THE GURGLING COD

Cubano Quixote Update

A few weeks back, I chronicled  my bootless Cubano safari in Miami, in which I emerged as the anti-Apple. Turns out that New York DJ equipment purveyors are the ones who know where the Cubanos are at.

NASCAR Meats

Taste the excitement. No, seriously, taste the excitement:

Monogram Food Solutions has launched a full line of meat products under the NASCAR label, including NASCAR hot dogs and bologna, NASCAR smoked sausage, NASCAR lunch meats, and NASCAR bacon. NASCAR meat products will be made available to all retailers nationwide September 18, coinciding with this year's first NASCAR Nextel Chase for the Cup race with the Sylvania 300 at the New Hampshire International Speedway.
 

Keith = Crackle

I imagine the Rolling Stones shilling Rice Krispies way back in the LBJ days is supposed to be some sort of skeleton in the closet, but the jingle rocks. I'd rather listen to this than anything the've done in the last 25 years, for certain. And it makes me want to eat Rice Krispies. Via Advanced Theory, out of the Fiddler, again.

Speaking of eponyms

I'd wondered where the stuff came from.
Via the fiddler.

Chef Update!

Sascha Lyon now inside eponymous restaurant, and looking at camera:
Sep '05:
 
March '06:

Now, if they can just get him to stop hanging out at the bar, this might be a worthy Meatpacking successor to the lamented  Hog Pit.

I'm glad I spent it with you

'Perfect day for cutting up a pig!'

The Observer Food Monthly delivers with an article on weather and its impact on Pig in a Day classes:

But this weather also works in our favour at a more technical level. For example, it makes for better crackling on the roast rolled loin of pork we usually serve at lunchtime. It's all to do with the dryness of the skin when the joint goes in the oven. If you hang the pig up in the sunshine on a day like this, as we sometimes do, the skin will actually begin to tan, turning from flabby white to golden yellow in just an hour or two. And the resulting crackling, scored with a finely adjusted Stanley knife, a good 0.5cm into the fat, but not as far as the flesh itself, then seasoned with flaky salt, black pepper, and coarsely crushed coriander seeds, will be completely sublime.

The something new I learned today is that you do not need to be alive to tan. Good to know, esp. just post spring break.

Are We Not Men?

Actually, we are tagines.* Flofab takes them out for a testdrive and concludes you are better off shopping at the souk than at Williams-Sonoma. Curiously, the Cook's Illustrated that arrived yesterday also had a tagine test. Do Florence and Chris Kimball speak each other's unspoken language? Developing!  The winner, according to Cook's? A dutch oven. Flofab opts for the echt.
    If they ever open up The Museum of Wedding Presents of Limited Utility, there will be a tagine wing.  For starters, any  wedding gift that doubles as  such an attractive blunt instrument seems like a bad idea. In re Williams-Sonoma, they grow ever bolder. I was momentarily tempted by the silcone spatulae in saffron ( monogrammable, no less!) until I saw the new frittata pan. This gets my vote for stupidest kitchen item of 2006. If you have a skillet,  a range, and a stove, you can make a damn frittata. Beat up some eggs, add whatever you have around, cook it on the stove until it firms up around the sides, throw it in the oven until the top is brown. Or you can drop $135 on this contraption that seems like the quickest way possible to introduce beaten eggs into the interior of your range. I have to think that someone in Marketing had a bet that they could find a way to get people to buy two pieces of Calphalon that would have only one use. Someone needs to take these folks to the woodshed, or better yet, the Lodge.
* As good a moment as any to register my objection to Dev2.0. Rip it up and start again ≠ pissing on your own legacy by re-recording your songs in the manner of Kidz Bop. Instead, let's hear what these kids do with a Devo song:
Superchunk, "Girl U Want" Freedom of Choice, Tannis Root, 1992

If you enjoy the song, it's from this compilation--you could pick up a used copy and kick a few bones to Planned Parenthood.

 

But it doesn't make sense to slide into first....

Evidently, some people think it's funny.

Some pig

Some pig. Make you nostalgic for the days when all we had to worry about were monkeys with four asses. Tip of the fin to Slobra for the link.

Dissembling

The mystery surrounding Dream Dinners deepens. The main mystery of why anyone would pay a premium to pretend to cook using inferior ingredients at a "meal assembly center"is completely unfathomable. I still can't quite figure this out, but it appears to be to cooking what the Wingshooters Hunters Preserve is to hunting. (I have much respect for Wingshooters patron Mike Timlin as a baseball player, but Sox hero or no, he hunts like a bitch.  The "Dream Dinners Experience?" You drive somewhere, assemble prechopped ingredients, and pay a premium for the privilege:

Meal assembly centers are not necessarily a return to the home-cooked food generations grew up eating. For one thing, no one actually cooks at them. The chopped vegetables and frozen meats at most of the centers come from industrial food suppliers like Sysco, and recipes include ingredients like canned wax beans and that old hot dish standby, cream of chicken soup. Nothing is actually cooked on site, although workers in the back room might chop scallions or slice raw beef into serving sizes.

The lede for the article runs like this:

SEATTLE — Jodi Robbins and her family were on a grim dinnertime merry-go-round.Takeout pizza was a mainstay, except on the nights when Chinese food seemed more appealing. When Ms. Robbins cooked, it was spaghetti or tuna casserole over and over, with rarely enough time to make a salad.

Fair enough. As the article says, "Their routine was expensive, fattening and boring." Absolutely. But how does spending a two hour chunk of time at a meal assembly center preparing "a rotating menu of mostly stews and casseroles designed to be assembled in freezer bags or aluminum trays, then taken home to be baked or simmered in a single pot," made from cafteria quality ingedients help? This chain seems to be making its bones by adding "inconvenient" to the "expensive, fattening and boring" equation. Also, my objection to this business is not a question of insisting that parents ("Moms" as the Times call them) travel to Brittany to harvest their own fleur de sel, or generally spend more time making meals, and eschew this kind of shortcut -- these meal assembly centers seem distinctly less convenient than making a meal at home, never mind the risk of getting cream of broccoli all over the interior of your Nissan Quest.   

    The  secondary mystery is why the  Times continues to recycle this story. Last time it was Hesser, and now she has punted to Kim Severson*  and that Salman Rushdie of mac and cheese, Julia Moskin.  I vented thus  in re Dream Dinners last time, though I hope nobody comes here for stock tips--unaccountably, Dream Dinners appears to be growing more rapidly than Kenny Rogers Roasters. I never thought threre could be a franchise concept that made me nostalgic for Boston Market.  Can anyone explain this?

*Severson's post-Katrina NOLA food coverage has been solid, and more importantly, persistent.

Update: Ms. Culi makes it clear she gets it by missing the point. She had me at the soccermoms turned flensers.