THE GURGLING COD

Soup!

Soup! 

Oysters for Haiti

We still you pix and stories from the trip the cinetrix and the Cod got to take to Island Creek Oysters. Long/short: a) these folks are not messing around (read Shucked, if you want to know where your oysters come from b) I'm sure the oysters they raise special for Thomas Keller taste nice at Per Se, but not as good as they taste coming right out of the water on a boat, in August, in Duxbury Harbor. c) If I get to pick, I am coming back as an oyster dog. See right. 

And now they are hosting a Thing. If you can manage to gag down short plates from Rialto, Mary's Fish Camp, Formaggio, Gramercy Tavern and a host of other spots at either end of the Fung Wah corridor, and bear up under the burden of unlimited oysters, you could console yourself with knowing you are supporting aquaculture in Haiti. You can read about the bigger picture hurr. Were the Cod not previously committed to a Tiger v. Cardinal contest, would be there w/ bells on fins. 

Stop, the Yelp you save may be your own?

An interesting post from Eating Ice Cream in the Dark, viz then things they want people to do before they post an online review: 

1. Poach a perfect egg.
2. Make mayonnaise.
3. Whip cream by hand.
4. Make veal stock.
5. Butcher a chicken.
6. Fillet a fish.
7. Grill a steak to medium rare.
8. Bake a yeast bread.
9. Identify a wine’s varietal by blind taste.
10. Host a dinner party for ten without hired help.

The Cod agrees. These are things you should do, and often. But as prerequisites for sharing your opinion about a meal you have spent your time and money to eat? Not so much. At first, the entire post struck me as huffy, and generally assy, viz "

It seems everyone has become a critic.  It’s nearly effortless to pass judgement, publicly, on every dining experience... I ask for very little.  Before you post your next Yelp! review, complete the ten tasks I have listed above.

Heaven knows, The Cod is no fan of Yelp, but geez. It is not necessary to perform the task in order to be able to evaluate how someone else does the task. Only novelists can review novels? Only currently active gymnasts can score gymnastics? Nuh uh.

But! The conclusion goes a long way toward redeeming the post. 

"Maybe your next meal won’t revolve around criticism, but instead a shared sensory experience.  The table will become a place for conversation, intoxication, and rest.  Your dining experience will be enriched by what you have learned.  I promise."

I read this as "if you cook, you will have a deeper enjoyment of what others cook for you." This is totally true. One of the best recent dining expereinces I've had was sitting at the bar at Farm 255 and chatting w/ Whitney Otawka about making bearnaise. Turns out the way my mom taught me, and the way Thomas Keller taught her are quite different. That's not a conversation I can have if I've never made bearnaise myself. 

It might just be me, but conversations between a professional and passionate amateur always remind me of Lance and Kilgore in the chopper.

 

The more things change, Brooklyn squirrel hunting edition.

File under "look what you made me do, Addison":

It's the Post and 2012, and not the NYT and 2007, there are certain verities in features on Stephen Rinella: 

The Post, today: 

Steven Rinella grew up hunting and eating squirrel in rural Twin Lake, Mich.

So when he moved to Fort Greene, Brooklyn, six years ago, and squirrels began showing up by the dozen to steal the ripening tomatoes from his apartment’s 800-square-foot garden, he figured he’d make a meal out of them, too.

“Sometimes, I get such a craving for squirrel meat that I’ll go to extremes to get it,” writes Rinella, 38, in his new hunting memoir, “Meat Eater,” out Sept. 4.

That includes rigging up snap-type rat traps to capture the small game, skinning them over his kitchen sink, cooking them with a “Jamie Oliver-inspired” recipe and serving the resulting dish — lemon-thyme squirrel — to his wife, Katie.

“The method is of very questionable legality,” he admits in the book.

Hunting squirrel by trap is technically illegal in New York state (and the state-approved methods of capture — by hunting bow or firearm — are banned in New York City)  - but, since they are nuisance animals, according to the state’s Environmental Conservation Law, they may be killed at any time in any manner by the owners or occupants if they are injuring property.

