Cooking Journal

I keep a journal of all meals I cook, setting forth the date, the meal and who was present, followed by each dish served, the source of the dish and comments. This enables me to improve the recipe if I use it again, and to avoid serving the same people the same dishes.

I use the template set out below:

Date | Meal | People Present

Course | Selection(s) | Source | Comment

Hors d’oeuvres
Appetizer
Main
Side 1
Side 2
Salad
Dessert
Post-dessert


Bobby Jay

Food Literature

An excellent book for food lovers is Une Gourmandise, by Muriel Barbery, who also wrote the award-winning and really brilliant l'Elegance du Herisson (now out in English translation as The Elegance of the Hedgehog). Une Gourmandise is the story of an influential food critic who is on his death bed and wants, before he dies, to recreate the signal food experience of his life. There are fantastic riffs on grilled fish, potatoes, and many other foods and experiences, and a satisfying ending. The French is relatively easy to read, without complex structure, but still it's French.

Bobby Jay

Food Biographies

I'm not a huge reader of books by chefs and other food professionals, but still have read quite a number.

I very much enjoyed Jacques Pépin's The Apprentice and Julia Child's My Life in France. They both know food, France and how to tell a story. For lovely stories about life and food in the French provinces, try Susan Herrmann Loomis' On Rue Tatin and Georgeanne Brennan's A Pig in Provence.

I liked Judith Jones' The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food a lot less, and I found Bill Buford's Heat to be interesting but lacking something. I thought Anthony Bourdain's classic Kitchen Confidential was a more exciting "view of the restaurant from inside."

Although written by critics as opposed to practitioners, the great The Food of France by Waverly Root and A.J. Liebling's Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris stand above the rest for insight into the majesty of French cuisine.

I recently read a nice little book, Untangling My Chopsticks, by Victoria Riccardi, which deals with the amazing food that is part of the tea ceremony. If you are interested in Japan (where I and my wife lived for three years), she gives you plenty of good insights and fun anecdotes.

A quirky book, and a good read, is Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously, by Julie Powell, a young New York City woman who didn't know how to cook but decided to cook every recipe in Julia Child's seminal Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Funny and moving.

I think I'm leaving some out and will add to the list later.

Bobby Jay

Cleaning Enamel Pots

I have some wonderful Le Creuset enamel pots, which had a lot of baked-on dirt and grime. I finally hit on the idea of cleaning them with Easy Off Oven Cleaner. Success! With little effort, they are now like new.

Bobby Jay

First Posting

This is the first posting on my newly created blog, bobbyjayonfood. Many of my friends have encouraged me to share my thoughts and experiences relating to cooking, eating, restaurants, food products and ingredients, kitchen equipment and other matters relating to cuisine. I hope this will be of use to others and perhaps even to myself by creating a central place to organize my otherwise random thoughts and ideas.

I do not plan to offer reviews of New York restaurants; there are already enough reviewers and points of view. I will, however, discuss things that I discover at restaurants that may be of interest to others. I will offer brief reviews of selected Paris restaurants, as I am often asked for suggestions by people planning trips to that marvelous and beautiful city. In particular, I will report from time to time on my ongoing quest for excellent, reasonably-priced restaurants in Paris; fortunately, there are many.

Please comment liberally on any of my posts or on others' comments, or share your own ideas, discoveries and recipes in new posts. Let's all learn together!

Bobby Jay