Wyeth colors.

Roasted tomato and eggplant soup with sumac; Mafalda, black-eyed peas, toasted walnuts and escarole in brown mustard vinaigrette.

At Brillobox we roll out a spectacular half pound Wyoming free-range chuck whallop, which for my money is useless without bacon, pimento cheese and avocado. However, given my own dietary reforms and philosophical consideration it is frequently back to those meatless dishes that my thoughts travel. Mind you, there is no end of satisfaction to be found from blackening beef and gilding with bronzed pork. But some of the surest flavors lie in ascetic application, in dishes so conservatively conceived that there is little room for the overwhelming bluster of pork fat, of crisped chicken skin, of blood.

In another lifetime I was shown a way to make soups, one a day, without meat or the crutch of a prepared stock. The merciless and heedlessly articulate proprietor of La Cucina Flegrea in Squirrel Hill, Anna Fevola, swept together the wilted remainders of her pantry each day around lunchtime using the same unassuming motions one might expect from a janitor dusting the floor. Until you've tasted the clarity of a broth begun on carrot ends, onion skins and mushroom stems, having watched it culminate in a pale copper bullion that managed to--against the tide of a malnourished cynic's doubt, bear out the delicate accent flavor of field greens no longer crisp enough for the salad plate then its all just hot air. But the truth is there, it is anxious in basic things. And it is quite good.

Our Sundays can be problematic. The week draws to an end, the pantry is bare. We're all thrashed from the weekend crowd. To make matters worse Brillobox closes it all out with a Sunday Night Starving Artist Dinner. Five bucks gets you a respectably portioned and dutifully tasty platter of usually vegan, always vegetarian, eats.

Ugh.

Implicit in the aforementioned gripe is that people come out for this thing. In numbers. Cooking ravioli on Valentine's Day is nice. Blowin' minds on Christmas morning by bringing a dozen homemade dinner rolls is pretty smart too. Provided the number of hungry mouths is relatively low--I'd say below five, it's pure meticulous nerd-out joy. But go above that humble number, go to, say, 20 or even 30 and the fundamentals change.

What I learned in time was to work in broad strokes--multiplying recipe measurements to suit larger crowds has always met me with mixed results. So each week--try as I might to

streamline and work ahead, airs of fuss and uncertainty cloud the kitchen.

Last week everything came off beautifully--even if I don't remember the exact recipes.

Soup and salad

(Imprecisely pared down for 2--with some leftovers)

Salad--make ahead

1 lb. Mafalda pasta--any shapes will do, cooked and cooled.

1/2 c. walnuts, pan-toasted

3/4 cooked black-eyed peas

2 sm. heads escarole, thoroughly washed, wilted in a saute pan, shocked.

Vinaigrette

1 1/2 tbsp. whole grain mustard in white wine

1 lemon, juiced

1 tsp honey

2 tbsp sherry vinegar

1/3-1/2 c. good green olive oil

Combine the salad ingredients in a large bowl, set aside. For the vinaigrette mix the first four ingredients throughly with a whisk or fork. Continue to whisk, adding the olive oil in a thin, steady drizzle. Once the dressing has emulsified--the mustard will assist greatly, taste. Add salt, cracked black pepper and honey as needed. Coat the salad.

The Soup

The aromatics:

1 med carrot, chopped

1 stalk celery, chopped

1 white onion, chopped

1 small bunch sage leaves

1 stem rosemary leaves

2 cloves garlic, smashed to paste

3-5 tbsp olive oil

The vegetables:

1 medium Italian eggplant

5 ripe vine tomatoes or one 28 oz. can domestic San Marzano tomatoes, diced

1 lb. leftover home fries or 1 shredded Russet potato

2 tbsp honey

Begin by roasting the eggplant til skin is uniformly charred--open flame grilling is ideal as it is fastest. Remove to stainless steel bowl, cover with plastic to steam for ten minutes. Cut away cap and end, then skin eggplant--it should peel easily. Leave minor bits of the charred flesh as they'll infuse into the final puree with a smoky flavor. Pretty crucial, actually. Chop into loose cubes--by this point the outer flesh will be quite soft.

Add the first three ingredients to a hot stock pot with olive oil. Once signs of browning appear add the remaining "soft" aromatics. Once full fragrance is released add eggplant (include juices accumulated in steaming bowl) potato and tomatoes. Stir in honey. Stew til aroma reemerges, add water to increase volume; season in accordance: salt, dried chilies, pepper.

Remove herbs stems and pulse with either a hand masher or an immersion blender til the soup mixture appears 3:1 puree to chunky vegetables.

Serve together, dusting the soup with ground sumac. Fresh yogurt accompanies nicely as well.

At brillobox.

Pulled pork tacos with chipotle crema and avocado corn salsa

As long as we're clear this isn't just a porn forum for my hangover cures I thought it was best to begin introducing the dishes I've been working on at my neighborhood's smart haunt, Brillobox.

Headaches and recursive anxiety attacks aside it has been a slender miracle putting a menu of dishes out. Ideas that seemed from the outset fully formed and precise took to wild growth spurts and contentious trial and error efforts. All for the best mind you, the food just gets better every day.



Unquestionably the white whale in this undertaking has been the perfection of macaroni and cheese--specifically the besting of our local fave made by the exalted Kelly's Bar and Lounge in East Liberty. Nothing against the folks--truth be told I'm kinda warm on their kitchen magic myself. But, you know, I want to be better.

I began with a cream reduction and a fifty-fifty mixture of Gruyere and Beemser Vlaskaas--a pedigree combo that bore out responses of continental hauteur and, well, lack of being impressed.

Change came.

Up went the Gruyere--the melty string section. I introduced a bright yellow cheddar for flavor and visual appeal. The eyes that eat while the palate eats demand gold in their dishes, so I obliged.

Next came the issue of the crust, which my predecessor adressed in a rather sharply biblical manner by dusting his dish with fried shallots reminiscent of dehydrated locusts. They had to go.

I went with grainy breadcrumbs, grated Pecorino Pepata and finely chopped fried sage leaves. The oil those leaves hold onto is more than ample along with what is exuded from the Pecorino for creating a browned exterior in the oven--a point of prowess in fact. There is a conjugal moment when, mouth hovering, the individual pierces the crust with a creme brulee-like K sound and the term of astonishment is at hand.

Perhaps--in regard to perfection, it remains a periodical thing, something requiring more adaptation and more forward movement. For now it's just grand. Every time someone mentions Kelly's in the same mouthful of it--for better or worse, I inch closer to that grail. It is well within reach.



Caprese Panini--nationalist Italian salad relegated to poor divine grilled cheese sammich status. The humanity.

Ruination.

It has been too sultry to write new recipes til now, so a few are on the way, rest assured.

Yesterday morning with fecundity common these days to my bewilderments at dawn I gave birth to another silly sandwich. Seen above is a panini of oil-poached chicken, fried egg, tomato, chili aoili and kyori zuke pickles. Convert this into a shot and I'll have a child with you.

The race is on.

The fez.

Got home at 5am and all I wanted was a sandwich and to hear Steely Dan's "The Fez". I came up with this gallant device: Egg still runny, yellow cheese, mortadella with pistachios and chipotle mayo on a Mancini's jalapeno roll. My asshole is gonna sue me.

Dawn, late summer.

The aperture of summer tightens still: The lifeguards at the Polish Hill pool stopped blowing the whistle when we sneak in flips and dangerous dives. Each day I walk up the Bloomfield Bridge and am met by a haunting breeze; it is coming.

