Nice article on cured meats and Parma by Virginia Phillips in Pittsburgh Quarterly.
http://www.pittsburghquarterly.com/pages/fall2006/fall2006_84foodfare.htm
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Monday, March 31, 2008
Pig Shirt
In case you can't read it, the box is a pig butchering key. You can get one at the link below.http://thewarehousesite.spreadshirt.com/us/US/Shop/Index/index
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Beef, it aint for dinner
So, I am now grossed out. After sufficient footage of downer cows being cattle prodded, shoved with forklifts, and walking on seemingly backward-growing legs; after seeing bizarre fatty tumors in the middle of a muscle on a loin of supposedly USDA Prime beef as I cut it; after recalls and recalls and recals; I am done. I am no longer choosing beef as a meat. I will eat it for professional reasons, but not indiscriminately.
Of course, I will look for options in humanely raised beef. I will seek out grass-fed, well-tended flocks as soon as I can. I will bring to the table clean and safe beef. As a chef, it is my duty.
But as an eater, I am completely in love with the pig right now. It is a holy animal, edible from tail to snout, easy to grow, easy to preserve, easy to eat. Why worry about infected beef supply when we are already cooking pork to safe temperatures and the lure of tartare is not there? Why have a steak when a sexy young generation of butchers are creating poetry with swine? Why worry about marbeling and pay $25/# for Prime steer loin when well-marbled pork loin is at most 1/4 that price? And what is the beef equivalent of jambon serrano, prosciutto, or Virginia ham? And the beef equivalent of bacon? We pay a bunch of money for beef steaks and turn the rest, some 85%, int cheap burger meat. Completely unsustainable.
Viva la Swine! The only thing you can't produce out of a pig is good whiskey.
Of course, I will look for options in humanely raised beef. I will seek out grass-fed, well-tended flocks as soon as I can. I will bring to the table clean and safe beef. As a chef, it is my duty.
But as an eater, I am completely in love with the pig right now. It is a holy animal, edible from tail to snout, easy to grow, easy to preserve, easy to eat. Why worry about infected beef supply when we are already cooking pork to safe temperatures and the lure of tartare is not there? Why have a steak when a sexy young generation of butchers are creating poetry with swine? Why worry about marbeling and pay $25/# for Prime steer loin when well-marbled pork loin is at most 1/4 that price? And what is the beef equivalent of jambon serrano, prosciutto, or Virginia ham? And the beef equivalent of bacon? We pay a bunch of money for beef steaks and turn the rest, some 85%, int cheap burger meat. Completely unsustainable.
Viva la Swine! The only thing you can't produce out of a pig is good whiskey.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Ten Food Goals for 2008
So it is February 3. I don't care. Here is what I will be doing about my relationship to food in 2008:
1. Convert my home eating to more local. Call it laziness, or lack of planning, but I got awfully far from being a good locavore. We do way better at the restaurants than I do in the house. I'll subscribe to a CSA, order my swine and chicken from farmers, hit the farmers' markets at least once a week, and get back on the program.
2. Focus on the quality of every single ingredient. This is obvious, and I should do this with every waking second of my work life, but I am going to go back to previous decisions and touch consider every over-looked ingredients to make sure we are cooking with the best products possible. This is the year I switch Mad Mex to all local pork. This is the year I get Elysian Fields in Mad Mex. This is the year I make the spices better. I am going to get a better avocado. This is the year of the perfect ingredient.
3. Eduction. I have the unique position that my ruminations on food can reach a lot of people. Not, of course, from this little lark, but from speaking at various events, the newsletter, and TV. I will continue to talk about great ingredients and good eating, but never preaching. I believe that there is an eating crisis in the US, that people eat junk all day every day, and that we all need to reconsider what goes in our bellies. But I think that I can lure that horse along with the fresh carrot and avoid the preachy BMI stick as much as possible.
4. I will increase the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables in my diet and make a better example to all around me. If it kills me. Really. I will also eat fewer slabs of cold, braised pork belly from the walk-in cooler. Because this will kill me eventually.
5. I will drink better wine, and maybe a little less of it. I will expand my wine palate to the enjoyment of new regions and grapes (to me). I will pay even more attention to the pairing of wine and food. Goodbye savings account.
6. I will become as much an expert on Mexican food and tequila as I can. (This is a vow every year, but worth noting every year).
