God bless German ingenuity
Next time you’re stuck on a mountain…
Food
Tuesday
Friday
A Cook’s Bookshelf
Megan offers her annual Christmas cooking recommendations. Kit here; manuals here. As usual, there’s lots of good stuff. But permit me to offer some supplementary ideas on the matter of cookbooks. If, as Megan suggests you should, you own several of Julia Child’s books you may not think you need another set of classic volumes on French, Italian and Mediterranean food. You’d be wrong. No serious Anglophone cook should be without at least two (if not all three) of Elizabeth David’s masterpieces: Mediterranean Food, Italian Food and French Provincial Cooking. These three books alone provide enough inspiration to last a lifetime. More than just recipe books, however, these old friends
Tuesday
Pizza Wars Continued…
Yeah, so Megan can’t find New York style pizza in Washington. Well, I can’t find Scottish pizza here either. I forgot to ask earlier if any readers know of anywhere on the eastern seaboard that does a good, proper deep-fried pizza*? *Photos from a fine chippie I used to frequent regularly: Piccante on Broughton Street in Edinburgh. We were spoilt for choice, in fact, since we also had the Rapido 100 yards down the road. Their traditional – that is, only cooked once – pizzas were better but Piccante took the palm for deep-frying. It’s also one of the few places I know where, honoring the spirit of Scottish invention,
Monday
In Search of the Perfect Pie
As any newcomer to DC must, Megan McArdle bemoans the relative lack of decent pizza in Washington: To a lifelong New Yorker, there is no other sort of pizza than the large, thin, New York slice. We may disagree amongst ourselves about the theological details–crispy or floppy, thick border or thin, sweet sauce or spicy, and how much grease is too much? But basically, we’re all in the same church, and it’s a highly localized one. Chicago pizza may be a fine foodstuff, as long as one consumes it without trying to imagine that it is actual pizza. But it is no substitute for the One True Faith. Well, sure,