THE GURGLING COD

Beef Week: Bonus Beef Beats

The keen-eyed cinetrix passes along the following. No one who has been there would be shocked that the story has a Rhode Island dateline. There are 49 states in the Union where one might expect that a man would not want to sleep with the kind of lady who would agree to sleep with him in exchange for a couple of t-bones he says he has at home, but here, it makes sense somehow.  Elsewhere, Burrito Lockdown. Curiously, a variation on the burrito incidcent happened to me once in Rhode Island. I was walking near Classical High, toting a Cubano from a local bakery. It was cold, so I had the Cubano under my coat to keep it warm. As I approached the school, a post-Columbine guard accosted me, and asked me to show what was under my coat. (It may be useful to know that this Cubano was approximately the shape and size of a carbine.)  I successfully demonstrated that my bundle had a pliablility and porky aroma not characteristic of small arms, but I did find a hair in that sandwich.

Beef Week: Friday Fish Beef

I was looking at an article about the whole ex corde ecclesiae thing in the Chronic, and it struck me that one overlooked consequence of the recent changes in Foxboro and Rome is that the guy on the right is now the boss of the guy on the left. Will Benedict16 gently urge the Fighting Irish to return to the single-wing offense? The New Deal and Vatican II are under the gun, so, why not Frank Leahy's T-Formation, too? I keep waiting for Bush to announce a bold new rural delectrification act at a press conference he wraps up by pissing on FDR's grave. But perhaps the Cod is high on beef, and needs to cut back. As it is Friday, fish beef seems only fitting. Love fish beef. The proliferation of these cards is  an interesting response. The "go fish/no fish" version has a more euphonious title, but Fish list is good, too, b/c it reminds the Cod of a favorite L7 song.  Best is the version courtesy from the California Academy of Sciences,  if only for its inclusion of a third kind of fish. "Iffy fish" sounds like what Bertie Wooster might call an unfavored relative. In any case, while the thought of a pinochle-size fan of these cards being de rigeur for a trip to the market is discouraging, there are some good fish among the good fish. So why not smoke some mussels this weekend? Put some alder chips in your Cameron Smoker, throw in as many mussels as will fit, and smoke them until the shells are open and the mussels are firm. Save the juice from the drip pan, combine with melted butter, some wine and shallots. Serve on the half shell, with toothpicks and the juice. It is good with the juice. I bet you could also toss the mussels with some thin pasta and the juice, and that would also be good.

Beef Week: Bonus Basketball Barkley Beef

Our stringer in NYC, the keen-eyed Itch, passed along the following from one of the tabloids there:

Miami's free-spirited point guard Damon Jones kept firing darts with thesame accuracy as his 3-point attempts in this lopsided first-round series with the Nets.

This time his targets were the NBA for ordering him to do without his rapper-like Yves St. Laurent sunglasses during post-game press conferences and TNT commentator Charles Barkley for ripping him for wearing them.

"Stan [Van Gundy and Pat Riley didn't ask me [to take them off]," Jones said before the Heat flew to New  Jersey for tonight's Game 3. "The NBA did. I don't know why. I don't get into that but know Charles Barkley gave me some bleep about it. The only reason he did that is because he doesn't look as good as I do. He can't find sunglasses to fit his big, fat, bald head. He's on the stage to where he gets on a lot of people about a lot of things. I'm just shooting back."

League spokesman Tim Frank said a "memo" was sent to teams before the season regarding postgame-interview attire. 

"It includes no wearing of headgear, and sunglasses and hats are included in that," Frank said. "The idea is our league more than any other league fans get to know the players and what they look like. We want the same intimacy in the interviews."

Jones, who's shot 11-of-15 from 3-point range in Miami's two victories, also wasn't amused by TNT calling him the butler to Shaquille O'Neal and Dwyane Wade's Batman and Robin, going as far as drawing him in a butler oufit holding a plunger.

"I don't want to be Damon the butler anymore," Jones said. "I want to be Damon Jones, the most electrifying. The plunger and all that, I don't do toilets. I shoot a basketball man."

Rapper-like? Whatever, Rupe. Where is the love? More important, where are the Cazals?

