Paul Klenk | The Official Site

The Front Page is published weekly on Mondays.

New this week...

• “Vive le cliché!” An ironic French perspective on a true American original
• Plus a related article, “Julia Child, drunk on her own authority”
• Watch this week’s Feature Presentation, “The History of the Piano” by the incomparable Victor Borge
• Hear an exceptional new sermon, “Hope for the City.”

January 28, 2010 – Each Monday, The New York Times publishes stories by its readers about life in New York City, in a N.Y. / Metro column called “Metropolitan Diary.”  It’s a day-brightener of anecdotes, cute stories, overheard conversations and acts of kindness which reflect the City’s unique signature.  Read more »

January 13, 2010 – Julia Child’s publisher, Knopf, has generously made her legendary Boeuf à la Bourguignonne recipe available online (view it below).

As you know, the dish was featured prominently in Julie & Julia. After it opened, The New York Times ran a piece about the reaction in France to the movie, Child, and her cuisine.

One prominent French cookbook author and television personality, Julie Andrieu, called Child’s cuisine a “cliché,” “academic and bourgeois.”   But she does admit that Americans write better cookbooks than the French.

“The French think that they are natural-born cooks; they prepare a dish off the top of their heads, without testing it,” she said. “In France, we rush over explanations.”

And then Andrieu followed Child’s example and tested the recipe.

From the article:  After watching “Julie & Julia,” Ms. Andrieu said, she felt compelled to go home and make boeuf bourguignon according to Ms. Child’s recipe. “I cut the flour in half, and it turned out to be the best I had ever made,” she said.

So much for clichés!

While preparing for my future attempt at this great dish, I stumbled upon a terrific video (see below) produced by Wine Spectator which makes reference to chef Thomas Keller’s refined version of Child’s recipe (adapted here).  Normally I would not be interested in such a thing, but Bruce Sanderson and Owen Dugan sold me on it.  (Another remarkable suggestion worth sharing – one which I believe sells itself – is to serve the stew in puffed pastry shells!)

Additionally, they have paired a wine with the dish.  Child pioneered the inclusion of wine pairings with recipes; Sanderson and Dugan followed her lead and recommended a red Rhône Syrah, Domaine Jean-Louis Chave Sélection’s Saint-Joseph Offerus 2006.  At $29.95, it is quite affordable.  It is widely (and wildly) praised on the Web, and Snooth can help you find it.

Julia’s recipe:



Wine Spectator’s video:


I found this recipe online by accident. I was going to ask one of my two older sisters to copy it out of their Mastering the Art of French Cooking and send it to me. (The past two Christmases we’ve talked about making it, and I have a standing promise to visit Laura upstate to do just that.)

– p.k.

December 12, 2009 – Part of Julia Child’s charm is that she nonchalantly became her own authority. One of my favorite quotes is her description of her “brand-new, super-duper” Chocolate Mousse Dessert Cake:

“And here it is: Le Gâteau Victoire au Chocolat, Mousseline! One of the great chocolate cakes of all time, according to me.”

Not, “in my opinion,” but “according to me.” Who says that? A master citing herself, that’s who.

She restates this notion of self-authority in the same television segment, a guide to an intimate tableside cooking of Steak Diane:

“So, as I said at the beginning before we started cooking, I think this is a nifty little dinner (and I really agree with myself) for a chafing dish dinner.”

The menu (which she pronounces “may-noo”) of this very simple feast includes:

• A cold first course, a ceviche [“sev-EE-chee”] of scallops, with fresh artichoke bottoms
• Steak Diane (“cooked in a chafing dish, right at the table”)
• Mashed potatoes, “made out of actual potatoes, which is a rare thing” (rare in 1978, I guess)
• Fresh peas
• The cake, made with a full pound of chocolate

Child must have imbibed quite a bit of alcohol on a daily basis, I think. I cannot believe that someone whose recipes and menus included such a prodigious amount of spirits, and a kitchen so well-stocked with them, did not start drinking around lunchtime.

For this meal alone, the following alcohols are used:

As ingredients:

• For the cake, rum.
• For the steak’s sauce, “a little bit of Madeira or port… [plus] a few drops of cognac” added at the last minute for taste. (“That never hurt anything.”)

Served with the meal:

• “With the Steak Diane, I would serve a nice red Bordeaux, or a cabernet, and with the first course, the ceviche, you could serve a chablis or Riesling.”
• And with the dessert, “a fine bottle of vintage champagne, maybe one of the great California wines.”

Bon appétit, à la vôtre, and enjoy the video.



– p.k.

What are your plans for your bible gift bags? Leave a comment below.

– p.k.

November 18, 2009 – I was “blogging” in October 1998, before there was such a word. My very first Web site at Angelfire included a daily journal I posted when Dad was in the hospital, with prayer requests for him and our family.

Sadly, John passed away on October 18, 1998. Coincidentally, the next day, OpenDiary.com was founded; it is the first blog community where users could comment on each other’s entries. (The word “weblog” was coined in 1997; it was first shortened to “blog” in 1999.)

I have been unable to log into that old Angelfire account for years, so it hasn’t been edited since my last post. I sure hope it’s never deleted:

• http://www.angelfire.com/mn/paulklenk/john.html

You will notice an announcement on my old site that I was moving it to paulklenk.com. Well, I never quite accomplished that. I did own that domain name for a time, but when I let it lapse, it was snatched up by an evil realtor in the state of Washington. I’m sure I’ll never see it again.

In hindsight, I really do like the .us domain, and own several names there. Obviously, this blog is not a “commercial” site, so the .com TLD is probably not appropriate anyway.

