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What is dirt candy? Vegetables, of course. When you eat a vegetable you’re eating little more than dirt that’s been transformed by plenty of sunshine and rain into something that’s full of flavor: Dirt Candy. It’s also the name of my restaurant, which opened in October, 2008.

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One of my favorite things about my copy of Life Magazine’s Picture Cookbook (1958) is how outrageously sexist it is. For instance, did you know:

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If you can’t read the tiny print:

“Whenever the menu calls for a delicate dish or a fancy pie, most men are more than happy to let their wives take care of the cooking. When it’s a matter of steak, this tolerant attitude is replaced by an unassailable belief in masculine know-how. Steak is a man’s job.”

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Ladies, you are fine with your fancy pies, but a big slab of juicy meat can only come from a man. If you had any doubts, just look at this candid, unstaged photograph of steaks being grilled in the wild.

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Note the woman’s submissive interest in the fire being tended by the man. See her pet steaks cavorting about her skirts, waiting for their turn on the grill. I have to assume that the two men in the background not cooking steak are of ambiguous sexuality.

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However, all you fancy pie owners, do not despair. There is one area that is the unquestioned Domain of the Woman: the kitchen. As a later article reads:

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“Almost all U.S. kitchens are designed by men. That housewives are not entirely happy with man’s conception of woman’s domain was made clear at a U.S. housing administration forum at which women explained what they think ails modern houses. Having considered their complaints, one of the country’s few successful women architects, Margaret King Hunter of Hanover, N.H., planned an interior to suit her own needs.

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“Her design so impressed General Electric Company executives that they built it. Mrs. Hunter’s kitchen does away with walls and is stationed in the middle of the living space. Motor-driven shades lower to enclose kitchen or screen any side. A ventilating fan is in plastic skylight over kitchen. Here Mrs. Hunter stands in the hub of her house while son Christopher and friends have supper. Dining area is in foreground, living room at right.”

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If anything, it makes me think that the kitchen on The Brady Bunch was kind of progressive since it was the center of the house (TV room to the left, living room to the right) and had the same kind of open plan. Also, I would love to know if the U.S. Housing Administration still holds forums where it asks housewives what’s wrong with their homes. Maybe they meet in an auditorium designed by one of the large number of unsuccessful women architects that the caption implies?

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So, just in case you had any doubts:

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Steak = man’s job

Kitchen = women’s domain

Architecture = difficult for women

Running GE = easy for men

Fancy pies = woman

Steak = man

Delicate dish = woman

Steak = man

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Later, there will be a quiz.

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While the Lady Chef Stampede is only supposed to talk about lady chefs, I’ve been deviating from that path a lot recently. Whether it’s Rosaura Guerrero, the founder of Rosarita Foods, or Amy Scherber, the baker who founded Amy’s Breads, I’ve been mixing it up and keeping you off balance. Today, I want to keep it unpredictable by talking about one of the food world’s most important cooking teachers, Madeleine Kamman.

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A candy version of Chef Kamman made by Cindy Atmore.

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July 1 is Canada day! And that means the Dirt Candy Store has to have a sale. It’s a law. But one day is not enough to celebrate the might of Canada and so we’re celebrating Canada all MONTH with a Canada Day Month Sale. July will be the last month of free shipping from the Dirt Candy store, we’ll have cookbooks signed by Ryan Dunlavey, and we’ll be offering everyone 20% off (which is almost $4 off the cookbooks!). It’s practically free. And what better way to show your love for Canada?

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So keep your eye on July 1. That’s when the Canada Day madness begins!

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From the 1970 Campbell’s Cooking with Soup cookbook. I don’t think I need to add anything to this except to say that this is now the mission statement in my proposal for a new restaurant.

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Well, it happened. I sold out.

