I Feel A Great Disturbance In The Force

Raise a glass of chianti, my Friends; a Dear One has left us

There are heavy hearts in the culinary world today upon hearing the news that famed cookbook author Marcella Hazan passed at the age of 89.

I cannot count the number of meals I have made using her book.

God, she was this kind of awesome

She begged home cooks to use more salt and once wrote that if readers were concerned about salt affecting one’s life expectancy, to “not read any further.”

You Say Erster…

And I say Oyster

Yum yum: 6 fresh oysters on the half shell for $10 yesterday at the Guinness and Oyster Festival in Red Bank.

Also fried oysters were consumed

As were lobster rolls

And lots of tasty Guinness.

Lots.

Summer Is Fast Disappearing

And that means we need to glutinate ourselves now on yums like grilled scallops and swordfish

and also on vitamin-packed beverages

Health Food!

Well I Guess I Have To Change This Weekend’s BBQ Menu

Fear the marmot, my friends

Health officials fear an outbreak of bubonic plague in central Asia after a teenage boy died from the disease and three more were admitted to hospital in Kyrgyzstan.

Temirbek Isakunov, a 15-year-old from a mountain village near the border with Kazakhstan, reportedly died from the disease last week after eating an infected barbecued marmot. Kyrgyzstan’s emergency ministry said a young woman and two children from a different village who came into contact with Isakunov were hospitalised on Tuesday with the high fever and swelling around the neck and armpits characteristic of bubonic plague, local news outlets reported.

A total of 131 people, including 33 medical personnel, have been quarantined, although none of them have yet exhibited symptoms of the disease, the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda in Kyrgyzstan reported. The health ministry continues to find and quarantine people who came into contact with the teenager, according to its director.

Kyrgyzstan?

Judging by the picture that headlines the article

I’d say it was actually Caddyshackistan…

Some August Sipping Juice

Kind of an odd duality running through this. The nose is full and sweet but also hot and these all show up in the sipping: full caramel sweetness tempered with a forward hot alcohol that cleans off the palate for the next sip. Yum. And I think it was only $28 or so…

Friday Night…

…is pulled pork lasagna night!

nommity nomnom.

The Fifth One So Far

Been at this airport bar for a few hours.

And my flight just got delayed 3 hours…

Yay.

Just doing my part to revive the economy.

Free Le Fromage!!

A short video about the Obama administration’s #WarOnCheese

Yes. You heard that right.

Mr. Sulky Pants Notwithstanding

The short ribs turned out pretty darned yummy.

after they sat all night in the fridge to congealulate I took the pot out and gently skimmed off the fat chunks then put it on the stove on medium to simmer and reduce some more

while that was enthickalating I made some unctuous mashed spuds and my Bride oven roasted some brussel sprouts

nom nom de nom nom nom

I need to buy bigger plates.

Moinks!

They’re what’s for dinner

with some sauteed kale on the side

Of course a CERTAIN SOMEONE was far more interested in the short ribs I started tonight for Sunday’s dinner

and then he became all Mr. Sulky Pants when he felt short-changed on the short rib scraps

quick, call the ASPCA

Memorial Piggie Update

Why look who just came in!

nomnomnomnomnom

Memorial Piggie

Got up a tad earlier than I cared to this morning to get the 12lbs of pork butt on the smoker

The knockout roses are looking quite neony

and it was exceedingly pleasant sitting on the deck working my way through a pot of coffee

(gratuitous multi-grill pr0n)

A Cold Friday Night Meal…

…in freakin’ May.

Thanks Al. Tons.

Like many folks on the East Coast my plans of summeresque grilling evaporated, strike that, were washed out by this cold drizzly rain were under. May 24th and it’s in the low 40s. Global Warming my left shoe.

Anyhoo, so I needed to dig into the Warm Me Up Scottie bin:

Firstly, of course, was red wine

I picked this up the other night whilst the Bingleys were enjoyng some burgers with kcruella. It’s about $13 and is a very smooth velvety wine with soft tannins. A few glasses put me in the mood to brown about 1lb of italian sausage and 2 Pamelas (cut into bite-sized strips) in large straight-sided pan

I must herewith confess that I used turkey sausage; with the addition of a couple of teaspoons of fennel seed it worked perfectly fine, plus there’s no grease to drain off.

Once it’s reasonably browned add 3/4 cup each of wild rice and brown rice and a healthy amount of red pepper flakes

and 2 cups chicken stock, 1 1/2 cups white wine and 1/2 cup of water

and 3 cloves of chopped garlic

bring it to a boil then reduce to simmer, cover and cook for 45 minutes or so until the rice is mostly done (remember this is brown rice which takes a lot longer than white rice) during which time you will be studiously ignored by someone who in fact DID get a lot of chicken

a fact which he conveniently forgets

Once the rice is mostly done toss in a pound or so of fresh chopped asparagus

and cover and cook for 10 minutes or so until the asparagus is done but still crisp and eat

with more wine as appropriate, of course.

Spineless Chickens!

Taste pretty darn good, actually.

