Unplanned-for Moments …

Appreciating travel, the comforts of meals at home, the perfect hot weather soup, movies, books, and great links ...

(See below.)

When you plan a trip, you book food tours, buy your tickets to the Guggenheim Bilbao ahead, you map out your schedule, you are thrilled that dear friends will be in Paris the only night that you are and you a plan dinner together. This trip is going to be a blast.

But I want to talk about, and appreciate, the unplanned moments, the unexpected people, foods, events that you can’t schedule or plan. These can define a trip and shape your memories of them. Yes, lost luggage is never planned for—it’s a headache and a pain. Your flight home from Malaga cancels. You don’t plan on that, either, and you think “This sucks.” You want to go home as planned.

Last fall, the latter happened. It did suck. I booked a room we didn’t expect to pay for. You grumble. You whine.

… But your hotel in the old town, booked quickly on your phone using Expedia, happens to be lovely. You have a great evening walk and an unexpectedly delicious meal. You see a new city you hadn’t expected to. Your flight the next day is on time. And, thanks to a wonderful note from someone on Instagram who responded to our airport plight, Ann was able to get a $1,300 reimbursement from TAP airline, covering not only the hotel and the meal and Ubers, but most of the airfare for the entire trip.

I’ve been thinking of those moments after our month-long perambulation through Ireland, northern Spain and southern France. Some of our greatest moments we could never have foreseen, but there they were.

One of the great moments of the trip for me came at the end of a long day of travel from Donegal to Dingle, capped by a four-hour Dublin to Tralee train ride. But here was the unexpected joy: the taxi from Tralee to Dingle along the Conor Pass, a harrowingly narrow, hilly, cliffside road, a turbulent dusky sky, with our friends Andre and and Fontaine Dubus.

The comaraderie in the taxi, Andre’s hilarious stories, the physical beauty of the Connor Pass, the dramatic vista and light, and the white knuckle drive. One of my favorite moments of the entire month. Cannot plan that.

Or the full rainbow you wake to in Dingle.

You try walking into a new restaurant in that tiny town, spur of the moment. You wind up having the best sole you’ve ever had.

The black sole at Fenton's in Dingle, Ireland.

At the end of a long night of pintxos in San Sebastian, two weeks later, you decide to have a whisky at the hotel bar before heading to the room. You spend an hour talking to quiet Americans, Phil and Yuko, whom you’ve sat next to. You see them again the next night in the same bar and spend another hour with Phil and Yuko. Phil is a retired high school principal who dabbles in experimental visual art. Two days later you get a long email from them as they tell you about their travels through Portugal and southern France and you are grateful to have met them.

In Hondarribia, you’d planned to travel by train to your next destination but learn that the train doesn’t run on Sundays. You are stuck in Hondarribia an extra day. You find a small taberna for lunch that serves you a dish of the most amazing peas you’ve ever had. Called guisantes lagrimas, they burst in your mouth with little pops. An extraordinary, local, seasonal luxury you’ve never heard of.

On your final day in Paris, before your 6 pm flight, you walk to see Notre Dame after the fire. On the way you spot a cute bistro; you know you’ll want lunch before heading to the airport; you ask to reserve a table in an hour.

The oeufs mayo and tartare at Colimaçon, in the Marais, Paris.

It turns out to be one of the best lunches you’ve ever had in Paris, so simple and perfect and unexpected. Beautiful duck confit, oeufs mayonnaise, hand-cut beef tartar with fries, a delicious Haut-Medoc. Your wife says, “This is on me. Happy Father’s Day.” It felt like a gift from the travel gods.

These to me are the real joys of travel. All you need is the capacity to be open to the unexpected.

Using the second person voice …

Twice in consecutive newsletters! I never write that way. Go figure.

This week on The Tonight Show …

A while back I got an email from my agent saying Jimmy Fallon would like me to come on his show and demo how to make a proper French omelet. Apparently, he loves my book From Scratch. I’m grateful and excited to be on this show, of course, but also terrified as omelets are very easy to fuck up, especially when using other people’s equipment and cooking on an unfamiliar induction burner.

So tune in this Wednesday, 11:30 Eastern, to NBC and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and see what happens! Will I fuck it up? Will they make me use one of those stupid, hinged American omelet pans? We’ll see.

The comfort meals on our return, both familiar and new.

For two weeks we ate Irish food and another week we ate Spanish food and then French food. What do we eat on our return? Pasta. I’ve never before seen Ann go a full month without pasta—not a pretty sight.

Pasta carbonara to the rescue!

N.b.: Ann uses every drop of rendered fat.

