Empires, Cannibals, and Magic Fish Bones
Join us as we celebrate food, the dinner table, and quite likely empires, cannibals and magic fish bones!
Philippe de Champaigne’s painting Saint Augustine (1645-1650) presents the image of a burning heart in the theologian’s hand to emphasize his burning love of knowledge, truth and God. A smoking heart has much to do with a love of taste, and with that, a few words about taste from the Journal of René Redzepi: The connection … Continue reading Smoking Heart Of Love.
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.
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.
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)
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
For Monday 16-Tuesday 17 May, Rene Redzepi writes the following in his journal, I went foraging, sinking into the forest, tasting things, hoping to clear my thoughts and take that deep, relaxing breath that allows me to shrug off the bustle of the kitchen. I took a second and rested on my haunches, absentmindedly picking … Continue reading A Taste Of Spring In Fall: Redzepi, Heaney and Vivaldi With A Dram Of Johnnie Walker Black
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.”
I used to burn them with a magnifying glass when I was a kid. Yes, not the most humane, civilized moment in my youth, and since then it’s been a tense relationship. Accidentally stepping into a fire-ant mound ranks as one of my least favorite things about Texas, and I usually respond with gallons of … Continue reading Eating Ants (Or How All That’s Good Tastes Like Bacon)
I’m dividing day from day as I read through René Redzepi’s year-long A Work in Progress filled with epiphanies, fights, struggles, and successes at Noma. At the beginning of Genesis, Elohim divides light from dark, water from water as he speaks plants, fish, birds and humans into existence. With a special thanks to Michelangelo. The bard … Continue reading What is Creativity?
Francisco Goya’s still-life, A Butcher’s Counter. A sheep’s head and sides of mutton. Painted between 1810 and 1812. Painted during the ano del hambre in Madrid when thousands starved to death. This was the time of Napoleon’s invasion, time of Desastres de la Guerra. In our featured painting, protein is the key molecule, movement. In … Continue reading Protein Of The Soul
