Category: Food

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Reading And Cooking Liver While Several Species Of Small, Furry Animals Gather Together In A Cave And Groove With A Pict.

Liver has pride of place in the human body in ancient texts as a producer of blood and a source of life.  The Etruscan bronze liver above with its inscriptions guides the reader of entrails through a large, meaty organ considered the basis of life.  The ancient Greek term is hēpatoskōpia, which means to examine the liver. … Continue reading Reading And Cooking Liver While Several Species Of Small, Furry Animals Gather Together In A Cave And Groove With A Pict.

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Smoking Heart Of Love.

Philippe de Champaigne’s painting Saint Augustine (1645-1650) presents the image of a burning heart in the theologian’s hand to emphasize his burning love of knowledge, truth and God.  A smoking heart has much to do with a love of taste, and with that, a few words about taste from the Journal of René Redzepi: The connection … Continue reading Smoking Heart Of Love.

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Eating A Burning Heart Of Love.

In the early sixteenth century, Leonardo Da Vinci sketched many anatomical drawings and wrote many notes concerning the human heart. Nature has made the cords on the back side of the fleshy membrane of the three gates with which the gateway of the right ventricle is shut; and she has not made them on the … Continue reading Eating A Burning Heart Of Love.

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More Alchemy And Travels Through Space And Time With Barbecue Sauce.

Houston like any city from Ur to Rome to Hong Kong tells its story through food and those who bring food traditions from around the world to their neighborhood.  A Brief History of Houston Barbecue offers such a tale, one where I stir a barbecue sauce in my Houston Heights home and wonder, whose sauce … Continue reading More Alchemy And Travels Through Space And Time With Barbecue Sauce.

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House Of Kitchens To Doctor Omelette: Cooking Strategies And Tactics.

A maid and a cavalier look out at us from a 17th century kitchen in Pieter Cornelisz van Ryck’s A large kitchen still life with a maid and a gentleman.  She’s scaling a fish and he’s pouring back some water or wine.  Practices of a day and time, very much like today, though the clothes … Continue reading House Of Kitchens To Doctor Omelette: Cooking Strategies And Tactics.

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Alchemy In The Afternoon

Alchemy is a chemical transformation of matter through air, earth, fire and water, a process characterized by melanosis (blackening), leukosis (whitening), xanthosis (yellowing) and isis (reddening), also known as nigredo (chaos), albedo (release, daybreak) and rubedo (intensity, sunrise); which means through the language of the opus magnum, alchemy is to cook, and specifically for these … Continue reading Alchemy In The Afternoon

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The Improbable, Impossible Sausage Sandwich.

Maybe it’s because of Martin Picard’s Pied du Cochon Burger.  Maybe it’s because my friend Sarah Mangrem gave me beef sausage from her family’s farm.  Maybe I didn’t need a cause nor reason, maybe it’s just fate.  No matter, for days and nights I’ve been carrying around a vision of an improbable, impossible sausage sandwich … Continue reading The Improbable, Impossible Sausage Sandwich.

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“You Ain’t As White As You Think.” Braised OxTails And Greens.

  Society has to be crowded with the truth. The truth must kneel on football fields and spill onto our dinner plates. Chefs, writers, bartenders, bakers, farmers, and the lot of us food people are keepers of social space—and we have a responsibility to introduce racial equity as a necessary non sequitur. Tunde Wey writes … Continue reading “You Ain’t As White As You Think.” Braised OxTails And Greens.

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Creamy Coconut-Cashew Soup With Okra, Corn, And Tomatoes.

Bryant Terry is Chef in Residence at the Museum of the African Diaspora and his cook book Afro-Vegan connects food to health, identity and civic responsibility. More than anyone else, people of African descent should honor, cultivate, and consume food from the African diaspora.  Afro-diasporic foodways (that is, the shape and development of food traditions) carry … Continue reading Creamy Coconut-Cashew Soup With Okra, Corn, And Tomatoes.

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The Picayune’s Creole Cook Book

In 1900, for just twenty-five cents, a freshly published copy of the “compendium of our local culinary science . . . an authentic and complete account of the Creole kitchen” could be obtained from any New Orleans newsstand.  (10) So opens Rien T. Fertel’s essay “Everyone Seemed Willing to Help” The Picayune Creole Cook Book … Continue reading The Picayune’s Creole Cook Book