THE GURGLING COD

#Linkfest, cont. Cochon Butcher.

 

Apologies for the delay. Life intervenes. Around the corner from the aforementioned Cochon is Cochon Butcher. They do sell fresh meat, and also charcuterie, and their tasso, and bacon pralines, etc. etc. But Cookie and I were there for the sammiches (click left to enlarge). The Cajunboy com
mended the buckboard bacon melt. The pork belly has its partisans. The Cochon Butcher muffaletta and the Cubano are probably the high profile moves here.
I have had and enjoyed both-- you can get a better muffaletta on Decatur St., and a better Cubano in Miami, but it's remarkable to have both in the same place, along with a host of other sammiches, and other delicious things.

I started w/ the head cheese. (Alice Waters, occasionally maligned here, is correct that when made right, it is a surprisingly light and delicious treat.)

For the main, I worked down the list to something a bit less daunting than the abovementioned sammiches, and had the Gambino, CBs take on an Italian sub. It makes a difference to a cold cut sandwich when the cold cuts are cured in house, and not off a Sysco truck. That's the case here, and it's a remarkable sammich. Elsewhere, this would be a star. Open a spot selling just this sandwich, on, say, 4th ave in Brooklyn, and there are lines around the block. Here, in the context of many other remarkable asmmiches, it's a role player. The Gambino, as I tweeted at the time, is a young Kevin McHale of sandiwches -- good enough to start just about anywhere, but on the 1981 Celtics, he came off the bench.  Among other things, Cochon Butcher is the 1981 Celtics of sandwich shops. 

Modernist Cuisine breakfast, Or: Gael Greene diagnosed with Monheit's Syndrome

The Modernist Cuisne PR drumbeat goes on, thanks to publicists better than Ina Garten's. This time, for a breakfast at Jean Gorges. Food personality Gael Greene was there, and the Cod is sorry to report she seems to be in the grip of an advanced case of Monheit's syndrome:

Tim and Nina Zagat had beckoned, and a constellation of culinary stars and divas arrived at Jean Georges Monday morning to taste a modernist cuisine breakfast engineered by Nathan Myhrvold, a multi-millionaire scientist promoting 39 pounds of a cooking encyclopedia. For any chef-groupie who wandered in, it was an orgasmic gathering of big cheeses: Daniel Boulud, Ferran Adria, Martha Stewart, Wylie Dufresne, Michael Lomonoco, Ruth Reichl, Padma Lakshmi, plus a platoon of younger toques and the media and puffers who swarm in their wake. Everyone sipped centrifuged juice, a choice of orange or grapefruit and pear. If a cuisinary terrorist – a demented vegetarian or an overheated locavore -- had chosen this moment to detonate a bomb or even a bombe, the city’s gourmands might have been reduced to eating ethnic, luncheonette or Applebee’s.

Seriously, you could not make this up any better than GG does. 

Unfortunately, "modernist cuisine" as lowercase descriptor seems to be gaining traction. Like I said yesterday, I am on the record as skeptical of Modernist Cuisine, as "modernist" is misleading and confusing to use to desribe a 21st century haute culture food movement. I guess if you have enough cash, you have a better shot at rewriting the dictionary. That said, the recent review in the NYer took a better stab at justifying the title than anything else I've seen:

Myhrvold broadened his idea of the book to include food safety more generally, then broadened it further to include information about the basic physics of heating processes, then to include the physics and chemistry of traditional cooking techniques, and then to include the science and practical application of the highly inventive new techniques that are used in advanced contemporary restaurant food—the sort of cooking that Myhrvold calls “modernist.”

We've been over this, but the use of "modernist" in this context is highly idiosyncratic. The NYer review does use a much more appropriate term as throwaway: "Liquid nitrogen became a new standby for the gastronomic avant-garde." "Avant-garde" makes much more sense than "modernist," because it lacks the temporal links to the first half of the 20th century, travertine, Mussolini, etc, that "modernist" suggests. "Avant-garde"  certainly more makes sense for a "mushroom omelet with 'constructed egg stripes steamed in a combi oven," than "modernist." I am not sure why "avant-garde" gets left on the bench, but the NYer's gesture in that direction does usefully recall the distinctions Clement Greenberg draws in "Avant Garde and Kitsch." You can go read the thing for yourself, but the idea that  "in turning his attention away from subject matter of common experience, the poet or artist turns it in upon the medium of his own craft," suggests the discoveries and limitations of the molelcular gastronomes. The challenge comes in the other half of the equation -- the chefs struggling along with knives and stoves, rather than cavitators and centrifuges are not the culinary equivalent of Mickey Mouse, after all. However, the current food scene does seem to encompass a number of high profile chefs like Ferran Adria who are concerned with the medium of their own craft." It might be possible to consider a certain stratum of Food Network celeb as kitsch chefs, but the Cod is not sure if he's comfortable with that label, as Guy Fieri, et al, seem both to surpass and fall short of Greenberg's notions of kitsch. 

Of more interest, I hope are chefs who are enlisting avant garde techniques in in the prosaic effort of making food taste good. More on them soon. 

 

A saucer of cream for Mariani?

