WOW! moments-sense memories

I'm initiating this thread after mrbarolo's excellent suggestion. I'll add to the discourse(if any...heh)in time.

to get the jus flowing:

circa 2000 visiting friends in Manhattan Beach: my best friend's partner cooked up a wonderful salsa pomodoro fresca over spaghetti, garlic bread, and conventional salad with green godess dressing: I dunno...something really, magically clicked...the joy and ease with which our friends served us...the simplicity and pure flavors of the meal...

a couple years later after a late dinner of roast chicken and parsleyed potatoes offered to these selfsame friends upon their visit to Chicago, I recounted my earlier epiphany...they were bemused and, I think, quite pleased with what, in their eyes, was an absurdly easy, ad hoc meal

great thread idea...

one of the most happy meal memories I have is a meal I had at the Union Square Cafe in NYC on one of my very first business trips. I was alone and spending the weekend in NYC on the company's dime and had just seen Bernadette Peters do Annie Get Your Gun on Broadway, so I was already in a good mood. I had wanted to eat at the famous Union Square Cafe and so on a Sunday afternoon I simply walked in and asked to be seated without a reservation -- the very kind front of house man said he couldn't sit me at a table but would I like a seat at the bar? It was a fabulous meal. The bartender looked after me like she was my best friend -- I got complimentary tastes of wines, especially a Muscat with my dessert that was out of this world and the best memory of the whole meal was a simple side dish of Tuscan Beans that were creamy and sagey and just the perfect garlickly goodness -- probably the first time I had ever tried a dish like that and I remember I just wanted to eat them forever and ever. Ah....memories.

I also remember spending the week with a friend in her family's sprawling cottage up on Lake Canadaigua in upstate New York and we pretty much did nothing but eat and swim in the lake for four solid days. (well...we also did some great jigsaw puzzles!) and we had a Gourmet magazine with us which had a lovely shortcake recipe with mixed berries that was out of this world -- they had orange rind in them and were sweeter than an average shortcake and we made homemade lemonade and the shortcakes and had hand picked blackberries and raspberries along with some good strawberries which had been mascerating in grand marnier with some lovely whipped cream and it was like paradise on earth--the perfect summer dessert. You can find that shortcake recipe at Epicurious but I've never made them again because the memory of them was so special -- I don't want to mess with it! <grin>

The aroma of lavender, rosemary, and wood-burning fires in the air on a clear chilly, spring evening in the mountains of the Luberon. Nothing to do directly with food, of course, but such experiences might lead to an explanation of why the French are so successful in the matter of sensory things.

In Maine, spending a few early-morning hours picking a thousand tiny wild strawberries and baking a pie with them for dessert after a lunch of lobster rolls, overlooking the rocky coast.

Bill/SFNM

Adding on to the ones that are still in the orig. thread where this began:

* In one of Marcella's books there is a recipe for a barely cooked tomato herb sauce wherein you simply combine fresh tomato and fresh chopped herbs, pour very hot oil over them and serve. There is a dramatic hiss (like the arrival of "sizzling platter" in a chinese restaurant) and an explosion of aroma. The first time we tried this, the combination of simplicity, drama, and flavor was a big "wow."

* One night the aforesaid (previous thread) mentor-in-all-things tried something from (I believe) a Jeremiah Tower book: it's been a long time, but I believe it was as simple as salmon fillets on the grill (with mesquite) tied up with bacon and basil leaves. And some big ol' French white. Big wow.

* Once, helping the mentor move, a fellow faculty member brought a bone-basic bean salad: white beans, lots of great olive oil, lots of fresh garlic, basil. People were practically stripping off their clothes and trying to dive in.

First trip in Alaska, a B&B in a remote park (Wrangell St. Elias), we baked in the oven of our room a whole Copper River King purchased that morning, after having crossing the Copper River on the way to the park that day. Eating that perfect fish, while occasionally looking out the window at the mountains the the nearby glacier, was one great WOW. I've wondered how much the atmosphere affected how good we thought the fish was, and my conclusion is that, while the atmosphere was great, the fish really was that good.

Jonah

Two memories for now...

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My parents business caused them to be busy on the weekends so every Saturday I was sent over to Cock Robin for a sack of burgers and fries.

Walking home with that bag under my nose and the odor of fries wafting up... Needless to say there were a few missing fries by the time I got home.

It's the odor of those fries mingled with the grilled onion and burger I'll never forget.

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Once for a holiday I smoked a brisket, low and slow. When I brought it in and placed it on the kitchen table the family clustered around and started grabbing slices as fast as I could slice. No plates, buns, sides.

Somewhat like a pack of wolves.

Beautiful thread. Hard to imagine a better one...if only I had memories...oh yeah, Portage Park, circa 1964, I'm leaving the pool (it's still there and still cool in all its Pan-American glory) with my dad, and in an unprecedented expression of parental largesse, he buys me a hot dog from the stand in front. It's a quarter (at that time, a measurable percentage of weekly income), and a flavor I had only dreamed of, having smelt it many times, leaving the pool, exhausted and hungry as only a pre-teen who has exercised full out for several hours can be. I don't remember how it tasted. I do remember it smelled great.

