30 Oct 2012 Leave a comment
in Beverages, Observations, Recipes Tags: Bodeguita del Medio, Casa San Matias Pueblo Viejo Anejo, Cazadores, Familia Camarenas, Jalisco, Maestro, margaritas, Patrón, tequila, Vallarta Market
Long a beer and wine (and sometimes saké) man, I’ve recently taken to tequila.
I’ve always drank tequila, in the form of a margarita or the occasional shot. But it wasn’t until I was well beyond my freewheeling 20s that I discovered good tequila — sipping tequila. More
26 Oct 2012 7 Comments
in Observations, Recipes Tags: cooking, food, hunger, Italian, José Andrés, NRDC, penne
Contemplating a quarter loaf of severely stale ciabatta bread in my kitchen this morning, I was reminded of a staggering statistic I read recently. “The NRDC report said Americans discard 40 percent of the food supply every year.”
All that stale bread & an overripe tomato can be
As a person with a gut-level aversion to throwing anything edible away, this figure was unimaginable — especially given the hunger not only around the world, but in our own country. Another statistic: “In 2010, 17.2 million households, 14.5 percent of households (approximately one in seven), were food insecure, the highest number ever recorded in the United States.” Children were “food insecure” (i.e. hungry) in 10% of households. All of which brings up a fairly obvious question:
How is it that 15% of America is hungry, when we are throwing away 40% of our food? More
23 Oct 2012 1 Comment
in Food, Humor, Observations, Recipes Tags: drinks, japan, Japanese cuisine, Mansion of Dreams, Miyazaki, recipe, sake, spirits, sushi
When I was a lad, saké was something warm and exotic we drank at the local sushi bar that served underage kids. Not ones for moderation, we used to do something called a “saké bomb,” where we would drop the small ceramic cup of hot saké into our glass of beer, and then down the whole thing.
Saké Still Life (with Sushi Knife)
I remember once, several bombs in, I chucked a California roll at my friend Pat, sitting a few seats away. It hit him on the forehead and fell into his saké-and-beer. He lifted the glass, drank the bomb and ate the roll at the bottom in one epic gulp, and we all applauded. More
19 Oct 2012 Leave a comment
My kids will sometimes come home from school and dance around the kitchen, begging for popsicles. But what gets Dad jumping is not the refreshing fruitiness of a popsicle, but rather the crackly porkiness of a pigsicle!
Pigsicles
What is a pigsicle? Well, before you gag and reflex-close this blog, it is not a sweet, frozen pork juice confection. I just gave it the name “pigsicle” because it was catchy and I may include it in the barfood menu for my restaurant one day. Rather, it is skewered fatty jowl meat seasoned and crisped up on a very hot grill. A grown-up treat of the very highest order, to be sure. More
16 Oct 2012 7 Comments
in Food, On the Road Tags: Au Pied De Cochon, duck, fois gras, food, Montreal, Pork
The texts and emails began arriving in earnest on a Thursday afternoon. Friends Don and Monica were in Montreal, they had booked a reservation in one of the city’s most talked about restaurants, Au Pied de Cochon, and they wanted me to know about it.
First came links to Yelp, followed by one to the restaurant’s own website, and finally photos of the food they were eating — fois gras poutine, steak tartare, fois gras hamburger and something called “Duck in a Can.” More
skinny girls & mayonnaise 