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The Gay Bomb

Gay Bomb 2The Gay Bomb
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. That’s our national military’s policy on homosexuality. (By the way, I was in ROTC back in college in the mid-70s, I told when asked, it didn’t stop them from admitting me to the program – though, of course, that was before the policy, it was during the “no way you’re getting in” era. I was also once interviewed by the CIA, originally for a position in psychological profiling, but then was offered a position in data analysis – they asked, I told, they still offered. Who knows?)

Regardless, the policy is clearly for our military, not our enemies:

“Category # 3: Chemicals that affect human behavior so that discipline and morale in enemy units is adversely affected. One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior.”

This from the Wright Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, part of a 1994 study paper entitled “Harassing, Annoying, and “Bad Guy” Identifying Chemicals. The paper came to light this week as a result of efforts from the Sunshine Project, a biological/chemical warfare watchdog group. According to the officer in charge of such things, neither this nor any of the other silly ideas in the paper were pursued, they were merely proposed and discussed.

There’s clearly not enough detail in the paper released to figure out things like: How did they plan to test this one?

“Conduct tests to determine safety/toxicity for humans, then conduct field trials to determine initial and lasting effectiveness in various climates and conditions….”

(Some commentators have suggested that San Francisco’s Castro district and New York’s Greenwich Village might have been test sites…)

If homosexuality is a combination of “nature and nurture”, as is generally believed, just exactly what sort of chemical was going to convert heterosexuals to homosexuals? Did someone really think that just by making soldiers super-horny (aren’t they already?) they would drop their weapons, stop listening to their orders, and jump each other in the foxholes… so to speak?

On the flip side of this, and in a clearly clairvoyant moment, Weekly World News reported way back in August of last year that:

“Extremist Muslim scientists are developing a bomb that turns anyone within a 30-mile radius of its blast into a homosexual, say U.S. Intelligence insiders.”

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The White Party

20050116
There’s an annual party in the gay club scene in NYC (and probably in other cities as well), called The White Party. The idea being to dress all in white, sexy, clubby, etc., and dance the night away. There’s also The Black Party, which tends towards a lot of leather. This dinner had nothing to do with either, other than probably an inspiration for the name of the evening. It was a white, monochromatic dinner (ooh, yet another one, so long before the trend), in midwinter, so presumably a bit on the snowy side outside the walls of my 16th floor apartment.

Sunday, January 16, 2005
The White Party

Shichimi-seared Albacore Tuna, White Miso Sauce
Rihaku “Dreamy Clouds” Nigori Sake

Celeriac Soup, Sea Scallops, Gorgonzola Dolce
Taittinger “Comtes de Champagne” Blanc de Blancs, 1985

Slow-roasted Cauliflower, Walnut Puree, Dried Cherry Chutney
F. Chauvenet Meursault “Les Bouchères”, 1986

Blanquette de Veau
Touchais “Grande Année”, 1976

Tetilla
Blandy’s 5-year old Verdelho Madeira

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The Flying Shrimp of Death

Food allergies are on the rise. In the U.S. alone, they are responsible for some 30,000 emergency room visits per year, and somewhere between 150-200 deaths! Shrimp allergies are among the more serious. Not a good thing. Not a joke. But some folks can’t seem to tell the difference between serious and a joke…

In December 2000, a Long Island furrier and his family gathered at a Benihana restaurant to enjoy the show and dinner. The chef sliced and diced, tossed things in the air, all the usual sort of thing. As they often do, he tossed a shrimp here and there to the eagerly watching crowd. Now, here’s the disputed part. Jerry Colaitis, the furrier in question, apparently ducked to avoid being hit by the shrimp. Or at least that’s what his widow says. Her claim, in a $10 million lawsuit filed against Benihana, is that he ducked (after having asked the chef not to flip the shrimp at him… but wait, isn’t that part of the show that they were there for?), and injured two of his neck vertabrae. Over the course of the next ten months, he had two operations on those neck vertabrae, and died of surgical complications after the second one. Now, the chef claims that Mr. Colaitis was attempting to catch the shrimp in his mouth, lunged in some direction or other, and perhaps injured his neck that way – if there was even any relationship between his vertabrae and the dinner. There seems to also be some question as to whether or not the vertabral injuries were a pre-existing condition…

