We ate many mushrooms in France

We ate many mushrooms in France. We ate orange chanterelle schmoored down in drip drip butter and entire heads of garlic smoosh-smoosh in pan hot and swipe the pan clean with pieces of pan-toasty bread with chop chop parsley. And then out of the pan with our hands for breakfast the next day.

We ate brain-spongy morilles hidden half in somewhat soggy omelettes and drowned in jus under lamb chops from French lambs.

We seared more chanterelle in more butter and ate big bowls of them with still-chewey barley. On top we put perfect temperature comté because we were where comté comes from and we didn’t have a fridge.

Another time we grilled them and put once-chopped parsley and lemon juice squeezed on them.

Memory steaks

I remember the adults looking at her. My sister had just ordered a $40 sandwich. She was 8. Sure, this was Smith and Wollensky, New York, the 90s, and the sandwich was more steak than sandwich. And ok, this sandwich has since shaped my dreams and, more often than not, frustrated my expectations. But she was still an 8 year old ordering a $40 sandwich in a, if not the, quintessential New York steak house, built on the bones of countless cows for big men wielding big knives, big accounts, Brook’s Brothers suits, and a napkin around their necks. And she didn’t blink an eyelid. And she ate it all.

When farm to table literally means a table on a farm

The lamb was killed the day before and hung. You can't eat an animal right away because of rigor mortis, the stiffening that sets in after death.

Remove the head right before the first vertebrae from the top of where the neck starts. The higher up you go, the more neck meat you'll have. And neck meat is good.

Cut the skin around the legs and pull down, easing it with a knife. Find the white film on the under side of the skin and cut with it.

Pope Francis Says There's a Place for Animals in Heaven

 

The brain was someone’s baby but if you don’t have a soul, do you count? Catholic animals don’t have souls*, which I learned at a catholic christening for a real baby with a soul, sin, correct amount of feet and all. But the church was the next day and I didn’t know about the soul thing when I was sautéing the brains, thinking about babies.

On p.314 in De Dikke van Dam under ‘brain’, Johannes van Dam says that in Papua New Guinea, fathers used to have to kill a man they knew the name of and eat his brain on the baptism of their child. He says that on the (Dutch) colonists’ suggestion that they stop, they were dismayed. How were they name their young?

On killing yourself for free stuff and Hot Toddies (Chai and Tahini Hot Chocolate)

Free stuff comes to those who persevere and I had persevered for a whole week. ‘Free’ is a relative term though and relative, in this instance, to carrying the stuff down 10 flights of stairs and up one, door handle or no door handle.

We still have our door handle.

Free stuff gets you into situations you wouldn’t be in for all the money in the world. This is how we ended up locked into a storage unit terrain at exactly the same time a group that looked nothing if not criminal were depositing/collecting/god knows their guns/drugs/god knows.

We left without the trailer.

Free stuff means you’re not choosing things but trusting things. Trusting that either it will fit through the door or the rain will stop so that you don’t have to leave the thing you didn’t choose to be suede under a tarp in the rain. Rain isn’t good for suede and tarps aren’t magic.

We got it through the door.

Free stuff is always exciting and we were excited so we planned a meal around the occasion. We were to get a free couch and so we were to eat our first dinner on the couch and let dinner cook whilst we were out getting the couch.

We were out getting the couch longer than expected.

We had burned our dinner.

I’d gotten a cold.

We didn’t eat our dinner on the couch (suede is hard to clean anyway).

We drank Hot Toddies.

Here's a recipe for our Hot Toddy and more on the couch drinks.

Domaine Pechigo 'Le Blanc' 2009

I never thought I’d write about wine. I know basically nothing about wine, and when it all just tastes like ‘wine,’ what’s there to say? 

Except, apparently, they don’t. Recently I’ve had wines that taste like raspberry-cherry lightening, almond lava flow and chalkboards, respectively. I’ve done blackberry jello shots poolside and watched galaxies unfold lying on my back lakeside. And I’ve definitely drunk stuff that tastes like beer. 

