Clarinet crusader. Bunny Matthews of OffBeat interviews my old high school bandmade Tim Laughlin (from Google's cache, as OffBeat seem to be redoing their site at the moment). Tim's one of the best jazz clarinetists anywhere -- even though he and I had the same music teachers, the lessons must've really taken with him. He's at Jazzfest's Economy Hall tent this Friday at 2:55pm. Quote of the day. I am so stealin' this one.
Yeah you rite. [ Link to today's entries ]
New Orleans-bound! This'll likely be my last day of posting for a while, as Wes and I are heading back home to New Orleans tomorrow. We'll be wallowing in food, drink, music, family and friends for the next two weeks, and posting is likely to be scarce. Expect huge gobs of food porn when we get back, though. The Dozen Essential New Orleans Dishes. From today's New Orleans Menu Daily, a list of what Fitzmorris considers to be the must-have New Orleans dishes. Discuss.
I think I'll likely be having examples of all of these in the next two weeks, especially lots and lots of softshell crabs! (Good thing I still kept a coupla pairs of the 34" waist pants.) Airline food?! Aieeeeee!!! I don't eat it, and I never will, unless I'm on the verge of starvation. This boy always brings his own food aboard a plane whenever possible. This is why. Unless you're overpaying for first class, it's invariably inedible. *shudder* You've got to be fecking kidding me. Ratzinger? They picked Ratzinger?! Well, congratulations, seventeenth-century cardinals. You couldn't possibly have come up with a worse choice -- the only member of the College of Cardinals whom I actively despised. Expect to drive many millions more people away from your church, and expect the ones who have already been driven away to distance themselves another few hundred thousand light years farther off. [ Link to today's entries ]
A spectacularly bad job. That would be an apt description of my stated goal over the last couple of weeks, which was "Hey, I think I'll keep to a very strict WeightWatchers regimen and drop down below 160 to help counter the weight I'm going to put on in New Orleans in a couple of weeks." A noble sentiment, but the results could best be described as complete and utter failure. The bacon bash of a couple of weeks ago didn't help, nor did Friday night's lovely dinner at Blair's in Silverlake with Robb and Jaason. I forgot my little black dining notebook, so some details will be lost to posterity, but the Champagne at the top of the wine list turned out to be the perfect apéritif before the evening's gustation. I tend to be a tad skeptical of crab cakes, particularly after swooning over the crab cakes at Commander's Palace (almost pure, unadulterated lump crab meat brought to the table in a ring mold). I decided to try these, though, as I'm generally trusting of Chef Marshall Blair's cooking (he has yet to let me down). His crab cakes were crisp and deep-fried, light on the inside with tangy seasonings amidst the Dungeness crabmeat. Good, but I'm still sperled by huge bass drums of lump blue crabmeat and only the subtlest hint of seasoning. The main was wonderful -- sautéed skin-on lake trout filets, with butternut squash purée and blueberry farro with a chanterelle nage. Absolutely lovely flavors, and the fish was perfectly done, simply presented. I loved the farro, which I had never tried before and which is apparently really good for you (I chose something healthy ... go figure!). I'd get that again in a heartbeat, but there's more exploring I want to do on his menu. Jaason got the beef shortribs, which were falling-off-the-bone tender and looked fabulous. Wes went with the duck (one day that boy's going to turn into a big half-duck, half-softshell crab); he'll have to fill in the details, I'm afraid. The dessert was pretty good, but the whole didn't quite add up to the sum of its parts for me. Strawberry-filled crêpes with tarragon ice cream sounded fascinating, but I was reminded after I took my first bite that I'm not a huge crêpe fan, and I wished the tarragon ice cream were more strongly flavored (I'm going to try a batch at home after we get back). It was topped by a piece of candied Meyer lemon peel, and I found myself wishing I had gotten something chocolately. Wes loved his hazelnut and caramelized banana tart, and Robb and Jaason split some enormous chocolate-peanut sundae thing, which was alluring and terrifying. Blair's is a lovely (if tiny and often crowded) neighborhood restaurant that offers dishes far above the usual neighborhood joint. It's actually one neighborhood over from ours, but less than 10 minutes away (no farther than Cinnabar, really) where we'd only been once before, but after tonight we'll certainly go again and again. About last night. Oh, and my further failure to slim down was compounded by last night's meal. We had had plans with our friends Gregg and Mike to have a dinner of choucroute garni (French for "garnished sauerkraut"), the pride of the Alsace, which we all love and which I hadn't made since cooking school. I never was a fan of sauerkraut. My old roommate Andy back in gradual school was a sweetheart and a great roommate, but had a few really bad habits. One of them was to dine on sauerkraut, dumping it right from the can or jar into a saucepan and heating it up, thereby quite literally stinking me out of the house. He'd then shout through the window to tell me how wonderful it was and how much he was enjoying it, and I'd reply with graphic retching noises. In my second year at UCLA's nighttime culinary arts program, my chef-instructor was a diminutive-looking woman named Cecelia DeCastro, who could remove