(although I admit it really is rather…nasty looking)

flatten the bugger out and merrily salt before grilling

oh and don’t forget the oven-roasted brussel sprouts!

Worthy Is The Lamb

…that was slain so I can eats him!

Thank you, Oh Bountiful Provider, for the Glorious land of Australia and all the cute, fluffy, wooly and oh-so-tasty creatures of Your Munificence that dwell therein

look at these bonesies! So nummy!

now you can easily slip the fileting knife betwixt the little rib segments you see above and get eight LambiPops thusly

now you do need to trim the excess bits off of the ribs. It’s not that complicated, especially if one’s kitchen comes equipped with a Trimmings Dispose-All Unit

You do have one of these, don’t you? Have can you possibly exist without one?

Anyhoo, you don’t need to be too exact on all the little scraps and such, as the grill will clean them bones up just fine

then toss those LambiPops into a gallon-sized ziplock with red wine, capers, garlic, rosemary, and just a little salt and pepper

then into the fridge to marinate for a few hours, flipping every hour or so

they cook on the grill very quickly (and you don’t want them past at most medium anyway)

and serve them up with whatever version of mashed potatoes you’re in the mood for and some steamed asparagus and Life, My Friends, is pretty good.

For dessert, I highly recommend a trip to your local orchard for some fresh made PAH

apple/cranberry in this case in a crust to DIE FOR washed down with several drams of hooch

from a little distillery in an area that THS used to frequent many many moons ago in her Moon-shining days.

I, of course, would never make illicit runs across the border to take advantage of differences in ages of legality to buy such things.

Never.

Good Friday Eats

“Virtue” being as you know my middle name I decided to make some fish for Good Friday.

Baked tilapia with a lemon/paprika/parsley coating, served with some chipotle-dusted roast potato wedgies and, of course, sauteed brussels sprouts.

Dang fine eats.

and washing it all down were a few lurvely bottles of Raymond Reserve Chardonnay

Runs about oh $15/bottle. A nice full velvety wine, with a joyfully piquant acidity playing a delightful dance in harmonious contrast to the fine butterscotch and late Spring melon notes that linger seductively on the palate, offering hints of untold delights that await the determined pursuer.

Ok, I made that up.

But it is none the less pretty good hootch.

I Am Sure That Right Now Sweet Baby Jeebus Is Eating One Of These

Pork roll, egg and cheese on a fresh-from-the-whatever-they-cook-them-in french toast bagel.

The perfect combination of sweet, salt and cheesey-eggy fat goodness.

nomnomnomnomnomnom

Grilled Tuna

It’s what’s for dinner

(though some prefer sushi)

Dang, Now I’m Hungry

His restaurant is only a few miles away…

While I Applaud Their Obviously Successful Business Model

…I HATESES IT.

HATESES, HATESES, HATESES IT!!!!

In-N-Out’s Billionaire Heiress Explains Why Her Burger Joints Haven’t Expanded All Over America

Much to the chagrin of East Coasters, the folks at the helm of In-N-Out Burger haven’t expanded the chain all the way across America.

Why’s that?

The Orange Country Register managed to get a rare interview with with Lynsi Torres the 30-year-old owner and president of In-N-Out.

Oh, my Banglacola Kingdom for a Double-Double with grilled onions and CHEESE!!!

And a chocolate shake, of course.

A Fine Caper

Well, lots of them actually.

All mixed up with olives, onions, mushrooms, tomaters, garlic and some red pepper flakes.

Now what to do with this steak I’m not eating…

“Monk Inspired”

GASTONIA, N .C. – When I heard about it, I jumped in the car and drove out to Gastonia.
I was not alone.
By noon Thursday, an admittedly early time to be drinking beer, the Brixx on Cox Road in Gastonia had already sold about a dozen glasses of Belmont Abbey Dubbel. They could only get a small torpedo keg of it, which holds roughly 50 glasses of beer.
They ran out by 5 p.m.

“We’ve never run out of beer that fast,”

Noon “early” to be drinking?

He’s never met Bingley.

Saturday Night In SP

After our light lunch we strolled around Paulista Avenue a bit and, in true Gringo fashion, stopped in a Starbucks to re-caffeinate. Oddly enough, despite Brazil being the largest coffee producer in the world and also having a total coffee drinking culture there just simply aren’t that many coffee shops on Paulista; in other cities there are lots of places but for some reason (perhaps the cost of the rent) not here. So Starbucks it was and, for the record, they make their latte drinks here a lot sweeter than back in the US.

Dinner that night was at Tordesilhas, named for the treaty in which the Pope divided up the world solely between the Spanish and the Portuguese.

How’d that work out, by the way?

Anywho, the neat thing about this restaurant is they have food from all the regions of Brazil, from the Amazon down south, so you can taste flavors and techniques that you might not find elsewhere.

