HAPPY NEW YEAR

PEEL'S

Peel's* is a new place that recently opened, run by the same people as Freeman's. I met a friend there for breakfast. On the menu there is a section called build your own biscuit: I had country ham and egg. This place is pretty much perfect, I hope it doesn't get ruined by being too crowded all the time.

* I went to high school with a guy who had this last name (different spelling). We both worked at McDonald's. He hated when our friends would come in and tease us. So, to drive him even more crazy and make the teasing even worse my friend Greg would come in and call him Puskweedleplums as a nickname. So now when I see this place called Peel's all I can think of is that, it cracks me up.

DINNER BELL

Sara, Jules and I joined a group of a dozen assorted Brooklyn hipsters who had signed up for Julia's once a month Dinner Bell dinner. She turns her house into a private restaurant for the night. We ate at a big table in her back garden. It was a windy night so our hosts provided us with assorted sweaters to wear. Julia's boyfriend was her sous chef and her beautiful sister was our server. I've always wanted to try something like this in my studio apartment. It was so much fun I think I'm going to try.

Cornbread Panzanella

Chorizo Cappelletti

Halibut

Peach Galette

DINNER WITH KIM

Kim came over for dinner, she likes pork. It was fun making up this meal: Pork meatballs with ginger, garlic, lemon and basil. Sauteed chicory.

FREEDOM

Right after 9/11 I was reading The Corrections. For all sorts of obvious (and not so obvious) reasons, I like, many others wandered the streets of New York with tears in our eyes. I loved that book, it made a deep impression on me during a raw period. I've been looking forward to a new book by Jonathan Franzen for a while. Freedom came out recently and I couldn't put it down. It's about Freedom--which I have a lot of (maybe too much).

VENICE

Friends had warned me that it was hard to find good food in Venice, but I didn't really believe them. I went to the Venice Film Festival to celebrate the premiere of Meek's Cutoff (which I'm proud to have taken a part in the making of). Disappointingly, the best meal I had was at the airport (a plate of prosciutto di San Daniele) All of the food was pretty mediocre. In general it was bland and oily. Corte Sconta is one exception, it's part of an association of restaurants who's aim is to use fresh, local ingredients in keeping with Venice's ancient food culture. We started with spider crab pate.

Salmon with red berries

Tuna carpaccio
Tiny clams in ginger broth
Crustaceans: Octopus, squid, baby shrimp, cod, prawns
Squid ink spaghetti with mussels and squid
I can't remember what kind of fish this was (sea bass?)

BLUEBERRY MUFFINS

Ann came over for lunch yesterday and then we saw the Charles Burchfield paintings at the Whitney museum. We had wild Italian arugula with cherry tomatoes.

Momofuku-style fried chicken with ginger and garlic

For dessert, I made blueberry muffins using the method that Yvonne from America's Test Kitchen taught me. The big thing that she does is to use one cup of blueberries to create a jam that gets swirled into the batter in the baking pans. There are also whole blueberries. The other thing she does is sprinkle the muffins with a sugar and lemon zest mixture before baking. This creates a nice crust and adds a fresh taste.