There’s too much good stuff out there on this on the internet. The best comment, from Fark:

“You have to admit, of all the ways a Benihana chef could have killed the man–his expert wizardry with knives, his ability to dice raw meat midair, his precise spatularic stylings–he cleverly used a common shrimp. Those ninjas that disguise themselves as Benihana chefs are as cunning as they are evil…”

And as long as we’re looking at shrimp deaths:

A Florida jury has awarded $12.3 million to an Ecuadorian shrimp farming company that claimed DuPont’s Benlate fungicide poisoned its harvest. Aquamar S.A. contended that Benlate and other pesticides seeped into the water after being used on banana plantations and killed their shrimp. The case mirrored one that DuPont lost in Florida in November. In that case, a shrimp farmer was awarded $10 million. (Needless to say, DuPont is appealling these decisions.)

I also refer you to God Hates Shrimp… “Pinch the Tail, Suck the Head, Burn in Hell”

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Salsa!

Outlet Radio Network
January 12, 2005

Salsa!

Visions of whirling women in bright colored skirts, men dancing their way across the floor, dressed to the nines. Not that kind.

Salsa is simply a Spanish word for sauce. Now, in our nortamericano daily parlance, we usually use it to denote a somewhat fiery red or green sauce for dipping tortilla chips into. Often we see it on restaurant menus to refer to some chopped blend of vegetables, fruits and spices that accompany a dish. But we keep going back to that dipping sauce in our minds.

For me, however, as a chef, I tend to think of salsas in terms of what a Mexican chef might call a salsa cruda. That is, a chopped blend of raw or barely cooked ingredients that is used as the sauce on a dish. And the couple of recipes I’m going to give you aren’t going to relate to Latin American cooking. They’re just a couple of my current favorites that I hope you’ll try out and enjoy!

I was reading my favorite cooking magazine, Australian Gourmet Traveller (one of the best written consumer food magazines out there, even if the vocabulary takes some getting used to), and came across a reference to a fascinating sounding veal dish. No recipe was provided, so I experimented and came up with this little gem that we all fell in love with.

Veal Scallops with Meyer Lemon Salsa
Serves 4

1½ pounds of thinly sliced veal scallopini
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large seedless cucumber
3 Meyer lemons (not regular lemons, Meyers are sweet lemons from Florida)
2 tablespoons of coarsely chopped fresh oregano
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

Peel and dice the cucumber. Remove the peel from the lemons and carefully cut out the individual segments of the lemons, then cut each segment in half. Add the oregano and the extra virgin olive oil. Add salt and pepper to taste. Let it sit for at least an hour.

Season the veal scallops with salt and pepper. Saute them in a mix of the butter and olive oil (or just use one of the new “butter flavored” olive oil spreads), until lightly browned. Serve topped with the salsa, which can be left room temperature or slightly warmed. If you’re not into veal, this salsa works just as well on thinly pounded chicken breasts, or even a sauteed slice of tempeh!

Beef Fillet with Radish Salsa
Serves 4

Okay, it sounds strange, but it is oh, so good!

4 beef fillets, each about 6 ounces
2-3 limes
1 bunch of icicle radishes (these are pure white and sort of long and skinny radishes)
a dozen or so fresh mint leaves
2 serrano peppers
¼ cup olive oil
salt and pepper

Peel the limes and coarsely chop the peel. Mix the peel, the juice of the limes, and a bit of salt and pepper to make a marinade. Rub the beef all over with this and let it stand in the refrigerator, occasionally turning it to recoat, for at least 2 hours.

In a food processor, pulse the radishes (greens removed), the serranos (seeds and stems removed), and the mint leaves, until you have a coarse mixture. Add olive oil, and the salt and pepper to taste, and let sit for at least an hour.

In a very hot pan, sear the beef fillets on both sides, and then put the whole pan into a hot (500°F) oven. Let it cook for about 5-10 minutes depending on how done you like your beef. You can always stick the pan back in if you check a fillet and it isn’t done enough.

I like to serve this one by slicing the fillets and fanning them out on the plate and then topping with the salsa.

For the non-beef folk, try this one with portabello mushroom caps, just don’t over cook the caps in the oven, five minutes is usually plenty of time.