I, for one, could not resist a white wine called “Utopia”

but sadly, as has always been the case, what has been advertized as Utopia turns out to be, well, somewhat less, shall we say. But hey, it was alcoholic and cold…

We had some various appetizers, including some delicious fried manioc balls with parmesan

and some pastels that had ground beef and some that had cheese

to enliven the flavor they provided various peppers in adorable little Jars of Doom

having previously (and quite humorously as far as my Bride and Daughter were concerned) discovered that my tolerance for spice was not quite as high as I imagined it to be I wisely limited myself to leeeetle drops of the oil on the pastels; very tasty drops to be sure but also very delicately placed ones.

All washed down with some very tasty caipirinhas

Quite tasty indeed.

For the entree itself both my Bride and I decided that after 10 days of seafood and beef we sort of had a hankering for…chicken. One of the oddest, funkiest trees I have ever seen is a native Brazilian tree called the Jabuticaba. The fruit is delicious but it grows…out of the trunk. It is the strangest looking thing, and it also happened to be ‘in season’ so the menu had “chicken in Jabuticaba sauce with parsnip puree and peas”

The jabuticaba has a concentrated sweet/tart grapey flavor, it was an interesting and unique combination. The parsnip puree was wonderfully smooth and creamy and the snow peas were sweet and crisp.

For dessert I had three types of sorbets made from Amazonian fruits: acai, cupuacu and tapioca

and probably another caipirinha.

A Paulista Saturday Lunch

So we had a weekend in Sao Paulo before flying back. The weather, even though it was in the very midst of the Summer, was cool and rainy, well call it drizzly really, so it actually was pleasant. A good friend recommended a driver so we took a little tour. First place we saw was the Cathedral.

here you can see the nice group of homeless ushers waiting to greet folks who stopped by

Brazilians like to joke that they truly believe in the Trinity; they are religious 3 times in their live: when they are baptized, when they are married, and when they are buried.

The rest of the time, not so much…as evidenced by the state of the holy water fonts at the entrance to the church

we drove around a little and saw the lovely Ibirapuera Park and strolled there but parks, whilst pleasant to stroll about, are boring to look at and anyhow all this walking made me think of food.

And if you’re thinking food at lunchtime then you are thinking the Municipal Market, a huge cacophonous den of amazing fruits (that are amazingly expensive), fresh meats, vegetables…

freshly made juices

and the absolute star of the show, what is perhaps the best sandwich you may ever have in your life, the Mortadella sandwich at the Hocca Bar

we also of course had perneil

and their also-famous bachalhau pastel

but really they paled next to the mortadella. The combination of the warm, salty, juicy meat with the slightly melted cheese on a warm, soft roll… Oh my. My Bride and I only got a few bites in before Daughter claimed the rest.

Punk.

The place was very very popular

The fruits here are just…well, bizarre

Some of them look like they were created by Dr. Seuss.

Like these:

those, my friends, are cashews in their natural state. Wild, eh?

As I’ve said, the market is loaded with all the fresh foods a well-funded cook could possibly desire, from fruits and vegetables to Happy Pigs

to all the bachalhau a feller could possibly desire

You’ll notice of course that they don’t list a “sodium content” for the bachalhau, as it’s approximately 100%…

Want some fresh suckling pigs or maybe a rabbit to impress that next date?

The market is a fun place to spend a few hours and have some great eats. We headed back to Paulista to walk around a little before dinner and there I saw one of those little things that just set my hear a-flutter

A happy day indeed.

How Now São Paulo

On a rainy Thursday we left Rio for São Paulo. The best part was this trip involved what may be my two favorite airports in the world.

We took off from Santos-Dumont

Santos-Dumont is basically an aircraft carrier, and the really neat thing about it is that when you take off from it the plane climbs and banks hard to the left immediately…

Because this is right at the end of the runway

then the plane curls around Pão and gives you a great view of Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon as you head off towards São Paulo to land at Congonhas

Think of landing on an aircraft carrier floating in the middle of Central Park and that’s Congonhas: it’s set in the center of São Paulo and is surrounded by skyscrapers. You feel you could almost reach out and touch the buildings because, er, well you just about could. I’ve landed there in the midst of thunderstorms and it scares the bejeebus out of you.

It’s really cool.

So we arrived in São Paulo

and went to spend a few hours at MASP, the Museu de Arte de São Paulo. My goodness, what an incredible collection of really neat art they have: Rubens, Botticelli, Titian, Matisse, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Hieronymus Bosch!!!!!, Monet…it just went on and on. I really wish we had more time to spend there; it was great.

But we had to go to dinner.

One of my favorite restaurants: Figueira Rubaiyat.

Wonderful steak, wonderful wine, impeccable service, all served under the arms of an absolutely amazingly ginormous Fig tree.

I took advantage of being in Brazil to have a great bottle of Argentine Malbec: Catena Zapata Angelica

They don’t sell it outside of South America. It is amazingly yum.

It went exceedingly well with the huge steak Daughter and I shared

Look at the size of the branches of the fig tree

and the trunk is just insanely huge

I didn’t want to be too Gringo-y and use the flash…

São Paulo has a much more formal vibe than Rio: there was nobody walking around in havaianas, everyone was dressed quite nicely for dinner. There’s much more of a professional New Yorky sort of feel to it, whilst Rio is more Miami in flavor.

But the eats in both are divine.