Birth of a Foodie

With food on everybody’s mind right about now, I’ma get back to this Beefaroni-to-brie au poivre thread I started earlier. The gist before was about how, for example, I had to explain sushi to my stepfather a few years ago while I was chowin down, but I wasn’t hardly raised on raw fish or Whole Foods Market. I remember South Bronx super- markets and bodegas with sawdust on the floor (no lie), and mangy cats walkin around, no doubt to handle the mice. TV dinners were allowed back in the day. My great-grandma’s soul food would put Sylvia’s to shame, but I grew up like any other 1970/80s black boy: I knew Tang, Spam, Bosco, Chef Boyardee, Hamburger Helper and all that. Chinese takeout, pizza, McDonald’s, etc. I wasn’t anything like a “foodie” until I moved to France.

See, in France, everybody’s a foodie. My wife would never buy a boxed cake by Entenmann’s; she’d just make one, and it’d taste 20 times better. Parisians grow up just naturally knowing about wide varieties of wine and cheeses (I knew Swiss, American and that’s it. But brie, rochefort, trou du cru, comté, and so many others are, like, common here.) There’s that Sex and the City joke Carrie tells about never using her Manhattan kitchen, and it’s true: I used to cook once a month tops living in Brooklyn and Harlem back in the day. Now, I eat out a whooole lot less and I prefer it that way. Granted, I’m married now, and my lifelong attraction to artists finally matched me with a master of the culinary arts. (Who’d want Chinese food?) But still.

Gotta shout out my homegirl, superfoodie Emma Feigenbaum, here. Dated her twin Zoë onceuponatime, and had the pleasure of her eggs Benedict and smoked salmon out in the Hamptons (Wainscott?) a few summers ago. Since that particular onceuponatime, Emma got down with Martha Stewart and scored a cohost spot on Everyday Food. The poor little rich girl deserves it.

As for me, since living in Paris, I can finally (at 37) cook more than curry shrimp and spaghetti. (Wifey doesn’t cook all the time.) Here’s my menu sample:

1. spicy scallops with capellini
2. snapper with spicy crab-and-andouille sauce
3. fusilli salad with fried zucchini
4. swordfish in creamy tomato sauce
5. stracciatella (Italian egg drop soup)
6. scallops with hazelnuts and browned butter vinaigrette
7. roasted cherry tomato and ricotta pasta salad
8. curried scallops with spinach
   
9. vegetarian ziti gratin
   
10. mackerel vin blanc