorable performances i've seen all year, was hardly recognized. nor was my already proclaimed favorite, the diving bell and the butterfly. just to give you a glimpse into the critics' nominee lists, here is what they came up with for the nominees for best picture:

a.o. scott:
sweeney todd: the demon barber of fleet street
4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days
i'm not there
ratatouille
into the wild

manohla dargis
there will be blood
the bourne ultimatum
4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days
i'm not there
zodiac

stephen holden
there will be blood
the diving bell and the butterfly
starting out in the evening
no country for old men
across the universe

in my world, the best picture nominees would be the following:
there will be blood (the hands down winner)
the diving bell and the butterfly
i'm not there
no country for old men
zodiac or into the wild

check out the rest of their nominees here.

and finally, one last article worth mentioning was the piece on ethan coen's one act plays which begin previews at the atlantic's second stage theater next week (i think). neil pepe, the artistic director of the company, directs, with some of our former teachers are performing in the show.

that's all folks.