THE GURGLING COD

Feeling a Coppa

Not much time in TLOTB&TC for the Cod this summer, but a quick trip to cinetrix' homefolks was parleyed into a trip to Island Creek Oysters and Coppa Boston. Been wanting to try Coppa Boston since being seated w/ co-proprietor Jamie Bisonnette during last year's epic Maws/Brock dinner, part II. Food was great, FOH folks, esp Amy were great, and they took good care of us - charuterie highlights included the tongue and a ridiculous beef tongue pastrami, and unlike most such plates there was not a clear last place finisher. The bone marrow and beef heart pastrami pizza was one of the best things I've tasted in a long time - an unholy alliance of pizza and smoked meat flavors, without seeming like it was trying to do too much all at once.  Of the food, more soon. 

As it happened, we were in for lunch before this evening's Bisonnette/Marcus Samuellson dinner. In all of what I experienced, however, the most impressive thing may have been by accident - I happened to peek into the kitchen, and there was Bisonnette, the owner of Coppa (and Toro), Food and Wine's best new chef, etc, shucking corn. The main dude was doing a task that home cooks usually delegate to small children. It was like watching Tom Brady throw a block on a halfback option, and it said a lot about the ethos that makes a good kitchen work. 

A modest Chick-fil-a Proposal -- waffle fries and gay tonsil hockey!

What with the Chick-fil-A stance against marriage equality, there has been talk of this Aug 1 being Chick-fil-A Appreiciation Day, where we all go eat at Chick-fil-A to show our support for their CEO's support of the "Biblical definition of the family unit." There are many different configurations of the family unit in the Bible, but let's focus on the issue at hand. 

The Cod would like to encourage any and all to take part in this demonstration, with the caveat that you please vist your local Chick-fil-A with a member of the same gender, and that you  make out with said member of same gender as you. The Cod solemnly pledges to post all such pix/videos here. You can email to fesser at the gmails, or tweet at @TheGurglingCod. Scenaria that involve two or more people and one waffle fry are especially encouraged. 

Sinner, Sinner, Chicken Dinner.

So, to return to the chicken sandwich wars - Mayor Mumbles gets it:

“Chick-fil-A doesn’t belong in Boston. You can’t have a business in the city of Boston that discriminates against a population. We’re an open city, we’re a city that’s at the forefront of inclusion,” Menino told the Herald yesterday.

“That’s the Freedom Trail. That’s where it all started right here. And we’re not going to have a company, Chick-fil-A or whatever the hell the name is, on our Freedom Trail.”

The Muppets get it - see at right. 

We have, several times, offered our own alternative to a sandwich that hates the gays, in the spirit of bragging for humanity, not out of self-promotion.  And now our friend Daniel takes the conversation in a whole new direction: 

 

Ossabaws on the catwalk?

So, the Cod's issue of Vogue evidently got ganked, so we will steal grasshopper Princess Jinx's takes on the Steingarten Sean Brock feature: 

Dear Vogue,

Let’s not do a feature on someone’s sleeve and then write “apart from his arm, he is very pleasant in appearance.” No, just no. 

and

  I also hated the pimento as an inexplicable obsession line and the inability to differentiate/unwillingness to learn the differences between southern food and lowcountry food coupled with the laymen/laywomen quote.

NB, Jeff. And food writers - if you are planning to come worship at the shrine of Brock, consider enlisting Jinx as your lowcountry Virgil, so you don't make amateurish, Steingartenish, mistakes. 

Have a swell weekend, by which I mean don't let the office door hit you in the ass when you leave early. Play us off, Ini Kamoze: 

 

Blood, Bones and GOOP?

Via Eater:

 Mind-bending morning news: Actress/culinarian/newsletter huckster/cleanse practitioner Gwyneth Paltrow is rumored to be cast in the lead role of the film adaption of NYC chef Gabrielle Hamilton's award-winning memoirBlood, Bones and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef.According to the Hollywood Reporter, Paltrow is "in negotiations" to star in the film.

Gabrielle Hamilton is a Broad. A Dame. Mrs. Coldplay is not. Are these the same people who would cast Rachel Black in an Ethel Merman biopic? The thinking is both Hamilton and Paltrow are sometimes blonde? In response. a) Fairuza Balk b) Asia Argento c) Check w/ John McEnroe: 

White people struggle with kale and Netflix.

