THE GURGLING COD

An Outrage!

Actually, no stars for Mr. Chow seems right on the money. But clip and save this guy for when you are feeling indignant. In other news, my first actual attempt at a receipt from Ruhlman's big meat book is in the oven. Still not as fun to read as Jane Grigson on pate, but possibly more helpful. Ruhlman's endorsement of the quenelle test (poach in plastic wrap) instead of a mini grilled  patty to check for seasoning makes all kinds of sense. Pate de campagne details to follow.

4th of July picnic with Roland Barthes

Posting will be light the rest of the week, as we prepare for the annual 4th of July do. Look for reports on whole hogs and local brisket next week. In the meantime, the folks at Epicurious offer a puzzling tidbit on summer food safety myths. This is all good advice, but I have a hard time thinking of anyone who actually believes the following myths:

Myth: You can nuke meat and poultry early in the day and then just put it on the barbie for long enough to get those great grill marks.
Myth: You can tell a burger's done by its color, and brown means it's safe to eat.
Myth: You don't need a cooler if you've got an air-conditioned car, and those sandwiches will be fine in the backseat till you get to the beach.
Myth: Foods packed in a chilled cooler are safe to eat for hours.

I really want to party with the people who believe this: "That chicken salad was in the back of my Fiero-- it will be fine." I had hoped for actual myths, like the world began when Gaia formed the first man and woman out of some egg salad She had lying around and was afraid had gone off, but evidently Epicurious has a different understanding of mythology than the Cod. In an effort to clear up this discrepancy, I did some research, and discovered that the Wikipedia entry on Roland Barthes also touches on food safety:

Barthes' many monthly contributions that made up Mythologies (1957) would often interrogate pieces of cultural material to expose how bourgeois society used them to assert its values upon others. For instance, portrayal of wine in French society as a robust and healthy habit would be a bourgeois ideal perception contradicted by certain realities (i.e. that wine can be unhealthy and inebriating). He found semiology, the study of signs, useful in these interrogations. Barthes explained that these bourgeois cultural myths were second-order signs, or significations. A picture of a full, dark bottle is a signifier relating to a signified: a fermented, alcoholic beverage - wine. However, the bourgeois take this signified and apply their own emphasis to it, making ‘wine’ a new signifier, this time relating to a new signified: the idea of healthy, robust, relaxing wine. Motivations for such manipulations vary from a desire to sell products to a simple desire to maintain the status quo. These insights brought Barthes very much in line with similar Marxist theory.

Thus Epicurious opines:

Myth: Mayonnaise is a major culprit in food-poisoning outbreaks.
  Truth: Store-bought mayo can actually retard the growth of food-borne bacteria thanks to some of its ingredients, including salt and lemon juice. But many dishes that contain mayonnaise tend to be handled a lot — you add celery or parsley to egg salad and then spread it on bread, for instance — so there are more opportunities for the food to be contaminated.

Mystery solved. Remember, be safe this holiday, and cover your children with at least a quarter-inch layer of Hellman's before you send them out to play.

Like Coltrane -- insane

The manager of the Asheville Tourists sets a new standard for "tantrum."

Joe Mikulik, the Cod salutes you! Call it a childish outburst, and a bad example for the young Ashevillians in the stands, but it takes a man with some sand to transcend the traditional baseball heave-ho tantrum, making it into diamond version of the theatre of the absurd. If a standard Pinella tantrum is Julie Andrews, this is John Coltrane's "My Favorite Things."
If you'd like to try this at your local diamond, clip and save:

Upon ejection,

        1) take head-first slide into second;
2) uproot the base, show base to second-base umpire, and toss it;
3) grab the resin bag and fling it to the right-field bullpen;
4) confront plate umpire, kick dirt on the ump’s feet;
5) kick the batter’s box lines;
6) kick dirt on the plate;
7) drop to knees to further cover the plate by hand;
8) fire four bats from the dugout;
9) return to “clean” home plate with contents of a water bottle;
10) squat in the umpire position in a mock glance toward the mound;
11) spike the bottle on the plate.

Jerky and you

A special happy birthday to my brother, who loves beef jerky. My gift to him is not to make him this.
Making jerky at home is potentially a good idea, but these guys lose traction with me right about here:

The t-shirts wrapped around the bottom edge regulate airflow coming in.
A closed-cell foam sleeping pad is wrapped around the two crates for insulation.
Strips of bicycle innertube wrapped around that hold it in place.
A foam gasket sits on top of the crate to slow the airflow.

"I found the 2006 jerky complex and insouciant-- a balanced beef taste with hints of t-shirt, sleeping pad and innertube. The finish was, however, a bit gasketty."
Seriously, I think this contraption was on the Hans Blix list.

A Bonus with the deluxe edition of The Squid and The Whale DVD

With specially marked boxes of The Squid and the Whale  DVD, you get two impossibly precious urchins selling panini on a Park Slope sidewalk. Sitar sold separately. A  writer chum of the cinetrix, who has had some slippery moments of his own, observed of TS&TW, "At some point, you just have to decide to forgive your parents."* These lads will have their work cut out for them.

*Speaking of which, a very happy 46th to the Codmother and the Codfather! Whatever veneer of civilization I have comes from having sitdown dinners with them virtually every night.

