THE GURGLING COD

Regicide

Schlosser's op-ed on the fucked-up economics of fast food tomato growing in Florida is worth a read and a reflection. Almost as remarkable is the significant cohort of Times readers who are batshit Idaho meth-brewing ultra-right
zealots and make comments condemning Schlosser's lack of respect for the market.*  If you can walk into a  BK after reading this between now and Christmas and order a fucking Whopper, you deserve a lump of coal in your stocking, and said coal inserted into your temple, bolo-steez.
*With such a significant proportion of Times readers likely committed to drinking only their own filtered urine, it hardly seems worth it for Maker's Mark to splash out for a full-page ad, even if it is cheek by jowl with an article on Bourbon's new cachet.

Edward Yang is Playing at my house

The cinetrix is screening Edward Yang's Yi Yi for her charges, and volunteered the Cod to prepare an appropriate meal accompany. The issues are different than when we went down this road with Birth of a Nation, but instead, there is the issue of my total lack of familiarity with Taiwanese cuisine. Suggestions for places to start, or other thematic approaches to match a meal to this movie are much appreciated.

Bourbon rules

My new imaginary friend Infinite Thought passes along the exciting news that computers may soon be able to generate pornographic fiction.* While that in itself is a reason to go on living, even better news is that the bots are warming up by writing about brown spirits. This is the most plausible explanation for the bourbon article in this week's DI/DO. Bourbon is back, and classy, it reports. Had I but known it was coming into vogue, I might not be drinking it like its going out of style, but I digress. I swear there is an algorhythm somewhere in some computer that inserts a variant of this article into DI/DO or a similar outlet every thirteen months or so. The article itself is unriveting, but the tasting notes are interesting -- compared to the wines usually featured in this space, the correlation between cost and taste is much more elusive. If Beam Black at a Jackson can hang in with the nerdly likes of Pappy Van Winkle, perhaps my notion of surveying the best Bourbons under $10 is not so crazy -- that dusty bottle of Kentucky Gentleman's Natural Son Bourbon behind the register at the gas station might be a sleeper, "with sweet, peppery, floral flavors." More booze news you can use tk.

*Looking forward to the Roomba on Aibo scenarii especially.

Mario says the darndest things....

“Well, the Food Network has made the conscious decision to go a little more mass market than I would say that I appeal to...”

-Mario Batali, author: Mario Tailgates NASCAR Style (New York: The Sporting News Press, 2006).

Add buy nothing day

Rose's Lime is right to point out the folly of the Sur La Table sniffer, but on the same page was something equally redonkulous- the SLT Caja China. Yours for only $399, or $70 more than it costs from the source. With the money you save buying direct, you could get one of them fancy corn poppers and have money left over for a venti mochachachino and a copy of In Touch.

The Buy Nothing Day Gift Registry

Greetings, and I hope all enjoyed a fabulous holiday weekend, and that your roasted/smoked/fried/poached turkey was the best evarr. Not too much left to say on the subject of Thanksgiving, but the day after is a holiday that does not get enough love. Buy Nothing Day poses obvious problems for the potential celebrator. It is un-American, for one thing, and very hard to merchandise. Even Buy Nothing Day cards would seem to violate the spirit of the day. So what to do? As a nation, we like making lists almost as much as buying stuff, so I suggest, next year, celebrating the holiday by making a list of worthless crap you do not want.
Williams-Sonoma is right behind this effort. On a good day, leafing through the W-S catalog is like having limited second sight that allows you to see yard sales twenty months in the future. Most folks who cook have a knife or two, some pots and pans, and are ready to cook about 99% of whatever they might want to cook. But that does W-S no good, so they target the other 1%, or pimp single-use items of limited utility. Unless you live on an island off the coast of Brittany with Fanny Ardant, you do not need a dedicated mussel-cooker.
Number one on my Buy Nothing Day Registry is an item featured on the back cover of the current catalog -- the Cuisinart popcorn maker. Make no mistake -- this is not the modified hairdryer you remember from dorm days. Instead, this is an oil-based system -- you put oil and kernels in, turn it on, and it pops. Thus, essentially you have a hotplate and a plastic bucket, marked down from $110 to only $59.95. That represents a significant discount, but is still $59.95 more than the pot with a lid and stove you already own, not to mention the counter real estate it takes up during those rare moments when you are not cooking popcorn. If there is more stuff like this out there, please send it along to the comments or fesser -at- gmail dot com -- if there is enough, I'll do a grinchy twelve days of worthless kitchen crap series of posts.

In the spirit of the season,  however, some lowdown_popcorn.

Thanksgiving wrapup

New York Knickerbocker Thanksgiving favorites, revealed.* We will all sleep better for having this crucial information at our fingertips. Via Posting and Toasting.
* Asking professional athletes about their favorite holiday foods is a gamble. 99% of the time, you get uhhhh... turkey, and variations thereof, and only rarely do you get a gem like Carl Everett's "anything under soul food," which was his answer in Crowding the Plate, a Red Sox charity cookbook from a few years back.

Not the only Chang in town

What with all the love that David Chang is getting from Esquire, not to mention the MacArthur grant, the specially created Nobel Prize for outstanding achievement in the field of LES restaurant excellence, etc, it is worth remembering that there are other Changs in the restaurant biz, and other journalists celebrating them. Bruni, RG, and the Cuoz may have Gotham locked down, but it is, like they say, a big country -- a big country full of intrepid young journalists not afraid go off the beaten path in search of culinary delights.

One such scribe is Andrew Brandenberg, who handles the culinary beat for Bob Jones University's* Collegian. Of P.F. Chang's, he opines:

Both traditional Chinese cuisine and modern, stylish décor combine within the great walls of the bistro that is P.F. Chang’s.

He zeros in on some menu highlights, and describes them in detail:

I really enjoyed the “Crispy Honey Chicken” which was affordable at $8.00 for a lunch-sized portion. The chicken is served crispy and comes with sweet honey sauce glazed over the lightly breaded chicken. However, the spicy “Beef a la Sichuan” ($13.00) was delightful and a great alternative to other, more conservative, choices. The ingredients—namely celery and carrots—are twice-cooked, making it crispy (an interesting sensation for the lips and tongue), and the spice gradually increases throughout the meal (faint-at-heart, be warned!).

Surprisingly, the review does not conclude with "Oriental food that's so tasty, there's no way the chef is descended from an ape!" but rather the assertion that P.F. Chang's offers oriental food at its best.

*Don't miss the dress code.

Thanksgiving

If you are in front of the computer today, you will probably enjoy this trailer.

Have a great holiday, and from ours to yours, I hope that your turkey is the best ever. Next year... sous vide turkey secrets -- revealed.

A tedious argument of insidious intent

As I was reading the post on Eater about David Chang being chef of the year, and the predictable chaff in the comments about how Chang keeps it real, or, conversely, that Achatz could cook circles around Chang, it struck me with the force of an abutment--why is there not sports talk radio, except for food?