Apparently these ‘other’ wines are ‘natural wines,’ and evidently the guys making them are doing something different. So different that their wines don’t taste like ‘wine’. And so suddenly it’s not about wine and I have something to say.

Tasting notes:

“Le Blanc” tastes like sunshine. Like light streaming through trees and bruised apples in a basket. Like the stuff you imagine Hummingbirds are into: something very viscous with a lot of guava / lychee / pineapple / nectarine in it on a lot of ice with a lot of straws. Like something alive and rotting and in a rush.

//

“Le Blanc” 2009

Domaine Pechigo 

Chardonnay + Chenin Blanc + Mauzac  

Languedoc -Roussillon 

Post updated with a picture I took from Rødder & Vin because, like normal people, I wasn't taking pictures of wine in 2015. 

A Sauerkraut Spritz because why not?

It’s noisy and your eyes need a moment to adjust to the dark. There’s no room for elbows and people keep jostling past, the jostle all the more so a jostle because of the full skirts and aprons. Everything is dark wood, copper or printed cloth. And antler. There’s a lot of antler if you count up all the buttons. You smell onions frying and yeasty clouds of beer. It’s cold outside and you feel your face flushing from the warmth, from the beer. Those skirts are swishing back and fourth from the kitchen, their matrons handling big trays laden with heavy food. A bowl is placed is front of you. The cold has made you hungry and everyone around you is already eating. Inside it is a mass of steaming bacon and other pig’s anatomy, slivers of cabbage, juniper berries, bay leaf and thickly cut apple. You have primeval German brot (bread) on the side and are already spooning out yellow senf (mustard) with one of those little wooden spoons. 

How to eat watermelon in six weird ways in two parts, Pt. 1

Some alternative things to do with watermelon when cutting it into slices, getting drippy sticky and spitting pits like you’re 5 just doesn’t cut it (possibly because you’ve been doing this all summer long and even before the summer really started with imported watermelons from Turkey) and that don’t involve smearing it with suntan lotion and wearing a life vest like a diaper*.

 1. Sprinkle it with hot chilli flakes, salty salt and oil from olives

You can still cut this one into slices but then you should use a knife and fork to eat it them.

2. Make watermelon à la Provençale (it involves wine)

Make a circular incision around the stalk of watermelon, cut off the end and scoop out some flesh. Shake the fruit (over the sink) so that some of the seeds fall out (into the sink) and fill with a dry rosé (specifically, Tavel wine, which indicates wine from an appellation of the southern Rhone valley, the only AOC in France to solely produce rosé and a rosé, at that, which was, apparently, the favourite of Louis XIV). Stop the top with the cut off end and seal with cling film. Chill in fridge for at least 2 hours.

To serve, take off end, strain wine, cut rest of watermelon into those slices we were talking about and serve with the wine.

3. Mix it with tomatoes and call it a salad

Whisk together 1tbsp sugar, 1 tsp salt, ¼ tsp cayenne pepper in a small bowl. Quarter and thinly slice ½ small red onion and toss it in ¼ cup white wine vinegar. Set aside to rest until onion softens and mellows which will take about 30 minutes.

Combine 4 beefsteak tomatoes cut into hunks with 1 medium watermelon, also cut into chunks. Pour in onion-vinegar mixture along with some extra virgin olive oil and toss. Add salt and pepper to taste.

This will serve about 5 people and is the recipe of a friend.

*This happened.  

Tongue's a-bub-bubblin'

Someone had to babysit the tongue. It is, as I write, a-bubblin’ and bouncin’ in the that there pot. It’s raining out. My instructions are to wait for the white stuff to flake off: if you’ve ever looked at your own tongue in the mirror after burning it, you’ll know what I’m looking for. Takes about two hours for a tongue this big and by ‘big’ I mean a forearm’s worth of muscle tuned to plucking blades of grass. Big enough for it not to be ready in time for dinner last night by 9 o’clock so we had Italian instead and more than one aperitif.

