It's true, curly parsley has an unfortunate stereotype of the retro garnish on restaurant plates. But that's no reason to dismiss it as I have all these years. Its curliness is unique and I'm enjoying using it again. The fine, pinnate leaves of curly parsley have a texture, that in my mind adds a unique quality to recipes. Most importantly, parsley of any variety is a valuable and nutritious plant.
 
I really don't find any difference in the taste of curly to flat – leaf parsley and I see no reason not to cook with it. I've been to many garden plant sales this season and often the flat leaf parsley shelf would be wiped out. Next to that would be a full shelf of curly parsley, untouched. This saddened me. It is a pert, pretty plant in its own right and it should hold a proud place in the garden.

I prefer curly to flat leaf in tabbouleh. It really adds a presence to the chewy cracked wheat and crisp cukes. My favorite use is for fried parsley. There is nothing quite like it.

The leaves turn deep, rich green and stay crispy for hours. I use a small amount of oil, maybe 1/2 inch in a small saucepan. Light dusted with flour, batches of curly parsley fry up in seconds. Talk about an impressive garnish, use it to adorn rice, pasta, steamed or pan fried fish, grilled eggplant and peppers or crostinis and bruscettas. Grow it in your garden next year or plant it in a large pot and start using it again.

The hottest table in Paris this year was arguably Hidden Kitchens, an “underground” restaurant inspired by Naomi Pommeroy’s Sunday Supper in Portland, Oregon. Braden and Laura (they keep their last names a secret), a superyoung Seattle couple, moved to Paris and started cooking Sunday dinners in their apartment for 10 to 12 privileged guests at a time, mostly expats and food-obsessed, restaurant-blog-reading visitors. An e-mail would be sent the day before the meal revealing their address. The 10-course feast centered around dishes showcasing American ingredients and flavors and French techniques. Chef Daniel Rose of Spring and star chef Guy Savoy were among their first customers.

After serving 1,287 people and more than 12,000 courses, Braden and Laura are spending the summer road-tripping through the U.S. before returning to Paris to move into a larger, more grand space on the Palais Royal, right near the Louvre. The new restaurant will open in December with the same menu concept, and Braden says they’ll keep the name Hidden Kitchens even though this new restaurant won’t be a secret. One tip: Start booking now.

Braden updated me from the road as he and Laura ate their way through Minneapolis, Chicago, Buffalo, New Haven, Boston, New Hampshire and New York City. So where do expats eat when they come home? Next week, he will give F&W an update on his cross-country eating itinerary. His one clue: “We are testing our cholesterol limits with big greasy breakfasts, hot dogs, buffalo wings, huge stacks of pancakes and giant deli sandwiches.”

I’ve never been one for the celebrity scandals and movie-star gossip in US Weekly or Page Six. My real guilty pleasure is reading about the rumors, controversy and speculation surrounding the NFL pre-season. In addition to covering the league’s latest drama, ESPN the Magazine is now going into the kitchen with top NFL stars as part of their new online series, Jock Chefs. For the first episode, Kris Jenkins, the enormous defensive tackle for the New York Jets, prepares a healthy egg-white omelet at teammate Eric Barton’s house. There’s something about watching a 330-pound lineman chopping garlic and onions that is completely enthralling…and adorable. Jenkins even has his mise en place in Jets dishes. More segments are in the works with wannabe–Top Chef players from other teams. An insider told me there's a chance these NFL cooking shows could start running on SportsCenter or NFL Countdown once the season officially starts.

On Tuesday, I blogged about F&W Best New Chef 2004 Dominique Filoni's upcoming Philly restaurant, Parc. I also got him to share his tips for perfect fries—just in time for July Fourth festivities:

How Filoni will make his fries at Parc: "There’s a guy I work with who was with me at Lacroix [at the Rittenhouse in Philly]. I call him Mr. Potato Head. We went through about 20 different ways to cook fries to find the best method to use at Parc."

His tips for crispy, golden brown fries:
1. Rinse really well "After peeling the potatoes (ideally Kennebec) and cutting them in quarter-inch slices, rinse them two or three times. Leave them in water overnight in the fridge, then rinse again. The water should be clear on the last rinse, so when you fry them, the exterior won't burn."

2. Use soybean oil "It holds its temperature better than other oils for a nice crisp, plus, it has a neutral flavor."

3. Fry twice "After blanching the potatoes in oil, we let them first cool on a rack, then in the fridge for a couple of hours so they're really cool. Then we refry again for extra crispiness."

In one of my first most painful days as a line cook many moons ago, when the slightest error on my part provoked near nervous breakdowns, my head chef discovered I was about to serve perfectly fried crabcakes that were frozen within. The refrigerator had run too cold the night before, and in my over-reliance on tongs I hadn't noticed my cakes were all ice. She turned to me in my panicked state and said, "Emily, I can't have a blabbering line cook. Watch me." As she deftly, subtly split the frozen thing in half to blitz it a moment under the broiler, she continued, "99% of being a good cook is knowing what to do when you screw up, because you're going to screw up all the time."

Advice for living, indeed. Fast forward 10 years: earlier this week I invited friends over for dinner, got stuck at the office and had only 20 minutes before they showed up to make them the roast chicken I'd promised them – mistake number one. I sallied forth, cutting up my chicken into quicker-cooking parts and switching from roasted baby yukons to faster mashed potatoes, when I discovered mistake number two: I'd somehow managed to run clean out of salt, and forgotten to get any more. I gave myself 2 long minutes to really savor my idiot status before I decided to get resourceful. I reached for my saltiest pantry items - soy sauce and fish sauce – and sprinkled a little of both on my chicken parts as they steam-sautéed in my skillet. A tablespoonful of each, and my caramelizing chicken skins turned that much darker and sweeter. As I gloried in my tasty triumph, I heard the doorbell ringing as I discovered goof number 3: no milk for the mash. Yogurt worked even better – somehow the tang made up for the salt-free status (as did loads of freshly ground pepper). My friends arrived and we sat down to a delicious meal, where I managed to avoid mistake number 4: confessing to them the extent to which I'd nearly screwed the whole thing up.

When you break it down, America’s two greatest contributions to the culinary universe are barbecue and cocktails (buffalo wings finish a distant third). On this patriotic weekend, I plan on celebrating both, with a pile of pulled pork (from our June 2008 issue) and this spunky drink made with applejack, the original American spirit, which I’ve turned into a pork-friendly pitcher drink.

Big-Batch Applejack Cocktail
Makes 8 drinks

Ice
2 cups applejack
1/4 ounce Rich Simple Syrup
1/2 ounce Angostura bitters
8 lemon twists, for garnish

Fill a pitcher with ice. Add all of the ingredients except the lemon twist and stir for 30 seconds, until chilled. Strain into chilled martini glasses and garnish each drink with a lemon twist.

© Nick Fauchald
Butchering at The Brooklyn Kitchen

Fellow food editor Nick Fauchald and I ventured out to Williamsburg last night for The Brooklyn Kitchen’s class on hog butchering, taught by Marlow & Sons' meat master Tom Mylan.

Mylan began the class: “I sliced my arm today with my knife. Perhaps I was slightly hung over.” Yikes. While he said he felt loopier than usual thanks to all his blood loss, his blog confirms he’s always just as irreverent. Here, a few excerpts from our class:

- He broke down a pasture-raised Berkshire pig, which had gorgeous red meat. “Not like that super white meat from those boy-in-the-bubble farm animals,” he said.

- He arranged the kidney and sweetbread together on a tray he referred to as the “offal-a-go-go” pile.

- When breaking down the hog shoulder, he showed us the two popular barbecue cuts, the pork butt (the upper part of the shoulder) and the picnic ham (the lower part). When attached to the leg, the picnic ham looks a bit like the true ham, which is cut from the hind leg. To distinguish the two: “The picnic ham is the one you serve your inlaws," he said. "The real ham is for when the pastor comes to dinner.”

- He explained to us how to make head cheese (and one brave cook with a very large stockpot took it home to try). Mylan added that we could create a similar terrine with the foot. “You know, foot cheese.”

-He reduced a common food lover’s romantic vision of pasture-raising hogs—one of Nick’s post retirement dreams, in fact—to “a Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall fantasy,” named after the wacky luddite British celebrity chef whose spectacular River Cottage Cookbook full of agro porn photography is just hitting shelves in the U.S. this week. 

After Mylan finished butchering the hog, the class got the divvy up the meat in a selection process more stressful than the NFL draft. Nick, who got the lucky #1 pick, generously snagged me the tail, which I’m salting now to fry up tomorrow. Perhaps it will be the next duck neck.

 P.S. Welcome to the new improved Mouthing Off. Now with pictures. Continue to see more shots of the pig but vegetarians beware. 

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In the May issue of Food & Wine, Rob Evans, an F&W Best New Chef 2004, shared highlights from his honeymoon—a 25-state motorcycle trip (he rides a 2000 Triumph Tiger, and his wife, a BMW GS650).

Over the course of a month, Evans and his wife covered 7,000 miles of national parks, eating in small towns throughout the West and Midwest. Experiences at places like the North Fork Brewery, a brewery, beer shrine, pizzeria and wedding chapel on Mt. Baker Highway in Deming, Washington, and Binkley’s, a fine-dining restaurant with a shockingly good tasting menu in Cave Creek, Arizona (“I would fly from Maine just to eat there!” says Evans), inspired him to reinvent Hugo’s, his fine-dining restaurant in Portland, Maine, to reflect the direction he feels American dining is headed. “The trip didn’t influence my food, but it did influence my perception of the dining experience,” says Evans.

The new Hugo’s opens its doors tomorrow. Evans tossed the table linens in an effort to lose the “poshness” and create a more comfortable atmosphere. He’s also added a snack menu to the prix fixe format that was previously offered.

Evans is particularly excited about the new bar area. A silent, flat viewing screen hangs behind the bar will be put up at the end of the year, allowing customers to watch as chefs prepare their food in the kitchen. “We’re combining the two hottest concepts, the feel of an open kitchen and the visual pleasure of watching food being created, without the negative aspect of a loud dining room. It’s the open kitchen of the new millennium,” says Evans.

After the recent Pinkberry scandal, where should fans  turn for a froyo that’s truly au natural? Look no further than our upcoming June issue, which features extraordinary frozen yogurt recipes (as well as ice creams and sorbets) from the ice cream maverick, Jeni Britton of Jeni Britton’s Splendid Ice Creams in Columbus, Ohio.

When we asked Jeni to give us recipes for her incredibly creamy, cult-worthy  ice creams, she started from scratch. Apparently, ice creams made in professional machines and kept frozen at sub-Arctic temperatures don’t translate easily to equipment available to the home cook.

Jeni’s food science professor friend at Ohio State University told her that a great homemade ice cream with a shelf life beyond a few hours was impossible--he said they all inevitably become icy. Jeni, however, ignored him and set about revolutionizing homemade ice cream with nothing more than a $250 Cuisinart ICE-50BC machine (in our test kitchen--the simpler $50 model worked equally well), Organic Valley dairy and a lot of gumption.

To develop her vanilla ice cream recipe, she slung her adorable then two-month-old daughter on her back and over a solid month, tested 75 batches before feeling satisfied. She started with recipes from cookbooks, most which call for egg yolks, all which ended up with ice crystals. Since she doesn’t use eggs at her shops, she ideally wanted an eggless home recipe.

In the end, she developed several tricks to make perfect homemade vanilla ice cream:

• Using sugar and corn syrup, which help “tie up” the loose water molecules that cause iciness.
• Boiling the cream and milk with the sugar helps thoroughly incorporate the sugar and evaporate some of the excess water.
• Adding cornstarch to thicken the cream and absorb water.
• Whisking in cream cheese to help improve the final body of the ice cream.

The result: the best homemade ice creams to ever hit your spoon. And if the DIY approach to ice cream isn't your thing, Jeni's does offer mail order.

Never underestimate the palettes of children. Not all rely on chicken nuggets, boxed mac and cheese and Lunchables. Meet my young friends Jack and Ian, whose mom placed the winning bid on a "Tour of the Test Kitchen and Cooking Lesson" on their behalf. They're 10 years old and eat anything not nailed down. When asked what they'd like to learn, they said,  "Something spicy, ethnic and complicated." How cool was that? With just two hours to do everything (including eat), I suggested Vietnamese food: spicy, ethnic and complicated—and quick.

"The recipes I chose were yummy fresh summer rolls with a spicy nuoc cham and a fantastic banh mi (Vietnamese hero sandwich) from Charles Phan, chef and owner of The Slanted Door in San Francisco. The summer rolls were especially fun for the guys because they could get their hands dirty and NOT have to wash them before eating. The spicy pork meatball banh mi on the other hand required hand washing before AND after cooking. Fish sauce, an otherwise adult flavor (or so I thought), was quite popular, as were the fiery hot Thai chiles for the nuoc cham.

As a mom of two kids and (just as importantly) a recipe developer, I think this encounter with my friends Jack and Ian has changed the way I'll think about children and their eating. I won't be so quick to dismiss their budding taste buds or take for granted their willingness to try something otherwise "Ew , gross."