Beef Week: Bison Beef

This was yesterday, but it is important. I enjoyed that the Times coverage stressed that the bison roamed through "affluent" neighborhoods, suggesting that in Baltimore, packs of bison routinely trample crackwhores in the seedy parts of town, but when they get loose in the tonier areas, the police mobilize. Could be. More importantly, the saturation coverage is a subtle reminder--when was the last time you watched men on a tennis court in a bison-free context? A while. Men's tennis has evolved into a sport that is conducted in secrecy. Where have you gone, Ile Nastase? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you. And now, it seems that there are folks making plans for bison--pass the Old Bay, and a Natty Bo.
Big Dipper, "Making Plans for Bison" Every Band Has a Shonen Knife who Loves Them, Giant, 1989

Beef Week: Duck Beef

Cod hearts duck, and cannot lie. One of the dinners I'm proudest of is a roast duck on grilled Portuguese sweet bread paved with thin slices of mango, served to the cinetrix prior to a Valentine's day concert by the Mann-Penns. The key is to make a little bit of stock out of the neck and stuff, add the pan juices, and reduce with dried cranberries, and some of the rosemary you had in the duck's cavity, along with a quartered lemon, also in the cavity. I was riffing on a passed app from a wedding here. Thus, happy to see the reliable Mark Bittman getting after the canard with Gary Danko, who has an eponymous restaurant. (Aside to Mr. Danko: unless your enterprise involves charging people to drip wax on them, or designing first-person-shooter video games, your website does not need a flash intro. We will all be food for worms soon enough without sitting through your droll animated sequences.) Bittman and Danko both turned in some good-looking dishes, and I look forward to trying them when appropriate ducks emerge. The beef is with the beef-oriented presentation of the material: this series of articles is evidently trying to suck the last modicum of buzz from the fast-chilling Iron Chef franchise by billing them "The Minimalist vs. The Chef," with accompanying TV show, "How to Cook Everything: Bittman takes on America's Chefs." Evidently, Iron Chef has bequeathed a legacy of cooking as a fundamentally antagonistic undertaking. To be sure, cooking can be competitive--I've been known to express a desire to "dominate a cookout" friends are having, but with the recognition that it is retarded of me to think that way. What Bittman is doing is far more useful than that--it is like Us's Star Splurge/Budget Swap, but not involving handbags. Thus, the pretense that Bittman and whomever will be confiting duck legs, with the winner getting shiny fiddle made of gold + soul of runner-up is just distracting. (Holla, ATLiens!) The concept seems much less smart than Bittman, and I blame Iron Chef. After all, with Julia Child and Jaques Pepin, we did not see Julia tag in for Big Show so she could brutally rake Pepin's face with her nails, while choking Ric Flair with the bell rope, during the Cassoulet Cage Match, did we? The answer is no. Otherwise, TMFTML got there fustest with the mostest in re Bruni, but since not unlike Nicely Nicely, when you ask "what's in the Daily News?" T-Muffle says, "I'll tell you what's in the Daily News,"  he did not share the following Bruni nugget describing the gentrifying Meatpacking district:

"But despite its minor adjustment for a Starbucks that didn't come, it has less often bent to shifting trends and times than bucked them, staying largely the same while all around it changed, while the muscle of the Mineshaft gave way to the Manolos of Spice Market and risqué was usurped by chardonnay."

Sadly, this is not the only alliance of Manolos and chardonnay in this week's DI/DO. Stayfree? Lindsayism? Bueller? It sounds like an effort to bring a Cool Colt level of contempt for the consumer to marketing wine to the disenchanted Ft. Lee hausfrau. Before we go, a song for Bruni.

Beef Week: Babel Beef Bonus

"Bresaola of "the Saint" Valtellina the more genuine and traditional way than to fine taste the bresaola of the Valtellina 300 grams of bresaola of the Valtellina Disporre the bresaola of the mannered Valtellina on every plate, best if of wood.  It can be accompanied with riccioli of butter the juniper (1) and "bread of saws them" (2).  In a pestello to tritare some berries of juniper, to incorporate in the butter softened to temperature of atmosphere and therefore to place in refrigerator for an hour.  Bread in shape of rubber ring obtained with grain flour mixture and of saws them (grain saraceno)."