your head from clear across the kitchen with one quick lash of the tongue. She started picking on me from day one, after it seemed that I was the only one in the whole class to successfully carry out the first homework assignment -- make a classic chicken stock. I don't know what the other students' problem was -- perhaps I was the only one who actually read the feckin' recipe -- but she said my stock was perfect, was the only one in class that was perfect, and from that day forward she dubbed me "the overachiever". My questions were harder than everyone else's during oral quizzing; in fact, most everyone got one question, but she'd keep asking me five or six or seven, until she tripped me up. I got the stinkiest, most difficult dishes, the ones with the weirdest ingredients, the ones nobody else wanted to make. I loved it. She was a great teacher. Anyway, when I saw that one of the dishes was a braised sauerkraut with pork, I whispered to my cooking partner about Andy's stinky eating habits, and how much I hated sauerkraut, and how I hoped someone else would get assigned that dish. Naturally, Chef heard me from 40 feet away and thundered that I would be making the choucroute. Great. Turned out that I loved it. Done properly, sauerkraut is cooked after thorough rinsing in at least two changes of water, and squeezed dry. (Hear that, Andy?!) I used my old recipe from class -- first off, you get fresh sauerkraut in the bag, from the refrigerated section of the supermarket, or better yet, freshly-made from a deli. After thorough rinsing it's combined with sautéed onion, garlic and Granny Smith apple, then it's cooked in white wine (preferably a Riesling) and pork or chicken stock, with a seasoning sachet of juniper berries, a little caraway, parsley, bay and cracked black pepper. Then ... there are the pork products. The "garni", or "garnished" aspect of the choucroute is the various smoked pork products included. I had two extra-thick smoked pork chops from the European Deluxe Sausage Kitchen in Beverly Hills, which were plopped on top of the choucroute and braised for about an hour. Then on top of that went a one-pound ring of their housemade Polish kolbase sausage. Mixed in with the choucroute was several one-inch pieces of that fabulous Summerfield Farms bacon we've been eating for the past two weeks, and then I grilled up some of the EDSK's excellent andouille. That, with some roasted new potatoes and four kinds of Alsatian beer, was dindins. Fantastic, but low-fat it ain't. Dessert was a surprise -- Gregg and Mike brought over some loquat clafoutis, topped with crème fraîche, made with loquats they had picked yesterday from their tree. Unbelievably good. I can't wait until our loquat tree is ready, but it'd be just our luck that they'll probably be at their peak of ripeness while we're in New Orleans, and the birds will have gotten them all by the time we get back. I have plans for loquat preserves and loquat liqueur, if we can get any. The clafouti was washed down with a few drops of F. Meyer Quetsch Dark Red Plum Eau-de-Vie, which was lovely (and which prompted me to pull out some Meyer Poire Williams eau-de-vie that I had in the cabinet, and which went particularly well with the clafouti and gave me ideas for later). Sigh. I'm going to have to do lots of walking when I'm back home. Running with scissors. Steve Gilliard, today (via Mary ... thanks!)
And terrifying. I hope Frist gets all the bad press and plummeting approval ratings he deserves for mixing himself up in this bullshit. If he doesn't ... [ Link to today's entries ]
Cocktail of the day. You know what we're drinking today. Try not to have too many, unless you really need them. It's not all that great just a Bronx Cocktail with bitters added -- decent, but nothing to write home about -- but if you're going to drink them, today's the day.
As I mentioned last year at this time, at our house we prefer a different borough:
Now that I could drink all night. Quote of the day. This'll work for today's obligations.
No rush ... y'all got 'til midnight! Mixologist! Yay! Just as I was talking about it yesterday, my copy of Mixologist: The Journal of the American Cocktail, arrived! Yep, a 200-page, scholarly, peer-reviewed publication, which isn't to say it's just as fun as it is informative. Here's a rundown on the articles within:
That oughta keep us busy for a while! Links for ordering Mixology are in the most recent issue of The Cocktailian Gazette. If you've got an idea for an article, get to work -- submissions for next year's issue are already being considered, and the deadline is October 1. Speechless. Why do I write about cocktails and drinking before I write about things like this? Could it be because you'd have to be piss-drunk to believe some of the shit that's happening? I've never been more concerned for the future of this country than I am now. We're going to have to fight to keep it, y'all. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and the radical clerics behind him are beginning their full-on assault on our democracy, and Frist is coloring his attempt to establish one-party rule in the Senate as a theocratic crusade. From today's New York Times:
Atrios: "These people hate our country. It's really that simple. They hate the Constitution. They hate everything that we were taught (back in the day at least) is supposed to be great about the country." If Frist and the extremist religious wingnuts whose votes he hopes to get for president in 2008 (why he's doing this, of course) succeed in eliminating the filibuster by simple majority, 57 million Americans (at least) will have no voice in the Senate.
