"Comfort Me with Apples"

The whole club was surprised that by page 29 after their second meal together, Ruth Reichl was already starting an affair with a LA based food editor.

I wonder how many readers wrote to Ms. Reichl to inform her that the unusual animal she saw in China was 穿山甲 Pangolin, not 犰狳 Armadillo, and certainly not a hallucination.

• "I know," said Alice (Waters) wistfully. "But the trouble is, once you're successful at something, it just sort of follows you around and haunts you."
• (Colman:) A substantial man with thick black hair was bearing down on us, wearing a suit, a tie, and an air of extreme self-satisfaction.
• The caviar was gray and glistened. When I put some on my tongue it was not salty, the way other caviar was, but seductively fruity with a taste that went on and on. I swallowed and the flavor resonated down my throat. Then I took a sip of champagne, and instead of washing the taste down it brought it back to life, sharper now and more intense.
• Colman's Paris was not mine... He too me to Laduree for coffee and croissants and we sat there, beneath the ancient paintings of nymphs and angels, bantering with the waitresses in their black dresses and white aprons. After three days we were regulars.
• "Never stint on oysters," said Claude. "It takes away the pleasure."
• (On partridge:) "The secret," said Claude, "is in hanging the birds long enough. When I was a boy every bistro in Paris knew how to hang its meat, but Isadore is one of the last of the breed."
• "Have you never had aceto balsamico?" asked Darrell... "Modena. The process is similar to sherry: As the vinegar ages it is moved from one barrel to another... the vinegar becoming more concentrated as it progresses through subsequent barrels of red oak, chestnut, mulberry, and juniper."
• Chez Panisse was the only professional kitchen I had ever seen that was decorated with flowers.
• How was I to know that Bruce Aidells would one day be the sausage king of America?
• boursin, the garlic-laced cheese
• "See if you can guess, just from looking at the type, what these two restaurants are like," I said. <> Dad took the menus and ran his fingers over the type, just as he did with books.
• "This is the bean-curd factory." It was also, I realized, the center of Taishan nightlife.
• "You know, when I was an apprentice we had to peel the shrimp in cold water, to keep the texture correct."
• "That is unfried pig skin. That will be used for poorer customers; the chef will cut it into thin, thin strips and weave it into imitation bird's nest."
• the squid scored like a pinecone and gleaming white.
• My heart lucrched with the elevator, and I melted into him... <2nd affair, page 145>
• On M. K. Fisher: "When you read her you understand that you need to respect yourself enough to focus on the little things of life."
• And the walk she sent them on: "Birds were singing and we could smell the honeyed hay scent that you get in country that is more gold than green.
• In Thailand: plates covered with small, beautifully translucent crabs, their shells faintly blue against the bright red row. "Pu dong," he said. "They are marinated, raw.".. the sensation of slippery meat. It was chewy and very hot, but behind the heat was a startling, pleasant sweetness. <醉蟹！>
• Wolf(gang) cheerfully. "We just cook very little in a big pan. Chinese food tastes good to us because they sear everything instead of letting all the juice go out."
• In Danny Kaye's kitchen: The pasta was so thin that it seems to have vanished, leaving only a memory behind. What was left was simply the subtlety of the sauce, pure and light, as if the liquid had somehow taken solid form.
• The food on the table actually looked  more vegetable than animal, like it had been cut from a garden and not fished from the sea. The tiny squid were the size of blueberries; they were tinged with black and, when I stretched a finger out to touch them, felt as soft as peaches... Baby octopuses, their tentacles tightly curled, had the air of prickly little roses basking in the sun.
• The animals were so young that the butchers' knives moved soundlessly through the soft bones. The innards were beautiful too: the tripe so clean and white it might have been spun by spiders.
• (The disastrous all-star chef meal in Barcelona:) "Attention grillmasters," said Mark.. "We've got a grill." He shook his soggy hair. "That's the good news. The bad news is, it's pouring."