article comments 3

Title: Real Entertaining: A menu with signs of spring

In Short: A couple basic recipe ideas that nevertheless manages to sound self-important.

My Thoughts: Going into this article, I was under the impression that Hagedorn was going to discuss spring foods. He did, after a fashion - in a snooty voice, he lets the reader know how very fed-up cooks are with winter foods, and how it's about time to have spring already.

     The server announced a special entree of braised rabbit with peas, carrots and spinach ricotta dumplings, brightly noting, "The chef wants it to be spring."

     Don't we all.

Yes, Hagedorn, we do, but your complaining isn't going to get us anywhere. Additionally, for the parts of the audience that are not familiar with food's availability patterns, this exchange is not only boring, but senseless. It takes a cook or a gardener to know that peas and carrots are late-summer/early fall vegetables, easily preserved and often in winter foods, and that spinach comes in two forms: fresh (when you can't hide anything about it) and cooked (when you can stuff it into dumplings and pretend it's fresh).

I, personally, still can't see anything wrong with serving rabbit.

But so Hagedorn's article goes. He goes on to dictate his own menu of a Sunday evening dinner, giving boring recipes in paragraph form, praising his cleverness in "cut[ting] baby spinach leaves into thin chiffonade strips and serv[ing] the stew atop them as if they were noodles." Well done, Hagedorn.

Overall: Overall I was not impressed. The tone of the article was less informative and more complaint/self-satisfaction - neither of which I want at the table.

Link: here.