The Times, five years ago:

He had better luck with squirrels — eight in all, though one had to be rejected for mange. He caught them in the same backyard using both a mink trap and a modified rat trap. The rat trap just knocked them out, he explained. “So then I went out and thumped them with a hammer."

(Technically, the state requires that if you want a squirrel for dinner you need to hunt it, not trap it.)

As I pointed out back then, in a post that evidently caused Mr. Rinella some distress: 

Without getting all Teddy, it would seem that someone who says   “If I’m not cooking with game, I don’t think it’s any fun,” would be aware of relevant game laws, especially the ones indended to prevent suffering of the kind a rat trap/hammer combo would inflict. Also, there is something insufferably droll in the use of "technically." The inference I take is "New York State game laws are beyond the concern of DI/DO readers, who are preoccupied with nanny poaching and where to get parts for the Viking, and are, as such, technicalities." One would never say, "technically, the state of Idaho requires trout to be taken with a fly or angling rod, rather than dynamite," or "technically, dogs die in hot cars." 

In this case, DI/DO and the Post readers are united in their blithe unconcern for NY state game laws, which are, for both constituencies, "technicalities." Perhaps this can be a building block for a new era of concord and amity among Times and Post readers! 

Guiteau Monday lunchables

It happens. It has to me, already, this year, event with a new fridge in the office, and plans for an office toaster oven. (Did you know they will sell you one w/ a rotisserie, raising the spectre of roasting a chicken in the office, and the passing of drumsticks to students waiting for academic advising, etc.) But, it happens. Rather than packing a delicious and inexpensive lunch, I've wound up paying for something more expensive and less good. No need to go into details - those of you who know where the Cod grinds can paint the unpretty picture; those in similar rackets can paint a similar picture using colors other than orange and purple. You plan for something like Badthings epically simple sandwich:

If, say, it is 90 degrees out and you are late for work, you will want to make yourself the easiest lunch possible. You will put a tomato (maybe even an heirloom, as long as it doesn't suck) in a bag with 2 slices of bread. Because you live in a less pleasant part of the world, current temperatures notwithstanding, you will have to settle for some simulacrum of Acme pain au levain. Come lunchtime, you will grab a paper packet of salt from the cafe and pour most of it over the tomato you have carefully sliced with your dedicated pocket knife, and thoroughly squish the result between said slices of bread. Yuppies will substitute sea salt. You will have a tiny bottle of Catalan arbequina olive oil sitting in your office for just such an occasion. You may have planned ahead and brought a substantial slice of pecorino fresco with you, but this is not stricly necessary. Refreshed, you are now ready to return to counting the hours until you can shower again.

But it's 95 degrees out, and you forgot to get an extra tomato, and you  need to pay someone for a less good sandwich than the one above, so you go to a non-Jared sandwich outlet. It happens. But! It's the kind of thing one keeps to one's self. However, the social media wizards at the aforementioned sandwich chain now want you not only to confess your weakness, but to shout it from the electronic rooftops of Twitter. It could happen, but only on a Guiteau Monday. 

Elizabeth Wurtzel's ACC Football preview

Inspired by Wide Right & Natty Lite's guest post w/ Cormac McCarthy previewing the upcoming season in the Big 12, we thought it might be fun to get another popular author in to preview our home conference. Long story short, we got noted provocateuse Elizabeth Wurtzel instead. Sorry WR&NL!. 

Atlantic Division:

1) Florida State Seminoles: When I was at Harvard, I had an Indian boyfriend, but the other kind of Indian. I can't remember his name. I think I fucked his roommate. 

2) Clemson Tigers: Like I care about some liberal arts college in North Carolina? 

3) Boston College Eagles: When I was at Harvard, they had these buses to bring girls from here so they could find husbands or something. On a slow weekend, not bad for a diversion, if you don't mind a little rough trade. 

4) Maryland Terrapins: I think my agent's stepson wears a sweatshirt from here. Dim bulb, but Oxy doesn't grow on trees!  