Seen here is a cocoa raspberry custard with dulce de leche, vanilla hazelnut granola and a cinnamon toast cone. Calories, friends. This summer we burns em, this summer we east em...

Little nothing.

I wonder if I shouldn't burn my anthology of Chinese poetry and the lp of Wild Nothing's Gemini when this summer ends. Mind you, I'm too economical these days to follow through even if quixotic concensus should prevail. Nevertheless, exiting this summer in a mild August I'm already turning back on it and asking myself if with plaster, government funding and a second imagination to assist, could I ever replicate this thing we are leaving?

Seen above is one Pittsburgh blue beef slider eaten from atop Mencken's Chrestomathy at approximately 6:30AM sometime last week. Miss Ella was asleep and, for posterity, the news of the previous day was good.

Bruce Foster of Lawrenceville provided the Wyoming Black Angus, there's a Martin's roll, Heinz pickle and ketchup, minced onion and a bit of the furious Mr. Mustard brand mustard. It takes the crippling of families and their generations to achieve the most recognizable kinds of wealth. Others we wake up to in destined preparedness.

Everything is euphoric.

In search of a word.

There was one moment when Miri, Dan and me were eating egg yolk tacos at 4 AM, listening to Jorge Ben and I figured it was as grand as food or feelings could ever get. Miri's idea was that there should be no pictures because how could that possibly compare to what was really happening: Let's just rely on the heat of memory; Burping, farting, eating, listing and being ideal.

But...

for the sake of posterity:



Pate of avocado, tomatoes, garlic and jalapeno. It rained tacos.



A simulation involving skirt, peas, cabbage relish, sweet corn, goat cheese, pineapple rundown, jalapeno, avocado pate and rice.

June potluck.

Roasted beets and white onions with sprouts, toasted cashews and goat cheese.



Garlic scapes and cauliflower in habanero honey mayo--yes, the same as from the breakfast post a few days back.




Miss Ella in post-feast repose.

Good morning.

My pal, Quint, caught the perch seen here on Lake Erie some time back; and the eggs come from Lucinda's goat farm. Yes, this precious eat local bug bit my ass good.

Also pictured are roasted radishes and celery. With the fish there is a bit of habanero honey aioli--egg yolks whisked with honey roasted chilies and grapeseed oil til it forms a loose yellow mayonnaise.



Excuse me.

The patina of the cold immemorial.

Being invincible is largely a matter of convenient timing and clever diet. Avoid sick people and eat only what you like. This winter--now that it's over we can finally talk about it, taxed the senses more than most. More snow fell in February than in any other month in recorded history. Love lives involved neighbors, a triumphally sad piano dirge called 'I Wonder' by an unknown balladeer named Big Ceasar (sic), and a thoughtful, indeed thorough, rethinking and remapping of the notion "the silent treatment." Some weeks I deep fried balls of gelato in duck fat and chased them with foie gras and mayo, others I don't think I even looked at food. I distinctly recall cutting into the vividly colored concentric design in a watermelon radish--the one I used for the salade Nicoise piece probably, and thinking it was astonishing that something so beautiful could live so comfortably in the natural order with no discernible purpose. It was only later, lying in bed, no doubt fucked off about the aftertaste of PBR and love gone bad, that I realized with a perfectly startled air of discovery that the radish is in fact a tuber, and by the parameters of our archeological reckoning a food stuff with a decided purpose.



Again, there were days when I did eat. And days when I surprised myself.

Maybe because JJ knocked one out of the park at Dinette or just the rote banality of making them I found this season populated heavily with pizzas. JJ's involved anchovies and thinly sliced serrano chilies. It was, to say nothing of its godfatherly standing among other pies, one of the finest foods I've ever eaten. So too did I find it behooved me to make a few myself.

Running the cheese counter at the store presented me with a rather novel challenge. How do I get people to try something they regard as over-priced continental elitist garbage? I could shave wafers of Societe Roquefort off for people wearing Dale Earnhardt t-shirts all I liked. In the end it's just shwag. It dawned on me that the only way to effectively convince people that cheese is in fact the culmination of our worldly initiative with the Earth was to dislocate it, give a fresh context: Everybody loves pizza. So I made pies for people to sample, pies with Beemster's goudas, with Sini Fulvi Pecorino Romano, with homemade ricotta-stuffed burratas, anything I could get my hands on. I still only sell about five bucks worth of cheese a day but when Dale Earnhardt's flock tastes those pies every Saturday morning they are, if only momentarily and of course unwittingly, transformed into les becs fin.

History clings exclusively to those particles of our discovery and invention that provoke the senses.

The pie pictured above was made with Hodgson Mill-brand yeast, and honey where the recipe's author, Mario Batali, employed wine. For a conventional oven you must resign yourself to a slightly inferior crust--yes even with a pizza stone. The heat is insufficient to achieve that ideal crisp edge and pillowy streak in the interior. Sorry Charlie.

Oh yeah, fair warning, if in the course of our co-habitation you should discover me building a wood-burning pizza oven in your back yard it's a fair signal of my intention to marry you.

With a handicap on the crust the emphasis shifts even further to the cheese melted over-top. On this occasion I chose a buttery stinky Taleggio. Previously I hung the contrastive balance on tomatoes and salty Pecorino Pepata, so as a foil for the rich flabbiness of the cheese I went with roasted endive and radicchio. In general I prefer a sauce rich with olive oil. There are several reasons: first, it's a very flavor-friendly element and showcases your aromatics dutifully, but in terms of simple mechanics I have found that loose fresh tomato purees tend to sog the crust down. The solution is to treat the sauce like a vinaigrette: emulsify chopped tomatoes with olive oil and whatever herbs you like. In the mortar of the cheese you will find it becomes veneer-like.

The final accent, crucial in the lightless winter months is a handful of loosely chopped green herbs--in this instance I had parsley basil and thyme. Dress the herbs in a mixture of olive oil lemon juice salt and pepper then add to the finished pie--it should look like an afterthought. The effect is pretty invigorating and momentarily winter abates.

Alright, I'm awake.

Ashley makes a formidable coconut flan, tries on a fried eggplant taco.

"There is no malice in him; he is as trustful as a child. In point of fact, his childishness is more prominent than his creator intended it to be. When...he suggests performing "mad things" as a penance--additional deliberate "mad things" on top of his normal madness--so to speak, he shows a rather limited schoolboyish imagination in the way of his pranks."
-from V. Nabokov's lectures on Cervantes' Don Quixote, Harvard Univ., 1951.


"America don't want to see us work, they want to see us LIVE. Tron is livin' for the ci-TAY!"
-Tron

Ask Ashley for the flan recipe--annihilating business, forcing shameful predawn trips down the stairs to scoop it out of the fridge between gulps of Brunton's 2% milk--I remember ribbons of raspberry sugar syrup running from my tipping spoon, evidentiary only to the moon and my own fatigued sense of place and time.

My life as an educator has yet to begin so it would be egregiously premature to make lessons of my poverty, my secular self searching and the like as if a bare shred of enlightenment grew in either anyway. Now, Lent and Siddharthan confrontations set aside, purposefully and to the enrichment of color and flavor alike, we must, you and I, go back to fucking around in the kitchen, flower petals and cashews on the floor. With whiskey.

Eggplant tacos with chili mascarpone crema and pickled cabbage.


