Empires, Cannibals, and Magic Fish Bones
Join us as we celebrate food, the dinner table, and quite likely empires, cannibals and magic fish bones!
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.
I’m working on two lectures I’ll give next week on Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein. Much to offer. I could focus upon the sublime views of nature such as Victor Frankenstein contemplates just before he meets his creation high in the Alps. I resolved to go alone to the summit of Montanvert. I remembered the … Continue reading The Anatomical Theater: The Anatomist And The Butcher.
Ah, the brain. Fergus Henderson devotes an entire section of his Nose to Tail cookbook to Lamb’s Brains. Why lamb’s brains? When brains were available, lamb’s were cheap compared to the calf’s, but still delicious, creamy and rich, and no other ingredient offers you better possibilities of the gentle give and crunch combination. (58) Thank … Continue reading The Anatomical Theater: The Brain (part 2)
This beautiful looking cow heart you’re gazing at appears courtesy of Regula Ysewijn, who blogs under the title Miss Foodwise. Stuffed with kale, bacon and mushrooms this hearty repast reminds us that any body part in a human we probably dine on when it comes from an animal. More about this fabulous dish later, for … Continue reading The Anatomical Theater: Heart and Blood
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
It’s November 8, 1895, late at night, and Wilhelm Röntgen, Professor of Physics in Worzburg, Bavaria sits in a dark room. He’s enclosed a discharge tube in a sealed, thick, black carton. He lifts a paper plate covered on one side with barium platinocyanide in front of the discharge tube and the plate turns fluorescent. … Continue reading The Anatomical Theater: Bones
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
No, not garbage, nor a disturbing twig sculpture out of True Detective. Though, all in all, given where we travel in this essay, similarities abound. A male satin bowerbird crafted the construction at the top of this post. Why? I found the answer in David Rothenberg’s Survival of the Beautiful: Art, Science and Evolution. He’s … Continue reading “I Just Want To Make Love To You.” Actually, I Just Want To Make Art. Bowerbirds, The Faerie Queen and Etta James.
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.
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
