Food News Feed

Heidi gets a visit from the ghost of Madame Saint-Ange. Who is the Madame Saint-Ange, you might ask? She is meticulous, particular, technically masterful, a bit snobby, demanding, and trust me - you seek her approval. You can't help yourself. I spent the morning making souffles with only her words by my side. She comes right through the page - and she's not messing around. You better not either. Paul Aratow's translation brings the author to life in a way that one seldom encounters.

There were a few highlights. One was listening to the presentation by Nick Joy, managing director of Loch Duart, the sustainable salmon company as they call themselves. Mr. Joy is a salmon open net pen farmer, something you would think would be about as welcome at a sustainability conference as a piranha at a tilapia farm...When I buy seafood I'm juggling a lot of variables. Wild or farmed? There are some fish I only buy wild, like salmon. Impressed though I was by Mr Joy, salmon is also an excellent educational fish. By that I mean by only serving wild fish when people get to the restaurant looking for salmon and it's October I can tell them it's not salmon season. Many people have never considered that fish might be seasonal. Many people these days don't get that produce is seasonal. Some people leave, in search of salmon. Most stay and discover something else to eat.

A mystified friend complained to me recently about her experience trying to reserve a table for two at the restaurant Annisa in the Village. She happened to go on www.opentable.com and found a table at 7:30 p.m. Were there tables she could get on the web but not by phone? Had she received a straight answer the first time around?

Edna Lewis, a seasoned practitioner and feisty proponent of the cooking of the American South, died Monday at her home in Decatur, Ga. She was 89. Miss Lewis was one of the first and few African Americans to reach the upper echelons of America's food world, winning a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Southern Foodways Alliance and the title Grande Dame from the professional women's organization Les Dames d'Escoffier International. In 2003, the James Beard Foundation inducted her work into the Cookbook Hall of Fame.
Related: John T. Edge, the director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, on Edna Lewis: When I learned that Edna Lewis had passed, I called my wife. Blair gasped. And then she told me that she was – at that very moment – in the midst of making “Good Chocolate Cake” from The Gift of Southern Cooking, the book Ms. Lewis wrote with Watershed chef Scott Peacock, her colleague and caretaker.
Talk about ghosts...

Dr. Seuss it's not.