The one in the middle looks like Willie Nelson.


Feeds 3.

18 corn tortillas
1 medium eggplant
1/4 c. all purpose flour
1 c. fresh bread crumbs
1 egg beaten with 1 tbsp water

2 medium tomatoes, chopped
1 c. pinto beans
1 sm. yellow onion chopped


1/2 sm. head green cabbage
1 sprig cilantro, chopped
1 lime, juiced
1 clove garlic, pulverized
1 bunch scallions, chopped--greens and all. DO NOT WASTE THE GREENS!
2 heaping tbsp. white vinegar

1/4 c. mascarpone--I recommend the tasty, cloudy Vermont Creamery brand--they're sustainable too!
3 chipotle chilies in adobo, chopped
1 tsp milk
a pinch of annato seeds steeped in 1 tbsp. grapeseed oil--seeds discarded once a deep blood orange oil color is achieved.

salsa--see note.

The tacos, since meat was out of the question were amply substituted with fried eggplant. I sliced one medium eggplant into disks the thickness of an average magazine--quite thin. Salt them and leave them for a half an hour or so to dry. The salt will cause moisture to bead on the surface: pat the disks dry of any pooling water with a dry towel. Add to a paper bag with flour, shake to coat. Dredge in egg then coat in bread crumbs. Allow the disks of eggplant to air dry while you prepare the accompaniments.

Saute the beans and tomatoes, beginning with the aromatics--I think this time I had some leftover fennel greens which I added to the garlic and onions. Celery is always welcome too. As you add the beans and tomatoes adjust the liquid level--water is fine, but stock or tomato juice is even better. I also like to secret in a squeeze of anchovy paste. Allow this to simmer, moving right along.

For the cabbage you will simply slice it in the fashion of a slaw, adding the cilantro, aromatics and acids, adjusting to taste. A pinch of sugar will take the sharp edge off if you notice one--or simply sub in orange juice for the lime. In the end this element is primarily added for textural contrast. The flavor, though supportive, should at least be pleasing.

The crema is, too, purely a matter of consistency. As long as you can rely on the quality of the two fundamentals, the mascarpone and the chipotles, the flavor is an unspoken promise. Start the mixture with the colored oil, mixing the mascarpone and chilies in, adding the milk later, only if needed. It should be the consistency of sour cream, the color of cantaloupe.

At this point time management should be a consideration: The tortillas will take about about twenty minutes to griddle to pliability--you'll want them to appear at once darkened in spots and slightly puffed with steam. So too you'll want to watch the beans and tomatoes. With your final season, mash the beans--keep the consistency of refried beans or loose mashed potatoes in mind.

Meanwhile fry the eggplant in neutral oil set to 350 degrees. It will brown, then float. Season, then allow the crisped pieces to air dry briefly. This will ensure the eggplant will provide an inner meatiness and an exterior crunch so you don't feel like such a loser ass vegetarian--not that you should necessarily.

As the last of eggplant emerges from the fry and the tortillas rest under a warm damp towel you might want to consider a salsa. Frankly at this point it's all salsa anyhow, but if you have an avocado, a bit of corn and a pinch of broccoli sprouts lying around, it's fair game: mash em up. Otherwise anything, prepared or easily assembled on the spot is fine. I don't like particularizing salsa--or anything truthfully, as it really does encumber our availability to surprise. On a hurried lunch between shifts days after making these tacos I added a sliced pear to mine in the place of guacamole and found it jarringly appropriate. In fact, I recommend it.

In the order best suited to your already taxed post-lenten sense of ritual you will want to construct and consume the tacos, then and there, or later as you like, evidentiary only to your own moral compass and the moon.

Nice.

Salade Nicoise always struck me as one of those things, alternately haughty and boring, that could stir up debate among the indifferent without ever compelling their hunger. I grew up thinking a salad, plainly, was a dewy green phone book gathered in a wooden bowl from the underbelly of a push mower as gustatory scapegoat for whatever Frito Lay product had been last--and more shamefully, partaken. I was nearly right.

Whatever the debate or ennui this salade seems to inspire in others I jumped for it. Long before frat bars piled French fries on landfills of iceberg lettuce, jerk chicken and shredded cheddar (don't knock it it ain't half bad) the salade Nicoise added potatoes to greens--or so I thought; it had blanched string beans, lending a gardeny crunch--or so I thought; and of course the tuna itself meant the pious water-canned albacore--or so I feared (and kinda hoped).

Then I came across this. No potatoes, no lettuce, no beans, no jerk chicken. Hell, no dressing really, just the olive oil from the tuna. And don't ask, no, no albacore in spring water. Turns out the Europeans have built an industry of exquisite oil-cured tuna.

Salade Nicoise
(for 2)

1 poblano pepper--try to select a mild one , or simply forgo the chilies.
1 long stalk celery--stripped of floss
1 red onion
1/3 medium daikon, shaved

1 bunch scallions, finely chopped at the white bottoms, then lankier the further and greener up
1 tbsp capers
2 tbsp roughly chopped cornichons--keep the brine handy.
chopped parsley.
crushed chilies
a few additional splashes of very decent olive oil.

1 watermelon radish or 2 red radishes, slice across into wafers

7oz. jar of Flott oil-preserved tuna
2 hard-boiled eggs, shelled, quartered.
1 grilled half of lemon--well-concealed from Nicoise purists!



1. Arrange radishes in a circular fashion along the perimeters of two medium plates.

2. Chop the first four ingredients into stubby match sticks, add to the radish-lined centers of the plates.

3. With the final of the six, a good olive oil, scud the ensuing six ingredients in a mixing bowl. Toss and muddle-infusing the ingredients. Add salt and cracked black pepper to assist and taste. Spoon over raw vegetables, coat by tossing gingerly between your fingers.

4. Add the tuna to the salad plates. Combining leftover oil with any oil-scud leftover in the mixing bowl, drizzle on tuna and salad. Place eggs.

5. Dress by adding salt, cracked pepper and juice from grilled lemon. Shave Piave Vecchio over it if you like...

No food, no whiskey.

Okay...some.

A few weeks ago some friends introduced me to their (mostly) secular versions of Lent--they set aside something dear to themselves--crutches as one succinctly put it.

This year it was time I tried it out for myself. After all, that's masochism! And if a masochist lives in me I should know. I have forty days to discover him, study him and prepare him for the hedonist secret sharer he'll meet sometime in early April--provided that Bacchanalian-on-hiatus is still breathing by then.

This is only week two, not even halfway through, and already my sacrifices of alcohol, red meat and the other white meat are producing vibrant disciplinary and spiritual symptoms.
My experiment began with a 48 hour fast, followed by 24 hours of raw vegetables and fruit juices. At night long, fearsome dreams of shitty jobs from long ago, messed-up romances and estranged life plans greeted me. Each morning I awoke tired and puzzled. It is a fitting detail of one's psyche to know contentment not by what colors dreams, but by what fails to discolor nightmares. When all one does in the waking hours is fuss over food and drink it is reassuring to know he doesn't dream of starvation--it would confirm all the worst neuroses of life in the first world--not to say comparable evidence of that kind of cultivated depravity doesn't exist elsewhere. Anyhow some narrative device operating in my sleep juggled my oldest troubles: Having enough to eat was not among them. Nor was having enough to drink, sufficed to say.