7. I will cook more. Home, work, wherever.
8. I hope to transition my food writing to more humor, more information, and more quality of content. Less schmaltzy remembering and silly commentary. See item #3.
9. Like things more. I want to enjoy what I eat more. I'll still identify opportunities for improvement in my/our cooking and act upon them but in general I'll really dig what it is that I am eating for what it is. See the person in the food, respect that, and praise it whenever possible.
10. Get my kids to eat more vegetables.
Maybe the last one should be first.
It is going to be a great year. I feel a huge surge of excitement for the world of food and cooking and think, through my many channels of contact to the bellies of the people around me, I can fill them with happier product.
Time to eat!
1. Convert my home eating to more local. Call it laziness, or lack of planning, but I got awfully far from being a good locavore. We do way better at the restaurants than I do in the house. I'll subscribe to a CSA, order my swine and chicken from farmers, hit the farmers' markets at least once a week, and get back on the program.
2. Focus on the quality of every single ingredient. This is obvious, and I should do this with every waking second of my work life, but I am going to go back to previous decisions and touch consider every over-looked ingredients to make sure we are cooking with the best products possible. This is the year I switch Mad Mex to all local pork. This is the year I get Elysian Fields in Mad Mex. This is the year I make the spices better. I am going to get a better avocado. This is the year of the perfect ingredient.
3. Eduction. I have the unique position that my ruminations on food can reach a lot of people. Not, of course, from this little lark, but from speaking at various events, the newsletter, and TV. I will continue to talk about great ingredients and good eating, but never preaching. I believe that there is an eating crisis in the US, that people eat junk all day every day, and that we all need to reconsider what goes in our bellies. But I think that I can lure that horse along with the fresh carrot and avoid the preachy BMI stick as much as possible.
4. I will increase the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables in my diet and make a better example to all around me. If it kills me. Really. I will also eat fewer slabs of cold, braised pork belly from the walk-in cooler. Because this will kill me eventually.
5. I will drink better wine, and maybe a little less of it. I will expand my wine palate to the enjoyment of new regions and grapes (to me). I will pay even more attention to the pairing of wine and food. Goodbye savings account.
6. I will become as much an expert on Mexican food and tequila as I can. (This is a vow every year, but worth noting every year).
7. I will cook more. Home, work, wherever.
8. I hope to transition my food writing to more humor, more information, and more quality of content. Less schmaltzy remembering and silly commentary. See item #3.
9. Like things more. I want to enjoy what I eat more. I'll still identify opportunities for improvement in my/our cooking and act upon them but in general I'll really dig what it is that I am eating for what it is. See the person in the food, respect that, and praise it whenever possible.
10. Get my kids to eat more vegetables.
Maybe the last one should be first.
It is going to be a great year. I feel a huge surge of excitement for the world of food and cooking and think, through my many channels of contact to the bellies of the people around me, I can fill them with happier product.
Time to eat!
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Why Hungry
In 1984 I left my hometown with some clothes in a backpack, a new mac card, and my thumb stuck out. I was headed to Seattle to live with high school friends. Powered by Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, and Bob Dylan, I was on the road, tangled up in blue, ready to fish for my own trout in the 300 million streams of America. I was setting out in the full regalia of young naivety to discover the world, become a man, and have some fun. Hopefully, a girl or two would figure in at some point. I figured it would take a week or so to hitch to Seattle, I told my post-operative breast cancer mother, and I'll call you on the way.
Amazing, that point in my 17 year old life. I can remember it pushed through the tammis of 23 years, 8400 days. But that day, that June day I stopped by to see my mother in the hospital and had my sister drive me out to the Interstate, that day I cannot recapture in any memory of mine. What was I thinking? How did it feel? I don't think I realized I was bailing on my mother, sister, and brother, leaving them to tilt at cancer, the eventual cause of my mother's death. I would be absent for that healing, as I would always be. I can't imagine what I, today, in my grown up calculus would say about that young man. As a father, I would be disappointed. As a man, angry that the eldest son left at such a juncture, such a point in time where his mettle was to be tested. The leaving, from this vantage point, was a failure. The man that I am now judges that boy and says "You failed." But that coward(?!), that nervous boy, that runner, he became me. Can the tree denounce the seed?
I wasn't some stoned out hippie, lost from family and friends. Just a normal kid, fairly good student, not too much trouble. I wasn't running from a pregnancy, a court date, a bad home. I was happy to depart my hometown, of course, small of course and poor it was as is the American legend. But not running. Not trying to get away and afraid that my actions would disappoint so many around me. Not running.
