25 Apr 2013 7 Comments
in Food, Humor, Pork, Recipes Tags: Chengdu, China, Chinese cooking, Huang Fei Hong spicy peanuts, ma la, peppercorns, Saveur, Sichuan, Szechuan
One of the strangest culinary experiences I’ve ever had was more than a decade ago, when our friend from Szechuan, Guonan, invited us over for Szechuan hot pot.
Among the more unusual items on the condiment plate that evening as we sat on the floor around a bubbling pot on the coffee table of her Marina del Rey apartment, gazing out at the twinkling lights of the boats in the harbor, was duck tongues. More
19 Apr 2013 15 Comments
in Food, Humor, Pork, Recipes Tags: Alsace cooking, choucroute, Dar Maghreb, French food, Pierre Dupar, Pork, saffron, sauerkraut, spices, star anise
A few weeks ago, I was making choucroute, a German-influenced French specialty of the Alsace region, when I realized I didn’t have any juniper berries. (After all, who has juniper berries?) I emailed pal Ernie, who would be joining us for dinner that night to see if he might have some, in addition to caraway seeds and whole clove.
“I have caraway seeds,” he replied, “But I have no idea how old they are. They’ve been in here a long time.”
Old spices from my spice drawer (l to r): Chinese powdered ginger, herbes de Provence, something so old I don’t even know what it is, some Jamaican curry a friend brought me back from Jamaica when we were in our 20s, and ancient saffron from my dad’s friend Pierre
I then queried neighbors Chris and Glennis to see if they had any juniper berries, and was pleased when Chris responded that they did. More
15 Mar 2013 2 Comments
in Food, Humor, Pork, Recipes Tags: Asturian beans, chorizo, Fabada, fabes, fagioli, La Tienda, morcilla, paella, Spain, Spanish cooking
Our friends, Dan and Nonie, spent part of last summer in Spain. (Or was it the summer before? Time flies…) Good friends that they are, they were thinking of us as they browsed that wonderful country’s grocery stores and open markets. And they brought us back a large shrink-wrapped plastic package containing dried white beans and several pork products — fabada Asturiana.
Beans, salt pork & blood sausage on the stove
They bought one for themselves as well, and invited us over to sample it. They threw everything into a pot of water, covered it, and let it simmer for a few hours until the beans had assumed the orange of pimentón from the chorizo and general porkiness from that and the morcilla blood sausage and salt pork also included in the package. More
01 Mar 2013 6 Comments
in Food, Humor, Pork, Recipes Tags: beef short rib, Chinese cooking, Don Schnieder, five spice, guanciale, Japanese cooking, jowl, Matthew Tekulsky, monkfish liver, Pork
The other night I was drinking wine and eating monkfish liver with my culinary soulmate, Donnie, and lamenting about when odds-and-ends meat cuts become trendy and then are suddenly expensive.
Pork pops
Take the case of the aforementioned monkfish liver. It used to be the rare non-Japanese person who would try this odd delicacy at the sushi bar, and I could buy a whole softball-sized liver at the Japanese market for a few bucks. More
08 Feb 2013 18 Comments
in Food, Pork, Recipes, Video Tags: Austria, Austrian cooking, Café Pruckel, Danube, Mozart, spaetzle, Vienna, Wien, Wienerschnitzel
I spent a long, cold portion of a winter in Vienna once.
What I was doing there is a long story all it’s own, but like many such stories, it had to do with a girl. That didn’t work out as planned, and I spent much of my time there on my own, exploring the city — stumbling on former residences of Beethoven around every corner, searching out the Grove of the Immortals — Brahams, Schubert, Strauss, Beethoven — in the Central Cemetery, visiting the homes of Mozart and Dr. Freud, staring at the sparkling canvases of Klimt at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, taking in Richard Strauss’ “Rosenkavalier” at the famed State Opera House and a performance of the Vienna Boys Choir at the Imperial Chapel. More