Call every independent or Democrat of faith that you know, and tell them to call their Senators, write their newspapers, call their local news stations. You want to stop the imposition of a tyranny of the (barely a) majority? Then get busy. UPDATE: Here's a statement from Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid: I am disappointed that in an attempt to hide what the debate is really about, Senator Frist would exploit religion like this. Religion to me is a very personal thing. I have been a religious man all my adult life. My wife and I have lived our lives and raised our children according to the morals and values taught by the faith to which we prescribe. No one has the right to judge mine or anyone else's personal commitment to faith and religion. Don't count on it, Harry. The man's a nut. UPDATE: Via Hunter at dKos, a statement from Rabbi David Saperstein, of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism:
Don't count on it, Rabbi. The man's a nut, and an ambitious nut at that. Still, we can hope he comes to his senses ... (yeah, right). Not all it was cracked up to be? From this week's issue of The Onion:
"Merely." Heh. The Onioneers' writing is brilliant and razor-sharp, as always. [ Link to today's entries ]
The Cocktailian Gazette. Robert has just sent out the most recent issue of the newsletter of the Museum of the American Cocktail, featuring an article by Dale DeGroff and other museum news (including the publication of the first issue of Mixologist: Journal of the American Cocktail, weighing in at 200 pages!) One line I didn't mind waitin' in. There was a great turnout for Poppy Z. Brite's signing at Dark Delicacies last night, with probably 40 or 50 people showing up. Alas, we didn't get to chat with her as much as we might have liked, but that was just fine -- we were happy to see all those people there, and glad that they were all buying books. I just hope none of them bitched (even privately) that her new work isn't horror. I love sf, horror and fantasy too, have since I was old enough to read, but c'mon people ... a terrific book is a terrific book. Get your head out of the genre sometimes! Poppy had mentioned a while back that she doesn't usually imbibe on tour, but from the looks of how things had been going lately Mary, Wes and I thought maybe she could use one. Sazerac lovers/evangelists that we are, we brought Sazerac fixins, but after having just read Poppy's story "A Season in Heck", also set in the world of Liquor, and wondering if Rickey's vehement hatred of Sazeracs came directly from the author's own tastes, I made sure we grabbed the bottle of Wild Turkey from the bar as well (we know she likes that stuff!). So, for perhaps the first time in the history of author signings at Dark Delicacies (and, I hope, not with any consternation or annoyance on the part of the owners, whom we didn't ask first but should have), a visiting author was served a Wild Turkey and soda from a 1940s-era glass from the Sazerac Bar at the old Roosevelt Hotel. We got kinda ravenous and ready for dinner, so we had to nab the glass back and pour Poppy's drink into a go cup (how New Orleans is that?) For dinner we ended up at a nearby British pub for English food "Isn't that an oxymoron?" I guffawed to Carol, who pointed out that apparently these days London is one of the best eating cities in the world, and I don't doubt it. It was typical hearty pub grub, some good and some disappointing. Wes praised the sausage rolls, which sat in a pool of deep brown gravy that most certainly came from a big jar (it glistened), and I have to admit I love good sausage rolls but was attempting to behave myself. Mary got a Ploughman's Lunch, which came with an enormous wedge of Cheddar, about the size we'd put out for everyone at a cocktail party, a pile of crisp but tepid chips (fries) and various Branston Pickle and other pickly and salady accompaniments.
My cock-a-leekie soup (boy, don't you just love saying that? "Cock-a-leekie!") was overly salty and obviously made from a prepared commercial soup base (c'mon, it's a pub; what do you expect?), but the leeks were fresh and tender. My shepherd's pie was actually pretty good, although it was made with the same glistening bottled gravy that Wes had with his sausage rolls, and it was served with fresh carrots and peas that were so brightly colored I wondered if they had been spray-painted. The vegetables were, of course, prepared in the grand English tradition -- entirely devoid of seasoning. ("God save our gracious chef / long live our noble chef / God save the chef / Send him a pepper mill / Herb and spice jars to fill / Something tasty on the bill? / God save the chef") We had fun, though -- the Guinness was good, and there was this good but strange bluegrass band there, playing both twangy old traditional songs and Savage Garden covers. By the way, if you're in the mood for comfort food and are looking for ran absolutely dynamite shepherd's pie, go to Auntie Em's in Eagle Rock and hope that it's one of the recurring specials that day. No dearth of seasoning there! And enough in one serving to feed the entire 42nd Royal Highland Regiment. Chef or hunk? (Both.)
