Empires, Cannibals, and Magic Fish Bones
Join us as we celebrate food, the dinner table, and quite likely empires, cannibals and magic fish bones!
The Magician (1952) by Rene Magritte where the fantasy of a human with four arms navigating table to mouth contains a question for our senses–is taste, along with our other senses, a fantasy, an illusion? This steak may not be a steak. We are familiar with questions about the veracity of our senses. They’ve been … Continue reading What Is Really In My Mouth? The Case For Cypher Over Socrates.
Such a sacred tableau in Pablo Picasso’s 1902 painting La Soupe. There’s a graceful, reverential bow on the part of the mother as she offers a bowl of soup to her daughter, who springs forward, ready to receive sustenance, ready to receive a gift. I love cooking soup. A small, crafted merging of nature and … Continue reading A Few Thoughts On Soup
. . . when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her. There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” And so begins an … Continue reading Breakfasting With The White Rabbit Or At Least His Heart, Liver And Kidneys.
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.
Tuesday morning which means we’re off to the farmers’ market in Praça General Osorio, Ipanema. I love going to markets whenever I travel, markets in Dublin, Madrid, Stockholm, Thessaloniki and of course, Rio de Janeiro. I’m planning on cooking with local fish and have my sights set on Namorado. Namorado in its dictionary form means boyfriend … Continue reading Market Day In Rio
Saturnalibus, optimo dierum! (Catullus) And so it is. A time of honoring agricultural deities, gathering to brave darkness, exchanging tokens of friendship, banquet-style eating of copious amounts of the gods’ riches, and drinking . . . drinking and drinking. For twenty years I’ve started Saturnalia celebrations with the seasonal Anchor Brewing Christmas Ale, 2016 … Continue reading A Southern Saturnalia
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.
Quoting Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin allows me a wry comment on what I’ve been anticipating with great pleasure. Oh, how I’ve been waiting for this book, and on October 18th it arrived: Feeding Cannibal: A Connoisseur’s Cookbook by Janice Poon, the food stylist for Hannibal. Bryan Fuller created a television series under the guise of a psychological … Continue reading A Taste Of Feeding Hannibal / “Tell Me What You Eat: I Will Tell You What Your Are.”
My morning thoughts do not immediately turn to blood, but then I read an article by Katie Macleod which offers a wonderful observation of blood sausage and what we will eat when we’re young and what we will not in Blood for Breakfast is Wasted on the Young. And then, all my thoughts turn bloody. … Continue reading Blood In The Kitchen.
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.