I started writing food & wine columns for the Outlet Radio Network, an online radio station in December 2003. They went out of business in June 2005.

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Tales of the Naked City

blanca
Happy New Year Everyone!

“To be offended by the visual appearance of another person is prejudice, akin to racism. The right to exist, uncovered, should hold precedence over the right not to view this, for the objection is irrational.” – Terri Sue Webb – nude cycling activist…

I just saw this piece from a week ago:

The Associated Press
Updated: 7:04 p.m. ET Dec. 22, 2004

MEXICO CITY – There’s a city in Mexico that’s making it illegal for citizens to be naked — inside their own homes.
Officials in the southeastern city of Villahermosa confirm that the city council has adopted a law banning indoor nudity.

A council member who opposes the idea says he’s not sure how it’ll be enforced.

But a councilwoman who supports it says she’s confident that citizens who catch a glimpse of violators while walking past their windows will report them to police — even though the law also threatens jail for peeping Toms.
She describes the law as “zero tolerance” for “a lack of morality.”

© 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. (and my apologies for bordering on violating that…)

“The majority of houses have a lot of ventilation and we give ourselves the luxury of going naked. Because we walk past the windows, you see a lot of things.”

– Councilwoman Blanca Estela Pulid

Opposition party Councilman Rodrigo Sanchez said in an interview that the measure, part of a larger series of prohibitions, “tramples on the rights of the citizens by taking laughable measures such as contemplating penalties for citizens who walk around nude inside their houses.”

“I have no idea how you detect the naked. You’d have to have a big operation to try to bring it under control,” he added.

This law, like many that on the face of them are inordinately silly, has generated lots of internet commentary (Google lists 20,400 references to this topic over the last week!). It should be noted that the law doesn’t actually ban citizens from being nude in their homes or anywhere else (despite the discussions I’ve found on whether one can still take one’s clothes off for doctor’s visits, to shower at the gym, to shower at the home even). It specifies that people are banned from “displaying themselves nude intentionally in public and private areas or inside the home, in the latter instances when it is in a way that is obvious to the public or to adjacent homes.” Nonetheless, it makes for great conversation! Here’s my favorite editorial on the topic where editor Fred Foldvary suggests, tongue-in-cheek, that we attach mini-cameras to horseflies and let them fly around while police monitor what they see. By the way, the penalty for violation of this law is either 36 hours in jail or the current equivalent of a $120 fine.

From Wikipedia:

In ancient Greece, athletic exercise played an important part of daily life. In fact, the Greeks credited several mythological figures with athletic accomplishments.

It was in the city-state of Sparta that the custom of exercising naked was first introduced. From there, it spread to the whole of Greece, and the athletes from all its parts, coming together for the Olympic Games and the other Panhellenic Games, would compete naked in almost all disciplines, such as boxing, wrestling, pankration, stadion and various other foot races, and the pentathlon (made up of wrestling, stadion, long jump, javelin throw, and discus throw). However, they did not perform in the nude during chariot races.

Evidence of Greek nudity in sport comes from the numerous surviving depictions of athletes (sculpture, mosaics, and vase paintings). Famous athletes were honored with a statue erected for their commemoration. A few writers have insisted that the athletic nudity in Greek art is just an artistic convention, finding it unbelievable that anybody would have run naked. This view could be ascribed to late-Victorian prudishness applied anachronistically to ancient times.

The word gymnasium (from Greek gymnasion), originally denoting a place for education of young men, is another testimony of the nudity in physical exercises; the word being derived from Greek gymnos, meaning “naked”. The more recent form gym is an abbreviation of gymnasium.

In Hellenistic times, Greek-speaking Jews would sometimes take part in athletic exercises. They were then exposed to ridicule because they were circumcised – a custom which was unknown in the Greek tradition.

The Romans, although they took over much of the Greek culture, had a different evaluation of nakedness. To appear naked in public was considered disgusting. However, athletic exercises by free citizens had partly been replaced by gladiatorial games performed in amphitheatres. The gladiators were recruited among slaves, war captives, and convicts. When fighting in the arena, against one another or against wild beasts, they would be armed with swords, shields, etc., but would otherwise be partly or totally naked (see Gladiator for particulars).

