Saturday, September 30, 2006

pepper is the new salt

you heard it here first. the days of precariously salted dishes emerging from the kitchen are drawing to a close. lobes of foie with a selection of 12 artisanal salts are going to be very early 2000s. tellicherry is the new kosher, szechuan the new fleur.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

i've been using hot sauce for years, so i guess that makes me avant garde.
does this mean that you will finally accept frank's redhot as a welcome guest at our dining table?

simon said...

nice try. I will continue to sneer at your hot sauce until a chef of international acclaim declares it to be in (or hot, as it were). at that point, I will fully embrace hot sauce and deny ever having sneered at it.

Anonymous said...

"mila's hot stuff" was critically acclaimed. is that not enough?

Anonymous said...

Let me remind you, Simon, that sichuan peppercorns are not biologically related to black pepper. Also, I think somebody's revealing their secret love for Susur Lee despite the superficial hating.

Anonymous said...

oh no! i didn't use any preservatives!!!

Anonymous said...

Mind you, Susur Lee's so-called Szechuan spices are only a mild representation of the true, exquisite mouth-on-fire pain that the artisans of real 'Sichuanese' cuisine purport to endure.

For the true 'spice' experience, I'd recommend consulting with my Sichuanese girlfriend, who constantly ridicules my white-man spice tolerance.

simon said...

who's talking about susur lee anyway? I have no secret love for that man. he has no passion for service. NO PASSION. AND I QUESTION HIS PASSION FOR FOOD. DO YOU HEAR ME SUSUR? I AM QUESTIONING YOUR PASSION FOR FOOD AND SERVICE.

simon said...

p.s. which stephen are you?

Anonymous said...

Hmm, to take you away from the dullness of class, let's play a game to solve your question:

Hint #1: I have "WHITE-MAN" spice tolerance. (READ: not white.)

Hint #2: My girlfriend is "Sichuanese". Therefore, my actuarial math shows the probability that I am Chinese as >70%. Or 5% probability that I am African-American.

Hint #3: I now "WHEEL" behind a 268hp Camry. How ridiculously excellent.

Figured it out yet?

Anonymous said...

it took me until "wheel" to figure it out.

simon said...

since when are you stephen? your name change is what confused me. that and that you were pretending to be white.

Unknown said...

Steeeeever!!!

I am proud to say that I knew it was him based on his first post.

Anonymous said...

Where in my first post did you get the inkling that I was pretending to be white? Obviously, I wouldn't be commenting about "white-man" features unless I wasn't white! Duh. Wait. Or is it the other way around?

In any case, at least Jules figured it out. But then again, our shared communist Chinese rational logic would have it no other way.

Haha, as a professional, I now have no choice but to go back to using formal first names in all forms of correspondence, to avoid all forms of legality issues.

simon said...

mr. stephen, thank you for your clarification.
sincerely,
simon

Anonymous said...

Mr. simon,

My pleasure!

Cheers,
Mr. Stephen