An article in last week's Los Angeles
Apparently not every chef shares his pain. In fact, Chef Ludovic "just call me Ludo" Lefebvre of Melrose Place's Bastide seems pleased as punch to flaunt what a hunk he is (note the photo to our left) in his new book Crave: The Feast of the 5ive Senses, reviewed in the Times. Thing is, he's not just a prettyboy chef -- the food is apparently amazing. It it accessible? Yes, but be prepared to seek out obscure ingredients and spend 5 hours to 3 days prepping. (Is he accessible? Sorry boys and girls, he's married.) The food? Like its chef: "Absolutely alluring, but frequently infuriating." Some of it sounded fantastic:
Some dishes, not so much, plus the typical bugaboo of a restaurant cookbook:
That one's worth trying -- I love lentils, and we have Ceylon cinnamon (from Penzey's, natch, along with Vietnamese and Korintje cinnamon) in our cupboard. I think I'll skip all that butter and the slimy cukes, though. And the Evian? I think I'll be happy with Arrowhead, or maybe even good ol' Eagle Rock tap water. (A digressive rant -- I read a piece in Gourmet by chef Tony Bourdain in which he visited Alain Ducasse's New York restaurant and sat there squirming in agony while the waiter extolled the individual virtues of all the bottled waters on the water cart he had brought to the table. (Water cart? Oh, for Christ's sake.) Y'know ... when we go out to a fine restaurant, if we've got the money we don't skimp or cut corners. We order truffles and foie gras if it's there and the dishes look good, we order appetizers, soup or salad, entree and dessert, we order cocktails, wine with dinner, Port or Cognac or some other after dinner drink and we always tip very well. Still, we just don't have it in us to spend between six and ten dollars on a bottle of feckin' water. I'd rather spend that on a glass of wine, thank you very much. And don't even think about giving me that condescending look or worse, a comment, when we say "No thank you, tap water will be fine." Digressive rant ended.) Anyway, I think I'll add this one to my Wish List ... hey, I've got a birthday coming up in seven months! New Son Volt coming! From the Jay Farrar mailing list, via Tom (thanks!): There's a new Son Volt album due in a few months, although not with the original lineup of Heidorn on drums and the Boquist brothers on almost everything else; the new lineup looks really good, though, and I'm glad to see a Blood Orange in there. Here's the release:
Straight to analog tape ... gotta love those old-fashioned guys. In case you're bewildered about the album's title, Okemah is Woody Guthrie's Oklahoma hometown. Woo! Get DeLay out now. (Via Kos) Aside from having the ethics of a Denebian slime devil, Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay declares in an interview with the Moonie-owned Washington Times that there is no constitutional separation of church and state, no right of judicial review, and that the only reason we have any semblance of a right to privacy is that Congress didn't stand up to the courts. *boggle*
And one day we'll be living in an authoritarian, one-party theocratic state because the people didn't stop him? Why are they even letting him stay around this long? Why isn't he out of a job by now? The death of TV news. From the LA Weekly: Former "Nightline" executive producer Leroy Sievers laments the death of serious TV news.
As Jon said ... cable news networks, you're hurr-urr-ting America. [ Link to today's entries ]
Get Liquored up; tonight's Prime time. Okay, shitty puns aside ... tonight at Dark Delicacies bookstore in Burbank (between Hollywood Way and Cahuenga) New Orleans author Poppy Z. Brite (of whom we're huge fans and who has been sweet enough to pop in here every now and again) will be signing books (and reading too? I'm not sure on that one), including her new one, Prime. I've just finished Prime, and loved it. It's such a pleasure to read someone who writes about New Orleans so well, making its eccentricities, strangeness, uniqueness and traditions come to life such that it becomes a character of its own rather than a mere setting. The flesh-and-blood characters are people about whom we care deeply, it's funny and mysterious and absolutely revels in the joy of food. I've also been enjoying the portrayal of life in the restaurant scene. It makes me think that I'd have to be crazy to want to do that, especially considering my experience on the line is a microscopic fraction of what Rickey and G-man had before they opened their restaurant Liquor. But underneath the brutally long hours, extreme heat, extremely hard work, sore feet and crotch rot (read the book to learn more about that!), it's also inspirational. Maybe there's a modest little poor boy shop in my future one day -- you still can't get a decent roast beef or hot sausage poor boy in this city, and nobody gets the bread right. I've said it before, I'll say it again -- if you love New Orleans, if you love food, if you're intrigued by a story of two chefs in love who make their dreams come true amidst much hard work, mystery, intrigue, danger and gallons of alcohol, if you love a good story, my recommendations for the year are The Value of X, Liquor and Prime. I already can't wait for Soul Kitchen and Dead Shrimp Blues, also featuring Rickey and G-man and their world, due out next year and the year after that. Dark Delicacies is located at 4213 W. Burbank Blvd. in Burbank, (818) 556-6660, and the signing starts at 7pm. Y'all L.A. locals drop by. Say bra, ya got ya name in da papuh! Hey, I got a nice plug in the Washington Post today -- the "Staff Favorites" column in the Food and Dining section did a story on jambalaya, and apparently they like mine (woo!). They also ran the recipe, which is pretty cool. One of the Travel Section staffers had emailed me the other day about using my New Orleans lexicon in one of their articles, but I didn't get back to them in time to meet their deadline; I did, however, say they could go ahead and use anything else as long as they let me know and attributed the source. So, welcome, Post readers! All praise the pig! GreggO passed along a post from a food weblog called Orangette (hiya, Molly) in which an annual celebration of pork takes place among good pork-loving friends (hmm, that sounds vaguely familiar). Pork Week for these folks is the week after St. Patrick's Day, during which pork must be consumed every day. (I think I like these people.) I'd suggest to the Fat Pack that we institute something similar, but with us it sometimes seems as if every other week is Pork Week. I've still got some of that Summerfield Farms bacon left from Mary's birthday bacon bash ("The Château d'Yquem of pig!"), some good Canadian back bacon (not the sliced rubbery stuff from the supermarket), some andouille, and I think I'll pick up some more of those fabulous smoked pork chops from the European Deluxe Sausage Kitchen in Beverly Hills. Sunday night we're having choucroute garni, fresh sauerkraut cooked in white wine and pork stock with spices and lots of pork products ... mmmmmmmmmm! Gimme a break. Mel Gibson is apparently planning to make a movie about the late Pope John Paul II. This is pretty fucking ironic, if you ask me, given that Gibson is a member of an arch-conservative right-wing nutball Catholic fringe group that considers itself splintered off from the 16th Century Council of Trent and doesn't recognize the authority of the Roman pope. Methinks it's merely a moneymaking scheme, along the lines of the crucifixion nail pendants he was hawking along with the gory S&M-fest that was his last picture. [ Link to today's entries ]
Dear John ... Fred Kaplan at Slate covers John Bolton's "appalling" performance at the Senate confirmation hearing for his appointment as U.S. ambassadodr to the U.N. -- "bloodless, evasive, and mendacious" -- and details why he is the latest Bush appointee to be wholly unfit for office. "Jaw-dropping": Pay Gap Widens Between CEOs and Workers Via Common Dreams:
Out here where I live, the CEOs live in 6,000-10,000 square foot houses in Beverly Hills, Bel Air and Malibu, and their employees generally can't even afford a "starter" house or fixer-upper on their salaries. At $34K per year you couldn't even buy a crack house in this city. (Actually, if you already owned a crack house and were selling crack from it, you'd be making a lot more than $34K per year.) A debate worth having. I really need to keep up with and pay more attention to the SciFi.com website. After stumbling upon the brilliant idea of the "Battlestar Galactica" episode commentary podcasts, I've stumbled across "BG" producer/writer Ron Moore's blog, thanks to an Atrios post. I'm going to reproduce Moore's most recent post in its entirety, as an example of one of the many reasons (besides the amazing creativity of everyone involved in it, the brilliant writing, acting, photography, effects, etc.) why the new "Battlestar Galactica" is so fucking good.
