Empires, Cannibals, and Magic Fish Bones
Join us as we celebrate food, the dinner table, and quite likely empires, cannibals and magic fish bones!
We’ve shopped at the farmer’s market, so now it’s time to cook. Let’s take a look at my beloved fish, meu namorado. Oh, he’s quite a catch. Scaled, gutted and cleaned. Let’s take a look at the shrimp. Lovely. I cut the namorado into thick steaks, saving head and tail for a stock. I remove … Continue reading When In Rio, Cook Like A Carioca.
A dissolute aristocrat dreams Don Quixote who dreams Miguel Cervantes writing his novel Don Quixote who dreams Pablo Picasso painting two lonely figures on a hill. Our narrator dreams the Knight of La Mancha dreaming an inn as a castle, prostitutes as maidens, and stockfish as trout. I read of Castile and Alcalá de Henares … Continue reading Dreams Of Mustard Greens, Pigs And Shrimp.
Leroy Campbell’s Table Talk portrays three generations of a family gathered round plates full of corn, greens, tomatoes and rolls. Newspaper articles focused on African-american culture stitch together the tablecloth. Bright, lively colors clothe family, furniture and walls. Two black and white portraits of ancestors watch over them all. Campbell creates his work out of Gullah-Geechee … Continue reading Gullah Cuisine: An Argument And History About Who’s in The Kitchen With A Chicken Bog.
Gustav Klimt‘s painting Garden Path with Chickens from 1916 no longer exists. Hasn’t for awhile. Thirteen of his paintings stored in Schloss Immendorf castle in Lower Austria during World War II were destroyed by retreating German forces who set off explosives. Only a photographic reproduction of the work allows us to view it today. Gustav Klimt’s … Continue reading Chicken Soup For A Friend Who’s Fallen Ill.
Ah, ginger beef tripe from Yum Yum Cha Cafe. Though no longer a fixture of Rice Village, many a Sunday morning the Harvey/Maya family traveled to its storefront window and entered in search of dim sum. Beef tripe comes to us from the muscle wall of the first three chambers of a cow’s stomach. The … Continue reading The Anatomical Theater: The Stomach Our Cultural Engine.
The year begins with champagne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party (circa 1880-81) and new dietary guidelines. Well, something like that. Marion Nestle at Food Politics offers a review of the impregnable document: The 2015 Dietary Guidelines, At Long Last, while Mother Jones points out that climate goes missing in the document: There’s A Huge … Continue reading A Week Thinking About What We Eat
I discover Edna Lewis in the pages of the New York Times. Edna Lewis and the Black Roots of American Cooking by Francis Lam casts me into the world of Freetown, Virginia where people lived close to the land, cooking their harvest in wood stoves, using wells and streams to keep food cool. Lam carefully chooses … Continue reading Edna Lewis And Kidney Bean Soup
Oh, Louis Léopold Boilly, you’ve captured the rapture of a gourmand! My turkey still swims in its brine and the duck thaws on the black granite counter, but what about the stuffing and side dishes? First off, thank you Bon Appétit for your Cornbread, Chorizo, Cherry and Pecan Stuffing recipe, which I’m adjusting to Cornbread, Chorizo, … Continue reading Vegetables, Wine, Whiskey, Hell and Smoke Alarms
The Thanksgiving Turkey has arrived! Last night Greenling delivered a Bourbon Red Heritage, Free Range Turkey from Richardson Farms. Now, that’s a turkey! Bearing reddish plumage and first bred in Bourbon County, Kentucky the Bourbon Red sat on many a Thanksgiving table from the last decades of the nineteenth century all the way to World … Continue reading There Will Be Thanksgiving!
Apparently, Miss Piggy is a Mangalitsa pig, which means Kermit needs to overcome his trepidations about marriage because she is delicious. I ordered three pounds of pork belly from Revival Market earlier in the week, and to my delight was told it would be from a Mangalitsa pig. Oh, amazing delight! Let me explain. This … Continue reading The Glory Of Mangalitsa Pork Belly With Help From Miss Piggy, Laphroaig, And The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald