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Like Dionne Warwick and the Psychic Friends Network, like Mary J. Blige and Burger King’s crispy chicken wrap, or Claire Danes and the Latisse Eyelash Prescription Treatment System, I am endorsing a product. Which appeals deeply to my childhood self. I mean, I grew up seeing Bill Cosby eat Jell-o Pudding Pops and Michael J. Fox drink Pepsi, so joining their ranks (in some small way) kind of makes me want to jump through time and high-five my eleven-year-old self. The product?

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From now until infinity you will not be able to use a Wusthof knife without thinking of me.

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Do not attempt this at home unless you want to cut off your nose.

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You can see the entire campaign over on their Edge site.

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When they asked me to endorse them they sent me a nice chef’s knife in the mail, as well as a letter inviting me to be one of their spokespeople as well as a bunch of material outlining the campaign they were planning. I opened the package, took the knife (“Cool,” I remember thinking. “They sent me a knife because I’m a chef.”), glanced at the rest and thought, “Junk mail,” and tossed it in the trash. A week later someone from the agency putting the campaign together called.

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“Did you get the knife?” she asked.

Oh, great. Now she was going to try to sell me something. Well, ha, ha, sucker. I’ve got my knife and I don’t have to give it back.

“Yep, thanks. It’s nice.”

Now, just try to sell me more knives so I can refuse you.

“What did you think about it?”

What did I think about the knife? Well, it’s sharp and it cuts things? What does she mean? What is she talking about?

“Um…”

“You know, the proposal?”

The trash was long gone. What had I done? I tried to fake it.

“You know,” I said, “I thought it looked good, but why don’t you refresh me…”

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It’s amazing I’ve survived this long around so many sharp knives and so much fire, to be honest. But, ultimately the joke’s on Wusthof. What they don’t realize is that they didn’t need to pay me to endorse them. I was doing it a long time ago for free. Way back in 2004 I did my first ever interview as a chef. Ted Lee (of the Lee Bros. cookbook out now!) needed some chefs to talk about knives for a piece he was writing for the New York Times. He figured that I worked with vegetables so I’d have a different take on it. He’d talked to lots of chefs about their fancy Japanese knives, their hand forged custom steel, their ceramic knives built by robots. Me? I used a Wusthof.

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Amanda Cohen, a sous-chef at Pure Food and Wine in Manhattan, bought her less exalted Wüsthof chef’s knife at a Bed Bath & Beyond store in Manhattan. But she is every bit as sanguine as Mr. Heflin about its form and function.

“My knife fits my hand so perfectly,” Ms. Cohen said. “Every time I pick it up, it’s like, `Hello, old friend!’ “

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I’ve always used whatever knife I had lying around. I usually go for a Wusthof if I’m buying one, because I take my knives to hell and back and really beat the tar out of them so $900 knives that require constant maintenance are wasted on me. Later in the NY Times piece:

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“As long as you get the job done on time, a knife is a knife,” said Ms. Cohen, the sous-chef at Pure Food and Wine. “I see all these guys with their knives in fancy carrying cases, and I always want to ask them, `Does that make the food taste better?’”

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I’ve got a Wusthof tossed in my bag and that’s kind of all I need. Just the 6″ chef’s knife. From now until I go off a cliff, I’m Thelma and this is my Louise.

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2 gether 4 ever.

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So thanks, Wusthof, for putting a price tag on a relationship you didn’t even know already existed. And the campaign’s not just about me. Marc Vetri of Vetri in Philadelphia and Katherine Clapner the pastry chef who owns Dude, Sweet Chocolate in Dallas are both part of their campaign as well this year, so I’m in good company.

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And I got a free knife!

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This week, on the Lady Chef Stampede, we get baked with Amy Scherber, the woman behind Amy’s Bread. Normally I am deeply suspicious of bakers, regarding them as a mutant offshoot of pastry cooks (if you want to know about pastry cooks, I suggest reading some H.P. Lovecraft, who wrote about them in great detail). But two things made me want to write about Scherber. And now you have to keep reading to find out what they were.

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I have been banging my head against this dish for three months now, and it’s finally getting close to being ready to go on the menu. My big breakthrough came about a month ago when I made this dish for the nine millionth time and was so angry at it that I smashed the plate and…well, more on that later. For now, gaze upon my Broccoli Dawgz!!!