An intelligently written show for adults, that makes you think, that actually prompts debate of societal issues? Nah, surely not. Go back to watching that stupid Paris Hilton un-reality thing. (Incidentally, we're big fans of "Lost", too.) [ Link to today's entries ]
The coming war on the judiciary. Some Salon articles you should read; if you're not a subscriber, just sit through the commercial and get the site pass.
"The wisdom of Stalin"? Jesus H. Christ on a crutch.
And via adigal at DailyKos: "The Washington Post has a column today by Ruth Marcus which highlights the extremism of the Republican party --- some suggestions by Tom Coburn's chief of staff are mass impeachments, and simply firing judges with whom they disagree, for bad behavior. Just have Bush call them up and send in the capital police to help them leave their offices."
Tom Coburn is the right wingnut that Oklahomans elected to the Senate, in a fit of head-spinning what-the-fuck-were-they-thinking. If anyone needs removal from his job it's his aide, and himself as well if he were to actually advocate the destruction of our judiciary because they don't toe the extremist right-wing line. Any apathy you might have about these people and their agenda is potentially dangerous; we ignore them at our peril. Will they be able to achieve any parts of their agenda? Probably not. Still, pay attention. Appomattox. From Ed Kilgore of the Democratic Leadership Council, an article on Confederate nostalgia, the romanticizing of the Confederacy as some kind of "Southern cultural heritage", and trying to portray it as being about "everything other than the ownership of human beings":
More from Steve Gilliard:
As The Bottle Rockets sing, "Look, here comes another one, four-wheel drive / Look there in the window man, sakes alive / That good ol' boy's wavin' the stars and bars / It's a red, white and blue flag, but it ain't ours / Wave that flag hoss, wave it high / Do you know what it means, do you know why? / Maybe bein' a rebel ain't no big deal / But if somebody owned your ass, how would you feel?" [ Link to today's entries ]
Cocktail of the day. Okay, I don't usually post cocktails that I haven't tried, but this one's interesting-looking. Thing is, it calls for some very specific ingredients I don't stock ... I'll have to try one first before deciding, I suppose. This is the signature cocktail of Café Giovanni in New Orleans, featuring the fine food of Chef Duke LoCicero. Unless you're a big opera fan, avoid the place like the plague on the three nights a week the waiters sing (God, I thought my eardrums would burst; I'd like opera a lot more if it weren't for the singing), but no matter what night you go you'll love the food. I still think of that foie gras appetizer served on pain perdu ... mmmmmmmmmm. Although they sound potentially tasty, I've never tried either brand of flavored vodka used in this drink. Finlandia's a good brand, so I'd give them my trust (Are mangos really big in Finland? I tend to doubt it.). I've never tried any kind of Effen vodka, but I like the name ("Hey! Pass over that effin' vodka!"). This one comes from New Orleans Magazine, which has been publishing a local specialty cocktail every month. This is the first one I've seen that I thought I might want to try. (The original recipe was double this one, and would have made a six-ounce cocktail. I dislike the trend of larger and larger cocktails. Less is more.)
Anyone ever tried these vodkas on their own? Any good? The Cocktailian. This fortnight's edition of Gary Regan's column features some Aussies, an undeservedly obscure liqueur, and a delightful-sounding Summertime Cocktail. Not only does it sound like a lovely apéritif, the recipe also produces a perfect little three-ounce cocktail. I wholeheartedly approve. [ Link to today's entries ]
Mmmmmmm, baaaaconnnnn ... This past Sunday we celebrated the birthday of our perpetually twentysomething friend Mary with a truly decadent extravaganza of fresh and cured pork products, to wit -- lots of sausage and bacon. Last month's issue of Saveur featured an article on "the best food in the world", which is, of course, bacon. They were also kind enough to provide a plethora of recipes for this heavenly food, and we were keen to try almost all of them.
