Recipe of the Week

Shrimp and Baby Beets with Sherry Vinegar

From Food & Wine. Photo  by me. This is easy to make. It was pretty good. Obviously, you have to really like beets. I think this would be a good side dish or as something to bring to a potluck, not so much a main course all on its own.

Ingredients

1. 20 baby beets (1 1/4 pounds), preferably a mixture of white, golden and red, greens trimmed
2. Salt
3. 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
4. 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon chicken stock, canned low-sodium broth or water
5. 3/4 pound medium shrimp—shelled, deveined and butterflied
6. Freshly ground pepper
7. 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
8. 1 tablespoon capers
9. 1 tablespoon minced chives
10. 1 tablespoon minced parsley

Directions

1. Put each color of beet into a separate small saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil, salt the water and simmer over low heat until tender, about 20 minutes. Drain and peel the beets.
2. In a medium skillet, melt the butter in 1/4 cup of the chicken stock. Add the shrimp, season with salt and pepper and cook over moderate heat, stirring, for 2 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the shrimp to a plate and cover loosely with foil.
3. Add the sherry vinegar and the beets to the skillet and bring to a simmer over moderate heat. Stir in the capers, chives parsley, shrimp and the remaining 1 tablespoon of stock and season with salt and pepper. Serve at once. 

Make Ahead

The cooked beets can be refrigerated overnight. Bring to room temperature before proceeding.

Model of the Week: Kate Moss

It’s time I featured a real icon, someone who makes all the other girls look like rank amateurs – and no one is more iconic than Kate Moss.  Right now the great supers are having something of a renaissance. Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington and Kate are all getting tons of editiorals, covers and A-List ad campaigns. It is nice to see them all back at work. Unlike the other supers, who all took years off to raise families, collect art and Phds, or in Naomi’s case behave like a psychopath and go to jail, Kate has never taken a sabbatical. Kate was discovered in 1988 and she has been at the tippy-top ever since. She’s had some scandals, a stint in rehab, high-profile romances, a child, etc but she’s never been out of the public eye. She is such a chameleon it’s impossible to get tired of her. This month she’s on the cover of W. (If you’re keeping track, that’s two supermodel covers in a row, and the third this year for W). She also has  the cover of Vogue Russia, British Vogue and V, the latest of hundreds of covers she’s been on.

Interview, September 2008

British Vogue, April 2007

Vogue Australia, February 2006

British Vogue, March 2005

 

Paris Vogue, March 2004

British Vogue, May 2003

Harper’s Bazaar, May 2002

British Vogue, December 2001

British Vogue, February 2000

Paris Vogue, March 1999

British Vogue, November 1998

Paris Vogue, October, 1997

W, May 1996

 

German Vogue, July 1995

Allure, December 1994

March 1993 (Vogue unknown)

Harper’s Bazaar, December 1992

Blinded By Love

Blinded By Love, the Rolling Stones, Steel Wheels, 1989

Steel Wheels – great album. I remember the first time I heard it. No, not when it came out – I would’ve been just a kid. I remember riding home in the back of the car, listening to the tape. The first three songs were a little bleh. Not bad, but generic, you know? Then suddenly it got so good. It’s a very diverse album, with several quite unique and experimantal songs. This one is kind of a middle ground between the big muscular rockers and the willfully weird offshoots.

Blind Love

“I don’t care if they miss me/I never remember their names”

Tom Waits is one of those people who it’s hard to imagine ever being young. He has been, by all accounts, old all along. As a boy growing up in California he enjoyed going to other kids’ houses so he could hang out with their dads and play jazz records. Yet, evidently, he hasn’t always been quite as grizzled as he is now. See more here.

Now you’re gone, and it’s hotels and whiskey and sad-luck dames
And I don’t care if they miss me, I never remember their names
They say if you get far enough away, you’ll be on your way back home
Well, I’m at the station, and I can’t get on the train

Must be blind love, only kind of love is stone blind love
Blind love, the only kind of love is stone blind love
With your blind love, oh it’s blind love, stone blind love
It’s your stone blind love

Now the street’s turning blue, the dogs are barking and the night has come
And there’s tears that are falling from your blue eyes now
I wonder where you are and I whisper your name
The only way to find you is if I close my eyes

I’ll find you with my blind love, the only kind of love is stone blind love
The only kind of love is stone blind love
The only kind of love is stone blind love
With your blind love, oh your blind love, your stone blind love

It’s your blind love, the only kind of love is stone blind love
Stone blind love, the only kind of love is stone blind love
With your blind love, the only kind of love is stone blind love
Stone blind love, stone blind love

Blind

Blind, Talking Heads, Naked, 1988

Naked was Talking Heads’ last album. I’m rather proud of them for not going down the comeback road. Most broken-up band reunions are transparently motivated by cash needs. We know that David Byrne, for one, is not hurting for money. Plus, he’s too classy a character to enjoy milking off of fans’ nostalgia. Add to that the rumour that the former Heads can’t stand each other. On the other hand, Talking Heads is one broken-up 80s band that actually deserves a comeback. Journey? Styx? Rush? Please, nobody wants to see your bald heads and fat bellies. Or rather lots of dumb suckers do, but I don’t. David Byrne, your white hair and fat belly, I do want to see (no, I know David Byrne doesn’t have a fat belly, sorry).

Blessed Wild Apple Girl

This is about as obsure as it gets. Blessed Wild Apple Girl was one of the last songs Marc Bolan recorded with Steve Peregrine Took as Tyrannosaurus Rex. It never made it onto any of their albums. It may have been used as a b-side for a single during the Ride A White Swan transitioning phase. It occasionally washed up on compilations or as a bonus track on the new reissues.  Someone once commented to me that it sounds like it was recorded underwater. That’s apt, and probably the intention as well.

Gipsy Girl, oh twisty pearl
Sat upon the stony pale mare
Beltane Eve, by the fires you grieve
With your deep Babylonian hair

(chorus)
Blessed Wild Apple Girl move along now
Blessed Wild Apple Girl move along now
Blessed Wild Apple Girl

Gipsy girl, oh twisty girl
Your hands are dangled with flowers
Tangled torn, so stately born
For a throne in the hill of the Island

(chorus)

Fools have said the hills are dead
But her nose is a rose of the Shea
A silver sword by an ancient fort
For my gifts from this child of the trees

(chorus to end)

Bless You

Bless You, John Lennon, Walls & Bridges, 1974

Walls & Bridges is my favorite solo Lennon. The album was recorded during John’s notorious ‘lost weekend’, during which time he drank too much, hung out with nogoodniks like Harry Nilsson and Elton John, but also redeemed himself by mending fences with his son Julian. And still found time to write some of his best songs.
Bless you wherever you are
Windswept child on a shooting star
Restless Spirits depart
Still we’re deep in each other’s hearts

Some people say it’s over
Now that we spread our wings
But we know better darling
The hollow ring is only last year’s echo

Bless you whoever you are
Holding her now
Be warm and kind hearted
And remember though love is strange
Now and forever our love will remain

Bleecker Street

 ”30 dollars pays your rent on Bleecker Street”

Nowadays $30 might buy you a cup of coffee on Bleecker Street. That was before the Village became a tourist attraction, back when real people still lived there. I think now the only part of Manhattan where real people (non-gazillionaires, that is) live is Harlem, and even that is getting gentrified fast. No, but I love the Village and I try to walk down Bleecker Street every time I’m in New York. There’s plenty of cool shops and you can still find cheap food. Who cares if all the normal people commute from Joisey.

Model of the Week: Agyness Deyn

I was going to feature Agyness Deyn this week anyway, and then she fortuitously scored the cover of Harper’s Bazaar. (Agyness’s Bazaar cover is for subscribers only – newsstand copies feature a young television-based nonentity named Leighton Meester) Agyness is fashion’s most beloved It Girl,  because she follows the long tradition of youthful cool girls from Jacquetta Wheeler all the way back to Edie Sedgwick and Twiggy. You know them – girls with short hair, long legs and huge smiles. Agyness is known for her neon-bright hair and her enormous joie de vivre. She’s like a waif without the angst. Agyness stands out becuase, unlike most other models she doesn’t present an image of impossible perfection. She’s more like a regular girl. She’s somebody a hip college girl would want to be, or have as a friend. Agyness has her own style and she has fun. She certainly one of the most relatable models we have. Many of the images of well-groomed glamour we see in fashion seem impersonal and bland, because the very young models themselves can’t relate to it. Agyness is the antithesis of that. She’s not too perfect, never too groomed and always charming.

Blank Frank

Look, he still has his hair. Yowza!

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