So I poked around at the Bresaola website I mentioned below. Thought I would take a look at the receipts, even though they are in Italian. (The Cod studied Italian for a semester at a community college, back in the day. It was welding on Monday in Randolph, VT, and Italian on Tuesdays in Hanover, NH. My progress in the language stalled somewhere around my translation of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Special Secret Song": "Io ho avere fete sul tua gato, bambina..." if memory serves. And my welds were never even got as good as the one featured above, courtesy of failure-analysis.com. The text quoted above demonstrates the limitations of Google's translation tools. I am intrigued, however, by what appear to be references to juniper butter.

Beef Week: Foe Beef

Sadly, with a F, and not a PH. The contretemps surrounding the exposure of the Foetry guy is a reminder that the literary world is beefier than if  Logan Mankins had a bachelor party at Plataforma hosted by actual vaqueiro. Heck, I'd considered airing out some beef regarding the limitations of the cheeses of Wisconsin,  but do not want the cheesehead faction of the LBC rumbling out of the mountains and going all Instant Replay on me. Old Hag's "Jorie Sham" post is a place to begin, especially  for the jiveass "blame the medium" response from Graham printed in the Globe she  links to. On the other hand, Mr. Foetry does seem to have a bit of a Hard Harry complex, esp. post outing. Perusing the Foetry/Whoisfoetry back and forth is like watching two guys separated by an Igloo full of haterade, but they can't decide who is Parcells and who is Bavaro. The dismaying thing about the whole business is that Foetry, even at its most successful, succeeds like when the Feds successfully busted Al Capone for tax evasion. The problem is not that these contests are rigged in favor of  privileged coterie of insiders, but that in this respect, the contests reflect the world of poetry at large. The only difference is that unlike every other aspect of the literary world, there is a soupcon of a presumption of a level playing field. In poetry, literature, art, underwater demolition, polar exploration or just about any other field of endeavor, people will be inclined to give jobs, perks, whatever, to their friends, colleagues, associates, rather than strangers. Thus, Foetry establishes that poetry contests, much like the rest of human existence, are not fair. It sucks, and it is worth it to point out when people give prizes to their spouses, but this approach seems unlikely to change much. Anyway, as a treat, a bit of bile unlikely to upset anyone too much:

The style of the work is excessively bad. It is a labored parody of Scott's worst manner; we mean that, which he himself describes as the 'ambagitory' or 'circumbendibus....' He is never content to express a simple circumstance in plain language, but is always seeking for some roundabout, or tumid paraphrase.... He seems determined, that the reader shall never lose sight of him, and it is not surprising that his readers frequently forget both his story and his actors. ...it is very evident that the writer has mistaken the admiration of good novels for the power of writing them, and that his work evinces reading, rather than thought, observation, or accuracy.
-Jared Sparks, on Capt. Matthew Murgatroyd's Refugee in the North American Review of July, 1825.

Beef Week: Peach Beef

Welcome to Beef Week here at the Gurgling Cod. Through no fault of his own, the Cod is feeling more beefish than beefy, mainly for reasons too tedious to discuss, and also because of the Tampa Bay "It's a shame about the" Devil Rays. I don't know what a Devil Ray is, but it is evidently made out of beef. Evidently, the mission statement in the Tampa Bay GM's office is twofold 1) To suck 2) To throw at Red Sox. Who can forget the already-ejected Gerald "Ice" Williams returning to the field in 2000, in a game when 8 Devil Raays (I think the triple-a Raaays is giving too much credit) were ejected (Petey almost no-hit them, too.) When Boston Dirt Dogs seems restrained, you know you are dealing with a bunch of no-account, cellar-bound cowtown jackasses who will be scheduling tee times for October before you dust off your white bucks. To recap: Rays throw at Manny: he goes yard. Rays throw at Papi: benches clear, when order is restored, he also goes yard. And, Jay Payton, replacing the ejected Trot Nixon: yard. Pinella is a freaking chessmaster. Nixon was ejected for his effort to share some home truths with a Raay:

Brazelton, Nixon said, was yelling at him to stay away from Carter, and then stuck his finger in his left eye. It was the same eye, he said, that his toddler, Chase, accidentally hit two years ago, scratching his cornea, leaving him with blurred vision, and causing him to go to then-manager Grady Little and say he couldn't play. "I wasn't comfortable with my vision for almost three weeks," he said. "So whether he intended to do it or not, that doesn't matter.

"I think Mr. Reed thought I was threatening [Brazelton] or whatever, but I wasn't threatening him. I was just giving him information."

That information wasn't Kathryn Nixon's recipe for peach cobbler.