All moral fine tuning aside, with a tightened budget the narrative turn into frugality and creative restriction only made sense. As I dream up innovations for pantry dearth feasts enjoy this one last snack food combo that sustained me for well over a week--basically til the first hints of sourness visited the eggplant.

Warm tomato salad and baba ghanouj

Celebrity chefs love to encourage you to take chances and work with what you like, to make your own creative variations on their instructions. That's fine, but for such a simplistic pair of flavor complements I couldn't imagine changing a thing. Add Rice Krispies or guanciale at your own risk...


The salad

1/2 lb. soaked and simmered white cannellini beans, with several tbsp. reserved cooking liquid.
1 lg. can San Marzano tomatoes
1 med. sweet onion, grated, juices reserved.
1/2 lg. bulb fennel, finely diced
1 1/2 tbsp raw honey
1 sm. tin anchovy fillets, finely chopped (since this recipe is very nearly vegan you could substitute 1/3 c. mashed picholine olives for anchovies and get a comparable salinity)

4-5 cloves of garlic
1 sprig fresh rosemary (or 1 tsp. dried)
1 lg. lemon, halved, plus 1 sm. lemon, halved (reserved for baba ghanouj).

As far as a few days but no later than a half an hour in advance preheat oven to 350 and roast garlic, rosemary and lemon in olive oil--use a small enough vessel that the ingredients sit fully submersed in oil. Depending on the oven this could take up to 40 minutes--keep an eye on it.

Remove garlic cloves to a small mixing bowl and mash-they should succumb easily to the back of a fork. Strain in olive oil, pressing firmly on the lemon halves to extract all juices. Discard solids, then whisk juice and oil to a loose emulsion.

In a saute pan over medium high heat add 2 tbsp. of prepared oil emulsion. As this comes to near smoking temperature add anchovies and grated onion, cooking til juices evaporate and the onion flesh begins to brown. Add an additional tbsp. of oil followed by the fennel. Repeat this process with the beans and finally the tomatoes, allowing each phase to cook til the pan is nearly free of simmering liquid. Whisking vigorously add the remaining oil along with the mashed garlic paste. Stir in honey, season with salt and pepper, cover and reduce heat to low.

The baba ghanouj

1 lg. eggplant, quartered lengthwise
3-4 tbsp. olive oil
3/4 to 1c. tahini paste
1 bunch of med. chopped Italian parsley
juice of 1 med. roasted lemon, reserved from salad preparation
2 raw cloves of garlic, mashed to paste
1 tsp chili flakes

Under a broiler roast eggplant til skin is singed and peels easily from the softened interior. Transfer to a large mixing bowl, cover with plastic wrap to steam. Once cooled to touch strip the eggplant of burned skin, rinsing hands in a bowl of cool water as you go--the skin will stick. Some residue of the blackened skin will adhere to the eggplant, but shouldn't be picked over as it will add a crucial smokiness. In a large clean mixing bowl add skinned eggplant and any collected roasting juices. Mash eggplant, adding all additional ingredients one by one, beginning with the tahini. With each addition season with salt and pepper to taste. In the end you may need to add a few tablespoons of olive oil or water to thin the paste to your desired consistency.

Lightly char pita over direct stove flame until spotted black. Top. Finish with black sesame seeds and more olive oil.

The baguette in winter.

Snow clouds the senses.

The baguette.

Fond, if you've watched any two consecutive minutes of food tv is the browned-on junk at the bottom of a pan after you've cooked in it. Last night I made some farfalle with olives and Zamorano, and consistent with my character did not wash up afterward. There was fond. Mind you for health reasons I should caution against leaving pans sit unwashed for so long as rumors of illness and foul taste follow them. Personally I find it all perfectly false and unduly worrisome.

Bring the fond-stained skillet back to a medium heat, scudding in olive oil to loosen the remnants. Once you've made a rough sludge of it add some aromatics; I chose sweet onions, shallots and fennel. Season the mixture shortly into the saute as the salt will speed the softening. Add diced tomatoes and all juices. As the liquid cooks out continue to season and moisten--my pal, Crystal, brought a grand Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon to dinner last night: It was on hand and did the trick nicely. Once incorporated the red sauce will take on a rusty caramel color. Add a liberal pinch of sugar and let simmer til the solids have largely been broken down. As the last of the dousings dry in the pan stir in a healthy soak of olive oil. Whisk. Once emulsified it will both fortify the body of the sauce and tame the color a bit.

This too provides an essential boost in substance. Matching the dimension of the oil with the caviar-like richness of the eggplant will prove among the most satisfying elements of the dish--not to mention a subtle unifying factor.

Slice the eggplant into discs and salt, leaving them to sit for 15 minutes--this will remove moisture that might otherwise prevent bread crumbs from adhering. Pat dry with paper towels. Dredge and fry the eggplant in batches: Lightly flour (I toss them into a brown bag with a half cup of all purpose flour and shake). Next into egg wash then into a mixture of fresh bread crumbs, plane-grated Parmigiano Reggiano and parsley. Fry and transfer to a newspaper to dry.

In the halved, still-warm baguette begin with a layer of sliced Taleggio, topping with overlapping eggplant discs. Spoon the reduced red sauce overtop along with thinly cut fresh buffalo mozzarella. Finish with parsley, chile flakes Parmigiano and one last splash of olive oil.

It goes under the broiler til the bread is nearly blackened and all visible cheese bubbles.

A terrible thing to waste.

Thanks to my pal, Nick, for capturing the bird-brained side of me...

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009. Pan-seared pig's brain with potato pancake, scallion salad and mustard hollandaise.

My visits to the accommodating--if often crowded, Strip District Meats on Penn Ave. are invariably marked with a child's wonder reading the chalkboard beyond the meat counter listing their speciality items: varieties of wild game, offal extremes, bison gonads, rattlesnake egos, cutlets of muscly witchcraft, etc..

As adventurous a spirit as I feel I have I have to admit my adventures have been few--I have lived mostly aloof, and as often dishonestly.

I know, shocking...

Pig's brains at Strip District Meats sell at $1.99/lb--as opposed to the prized veal brains at $13.99/lb. I'm no vegetarian, but I do draw my line at eating the young. It just seems unnecessary and commensurate with the snuffing of young life, simply not fulfilling as an eating experience. That and, c'mon, pig's brains are two bucks a pound. I grabbed a pound.

My schooling on the subject came by familiar way of Simon Hopkinson and his essential food narrative/cookbook, Roast Chicken and Other Stories. His cervelles--he pussyfoots with the more euphonious--and frankly misleading, French name for the dish, but manages, in spite of this affectation, to produce a handful of appetizing recipes. More importantly he makes the process of brain preparation easy and coherent. The brain dish I produced is my own concoction but the fundamentals of the cooking are his.

Because the preparation requires two phases--an initial poaching, followed by a pan sear, there was a convenient pause in the process where I could taste the firmed up brain matter and get a basic idea of the texture and flavor. Of the former, brain has been accurately compared to scrambled eggs in the French style--which is to say custardy and not fully set; my pal, Wendy, still does them the best, having spent her schooling years at Tulane where such extracurricular lessons would've availed themselves.

Enthusiasts of Korean food who--like me, thrill over the silken tofu in soon dubu soup, will find similarities there as well.

It is, to be sure, a little jostling on first taste.

However comfortable one is with his omnivorism the ultimate sensation is one that prickles with philosophical misgivings. We are what we are, we eat what we chose, and if we are to taste some it we must certainly accept the lot it. Of course all of this is provided you've come this far...

