Empires, Cannibals, and Magic Fish Bones
Join us as we celebrate food, the dinner table, and quite likely empires, cannibals and magic fish bones!
Rain falls for six days, rain falls for one hundred and forty-four hours, rain falls for eight thousand six hundred and forty minutes, and so on. As with Aureliano Segundo who fights boredom during the four years, eleven months, and two days rain falls in Gabriel Garcia’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, I have … Continue reading Cooking Hannibal Through Thirty-Six Inches of Rainfall: It’s All About Love.
A maid and a cavalier look out at us from a 17th century kitchen in Pieter Cornelisz van Ryck’s A large kitchen still life with a maid and a gentleman. She’s scaling a fish and he’s pouring back some water or wine. Practices of a day and time, very much like today, though the clothes … Continue reading House Of Kitchens To Doctor Omelette: Cooking Strategies And Tactics.
This recipe begins with Joan Miró’s The Table (Still Life with Rabbit), 1920 with its mix of realistic details and slightly Cubist perspective, and a paragraph from Feeding Hannibal: A Connoisseur’s Handbook by Janice Spoon. On page 181, under the title “Pappardelle Sulla Lepre,” I read, In Contorno, Inspector Pazzi and his young wife, Allegra, … Continue reading Cidered Rabbit
Quoting Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin allows me a wry comment on what I’ve been anticipating with great pleasure. Oh, how I’ve been waiting for this book, and on October 18th it arrived: Feeding Cannibal: A Connoisseur’s Cookbook by Janice Poon, the food stylist for Hannibal. Bryan Fuller created a television series under the guise of a psychological … Continue reading A Taste Of Feeding Hannibal / “Tell Me What You Eat: I Will Tell You What Your Are.”
Gustav Klimt‘s painting Garden Path with Chickens from 1916 no longer exists. Hasn’t for awhile. Thirteen of his paintings stored in Schloss Immendorf castle in Lower Austria during World War II were destroyed by retreating German forces who set off explosives. Only a photographic reproduction of the work allows us to view it today. Gustav Klimt’s … Continue reading Chicken Soup For A Friend Who’s Fallen Ill.
Our collective human memory reaches far back through many doors, many hallways and rooms, and alway we find, though never that first room, a place to cook and a place to sit down and eat with each other. In Homer’s the Odyssey, Odysseus portrays this action and place as the best life has to offer. … Continue reading Happy July 4th! Some Thoughts on Cannibalism For North Carolina.
The old stories tell of a bride . . . and then a war, and as always, banquet after banquet. Remember Helen? Daughter of Zeus and Leda. In this Peter Paul Rubens’ version (there are two) Leda and the Swan (aka Zeus) may share a kiss or you could also interpret that she’s asleep, either … Continue reading Thoughts Toward A Lecture In North Carolina: A Swan, Bride, And Fatal Banquet.
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)
A simple table setting from Hannibal. Well, a simple precision given the layers of life and death unfolding between Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham. Consider this a dark bridge to the scene from Pan’s Labyrinth which ended the previous post. Fork and napkin on the left, knife on the right, wine glass also on the … Continue reading Cochon De Lait For The Three Graces, Day Two With Some Bollywood For Good Measure
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!