When Christianity in the fourth century became the state religion, gladiatorial games were soon abandoned, and the concept of nudity as ‘sinful’ took over.

In Japan, female sumo wrestlers wrestled in the nude. Today, females are not allowed to sumo wrestle, and the sport in general is considered sacred under Shintoism.
Sport in the modern sense of the word became popular only in the 19th century. Nudity in this context was most common in Germany and the Nordic countries, where Body culture was very much revered by Nazi ideologues. In the nordic countries also swimming in rivers or lakes was very popular and traditional. In the summer, there would be wooden bathhouses, often of considerable size accommodating numerous swimmers, built partly over the water. Hoardings prevented the bathers from being seen from outside. Originally the bathhouses were for men only; today there are usually separate sections for men and women.

For the Olympic Games in Stockholm in 1912, the official poster was created by a distinguished artist. It depicted several naked male athletes (their genitals obscured) and was for that reason considered too daring for distribution in certain countries. Posters for the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, the 1924 Olympics in Paris, and the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki also featured nude male figures, evoking the classical origins of the games. The poster for the 1948 London Olympics featured a classical nude sculpture of a discus thrower.

A group from the southern U.S., having been invited in the 1950s to participate in a university students’ swimming competition in Stockholm, was surprised to find at their arrival at the (indoor) swimming pool that their swimming trunks were out of place; they swam in the nude like everybody else.

It is not uncommon for private clubs with male-only or female-only facilities to allow (for example) nude swimming. Some argue that in more private environments (whether at home or in, say a single-gender bathhouse), the less clothing one has on when exercising or doing any activity the better.

Stephen Gough, dubbed the Naked Rambler, in 2003/2004 made a long-distance walk from one end of the UK to the other, wearing only boots. He was arrested several times, and his walk was interrupted by two periods of jail time, together five months. Including these, the journey took seven months. He undertook his walk as a protest, in order to celebrate the naked human form, and to try to convince the public to stop being paranoid about the naked body. He observed that anti-nudity laws are more strictly enforced in Scotland than in England.

On 12 June 2004 over 1,000 people taking part in the World Naked Bike Ride in 24 mostly North American cities rode their bicycle either partially or totally nude in a light-hearted attempt to draw attention to the danger of depending on fossil fuels.

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How Do You Like Dem Apples?

Outlet Radio Network
November 19, 2004

How Do You Like Dem Apples?

Just a short column to let you all know I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth. Being in the food and wine biz this time of year gets a bit crazed. Out in the non-electronic world I’ve gotten several requests recently for good old-fashioned apple pie. Things like “what’s the world’s most amazing apple pie recipe?” and other easy demands to respond to like that.

Well, I’ll tell you. I haven’t a clue. There are probably a gazillion recipes out there for apple pies, and I’ve only tried a few of them. Truthfully, I tend to go about as simple as I can when I make an apple pie, which isn’t very often. You can use something basic from the Time-Life Good Cook series, or that long-famed kitchen staple, The Joy of Cooking. Or your mother’s recipe. Hey, if you think you’ve got the world’s best apple pie recipe, I’d love to hear about it and try it out.

What I do make pretty regularly with apples is an old Ukranian-Belarusian (somewhere out there) sort of apple pie-cake-crumbly kinda thingie. The recipe isn’t my own and it’s been reproduced in Eastern European cookbooks for eons, but damned if it isn’t really easy and really good! It’s usually referred to as something like “Guest at the Door Apple Cake”, for reasons that should be apparent from the name.

This comes out best if you use a 9″ springform pan, but any deep dish pie, tart, or cake pan will do. You can even do this in a cast iron skillet if you want!

Butter the inside of the pan and sprinkle with bread crumbs or flour to prevent the cake from sticking. Preheat oven to 350F.

Take six large, tart apples and peel, core, quarter and then slice them. Toss the apple segments with a teaspoon of ground cinnamon. Put them in the buttered pan.

In a mixing bowl, whisk or beat together 3 large eggs and just under a cup of sugar (don’t ask me why, but a full cup makes it too sweet, so take out a heaping spoonful). Beat this until it is pale yellow and forms a ribbon when your whisk or beaters are lifted.

