Dear Rick and Michael Mast,

When you take your ship out to sea on your next cacao-seeking maritime mission, can you give us a call so we can jump aboard starboard and aft to join you in your wanderlust, dreaming childlike dreams of the food of the gods? We will play bagpipes. We will haul burlap. We will grow beards.

Sarah Williams from The Scout, can you please come, too, and document it all with your magic camera?

The Mast Brothers from The Scout on Vimeo.

Would you like some Mashed Potatoes with your Gin & Juice?

Emma's post earlier today reminded of this wonderful instructional video by Cordozar Calvin Broadus (Snoop Dog) and Martha Stewart about how to make proper mashed potatoes. It turns out, you make them in an egg-shell blue Cuisinart stand mixer with a whole stick of butter, a whole pack of cream cheese and a generous helping of, ahem, black pepper.

Cotton and Katy Perry

One of our favorite artists, Will Cotton, has collaborated with Katy Perry.  Mr Cotton acted as Art Director for the video California Gurls, with director Matthew Cullen.  Mr Cotton told ArtInfo that his "post-production crew stitched in maquettes and images from his archive onto a green-screen backdrop, literally implanting Katy Perry into a world constructed from his paintings". The similarities are uncanny. So here it is: Gastronomista's visual comparison, the work of Will Cotton, and Katy Perry's California Gurls.  

Will Cotton, Cotton Candy Clouds, 2006

Ms Perry in her own Cotton Candy Cloud

.....

Will Cotton, Taffy Forest, 2007

Ms Perry checkin out Candy Land, aka California

.....

Will Cotton, Candy Stick Forest, 2005

Candy Safari

.....

You get the idea. And behold, the video:

Maybe someone should tell Mr Cotton that is he is missing a portrait of Snoop Dogg from his oeuvre. 

And finally, Mr Cotton's portrait of Ms Perry for the cover of her forthcoming album, Teenage Dream.

Will Cotton, Katy Perry, 2010

Mad for Red Lipstick and Vodka Gimlets

Dearest Readers,

We have not forgotten about you, we have been on holiday, basking in the sun and drinking our fair share of Dark and Stormy cocktails.

Fortunately, anticipation of the premier of Season 4 of Mad Men has beckoned us indoors, and we must share our delight and excitement with you.  First of all, we love Mad Men.  We are obsessed with Mad Men.  And this Sunday is the Premier!  Finally!  Our Sundays will have purpose again!

We plan on heading to the Oak Room this Sunday to watch the premier - we've heard they will be serving Bloody Bulls - a proper Bloody Mary with a meatball garnish.  Smashing.


Look for us, we will be wearing this:

For the more committed fans, AMC is throwing a premier party in Times Square.  Perhaps you could be convinced to enter the Costume Contest.  Reminder: get elbow length gloves dry cleaned. 



Joanie. We adore you. We would drink Manhattans with  you any day!

But today, we will drink in anticipation:


The Vodka Gimlet

1 1/2 ounces vodka
1/2 ounce fresh lime juice
1 teaspoon sugar
Place all ingredients in a cocktail shaker. Add ice and shake well. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass

Recipe via the New York Times


or perhaps:


Pepper Martini


2 cups Plymouth gin, divided
4 tablespoons dry Sherry (such as La Ina or Tio Pepe), divided
8 teaspoons pepper jelly, divided
4 teaspoons orange bitters (such as Regans' No. 6), divided
Ice cubes
8 Tomolives
    
Preparation

Combine 1/2 cup gin, 1 tablespoon Sherry, 2 teaspoons pepper jelly, and 1 teaspoon orange bitters in cocktail shaker. Fill with ice cubes and shake vigorously. Strain into 2 Martini glasses. Repeat 3 times for 6 more drinks. Garnish each with 1 Tomolive and serve.

Recipie via Bon Appetit

We also recommend this article about the show's liquor styling by prop guru Gay Perello.



Oh Don Draper, we've missed you.  In honor of your return we will make you a Butter Tree.

image via Vanity Fair

Get Thee to the Boulangerie

photo from our friends at nowness

Fun fact about bread: In the olden days, women who thought they were possessed by a sexual demon would eat a phallic-shaped bread roll to exorcise it. There are lots of ex-voto breads in Italy and lots of sexual breads that look like male and female sexual parts—baguettes and breads with cracks.