5) NC State Wolfpack: That reminds me, I should write another memoir - about the time I got stuck under Philip Gourevitch's desk for a week. 

6) Wake Forest Demon Deacons: Pretty sure this is actually one of the boarding schools I got kicked out of, but don't feel like looking it up. 

Coastal Division:

1) NYU: Number one because my new boyfriend is a doctor there. He's married, so I can't say his name or his specialty, but let's just say he's in a position to admire his handiwork.

2) Virginia Tech Hokies: Didn't they have shootings here? Like after I had to move out of my studio because of 9/11? Maybe Fall of 05? Anyway, it was about the time that some bridge and tunnel cunt grabbed a pair of 40% off Louboutins from me at a Barney's sample sale. That's a tragedy people need to not forget. 

3) Miami Hurricanes: Miami is the only place I can really relax. The Fontainebleau sends a limo and I curl up in the back so I don't have to look at Cubans. 

4) Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets: I could watch the triple option all day. And not just because Paul Johnson reminds me of my father. 

5) UNC Tar Heels: Some guy from here tried to contact me on OK Cupid. Ew. 

6) UVA Cavaliers: UVA gave Jhumpa Lahiri ten large to do a reading right after MY book came out. The next time I saw her in the sauna at the NYAC, I left a used tampon in her shoe. Interpret that malady, Jhumpa!

7) Duke Blue Devils: My BFF from high school had to go here because she got waitlisted at Harvard. We had about the same grades, but she did let herself get a little chunky after she stopped dating her gymnastics coach. Sometimes the little things make a big difference! 

Welcome VC fans

Had been toiling in other areas of the Internets, and had not seen the kind words from Fred Wilson. Despite your first impression, it's not just imagining state names as stripper names here, not that we are above that sort of thing. Our POSSLQ had a blog, and it seemed like fun. It's mostly food, with categories for Boston, NYC, NOLA, as well as the South. We cook, we ponder, we waste your time, we pick up a book now and again. We like football, the regular kind, as well as the kind played by men hired for money, and now and again we offer food ideas keyed to specific gameday situations. We have a very patient friend who is willing to photoshop Alice Waters into almost any situation. If you like Twitters, you can keep up w/ posts, and other nonsense, like that with the official Twitter of The Gurgling Cod. 

The states, ranked as noms de plume for sex workers.

Per the last post, more detail on states that do or do not sound like good names for sex workers:

The top 10:

1)     Georgia

2)     Alabama

3)     Nevada

4)     Louisiana

5)     Montana

6)     Arizona

7)     Tennessee*

8)     Florida

9)     Utah**

10)   Virginia

*Male stripper only. 

**For a performance artist who works blue. 

And the bottom ten:

1)     Pennsylvania

2)     Washington

3)     Wisconsin

4)     Oklahoma

5)     Michigan

6)     Nebraska

7)     Maine

8)     Ohio

9)     Vermont

10)   Rhode Island

It is worth noting that on their own "Carolina" or "Dakota" are good sex worker names, but the compass wrecks it. As a general rule, SEC territory = good sex worker state names; New England = bad sex worker state names. (I would, however, go out of my way to see anyone who chose to dance under the name "Connecticut.")

 

 

It's hard to be hungry when you're from Alabama...

So, the G&G tells me that some folks made a movie about eating only food from their home state. Good for them:

Nice idea, but the title "Eating Alabama" might work better with a state with a name that would work less well as a porn star's name.* Also! Not the first time such a thing has been done. And! 

Mittens in the 864

So, Romney took some time away from stonewalling on his taxes to hit the Cod's backyard. Beyond his documented cruelty to animals, lack of vision, lack of discernable values, etc., it's also clear that anyone hosting a political fundraiser in 2012 in Greenville SC, who would choose to have that event at Soby's is unfit to lead. Instead of American Grocery, or the Owl, or the Walhalla Steak House, it's a long-in-the-tooth proto New South place that desperately needs to hear what Coco Chanel has to say about accessories.