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They’re not in their final form yet, but those are salt and vinegar broccoli rabe chips. Oh, yeah! It’s summer and time for a picnic on your plate!

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Don’t forget that if you’re at GoogaMooga this weekend you can skip the Yeah Yeah Yeahs concert. You can forget about the Flaming Lips. What you need to go to is my literary wrestling match on Saturday, May 18 @ 3:45. I’ll be in the literary fancy pants tent called Cafe GoogaMooga and my husband and I will be presenting The Dirt Candy Food Porn-u-copia. Clothing will be optional! (Get your tickets to GoogaMooga here)

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Also, on Sunday, May 19 @ 2:15pm the Dirt Candy cookbook artist, Ryan Dunlavey, will be playing Food Pictionary with the audience and the able assistance of cartoonist Lucy Knisley also in the Cafe GoogaMooga.

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It’s hard to remember the big restaurants from last year, let alone from a couple of decades ago, but I recently came across Life Magazine’s Picture Cookbook. They do a round-up of “the best” restaurants in the world (circa 1958) and I thought it’d be info-taining to reproduce the New York section, both pictures and text, to remember the forgotten restaurants of 50 years ago.

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Le Pavillion. Owned by Henri Soule, a great restauranteur, Le Pavillon rates as the finest French restaurant in America. In the copper dish are quenelles de brochet Pavillon, egg-shaped mousses of sieved pike poached and served with lobster sauce. On the serving platter at right is mousse de sole Pavillon which is served, as in foreground, half covered with lobster sauce and half covered with champagne sauce.

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Brussels. Born of the 1939 – 1940 World’s Fair where its managers operated the Belgian Pavilion restaurant, the Brussels has become one of the city’s finest restaurants. Here Maître d’hôtel Leon Lievens lifts a chateaubriand en papillote from the paper in which it was cooked. On a side table are the asparagus with sauce mousseline of hollandaise and whipped cream, and pommes soufflées to go with it.

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The Forum. A restaurant with an off-beat touch is The Forum of the Twelve Caesars. In foreground is alpine snow hare stewed in wine and served with maize and lingonberries. At left is an appetizer of clams, oysters, crab meat, lobster, shrimp. Ramekin holds pike mousse. Menu goes in for Latin (eggs Benedictus) and flaming foods — “fiddler crab lump a la Nero.”

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Voisin. Quiet and elegant, Voisin has for 45 years been famed for its desserts. Below is an assortment: a chocolate soufflé (top), served with vanilla sauce (in sauceboat), a gâteau St. Honore (at left), two chocolate boxes of spongecake and chocolate butter cream flanking a strawberry strip, eclairs, strawberry tarts and a vanilla pot de crème.

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Just for fun I thought I’d include a Chicago restaurant, The Pump Room because, well, having this guy in your restaurant probably wouldn’t go over real well today, but in 1958 it was the height of class. Also, flaming swords of food!

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Pump Room. Famed for flaming swords that carry speared sustenance ranging from shashlik to Alaska crab, the Pump Room in the Ambassador East Hotel is one of America’s most spectacular dining rooms. Bright-coated waiters march back and forth bearing the sizzling swords to the tables while (at night, not at lunch) the lights grow dim. In this picture, the array of hot swords from left carry shashlik, deep sea scallops, broiled lamb chops, whole chicken livers, milk-fed chickens, crab meat rolled in bacon, and filet mignon. Presiding is the coffee boy.

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That’s coffee MAN to you, buddy. Mr. Coffee Man.

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There’s something so hopefully romantic about this cookbook photo. Maybe it’s the two glasses of champagne, one flat and the other suspiciously foamy? Maybe it’s the pink roses peeking in from the right? Maybe it’s the idea of attracting a woman by feeding her a store bought pie crust oozing with pink Cool Whip? Whatever it is, I bet the person who made this ate it alone.

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