THE GURGLING COD

Something completely different....

The big story here is still the big story. Struggling to make sens, and come up with some appropriate tribute, but it's difficult, as my mom's influence on what I know about cooking and eating is so pervasive that it's hard to indicate where she leaves off and I begin.

But, something completely different as I recharge in a quiet corner of the Philly convention center as the English Professor Rodeo gets underway. Specifically, the not safe for work website, "if you can't stand the heat" which is NSFW, and something you should not look at while you are at work, consists of naked people in kitchens. A lot naked. Now, I don't know what sort of niche this fulfills, but someone, at least, is taking the time to sift through lots of pictures of naked people to find ones that are taken in kitchens. (Alternatively, someone is looking through pictures of kitchens to find ones with naked people in them, but that seems like more work.) Presumably, said person would not bother if there were not some call for pictures of naked people in kitchens. Even a few years ago, it would have been hard to gratify this impulse, but digital media permits a certain balkanization of appetites that print media did not. In the olden days, the fan of kitchen nudes would have to imagine the icebox next to Betty Grable.

The somewhat tenuous connection to food is that we seem to be allowing the same thing to happen with other appetites. Increasingly, it seems as if the idea of a communal meal has given way to a family member designated with the role of short order cook, who cooks individual meals for individual family members, subject to the whims of their appetites and schedules. It's debatable if we lose much living in a world where there are niches like "if you can't stand the heat" rather than a mass thrall to Farrah Fawcett and a beachball, but it does me sad to think of the days of the take it or leave it family supper giving way to niche meals. Yes, eating and looking are two kinds of appetite, and the looking here is problematic in any number of ways, but I wonder if they share some common root in the fragmentation of appetites.

Update

My mother died tonight. She taught me to cook, taught me to write, and brought me to restaurants from a young age and insisted I looked the server in the eye when I made my order. If you have enjoyed what you have read here over the last 5 years or so, thank her, and raise a glass to the Whupper.*

*So christened by my father after his faith that she would whup cancer. She parlayed a diagnosis of months into six years and change, which I will chalk up as a W, even though my heart is broken.

Shank Lou for the memories?

Love Lou. Wish I could eat there more often. But the Cod must raise an objection to the announcement of this Monday's Monday Supper -- which features, among other delicious things, "pork osso bucco." Is there a general word for this linguistic problem? Specifically when a word, which denotes a specific combination of things, is modified by another word, which means the thing is no longer the thing the word modifies. "Vodka gimlet," for instance. Have we reached the point in LA where when one prisoner stabs another with a knife fashioned from a toothbrush, the wardens are notified that an inmate in Cellblock 3 has been ossobuccoed?

Sam Sifton -- undercover New York Doll?

Seems that way, in that DI/DO's lead reviewer is looking for a kiss. Back in the fall, he described an amuse somewhere as like a kiss from an extremely attractive stranger. Now, in another want-to-go-to-there review, this time for Korean BBQ joint Madangsui, this:

There is kimchi among the banchan, of course: Napa cabbage fermented with chili peppers and salt, Korea’s national dish. There is also a zucchini version, a bok choy one, a wonderful bouquet of tiny pickled scallion shoots. There are cold boiled bean sprouts fragrant with sesame oil, and salty tangles of wakame dressed with sweet vinegar, soft on the tongue, a kiss in a rock club, right after the show. There is boiled eggplant; dried shredded squid fried with hot chili sauce; occasionally there is a strange cold cabbage dish with bits of hot dog in it, or a crab split in two. A fellow could pick at these with his chopsticks for an hour and be pleased with the time spent.

Sifton seems to manage to tuck some reference to his inner life into almost every review. Perhaps it will become his McGuffin. 

I'ma grip and sip.... With Kermit Lynch

A  swing into Thirst, AKA the Other Music of wine stores,* yielded a couple of bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau, sans the familiar LeRoy Neimanesque DuBoeuf livery, and avec the name of Kermit Lynch** as importer. I asked if there would be a difference, and the Thirst merchant informed me that what distinguished this BN from others is that it is made with grapes and yeast. Oh, snap. But the Gamay minus Giorgio, or whatever they add to the supermarket Beaujolais made for a tasty Thanksgiving beverage.

*My first visit to the supermarket wine aisle post-Thirst made me feel like I was shopping for Garanimals. Do we want the wine with the monkey, or the wine with the giraffe? 

**Holding on to the #3 spot in the Kermit Power Rankings: behind the frog, and Ruffins, ahead of Washington.

Travertine-age angst

Anchower. A heavyhearted whirlwind tour of NYC over part of the Thanksgiving weekend. For reasons that remain unclear to me, we ended up at Travertine. The restaurant is sheathed eponymously, always un poco facisti w/ travertine.* Conversely, the interior and the lighting skew a bit to the untz, untz, untz, untz for a place that takes itself as seriously as this place takes itself. I've never had a meal that stumbled so badly out of the gate and managed to redeem itself.

I saw amuses wafting around to other tables, and from a distance, it looked interesting, some bit of roe or something. When the amuse arrived, I thought it was literally a joke. As the server announced, it was a julienne of carrots and apple, with a dot of blackberry(?) compote. It looked like what might fall out of your Vietnamese springroll.

The mains were uniformly uncompelling, so we did starters and pasta. I had a pork terrine that was bland, and accompanied by some perverse nouveau gesture in the direction of mostarda, if memory serves.

After this, I was dreading the main, but it was a really solid gnocchi w/ braised pork shoulder that I keep remembering fondly. The braising, rather than the roasting of the shoulder, produced little strands of meat that worked very nicely in the dish. Considering the disastrous start, it was a pleasant surprise.

*If there is a stronger connection between a person and a building material than Mussolini and travertine, I can't think of it.