THE GURGLING COD

Simulated liveblog of Ribs n Bibs visit

No video, but look at the image above, and listen to this, while you shake your monitor, and that's pretty much how the first Rib Tip Dinner from Ribs n Bibs in five+ years went down.

Keep your hands to yourself...

So FOC Ruhlman is at pains to tell you that you should knock boots while the chicken is a-roasting. William Alexander also mentions having sex with his wife during the quiet moments in the bread process. The Gurgling Cod endorses and approves of sexual intercourse of all forms involving consenting adults, but given the historical and current popularity of sex, it does not seem necessary to integrate it into instructions for roasting a chicken or baking a levain. When Martha Stewart tells you how to put an antiqued finish on an endtable, she does not need to suggest a ride on the ol' baloney pony while you wait for the first coat to dry. 

The Cod will continue to do whatever it is happens here, but will limit the cooking sex advice to the following suggestion, the fruit of bitter experience of a friend who shall remain nameless. If a receipt involves cutting up Scotch Bonnet peppers, and you choose to beguile a subsequent period of marination by spending a quiet moment or two with the Athleta catalog, either remove the rubber gloves you were wearing while chopping habaneros, or put on a pair before you get started. 

Bourdain meets MC Escher, or sometimes metatheater is a Sazerac in the face

The Cod just got off an airplane, but this makes the bones in his head hurt. If I have it straight:

1) Katrina.

2) Critic trashes post-Katrina NOLA dining.

3) TV show set just post-K drops.

4) Show references critic's pan.

5) Critic makes cameo on show, gets Sazerac in face from irate NOLA cook.

6) Said (fictional) incident blows up Eater.com. 

7) Entire story arc reprised on (real) Eater.com. 

8) Cod further muddies water with real blog post (this one here) about metatheatrical collusion between Eater and Treme. 

Is that correct? 

Chicagolypse pt. 1 Z&H Deli

Call it the Savage Inequalities Tour 2k11 -- yesterday, the Cod was visiting a public HS in rural SC, getting his school lunch cherry took, and hearing exhortations over the school PA for the students to raise money for the soccer team by eating at Zaxby's. Today, the Cod is a spy in the house of Berwanger, returning to a very different Hyde Park than the one that was there when the Cod was getting his school on there. For one thing, Z&H MarketCafe, where I am currently gruffling: 

 

TENZING NORGAY	4.75
Neuske’s bacon, ham, cheese and organic egg on a croissant or wheat bread

Not mad at it, at all. Never thought I'd see Neuske's bacon on 57th st. 

Guiteau Twofer, fat and skinny edition

For one thing, evidence that America's obesity epidemic transcends the Mason-Dixon line. Burntover District Correspondent Mr. Sunshine passes along this gem:

 As the name implies, at Hucklebuckets, buckets take center stage. And let's get it out of the way up front -- if you don't want your food served in a plastic bucket, this isn't your kind of place.

and

I'd checked out the menu beforehand online and we'd already discussed the $11.95 "Garbage Pail" -- "a big bucket filled with fresh cut fries, onion rings and tater crisps doused in meat chili, pulled pork, four cheeses, sour cream, salsa, bacon, jalapeno and scallions."

Meanwhile, down south, diet sweet tea vodka:

 

 Firefly is introducing Skinny Tea.  Skinny Tea will be a favorite choice for consumers who prefer to drink a little “lighter,” featuring a lower alcohol content, fewer calories and zero carbs.   

Firefly is known for its great taste, “mixability” and genuine southern heritage. While our loyal fans love our sweet tea made with real Louisiana sugar cane, many ask if we have an “un-sweet” or sugar-free tea.  Co-founder Scott Newitt wanted to satisfy our fan’s requests and Skinny Tea delivers. Newitt tells us, “Firefly Skinny Tea is our original sweet tea flavored vodka, minus the sugar.  It is still infused with South Carolina tea but the difference is in the sweetener.  Our Skinny Tea is made with Truvia™, created from Stevia, an herb that is naturally sweet and sugar free.”

Food in buckets, the diet version of the Official Beverage of Unplanned Teen Pregnancy, (and the Cod will be talking to two! different! lawyers! this morning? Sounds like a Guiteau Monday to me. 

