THE GURGLING COD

When I say "Atlantic" you say "Coast!"

Returned from adventures up and down the coast that shares its name with a collegiate athletic conference that went 6-4 this year against teams from another, much more highly regarded collegiate athletic conference. It's the conference whose teams are not appearing in its championship this weekend in Atlanta were a combined 1-6 against the conference named after the coast that forms the eastern border of the continental United States. Details to follow.

Thanksgiving C.E.O.S?

I have mentioned in this space that Thanksgiving is a time that more than others makes me glad that I am not a full-time food writer. The meal is the same every year. The turkey* becomes the scrim for projecting family pathologies no brine could ever wash away, etcetera, etcetera. So it's a challenge to come up with new angles. I get that. However, there is still no reason, in 2008, to run an article called "The CEO of Thanksgiving Dinner." In case you have been caught up in Twilight hype, just now, the economy looks like the bottom of a Porta-Potti in Lee Circle on Ash Wednesday.** On the front page of the very same newspaper was news that "the Federal Reserve and the Treasury announced $800 billion in new lending programs on Tuesday, sending a message that they would print as much money as needed to revive the nation’s crippled banking system."
The hook of the article seems to be to promote one of those books they have at airports to sell to desperate, lonely middle managers, but it really seems tacky just now to valorize the CEO as the epitome of what you need to run Thanksgiving smoothly.

You want to run Thanksgiving like a real CEO? Wait for your whole clan to assemble, tell them there's nothing for them to eat, then take the babysitter to Per Se. Seriously, Kim, WTF?

*It's like this dog.
**Not pretty, in other words.

Eater to Gael Greene: "Say it in Snowboard."*

Gael Greene is ridiculous. No question. Not just regular AARP-eligible-but-toting a pink-phone-Miami ridiculous, but writing-a-memoir-bragging-about-fucking-Burt-Reynolds-in-the-70s ridiculous. However, the Eater response to her comments on her dismissal from NYmag is the textual equivalent of those teen snowboarders who listen to Korn that plague midlevel ski areas. Or Poochie.
*Lexicon here.

Add fast food tattoos

Kevin Allman, FOC, and new editor of the Gambit, sees the Popeye's belly piece, and raises The Cod an Antoine's tramp stamp, on the back of a Rex Queen, no less. Attempts to simulate procure photographic efforts are, as yet, unsuccessful. The Cod is not, and unlikely ever to be, a Rex Queen, and thus the wrong online presence to ask, but while it's hard to imagine this particular bit of body modification, I'd slap a Cochon logo on my arm if it meant I got to eat for free. 

As you run out the clock on this two-day week, what image would you agree to put on your skin in exchange for what meal? The Tom Keller back piece for a tasting menu at Per Se? Ritual scarification by Gabrielle Hamilton for the run of Prune? A Face/Off with Chang for Ko reservation Super Mushroom power-ups?

Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.

Having reviewed a litany of turkey stories, here's my advice for the big day:
Chill the fuck out.
With an economy looking more and more like Ray's pool game, it's as good a time as any to shift the focus from what's on the table to who's at the table. Safe travels.

The signor is having his little joke

Noted Bay Area guy who likes some restaurants and not others Michael Bauer has some words for the grasshoppers. True enough, there is no shortage of restaurant critics, and thus no burgeoning program to take college kids, give them a crash course in restaurant criticism, and put them  in America's critically under-criticized restaurant markets. But is Bauer pulling up the drawbridge and thumbing his nose at the wannabees from the turret, or foretelling his own obsolesence by accompanying this advice "The best advice I can give is for people to follow their passion and write, whether on a blog or on established web sites. The unique, interesting and trusted voices will rise to the top" with a picture of the guys who started Yelp? The lads pictured below will help you parse the combination:

When Black Friday Comes

Adam Simha, of MKS Design, passed along pix of his new baby. It would be nice to find one of these under the tree, but better still to have one to hand on Black Friday.* More pretty pictures here.

*West Coast stringer Bananas informs us that at the Panty Palace, it's known as "Pink Friday." Jesus.  In any case, I've posted the Dan on slimmer pretexts.

Squash, Sage, Sidemeat

So I did this last night, and am enjoying it for lunch.

Roast an acorn squash -- you know the deal - halve it, olive oil and garlic in the pocket, face up @ 400 for about 2 Liz Lemons.*

Dice maybe 3-4 oz. (4 slices) of sidemeat.   (I like Junior Johnson's on the theory that the best cured meat is named after race car drivers. (See also Niki Lauda's Blackened Black Forest Ham.)

Start your pasta water.

Brown the sidemeat in a cast iron skillet. Remove. Cook two red onions, sliced from pole to pole, and then into long strips, in the fat rendered from the sidemeat.

Start your rotini in a pot of boiling water.

Stem and chop your sage. You want an amount at least as much, if not more, as one of those extortionate little blister packs they sell at the supermarket. Ideally, you have your own growing, and can thumb your nose at the Man who tries to sell you herbs like they were dime bags.

Scoop out squash, and add squash flesh and sage to skillet. Warm -- it if looks dry, add pasta water -- I ended adding close to a cup.

Drain pasta, return to vessel, and toss squash sage onion mix.

Serve,  garnished with reserved sidemeat and Parmesan.

*AKA 45 minutes -- the Netflix on demand thing has changed the culture of our home dramatically.

Dom? More of a shower.

The Gurgling Cod has been meaning to say more about The National, the downtown outpost of Hugh Acheson's Athens, GA empire. They do handsome Sunday suppers that Suzanne Goin better watch out for.* They have a Tuesday Dinner and a Movie deal with Athens Cine' cheap and good enough that even the most socially maladrioit, can't-spell-Knowshon UGA film nerd undergrad might just get to kiss someone prior to graduation. They have a charming staff, great drinks, and a lovely space. None of that actually got the Cod out of slackjawed Tumblr paralysis and into an actual post on the joint. However, word of the Grower Champagne Dinner** on the 10th of December rallied me to action. Because I wanted to make the shower champagne vs. grower champagne joke. Sorry. It does not appear that Peter Dale, CDC at the National, is kidding around with the menu. If you are checking it out, be sure to practice your most histrionic delivery of "Champagne for my real friends, and real pain for my sham friends."

*I can just see Acheson rolling through Hollywood, with one of those car PAs you can get at Radio Shack, being all like "Lucques... I am your father." (Freeals, based on my one experience, the Lucques Sunday Supper gets more unwarranted love than Will Muschamp and Kevin Barnes rolled into one.)
**It actually has nothing to do with boners. But "there is a growing recognition in the region that its viticulture has become slovenly"? Damn. They don't do PR like this in the States.

Don't call it a comeback...

I had a bunch of unkind things to say about Gov. Sarah Palin during her quixotic VP bid. However, I LOVE her new work with Eli Roth.