Posted by Alyssa
on
17 January 2012
Surely the fact that peak citrus season falls smack in the middle of winter is a sign the cosmos is not entirely without mercy. Just when we’ve thrown away our holiday trappings, the supermarkets brim with flashes of color. Even the humblest corner bodega has good oranges right now. My amazing local grocery store is having its annual citrus festival, and the produce section is crammed with so many exotic varieties that I brought my camera with me on my last shopping trip.
The fruit was piled high in fragrant chaos — pale chartreuse pomelos the size of melons nestled alongside orange-red kishu tangerines no bigger than a kiss. White, pink, red and yellow grapefruits kept company with a dozen different varieties of oranges, including sour Seville oranges begging to be roasted with duck, and blood oranges with their deep maroon flesh and Cara Cara oranges that are supposed to taste of raspberries but tasted, to me, exactly like a sweet-sour Pixie Stick. Not only were there kumquats (and I ask you, is there a more adorable fruit than the kumquat?) there were limequats and mandarinquats (which I keep wanting to call manquats, though I can see why they didn’t). There were real live bergamots, round as cue balls, and wrinkled, deflated yuzus, both of them smelling — when I dragged a nail across their peels — twice as heavenly as all the teas and candies and perfumes that feature them…
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Posted by Robin
on
25 September 2011
One day last month, Anna Payet wore a new perfume to an outdoor party in the northern Spanish town of Roses. The fragrance was mainly citrus, with notes of bergamot, warm milk, and brown butter. Extending her wrist for a fellow partygoer to sniff, Payet gushed, "Doesn't it smell good enough to eat?"
It should. The perfume in question, Núvol di Llimona (or "Lemon Cloud") was created by her brother-in-law, Jordi Roca, pastry chef at Cellar de Can Roca, one of Spain's most acclaimed restaurants...
— Read more at The New Spanish Scent That's Good Enough to Eat at Time. And you might remember that Jordi Roca liked to sample women's fragrances at Sephora to find inspiration for his desserts.
Posted by Alyssa
on
20 September 2011
After sniffing my way through a tea shop, a rose emporium, a spice shop and a few glasses of wine, naturally I thought it was time to smell some cheese. I know, I know — I can hear you giggling. But let’s get the jokes about sweaty socks and “cutting the cheese” out of the way right up front, because when it comes to aroma, cheese has much more to offer than stink.
“Every cheese — and there are thousands — has a different smell,” says John Antonelli, the owner (with his wife Kendall) of Antonelli’s Cheese Shop, who was kind enough to answer my questions about how scent is important to his work as a cheesemonger. “And it’s not different as in a variation within the same spectrum, it’s different as in night and day. I mean, there are cheeses that smell like roses, there are cheeses that smell like steak, there are cheeses that smell like smoke.”
In fact, when it comes to aroma, cheese is so complex that when Antonelli trains his staff to use their noses, the first thing he tells them is to go home and “start smelling everything as often as they can.” What they need, he says, is to fill their heads with a reference library of aromas from the world around them.
The same kind of cheese can smell markedly different from maker to maker or season to season…
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Posted by Alyssa
on
1 September 2011
When I explain who Mandy Aftel is to people outside the perfume world I often call her the Alice Waters of natural perfume. Both women are pioneers — influential innovators in their respective fields. Just as Waters combined her passion for local, organically grown food with fine cuisine, Aftel combined her love of botanical essences with a sophisticated understanding of perfumery. And they’re neighbors: Aftel lives and works a block from Waters’ famous restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California.
But it wasn’t until my recent conversation with Aftel about her food work that I realized just how deeply involved she was in the culinary world. She has lectured vintners at Coppola Winery and sommeliers at Thomas Keller’s renowned restaurant, The French Laundry. She has taught alongside White House pastry chef Billy Yosses, and worked with a long list of celebrity chefs including Dan Barber, Wylie Dufresne and David Chang. Food scientist Harold McGee has become a friend. McGee’s newest book is on flavor, and he stopped by Aftel’s studio not long ago to sniff a few things and talk about the importance of aroma in food.
“It’s a deep question,” she said, when I asked her about the connections between her perfumery and her food work. “I do go back and forth from food to perfume and perfume to food, but I see them as very, very similar in my mind and I always did.”
“I was eating and cooking before I was a perfumer,” she continued…
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Posted by Robin
on
9 August 2011
The sundae, called a “Bieber Bocker Glory,” is inspired by the top notes of Someday, and mixes in wild berry and vanilla ice cream, fresh pear, lavender sprinkles and even edible glitter. The treat will be on offer to customers at Harrods’ new Ice Cream Parlour cafe on the store’s second floor, and will cost 19.95 pounds, or about $32 at current exchange.
— The Justin Bieber-inspired sundae can be purchased at Harrods and the proceeds go to charity. Via Vogue, Polyvore Launch FNO Style Setter... Bieber's Someday Sundae... at Women's Wear Daily.
