Empires, Cannibals, and Magic Fish Bones
Join us as we celebrate food, the dinner table, and quite likely empires, cannibals and magic fish bones!
The hedges have not been clipped for awhile in this small garden at the edge of the Villa Borgehese in Rome. Grass does its best to cover a narrow walkway, while the sky above unfurls grey clouds and grey light like an old sheet stretched between the sun and earth. We walk through marble and … Continue reading The Mystery Of Cacio E Pepe While Walking In An Edward Gorey World.
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.
Maybe it’s because of Martin Picard’s Pied du Cochon Burger. Maybe it’s because my friend Sarah Mangrem gave me beef sausage from her family’s farm. Maybe I didn’t need a cause nor reason, maybe it’s just fate. No matter, for days and nights I’ve been carrying around a vision of an improbable, impossible sausage sandwich … Continue reading The Improbable, Impossible Sausage Sandwich.
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.
Ah, ginger beef tripe from Yum Yum Cha Cafe. Though no longer a fixture of Rice Village, many a Sunday morning the Harvey/Maya family traveled to its storefront window and entered in search of dim sum. Beef tripe comes to us from the muscle wall of the first three chambers of a cow’s stomach. The … Continue reading The Anatomical Theater: The Stomach Our Cultural Engine.
I’ve roasted a chicken or two in my life, yet when I read this post from Zester Daily today, I knew I’d been given a chance to up my game and learn a wee bit more from the French. http://zesterdaily.com/cooking/for-the-ultimate-roast-chicken-go-french/ The nation of wine and cheese has much to say about poulet rôti. Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin … Continue reading Ah, The Beauty And Philosophy Of Roast Chicken.
We open with Gustav Klimt’s Garden Path with Chickens (1916). If a blog post is a path to a particular world of sense and sound, then this one includes a chicken. And a cow. And leeks. Let’s walk further down the path. The first words of a favorite novel open thus, “You are about to … Continue reading If On A Winter’s Night A Cock-A-Leekie
Miley Cyrus has a famous tongue. So do Mick Jagger and Albert Einstein. Merriam-Webster defines a tongue as a tapering flame, long narrow strip of land projecting into a body of water, a moveable pin in a buckle. François Rabelais has Pantagruel cover an army with his tongue to protect them from a rain storm. … Continue reading My Tongue As A Sandwich With A Glass of Burgundy
I’m teaching a class this Spring semester called The Anatomical Theater. On Tuesdays we’ll discuss Western Art, the Classical Age, and the finer points of beauty and ugliness (thank you Bottichelli and Metsys); then, on Thursdays we’ll view the human body cut open, organs removed and replaced, invisible stitches making all whole again. Once and … Continue reading An Anatomical Theater With Chopped Chicken Liver On Toast (Part 2 Of A Meal)
