Peaches de Guzman

In this planet we live in, we all know that some good things never last. We can only keep the good memories forever. I met Peaches and Derek who used to be together but ended their relationship as good friends instead. Peaches booked their reservation when they were still together as a couple. I'm glad they came, even just as good friends, and graced the dinner I prepared for them.

Again... it's really a small world because Peaches is a friend of Kitty, my former officemate in FCB.

Do the wacky and romantic poses manifest a lovelier second time around?

I hope to see you again as couple :-)

How my colleagues are different from Sex and the City fans

November 30

Magnolia Bakery sent me a cupcake along with a press release telling me they’d be open during the winter holidays (regular hours, except for Christmas Day, when they will be closed).
I didn't really want a cupcake today, as I am already fat, so I’ve been trying to hand it off to a colleague.
There have been no takers.

It’s not an anti-dessert or anti-food thing. My colleagues have been eating freely of the red M&Ms sent to me by a tomato supplier (don’t ask; I can’t explain why they sent them either). I've had no trouble giving away the boxes of soup stock that are sitting on my desk. Someone stole a block of my haloumi cheese from the communal fridge. They’ve been all over my Sicilian almonds (quite different from the California variety — very mild taste at first, but with a powerful amaretto-like finish).
I guess they just don’t like Magnolia Bakery cupcakes.

from peanuts to smoked pineapple to vanilla ice cream with chocolate and caviar

November 30

Long night last night.
It started around 5 p.m. in the private upstairs room at Felidia, where I went to a party thrown by the Peanut Advisory Board. It seems that drought in the Southeast is affecting the peanut crop again, with regard to quantity, not quality, so I'm told. There should still be enough peanuts for the major manufacturers, but the smaller guys may face some difficulties.
I was apprised of the situation by a nine-fingered farmer on the PAB’s board, and he should know.
I got lost in conversation with others and ended up closing down the party at 7:30, and from there I went to a sherry party announcing the winners of a cocktail competition. I caught up with food bon vivant Arlyn Blake and Marian Betancourt, writer of cookbooks and other things. I introduced them to Kevin Patricio, who's, well, actually I’m not sure what he is. When I met him in, like 2000, he was a marketer or event planner or something for Food & Wine. I’ve seen him listed as a chef. He was working at the sherry party last night, though I’m not sure in what capacity. I do know that I’m always glad to see him, and he said that he and bartender/cocktail maven Jim Meehan (mostly of PDT these days) are working on opening a restaurant together. It’s all in very preliminary stages. Jim kind of rolled his eyes when I mentioned it and changed the subject.
Then beverage consultant and sherry guru Steve Olson gave a speech and announced the cocktail winner (Giuseppe Gonzalez of Flatiron Lounge in New York City, for his Madroño Cobbler
Recipe:
3 oz. Williams & Humbert Dry Sack Medium Amontillado
2 Strawberries
2 cinnamon sticks
0.5 oz Torani Amer
2 barspoons of Rich Demerara Syrup
Lightly muddle one strawberry in Torani Amer. Break one cinnamon in half into shaker. Add sherry. Shake lightly with a little crushed ice. Serve in wine goblet. Top with more ice. Garnish with fanned strawberry, whole cinnamon stick & straw).
After that I went upstairs to sample cocktails, including one made with smoked pineapple — smoking’s all the rage, and you can read about that in the December 10 issue of NRN — and chatted a bit with beverage consultant Jerri Banks and Julie Reiner, who owns Flatiron Lounge. I guess I should have congratulated her.
Next I headed down to Will Goldfarb’s new place, Dessert Lounge, which is located at the back of Chocolat Michel Cluizel (and also accessible from the back of Le Pain Quotidien). I ate Will's chocolate bubbles with milk foam, and his vanilla ice cream with chocolate bits, topped with caviar, and mostly hung out with Oceana executive chef Ben Pollinger, about whom I discussed plans to make dinner for my boss, executive food editor Pam Parseghian, and her husband George Arpajian, at the home of her boss, editor-in-chief Ellen Koteff, who unlike me does not need to undertake major cleaning efforts to make her home presentable to guests.
Ben suggested that some butternut squash gnocchi would be nice "If you want to do some work." Uh-huh. It would be nice.
It’s funny, I'll bake bread, no problem. Give me some flour and yeast and I’m ready to go. But I’m not making gnocchi.
Cute idea, though.
I chatted briefly with Oceana executive pastry chef Jansen Chan, whom I don't think I’d met before, and had a nice long talk with Dave Arnold, director of culinary technology at the French Culinary Institute. He’s the cat in charge of teaching about transglutaminase and immersion circulators and various types of evaporation and distillation equipment — all the stuff that used to be called molecular gastronomy until early practitioners of it decided they didn’t like that term (Will Goldfarb, who sells various ingredients used in molecular gastronomy, refers to his own cuisine as "experiential").
Freelance writer Francine Cohen introduced me to a friend of hers named Stewart, who writes music for TV and stuff. That kind of art is beyond me. I could make up a dish, or a story, but a song? Where do you begin?
Stewart said it wasn’t really different from writing words. We agreed that the TV show Battlestar Galactica has a great soundtrack. I like how the theme song starts with a single note repeated over and over again. It's really scary. Stewart likes the dominance of percussion throughout the series. I like that too.
A propos of nothing else, let me say right here that I’m also a huge fan of the NYPD Blue theme. I think the melancholy tune underpinned by the thrumming drum beat that is the pulse of New York City sums up the show well.

Thanksgiving, and Eating New York

November 26

I spent Thanksgiving with the family of my boss, Pam Parseghian. It was very much like Thanksgiving with her clan last year, with the addition of a delicious poultry pâté that Pam made.
The trip to central New Jersey was easier than in years past. It was just an 11 minute ride to Secaucus, and then I was picked up, a day bag full of Beaujolais in hand, by Pam's brother Steve and his sons Grant and Daniel. The kids get nicer every year.
On the day after Thanksgiving I have a longstanding tradition with my friends Birdman aka Dr. David Krauss and Rusty Cappadona. We meet around noon at Joe's Shanghai for soup dumplings and then wander through the streets, restaurants and bars of Gotham, eating and drinking until we fall down, can't eat anymore or simply have had enough fun and want to go to sleep.
This year Rusty brought along his eight-year-old son, Ryan, who's quite the young gourmand, it turns out.
We taught him different techniques for eating soup dumplings, and then took him to one of Birdman's favorite dive bars, where he had his first Shirley Temple (and second, and third really because the bartender decided Ryan should do a taste comparison between Shirley Temples made with ginger ale and lemon-lime soda — he preferred the lemon-lime).
The men drank Bass Ale.
Then we took a stroll to Ground Zero, because Rusty wanted to show it to Ryan. From there we met up with Birdman's girlfriend, Emily, and headed to Great New York Noodle Town for won ton duck noodle soup.
From there we walked down Canal Street and I continued my search for mangosteens.
Success! I found a bag of them for $7. They were from Thailand, so it's a good thing they were frozen solid as mangosteen season in Thailand ends in May.
We strolled up to Little Italy for fresh mozzarella and then hopped on the 6 train to have wine and cheese at Artisanal.
Ryan was a real trooper here. He didn't care for the vacharin, but he ate quite a few other funky cheeses (and a gruyère and a cheddar) with gusto, while drinking a Shirley Temple. The rest of us split a bottle of 1996 Haut-Médoc, and I ripped open a thawing mangosteen, to the slight embarrassment of Birdman, because of course pulling out your own fruit at a fancy restaurant is inappropriate. He and the others were happy to try the mangosteen, however, which it turns out, despite having been frozen, was quite a delicious specimen, with good sugar and acid levels and its typical velvety texture.
I tried to eat the rest of the mangosteens the following day, however, and they were terrible — either inedibly bitter or rotten. So I guess you have to eat them as they thaw. That's not really surprising as even in Southeast Asia you pretty much have to eat mangosteens within a day or two of buying them.
Next we walked up to Grand Central Terminal, where Rusty and Ryan headed back to Connecticut and Birdman, Emily and I soldiered on, slurping down mostly East Coast oysters at the Grand Central Oyster Bar, while drinking beer (I sampled a couple of New England beers whose names I have forgotten).
We'd planned on a Japanese snack on St. Marks Place — some starch to top off the oysters — but we deemed the lines at the izakaya places to be unreasonably long, and so instead we went to Grand Szechuan for cured pork, Szechuan dumplings, fried rice and drank more beer (Sapporo, I think).
Then we walked to Union Square, where I topped off the evening with a Starbucks Triple Grande Cappuccino and we parted ways in the subway station. I think it was around 11pm.