I am on the record as skeptical of Modernist Cuisine, and if I could have only one meal in Chicago for the rest of my life, I'd be heading to 53rd and Dorchester, not Alinea. That said, Mariani's review of Mod Cuiz and the Achatz bio is to book reviewing what this is to hockey:

Which brings me back to the much-hyped Grant Achatz, who on the cover of his fatuous new memoir Life, on the Line, stares out at you like a fey Ethan Hawke, stroking his greasy little goatee before cooking your food, while (according to the cover line) he is "Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, and Redefining the Way We Eat." The first part of that line might better read "Chasing pop culture stardom"; the second refers to his horrifying bout with cancer, from which he is, thank God, now recovered; the third line is completely hollow, because Achatz has had no influence on anyone's cooking at all, unless I'm missing scores of young cooks out there hanging limp bacon from silver clotheslines.

When the punch you pull is that you are glad the author did not die of cancer, you are operating in spheres of nastiness beyond the imagination of most mortals. There is a history of beef, but sheesh.

 

A small digression, for awesome.

A discussion of the new Paul Stanley OS for the iPhone over on the Twitters warrants making sure you have this at your disposal. This, in this case, is 65 minutes of Paul Stanley's stage banter. 

Download Paul Stanley - People, Let Me Get This Off My Chest

You are welcome. Especially good to throw on on long car trips. The stages of the first time listener:

Min 1-5: Hilarity

Min 5-15: Anxiety

Min 15-25: Concern

Min 25-35: Acceptance, unprecedented mirth.

Min 35-45: Sorrow, as Stanley's enthusiasm grows, even as the venues shrink. (Richmond, VA, hollerr!)

Min 45-finish: Complete fusion of the Self and Paul. 

Would you buy wine from a Snake?

Much to report, as a mad dash back and forth across the Southeast, eating like a damn-ass Hell king winds up, but first things first. 

Imagine a series of Venn diagrams:

The first: "people I would buy wine from" and "people who attended the University of Alabama."

The second: "people I would buy wine from," and "former Oakland Raiders."

The third: "people I would buy wine from," and "former casino greeters."

The fourth: "people I would buy wine from," and "people with three two DUI arrests."* 

If you imagine the set intersecting the intersection of those four planes, is that set Ken "Snake" Stabler?

Ken "Snake" Stabler may know football and wine, but he's not so sure about snakes. Not even the venomous-looking serpent that bares its fangs on his new private-label wine, "12." "I don't know what that is," Stabler said Friday. "It's a friendly snake, though. Not a poisonous one."

A friendly Stabler, dressed in a crimson turtleneck** and wearing championship rings on each hand, greeted wine connoisseurs and football fans alike at a tasting to launch his Championship Collection line of Chilean wines Friday afternoon at Overton & Vine in Mountain Brook.

The inspiration for Kenny Powers hawking Chilean wines? Oh, it is most definitely another Guiteau Monday. 

*Do Bama fans claim, like eleven DUI arrests for the Snake? 

**In fairness, Stabler 4.0 in turtleneck looks cromulently Mondevinoesque. 

Damn Ass Hell King overload b/w EDSBS Condiment Bracket

'Fesser and Trixie been touring the Southland and eating like damn ass hell kings, and as such The Cod is behind on writing said meals up. A nap and maybe a salad before I tackle that, but betimes, The EDSBS Condiment Bracket. 

Maws Brock throwdown

Like a combination Pizza Hut & Taco Bell, only better.

Ain't no party like a flatulent leprechaun party....

Local Glory in Charleston on St. Pat's with Tony Maws and Sean Brock

Stop me if you've heard this before... an idealistic young man from Boston heads to the Carolina Lowcountry to put his ideas into practice. The last time, true enough, it did not go so well. This time, however, the idealistic young man is Tony Maws of Craigie on Main, and instead of attacking Ft. Wagner, he will be cooking with Sean "Husk" Brock at Brock's other* restaurant, McCrady's. The Cod and the cinetrix will most definitely be in attendance, and hope to see you guys y'all there. 

Click to right for details, and move at a brisk Yankee pace lest ye be left out. Rather than Broderick taking a Mine' ball in the ribs, forecasts suggest it will be a collab like the one below: 

*And the one Sifton perferred. 

 

#Linkfest, cont. Stanley sidebar

To continue with the Linkfest writeup. With SCMSing around beckoning the Cinetrix, the Cod enlisted former neighbor, longtime friend, and sometime commenter Cookie to scrub in for phase two of Linkfest. But first, The cinetrix and I began the day with the eggs Benedict poboy at Stanley*. Before considering the business at hand, a word or two on Stanley**:

1: Serving a solid breakfast at a quasi-reasonable price smack dab in the middle of the Quarter puts you on the Nobel Peace Prize shortlist.

2: Considering the venue (French Quarter) and the clientele (hungover tourists, the cinetrix and I were gobsmacked by the cheery and efficient service.  

3: The eggs Benedict po-boy is ridiculous. It is delicious, but the method of eating a po-boy and poached eggs + hollandaise puts it squarely in the delicious but untenable neighborhood. It's as if the man from Mars, in the process of eating Cadillacs, Subarus, Mercuries, and Lincolns too, had eaten a car with an airbag full of eggy goodness. Eating it goes like this. i) Bite in, cover hand and arm with yolk and hollandaise. ii) Lick hollandaise off self, dipping bread/ham in what landed on the plate. A perfect breakfast, in other words. 

*The cinetrix went with eggs Stanley, which ups the Benedict ante with fried oysters.

**The website is a veritable Bruce Jenner of bad restaurant website design.