Now of the latter, the taste itself, there is not a lot to say. Like tofu it is bland as can be. You will find Hopkinson really gets to show off his saucier skills in this portion of his book. So the exercise comes to concern window-dressing. These recipes are kindled ventures in pageantry.

Far be it for a short order cook of my station to match maneuvers with Simon--I chose a different tack.

Given that uncanny similarity to scrambled eggs I went with my gut and humble heritage. The most common response I got was that this was Eggs Benedict. Well, Brains Benedict. And rather than relying on an english muffin I opted to up the flavor and texture with a potato pancake redolent of onions, finely-shredded celery and plenty of roasted garlic. The scallion salad lent acidity and some much needed structure to the dish, and the hollandaise framed the breakfast impostor studiously.

There are fundamental divergences I made from Hopkinson's instruction, but in the end I suspect they were only minimally influential to the eating experience of a pig's brain.

First I opted for an initial poach in seasoned milk rather than the court bullion. For one thing I hadn't satisfactory spices to fabricate one, and as well, my utilitarian instincts require I soak all non-muscle tissue in milk to leach out the cadaverous elements--its what makes liver such a (less minerally) smash when done correctly.

Also, since I used a larger organ than the one Hopkinson prescribed--he chose a calf's to my pig's, I sliced it down to cutlet serving size prior to poaching. It is essential to the undertaking of this step to know the delicacy of this organ--as food stuff, that is. If you have a fish spatula I recommend using it to transfer the brain segments to and from the poach and skillet as nearly any aggressive jostling will break up the tissue.

Finally, taste it out of the poaching milk. Get to know it for yourself. I found my recipe to be fairly intuitive. Like filet mignon it's a vessel, a near blank slate upon which, not unlike the imagination, you are required to show some initiative.

You need to pile up the flavor on a pig's poor brain.

The ingredients and preparation.

Feeds 2.

1 1 lb. pig's brain

3 c. whole milk

1 bay leaf; cumin; salt and pepper (to taste)

1 medium white potato

2 medium red potatoes

1 small red onion, grated

1 stalk celery, grated

3 cloves of roasted garlic (with one healthy tablespoon of reserved oil)

1 tsp smoked paprika

1 egg yolk, whitened with beating

1 tbsp. heavy cream

1 qt. cup heavy cream

1 egg yolk

1 tbsp. coarse mustard

1 tbsp. white wine vinegar

a handful of finely chopped parsley..

A handful of scallions, chopped lengthwise and then into matchstick size

lemon juice

salt and pepper

The idea is to get everything hot and ready at once. So timing is very much a factor. Because a hollandaise--what I call hollandaise at any rate, is so temperamental you should save it for the final step--like any sauce it requires the most ingenuity of your labor, so on that premise too you should save the imaginative for the culmination.

Begin by soaking the brain, sliced into half inch cuts in whole milk, seasoned liberally with salt, pepper, and bay. Let it sit for an afternoon, no less than a few hours, refrigerated.

Prepare the potato pancakes. Boil three medium potatoes in heavily salted water--I find a mixture of white and red increases the textural bristle. Using a block grater grate the celery and onion, adding it, with juices, to a bowl. Add the roasted garlic and oil--mash the cloves first. Once the potatoes have boiled to doneness you want to incorporate the grated vegetables with them, adding beaten yolk and cream as you go. Form patties and reserve til you're ready to griddle-cook them. In a white hot skillet fry the pancakes.

At this point you'll want to either attend to some measly vegetable sidecar--I roasted carrots, or get on with the brains...

The brain filets should be dusted in flour, salted and peppered--like any oddity the guilty secret is that pig's brain has no genuine flavor of its own so here's where you begin to make it up.

Sear and cook them through--touch the filets in the process for doneness. Like anything you'll feel a decreasing give as they go--cook to your liking.

In the meantime get on with your salad and hollandaise. The scallions need merely be trimmed into matchsticks and dressed with lemon juice, salt and pepper--I did dash a teaspoonful of ghee into the dressing as well.

The hollandaise begins like a conventional salad dressing: Convene with vinegar, mustard, egg yolk and seasoning. Whisk to a loose slurry consistency. Then add oil as with a mayonnaise--whisking vigorously. Once the body of the mayonnaise has formed begin adding the cream. You will want a heavy surface--but not something oppressive. Bear in mind you're dressing a brain, it needs a voluptuous speech, but it also needs--and this is admittedly tricky, a finer word--something to allow for contemplation. You want a taste of buttermilk dressing with the warm unctuousness of turkey gravy. Add plenty of chopped fresh parsley. It will take on the characteristics of thin white gravy.

As the hollandaise firms up brown the pancakes in a free skillet. Warm, too, the segmented brains as well--if needed. Upon mutual heating stack the elements in napoleon-form. Beg for Christ's sweet forgiveness and--panting subsided, consume to a nice Hank Snow record. Maybe Wham!

Fool's gold.

Sunday, December 13, 2009, 8:45 AM. First things first, I don't recommend you do as I have done. In fact let that stand as caveat emptor for not only this chronicle but for all expressions issuant. That said I spent the last 36 hours of my life wrassling with the vilest variety of a cold and flu combo yet encountered in my adult years.

I awoke this morning thinking about fire. I thought, more specifically about fighting fire with fire. Anything, my inclination went, a virus can do to me I can do better. I can out-destroy me. And so I did.

Gentle reader, I might have held my punches til everything was back to normal, sparing you the underbelly, but fair's fair: we eat beef Wellington together we eat, well, this shit together as well. You and me, we might as well be married. Seen here is one half a salami and provolone panini with about half a dozen pierogies from our beloved Pierogies Plus in McKees Rocks. This lethal combination was complemented by a mixture of El Yucateco habanero sauce, Sriracha, chili flakes and cracked black pepper. Washed it down with New Castle's own Pasture Maid Creamery raw milk.

And yes, now that you mention it it is a bit odd that in a sickness delirium I not only unwittingly eat great local food but finally showcase it.

That established I must now chase the aforementioned Faustian heap with an Emergen-C drink and a melatonin tablet, ideally cleansing me of memories both ill and restoratively misguided. Tell you what, give me a gun loaded with blanks and I'll find a way to shoot myself in the foot. I think I'm gonna throw up (again).

***

More flattering recipes to come using Pasture Maid's incomparable milk. And do grab a bag of pierogies from Pierogies Plus before the gals hightail it back to Poland for the holidays...

Pepperpot.

"The Caribbean...is a meta-archipelago...It has the virtue of having neither a boundary nor a center. Thus the Caribbean flows outward past the limits of its own sea with a vengeance and its ultima Thule may be found on the outskirts of Bombay, near the low and murmuring shores of Gambia, in a Cantonese tavern of circa 1850, at a Balinese temple, in an old Bristol pub, in a commercial warehouse in Bourdeaux at the time of Colbert, in a windmill beside the Zuider Zee, at a cafe in a barrio of Manhattan, in the existential saudade of an old Portuguese lyric. "
-Antonio Benitez-Rojo, The Repeating Island, 1996.


The author quoted above was drawing a broader observation on the manifold Caribbean identity, yet I in my natural bent could think of little but food. I could see in it-- for the purposes of this dish--one that not unlike chili, goulash, curry or gumbo is stupefying in its myriad origins and permutations, how Benitez-Rojo happened upon an essential puzzle piece of the contemporary food movement: the inclusion of the global in the local. As much as we regionalists, patriots, specialists and niche fetishists would like to think otherwise all cooking is fusion cooking.