First dish: Tempura Bacon. Easy enough -- lovely Niman Ranch bacon from Trader Joe's, fried nice and chewy-crisp, then coated in a simple tempura batter made from flour, club soda and salt and deep-fried until golden brown. This was surprisingly good (okay, so it wasn't so surprising to take bacon and then batter and deep-fry it, and it's still good).
Okay, that's the spread, or the first wave of it, at least. Left to right: Billionaire's Bacon, which we just called "Bacon Candy". It's bacon that's packed on both sides with brown sugar and oven-cooked, then broken into bite-sized pieces. Diana, who made it, says it's far, far more of a pain in the ass than it sounds (very sticky and unwieldy during preparation, as you can imagine). However, it's really, really fucking good. Next, Bacon and Stilton Cheesecakes. These were dead easy, particularly since we had gotten a mini-cheesecake mold (which makes a dozen) from some friends for Christmas. Make a crust out of bread crumbs, Parmigiano cheese, butter and a little Creole seasoning, then a pound of softened cream cheese mixed with a half-pound of softened Stilton cheese and a dozen strips of Niman Ranch bacon, diced and fried crisp folded in. Pipe filling into the mold over the crust, then chill -- no baking necessary. Oh my Gawd, these were good. Intense. Rich. (You really can't eat more than one.) Then to the right of that, Peanut Butter and Bacon Chocolate Truffles. These were perhaps the least successful offerings, and according to Nettie also a pain in the ass to make. I get the peanut butter and bacon connection (given to us by Elvis Our King), but it just wasn't working all that well here. The bacon was (dare I say it?) superfluous. We might try a peanut butter bacon combo by itself, or perhaps strips of crisp bacon dipped in chocolate sometime ... A few closer views:
These were all appetizers, believe it or not. The main course, by request from Mary, was for Hot Sausage Poor Boys with Cheese, made with a batch of my homemade Creole hot sausage, on the lightest, crispiest French baguette we could find (as really good poor boy bread doesn't really exist in Los Angeles) with American cheese, slightly toasted. Here's meself (wearing my Bacon Is A Vegetable t-shirt), hard at work frying sausage patties:
Unfortunately there were no pictures of the finished hot sausage and cheese poor boys, 'cause all thoughts of photography disappeared as I ravenously tore into mine, and every single sandwich was quickly devoured. Oh well. You know what a po-boy looks like. Use your imagination. Then, the beginnings of dessert. Who says all desserts have to be sweet? I had ordered a few different kinds of bacon from The Grateful Palate, the wonderful folks who give us The Bacon of the Month Club. I got some real Canadian bacon for later use (the good stuff, a whole smoked pork loin of "back bacon", not the sliced rubbery stuff you get in the supermarket), some jowl bacon from Kentucky (more on that later) and, the pièce de resistance, a four-pound slab of Summerfield Farms Bacon from Virginia. Here's how The Grateful Palate describes this stuff: "Molasses and brown-sugar cured. Slab only. A great big, hedonistic pig bomb. Rich, super-intense flavors. Totally unique. The Château d'Yquem of pig." Oh my. Well of course, after reading that description, I couldn't not buy some. I took my super-sharp Masahiro Japanese cleaver and spent the next several minutes achieving sort of a pork zen state, slicing the entire slab by hand into what turned out to be perfect thick slices. Here's what it looked like as it cooked slowly in the oven:
I'm not sure I've ever tasted bacon better than this, nor am I sure that I'll taste bacon better than this at any time in the future (although I'll certainly keep trying). It was cured with so much molasses and brown sugar that you can see the caramelization it was leaving behind on the pan. It was a sweet, smoky pork explosion, completely unlike anything you've ever tasted from a supermarket package. I sliced it and cooked it so that it would remain just chewy enough without being rubbery, and the sugars in the cure provided the perfect outer crispness on each strip. It's fifty bucks for a slab, but that's fifty bucks very, very well spent. Everyone went nuts over this stuff.
Mary made a fabulous cake with a chocoalte-caramel frosting (melted sugar until brown, cream added, chocolate added to that) that was fantastic, but by the time I had had some of this I was completely uninterested in the Marie Callender's pies that ended up on the table. Net weight gain ... one pound. Guess I musta paced myself. A suggestion for the PATRIOT Act. Sixteen provisions of the USA-PATRIOT Act are scheduled to expire this year, and Torturer-General Alberto Gonzales is currently urging Congress to renew it, and even to expand it. I have a suggestion for the United States Congress: before voting for this bill again, why don't you try fucking reading it before you vote for it this time? Quote of the day. This one rendered me speechless.
The lack of substance, the complete inanity, the utter uselessness of the 24-hour cable "news" networks, with 1,440 minutes of time per day to fill with programming, truly boggles the mind. From the Congressional Record. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon) made these remarks on the floor of Congress yesterday, in response to George W. Bush's astonishing gaffe/misstatement regarding this nation's financial commitments and solvency, "dangerously close to implying that the federal government won't stand behind the trillions of dollars in debt held by creditors around the globe." (Via Atrios.)
Let's keep those numbers plummeting, people ... and there's a midterm election next year. [ Link to today's entries ]
Cocktail lovers, rejoice! It's finally here! It's been a long time coming, too ... but Regans' Orange Bitters No. 6 is finally shipping.
In an eGullet post Gary says, "I'm just back from the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Kentucky where I saw the first batch of bottles being filled and labeled. I must say that it's pretty weird to have your ugly mug on a commercial bottle. Especially when you no longer look like that (the beard's gone). "The guys at Sazerac (the company that owns Buffalo Trace) were just great to work with -- really enthusiastic about the whole thing, and determined to pull it off, despite numerous problems with the [federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, regulatory agency for alcohol-related sales] who kept kicking back the formula saying it was too "potable." (In order to get approved as a bitters which, in the USA, makes it a food product despite the 45% alcohol by volume, the bitters must be deemed to be non-potable by the ATF.) "The finished product, though, tastes, I think, better than my original formula for the Regans' Orange Bitters No. 4 -- this version, though very similar in style and taste, is more bitter, and more complex. I'd love to hear comments from anyone who tries it." The long wait is over, and now there's finally some competition out there -- Fee Brothers is no longer the only game in town. From a test bottling I tried a while back, I can testify that Regans' is significantly different. We'll do another tasting once our bottles arrive (which should be any day now) and let y'all know. Most unpopular president ever in second term. (Reposted from DailyKos) So "can we quit with the 'popular president' schtick?"
Kos: "There's a 'mandate' for you. [Bush is] 11 points less popular than the next least popular president at this point in their term." California's frightening real estate scene. This story in Sunday's Los Angeles Times both scared the shit out of me (on behalf of many, many others) and made me drop to my knees to thank the Cosmos that we got into a good, affordable house at the right time, defying all odds. The article talks about how realtors, banks and finance companies are talking people into taking interest-only, adjustable rate mortgages they can barely afford just to get into a house in this insanely skyrocketing real estate market ... but there's a catch. The day of reckoning -- when the adjustable rate expires, the new (and perhaps much higher) interest rate kicks in and you have to start paying the principal as well as interest. Many people who take these kinds of loans have no idea what they'll do when that day comes. I have an idea of what'll happen -- they'll have to sell, or there'll be a foreclosure. Are these people insane? Y'know, I laugh when I watch Woody Allen's "Bananas", when the rebel leader ousts the dictator of San Marcos, then proclaims that the new official language of the Latin American country will be Swedish, that all citizens under 16 years old are now 16 years old, and that all citizens' underwear must be changed every half hour (and must be worn on the outside, so government agents can check). "Power has driven him mad," said one of his aides. It's a hilarious scene. I'm not laughing anymore. It's now scary. Power has driven these men mad (I suspect there was madness in there to begin with).
How long will the wingnuttery go on? What will it take for we the people to finally demand the resignation of these people? [ Link to today's entries ]
More shameless ego-boo. Okay, radio listeners ... you have yet another chance to be assaulted by the sound of my voice coming out of your radios, semi-nationwide. As I mentioned a while back, I did another radio interview a few weeks ago, this time for Wisconsin Public Radio's program "To the Best of Our Knowledge". It's a really cool show, and I was very happy to be a part of it. As I believe I also mentioned, I think this interview went particularly well. It's running in Wisconsin this Sunday, April 3rd, or you can listen to it here (Real Audio). The other stations across the country that carry it will air it that same day or later in the week. Unfortunately, the only station in the Los Angeles area that carries the show is KCLU in Ventura County, which is out of range, and it's not carried in Louisiana at all. Well, lucky for us we've got the Internetssssssss! Check it out -- it should be fun. Hey, I'm on right after Roy Blount, Jr! Sippin' vodka with dinner. A while back, our friend Fred told us about a wonderful new spirits company who make artisinal infused vodkas that are designed to be taken with food, just east of us in Monrovia, California. They're called Modern Spirits, and their products sounded wonderful. Unfortunately, as is often the case with is, we never really got around to trying it. Fortunately, they caught up with us. Melkon Khosrovian and his wife Litty Mathew, who make the stuff, approached the owners of our favorite restaurant over by our neighborhood, the fabulous Cinnabar in Glendale, hoping they'd stock Modern Spirits vodkas in their fabulous bar. Alvin Simon at Cinnabar tasted them and immediately said, "We need to get Chef Damon to do a dinner around these!" We're on Cinnabar's email list, the dinner was announced (and the email signed, as always, "The brother, the sister and the Magic Chef"), and we were in. No pictures, unfortunately, 'cause somebody forgot to bring the camera (ahem ... oh well, the batteries were almost dead anyway), so you'll have to use your imagination. It'll help in your visualization if you've had chef Damon Bruner's superb food before: First course: Lobster Ceviche with Sesame Cilantro Cookie. Served in a champagne saucer, beautifully tender and tangy and sweet, with a little savory tuile on top. I wonder if Chef Damon used a similar technique for preparing a lobster for butter-poaching, with the quick steep in just-boiled water so that the meat pulls away from the shell but doesn't cook. I'm gonna have to try making lobster ceviche at home ... Accompaniment: Rose petal vodka & Champagne cocktail. This was lovely, but the rose vodka tended to get lost in the Champagne, which was assertively flavored. I think they were trying to keep the vodka