Empires, Cannibals, and Magic Fish Bones
Join us as we celebrate food, the dinner table, and quite likely empires, cannibals and magic fish bones!
Louis Vincent Palliere renders in bright colors the infamous Slaughter of the Suitors” by Odysseus and Telemachus, note those gorgeous capes tripping hues between orange and red. I love cooking sausages. All sorts of sausage. Beef, chicken, lamb and pig; andouille, bloedwurst, boudin, bratwurst, chorizo, hot dogs, kielbasa, knackwurst, linguiça, longaniza, merguez, morcilla, saucisson, soppressata, … Continue reading Sausages And Cooking Murder.
Pedro Páramo and I walk into Gallo Pelón in downtown Raleigh. He insists that to read his pages I need to drink in earth and water of Oaxaca, and I need to do it now before I let my eyes fall on his first page, his first words. We tell the hostess we’re serious about drinking mezcal, … Continue reading Drinking Mezcal With Pedro Páramo.
Somewhere in Memphis, I had my back to a very large river and my friend said, “Let’s eat some BBQ Spaghetti.” I like my friend. I like his ideas. So I said to myself, Okay Harvey, You’re a tough guy. You’ve been sapped twice, choked, beaten silly with a gun, shot in the arm until you’re crazy … Continue reading A Film Noir Weekend In Memphis With Friends And Peter Lorre, BBQ Spaghetti, Mezcal And Rye, And The Lorraine Hotel, Followed By My Own Memphis BBQ Fettuccine While Listening To Little Junior’s Blue Flames.
A pulling back of skin and forceps on flesh reveal an inner world of the human body in Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. Anatomy lessons entertained curious spectators throughout Europe from the sixteenth into the nineteenth century. Such spectacles danced the edge of the sacred and profane as worlds under the skin … Continue reading The Anatomical Theater Of Anthony Bourdain
Vichyssoise made the list for Prolegomena Number 3, but Cocido interceded, so reading Kant and cooking with a pot continues today with garbanzo beans and odd bits. Let’s leap in with the beginning of the “Second Part of the Main Transcendental Question.” Nature is the existence of things, so far as it is determined according … Continue reading Prolegomena To Any Future Cocido Madrileño.
Been away from Empires, Cannibals and Magic Fish Bones longer than I anticipated, but I’m back for the last day of 2017 as a pork belly marinated in honey and molasses smokes outside and I listen to King Crimson’s 21st Century Schizoid Man on the Live in Chicago CD (a Christmas gift from my daughter … Continue reading Happy New Year’s Eve And The Indiana Book Of The Dead.
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.
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.
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
Cheek, ear, liver and spleen, if there’s a pig part Fergus Henderson has a recipe for it. My favorite piece of anatomy is the pig head and Chef Henderson knows quite a few ways to turn a skull into a fanatic meal, so tonight I’m making a Warm Pig’s Head Salad from his The Complete Nose … Continue reading Warm Pig’s Head Salad