By the way, what that means is… if you lift the egg beater, or electric mixer, or hand whisk out of the mixture, it kind of drizzles off and leaves a ribbony looking trail that takes a moment or two to sink in, rather than just streaming off and disappearing into the bowl.

Gradually beat in one and a half cups of all purpose flour. The batter will get pretty thick. Pour the batter relatively evenly over the apples. Bake until it turns puffy and golden colored, about 50-60 minutes, depending on your oven, the pan, etc. Let cool for a little and serve with whatever you like to serve on appley things – whipped cream, ice cream…

On other apple topics, since I promised I’d throw in some booze sort of tasting notes, some drinking thoughts:

Apple cider. Not the stuff in big gallon jugs that’s brown and filled with sediment from apples and your parents made you and all that…

Traditional French, English or American (they’re the only ones I know who make the stuff) alcohol-type apple cider. There are lots of producers out there of these. Two favorites:

Farnum Hill apple ciders, from Lebanon, New Hampshire. Made in relatively dry styles, these, to me, taste like very delicately apple scented light beers. They are quite yummy, and well worth checking out. Farnum Hill distributes primarily in the northeast U.S., but you can hit their website at www.farnumhillciders.com and who knows, maybe you can score some!

Eric Bordelet produces amazing apple and pear ciders in France. They range from relatively dry to relatively sweet. My faves are the Argelette for the apple and the Granit for the pear, but they’re all worth seeking out and trying. Once you taste these you’ll be hooked!

I’m also a huge fan of calvados. This is brandy made from apple and pear wine rather than grape wine. You get all that warming fire that is what good brandy is all about, with a delicious touch of apple fruit. Not sweet! My favorite producer is Christian Drouhin who makes a regular “Selection” calvados and stunningly good vintage calvados under the Coeur du Lion label. The vintage ones make great gifts!


I started writing food & wine columns for the Outlet Radio Network, an online radio station in December 2003. They went out of business in June 2005.

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Traditional Autumn Chocolate Rabbit Dinner

20041114
My first thought looking at this was, wtf? Then, looking at the title, I thought, well, maybe I’d done my version of my favorite chocolate braised rabbit several times before in the fall. And indeed, there, a decade earlier, in 1994, late October…. but the only other time was for a chocolate dinner in February of 1996. So, a tradition born of a single previous offering. So be it.

second sunday supper circle
traditional autumn chocolate rabbit dinner
sunday, november 14, 2004

cream of radish soup
classic cocktail: the booomerang

veal scallopini, meyer lemon salsa
1999 michel redde “cuvee marjorum” pouilly-fume

braised rabbit in chocolate
1982 torres gran coronas black label

nutmeg pie
1993 livio felluga picolit

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Why Can’t You Have Both?

Outlet Radio Network
October 22, 2004

Why Can’t You Have Both?

About 13 years ago I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon with Craig Claiborne. For those who don’t know who he was, he was probably the most influential restaurant critic who has ever written in the United States. Why? Basically, he was the first true restaurant & food critic for a major newspaper. Not that others hadn’t written about such things, but he raised it to an art form, and, he worked for the New York Times. He was also openly gay. Craig died in 2000. There’s no particular reason for this column, which was written 13 years ago, to pop up now, except it was never published, and I ran across it while I was looking through some of my files. Re-reading it brought back the memory of a wonderful afternoon earlier in my career, and I thought I’d share it here. Parts of this interview, both what’s reproduced below and more, were used by Tom McNamee in his book The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat: Craig Claiborne and the American Food Renaissance, which I’ve reviewed over on my SaltShaker blog.


I’ve been picked up in a lot of places by a lot of different people, in a lot of different ways. I never expected to be picked up at a bus stop, by Craig Claiborne, in a jeep. Then again, I never expected to be picked up by Craig Claiborne. Meeting the man who made it his career to open the doors of fine food to the American public is not the sort of thing a young chef and writer gets to do every day.

Comfortably ensconced in his East Hampton, New York home, a Michael Feinstein album playing in the background, Craig Claiborne talked explicitly about his life and loves. As he is fond of pointing out, his father taught him to always tell the truth. The interview is punctuated by a brief call from his lover of eleven years, calling to make sure I’d been safely collected at the station; by preparations for lunch (we made a pot of his famed corn and crab chowder), all concentration on the task at hand; romantic recollections of intimate encounters; and moments of misty-eyed sentiment as he reminisced about the men and women he has shared his life with.

Two stints in the Navy, bartending, and public relations for ABC, led Craig Claiborne to almost three decades at the New York Times. As the food news editor, he stirred the tastes of a public that hungered for food that hadn’t been scientifically prepared by home economists. Thousands of columns and articles, and a dozen or more books, fed kitchen hints, dining tips, and food facts to millions.

Scene. A youngster sits at the Chicago World’s Fair sampling his first food outside of the south. A bowl of jellied consomme with lemon juice and tabasco.

It was the best thing I ever ate in my life.

Shift scenes. Casablanca, World War II. A young man in uniform is invited by a handsome lieutenant to have a local home-cooked meal. Couscous, coriander, cumin.

One of the most important foods I ever ate was that couscous.

Shift again. The Ile de France, an ocean voyage. A young man, now out of uniform, tenderly bites into a Turbot a l’Infante.

I took one bite and my god, I was transmogrified. I decided, I’ve got to learn how to cook French.

From there life moved swiftly. Hotel school in Lausanne, Switzerland. A couple articles for Gourmet on tea and vodka. Pushing Fluffo, a butter substitute, led to contacts at the top restaurants in town, and more importantly, with Jane Nickerson, then the food editor for The New York Times. When Jane announced her retirement, Craig’s employers took her to lunch to celebrate.

Over a nice bottle of wine, Jane described her difficulty getting away from the newspaper. She said, “everybody in town has tried. If they can scramble an egg and type with two fingers they’ve applied for this job and The New York Times has refused to take anybody.” So after a couple glasses of wine I thought, why not little old me? So I went back to the office and, if you’ll pardon the expression, I closeted myself, and wrote a note to Jane Nickerson, saying, you know all about my background, do you think The New York Times would consider hiring a man as a food writer?

Two interviews, numerous phone calls, a tense vacation on Fire Island, and the job was his.

I went back out to the beach and then I started crying, uncontrollably, saying, I said, by god, what will you ever write a column about? I saw this guy hauling in a bluefish and I said, by god, I’ll write an article about bluefish.

In thirty-three years of writing four and five columns a week, did he ever write that article?

I never wrote a column on bluefish. I don’t like bluefish.

Every writer has those moments that he or she wishes they’d had a chance to write about, opportunities that happen once in a lifetime. Any regrets?

Well, now that I’m gone [from The Times] I can think of things I’d like to do, but let me think… There were two interviews that didn’t work out… But off-hand I can’t really think of one.

He reflects a bit more and then suddenly remembers a writer’s worst nightmare. A trip through the provinces of China, hosted by the U.S. ambassador to Burma and his wife, Burt and Lily Lee Levin, and one of the top restauranteurs in China and Hong Kong, Jimmy Wu. He returned with stacks of 3 by 5 cards.

I spent three solid days writing about this trip to China, and the third morning… I pressed the wrong button. I erased the entire thing. About twenty seven pages. Gone… I couldn’t go back and rewrite, because the notes were all shuffled, I didn’t have them numbered. Gone, with the wind.

In all those weeks in China, what stood out as memorable? Two things. An awful mountain train trip from Chengdu to Chongqing in the Szechuan province, for some of the best food he had on the trip…

It was street food. Which we ate in the rain. They had marvelous, fantastic soups, and noodles, and Szechuan pickles.

and back in Chengdu…

They brought us the next little thing, about that long and that big. I pick it up with my chopsticks and I said, “what is this?” She says, “the penis [bull’s].” Well, I ate the goddamn thing, but it was so unappealing. Not because it was a penis, I’ve had enough of those in my mouth, but it was just so awful to eat.

Well, as long as the subject came up…

I’m not bragging, but I have never met someone, even a straight guy, who I haven’t been to bed with, who I couldn’t take. I mean, I don’t care how many children they have, you get anybody in the right situation, gain his confidence, and after a couple of drinks, if you’re kind, he will. That’s all.

Being gay prior to the ’80s has often been touted as a dark, furtive existence. Corporate life at ABC and The New York Times have never been noted as hotbeds of gay support. What was it like?

Everybody I’ve worked with knows I’m gay. All the people at the New York Times knows.

