THE GURGLING COD

We know a cat who can really do the Cool Gherk

This cat they're talking about, I wonder who it could be. It's Rick of Rick's Picks dropping some mignonette science. It's a promising approach to oysters, but Rick's math seems a little bit off: 

"I got 18 oysters (enough for 5 folks to enjoy)."

18 oysters are enough for 5 folks to enjoy if one person has a flashbang grenade they can toss to distract the other 4 while they eat the 18 oysters. But if you are wondering why on their face they wear a silly smirk, here's the answer:

 

Playing chicken with Paula Deen

Via Libbie Summers, I saw where Paula Deen has a new collab w/ Springer Mountain Farms. This venture kind of has the Cod scratching his head. Springer Mt. Farms is a premium/humane brand of chicken widely available in the Southeast. Paula Deen is popular, esp in the southeast, but the kind of people who are willing to pay extrra for slightly less assy chicken (the Cod for instance) are likely to be the same folks who remember Paula Deen's association with an industry leader in industrial meat evil. For instance. From my perspective, Springer Mt.'s association w/ the Smithfield pitchlady makes me wonder if Springer Mountain Farms is any better/more humane than Smithfield. So 

1) Is Paula Deen trying to buff up her image by shilling for a better corporate citizen? 

2) Does Springer Mt. not know/care about the Smithfield-Deen association? 

3) Does Springer Mt. know/care, but got an endorsement from Southern-Fried Oprah on the cheap because of reason #1? 

In any case, James Brown shilling ramen makes total sense by comparison.

James Brown, FOUND in translation

If you enjoyed Bill Murray shilling Japanese whiskey in Lost in Translation, you will love James Brown shilling Ramen in REAL LIFE:

 

You really have to wonder about the meetings leading up to this commercial. One also gets the sense that the cup could be full of chitlins or dioxin, and you'd get the same performance from JB, once the check cleared. 

Soft-shelled crab banh mi

Getting to the end of softshell season. But, if you can, give this a try: 

Pickle some carrot and daikon. (The receipt in the Momofuku book is good, but basically skinny matchsticks, brine with some rice vinegar, water, salt, sugar.) 

Toast a crab'slength of split baguette. 

Toss 1 crab/person* w/ some flour, salt, and pepper in a paper bag. 

Fry crabs in pan w/ butter. 

Spread split baguette w/ sriracha and mayo. 

Put crab on one side, carrot and daikon on other, garnish w/ cilantro. 

Eat.

*You could double up, but one of the upsides of this receipt is that it makes a decent, if light, meal, out of one crab/person. A banh mi usually has more than one filling, but you do get some contrast of flavors and textures within a single crab. 

Guiteau Monday with Amazon.com

Q: What do Gabrielle Hamilton and Danyelle Freeman have in common?*

A: Not much. Hamilton has a Beard award, runs Prune, and is a general badass. Freeman is a "food personality," I guess. But! they both a) wrote books b) live in New York City, and c) have vaginas!  And that's enough for Amazon.com:

At this rate, if you bought The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Amazon would suggest a Kissinger bio, since they both have cool eyeglasses. I'd been thinking about buying some Lizzie Mercier Descloux CDs, but I sure don't want Amazon thinking that means I like Carrie Underwood. But serously, it ain't quite Realtree swimwear for the ladies, but the algorhythm that any food book written by a chick = any other food book written by a chick puts us in Guiteau Monday territory, no doubt.

*Hamilton does have an MFA from Michigan, but evidently does not share Freeman's ability to read a menu with her breasts. 

Posto Pizzeria Pig Postgame

It's perverse for the Cod to leave the pork savvy precincts of his day job in the Carolinas, and return to his ancestral spawning grounds in TLOTB&TC and then opine on a roast pig, but that's what happening here in this post:

Through the good offices of FOC TWM, I found myself as part of a party of 12 doing the whole pig dinner at Posto Pizzeria in Somerville. I had a good time, was glad to be included, and enjoyed seeing old friends and making new ones. It's a nice spot, where Carberry's and the OG Bertucci's were, on the stretch between Porter and Davis that has claimed more than a few restaurants. For the whole pig dinner, they did a nice job with the salads and the accompanying bread, and the antipasti were good. So was the presentation of the whole pig. Unfortunately, the actual pig roasting was doomed by several bad ideas. 

1) Roasting a pig in a woodfired pizza oven, if this is, in fact what they do, is a Bad Idea. I did not see the pig cooking, but it seemed to suffer from a lack of the slow and low that is critical for roasting pork 

2) Attempting to serve a whole roast pig in a (semi) soigne presentation is like teaching it to sing, in that it wastes your time, and annoys the pig, and as such is a Bad Idea. The point is humans + roasted carcass = atatvistic fun, but it's hard to do that when you are also trying to sell white peach bellinis. So, they show you the whole roasted thing (out come the iPhones -- it is, frreals, a nice moment -- and then take it away. And bring it back, in pieces. 

3) Piece #1 was slices of rolled loin, w/ skin on, stuffed w/ housemade sausage. Fine in principle but the skin did not even pretend to be crisp enough to eat, and the stuffing, suffused w/ carrots and not much else, was cloying. 

4) Piece #2 were the ribs, in a sort of citrus marinade, and they were actually pretty good. However, esp w/ a table of 12, it would have made much more sense to serve each rib w/ attendant loin, ideally w/ skin attached and crisp. That's how Lydia Shire used to do it at Biba, so while it might require more time and effort, it can be done. 

5) Piece #3 was Everything Else, busted up and slung into bowls. I enjoyed my trotter, which likely got a bit more heat than the rest of the pig. Sitting down at a table with fork, spoon and butterknife, it was hard to get much traction.

Like I said, the salads and breads were good. And I enjoyed the company. This was the first whole roast pig I've eve had at a restaurant, and it may well be a better idea in theory than in practice. At the very least, to make it work you would need to  be a place that communicated expectations to customers, rather than vice versa. An unfussy presentation like Chang's Bo Ssam at Momofuku might be a tough sell at an upscale pizzeria calling itself an Enoteca, but that may point back to the larger Bad Idea of trying to do roast pigs at an upscale pizzeria.  

You want to have a pig roast with your friends? Get a Caja China, a murder robe, call your butcher, and go to. You want nice antipasti and pizza? Check out Posto. 

Sifton Soundtracks: Desmond b/w Lounge Against the Machine, "Closer."

Q: Why, in 2011 does Sam Sifton drop a Blaze Starr reference into a review of a fancy but boring UES restaurant? 

A: Because he can. 

Desmond is a curious choice for a review. It may be relevant in ways the Cod misses, but Sifton does a good job of painting a picture of good but not very interesting food for rich folks. It's like a William Hamilton cartoon, or maybe like Le Cirque +better food and -Kissinger. But in a naked city with eight million stories, you'd think a canteen for rich folks serving Dover sole could be left to the imagination. 

In any case, here is an appropriately unchallenging soundtrack -- a lounge cover of NIN:

 

Special Down Under Guiteau Monday.

An Australian talk show host telling a joke about the Dalai Lama walking into a pizza shop... to the Dalai Lama? That's Guiteau Monday for you. 

Bourdain and the Bruins

Nice to see that Tony Bourdain's favorite movie is about none other than Bobby Orr.

Sifton Soundtracks preempted by hockey

Masa sounds like a nice spot. No Sifton soundtracks today, b/c the Cod and cinetrix are battening down the hatches and laying in provisions for the most important athletic contest since 2004. It's game Seven, and here's what you should be listening to all day long: