Michael Ruhlman's Blog, page 16

Follow Up: Kids’ Popup Restaurant

This is a followup to Emilia’s previous post and it makes me want to weep with gratitude. This is one way we can change things. —M.R. By Emilia Juocys Last weekend I went to Columbus, Ohio, to help my friend Tricia Keels run her Backyard Kids’ Restaurant. To see a suburban backyard transform into a restaurant is amazing, and to watch all the children and parents participate in this event is inspirational. The energy level is so high and it’s such a positive affirming experience. Plus, I get to teach both children and adults about food! For this year’s menu we offered house-made Italian sausages, Swedish meatballs, an insanely good Swedish meatball gravy (beef demiglace, sautéed onions, vermouth, cream), cucumber salsa, a jumbo Glad bag of tortilla chips, black beans, pickled okra, lots of grilled vegetables, house-ground flour pancakes, local blueberry Read On »

Kid-Inspired Popup!

I’ve long said the way to help change the way America eats is to teach kids to cook. This is a story from my colleague Emilia in which kids not only cook, but rather take it to a new level, using cooking to bring a community together.—M.R. By Emilia Juocys I met Tricia Keels at Eat Retreat in the summer of 2014. Both from the Midwest (she from Ohio and I Michigan) and sharing a passion for food, we immediately hit it off. She briefly mentioned her nonprofit Souper Heroes and this “kid-run restaurant” her family throws in their backyard once a year. But with everything going on at the retreat, the thought slipped away. Until I got a call from her last August with the words, “I think we need your help.” The Keels Backyard Restaurant was born Read On »

Kid Inspired Popup!

I’ve long said the way to help change the way America to eat is to teach kids to cook. This is a story from my colleague Emilia in which kids not only cook, but rather take it to a new level, using cooking to bring a community together.—M.R. By Emilia Juocys I met Tricia Keels at Eat Retreat in the Summer of 2014. Both from the Midwest (she from Ohio and I Michigan) and sharing a passion for food, we immediately hit it off. She briefly mentioned her nonprofit Souper Heroes and this “kid run restaurant” her family throws in their backyard once a year. But with everything going on at the retreat, the thought slipped away. Until I got a call from her last August with the words, “I think we need your help.” The Keels Backyard Restaurant Read On »

Halibut Ceviche

                                  I’ve been on the road a lot for a new book and so haven’t been able to post as usual. Offering here a repost of ceviche because when it’s hot, there’s no better appetizer, hors d’oeuvres, or even main course as a cool, acidic, spicy ceviche. And it’s so easy, nourishing, and refreshing, it’s something I make often in the summer. My favorite fish to use are snapper and grouper, which are usually easily available. I’d love to hear in comments what other fish people like to use in ceviche.—MR. One of the lucky perks about being an independent writer is that I can occasionally entertain invitations to exotic locales on someone else’s dime. Not long ago I Read On »

Wild Alaskan Red Salmon A Great American Fish

A post from my friend Carri in Alaska (it’s about more than just fish). Above, “the family that fishes together”—Carri’s husband John and their girls laugh between sets, salmon fishing in Bristol Bay.–M.R.   By Carri Thurman In a recent New York Times article that went viral, Paul Greenberg laid out three simple rules for eating seafood, one of which is to eat American seafood. I was happy to hear that since it is a subject that has become near and dear to me in a very surprising way. When first I stumbled into Homer, Alaska, on a sunny spring day 30 years ago, the fact that this was a “fishing” town had completely escaped me. It wasn’t until I was drinking a beer at the Salty Dawg Saloon on my first night (conveniently located right across the street Read On »

Badass Egg Spoon Has Returned

For months and months people have been asking when the The Badass Perforated (aka Egg) Spoon is back in stock. IT’S BACK. (Details here.) Here’s the original story of how it came to be. A couple years ago, nosing around in McGee’s On Food and Cooking, I came across his suggestion that one could make neater poached eggs by getting rid of the liquidy, flyaway whites before poaching.  And it works! (There’s really no point in adding acid to the water.) Regrettably, I left my good perforated spoon at a Macy’s demo and was left a generic slotted spoon with a shallow bowl and the egg always wanted to jump out. So when my friend Mac suggested we make some kitchen tools, a great perforated spoon that could also hold a jumbo egg was among Read On »

Unforgettable Paula Wolfert Kickstarter

When the formidable Andrea Nguyen, author and teacher, wrote to me asking for help in promoting a kickstarter on behalf of a book about another of the country’s most important writers about food, I was eager to help. Within a day or two, Andrea wrote to say that they had reached their too-modest goal. But I still wanted to help and keep promoting because their print run is far smaller than it should be. This is potentially an important book about food and memory. So herewith, Andrea’s ode to Paula Wolfert (pictured above).–M.R. By Andrea Nguyen “I live in the now. I live for today and I make it work for me,” says Paula Wolfert in the Kickstarter video to fund a new book about her and her work. She’s speaking to lifestyle adjustments she’s made since her Read On »

Brian Polcyn’s New Chapter

  By Emilia Juocys How does one react when they find out the news that their mentor is closing a chapter of their career? At first, compete shock, and then one becomes comfortable with the idea and accepts it. That is how you associated them to their current position in life and now it is no longer going to hold true. That full-time occupation or passion will always be a part of them, but now they are morphing into a different phase in their life. I don’t think it matters if you are a teacher, doctor, entrepreneur, chef, or restaurateur. A couple of months ago I found out that my mentor, my culinary father Chef Brian Polcyn (yes, coauthor of Charcuterie and Salumi), was giving up the reigns as chef/proprietor of Forrest Grill, outside Detroit. Unless you really know Chef Polcyn or follow his antics, especially when he is with Ruhlman, you would Read On »

Book Expo In NYC:Introducing My First Fiction

I’m in NYC to sign advance reader copies of my first fiction ever, non-food related. Love stories, actually: In Short Measures. Very excited, and nervous of course. One never knows, but just today one of my favorite novelists, Kate Christensen, who wrote the fabulous Epicure’s Lament, the food-themed but deeply personal memoir Blue Plate Special, and The Great Man, winner of the Pen/Faulkner award for fiction, sent me these uncommonly generous, and she says completely genuine, words in support of the book: “IN SHORT MEASURES is a propulsively well-written trio of novellas linked by a sense of loss and an inquiry into the impossible past. Ruhlman’s voice is poetic and visceral, and his characters feel both familiar and strange in the way of the best fiction. This is a richly layered book, full of surprises and Read On »

More Oysters!

I’m back from a fascinating trip to Massachusetts, where I visited a hatchery on Duxbury Bay. It was only due to this trip that I thought about where oysters come from and realized I had no idea how they are born. Most oyster farmers buy oyster seed, which are oysters the size of pinheads but fully formed. I had to turn to Rowan Jacobsen’s 2007 book A Geography of Oysters for an explanation. He is more elegant than I will be here, as my previous post, Considering the Oyster, shows. (Oh, and I urge oyster lovers to visit his fabulous new site, Oysterater, which describes every oyster available in the country and what people say about them.) The above are Island Creek Oysters and I ate them on this floating barge in the middle of the bay. The oyster on the left is one Read On »