Nom Chomsky

A medium-rare steak is a medium-rare steak is a medium-rare...

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 20:59:54 -0500

A medium-rare steak is a medium-rare steak is a medium-rare steak. But how much salt does it take for it to be seasoned “perfectly.” You know it when you taste it, but what does your friend think? The person at the next table who binged on potato chips earlier that day? The smoker? And that’s just one dimension of seasoning.

Cooking and eating play on the very thin line between objective execution and wildly speculative matters of personal taste. Wine, nearly independent from matters of nutrition, even more so. Which is why I’m so excited about SOMM, the upcoming documentary about the exhaustive training, exclusive tasting, and grueling testing required to become one of the world’s few Master Sommeliers.

Southern Foodways Alliance

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:49:44 -0500

Southern Foodways Alliance:

I’m blown away: the SFA has put together an amazing collection of oral histories, videos, interactive maps, and more detailing the past and present of southern food. What’s more, they spell out guidelines and tips for contributing your own interviews to the project.

Whether you want to know the history of boudin, curious about what’s new in Southern artisanal cheese, or are planning a real-deal barbecue tour, this is the place to start.

From ‘Soft Guerilla’ series Kyle Bean via BoingBoing

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 12:20:00 -0500

From ‘Soft Guerilla’ series

Kyle Bean via BoingBoing

Texts from last night, Martha Stewart Living edition

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 13:31:06 -0500

Me:This Press N' Seal wrap is out of control.
Mom: Makes you want to make a big ole batch of something just to get the leftovers. Bet you just can't wait to unwrap that lunchie.
Me: I know! All I can think about is sausages and burgers and if its safe to do sous vide. Wondering if the Glad product placements in Top Chef have something to do with it. Between that, all the baking I've been doing, and the lemon curd, really feeling the Martha Stewart vibe.
Mom: That's my boy! No Sunday night football for you. Bed time soon, and sweet dreams of napkin rings and tarts tatins.

"It’s like Betty Crocker and Charles Manson had a love child and he’s cooking for me"

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 23:50:49 -0500

“It’s like Betty Crocker and Charles Manson had a love child and he’s cooking for me”

- Tony Bourdain as guest judge on Top Chef season 2

UCB Tackles NY Foodie Culture with 'Pig: A Restaurant

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 11:28:53 -0500

UCB Tackles NY Foodie Culture with 'Pig: A Restaurant:

Foodie culture satire has become a sub-genre unto itself: Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon’s The Trip had some great little jests at British haute cuisine and the web series Foodies does a great job poking fun at American food snobs and their social challenges.

Now, Upright Citizens Brigade takes on the New York dining scene with Pig: A Restaurant, a short, one-woman play about the chefs, reviewers, bloggers, and eaters who create, perpetuate, and critique couture cuisine. From the Gothamist:

Written by the Leila Cohan-Miccio, a former editor for Grub Street, directed by Caitlin Tegart, and single-handedly performed by Lauren Conlin Adams, who’s waited tables everywhere from Balthazar to DB Bistro Moderne, Pig is a razor-sharp take on the city’s current foodie fadishness. The incredibly elastic Adams plays half a dozen characters, including, but not limited to: a pork-obsessed control freak chef, a hyper-bitchy restaurant publicist, a lascivious hat-wearing critic, and a DIY Brooklyn “farmer” who grows grapes on his Crown Heights rooftop, “with the terroir of Jamaican beef patties and weed.”

Tickets are available for $5 for wednesday shows on 12/7 and 12/21

Taco Bell

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 17:26:57 -0500

Love theis idea, and awesome, if somewhat tedious, execution.

Cormac McCarthy’s Yelp reviews

yelpingwithcormac:

Financial District - San Francisco, CA

Cormac M. | Author | Lost in the chaparral, NM

Two stars.

And so the man defied the villagers and ate the taco. In defiance of the will of those people but also in defiance of some order older than he. Older than tortillas. Than the ancient and twisted cedars. How could we know his mind? We are all of us unknowable. Blind strangers passing on a mountain road.

The man laid there in the village square for three days and nights and took no food and spoke to no visitor. The older villagers said that the man should not have eaten the taco and no sane man would do so and the price of such folly was known to all.

On the fourth day an old lady asked the man was he ill and did he need a doctor. The man told her he was indeed ill but that he wished to see a priest. And she crossed herself and left and in the sweltering afternoon sun a priest came down to the square to see the man.

The priest asked the man why he lay there in the square and if perhaps he could be convinced to leave. The man said he had eaten a thing which he should not have and he could not move because the world was revealed to him in its evil and in its beauty. That if he moved he might fall into the sky and never return. The priest assured him that it was not possible to fall into the sky and that an earthly cure of ginger and peppermint would surely calm his digestion. The man asked could God make a taco so terrible even He could not eat it. The priest considered this and said no this was not possible and to think so was a sin. The man was silent for some time. Then he said that he had eaten such a taco and that it tasted of bootblack and horsefeed. That if this taco was under God’s dominion then surely all other great evils must be as well. And then the man took the halfeaten and greaseblackened taco from his coatpocket and thrust it at the priest like a broken sword. Eat it, he said. Eat it or be damned.