"What ignited me the most is that he was grabbing at my face," Nixon said. "I was giving him information about what I'd do to him if he's going to do some crap like that, you know."

I don't have Kathryn Nixon's recipe, but here is a delicious peach cobbler, direct to you via the holler:

If using fresh peaches (always best), then:
2 bags of peaches
1 cup of sugar
1/2 stick butter or margarine
Combine peaches, sugar, butter in pan over low heat and cook slowly bringing to a low boil.  Meanwhile, combine the ingredients below to make the batter and pour into a baking dish.  Once the peaches have reached a low boil, pour on top of the batter (crust will rise through the fruit as the dish cooks).Bake at 350 until done.
1 + 1/2 cups Martha White self-rising flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 stick butter
Milk (sufficient to create a thick cake-like batter)
NOTE:  If using canned peaches, eliminate the cup of sugar and reduce the
butter to 1/4 stick.

I find this cobbler tastes best if you listen to jazz while you cook and eat it.

Think while you drink

...especially in the Athens of America.

Our keen-eyed correspondent Lee noted the following item in Sunday's Globe: basically, the Concord grapes (vitis labrusca) that make the Kosher wine you will be quaffing at your seder were developed as a nativist response to the encroachment of the foreign (ie "degenerate" and "Semitic") vitis vinifera:

"The story of America's only counter-Semitic grape, is told by Rutgers historian Philip J. Pauly in the January 2005 issue of Arnoldia, the quarterly journal of the Arnold Arboretum. It begins with Ephraim Wales Bull, a Boston goldleaf artisan and amateur farmer who relocated to rural Concord in 1836 at age 30. There, inspired by notions of a pure American civilization whose example would shame debauched Europe, Bull devoted himself to developing varieties of Vitis labrusca, the then-dominant North American grape species that would replace the morally degenerate European species, Vitis vinifera, as the source of American wine."

Read all about it here. Or  here , if you prefer not to register. I wonder if Daddy O knew about this when he dropped his "Like Welch's Grape, crushing suckers we hate" line in Stet Troop 88. Irregardless, a big Mazel Tov and L'Chaim to Ashkenaz and Sephardic Codstituents alike in this passover season, but especially this guy. Hope you found what you were looking for.  I do have some brisket suggestions coming up that I'd urge you to consider for 5766.
Meanwhile, we are shocked, shocked to learn that beer consumption is on the rise at Fenway Park. At $6 / cup of lite beer, you would think the only trouble would come when people cut in the bathroom line. It has always astonished me not that so many  people get so fucked up at Red Sox games, but that so many can afford to get so fucked up at Red Sox games.  Also, some math fun: at the article's estimated $4,000 per tap per game, the proceeds from three taps would just about cover the cost of one of Johnny Damon's at bats. I know that Theo and his lads are keen to extort maximize revenue. Perhaps some sort of  adopt-a-tap is the solution. Just a fan trying to help.

Internationally known as Soul Brother #1

Good to see Augusta in the news for something not involving a dude named "Hootie."
The best part:

Brown is scheduled to attend the dedication along with his former road manager, the Rev. Al Sharpton.

Somewhere, Madame C.J. Walker is smiling.
Just a snippet, because it would seem to dishonor what James Brown stands for to give his music away. Skip lunches if you have to, but own this record--the Maceo-led interval when James Brown is not even on stage would be worth the price of the CD if there was nothing else on it, but you also get a riveting intro to "Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm proud," a jumping "Kansas City," and 12:51 of "Cold Sweat." 12:51! And excellent liner notes from some guy called Chuck D., and a sketch of James Brown's 1968. If you were James Brown, there was a lot going on in 1968--this show was not long after Mayor Kevin White persuaded James Brown to go through with his scheduled performance in Boston, just after MLK  was assassinated. The concert was broadcast on WGBH, the local PBS affiliate, defusing the potential for a riot by keeping many potential rioters at home, and thus preserving this venerable structure for another 25 years or so, allowing for the installation two of these,  many of these, and preserving the workplace of Joseph James Terrence O'Reilly. James Brown, we salute you. You could buy the DVD of the Boston concert  here,  and read more about  it, though this vendor could use an editor.  But, your first job is to buy this record. You will be glad you did.
James Brown, "James_Brown_Thanks" Say it Live and Loud, Live in Dallas 1968 (Polygram, 1998)