Empires, Cannibals, and Magic Fish Bones
Join us as we celebrate food, the dinner table, and quite likely empires, cannibals and magic fish bones!
Midsummer in the Stockholm Archipelago and I’ve finally become accustomed to falling asleep in daylight. Important to blanket windows, shut eyes tightly, and dream about water and land washing, breaking each other. It’s about four in the morning when I wake to light and silhouette, and what can I do, emerging colors call me out … Continue reading Broth Of A Forest Floor: Walking On Storön.
We’re set floating in this light on midsummer day’s eve. The Baltic’s still, now that its been channeled around one island after another, though the surface slightly bends like a plate of glass heated and slowly turning in and out of itself. Think of a mirror dulled with age reflecting a dusted blue sky ringed … Continue reading Storön–Vignettes From The Big Island.
The first thing you notice about Pieter Aretsen’s painting A Meat Stall With The Holy Family Giving Alms (1551) is all the meat–an ox head with eyes staring at us, pig trotters on a cabbage leaf, whole side of a slaughtered pig split cleanly down the spine, a large ham shank, sausage, smoked fish, herring; … Continue reading Thinking About Who’s Sitting Down To Dinner In North Carolina
Here is a description of a food class I’m offering this mid-winter session at The Honors College at the University of Houston. More news to come. While reading, I suggest you listen to the Presentation for The Mystery Sonatas by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Von Biber. What is a recipe? It’s an All in One complex system … Continue reading The Great Banquet: The Alchemy of Recipes
What’s in a cooking pot? Here’s Rachel Laudan in Cuisines and Empires on the subject: The cooking pot, in which diverse elements were brought into harmony, symbolized culture and state. When the Greeks founded a new colony, they carried a cauldron and a spark of fire from the mother city. Confucians argued that the king … Continue reading Aaron Needs A Goat–I Have A Stew To Cook, Sins To Confess, And Côtes du Rhône To Drink. Let’s Here It For Family Bovidae!!
Up above an appropriate memento mori from Pieter Claesz (1628). Below, my beaten-up copy of Larousse Gastronomique under BONE-MARROW (Moelle) lists seven recipes: Beef bone-marrow (Moelle de boeuf). The marrow, cut into fairly thick slices (using a knife dipped in boiling water), poached without boiling in salt water and drained, is used to garnish steaks. Bone-marrow … Continue reading Beef Bone-Marrow: Removing Excess Blood, Scooping The Marrow Out, A Single Light, 350 Degrees For 20 Minutes, And An Egg.
I love cooking with bones. Over the next few blogs we’re going to consider the artistic and sustainable aspects of all sorts of bones: buffalo, chicken, fish, lamb and pig. For the joy of it, I’m also going to include shells as bones. As we consider the shank and neck, spine and trotter we’ll also … Continue reading Bones!