Other Domains I Own

I’ve always loved discovering unique and snappy-sounding domain names. Often when a phrase comes to mind, I do a search at GoDaddy.com to see if it’s available to buy. Some sites I currently own (but seldom update) are plasticpie.com (humor), loudcitizen.org (politics), pkea.us (“Paul Klenk, Executive Assistant”), oriboxi.com (origami boxes), and zombiesforobama.com (for the viral video I co-produced).

I think the second domain I ever owned was www.WebSiteonaStick.com, which I used to market ready-made Web sites of my own design. I advertised my services in The New Yorker during the ’98 Christmas season; the ad can be seen on page 98 of the December 21 issue.

Recently I identified a veritably wicked domain to use for Tea Party politics; if I am successful in obtaining it, I’ll announce it on this post with an update.

But I think the jewel in my crown is a domain I purchased at 101domain.com, the registrar for Pakistan. That country’s TLD is .pk, and since my initials are PK, I searched their registry one day and found that www.paul.pk was available. Wow!  It’s so pithy, clever, and unusual – I just love it! At present, I only use it to point to my Google Profile page, but one day I may find another use for it.

– p.k.

November 12, 2009 – Recently I came across an excellent interview with the legendary operatic singer Leontyne Price. You can watch it below in a new YouTube playlist.

I’ve been a singer since I was very young, but I never became interested in studying voice until high school.  It wasn’t until college that I became serious about studying (when voice usurped piano as my major), and not until 2003 that I found a teacher who truly transformed my voice into what it was meant to be (Michael K. Warren of New York City).

Singing is a passion for many people, but a surprisingly low percentage of teachers know even the first thing about how the voice works, let alone how to pass that knowledge on to a student through training. For this reason, singers often languish in frustration, give up trying, or lower their standards and pronounce their mediocrity as excellence.  Some stumble on a modicum of success purely by accident, or due to innate talent coupled with repeated effort, not because of what they’re being taught.

Listening to Ms. Price reminded me of the majesty of the voice, the importance of setting very high standards, and the pleasure of discovering the beauty of your instrument.

I hope this interview inspires singers everywhere.



This video was produced by the National Endowment of the Arts Opera Honors program.  – p.k.

November 9 –  Crossway is offering an excellent price for New Testaments to give away during Christmas. They normally offer “outreach editions” (trade paperback versions of the full Bible, or New Testament-only) of their ESV translation; this year, they have a lovely Christmas edition and kit.

Usually these editions sell for $1.99. But this year Crossway has created a “kit” for sharing them with neighbors and inviting them to your church’s Christmas services. The kit includes:

• 50 New Testaments, Christmas edition
• 50 cheerful “door-hanger” bags
• 50 Christmas-themed Gospel tracts
• 50 invites you can personalize for your church services
• 50 gifts: 30-day passes for free access to the ESV Online Study Bible

All this for only $50, so it’s $1 a kit, which is a very good price indeed.

I am going to give this a shot in my neighborhood in Astoria, Queens, NYC.  I hope you will try it, too.  If your $50 purchase results in only one person visiting a Christmas service, and either becoming saved or renewing their commitment to Christ, it is money well spent.

I also think this would be a great way to invite your neighbors to your house for a Christmas tea! – p.k.



More info about Crossway’s “Share the Good News of Christmas ’09” kit:

Official site | Video | Purchase | Facebook page  | More outreach editions

November 2 – A video I was instrumental in getting made looks like it may go viral on YouTube this week. “Zombies for Obama” – a skit presented in this year’s NYC Village Halloween Parade – is climbing the charts 24 hours after being uploaded.

I befriended the producer and artistic director, Reynolds Butler, and the videographer, Jeff Bruzzo – separately – at a Tea Party social on September 22.  I’ve always wanted to do a political skit in the parade, and when I heard Reynolds was already planning one, I decided to become part of that project.

Later, learning Jeff was a videographer, I put two and two together and hooked him up with Reynolds. Jeff agreed to volunteer his services to capture the event on film.

The result? This wonderful video.



In actuality, I did relatively little work on this, other than hooking these two guys up and creating a Web site for the event.  (A cold kept me from marching in that rainy parade.)  Reynolds put weeks and weeks of work in, designing costumes and props, wrangling the zombies, and acting as artistic director and producer.  Jeff also did an amazing job not only filming, but editing the video and creating an excellent soundtrack.

You can read  more about this wonderful piece of street theatre at www.ZombiesForObama.com.

– p.k.

October 22, 2009 – After giving up hope I’d ever find these again, today I recovered some lost audio files of two of my calls to Dennis Miller’s radio program in June of 2007.  They were special to me, because I got Dennis and his producer to burst out laughing, so I knew I was these were moments I wanted to have forever.

Clip 1: In this call I referenced a remark someone had made about Hillary Clinton in the early days of her presidential campaign.  She evidently had had a very successful a make-over, and everyone was noticing how good she looked.


The “bangable” remark I was talking about must not have gotten any traction, because a Google search of "hillary clinton" + bangable only comes up with 288 results.  No real surprise there.

Clip 2: Here, I mentioned the opening scene of Albert Brooks’ hilarious Lost in America, a movie Dennis sub-references whenever he says, “Let’s touch Indians!”


Why did I call myself Tugboat Paulie? During the very early days of Dennis’ show, he often called upon us charter listeners to be his “tugboats” and pull his new show out to sea. If anyone has a video clip of that movie scene, do please share it!

These files were lost when my computer was stolen later that year. But I had noted the show dates on an old fan blog; this was just the information I needed when I stumbled on a way to access old episodes from Dennis’ Web archives.

(Posting these clips online in an easy-to-play format was quite a challenge. If you’d like to learn the easy way what I learned the hard way, read my new guide to Audio embedding on Blogger and WordPress here.)

– p.k.