Did he ever find that it was a problem?

No. The funny thing is, that when my book [A Feast Made For Laughter] was published, Arthur Geld, who was the number two man at the time, it was his attitude to go into more detail about what it was like to be gay. It was never a problem.

And at ABC?

We had a boss named L. Henry. And once, after I’d been there about a year, I told L, I said, “L, you know, I’m gay.” And he shrugged his shoulders. The next day I told Dean [his roommate], and he said, “What did he do, give you a raise?”

You first came out publicly in your memoirs. Did you have any concerns about family, or “the public”?

I had a funny experience. When I was writing my memoirs, and the people I cared about, stating that I’m gay… I’ve never felt guilty about being gay, all my life. I’ve been through a lot of psychotherapy, but I can’t recall ever feeling guilty about homosexuality. And if anybody in the world wanted to know about my sexual persuasion, I’d tell them the truth. Why should I be ashamed, I didn’t ask for this… So, the only thing I cared about was my family, my niece and nephew, and my sister, I didn’t know if she cared or not. So I went down to Mississippi. We went to a restaurant. And I said, “The reason I came down, really, is to tell you that I’m writing my autobiography, and I’m going to talk about my homosexuality in it.” And so, nobody stopped eating, no dropped forks. So when I went to the men’s room, my niece turned to my sister and she said, “Did you hear what Craig said, that he’s going to tell people he’s gay?” And my sister said, “Look, my daddy always told him to tell the truth.”

Outside of being openly gay at work and in his memoirs, and socializing with friends, has he been active in the gay community?

I am not an active person. I get so tired of charities. I’m supposed to be writing the preface to an AIDS cookbook. God knows when it’ll ever come out. I wrote the preface. It’s done. I was host for a dinner, a gay dinner at God’s Love We Deliver… I got the New York Times to first cover AIDS. Larry Kramer mentioned that in his book.

Any “Life’s Most Embarrassing Moments?”

I was invited to a party at Harry Reasoner’s. A very private party. And I got drunk. And Richard Rogers was there. So, I got close to Richard Rogers, and I said, “Mr. Rogers, I’d give anything in the world just to tell somebody that you played the piano for me.” He shuffled along, he’s getting quite old, but he stood up and walked over to the piano, and I sang, with Richard Rogers playing the piano… My voice was terrible.

Forty some years of meeting chefs and restauranteurs from all over the world cannot help but leave an impression on a person. Who stands out as the most influential in Craig Claiborne’s life?

My favorite professor was Monsieur Tour. He had a great effect on me. He was a magnificent looking man, a great skier, extremely masculine. He was the head of table service… [sighs] I’m a very sentimental guy. I think Paul Bocuse [three-star chef in Lyon, France]. I just simply adore Paul Bocuse. He’s cold, a napoleon, that pose… Barry Wine [chef, The Quilted Giraffe, New York]. I love Barry. I think Pierre Franey. Because we worked together so long. Creating recipes together…

Anyone who stands out as the love of Craig Claiborne’s life?

Oh, I think my friend now. Jim. We met eleven years ago, the 3rd of July.

Favorite foods?

I have a passion for hot dogs. Once a month I sneak off and have a hot dog, with sauerkraut. I went to a restaurant called La Petite Tonkenoise [in Paris], vietnamese, and I was served the first course. I was devastated by it. It was a vietnamese spring roll, it’s called “cia gio”. I went to Saigon, in the middle of the war, just to learn to make that one dish.

What’s next on the horizon for Craig Claiborne?

Death. [laughs] That’s the only thing left for me. No, I don’t know. Well, having Jim as a friend. That’s what I live for. To be with him. We’re going to Scotland. And he’s planning a trip next year taking a European train, somewhere. But, that’s all I want. It’s an incredible experience.

As we parted ways back at the bus station, one anecdote kept running through my head.

I had a party once, a lot of TV people. And Harry Reasoner came up to me, from 60 Minutes, and said, “Craig,” he says, we’ve known each other for so many years, you are so obsessed with sex and with food, which do you prefer?” And I said, “Harry, why can’t you have both at the same time?”


I started writing food & wine columns for the Outlet Radio Network, an online radio station in December 2003. They went out of business in June 2005.

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