THE GURGLING COD

Raising Hell

Kudos to Clotilde of Choc & Zuc--the latest food blogger to turn pro. Speaking of food bloggers with book deals, The Gurgling Cod is pleased to announce a blogitudinous extravaganza of magnanimous proportions, as Gurgling Cod and Tingle Alley form like Voltron to review the flagship of this burgeoning genre of books by bloggers. (A packet of pizza topping from Pizza Hut if you can guess who.) Stay tuned. It will be like "Walk this Way," once we decide who gets to be the dapper ones in the fedoras, and who has to be the leathery ex-junkies.
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Cheesy

Kraft wants legislation to reduce the aging requirements for parmesan. Again. (Via The Food  Section.) First of all, suprised to learn that the FDA actually has appelation controlee-type standards for American cheeses that imitate Italian ones to begin with. I started to get indignant, but decided that if you choose to buy parm in a green can, getting fussy about aging times might be a bit like talking about the impact of terroir on your bottle of Cisco. In general though, it is always concerning when the definition of words can be changed by lobbying, and even more so the presumption that you could do so. Perhaps we need a new cabinet position -- Secretary of  Semiotics.

Whole Foods Bashing takes Friday off

Instead, Pat visits Trader Joe's. It does not go well.

David Ortiz For President

And he already has his  Air Force One.

I got 95 theses...

...and a shirty letter from Tony Bourdain ain't one.
Is the Cuoz poised to become the Martin Luther of NY restaurant reviewers?
Developing.

Where have you gone, Michelangelo?

The beat goes on for Ninja. Via Eater, a detailed account of an evening with the Ninjas. The more we see, the more it appears that this restaurant was developed by a group of boys who are nine:
"We can have individual rooms named after great ninjas!"
"We can attach a menu to the door with a throwing star!"
"We can have the servers' ninjas' order books burst into flames!"
"We can serve entrees in flaming conch shells!"
"Yeah!"
And, yes, Virginia-san, the dessert menu does burst into flames. I kept scrolling through this post about Ninja because of the fotos, but the narrative rewards perusal, in that so few restaurant reviews are written by people who are 1) in their early 20s 2) broke 3) don't like food. You can get the general idea from the foto at right.  Somehow, they are the perfect muses for this Chuck E. Cheese meets anime dungeon thing they're doing at Ninja. However, if you want the truth about Ninja, and what they eat, this is the most reiliable source.

An Awl! An Awl!

My kingdom for an awl!

Hey! Bruni! Leave them Cods alone!

Bruni goes to Nobu 57, and enjoys himself. So much in fact, that he mentions food as early as the 3rd graf:

Here they are, lightly battered rock shrimp in a gently spicy mayonnaise, a dish done with dozens of tweaks and an array of seafood in hundreds of restaurants over the last decade.

And perhaps there is some Ella Fitzgerald on the iPod:

Here it is, a plump wedge of miso-glazed black cod, the culinary equivalent of a Cole Porter standard, covered and interpreted by so many artists that you may not recall where and when you experienced it first.

As it develops, it's good, like at the original Nobu. Indeed, the menu, decor, and ambiance are similar (Naomi has been to both).  It reminds me of this guy. There are 52 Wednesdays a year, and about a brazillion restaurants opening every day, so a review that establishes the similarity of a second location to the original would seem not very useful, but Bruni's thing seem to be reviews of the tried-and-true in one form or another: "Goodnight Moon--still a favorite of toddlers--3 stars."
The Cole Porter business aside, Bruni stays within himself, mostly. I was even considering a post speculating that the Bruni Digest et al had crushed his spirit. But like a unicorn, his spirit cannot be tamed. That little bit too much will always find its way past the editors and into the article. This time, Bruni dreams of eating the Augustus Gloops of the sea:

What mattered was that black cod. I'm almost convinced that Mr. Matsuhisa maintains a secret tank in which the fish toss back Jacques Torres chocolates and watch "Finding Nemo" while they fatten.

On the other side of the room is the tank where the sea urchins eat Laffy Taffy and watch The French Connection? And he cannot leave the Cole Porter conceit alone:

The result, richer in the Nobu family than anywhere else, was no less de-lovely for the number of times it's been performed.

De-fuck me gently with a chainsaw.
(I did see the tailgating article. Silently judging.)

Don't forget the pork-Update

Update: Thanks to the kind offices of Mr. Badthings & Our Girl, the aforementioned WSJ article is here. The ideas are decent but there is a little bit more of a home ec vibe than I would have guessed:

Call it culinary split personality: You spend your weekends flipping through cookbooks, squeezing eggplants at the market and preparing leisurely meals. Then Monday rears its head -- you're late getting home from work and everyone is hungry -- and it's back to telephoning for take out or microwaving leftovers for dinner. But many people would rather sit down to a home-cooked weeknight meal, as long as it isn't Sunday dinner, warmed-over.

The solution: Cook ahead. That means that while you're making a weekend dinner you can also get a head start on a second meal. Then, on Monday or Tuesday, you use some of the ingredients you've prepared, but put them together in different ways to produce distinct textures and flavors.

This may be childish, but scripting the repurposing of leftovers like this seems to take some of the fun out of eating them. Hard not to imagine this kind of exchange on Sunday:

Mrs. Smith: "Delicious pork, honey."
Mr. Smith: "Glad you like it, honey, because we are having it tomorrow in a torta, and then as a sauce for papardelle on Tuesday!"
Mrs. Smith: "Oh."

I can imagine doing all of these things with a shoulder of pork, but not scripting its fate like this, and if I did, I would certainly avoid divulging the seqence of meals to anyone I hoped would share them, but I'd be interested in hearing how others approach this kind of issue. Are leftovers an opportunity for improvisation, or do you have sequences you follow?

Don't forget the pork

Correction in today's  WSJ:

THE RECIPE for herbed ricotta, Swiss chard and potato torta that appeared in Saturday’s Pursuits section omitted a step. The 1½ cups of shredded pork should be added with the onion, chard and potatoes.

Via Gawker. If someone out in Codland works for the Man enough to subscribe to WSJ online and can email the text of the receipt to me, I'd love to see it--I have this image of salarymen all up and down the LIRR, bent over their Wolf ranges, slaving over unprepossesing tortae. If you are a disgruntled WSJ chef, wondering what to do with your cup and a half of pork, you might try something like  this:

Anyway, efforts have been ongoing to exhaust this internally toothsome, but not compelling hoard of pork. In a fit of perverse desperation, I decided to desecrate one of my favorite chef's recipes, a lightning-quick chiffonade of collard greens with a balsamic reduction. It goes like this:

brown some mashed garlic in a slug of oil in a skillet, add a hot pepper or two you make a big roll of de-stemmed collard leaves, slice into thin ribbons (imagine cutting the end off of a cigar, over and over). Sizzle the collards in the oil until they turn a brighter green, 2-3 minutes, then add maybe 1/3 c. of balsamic--utility balsamic is fine, and continue cooking until greens are almost dry.

My "refinement" was to add several handfuls of chopped pork at the initial stage, which brings the process back closer to the usual accompaniment of collards w/ pork, but without the endless stewing. I had earlier drained and defatted the drippings, and had blended the fennely drippings with some stock, and returned a bit of the fat to the mix. The pork and the collards came together nicely with the Tuscan flavor. To serve, as it was getting late, 2-d polenta, aka corn tortillas, warmed in adjacent skillet, and secreted in oven. Thus, Tuscan soul tacos. Surprisingly popular in the Codhold. Diversity is important.

If any of you Scarsdale Galahads do try this, let me know what they say when you ask Whole Foods if they have collards, which look like this: