Empires, Cannibals, and Magic Fish Bones
Join us as we celebrate food, the dinner table, and quite likely empires, cannibals and magic fish bones!
Look at it. So beautiful. Firm, bright color, everything you would want. Consider Harold McGee’s view of skin in On Food and Cooking. Usually cooks don’t welcome large amounts of toughening connective tissue in meat. But taken on their own, animal skin, cartilage, and bones are valuable exactly because they’re mostly connective tissue and therefor … Continue reading The Anatomical Theater: Skin And Flesh
I’ve roasted a chicken or two in my life, yet when I read this post from Zester Daily today, I knew I’d been given a chance to up my game and learn a wee bit more from the French. http://zesterdaily.com/cooking/for-the-ultimate-roast-chicken-go-french/ The nation of wine and cheese has much to say about poulet rôti. Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin … Continue reading Ah, The Beauty And Philosophy Of Roast Chicken.
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
We open with Gustav Klimt’s Garden Path with Chickens (1916). If a blog post is a path to a particular world of sense and sound, then this one includes a chicken. And a cow. And leeks. Let’s walk further down the path. The first words of a favorite novel open thus, “You are about to … Continue reading If On A Winter’s Night A Cock-A-Leekie
Let’s read the opening sentences of Jane Grigson’s Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery, an awe-inspiring journey through cooking and prose. It could be said that European civilization –and Chinese civilization too–has been founded on the pig. Easily domesticated, omnivorous household and village scavenger, clearer of scrub and undergrowth, devourer of forest acorns, yet content with … Continue reading Jane Grigson, Pig Tails, Henri Michaux And Debussy–All From a Far-Off Country.
I’m pausing in my reconstruction of Thanksgiving in order to get all philosophical about cooking with corn meal. Here is part of what the Larousse Gastronomique has to say about polenta: Piedmont form of maize (corn) meal porridge. It is made simply of maize flour dried in the open and not in the oven. Polenta … Continue reading The Philosophy of Polenta as I Whisk with Napoléon, Rousseau, Sebald and Aurelius.
Well, it’s been awhile since Thanksgiving, and in the last post I left everything hanging on the preparations; however, with the semester over, oral exams finished, and only the tabulation of judgment left, I can take some time to turn back the clock and review the gastronomic event that was November 27, 2014. I’ll narrate … Continue reading Reconstructing Thanksgiving with a Kir Normand.
What’s in a cooking pot? Here’s Rachel Laudan in Cuisines and Empires on the subject: The cooking pot, in which diverse elements were brought into harmony, symbolized culture and state. When the Greeks founded a new colony, they carried a cauldron and a spark of fire from the mother city. Confucians argued that the king … Continue reading Aaron Needs A Goat–I Have A Stew To Cook, Sins To Confess, And Côtes du Rhône To Drink. Let’s Here It For Family Bovidae!!
You want to prepare for and enjoy the World Cup match between France and Nigeria today, don’t you? Well, here are five necessary steps. 1.) Procure and drink a rosé from Provence. I recommend Bieler Pere et Fils Rosé 2013. And if you don’t have time to chill it, don’t worry you can drop in a … Continue reading France And Nigeria? Rosé, Une Boucherie, Frejon Et Asa.