Perfect Pasta Carbonara Ruhlman

113KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

But we’ve also tried a couple of dishes we don’t commonly make.

As people who follow me on Instagram know, I’ve been obsessed with the onion rings served at the West Village bar and grill, Cecchi’s. All my life I’ve been trying to find a great onion ring recipe and have tried countless versions beginning when I was a teenager. My quest for perfection ends at Cecchi’s. I love them so much, I and my colleague Jonathan Dressler are working on a video, including, for paid subscribers (thank you), the restaurant’s exact recipe. Stay tuned!

A light, crispy, perfectly seasoned batter and Vidalia onions make for a perfect evening snack.

But we also made, and it must have been Ann’s reading this Politico article, vichyssoise. She asked me to make it when we got home, and with a heatwave coming on, what could be more perfect?

I honestly can’t remember the last time I made the soup (pronounced vee-shee-swaz). I kept it simple: sweat two fat leeks and one diced onion in butter without coloring them, dump in two big russet potatoes peeled and diced, cover with a mixture of chicken stock and water, simmer 30 minutes, thin with some half-and-half, blend, chill, finish with cream and top with chives, a miracle of simplicity, elegance, deliciousness, and nutrition. (Note: I halved the recipe in the pdf below, so 1 large potato or 2 medium ones (400 g/14 oz).

Here’s the recipe I devised for a weeknight meal:

Ruhlman's Vichyssoise

97.5KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

What we’re drinking …

We’re home! And that means a blessed return to routine.

After a solid day of work—Ann revising her next novel, a time-travel love-story, and I on my young adult novel—nothing gives me a more pervasive sense that all is right with the world than the evening cocktail, a bowl of goldfish, a game of cribbage and the news (the latter only to remind us that good as life feels, all is not actually right with the world). But with cribbage and a cocktail, and Julia’s favorite cocktail snack, it can seem that way, at least for tonight.

Ann is a Manhattan drinker. It is one of the bedrock cocktails. The booze softened and sweetened by the vermouth, the sweetness offset by the bitters, and a bright wedge of mandarin orange for garnish. What I love about the Manhattan is that any basic bourbon works just as well as a top shelf bourbon. We use Maker’s Mark, Noilly Prat, and Bittermens Xocolatl Mole bitters.

And for me, as I’ve written about at length, a Martini: Beefeater’s, Noilly Prat dry vermouth, orange bitters, lemon twist. Period.

When Ann told me ages ago that Julia served Pepperidge Farm Goldfish, I thought, how perfect. Sensible, satisfying, just the right amount of crunchy-salty. So that is the choice. (Unless your mom sends you Whitley’s peanuts for Father’s Day—thanks, Mom! THE best peanut on the planet.)

With this spread before us, pasta water on to boil, and a winning hand, nothing could feel better. In an uncertain world, such pleasures are a great big sigh of comfort.

Ann’s Manhattan

• 3 ounces Maker’s Mark

• 1.5 ounces Noilly Prat sweet vermouth

• Bittermens Xocolatl Mole bitters to taste (use plenty)

• Mandarin orange wedge or orange zest

Combine the liquids in an old-fashioned glass, add a large ice cube. Stir to chill. Garnish with orange. Deliver with goldfish.

What we’re reading …

OK, so The Bee Sting, a masterfully ambiguous ending! Who’s read it? Did he do it or not?!!!

I’m now halfway through a YA phenomenon, Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. I don’t write about Greek Gods or anything fabulous in my YA fiction, nor do I write books for the 10- to 14-year-old reader. I write about older teenagers in realistic circumstances, currently a motherless boy, an estranged father, and a journey through Spain. But Ann said the Percy Jackson narrative has a great troika at its center with a compelling female character, which mirrors the dynamic in the story I’m writing. So that’s why I’m reading it.

When I was young, my dad read me Greek myths—Theseus and the Minator, Orpheus and Eurydice (still maybe my all-time favorite story)—so the Percy Jackson is a fun return to the narratives of my youth.

But now … a word from

Ann Hood

our Promiscuous Reader:

I adored Havoc by Christopher Bollen, and not just because we will be in Luxor, Egypt next spring—which is where this twisty, surprising novel takes place. Eighty-one-year-old meddlesome widow Maggie has taken up residence at a luxury resort on the Nile during the pandemic. Despite hints of a problematic past, her life at the hotel is pleasant and orderly. Until eigh-year-old Otto arrives with his mother and a war of wits begins. Unputdownable!