Well, we won't kill the messenger, especially since he looks like this:

Meet Gontran Cherrier, experimental baker (uh, rye bread with miso?), bread scientist and all around heart-throb. God bless the man, he even takes time to rail on the Atkins diet. We love him for that! The full interview via Nowness is here. This guy's on the rise - at 31 years old he's already hosted his own show on Canal+ and authored 6 cookbooks. His first bakery opens in Paris this month. Let's woo him stateside, shall we? We hostesses are starting to brush up on our French right now. Voulez-vous coucher avec... nope, wrong phrase. Wait... is it?

If you ever doubted the sexiness of bread, we invite you to reacquaint yourself right now.

A Toast to Freedom

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know we said we don't drink pink drinks - but we can't resist a classic Rosangel Margarita, especially with a holiday weekend approaching.  Rosangel is a tequila aged for 2 months in Port barrels, and infused with Hibiscus - so divine! 

Tastes like Freedom

1 1/2 oz Rosangel

1 1/2 oz Premium Orange Liqueur

1 tbsp Agave Nectar

Juice of 1 Lime

1 tbsp freshly squeezed Orange Juice

1 tbsp Cranberry Juice

Splash of Ginger Ale

1 1/2 Cups of Ice

Garnish with dried Hibiscus Flowers

And check out the gorgeous bottle here!

Popbar

If you've ever been to Italy in the summer, you know the importance of gelato to keep you cool and thereby sane.  Here in the heat of NYC in the summer, we crave delicious cool treats to keep us sane.  We have a serious soft spot for bodega popsicles (we prefer the coconut All Fruit) but we think it's time to take it up a notch. Enter Popbar.  They use all natural ingredients and they import their gelato ingredients from Italy.

Flavors to try:
Coconut covered in coconut shreds
Pistachio Drizzle covered in chopped pistachios and dark chocolate
Raspberry, Mint, Lemon popSorbetto

We know where we are going this afternoon.

Get there
5 Carmine Street @ 6th Ave

If you're smart, get in on the franchise.

Oystering

Oystering

by Richard Howard

“Messieurs, l’huitre étoit bonne. Adieu. Vivez en paix.”
—Boileau



Secret they are, sealed, annealed, and brainless   

And solitary as Dickens said, but   

They have something to say: that there is more   

Than one way to yield. The first—and the hardest.   

The most nearly hindered—is when you pull   

Them off the rocks, a stinking, sawing sedge   

Sucking them back under the black mud, full   

Of hermit crabs and their borrowed snailshells,   

Minnows scattering like superstitions,   

The surf dragging, and every power   

Life permits them holding out, holding on   

For dear life. Sometimes the stones give way first.   

Before they will, but still we gather them,   

Even if our hands are bloody as meat,   

For a lunch Queen Victoria preferred:   

“A barrel of Wellfleet oysters, points down”   

Could last across the ocean, all the way   

To Windsor, wakening a widow’s taste.   

We ate them this afternoon, out of their   

Armor that was formidably grooved, though   

It proved our own reversal wiser still:   

Keep the bones and stones inside, or never

Leave the sea. “He was a brave man,” Swift said,   

“Who first eat one.” Even now, precedent   

Of centuries is not always enough.

Driving the knife into muscles that mould   

The valves so close to being impartial.   

Surrender, when it comes—and it must come:   

Lavish after that first grudging release   

Back there in the sea, the giving over   

Of despair, this time—makes me speculate.   

Like Oscar and oysters, I feel “always   

Slightly immortal when in the sea”: what   

Happens now we are out? Is the risk worth   

While for a potential pearl? No, what we’re   

Really after is the moment of release,   

The turn and tear of the blade that tightens,   

Tortures, ultimately tells. When you spread

The shells, something always sticks to the wrong   

One, and a few drops of liquor dribble   

Into the sand. Scrape it off: in the full   

Half, as well as a Fautrier, a Zen

Garden, and the smell of herring brine that   

Ferenczi said we remember from the womb,   

Lunch is served, in shiny stoneware sockets,   

Blue milk in the sea’s filthiest cup. More   

Easily an emblem for the inner man

Than dinner, sundered, for the stomach. We   

Take them queasily, wonder as we gulp

When it is—then, now, tomorrow—they’re dead.

Via The Poetry Foundation

A Proper Vessel

We love cookies.  Okay, we reeeaaallllyyyy love cookies.

But one needs a proper vessel for such deliciousness - this Jonathan Adler cookie jar will do the job.  We want. We need.