Out of the closet...into the kitchen

Every week the Veja Rio magazine has a list of featured restaurants listed by speciality: Peruvian, Italian, French, Contemporary. And every time this magazine makes it to my hands, I find myself ravishing it cover to cover. Guiltily. Like a teenage boy with a...oh. Let's not go there. Suffice to say that my interest in food writing is disturbingly addicting. This is partly due to the lack of sufficient funds and adventurous friends so necessary for a visit to these places of culinary delight, where lamb rests on a cloud of mint rice and haddock swims in sauces of “beurre noir” brought nearly flaming to the table. Buffets that cost more per kilo than the jeans I am currently wearing are not really within my budget, but oh, how I wish they were!

Reading this magazine brings me back to my adolescent years, when I would borrow my father’s Wall Street Journal, weekend edition, and scurry off to my room to read the wine guide. I’d never drunk wine, didn’t know anyone who did. But I was fascinated by the descriptions, by the words that made tastes come alive in my head, flavors I’d never imagined or experienced but which left me reeling when I stepped away from the newsprint.

And that’s perhaps why this poor post-graduate student/missionary/starving artist is a closet foodie. I read food blogs, cover to cover my cookbooks and am a fan (but THIS is inherited from my father) of the occasional television chef. And in the spirit of full disclosure, I have decided to share a few of my favorite food links and/or books and introduce the latest addition to the blog: an attempted weekly culinary posting.

Because this home is woefully short on basic cookbooks: Recipezaar

Bread Alone. The bible for anyone who dreams of taking a flight to France just to eat a real baguette. This book is somewhere in Indiana (the Souphouse, perhaps?), with flour and yeast clogging the pages. It was an invaluable teacher, leading me into the mysteries of artisan yeast bread. I once made and froze 20 loaves for a graduation party using the basic recipe given in this book. I’m not sure I graduated much farther than basic wheat bread, but that was more out of unadulterated satisfaction…

Chocolate. And Zucchini. And a recipe for Nutella ice cream. Will I be excommunicated for admitting that for a lifetime supply of said sorvete I would seriously consider never having sex, eating meat or listening to U2 until the Second Coming? I wish this blogger would be my friend. And send me presents every month. I'd reciprocate. Promise!

Spirituality, barbeque sauce and the best salsa recipe I have yet found. Oh, and the writing is excellent. Why, oh why can’t my mother find this book in the innards of our home and express it to Brazil, where it clearly belongs?