Empires, Cannibals, and Magic Fish Bones
Join us as we celebrate food, the dinner table, and quite likely empires, cannibals and magic fish bones!
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
Oh, Louis Léopold Boilly, you’ve captured the rapture of a gourmand! My turkey still swims in its brine and the duck thaws on the black granite counter, but what about the stuffing and side dishes? First off, thank you Bon Appétit for your Cornbread, Chorizo, Cherry and Pecan Stuffing recipe, which I’m adjusting to Cornbread, Chorizo, … Continue reading Vegetables, Wine, Whiskey, Hell and Smoke Alarms
The Thanksgiving Turkey has arrived! Last night Greenling delivered a Bourbon Red Heritage, Free Range Turkey from Richardson Farms. Now, that’s a turkey! Bearing reddish plumage and first bred in Bourbon County, Kentucky the Bourbon Red sat on many a Thanksgiving table from the last decades of the nineteenth century all the way to World … Continue reading There Will Be Thanksgiving!
This afternoon I’m drinking a Wasatch Devastator Double Bock (creamy, malty, yeasty and bananany) as I simmer diced onion and bacon (Revival Farms) in charred leftover bits of sirloin (Augustus Ranch). Grounded in the kitchen? Dwelling and being. I stir the pan and think through rural America, national parks, salmon on the Columbia River, returning … Continue reading Savoir-Vivre: Some Thoughts On Culture In A Bowl
My visit to San Diego immersed me in a family deeply rooted in the Iberian peninsula with Portuguese and Catalan roots, so why not, as an ambitious Scots-German, cook two of the quintessential dishes of Portugal and Spain: Caldo Verde and Paella? If something’s not right, they’ll tell me. My perfect setting for serving paella … Continue reading When Surrounded By Iberians, Cook Like An Iberian!
We arrive at Mission Beach and immediately dig into the earth. Some of us further than others. Clad in a Detroit Tiger’s cap and determination, Demian takes over a hole dug by other beach-workers and continues the business of excavating. Eventually he sheds cap and shirt and runs into the Pacific where he jumps waves, … Continue reading Mission Beach, Feijoada and Thoughts About Brueghel
We have a new picture headlining our blog this week, a chalk drawing by Demian Maya created at the San Diego Natural History Museum. They currently have an exhibit entitled Skulls containing nearly two hundred skulls from around the world. Demian’s there right now with Gabriela, Helena, Yuri and Thais, sending photos of the various … Continue reading You Say Bones, I Say Feijoada!
Two years ago I fell into reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and this act opened the books of Joel Saladin, Carlo Petrini, Sir Albert Howard, Aldo Leopold, Daniel Barber and many others. And, of course, I read Wendell Berry. Poet and farmer, Berry coined the key sentence for all of us who understand there … Continue reading And Now For Something Completely Different . . . And Yet There’s Always A Bone.
Hanging out in San Diego with Gabriela’s sister Helena, her husband Jordi, and two children Yuri and Thais. We decided to have lunch at Cowboy Star in the Gaslamp district. Lo and behold, look what appeared on the table. That’s right, Roasted Bone Marrow and a glass of Laphroaig 10. I have not yet … Continue reading There Will Be A Bone