As is so often the case one of the inaugural bonechill nights of winter last evening proved the ideal opportunity. Pepperpot is too common sense at its core, too irresistible to not be the subject of numerous national and ethnic claims. It has been prepared in so many variations that the very integrity of the dish's name is stressed to near meaninglessness. The consensus is that, by whatever route of emigration and trade, the Guyanese just north of Brazil lay the truest claim; being that their independent nationality is younger than my favorite Bob Dylan record its only fair they have something so hotly contested as their own. The culinary equivalent to a first round draft pick.

The irony of a global marketplace is that by laying so much extra-European bounty at our doorstep we are in a profound way removing ourselves from a long tradition of geographic and cultural dictates. And when tackling something so far removed from those dictates we become, in practice and expectation, a little lost. Truthfully, I didn't know what pepperpot was before last night. I made a grand old pot of some stuff and only then, after the fact--my septum scorched from blackened chilies and my senses ringing with a dozen toasted spices, did I break down and run a Wikipedia search. I made pepperpot.

Having spent the next morning searching out as many recipes as I could I found that the fundamentals are simple. First things first: pepperpot is a stew. Duh. And with the exception of a handful of American church bazaar-syle recipes nearly each involved a flavorant called cassareep, a cassava-derived syrup used to impart bittersweetness to the broth. Also, the meat aspect of the dish could be divided into two functional categories, the first a stew meat: this in my reading ran the gamut: pork, chicken, beef, goat--any and everything really. The second incorporation was of a collagen-rich meat: tripe, pig's foot, oxtail, soup bones, etc.. And finally, some vegetables--very few authors agreed on the combination, roasted with an earthy herb and chili mixture. From those general beginnings each took its own shape.

This vision of pepperpot was a wild success, and may even become an annual dish for the onset of true winter. Eat to the sounds of howling ice winds and Joy Division.

"Pepperpot"

1/4 roasted garlic cloves--roasting oil included
6 large sage leaves
1 sliced yellow onion
2 skinned and chopped med. carrots
1 medium zucchini, halved lengthwise then cut crosswise into 1/4" half moons
3/4 frozen spring peas
10-12 baby yukon gold potatoes

2 lbs. fatty country style pork ribs (basically chops cut across the bone)

1 light dash of all purpose flour
1/3 c. sweet vermouth

1 tbsp. smoked paprika
1 1/2 tbsp. brown sugar

dried chilies, toasted til nearly black--how many and what variety is up to you.

1/2 lemon

4-5 cups of stock--I used turkey, but basically anything to keep you from running tap water into your pot.

This preparation requires stages of cooking--just consider that each vegetable cooks at a different rate and work accordingly. Begin with the basic aromatics: onion, sage leaves and roasted garlic, adding with a good measure of olive oil to a medium hot soup pot with a heavy-base. Brown and remove to a bowl. Raise heat to high, add zucchini. Caramelize both sides and remove to same bowl. Repeat with potatoes, cooking them to the point where the skins show charred spots by they're internally still mostly uncooked--letting them stew with the pork, along with the fat and bone collagen will thicken the pepperpot in lieu of that second meat--save you the cost of a pig's foot. All $.79 of it.

Since the potatoes will join the stew before the others remove them to a separate bowl. Allow the pot a return to a high, near-smoking heat. Season the pork and add. As an aside I must mention my latest fetish object in the kitchen: butcher's pepper. It's a specific grind--a crack really, of basic black pepper. Since the birth of time--well, the nineties at any rate, I've searched for that specific size of crushed black pepper commonly used in steak au poivre. Most consumer brand coarse grinds aren't coarse enough, and the grist on my pepper mill will only do so much. Oh yeah, if you're over that's sea salt in the pepper mill from now on. So I finally found what I was looking for at The Pennsylvania Macaroni Co. in the strip. They also call it coarse ground, but its size is bigger and adds an almost textural dimension. It's like caviar, it pops. Look for it.

Brown the pork ribs well--I think I gave them a little more than four minutes on each side. Remove to potato bowl. Darken the dried chilies--if you're using them, in the remaining fat of the pot. Occasionally remove one; when its ready you should first of all be well aware of it by aroma alone, but as well it should crumble into flakes easily. If you prefer to flake the chilies--I did, I think it intensifies their presence, do so, then add back to the pot. Add the flour, paprika til the aroma converges then deglaze the pot with vermouth. Add in the brown sugar and squeeze in lemon. At this phase of preparation I hesitated, thinking of the confusion of flavors I was dealing with: the vermouth, the chilies, the smoked paprika. In fact it is a broad order. Just keep tasting for the right chemistry, and of course sub out what you don't like for what you do--pay no mind to your Guyanese neighbor rolling her eyes.

Return the pork and potatoes to the pot and cover with with stock. Simmer for an hour. The pork should pull easily from the bone but not fall too easily apart, and the potatoes should be, depending on size, alternately fork tender and disolving into the broth. Add the browned vegetables, and finally the peas. Season once more to taste and serve with minced white onions and scallions in vinegar.

If you can stand it let it sit overnight in the fridge. A good night of sleep helps.

The aftermath.

The smoke is clearing and the Gettysburg soil is drenched in blood. I paid my neighbors in yard work, shoveled sidewalks and some unspeakable favors of the bedroom to do my dishes as they were as revolting a heap as the food was revelatory. The truth of it is this thing, the aftermath, is far from over. We've begun a season so debauched and indulgent that once it's over it's common--hell, it's expected, that we make resolutions not to behave like this anymore. We do this every year. I couldn't tell you the number of stoic January 1st plates of hash browns I've stared into with all the gazing desperation of Narcissus and vowed, never again.



John and I planned what Avocado affectionately refers to as an orphan's holiday--no blood relatives, just a few stragglers from work and around the way. Ours began in the magic hour--if you don't count the daylong binge on deviled eggs so formidable that Cool Hand Luke himself would've genuflected.

You'll have to forgive my amateur excuse for photography. I'd blame the camera but truth be told I'm no better with a digital camera than I am with a 9 iron, which is to say poor and bordering on self-destructive. It was a beautiful light that seemed generously premature for the afternoon, one that carried on well past the expectation of dusk.



Four of us tackled approximately twelve dishes, not including the shrink-wrapped pumpkin pie John couldn't resist grabbing, on a last minute run to Shur Save for eggs. It remains shrink-wrapped on my kitchen table.

There was turkey: cajun deep-fried drumsticks; an olive oil and sage-rubbed breast; and my pal, Rick, from Right By Nature, prepared a stuffed bird that changed my mind for all times on the naysayer's resistance to stuffing before the roast. It was grand through and through. Not sure I'm ready to take that kind of chance myself, but Rick's butchering skills proved expert in cleaving enough of the bird to each side, open book-style that neither the bird nor the conservative lode of stuffing--itself a rather tasty side, stood a chance of compromised chemistry. They were good pals.

We had an orange-accented cranberry sauce that John seemed to simmer straight from the top of his head; the out-of-the-past deviled eggs--new foodyism seems to disparage what we truly love in favor of something we deign to call cosmopolitan; I tell you what, them eggs was penthouse and lighting Cuban cigars with hundred dollar bills as sure s if they were caviar and foie gras on the lawn. And as I already noted we ate a lifetime's supply before the table was even set. John made chipotle mashed sweet potato, and brilliantly roasted brussel sprouts with baby carrots.