Tongue’s great, though I never thought I’d say it. But then, I’ve had to back down from higher mountains I’ve talked my way up. For years (3) I’ve maintained zero interest in the more internal of internal meats; not that I constantly had to defend myself but the suggestion has, on more than one occasion, come up. Turns out most of these things (minus kidneys) are delicious. The cow version of them anyway. Once I was tasked to make an extra sheep’s liver into something riffed from Ottolenghi’s Plenty. I managed to make it green but it was gross.

Deli sandwiches aren’t civil

Deli sandwiches aren’t civil. They’re not cut into triangles, you don’t nibble them. You hold it with both hands as its unburdened over the counter, smell through. Nothing through the wrapper unless you asked for cheese and sauerkraut or meatballs or brisket or peppers or pastrami and you asked for it warm, which I recommend. On Rye. Take extra napkins.

Deli sandwiches make wonderful cross sections full of falling-out cold cuts and I like it best when they’re wrapped in plastic (loud florists' plastic that snaps and crackles). Second best in brown paper bags that get greasy if you leave it for too long but it's best if you don't. They can take some good minutes to make and should also take enough time to eat because if you eat too quickly, you'll think you're too full to eat the other half. You could always share but I always forget to, preoccupied with being starving, which is advice I wish I had when, in New York, I spent $19,00 on one, which is to say something for the amount of meat in it, not that the city is expensive which we all know already. I ate the rest for a second lunch and even dinner the next day.

'Fou du roi' 2013, Le Temps des Cerises

“Fou du roi" 2013 is the kind of wine I want to make and the kind of wine my Romanian friend says her grandfather used to make and the sort of wine mom says my opa also used to make which is, I think, us all saying the same sort of thing which is, to say it another way, the kind of wine to drink from a cup dancing to Italo disco in the dark.

Tasting notes:

Not original but for real ruby red. Smells a like cherries rolled in undergrowth funk and eucalyptus bark strips. Carbonic macerated poppy sour cherries and other red berries that zap, crackle and POP with a dark edged sugar fizz sparkle that tastes, and makes you feel, alive. This shit is highly drinkable or as those less self-conscious say, ‘smashable’ ok you can kill me now. Juice for juice’s sake and I like to think, also for mine big merci to you, Axel. I love this wine.

//

"Foi du roi" 2013

Le Temps des Cerises, Axel Prüfer

Grenache Noir + Cinsault + Carignan

Languedoc-Roussillon

The microbes are my friends

My search for the perfect pickle has been a long one, full of disappointment, small Polish shops and lots of E numbers. And then, one day, Alex brought home a small packet of Armenian meats (you know, something strung from the back of a saddle to dry as the horse runs), a bottle of something I didn’t know what but it was alive, and a small plastic pot of pickles. I feel like I can still get some mileage out of my pickle story so I won’t say more about them here; but when I found myself drinking all the brine from all the pots, I thought I’d better go see the source* for myself. And sure enough, I came home with a (different) pack of Armenian smoked meats, having tried a pickled tomato (from Russia, delicious) and a little jar of water kefir grains. With no clue as to what they were.

All I knew is that they were responsible for that lovely fizzy stuff we were making pilgrimages to drink. And, I thought, as I’d already managed to turn pineapple skins into alcohol, the beginning of what I’ve recognised to be a certain attraction to big jars of lightly fizzing yellow liquids, why not make my own? So I did and I’m on my second batch, hoping the third will actually be drinkable.

So, if you too are thinking about making these little guys your friends, and I warn you now: it is a friendship that solidifies pretty quickly if not only because once you have them, you'll do anything to keep them from dying on you, here’s what you should know, limited to what I know on the subject (which still isn't much).