2 Follow Up Reviews:

11/3/2011 We do not hear from the man who ate the taco until November of that year, when he … Read more »

11/10/2011 They left him there in the cell. Delirious. Speaking of crazy things. Wild things. The guards would not… Read more »

Adapting Local Traditions for Improving Nutrition

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 16:27:59 -0500

Adapting Local Traditions for Improving Nutrition

Cooking our way out of the recession

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 16:23:20 -0500

Cooking our way out of the recession:

A new program in Chicago focuses on giving the unemployed a new start in culinary arts and hospitality. I’d love to wax poetic about the joys and self-improvement by learning how to cook, but with Chicago’s unemployment rate at 11.2% (compared to a national average of 9%), it’s all about the bottom line:

When asked what attracted him to the program, one participant named Billy, hired a month ago to work full-time at the Hard Rock Hotel downtown, reached in his pocket to pull out a paycheck. As of Monday’s graduation, one-quarter of the graduates had already found full-time work.

With the collapse of manufacturing and the middle-class lifestyle it afforded, the class gap provides an interesting opportunity in the service sector. Before there was the assembly line, there was the saute line.

Modern Squash (via NYTimes.com) 1. Hang-It-All, Charles and Ray...

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:44:57 -0500

Modern Squash (via NYTimes.com)

1. Hang-It-All, Charles and Ray Eames, 1953. 2. PH 4/3 Lamp, Poul Henningsen, 1966. 3. T.W.A. Terminal, New York, Eero Saarinen, 1962. 4. Philip Johnson, 1906-2005. 5. La Chaise, Charles and Ray Eames, 1948. 6. Egg Chair, Arne Jacobsen, 1958. 7. Swan Chair, Arne Jacobsen, 1958.

Behind the scenes at artificial and natural flavoring behemoth...

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:31:24 -0500

Behind the scenes at artificial and natural flavoring behemoth Givaudan

Family Upgrades To Shells & Cheese

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:19:08 -0500

Family Upgrades To Shells & Cheese:

MOBILE, AL— After years of eating regular Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, the Conroy family upgraded Monday to the higher-end Velveeta Shells & Cheese. “We’ve finally arrived,” said wife Beverly Conroy while serving up a heaping bowl of the delicacy, made possible by husband Corey’s 35-cent raise at the local tile factory. “It’s nothing but the finest processed instant foods for us from now on.” Pending sensible budgeting, the family hopes to move up from Hydrox cookies to Oreos by August.

"We shuffled in line toward a machine that dispensed the tickets you handed to the chefs. There was a..."

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:17:50 -0500

“We shuffled in line toward a machine that dispensed the tickets you handed to the chefs. There was a bewildering array of choices. Ansari, clad in his new brown suit, was the first to reach the front. “I’m scared,” he whispered. “Just close your eyes and push a button,” said Chang.”

- Aziz Ansari of Parks and Rec, James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, and David Chang of Momofuku take Tokyo by storm. Hilarious and wonderful.

GQ.com via Eater

nprfreshair: meglange: “Cooking is like love; it should be...

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 12:24:56 -0500

nprfreshair:

meglange:

“Cooking is like love; it should be entered into with abandon or not at all.”

In case you need cooking suggestions this week, here’s a series of food-related interviews on Fresh Air….

ilovecharts: A whole series of Nintendo character butchering...

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:25:14 -0500

ilovecharts:

A whole series of Nintendo character butchering charts, over at ThatsLikeWHOA.com

Blue=Global pork commodities index Black= Rollout of the McRib...

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 14:34:17 -0500

Blue=Global pork commodities index

Black= Rollout of the McRib sandwhich

A Conspiracy of Hogs: The McRib as Arbitrage

Fucking fascinating

"It is utterly insufficient (to eat pie only twice a week), as anyone who knows the secret of our..."

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:02:06 -0500

““It is utterly insufficient (to eat pie only twice a week), as anyone who knows the secret of our strength as a nation and the foundation of our industrial supremacy must admit. Pie is the American synonym of prosperity, and its varying contents the calendar of the changing seasons. Pie is the food of the heroic. No pie-eating people can ever be permanently vanquished.””

- Racial determinism, geo-political history, gender disparity, and the law of man as viewed through the lens of pie.

New York Times, 10/3/1902

rumoko: Tim Curries

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 16:02:47 -0500

rumoko:

Tim Curries

145 - Some Dickwad on a Cleanse

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 12:02:15 -0400

onthebrod:

Why couldn’t I have gotten a ride with some awesome fat dude who’d be like, “Let’s stop at this Outback and have like twelve Bloomin’ Onions.” No, I ended up stuck with this dickwad on a cleanse.

"A competitive person or one who feels chronically undervalued cherishes foods that the brain has..."

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 13:18:52 -0400

“

A competitive person or one who feels chronically undervalued cherishes foods that the brain has coded as rewards. A loner finds no comfort in those foods the brain links with community. An abused person who lives in fear might hoard safety foods.

When we feel endangered, unsung and/or lonesome, we eat.

”

- Gilt Taste on the psychology of comfort food