THE GURGLING COD

MLIF Hunting

In my cheapskate efforts to strongarm my university library to get a copy of My Life In France on the shelf expeditiously, so that I could read it, and you know, be part of the conversation, I learned an interesting thing. You may remember that many academic libraries have a section, often near the entrance, called "popular reading." In a chance conversation with a librarian, I learned  my state university library, like many others, subscribes to a service that delivers the popular reading selections to subscribing libraries pre-marked and mylared, so all the libraries need to do is put their stamp in them. The selection priniciple? From what I gathered froma casual conversation, the service automatically sends all books reviewed in the New York Times. Not necessarily favorably, just reviewed. Obviously, MLIF is going to do well without this push, but a few hundred (?) library sales and attendant exposure might be a difference maker for a lesser title. I wonder if review copies ever show up at the NYT accompanied by fruit baskets? 

Dead Sheep in Tribeca!

37 uses for a dead sheep is screening at the Tribeca Film Festival. If you get a chance to see it, please chime in.

Jazz and Heritage

"There's almost nothing quite so good this time of night in New Orleans: they split a crispy, French, and flaky loaf of breat in two and pave the inside with beef or pork or ham, salt, pepper, and some kind of pungent relish -- or if oyster season's on, with six or eight big oysters, fried flaky brown, the way they know how to do it there -- I don't know how they do it,  but they call the thing a Poor Boy Sandwich, and the price of it is just ten cents, a dime. I guess they got the name from this, because that's the only thing poor about it. Why don't you and Pat go down and bring us back about a half-dozen? -- we'll sit here in the garden, I'll take beef for mine.  --I have remembered nights like these when people plugged a watermelon with champagne -- you cut a plug out, and poured iced champagne in -- and you would sit there in the garden, eating watermelon on a night like this: how bright and still it is tonight, the moon makes brightness through the magnolia leaves, there is so much of death, of life, of stillness and of fragrance here around us; on nights like these, the river hooks around you like an elbow, and you always know it is above the town."

-Thomas Wolfe, "A Prologue to America." (Vogue, Feb 1, 1938)

Did you know that there is currently a jazz festival underway in New Orleans? The New Orleans airport code is MSY, which will save you time if you find the prospect of attending a jazz festival more appealing than remaining at your desk.  If you cannot attend, you can follow along from home thanks to the good offices of WWOZ. If listening to jazz festivals on your computer improves the quality of your life, let the good folks at WWOZ know.

I saw a man, he force-fed a goose

When foie gras is outlawed, only outlaws will serve foie gras. Mayor Daley II's bemusement:

We have children getting killed by gang leaders and dope dealers. We have real issues here in this city. And we’re dealing with foie gras? Let’s get some priorities. Our priorities should be children, the quality of education. It should be seniors. We should worry about the gas price. We should worry about the global economy.”*

He claims that there are only about four spots in Chicago serve it, which seems low, considering that it has become such a ubiquitous luxe symbol they probably have it as an option on the burgers they serve at the Cheescake Factory. Others quoted in the article point out that helping the poultry does not mean endorsing gang violence, but no one mentions that much more suffering could be eliminated by banning the McNugget.   I've opined before that the whole foie gras contretemps is a whippet, morally speaking, but with the benefit of a seat on the sidelines, I would be interested to see the foie hit the fan if anyone ever suggests banning foie gras in NYC.
*When a sausage, potholes and snowplows guy like Daley starts making offhand references to "the global economy,"  that just might be a sign that things are real f-ed up. Just saying. In any case, like so many of us, Daley II is not the man his father was, and I heartily commend to you Mike Royko's biograpy of Daley, pere, Boss. It's kind of like The Power Broker, but in a size you could hand out to trick-or-treaters.
 

Hello, Nasty

How you been?

Making a run for the border in midtown

I urgently hope that this is a joke, like the Hulk blog, but there is evidently a gentleman devoted to campaigning to bring Taco Bell to Midtown Manhattan, and he has the blog to prove it.* You can see his problem here. A bigger problem may be that Taco Bell is flexing its marketing girth to promote a new meal. Just what the doctor ordered. Americans with 33% more gigantic asses, thanks to Taco Bell.
    In other news, the taco special this week at De Cero, a Chicago taqueria, is battered crawfish with roasted jalapeno lime mayo & cilantro. It'll set you back about a Lincoln..There are airports in both New York and Chicago. Just saying.
(I have no idea if this gentleman and his acolytes actually dress like Zapatistas, but I would encourage them to do so, if they do not.)
*Via the aforementioned (& red-hot) Epi-Log.

Baby Steps

How to enjoy Kraft Mac & Cheese. Kraft Mac & Cheese does not photograph well, and it is even less good for you than I would have imagined. Still, a place to begin for the novice chef.  (Via Discardian.)

Epi-pen

During an idle moment recently,  I trolled over to Epicurious to look for bright ideas for what to do about our kale glut. I was alarmed to see that the good folks there now have a blog for the editor, drolly titled Epi-log. Cod has been making sport of  Epicurious since back in the hatchery,  and I shuddered to think what might unfold. Surprise--in the week or so that I've been following, it has been interesting in a good way. In the archives, there is more rote recycling of the PR stuff she gets, but now the editor appears to be beginning to have some fun with the possibilities afforded her by a constant barrage of press releases:

We now know where much of California taxpayers' hard-earned money (and not so hard-earned if you take into account the movie industry) is going: the state's food agencies. The raisin board spent millions on dancing raisins (remember all those years of commercials?). We have grown used to the constant invitations from the California Avocado Commission to go on some junket that has little to do with our favorite green fruit (and no, we don't take them up on it).  And now the California Asparagus Commission has sent us not one, not two, not three, but four CDs in the span of two days with everything you want to know about the skinny stalk.  We are using them as coasters.

OK, not "From the Mailroom" in the Golden age of Spy, but it's somehow comforting to know that the Asparagus Commission is like some creepy erstwhile indie rock boyfriend deulging you with mix CDs and offering to loan you his dub of Superstar. And they broke the Bourdain Rhapsody playlist story.

    That said, it is still blogging for the Man. Blogging for the Man appears to be all the rage these days, and it seems that it requires a clarification of just what a blog is. The whole point, I think, is that the stuff you put up is precisely not what you are paid to do. If T-Muffle worked  for a government agency that was charged with mocking the pretensions of New Yorkers, TMF/TML would make no sense. Similarly, if Martin Luther were alive today, he would not have 95theses.blogspot.com, but perhaps a blog about raising rabbits for food.

I propose a name for the likes of Pour, Epi-log, and Diner's Journal-- the "clog," or corporate blog. If you write stuff to put on the Internet that is part of your job, that's a fundamentally different proposition than stealing time from your job to write stuff you actually  care about.

The BLT is free

    Sunday night dinner was a situation where appetites had been ruined, but not satisfied, thanks to tapas portions of ziti chez Britopia. Lots of greens in the fridge from the CSA. A green salad seemed like not enough, and much more seemed like too much. What ensued was involved, but I heartily commend it as an approach to salad-as-meal. I knew I wanted more than a straight green salad, and LaD's recent lardons reset had me thinking that shaving some peels off of the bay pancetta I cured and crisping them up would be a good start. Cooking thin pancetta is different than cooking bacon, because the mass of the fatty pork being cooked is less, so it is less prone to provide sufficient fat on its own to prevent sticking and burning. As I saw initial slivers of pancetta begin to dessicate, I rescued them, and introduced some unlean cubes of the same pancetta and a little water into the same pan. I cooked up some more pancetta in what was rendered from the cubes but it seemed  a shame to let all that seasoned fat go to waste, so I diced up some potatoes no one was excited about, and browned them in the pancetta fat.

    I washed some mixed CSA salad greens, and sliced some tomatoes as thin as poss, and used some of the seedy pulp to start my dressing. I added some of the initial abortive pancetta bits, a splash of sherry vinegar, a splash of tomato vinegar (Thanks, S.!) and some decent olive oil. I may have finished the dressing with a drip or two ofthe pancetta pan remnants, but I won't confirm that. I tossed the tomatoes and cooked pancetta with the dressing and the greens, and topped with the browned potatoes. In essence: BLT -bread +lettuce and + potatoes. I have often worked harder, planned more, and eaten worse than I did with this salad.

Boogie Down Productions: "Remix_for The_P_is_Free" (Instrumental) Criminal Minded, 1987/2001

Free Restaurant Idea

Given the NYT article pointing out the popularity of wine with animals on the label, and given the ongoing agitas some diners face ordering the right wine, it seems to me if these animals could be codified -- Merlot=monkey, Chardonnay=bunny, and so forth, some enterprising restaurateur could do quite well with a restaurant structured around the Garanimals concept.