Reading Louise Hegerty’s locked room mystery Fair Play is sheer fun. A group of friends gather at an estate in the Irish countryside to celebrate New Year’s Eve and a birthday. In the morning, of course, one of them is dead. What makes this whodunit so delightful is how Hegerty plays with the genre. She references early 20th century detective novels, has a detective who talks directly to the reader, and even adds a butler to the story.

When I read that William McIlvanney is considered the godfather of Tartan Noir, I had to read his first book, Laidlaw. I’m such a Denise Mina fan (to name just one Scottish mystery lover) that going back to 1977 with was a real treat and the book didn’t disappoint—gritty Glasgow, a gruesome murder of a teenaged girl, a cast of quirky characters who are all after the murderer, and the cranky, philosophical detective Laidlaw himself. A perfect companion on a long flight home.

What we’ve been watching …

Been gone so long haven’t seen a lot. We watched a good plane movie, Holy Cow, about a French teenager’s attempt to make an award-winning Comte cheese. We had higher hopes for the film, but still enjoyed the raw appeal of the protagonist’s plight.

Sunlight may be the discovery of the year so far. The movie opens with a man hanging himself and someone wearing a monkey suit watching it through the motel window. CUT TO: the man wakes up in his motorhome. It’s being driven by the person in a monkey suit. An extraordinary road story, love story ensues. A work of great imagination and originality. See it and tell others.

Pee Wee As Himself is a compelling, if too-long, documentary about the truly bizarre comic performer, Paul Reubens.

And we did catch a thought-provoking show at MCC Theater, called Trophy Boys, about four boys, high school debaters, preparing to affirm the statement “Feminism has failed.” The cast members are not played by boys but rather by female/trans/non-binary actors.

And finally, just last night we saw At the Barricades, an off-off Bway show about the Spanish Civil war, written and performed by Ann’s son, Sam Hood Adrain and James Clements, the masterminds behind the company What Will the Neighbors Say? I can’t say it better than this reviewer, writing in Theater Scene.

Links we’ve' loved …

• Those peas I wrote about above? They’re called guisantes (pea) lagrimas (tear), for their unusual shape, and are considered a gem of Spanish cuisine. They are grown in Basque country and in a small coastal region north of Barcelona. They’re harvested when not fully mature, resulting in their unique flavor and texture. We paid 21 Euros for a small plate of peas and it was worth it.

• I’d never heard of Creole cream cheese, a Louisiana-style form of cultured skim milk and buttermilk. (Atlas Obscura)

• The Chinatown landmark, Wo Hop (I joined Bourdain and Marky Ramone there for a meal for one of Tony’s shows), is expanding up out of its basement space to the ground level (apparently it’s clientele has aged out of stairs!). (Eater)

• Did a woman seriously name her baby after a man-made catastrophe? Apparently. (NY Post).

• I’ve known the Chicago food writer and reporter Michael Nagrant for years. I wanted to call attention to his newsletter, The Hunger, because he does excellent reporting on something really important to me: the way paid “influencers” are killing the validity of actual critics who pay for their own food and are unbiased. This piece exposes the influencer who uses the IG handle realsergelato, who posts rate sheets for IG and TikTok reviews, and threatened to take a restaurant to court for not paying him. (Nagrant charges for his newsletter but agreed to open this post for readers of this newsletter—thanks Michael!)

Shareable links from The Times:

• Pico Iyer, best known for his travel writing, reflects on the dilemma of sharing great, little-known destinations, thereby possibly ruining what made them special by drawing crowds to it. I know Tony worried about this as his show became a universally watched show. If I put this place on my show, I’m basically destroying it, he told me.

• I’ve written about the Brooklyn illustrator John Donahue, who does pen-and-ink drawings of restaurants in cities throughout the world (see his site All the Restaurants). I love his so much, Jonathan Dressler and I made a short video on him. He’s got his counterpart across the pond who is doing finely detailed pencil drawings of London’s pubs. Great videos of the 31-year-old artist at work.

• And last from the Gray Lady, chefs discuss their favorite films. I was happy to see the food masterpiece The Taste of Things front and center. After the first 20-minute cooking sequence, cooking in a late 19th-century kitchen, I had to lift my jaw from the floor. Now widely available for streaming.

And finally …

We missed The Tony Awards this year while away. As avid theater-goers we love this show. We were happy to see Maybe a Happy Ending received so many awards and were a little appalled that the mediocre, not-quite-finished-yet Purpose won best play over the outstanding “John Proctor Is the Villain.” And we are thrilled that the video of the original Hamilton cast performed an ingenious medley of what must be considered the best musical ever written. Watch it here.

And that’s all for this week folks! Please feel free to heart this newsletter, share it with anyone who might like it, and most of all leave a comment. Have a great week!

—Michael