THE GURGLING COD

How do you improve on perfection?

Finally, an answer to the age-old riddle -- what's one thing you can improve by making the holes bigger? The jalapeno roaster! The scientists at Williams-Sonoma have a new, improved Jalapeno Roaster 2.0!:
For a crowd-pleasing appetizer, stuff jalapeño peppers with cheese and other savory ingredients, then fire roast them over an outdoor grill. We’ve redesigned the roaster based on customer feedback so that the holes are now larger. Holding up to 18 stuffed or whole peppers upright, our jalapeño roaster imparts delicious smoky flavor while keeping the chilies a safe distance from the flame and preventing them from falling through the grate. After grilling, removing the peppers is simple.
It's great to be alive on days like these!

Still unfancy after all these years?

They are at it again in the 718, as the Unfancy Food Show returns. Like I said last year, I'm sympathetic to the idea, but wish the whole thing could be a litle less, um, Brooklyn. From the logo (L) to the vendors, the whole thing teeters dangerously close to unintentional self-parody. I predict next years UFFS will feature a performance of Old MacDonald by Animal Collective, who will arrive onstage via fixies made out of beef jerky.

Cookout lookout

Helping to put together a list of badly behaved BBQ/cookout* guests from movies. (Laugh all you want -- it's currently the most robust tributary of the household income stream.) I welcome your suggestions in the comments below. It's that, or Buster and Lulu go work in a mill.
*As good a time as any to mention that The Gurgling Cod's corporeal host will be soon appearing in The Gravy,  the revamped  Southern Foodways Alliance jawn. Say what you want about grits lines and sweet tea lines -- I'm not sure if I'd call it the South, but there is definitely a demarcation between parts of the country where people call grilling burgers  and dogs "a BBQ," rather than "a cookout," and the parts of the country where they know better.

Achatz to Pancake Humm?

From the Yankee Doodle of molecular gastronomy, the following tweet:
Daniel Humm in the house tonight. Had a great meal at 11 Madison a while back. Will be trying to blow him up tonight....
This is kind of exactly the sort of thing you hope for if you follow the likes of Humm/Achatz, in real life or on Twitter. Achatz' language -- "trying to blow him up" -- points to one of the unheralded aspects of cooking -- food is love, put cooking can sometimes be agression. I have caught myself thinking "how can I dominate this cookout?" more than once. I am confident that Achatz will beguile, charm, and entice Humm, rather than actually attempt to physically dominate, blow up, or pancake Humm, but it's interesting that it's expressed in these terms. For an explication of pancake, see below:

Alan Richman strikes again!

A friend we will call Food Media Subaltern passes along the following:

 

it must be hard to be the "dean of food writing" at FCI and be felled by a simple typo.

 

Linguine with clams, sweet peppers, and “nudja” was less admirable. “What’s nudja?” I asked. I sort of got an answer. Later, I Googled it. No help. It was the only dish of the evening I didn’t admire. The spicy sausage sauce—I believe that was the nudja part—was clumsy, with no discernable sausage.

 

Nduja, d-bag. Nduja. 

 

Apparently the Calabrians are as real as the Creoles.

This "dean," you will recall, is the same food writer who felt moved to piss on New Orleans while it was reeling from Katrina, follows with a gaffe that would be embarrassing in a freshman comp class. A helpful mnemonic: "the nudist bought a Nudie, then had gnudi and nduja." And, something for the ladies:

Gram Parsons = sexy. And thanks as always for the Peerless Photoshopping. 

A song for Governor Mark Sanford

It's hard out there for a governor. Sometimes, trying to cheat your own state's children out of money that might, oh, hire teachers, or keep schools open for the sake of your personal political grandstanding is stressful. Sometimes you just need to turn your phone off, slip your security detail, leave your four kids with the wife, and just chill. Here's a song for that.
The Beastie Boys "AWOL" Paul's Boutique, Capitol, 1989
Alternatively, the post-fugue press conference goes down like this:

Fight the recesssion... with Thomas Keller!

