Yotam Ottolenghi Cooks and Books Up Comfort

 

It’s impossible not to respect the up-front honesty of a cookbook — yes, a cookbook — that offers the following sentence in its introduction: “For the most part, we live in a batshit-crazy world.” That indisputable claim kicks off the need for the latest book from esteemed chef Yotam Ottolenghi (and his co-authors Helen Goh, Verena Lochmuller, and Tara Wigley), Comfort.

“I think food is the best antidote to the madness we live in,” Ottolenghi said during a recent Zoom interview. “If you cook something you know and you’ve cooked before and love, it gives you a sense of stability and a sense of place — this is what I think we are missing. So, this is another layer of comfort I would hope to explore with people, to hear how food gives them comfort through their personal lives and personal journeys.”

Care to read the rest then please do at the Independent's site.

Living the Lyrical Life with Nigella Lawson

 

Being famous can get in the way of how good you are. Take the case of Nigella Lawson, who has sold more than 12 million books worldwide and is on so many “successful television programs,” as her bio proclaims, that she’s “a household name around the world.” 

 But she’s not just a comely face on our bookshelves and small screens, and no one should discount the power of her writing. Take this passage in her latest book, Cook, Eat, Repeat: “I do so love a crumble. I don’t just mean to eat, but also to make. When I stand at the kitchen countertop, with my hands immersed in cool flour, fluttering my fingers against the cold cubes of butter to turn these two disparate ingredients into one light pile of soft and sandy flakes, I feel, at one and the same time, that I’m not only repeating a process but reliving the memory of all the times I’ve done so before, and yet utterly immersed in the present, alive only in a sensation of flour and butter in my fingers, as they scutter about the bowl.”

Care to read the rest then do so at the Independent's site.

Samin Nosrat on Fame, Food, and Writing

The James Beard Award–winning author and Netflix star Samin Nosrat needs no introduction. To call her thought- and taste-provoking. Salt Fat Acid Heat a cookbook is like saying Hamlet is a ghost story — except Shakespeare didn’t have such nifty infographics.

It’s our great fortune that she will be part of an UCSB Arts & Lectures virtual talk on Sunday, February 28, at 11 a.m. Moderated by Santa Barbara’s own restaurateur Sherry Villanueva, owner of The Lark, La Paloma, Loquita, and other hotspots, the chat also features Israeli-English author/chef Yotam Ottolenghi — remember when his book Plenty would be set dressing on television shows as a symbol that characters had hip taste?

Want to read the rest, then do so at the Independent's site.

And, yes, she's as warm and funny and self-deprecating and engaged as she seems on the Netflix show in real life, if a 35 minute phone interview is real life.

Modest Confessions of the Barefoot Contessa

I don’t know about you, but any time I’m having a dinner party and things start to unravel during prep, I think, “Just channel your inner Ina.” By that, I mean Ina Garten, the calm, cool, and collected Barefoot Contessa on the Food Network (think of her as the anti-Guy Fieri) whose best-selling cookbooks include her latest, Make It Ahead, and the one simply named after her trademark line, How Easy Is That?

Want to read the rest the do so at the Indy's site.

Some Music for You: Heavenly Haden Harmony

The Haden Triplets’ — yes, that’s jazz legend Charlie Haden’s daughters — take on the old-time Americana songbook on their eponymous new CD, mining every ounce of pretty/purty out of songs whose core ore is just sad, sad, sad. God might seem far, but one’s love tends to be even farther in chestnuts like “Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone?” and “Tiny Broken Heart.”

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Wesley Stace’s World of Wonders

Wesley Stace, who is curating his Cabinet of Wonders “vaudeville” event at UCSB Arts & Lectures on November 13, says people have no problem watching a show featuring musicians, comedians, and authors. “People know what a variety show is,” he said in a recent phone interview from his home near Philadelphia. “I think genre is really dead. People’s iPods are on shuffle all the time.” In Santa Barbara, that shuffle will feature Stace’s own catchily erudite music stylings (he’s got a new album out called Self-Titled), plus his usual co-host comedian Eugene Mirman (who also plays theremin!); comedians Bobcat Goldthwait and Kurt Braunohler; musicians Dean & Britta, Ned Doheny, Alec Ounsworth from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and John Roderick from The Long Winters. Matthew Specktor gets to hold down the writer’s chair (although Stace is also a novelist).

Yep, I returned to my music writing roots for this one story. Go read the rest at the Indy's site.

Something ’Wichy This Way Wins

We’ve been into competition since Abel and Cain, but, fortunately, not all face-offs end so finally. Sometimes it just means we get great sandwiches, as was the case at the Santa Barbara Sandwich Showdown, held at Whole Foods Market on February 3. The trio of contestants was as follows: Clay Lovejoy, co-owner of Three Pickles; Paul Shields, owner of Savoy Café & Deli; and our amateur entrant, L.J. Washington, an ICU nurse by trade but a fine cook by way of New Orleans, too. Their job was to create a sandwich that would wow our judges: Roman Baratiak from UCSB Arts & Lectures, Joanie Hudson from The Santa Barbara Independent, and Monika Sowizral from Whole Foods. And wow they did, for as judge Baratiak put it, “The creativity and eclecticism of Santa Barbara’s food artisans never ceases to amaze. Each of the sandwiches was a winner!”

Want to read the rest then do so at the Indy's site.

P.S. Somehow we had a sandwich contest in which not one contestant used avocado and we didn't get permanently banned from California.

Food Fight Starring the Felix and Oscar of Chefs

Anthony Bourdain likes to joke that he always cooks bacon when vegetarians come to his house, as he knows the smell is so enticing to make bacon “the gateway protein.” Eric Ripert, on the other hand, won’t even take the bait when an interviewer (yours truly) dangles the question, “In the well-considered Daily Meal’s list of the best restaurants in America that came out in February, your restaurant Le Bernardin was in third place … behind two Thomas Keller restaurants (Per Se and The French Laundry). Does that seem fair to you that Keller is hogging the two top spots?”

Want to read the rest, then go read it at the Indy's site.

That's the Way the Pastry Contest Crumbles

You know a contest has been a hit when one judge claims, “The entries from the professional pastry chefs were remarkable,” the second judge suggests, “I think I indulged too much,” and the third confesses, “And [after] some … well, let’s just say I licked my fingers.” Such was the case with the Kings and Queens of Pastry Contest held March 19 at Whole Foods Market and cosponsored by The Independent and UCSB Arts & Lectures, which came up with this contest and other events to expand its Food for Thought series of lectures and films with more community participation.

Want to read the rest, then go read it at the Indy's site.

The Food Truth According to Ruth

Ruth Reichl, the last editor of the late, lamented Gourmet, isn’t just concerned about the future of food writing. “It’s the same as the future of all journalism,” she asserted during a recent phone interview. “You really have to worry when so many people are writing for free. A lot of investigative reporting doesn’t get done if you don’t have an institution paying for it. Democracy depends upon a very robust press.”

Want to read the rest, then go read it at the Indy's site.