servings small so that all the guests wouldn't be staggering out of the restaurant singing "Sweet Adeline" afterward. Fortunately, we got to taste some of it by itself, later on. Second course: Seared Mexican Sea Scallop with Arugula & Shaved Black Truffle Vinaigrette. The scallop was big and fat and perfectly seared, just this side of raw in the middle, with a generous portion of truffle slices (preserved truffles, alas, but the fresh article isn't in season at the moment; still tasted lovely, though, but I can imagine how much better it'd be with the fresh article). When I get a scallop that's so big I have to cut it with a knife and take at least six bites to eat it, I'm happy. Accompaniment: Black Truffle Vodka. This was ... astonishing. I'd never tasted anything like it. Melkon and Litty use Oregon black truffles for infusing their vodka, finding its milder flavor and lack of the garlicky punch that European black trufflfes tend to have to be more appropriate for their purposes. They nailed it. This was the first of their vodkas I'd tasted on its own, chilled (not frozen) as they recommend. Earthy, perfumey (you get a wonderful bouquet from this, and then it just blossoms on the palate) -- an entirely new experience, and one I'd recommend highly. This vodka would go beautifully with seared or grilled red meats (hell, any red meats) and anything you can imagine black truffles accompanying (toast and butter, for Gawd's sake). We're picking up a bottle of this one right away, and I already have a cocktail idea ... Third course, intermezzo: Grapefruit and Mint Granita made with Grapefruit Honey Vodka. Lovely palate cleansing sorbet, but again I was a tad disappointed not to try this one on its own. The only other grapefruit vodka I've tasted (the only other that exists, I think) is Charbay's Ruby Red Grapefruit Vodka, and I wanted to compare the flavors of that with the Modern Spirits Grapefruit Honey Vodka. I suspect that when I get the chance, I'll find the Modern Spirits product to be more delicate and subtle, and a tad sweeter with the addition of a dollop of honey to the potion. I wonder how that stuff would taste in a Verena Abbott Cocktail ... Fourth course, main: Filet of Roast Pork with Pear Peppercorn Sauce and Herbed Goat Cheese Potatoes au Gratin. The other choice was char-grilled Australian wild swordfish in rosemary-thyme broth, but you put pig in front of us and we say, "We want the pig. The swine is mine!" Oh my. Perfectly cooked, with a little crust on the outside and just pink in the inside. The sauce was fantastic, a dark, rich pork stock and a deglaze of pear juice, with surprisingly spicy cracked black peppercorns that seemed less spicy as the meal continued. Perfect size, too -- the filet was no bigger than the palm of my hand, and in fact was a bit smaller. I could have gone on eating it all night, but it was all I needed. Accompaniment: Pear Lavender Vodka. This one was amazing as well -- not much bouquet at first, and on the first sip you get the floral notes of the lavender on the palate, and you start to wonder where the pear is ... and about five seconds later the pear sneaks in from behind and envelops the tongue. Delicate, subtle, complex. Just ... wow. Fifth course, dessert: Molten Chocolate Cake with Chantilly Cream. Baked and served in a coffee cup, brought to the table piping hot, already beginning to melt the dollop of sweet whipped cream that came on top, cakey on the outside and hot and thick and runny on the inside. Fan-tastic. And then we took a sip of ... Accompaniment: Chocolate Orange Vodka. The one-two punch. The death blow. We were okay until this course, and then by the time we were done with the cake and the vodka we were down for the count. Come get us with the wheelbarrow. Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you ... we were blissfully happy. The vodka was, as were all its predecessors, wonderful. Sweet without being syrupy or cloying, a rich chocolate flavor and perfectly perfumed with the orange. Litty told us that she and Melkon get fine Belgian chocolate in the 10 kilo blocks and chop it all up themselves to make the infusion, and this is yet another reason why I love what they do -- it's a purely handmade product and a labor of love. When chatting after dinner with Flame Simon ("the sister"), I mentioned that I thought the rose vodka got a little lost in the Champagne, and she leapt up to the bar and immediately returned with two cordial glasses with about half a shot of Rose Petal Vodka with a wee ice cube so we could taste it on its own. Ahhhhh ... there we go. As with its companions, the flavor was delicate but very much in the forefront, and not overly perfumey like rosewater. I can see this with Persian or Lebanese food, or with baklava for dessert. The other flavors that we didn't get to taste that night were Candied Ginger, Celery Peppercorn and Tea, and I can't wait to try all of them. Melkon told us of a new cocktail they make at Voda, the oh-so-hip vodka bar in Santa Monica -- Celery Peppercorn Vodka shaken and strained into a cocktail glass which contains a cube of frozen, spiced tomato juice. Brilliant. Check out Modern Spirits' website, read up on all the flavors, and from the site you can even mail order bottles from Mission Wines in South Pasadena if it's not available near you. I'd highly recommend it. Quote of the day, which also doubles as Wine Review of the Day, courtesy of Natalie Maclean's wonderful (and free!) weekly wine newsletter, "Nat Decants":
Hee hee. We love Nat. March Looka! entries have been permanently archived. [ Link to today's entries ]
|
Times Food Section called to mind the irritation that Chef John Rickey
of the (unfortuantely) fictitious New Orleans restaurant Liquor (in the
Poppy Z. Brite novels I've been enjoying of late) feels when some people
talk about him. Rickey wants to be known for his food, and bristles at
media descriptions of him as a "prettyboy chef", paying what he considers
to be inordinate attention to attributes other than his cooking.
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