The Anatomical Theater: Skin And Flesh

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

The Anatomical Theater: Bones

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

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.

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.

Cochon De Lait For The Three Graces, Day One

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