David "I just want to smell it" Hammond

-a vanilla ice cream cone after a long day at the beach, still the most refreshing thing I've ever had

-my mother's chocolate cream pie, which makes everyone at the dinner table go silent on the first bite

-my first 'fancy' meal out, on a family vacation where I was allowed to have crabcakes with a mustardy hollandaise sauce. I think this is where I learned of contrasting textures, with the succulent crab, crispy edges, and rich sauce

-a warm tomato from the garden with salt on it

-coming home from college to my mom's potroast - after so many months of eating in the cafeteria, I opened the door to smell that and it is still my go-to comfort food

-orange-vanilla frappes - also my mom's work. When I was sick and finally feeling better, she would put vanilla ice cream, orange juice, and honey in a blender - it was a way to pack a lot of calories all at once, and it felt so good on my sore throat and empty belly

-my grandfather's homemade parker house rolls - the softest, butteryest thing in the world

-bread in Paris

-sushi outside the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo

-cheese and wine in southern Spain

-lobster rolls and steamers on the coast in Boston - actually, steamers I got to have as a birthday dinner at home, somewhere in NY because my mom went searching for them. Those hot little briny critters dipped in melted butter....

-as I'm remembering all this, I am realizing how much food is connected to love; I mean I've always known this, but pairing favorite memories is so very attached to feeling cared for, being in good company, and being relaxed.

Family dinners out at the local Howard Johnsons when I was just a tiny tot - my favorite part of the meal was of course dessert - i always got the little dish of ice cream that were topped with these tiny colorful glass animals (which were later changed to plastic, and even later discontinued). I had quite the collection...

"Exotic", ethnic meals made by mom of Chop Suey (from a can - can't remember the name of the very popular brand name from the early seventies) and of Old El Paso Tacos.

My 16th birthday at a fancy restaurant (I believe a Chuck Muir's seafood restaurant in the detroit area) with mom, dad and my boyfriend (chip eising - no kidding. I later dated another chip - chip baker. my life was apparently always meant to head in the food direction). I ordered alaskan king crablegs, which i was having a very difficult time cracking. an older gentleman at the next table was enjoying my misfortune for a few minutes, then he sent over a huge portion of shelled crab for me to enjoy - he didn't know it was my birthday so it was a wonderful surprise for me. ended up he was our waitress's father.

My first experience with middle eastern food at Woody's Oasis in East Lansing. Falafel & hummous. yum.....

the last month's of getting to hang out with my dad, walking the isles of Costco having "samples" for lunch. Didn't matter what we ate - I got to hang out with my dad.

The HoJo's reference brought a little flood:

Going to the Bronx Zoo with my infinitely patient grandfather. Camel rides, feeding the elephants peanuts from my hand, Wise potato chips, Zoo popcorn, and then off to the nearby HoJo's for fried clams. For some reason I absolutely adored those bready, chewy fried clams as a kid and I thought that HoJo's was the only place in the universe they could be found.

Then either Good Humor ice cream from the truck, (the thrill of the ice cream man in his crisp white uniform and the changemaker on his belt), or even better, Bungalow Bar. Like a Good Humor truck, but it had a little peaked roof on it with a chimney that made it seem infinitely more magical.

Funny to mention Wise Potato chips and grandfathers. My grandfather, (who lived in the Bronx, so going to the zoo was a given when visiting) was a commercial illustrator in NY. While he wasn't the creator of the Wise owl, he apparently spent time drawing it, since we have sketches, comps and finished art that he did, along with the corn flakes rooster.

I too have found memories of Hojo's clams, and a vague memory of white chocolate lolipops they sold with their logo on it. My strongest food memory from childhood were the freshly roasted peanuts in Atlantic City. You could smell them all the way down the boardwalk, and a guy in a Mr. Peanut suit would be waving outside.

Memories as I got older:

A blueberry picked on the top of a mountain in North Carolina, after a long hike.

An ear of corn, plucked from a field near Dekalb, and immediately plunged into waiting boiling water, served with bbq chicken, killed and plucked hours earlier.

An oyster plucked from a rocky beach of an island in the Huaraki gulf in New Zealand.

A simple lamb chop and a kumara (sweet potato) served at the Blackball Hilton, (now called Formerly the Blackball Hilton after the International chain's lawyers heard of it) in a small ex-mining town in western New Zealand's south island.

The mission fig relish, served alongside a rabbit rillete, at Thomas Keller's Per Se, NYC.

A simple lunch in Erice, Sicily consisting of a Caprese salad, an arancini (fried rice ball), cannoli and some marzipan scraps.

A sample bite of a grilled stilton and cognac-and-honey-infused-prune sandwich that a local chef gave me the other night.

For me, it was a meal we had in 1989 at Nepenthe, in Big Sur. We were taking a much-needed vacation, driving the Pacific Coast Highway from L.A. to Oakland. Unfortunately, we left for California the day after a rather large earthquake -- I remember packing for the trip and having family members call to see if had cancelled our reservations (we had not). On our way to Big Sur on a two laned highway, it became foggy to the point that we could barely see two feet in front of our rental car. To make matters worse, there were frequent rock slides onto our lane and we never knew when they were coming. My foot ached from pushing the imaginary brake on the passenger side and I was sure we were going to be killed. We were driving very slowly so we wouldn't run into anyone in front of us and could barely make out the road. We finally got through to Big Sur, changed our clothes and went to Nepenthe for an incredible dinner. The fog had broken and we sat, staring at the view of the mountains, sharing a bottle of wine and ordering grilled fish, vegetables and salad. We finished with some kind of chocolate dessert. I don't know if it was the fact that we felt we had barely escaped death, or that the food was that delicious -- but both my husband and I swear it was one of the best dinners we ever had. We later heard that the road was closed down shortly after we arrived because it was too dangerous.

I'd dine there again in a heartbeat.

Suzy