For my part I made an andouille and croissant dressing. The pan yielded a fond we deglazed with some basic turkey stock from some hot browns John made a few weeks back. Good gravy.

I had, in my sleepwalking way, concocted an untouched casserole several days earlier of baked rigatoni with broccoli and a vodka Camembert sauce. Just prior to baking I finished it with a fresh sage oil. The recipe will follow.

I suppose the litany could go through the night, like the list of ships in The Iliad, like the genealogies of the Old Testament, but you get the picture.

Besides, like I said, this isn't over yet.




Baked Rigatoni with Vodka Camembert Sauce.



1 small red onion, finely chopped
1 medium carrot, finely chopped
1 large stalk celery, finely chopped
1 small Serrano chili, seeded, finely chopped
5 small oil-cured anchovies
4 roasted garlic cloves
1 lb. dry rigatoni
1 lg. can pelati (roasted roma tomatoes, ideally San Marzano)
1/4 c. heavy cream
6 0z. Camembert, torn in bits with the rind left on
1/4 c. Parmigiano-Reggiano
1/4 c. vodka
1 med. head of broccoli, cut into florets and blanched.
6 leaves of fresh sage browned in 3 tbsp. olive oil


Begin by sauteing the chopped vegetables in a mixture of olive oil and butter over medium heat. Once vaguely softened remove to a bowl. In the skillet brown five small anchovy fillets and four cloves of roasted garlic. As they brown in the remaining oil mash them with the back of a fork. As soon as the aromatics ripen in the skillet add a large can of whole pelati tomatoes with juice.

Allow this to simmer, mashing the tomtoes as you go, reintroducing the sauteed vegetables a moment prior to satisfactory reduction--it should look like jarred spaghetti sauce. It'll taste better, but the consistency will prove similar.

Cook off one pound of rigatoni. Not al dente, a little short of it. It'll need to bake.

Add to the sauce, in slow feeds, the cream, Camembert, vodka and Parmigiano Reggiano. Stir til a orange sunset color is reached. Add the rigatoni and broccoli, turning over to coat. Add the mixture to a large buttered casserole. Bake at 350 degrees, brushing the surfac occasionally with sage oil. Upon the final brushing add the crisped sage leaves to the surface. Once suitably browned remove from the oven and after an impatient rest serve.

Yams in the abyss.

Could I possibly be alone in the desperation to hide my greed in the cloak of magnanimity? Do only I say Thanksgiving--with its generosity, and not Christmas--with its gimme, is my favorite holiday?

Doubtful.

But I do enjoy once a year feeling as though my peritoneum needs sutures to hold in the grist of overeating; once a year seeing the family hazed in an aerosol of unctuous abandon--too eager before the fact to dwell long in the formality of that prayer, too corked-up during and after the fact to speak a word of wingnut horseshit.

Of course we get the whole grand sleepy feast again at Christmas, but for my liking once is sufficient.

I am disinclined to contribute to the clamor of helpful holiday tips. And I know no foolproof recipes involving cranberries. No witless tutorials--mine anyway concern Nabokov, and are conducted in private, with one eye half open, when my own aroma belongs nowhere near a gas stove. No, I am preoccupied with the distracting and distracted, something my family might look at as it steams on the table, and wonder, when did he lose his soul--for if not in these little ventures, when?

The ensuing recipes--I'm offering them in a ribbon-cutting gesture for the inaugural holiday season of FOOD & WhIskEy, involve some of the marquee cliches of holiday cooking. Some of them are merely sentiments familiar to the season, others incorporate seasonal ingredients. Ideally each will prevail upon you without my getting too explicit.




Sunday November, 22nd 2009 Sage Rubbed Venison Strip Steak with Butter and Browned Roquefort Polenta.

I would rather not begin with the finale--and in truth it cannot get more climactic, but sometimes circumstance prevails and adherence compels.

Last week, with a compound bow in his hand and his young son at his side Quint Weaver, hunting for the first time in his life, bagged himself a nine-point 24-inch antler span buck. First shot. I cannot in good faith to either Quint or the animal let the ruby tri-tips he gave me sit another day. All as well, the first tenet of Thanksgiving ought not rest on a single ingredient so much as a sentiment: simplicity.

Venison, like all game, disagrees with some palates because of its earthiness. The primary asset of any game animal for that matter is that the terroir has not been farmed out of the muscle and blood. You can taste grass, wood and minerals. So it must go with the preparation of venison that its complements show similar earthy--if somewhat decadent, minimalism.

This preparation will feed two.

If you want a fresh stock for the polenta start that now. For me I find two chopped onions (skins included), roasted garlic and a few shots of soy sauce make for an apt base--you're not making a soup, so the musky singularity of these few things will more than suffice as both a base and a complement to the bleu cheese you'll admit in short turn . Cover with about five cups of cold water and bring to a simmer, reducing by nearly half.

The polenta starts with a coarsely ground corn meal. Toast in a dry saute pan til lightly browned--the fact is cereals are kindred to spices in that their essences don't truly emerge til dry heat is applied. Or if you can find it, try Brinser's Best Yellow Cornmeal, a nutty, readymade tan cornmeal that requires no additional toasting. Salt and pepper immediately. Add simmering stock to the browned cornmeal, stirring as you do to incorporate. Once you have achieved a consistency you like--actually, stop short, it'll firm up once the heat is off, add a 1/4 stick of unsalted butter and crumble in bleu cheese til the polenta is well-colored with the penicilium marble--in this instance I chose the Fourme D'Ambert, which lends the prevailing richness.

The rest is monastically basic" salt and pepper the venison, browning in searing hot skillet til to your liking. I suspect with the slightly smaller tips I went about two minutes per side.

Deglaze the pan while the meat rests; I used the leftover stock, a splash of calvados and a tablespoon of butter. Get it to demiglace consistency--think honey.

I served it with grilled romaine lettuce in olive oil and a little lemon juice. The venison got a rolld coin of butter--again, unsalted. Let thems speak for themselves.

Thanks Quint, and good show.

Tuna and beans. An egg. Quinoa.

It could be that our DNA is only so old. Look at the dew on our architecture, the styles of America. The movies. We have on certain levels yet to outgrow the pioneer's gaze on things. We eat like we face an 18 hour workday, in a field. For a living I alternate between wrapping cheese in plastic for an "organic" grocery store and flip burgers for a dive on Polish Hill. I write, but as yet the pen has issued no checks so for now I'm constrained to call it an enthusiasm. But again, I eat like a bent-backed sharecropper. My metabolism probably needs about a quarter of everything I consume.

As for you and I, we eat to feel better: Verdi fed his beloved opera company; Christ demonstrated miracles to feed his flock; Stalin auditioned his own meals with his poison-tasters; Proust, benevolently, indulged himself. Neither we nor our culture on a greater scale eat to survive, per se.

Are we so young all in our shallow pool of a nation's time? Will we ever get the practice of eating, of enjoying food, of shopping, or growing down right?

I mention this, and forgive me, I seem to have woken up on the wrong side of my soap box this morning, because of a series of small epiphanies, all circling the same ethical dilemma: How do I feed myself in a way that is both true to myself, and reverent to the broader human experience? It could be said, and in fact, in refutation of these misgivings often is, that something so fundamental as eating--itself a block in the foundation of survival, need not suffer the scrutiny that could in any way delay it. It needs no bureaucracy above and beyond the bureaucracy of foraging.