It was a going towards. A desire. Hungry. I wanted. What? Wanted. More room more memories more space more hope more perspective more food more. Wanted. Not greedy, for the greedy have and need to hold and ache for more. Not desperate, for in desperation hope is lost. Not hopeless on that sunny June morning I walked up the exit ramp onto I-80. Not angry not lost not scared.
Hungry.
My life has been defined by hunger. Hungry for food in our poor, poor childhood. Hungry to feel, to taste, to see, to try. Hungry to make a warm place and secure, to build a stockpile, to have and trust. Hungry.
The many numbered days have been filled with tastes. Some reckless, really foolish, the dirty acid death just missed. Really. Some warm, the soft umami of flesh and peace and love. The salt of blood and sweat with the struggle to make, to land, to be. Tastes of spice and sugar from great adventures in life where the oceans and mountains and sun and rain all existed in that moment to be beautiful for me to scream "Life Is!" and I take it to fill the belly of that day. Nude girls eating seaweed cross-legged on the floor in a circle around my not naked nervousness. My first sushi eaten to get a girls attention. Ingera for the first time - same reason. Krishna kitchens waiting through stupid sermons for free Indian food. Burritos from carts, stolen Baked Alaska eaten over the dish machine, the daily burger practice test of the young grill cook, papusas, the squid cart, dim sum chicken feet, the progression of fluke at Le Bernardin, ribs and ribs and ribs. Crab feasts and Virginia ham and long nights of Barcelona tapas and eating eating eating. Corn and tomatoes, every year is delicious. Ramps. Pig roasts. Tacos.
Eating is best told.
Amazing, that point in my 17 year old life. I can remember it pushed through the tammis of 23 years, 8400 days. But that day, that June day I stopped by to see my mother in the hospital and had my sister drive me out to the Interstate, that day I cannot recapture in any memory of mine. What was I thinking? How did it feel? I don't think I realized I was bailing on my mother, sister, and brother, leaving them to tilt at cancer, the eventual cause of my mother's death. I would be absent for that healing, as I would always be. I can't imagine what I, today, in my grown up calculus would say about that young man. As a father, I would be disappointed. As a man, angry that the eldest son left at such a juncture, such a point in time where his mettle was to be tested. The leaving, from this vantage point, was a failure. The man that I am now judges that boy and says "You failed." But that coward(?!), that nervous boy, that runner, he became me. Can the tree denounce the seed?
I wasn't some stoned out hippie, lost from family and friends. Just a normal kid, fairly good student, not too much trouble. I wasn't running from a pregnancy, a court date, a bad home. I was happy to depart my hometown, of course, small of course and poor it was as is the American legend. But not running. Not trying to get away and afraid that my actions would disappoint so many around me. Not running.
It was a going towards. A desire. Hungry. I wanted. What? Wanted. More room more memories more space more hope more perspective more food more. Wanted. Not greedy, for the greedy have and need to hold and ache for more. Not desperate, for in desperation hope is lost. Not hopeless on that sunny June morning I walked up the exit ramp onto I-80. Not angry not lost not scared.
Hungry.
My life has been defined by hunger. Hungry for food in our poor, poor childhood. Hungry to feel, to taste, to see, to try. Hungry to make a warm place and secure, to build a stockpile, to have and trust. Hungry.
The many numbered days have been filled with tastes. Some reckless, really foolish, the dirty acid death just missed. Really. Some warm, the soft umami of flesh and peace and love. The salt of blood and sweat with the struggle to make, to land, to be. Tastes of spice and sugar from great adventures in life where the oceans and mountains and sun and rain all existed in that moment to be beautiful for me to scream "Life Is!" and I take it to fill the belly of that day. Nude girls eating seaweed cross-legged on the floor in a circle around my not naked nervousness. My first sushi eaten to get a girls attention. Ingera for the first time - same reason. Krishna kitchens waiting through stupid sermons for free Indian food. Burritos from carts, stolen Baked Alaska eaten over the dish machine, the daily burger practice test of the young grill cook, papusas, the squid cart, dim sum chicken feet, the progression of fluke at Le Bernardin, ribs and ribs and ribs. Crab feasts and Virginia ham and long nights of Barcelona tapas and eating eating eating. Corn and tomatoes, every year is delicious. Ramps. Pig roasts. Tacos.
Eating is best told.
Monday, August 27, 2007
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