I'm all out of words

Apologies for the lack of posting. This month marks the conclusion of work on my 2nd cookbook entitled Good Fish, on track for an April 2011 pub date. The last 6 months have been the hardest I've ever worked on any project. Ever.

I'd like to show you a few of my favorite pics taken by my incredibly talented friend and photographer Clare Barboza. Clare is like a missing limb - I have both arms and legs but I don't have her vision. I don't have her vision and I don't have her camera.

I want her vision. I want her camera.

We are trying to go for a Japanese-ish meets Northwest-ish, rustic, clean look. Iron, wood, and white all came up at meetings where we discussed the theme of the book. I adore this pic of skillet trout with chanterelles, bacon and sage.



Which doesn't mean there can't be color, like with these local spot prawns on mango "crack" salad.



Some of the recipes in the book are more challenging, like these seared scallops with carrot cream and pickled carrots.




But the majority of the recipes are easy to prepare, like these halibut tacos with tequila. Especially the tequila part, which you just drink (notice my form - I've done this before).



I appreciate all the support I've gotten while working on the book. You know who you are - but I especially want to thank (grovel to) the wine goddess who has put up with my sloppiness, crankiness, tiredness and lack of availability-ness.

(I told you I was all out of words.)

Next on track is work on a series of fish cooking videos. I've always wanted to do some fun cooking videos and I thought it would be nice to accompany the publication of the book with some associated educational videos for all of you out there who may be intimidated by fish or even for the chefs out there who've never worked with fresh sardines or geoduck or whole albacore. I've learned many techniques on YouTube. I've learned various filleting techniques from shouting guys on moving boats with shaking cameras. It's always entertaining, but I thought you might also want to see the techniques up close, with good sound and video quality.

That's where Luuvu Hoang comes in.

I met him through mutual friends and loved what he did with Lorna Yee's book promo video (see my last post). He agreed to my plan (mu-hahahahahahah) and now he's stuck with me as we prepare to film 15 fish technique videos - everything from removing pin bones from a salmon to "dealing" with a randy geoduck.

Give him some props please because our first project together was filming the intro sequence. I had this idea to make goldfish crackers swim into the letters of the book title. The poor guy was standing on a table for 2 and 1/2 hours while I incrementally advanced the crackers like some slow motion game of Risk where no one got Kamchatka and everyone was hungry and tired and couldn't eat any of the goldfish pieces. Here it is set to my brother Jesse Selengut's music. Jesse donated a sample of his great jazz straight from NYC.

Good Fish from LuuvuH on Vimeo.

I'll be back to more regular posts now. I've missed my blog. I've missed you. I've missed daily showers.

Writing a book can sure blow your proverbial literary load.