As predicted by Gastropoda, unable to stay off the Williams-Sonoma/Thomas Keller fried chicken set.

Our exclusive new Ad Hoc Fried Chicken Kit and All-Clad Sauté
Pan with Fry Basket & Tongs make it easy for home cooks to
whip up a favorite dish from chef Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc
restaurant in Napa Valley: old-fashioned fried chicken. As in
the restaurant, the chicken is brined to ensure tender, juicy
meat and twice dredged to produce a crispy golden crust. Pair
your fried chicken with potato salad and coleslaw prepared
with our exclusive Ad Hoc Dressings.

Words fail. The pan is marked down from $322 to $199, and the fried chicken set is $15 for two packages of brine miz, and two packages of coating. Yes, the wizard of Yountville is selling fried chicken coating. Shake and bake, Thomas Keller! And don't forget the potato salad dressing at $14, or the cole slaw dressing, a relative bargain at $12.50. The lady who makes the best damn fried chicken in the state of Illinois has some advice for Mr. Keller:

Spencer's Baadasssss Sweetbread Song

It's one thing to think "damn" if you write about food, and a leading Southern culinary authority goes and kills it on the Twitter; it's another when America's favorite college football blogger dunks on you in your own gym. Somebody let Spencer "EDSBS" Hall out of the basement where he allegedly writes about sports, and took him to Babbo:
Sweetbreads. I’m not a complete and loyal gut-meat enthusiast. When you put tripe into the steaming broth of pho, guess what? It still tastes like tripe, but now it’s in the middle of my otherwise delicious Vietnamese productivity gruel. (The thin slices of ligament, though, are choice: they add a silkiness to the broth that even non part-lovers have to admit is delicious.)

Sweetbreads, however, should enjoy their own kind of special categorical exemption for anyone so squeamish about meat that they like to think it comes in whole slices pre-wrapped. The sweetbread is the thymus gland of a cow located in the neck, meaning not only are you eating something that’s not only organ meat, but could conceivably be ripped directly from the throat of the cow if you were properly possessed by the spirit of demonic carnivorous hunger. (KALI-MAAAAAH!!!)

Surprisingly, it’s one of the most succulent, tender meats you’ll ever destroy on a plate, and if you get a chance to once in your miserable, short, and brutish life, go to Babbo in New York and get theirs. They take the heart section of the sweetbread, roll it in some kind of magical fennel batter, fry it for a bit, then serve it with a glaze of balsamic vinegar presumably aged by putting it in bottles, and then storing it beneath the flawless and protuberant buttocks of a hundred sleeping naked Italian virgins. They top it with an afro wig of flash-fried orange zest cut into tiny ribbons, and OH FUCK IS THAT BACON ON THE BOTTOM. (It was.)

I was drunk out of my mind at that point, and probably rubbing the remainder of the dish behind my ears in the middle of the restaurant, but no amount of Primitivo can erase the splendor of this dish.
And Sweetback's theme? Why not?

The Edge of NOLA

...not somewhere out on Chef Menteur highway, but John T. Edge is loose in New Orleans, and Twittering like he was Buddy Rich, and NOLA restaurants were his drumset. From Hansen's to August, he's risking his cardio-vascular health to make you feel jealous. And if you have not had the oyster and bacon sammich at Cochon, steal a car and go there now. While I shake the scorpions out of my Vans, have a look at the last dozen or so tweets, (including getting thrown out of Antoine's, which is kind of, but not exactly, like Clement Greenberg getting thrown out of the Met) and see if you can stop yourself from stealing a car and driving to New Orleans immediately.

A Little traveling music please

The Gurgling Cod is going on a brief vacation, and not taking a computer. Talk amongst yourselves, read EMD, watch rap and hockey brawl videos on the Youtube, and you will hardly miss me.