Empires, Cannibals, and Magic Fish Bones
Join us as we celebrate food, the dinner table, and quite likely empires, cannibals and magic fish bones!
There’s something compelling about cooking bones. Maybe it’s the strangeness of seeing recognizable body parts within a food culture that so successfully conceals any connection between meat and a living or dead animal. Maybe it’s a deep memory in the brain stem of scaring off predators from their kill, gathering bones with shreds of meat, … Continue reading Cooking The Bones: Pleasures Of The Table And The Grim Reaper
Yes, Cochon de Lait stuffed and roasted for six hours on Christmas Day; all deep brown and crisp with a fat-rich world inside waiting to pour out onto our plates. Let’s back up a moment, how did this come about? I prepped my mind for two days so I would approach the pig with the … Continue reading Cochon De Lait, Day Three With The Family, Andrei Rublev, László Krasznahorkai, August Escoffier, Julia Child, Montezuma, Demeter, Ian McKellen, Robert Fagles, Uncle Tupelo, James Joyce, Bob Dylan and The Band, Flannery O’Connor, And Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds.
A simple table setting from Hannibal. Well, a simple precision given the layers of life and death unfolding between Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham. Consider this a dark bridge to the scene from Pan’s Labyrinth which ended the previous post. Fork and napkin on the left, knife on the right, wine glass also on the … Continue reading Cochon De Lait For The Three Graces, Day Two With Some Bollywood For Good Measure
The number of guests at dinner should not be less than the number of the Graces nor exceed that of the Muses, i.e., it should begin with three and stop at nine. (Marcus Varro) I have a suckling pig in my refrigerator. Over the next three days I’ll narrate his transformation from corpse to recipe … Continue reading Cochon De Lait For The Three Graces, Day One
Miley Cyrus has a famous tongue. So do Mick Jagger and Albert Einstein. Merriam-Webster defines a tongue as a tapering flame, long narrow strip of land projecting into a body of water, a moveable pin in a buckle. François Rabelais has Pantagruel cover an army with his tongue to protect them from a rain storm. … Continue reading My Tongue As A Sandwich With A Glass of Burgundy
Who would I like to have over for dinner? Well, Vincent Price, of course. Besides terrorizing my younger years with such movies as House on Haunted Hill and The Raven, he also was a noted art collector and gourmand. My grandmother passed down to me A Treasury of Great Recipes by Mary and Vincent Price … Continue reading Vincent Price Cooks Small Boys, Final Words With The Dead, The Surprise Of Wild Boar, And Eating Pork Belly While Listening To Ralph Stanley. (Part 4)
The day begins with bourbon. Well, actually the day began with the removal of the pork belly from its brine, lighting of hickory wood, and now since my only duty today calls for a careful watching of the smoker, I feel morally sound in tipping a glass . . . or two. Three pounds of … Continue reading Smoking Pork Belly, Making Black Truffle Butter, Drinking Some More Woodford Reserve And Talking To The Dead, While I Listen To Barbara Dane And Uncle Tupelo. (Part 3)
Look at it. Three pounds of Mangalitsa/Berkshire goodness. Oh, the marble-like fat, smooth and wet to the touch. The Mangalitsa certainly has its share of attention these days, with an appearance recently in the Slow Food 2014 Almanac, which highlights its taste profile, “the fat of Mangalica pigs has been shown to be better for … Continue reading Another Day With The Appalachian Book Of The Dead, While Brining Pork Belly And Pouring Woodford Reserve Double Oaked With Johnny Cash And The Civil Wars. (Part Two)
The “Weighing of the Heart” in The Egyptian Book of the Dead offers a moment we may live any day or minute on earth, and one we may believe judges all our actions and thoughts after we die. This particular Book of the Dead presents Ani, a royal scribe, descending to the underworld–a descent which transforms … Continue reading The Appalachian Book Of The Dead, Woodford Reserve, And How To Smoke A Pork Belly On Your Son’s Birthday (Part 1).
It’s late, cold and I’m drinking Jefferson’s Kentucky Bourbon Very Small Batch. Much spice and vanilla on the nose with citrus notes everywhere–green apples and rum in there as well. Taste? Very clean, refreshing, slightly sour with red-hot candy, anise, a bit of lemon, bit of grass, and cookie dough. A roll of nectar in … Continue reading A Good Man Is Hard To Find, Jefferson’s Very Small Batch Bourbon, And Grits.