Caw Caw Carter!*

Having spend the morning serving as human bunting witnessing stirring commencement exercises. The Cod finds his black little heart unusually expansive this afternoon. A burrito will do that! Also, news of a collab that puzzles by putting forces of gooa and forces of evil on the same team. The Cod <3 Emile DeFelice long time. He ran for secretary of agriculture in SC when the rest of all y'all were having New Zealand kiwis delivered by razor scooter, one by one, and now he runs Caw Caw Creek Farm, where he basically homeschools heritage pigs.  At the same time, The Cod has, now and again, expressed reservations about Paula Deen on both aesthetic and moral levels. But! via Emile DeFelice's FB:  "Libbie Summers (of Paula Deen Enterprises and Red Velvet Partners) is cooking Caw Caw Creek pork for President Jimmy Carter!"

Menschy pork cooked for a menschy ex-prez by a Paula Deen henchperson? A) two out of three ain't bad. B) Folks I trust are down with Paula Deen, so perhaps she is less evil than I have hitherto thought? *Right before five on a Friday is the perfect time to bury this sort of thing! 

And what a week. Play us off, Electric Six:

 

An immersion blender is not an atomizer, so don't get your hopes up, cheese.

So the trap at the day job went hammity-ham-hogzilla-Iberico-ham. How hammity-ham-hogzilla-Iberico-ham? Such that this gets presented w/o suitable workup.

"How did people make soup before stick blenders? They are the absolute stone cold nuts. You can fuck up a soup real bad and a stick blender will totally make it presentable. Having a stick blender is like a cheat code for Call Of Duty: Soup.

From Steve Albini's cooking blog. Steve Albini! Cooking blog? It's like the Wed Chef and Thalia Zedek were the same person! But a dude! Learning that the dude who sang about setting things on fire w/ kerosene is now blogging about unusual shapes of pasta he finds at the Jewel is the existential = of finding the first gray chest hair, but ok, when you consider the alternatives.  Via the inestimible cinetrix.  And, well, why the fuck not: 

 

Carolina skillet fun

Back to the usual beefs soon enough, but the Cod threw this together last night, and it worked out OK. Dark butterbeans from Winslet's cooked w/ a hock from a trip to Durham a few weeks back, plus turnip greens from the CSA at the day job cooked in some jowl drippings and some homeade stock. Threw the whole thing over some rice (arborio in the rice cooker, if you're nasty) and threw the crisp bits of jowl on top. Looking forward to lunch. 

David Chang's Duck Rock

Flo Fab offers some details on the duckcentric reboot of the Momo Milk Bar space. Looking forward to it. The Cod has probably posted Malcolm McLaren songs on slimmer pretexts, but don't miss the inexplicable hockey sweaters and protodaggering in this jawn: 

Update on Update on Nathan Myrhvold and his problems

Update:

On closer inspection, there is an I missing from the address that bounced back. I'm sorry I did not check further before posting the post below. If the mistake is mine, I regret the error. If memory serves, however, I cut and pasted the email link from the MC "To err is human" post. If the error originated with me, I apologize to the MC team; if the typo was in their link, I apologize to my readers for not checking more carefully. 

The Cod mentioned the thing where there are a lot of problems with Modernist Cuisine the other day. Charging your beta testers a ton of money to debug your product is certainly an innovative cross-pollenation of the software and publishing industry, and The Cod wanted to be a part. Having pointed out a glaring problem with the book, namely the title, long ago, we thought it would only be courteous to share this info. After all Myrhvold had invited us to: If you spot a mis­take in your copy that isn’t already men­tioned here, please send it in."

On May first, I sent the following email:

 

I am taking you up on your offer that "if you spot a mis­take in your copy that isn’t already men­tioned here, please send it in." I don't own a copy, but I did notice an error in the title. Your book is concerned with avant-garde techniques popularized by the likes of Ferran Adria and Grant Achatz over the last decade or so. But the title of your book is "Modernist" Cuisine. Given the way this word is used in English, (see OED s.v.  Modernist, Modernism, and Modern) your title is misleading and confusing. You might consider "Contemporary Cuisine," or perhaps "Avant-Garde Cuisine," or maybe "21st Century Cuisine." Good luck with your edits -- it sounds like a very ambitious project! Hope this suggestion helps. Cheers, JBF, AKA The Gurgling Cod

I got this response:

 

 

 

from Mail Delivery Subsystem mailer-daemon@googlemail.com to fesser@gmail.com date Wed, May 4, 2011 at 10:26 PM subject Delivery Status Notification (Failure)

May 4 (6 days ago)

 

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

    info@modernistcusine.com

Technical details of permanent failure:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 451 451 Try again later (state 14).

 

Yep, the email to report errors does not work. What line of work was this guy in before he started writing cookbooks?