But this is not true. We must ask ourselves if it benefits the creatures of nature: are we honoring our place in the food chain? No, mere appetite does not dictate that. Are we honoring ourselves? Are our bodies, our skin, our demeanors reflective of the good things we give ourselves, or are we nagging reminders that we must change, improve, and in different way than before, satisfy?

Certainly its a personal matter, but the discourse is valuable. To publicize the struggle for improvement is itself a fundamental improvement. In the meantime we--those of us who have lived as we have, search for small fortunes on the road. Once a day I try to cook and eat sensibly. It turns out I can produce the caloric equivalent of a man-size cheesecake with relative ease, but more realistic grub, that gives me problems. Here is one I felt captured the newly found duty to self and surroundings with a fitting air of simplicity. Not one you'll likely try out on a dinner date, but it hit the spot for a Wednesday morning.

Start with steamed quinoa, add peas and chopped green onions. Season with salt and pepper. Add white cannellini beans and some oil-cured tuna--I used the Flott canned brand, but if I had my way I'd be back in Philadelphia, being (gladly) gouged for their jarred "filet" variety which is in my estimation superior to even the fresh fish.

Mix all these ingredients with chili flakes and a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar. Top with a fried egg. Go forth.

Sense, memory--version two..

Once upon some blue days--many in defiling tight sequence, and defilingly often in fact, I warmed to relish drawn blinds, Duke Ellington's 1948 Cornell University performance (it did, as did so many, begin with the strident and almost forgivably patriotic sound of the "Star Spangled Banner"), and drinking Johnny Walker Red Label from the plastic Cheryl Tiegs mug in a dearth of peeking daylight--what light defining a door's crack knows auspice?--to the unprofitable commotion of the Currans'--my landlords in those days, interminable knocks at the door. They wanted something and must've thought I or my wallet had it.

But do not be distracted by my debaucheries, as with growth comes a somber concession to the old ideals--I mean older than ourselves, to something as abruptly inevitable as it is despairing: Sanity. Our courses will deem their ways, but--and perhaps this lies at the root of our affinity for food culture, they will all, however disparate or meanderingly dissimilar, return to the food we once ate, the people who once fed us, the hunger that once protracted the hours.

So it should come as no surprise that we are destined to, if only mildly, regret our sanity. Children are wild, they love wild things. They eat things that would fatten us instantly, implode our pulmonary cores, send us into convulsive insulin shock; they eat these things and go crazy as--for no other reason, they can.

Lately I've gravitated to wandering into the kitchen, not necessarily hungry on every occasion, and in a zombie reverie, turning out cinnamon toast, or macaroni and cheese, creamed beef, peanut butter and bananas...

I don't recall ever eating the complementary grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup combo as a child, though coming up through various kitchens across the Commonwealth I discovered a phantom sense memory for it. For all the industrial era fondness I hold for the Campbell's Tomato Soup can--more a fondness for Warhol's imagery than the soup itself, I find and always have the soup to be synthetic tasting, of an unnatural consistency, and in hindsight a really fuck you to the developing palate. Might not be a bad idea to thank my folks right about now for not forcing it on me. No, as I encountered each chef after chef, each drunk on the generational ambition of exalting "comfort food" and teasing out the warmth of Americanness one tricked-out casserole at a time, a steady feed emerged of variations, technical differences and conceptual inconsistencies. And yes, we're still talking about a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup.

Sufficed to say a kind of second childhood opened up and ran parallel to the actual in me; as an adult I grew quite fond of this kid fare. Below you'll find scant details, and for the sandwich no recipe at all--I'm not so condescending. Rather I selected a few crucial techniques and--regarding the grilled cheese sandwich, a few current favorite cheeses to layer in and gussy up the ooze. If nothing else comes away from this, in both soup and sandwich, trust your instincts, as they are rooted in a child's wise sensibility--be it yours particularly or one more collective and inextricably sound.



THE SOUP should be--as should all, begun by pot roasting the vegetables and herbs of choice, starting with the firmest, and gradually working down to the delicate herbs. Start this process in plenty of hot oil and refrain from salting til the additives brown, lest they won't brown at all due to the leeching out of moisture. Once a satisfactory color appears go ahead and season the pot with salt and pepper. I get a mild outbreak of hives at the canned sound of Emeril Lagasse's showman schtick, but one tip he's hellbent on sending those tongue-wagging rubes in his audience home with after tapings is that seasoning is a gradual process, one monitored closely and adjusted with each new introduction to the pot. I do wish he'd stop with that smell-o-vision horseshit, but I'll let it lie.

While the stock vegetables are coming to color oven roast your tomatoes.

Cut x's in the bottoms as these will allow you to strip away the unpalatable skins after roasting. Halfway through the roast sprinkle the tops of your tomatoes with salt pepper and a bit of sugar.
Once complete, peel and add to the pot whole. Allow this new acquaintanceship to simmer, meanwhile prepare the broth. Start by submerging the browning pot of vegetables in several inches of water. Season, taste. Add a small can of tomato juice. Season, taste. Add a mixture of whole milk and heavy cream. Season, taste. Let simmer further til the colors unify. Think of it like a cup of coffee, the cream isn't added to taste but to color. Trust your eyes. The season and taste.

Once you feel the contents are as integrated as can be puree the soup--an immersion blender works best though whatever the means at your disposal they will indubitably suffice. Season, taste. I often find the missing factor at this point to be a heavy tablespoon of honey to encourage the sugars brought out in the roasted tomatoes. If you like stir honey in and follow it with a heavy hand of chopped parsley. Basil is most commonly suggested, and is a natural mate for tomatoes' sweetness, however I find the verdant crispness of parsley draws out the earthiness from not just the tomatoes but the vegetable bouquet on the whole. It evokes the richness of the garden, chlorophyll. It is, to my liking, indispensable.

THE SANDWICH is where I leave you to your own devices. Several cheese shopping tips couldn't hurt the rugged individualism with which you grill the damned thing though, right? For the butter it is a little pricey, and I don't recommend you spread it on just any old Get Go morning bagel, but Delitia Parmigiano Reggiano Butter is precisely what it sounds like, the churned byproduct of cheese production centuries in the refinement. I will take any old table butter and am not ashamed to admit I love margarine, but when, as an adult and with an adult's palate you finally do return to the kitchen of your childhood, you want the prismatic possibilities of the dairy to be pronounced. The lushness and mild sweetness of this butter is key. Do not, if availability and funds permit, pass it by.

As for cheeses you know what you like. I prefer a hard, a semi-soft and a soft, emphasizing the semi-soft as it usually melts best and produces that lustful stringy pull when you chomp down. In order, I chose splintered bits of Beemster Classic gouda, with the pushy character of a Parmigiano Reggiano and just a bit more melting give. Along with its sunset rust color it improves the final product in nearly endless ways. Cave-aged Gruyere might technically be a hard cheese by classification, though when it melts the transformation is awesome. Its chemistry, second only to its prickling flavor, is fundamental. For a soft I add a smattering of soft but not-yet-melted brie--the Paul-Renard family's musty Supreme is my running favorite, willful enough to not be mistaken for mere butter, yet compliant and smooth as a great butter is. Alchemy, that stuff.

Of course you'll need bread too--good bread, some respectable wine, and in the vestiges of not quite your childhood, but, as it turns out not yet your adulthood, Duke Ellington.