Onion Pie With A Cold Eye Cast On Fear And Hate In America.

Early 1960s America and Nietta Dunn defies Jim Crow laws by sitting at the H. Green lunch counter in downtown Lexington.  African-Americans may buy food, but they may not sit at the counter.  Here’s the thing, food doesn’t work well with fear and hate–not when planting, not when harvesting, not when cooking, and especially not … Continue reading Onion Pie With A Cold Eye Cast On Fear And Hate In America.

Smoking Pork Belly, Making Black Truffle Butter, Drinking Some More Woodford Reserve And Talking To The Dead, While I Listen To Barbara Dane And Uncle Tupelo. (Part 3)

The day begins with bourbon.  Well, actually the day began with the removal of the pork belly from its brine, lighting of hickory wood, and now since my only duty today calls for a careful watching of the smoker, I feel morally sound in tipping a glass . . . or two.  Three pounds of … Continue reading Smoking Pork Belly, Making Black Truffle Butter, Drinking Some More Woodford Reserve And Talking To The Dead, While I Listen To Barbara Dane And Uncle Tupelo. (Part 3)

Thoughts of Gallows, Ossuaries, Bourdain, Zombies and Cézanne As I Once Again Prepare Roasted Bone Marrow (Part One Of A Meal)

To further my French studies, Natalie Holstein-Charron has lent me Alistair Horne’s Seven Ages of Paris.  I truly admire the tenacity the Parisians display in executing each other from the time of Philippe Auguste in the twelfth century to the notorious Cardinal Richelieu in the sixteenth.  And I haven’t yet reached the Revolution!  Here is … Continue reading Thoughts of Gallows, Ossuaries, Bourdain, Zombies and Cézanne As I Once Again Prepare Roasted Bone Marrow (Part One Of A Meal)

If The Foodie World Is A Family Drama, Then It May Look Like “Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf.”

Above is vision of hell from an unknown Portuguese artist from the sixteenth century.  I’m thinking the great Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton movie. Sometimes cooks, foodies, gastronomes, gourmands and everyone else may come off as a bit too celebratory, a bit too awed by food and the culinary world.  Sometimes we need a reminder … Continue reading If The Foodie World Is A Family Drama, Then It May Look Like “Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf.”

Why A Food Blog? Roux And A Symposium . . . Or How I Dance, Talk, And Brown Butter At The Same Time.

Greenling has delivered okra!  Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking tells us that “Okra comes from the annual plant Hibiscus (Abelmoschus) esculentus, a member of the hibiscus family and a relative of roselle and cotton.  It originated in either southwest Asia or eastern Africa, and came to the southern United States with the slave … Continue reading Why A Food Blog? Roux And A Symposium . . . Or How I Dance, Talk, And Brown Butter At The Same Time.

Ancient Cuisine Philosophy For 500, Jack! The Odyssey To Yum Yum Cha To Nineveh To Cajun Country.

Why would this episode of Empires, Cannibals and Magic Fish Bones begin with Jacques-Louis David’s The Death of Socrates?  Ah, just you wait–death, drink, friends, and something sacred are all in the air. The Odyssey, so much eating, so much time: sacrifice and feasts, strangers walking in the door and feasting, sailors feasting on cattle … Continue reading Ancient Cuisine Philosophy For 500, Jack! The Odyssey To Yum Yum Cha To Nineveh To Cajun Country.

Is The World Better Off With Celebrity Chefs? Bourdain, Pépin, And Hong Kong Gardeners.

While working on a new post, I often like to scrawl through what’s happening in the blogosphere and discover a comet, orbiting planet or an emerging galaxy–today is one of the emerging galaxy days, I think. Throughout Dan Barber’s new book The Third Plate, he’s constantly wondering if chefs like himself are part of the … Continue reading Is The World Better Off With Celebrity Chefs? Bourdain, Pépin, And Hong Kong Gardeners.