Having finished Never Eat Your Heart Out, Eating L.A.'s next book is a 180 degrees switch from church potlucks to Crave: See Touch Smell Hear Taste
by Ludo Lefebvre and Martin Booe. Since Martin is a friend of Eating L.A., this isn't a totally objective review, but let's just say Ludo is awfully hot. (Of course so is Martin.) If you can get past the shirtless pinups of Ludo (not of Martin, though), the book is divided into chapters covering the five senses. It's an interesting approach, although I hope the dishes in the "see" chapter taste as good as the ones in the "taste" chapter. The recipes don't sound quite as contrived as the menus at Ludo's restaurant Bastide, which is probably just as well, since I don't get a hankering to make cinnamon sweetbread foam all that often. The large format hardcover is a combination of chef porn photos, food porn photos, and recipes divided between French standards (creme caramel, Mom's chocolate cake) and more daring dishes (foie gras with not just chocolate, red wine, pomegranate and onion jam, but also juniper berries!). I'm tempted to try the crispy soft-shell crabs with beurre noisette, the fried candied milk with green cardamom, and the caramel souffles. But unless you're really bored with most cookbooks, this is more a browsing than a cooking book, unless you're dying to run out and pick up some gold leaf, live sea urchins, and licorice root.Archived comments:
Sue said...
I saw Ludo at the LA Times Festival of Books this weekend. I caught about the last 5 minutes of his talk, which was falling flat with the audience, perhaps because the planned cooking demo had been disastrous due to stove failure.The thing I noticed about him was that he looks dang near exactly like a long-haired, tattooed Tom Cruise . With a better accent, too. Like you say, hot.I took some photos on film (it was a trip in the wayback machine with my trusty 1974 Minolta SRT-102) and will post them on my blog as soon as I get them developed. Boy, I never thought I'd say THAT again.
Pat Saperstein said...
Those Minoltas were great. I remember dying for an SRT-101, but I got an Olympus OM-1 instead. Haven't used it for a while.
Anonymous said...
Could we please please please see more photos of Ludo? I wouldn't want to miss him at the Traverse Epicurean Classic in mid-Sept on the streets of TC