It's Educational!

The sharp-eyed Hav spotted a Craigslist posting for an "in-store educator" for a new branch of a grocery store opening in Milwaukee. The best part is they listed it under "education/teaching jobs." If

1. Provide excellent customer service; actively model the Midwest Customer Service Standards.
2. Arrive to work station on time, appropriately groomed, dressed and ready to work; work all scheduled shifts and attend required trainings and meetings.
3. Practice courteous and proper etiquette when answering phones and pages.
4. Maximize sales potential through effective and proper procedures for scheduling and implementing education programs.

is an education job,  then somewhere Sport is living off of his TIAA-CREF checks. I don't know that many folks in Milwuakee, but if these guys were willing to leave that union gig at the brewery, they would be perfect.

Lobster Bitch V: Lethal Injection

As with lobsters, so to with convicted murderers.* A story in Friday's Times echoed the week's spirited lobster debate:

At the core of the issue is a debate about which matters more, the comfort of prisoners or that of the people who watch them die. A major obstacle to change is that alternative methods of lethal injection, though they might be easier on inmates, would almost certainly be harder on witnesses and executioners.

No word on plans to develop a special felon-sized Crusta-Stun, or Avure HPP. Somehow, the thought of using hydrostatic pressure processing in a penal context makes me wonder what the Spanish Inquisition would have  been like if Ferran Adria had been involved.

More practically, as long as we are discussing murdering murderers, and murdering lobsters, wouldn't it be possible to inject a lobster, with say, Long Island Iced Tea, and kill it that way? Just asking.
 

*For the record, TGC opposes capital punishment in all cases. How come?  Sacco, Vanzetti, Dreith, Denkinger, just to name a few reasons.

Look who's bitching!

Not to be confused with bitchin'. Evidently, after Frank swooped into Country like a ninja, and left three stars lodged in the door, the prices went up. From $85 to $110 for the prix fixe. Bruni is relatively balanced, but the comments are priceless. The indignation is justified. For instance, if you earn the national minimum wage, at $85/person, you would only have to work 16.5 hours to cover that meal. At $110, it goes all the way up to a prohibitive 21.4 hours.  If you can afford $85/person for a prix fixe, you can afford $110. Hell, you could probably even afford to take Barbara Ehrenreich as your date.  So shut the fuck up.

UPDATE! From the DJ bully pulpit, Frank comforts the comfortable, leans on Zakarian to restore more choices to the $85 tasting menu. Watch out, Dom Helder Camara, Frank is looming ever larger in your rear view mirror!

Lobster Bitch IV: Vertical Disintegration

This lobster thing really has legs. Lots of spindly, shell-encrusted legs. News of the Crusta-Stun caught the fancy of the folks at Read Express, which appears to be the Washington Post's version of Sidekick. But still. And the good news is that it moved someone to post directions on how to catch your own damn lobsters. Not sure how Florida-specific these advices are, but likely not a bad idea to assume that professional lobsterers will be armed. Also, while the FLA locale may make it tempting, do not hold your lobsters indefinitely, without trial, in nearby Guantanamo Bay. Because that would be cruel. On a brighter note, this is an endeavor that a) allows you to use an implement called a tickle stick, and b) takes officious grocery chains right out of the equation. As a Friday treat, an homage to sustainability from Husker Du.*

*Apollogies for the WMA snippet instead of the full mp3, but  my copy of New Day Rising is analog, natch. And, I know--umlauts. Can't be arsed to figure out the code just now.

Lobster Bitch III: The Decrustation

Trevor Corson is on this WF-lobster story like shell on an oyster. His TSLOL has all the deets on the humane ways the processed lobster Whole Foods will continue to sell will die. The whole post is well worth a read, but best of all is the Crusta-Stun. "Crusta-Stun?" you say. "Did Matthew Barney release a followup to the Cremaster cycle while I was waiting in line at the Shake Shack? In fact, the Crusta-Stun is a box for electrocuting lobsters, or if you have a bunch to off, consider the continuous flow model. If electricity seems banal, or if you are wary of having the lights go dim just before supper, consider the Avure HHP, which simulates what would happen if you put lobsters in the Marianas Trench if  it were three times deeper. Conveniently, this process separates the lobster from the shell. Corson has a foto in his post, but it looks too much like the pictures jackasses wave outside of Planned Parenthood for me to reproduce it here. And, the kicker:

"In 2005, the Maine Lobster Promotional Council commissioned a survey on people's attitudes toward lobster. Only 15 percent of Americans, mostly in the Northeast, qualified as 'traditionalists' who wanted their lobsters alive. An equally small number, just 13 percent, objected to the retail sale of live lobsters for reasons of cruelty. For Whole Foods, the smart business decision is to target the silent majority -- the 50 percent or so of Americans who would love to buy fresh lobster if only it were easier to prepare."

For Whole Foods, switching to processed, packaged lobster meat will earn them far more money than live lobsters ever did. At the same time, they are presenting it as an ethical choice, which will earn them maximim moral points.

You can read Corson's whole Boston Mag article here. If you are feeling old-fashioned, TSLOL has instructions on how you can kill lobsters humanely without these contraptions.