Mouthing Off

Talking with Rosie Schaap, it becomes increasingly evident that any good bar would want her as a regular. She’s easy going, funny, smart and genuinely interested in other people, and for the most part, she orders whiskey on the rocks—a no-fuss drink. In fact, Schaap, the Drinks Columnist for the New York Times Magazine, has become a regular at several bars around the world in her day, something that she writes about in her phenomenal new memoir, Drinking with Men.

Schaap is an expert storyteller. She takes readers from her days following the Grateful Dead through love affairs to working as a minister after the September 11 tragedy, with the bars she frequents and the friends she’s made in them playing a pivotal role in her daily life. For a book that’s purportedly about drinking, it’s intriguing how little of it touches on actual drinks. It’s the neighborhood bars Schaap inhabits that become their own little worlds–like Grogan’s pub in Dublin where everyone knows the words to the same bar tunes, or The Man of Kent in Hoosick Falls, NY, loved by many a biker on Route 7 or the (now closed) Liquor Store in Manhattan’s Tribeca.

Schaap misses Liquor Store most. “I just loved the mix of people there,” she tells F&W. “You just felt that everyone was happy to see each other and perfectly relaxed. It was a very simple unadorned place but it was a beautiful corner bar and the light was really special in late afternoon just before it turned into evening. That was really the most beautiful time there.”

While Schaap mostly chronicles her time as a patron, on Tuesdays she can usually be found bartending at South in Brooklyn’s Park Slope. “There is a lot more responsibility behind the bar, but I still feel as curious about people when I’m serving them as I do when I’m just sitting on the civilian side talking,” she says.

She won't be there tonight. Schaap is doing a reading at 2A in the East Village at 8 p.m.–and then will be off to Chicago, San Francisco and Boston over the next couple weeks on a book tour.

The gift-giving season roared toward us like some mammoth sleigh piloted by a crazy old coot in a red coat, so it’s the last chance to make some choices. For the wine lover in your life—or simply for yourself—here are fantastic new wine books that make great gifts.

In their quest to master classic and new cocktail techniques, mixologists around the country hit the books. To help you prep for the holiday season (and start a gift list), we asked top experts to reveal essential reading materials. With five passionate recommendations, The PDT Cocktail Book, by F&W contributing editor Jim Meehan, garnered sweeping praise for best contemporary release. (Meehan himself gives props to a tome published in 1930.) Here, a buying guide for every interest, from a Hemingway-inspired book chosen by cocktail genius Dale DeGroff to the oldest selection, Jerry Thomas’ Bar-Tender’s Guide, from 1862. »

I’m not sure if April Bloomfield learned a few things about touring from the rock stars who hang out at her awesome Manhattan restaurant The Spotted Pig (you know the names: Bono, Jay-Z, the Black Keys). So when Bloomfield goes on a book tour for her excellent new cookbook, A Girl and Her Pig, she does it right.

Starting in early July in Charleston, S.C., Bloomfield will team up with excellent chefs around the country cooking meals that show off dishes from the book. As it happens, many of them are chefs she met as a 2007 F&W Best New Chef (love that!). "I'm looking forward to cooking with my friends on their home turf,” says Bloomfield. “I'm sure we'll have fun…maybe too much, if a few pints are involved."

Below are some tour highlights. And in more news from Bloomfield, she’ll be chronicling the highlights on her just-launched website, aprilbloomfield.com. But how much better if you get to be there in person.
 
Charleston, SC: Saturday, July 7
Host chef: Sean Brock
Where: Heirloom Book Company, 123 King St.; 843-469-1717; heirloombookcompany.com
What: All you can eat lamb roast with Brock; sides by Bloomfield and all you can drink cocktails by the Gin Joint
 
Chicago: Sunday, July 15
Host chefs: Paul Virant, Paul Kahan and Bruce Sherman
Where: Perennial Virant, 1800 N. Lincoln Ave.; 312-981-7070; perennialchicago.com
What: Dinner prepared by Bloomfield, Kahan, Sherman and Paul Virant

Portland, OR: Wednesday, July 18
Host chef: Jenn Louis
Where: Lincoln, 3808 N. Williams Ave.; 503-288-6200; www.lincolnpdx.com
What: Dinner prepared by Bloomfield and Louis

Seattle: Friday, July 20
Host chef: Matt Dillon
Where: The Corson Building, 5609 Corson Ave.; 206-762-3330; www.thecorsonbuilding.com
What: Dinner prepared by Bloomfield and Dillon

San Francisco: Thursday, July 26
Host chef: Russell Moore
Where: Camino, 3917 Grand Ave., Oakland; 510-547-5035; www.caminorestaurant.com
What: Details coming soon!

Related: April Bloomfield's First Trip to France

Food & Wine Best New Chefs

Best New Chefs Simplest Recipes

There are so many reasons to anticipate tomorrow's release of The Hunger Games movie, which is based on the first book in a trilogy by Suzanne Collins. Here's what we'd like to know: Will 16-year-old heroine Katniss Everdeen emerge as a poster child for sustainability?

Book-fair nerds (what, you don't remember the most exciting part of elementary school?) will be psyched about a Food BookFair launching in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on May 4. The three-day event will feature panel discussions with celebrated authors, including food-science writer Harold McGee, Lucky Peach co-editor (with chef David Chang) Peter Meehan and nutrition expert Dr. Marion Nestle. Read more about the Food Book Fair >

One of this fall’s most interesting beer books, The Craft of Stone Brewing Co., tells the story of how Stone’s founders, Steve Wagner and Greg Koch, created the aggressively hopped, intensely flavored beers that turned their San Diego company into one of America’s iconic craft breweries. But before Stone launched in 1996, Wagner was just an ambitious home brewer. Here, he reveals the five biggest home-brewing flubs, and why sometimes it’s good to make mistakes.  
 
1. Forget to take notes. When you like the results of a home brew, you’ll want to re-create it—and that means having kept track of not only ingredients but also boiling times and fermentation temperatures. “To me, keeping detailed records is one of the signs of a really good home brewer,” says Wagner.
 
2. Try all your ideas at once. “When you use too many ingredients,” Wagner says, “they cancel each other out and make for a muddy, indistinct beer.” Instead, stick with simple recipes until you really feel like you’ve gotten it right. Wagner points out that though Stone’s beers are aggressively flavored, they have short lists of ingredients. The company’s flagship beer, Arrogant Bastard Ale, for example, calls for just one type of hop.
 
3. Underestimate the importance of yeast. “A lot of times, home brewers will be thinking about the water and the hops and the malt,” says Wagner. “When it comes to yeast they say ‘Well, I've got this old package in my pantry.’” Getting a healthy fermentation started—as quickly as possible—will help you avoid all kinds of problems. Use a fresh yeast starter.
 
4. Pull the plug on mistakes. One of Wagner’s greatest successes started as a mistake. As the book details, Stone's flagship Arrogant Bastard Ale was the result of a massive ingredient miscalculation. “We debated dumping it down the drain,” says Wagner. “But we let it finish, and when we tasted it, we were like ‘Nobody's going to like it, but it's really cool.’” (The brew was so intense that the founders weren't sure it could find a market.) Wagner advocates finishing any brew you start. If you do wind up with a flawed beer, keep in mind that bottle aging will often temper rough edges.
 
5. Add too much sugar and blow up your beer. Of all the ways a home brew can go wrong, this is the most dramatic. If you’re carbonating the beer without any special equipment you’ll do so via “bottle conditioning,” inducing a secondary fermentation in the bottle by adding some form of sugar to react with the still-active yeast. “It’s better to start out with too little priming sugar,” says Wagner. “If the carbonation isn't good enough, build it up a little next time.” Alternatively, if you overdo it with sugar, you'll get what’s known to home brewers as a bottle bomb—a bottle that explodes from excessive pressure.

Related: Great American Ales
Ultimate Beer Guide
Craft Beer Trends

Interior designer to the Obamas at the White House, Michael S. Smith, will release his third book next month: Kitchens & Baths. In it, Smith shares design inspiration for "the busiest and most personal rooms in the home." For a sneak preview, we asked Smith for his top kitchen decorating tips.

What are some easy ways to update your kitchen?
I think paint is the number one thing. If you have a kitchen that can be repainted, you can do that yourself. You can paint the ceiling a beautiful color. It's a bit more work, but if you have a wood floor, you can stain it, either in a pattern or one color. And many stores sell inexpensive hardware that you can install yourself, or you could change out the front of your cabinets.

How do you optimize space in a small kitchen?
Think about what you really need. If you live in an apartment and have a small kitchen, but don't cook that often, maybe refrigerator drawers instead of a whole refrigerator would be best. Make it charming and utilitarian. Like a boat: very efficient with no space left unused.

How do you approach giant kitchens?
Big kitchens tend to be filled with too much. Do you need a huge refrigeration space? I'd rather have a great bookcase with glass doors to store and protect cookbooks. Or a great niche with a sofa and ottoman so someone can hang out and talk with you while you cook.

What's your favorite kitchen trend?
Reusing things: refurbished stoves, old St. Charles cabinets, and lighting being reused. It is great environmentally and it gives the space charm.

What design elements are you obsessed with?
I really am obsessed with countertops. I think there are so many good options. People get into really expensive marbles. There are some pretty and really inexpensive stones, though keep in mind care issues. Butcher blocks can be inexpensive. CaesarStone is impervious to stains and is terrific. In my own kitchen, I have zinc countertops.

What are some kitchen decorating mistakes?
Trying to give your kitchen an entirely different look than the rest of the house—like if you walk into a fairly traditional house and the kitchen is Tuscan-style, and filled with sunflowers. That's wacky. Know what your house is like and what works. The things that come out of the kitchen, the food and conversations and all of those things matter—the look is important and should be attractive and cheerful.

More Kitchen Design Ideas:
Six Ways to Personalize a Kitchen
F&W Editors Kitchen Wish List
Food Bloggers' Best Kitchen Design Ideas

The September issue reveals some of the best new shops for food-obsessed readers.

Charleston, SC: Heirloom Book Company
For people who want to eat their food and read about it too, this new shop has books on food and wine and out-of-print cookbooks, alongside antique kitchen tools and seeds from local chef Sean Brock of McCrady's. After-hours, the homey Heirloom hosts small in-store dinners cooked by chefs from all around the South.

London: V&A Reading Rooms
This stand-alone shop run by the Victoria and Albert Museum lures in readers with its books on design and art. It gets them to stay with a small menu of snacks (olives, lemon almonds) and organic wines chosen by Duncan Ackery to drink while (carefully) perusing the stacks.

Related:
Marvel Superheroes' Cookbook and More Comics
Healthy Italian Recipes from Cookbook Author Jessica Theroux

 

The countless hours I spent shaping vegetables, cleaning lettuce and picking parsley in New York City restaurants were an exhaustive blur, but after reading Four Kitchens by Lauren Shockey, my memories of hard-knock kitchen work have resurfaced and I’m excitedly cheering on and almost missing that world I left behind.
 
In Four Kitchens, Lauren recounts heartfelt, funny stories of the grueling but invaluable time she spent cooking at Wylie Dufresne’s WD-50 in NYC and at restaurants in Hanoi, Tel Aviv and Paris. She chats about learning everything (often the hard way), from kitchen hierarchy—like the type of beverage a cook was able to consume at the end of a shift—to the incredible importance of wearing non-skid shoes. And get this: Her book also includes recipes for “almost-Michelin-starred meals.” Lauren has gracefully adapted recipes from the famed Paris restaurant, Senderens, and I was more than thrilled to find a recipe for one of my all-time favorites—pickled mushrooms! I’m going to take a stab at her adaptation this weekend. Truth be told, while I’m cheering for the kitchens, I’m grateful there isn’t a power-hungry executive chef at home ready to critique my every slice.