In other  DI/DO news, Moskin gets raw. The Times has never been reticent in its coverage of first world problems, but  Produce Panic is a new one: 

What should be a beautiful and inspiring sight — your kitchen, overflowing with seasonal produce — is sometimes an intimidating tableau of anxiety. The knobbly piles and dirt-caked bunches are overwhelming. Already the peak-ripe multicolored peppers are developing soft spots; the chard is wilting and the race is on.

Don't get it? Well, it's like this:

Vegetable anxiety can strike anyone at this time of year: C.S.A. subscribers, compulsive farm-stand stoppers and even vegetarians. “All this produce arrives with a deadline,” said Benjamin Elwood, a lawyer in St. Paul. “It’s like when a DVD comes from Netflix. You feel like you have to watch the movie ASAP in order to get your money’s worth, but the pressure makes you not want to watch it.”

Actually, it's the opposite of Netflix. The whole point of Netflix is that DVD's do not have an expiration date. Skeptical? Leave that red envelope with a copy of Silkwood on your DVD, and jam that CSA kale in your produce drawer. Spend one month ignoring kale  and Silkwood in favor of dime bags of mesclun and Real Housewives marathons. Inspect DVD and produce drawer. You will find that you have made Netflix a little richer, and that the Creature from the Black Lagoon is now living in your produce drawer. 

Anyway, this receipt is on the shortlist, and the idea of prepping the vegetables the day they arrive in your house might help fight Silkwood syndrome. The title had me thinking that Moskin was advocating for raw vegetables, but not so much. But this time of year, fresh and raw peas and tomatoes are where it's at. As you can see, Big Daddy Kane agrees. 

 

 

French pressed for time

The French press is the preferred coffee brewing method chez Cod. In the market for one for VT, to replace an Island of misfit coffeemaker toys. I saw in the DI/DO where they had a new kind of them. Clicked through in interest. Evidently, this kind does a better job of making sure there is no sediment in the coffee But! A "dauntingly complicated instruction sheet," is required. And the NY purveyors of the Espro runs "a 45-minute training sessions on Saturdays at 1:30 p.m.; reservations are required along with a $5 fee." I can maybe live with some sludge in my cup. 

 

Chicken tastes better than skinny feels?

Over the years, the Cod has poked fun at various absurdities from Williams-Sonoma. We kid because we love, right? But now, thanks to embedded correspondent Addison, new evidence of how the marketing wheels turn at W-S. As previously discussed, W-S is now selling fancy chicken coops as part of its "agrarian" line. 

But! our keeneyed Addison has twigged that the inspiration for this new direction for Williams-Sonoma came from none other than Kate Moss & Terry Richardson. Kate is either raising her own eggs, or determined to be the most winsome cockfighting enthusiast EVER. 

Can't wait to see how some of the other Terry/Kate collabs translate into new W-S product lines. 

It's a postmodern Denny's Summer!

So, Denny's is ramping up its regional specialty sandwiches. By making them available nationally. At the same time, you get free Denny's for life if you check in to a Denny's in all 50 states. So, if you celebrate regional American cuisine by going all over the United States, you can enjoy all regional cuisines in the same place, prepared uniformly, no matter where you go. So, Denny's is rewarding you for making a trip which they have made pointless by virtue of the very existence of Denny's. 

Or, as Jean Baudrillard puts in in America:

Decidedly, joggers are the true Latter Day Saints and the protagonists of an easy-does-it Apocalypse. Nothing evokes the end of the world morethan a man running straight ahead on a beach, swathed in the sounds of his walkman, cocooned in the solitary sacrifice of his energy, indifferent even to catastrophes since he expects destruction to come only as the fruit of his own efforts, from exhausting the energy of a body that has in his own eyes become useless.

If you don't think that Jean Baudrillard would fake his own death, chill for a year or two, then take over as US Operations director for Denny's, you don't know Jean Baudrillard. 

Sundae, Porky Sundae (Guiteau Monday Remix)

So Burger King has a bacon sundae. On the one hand, obvs, bacon sundae at BK = terrible, obvious Guiteau Monday. But! Glass half full sea creature that the Cod is, there is an upside. For the last several years, there has been a mass delusion that bacon is funny, or that liking bacon is cool. This is a bit like people who say things like "Ironically, my Social Security Number has nine digits!" 

In that respect, bacon was the Elvis of the aughts, in that it was something widely agreed to be good, but that many many people thought they claimed some sort of "quirky" status by making a thing of liking it. But since there is nothing funny or cool about Burger King, now it is impossible to be like this. 

If these people want a new cause to rally around, they are welcome to join me in my work to bring Meryl Streep to justice for her crimes.