An Effing Foodie

EF's Tomato Obsession Continues Unabated!

Markets crashing!
Lightning flashing!
PETA clamoring for B&J breast-milk ice cream!
Limey felled by hot sauce!

And yet, EF's consumption of 'maters continues unabated.

 
 

L to R, from top left corner: Tagliatelle with melted tomatoes, basil, ricotta, and red pepper flakes; striped heirloom tomatoes, whole and sliced; Caprese salad made with Brandywine tomatoes (PA).

Methinks this is some kind of subliminal coping strategy for the shortening days.

Breast Restaurant EVER: Human Milk Menu in Zurich!

You read right, folks: The Times UK reports that Hans Locher of Zurich, Switzerland, is attempting to open a restaurant that includes human milk in every dish.

Isn't this just the way?  Ya tell a bad joke, and some whackadoo has already thought of it, sans irony.

Where is he harvesting this bounty of Hepatitis Hazard?  Why, from willing young mothers in his village, plus all who answer his sordid classifieds (which is how authorities caught onto him in the first place).  The going rate for unscreened breast milk?  $16 USD per liter.  Cheap bastard.

And of course, Hans doesn't see anything wrong with any of this...like the cuckoo high-fructose corn syrup peeps, he takes the "What? It's all natural!" road:

"I don’t understand all the controversy. The mother’s milk is the most natural thing in the world – how can anyone be against it? It is, after all, the first thing we taste and I see no reason why I should not include it in my menu,” Mr Locher, who trained as a cook in several countries, said.
  --Bojan Pancevski, Times Online

Hanover Tomatoes from Richmond, VA & Poems of the Tomato-Kind

Feeling Fucked Up

Lord she’s gone done left me done packed / up and split
and I with no way to make her
come back and everywhere the world is bare
bright bone white    crystal sand glistens
dope death dead dying and jiving drove
her away made her take her laughter and her smiles
and her softness and her midnight sighs—

Fuck Coltrane and music and clouds drifting in the sky
fuck the sea and trees and the sky and birds
and alligators and all the animals that roam the earth
fuck marx and mao fuck fidel and nkrumah and
democracy and communism fuck smack and pot
and red ripe tomatoes fuck joseph fuck mary fuck
god jesus and all the disciples fuck fanon nixon
and malcolm fuck the revolution fuck freedom fuck
the whole muthafucking thing
all i want now is my woman back
so my soul can sing

    -Etheridge Knight, The Essential Etheridge Knight

Separation Anxiety: Pistahan, East Village, NYC

I'm a gal who likes to keep a few foodie friends around, for to feel a little less like a freak when eating in public--kinda like a tapeworm playdate.

Alas, we're of that age when peeps are wandering away from NYC to seek more affordable living, procreate, fight calamitous crime, etc.  Last year, dear Heathie and her baguette-baking ways left for the West Coast.  Next week, Big-Eyed Curvy Bombshell will start a shinier life in DC, free of the crushing tyranny of NY expenses.

<SOB>  It's the end of an effing era.

Naturally, a sadistic schedule of ritual overeating is underway.  (Hurray!)

We got wind of legendary lechon at Pistahan via Roboppy of Serious Eats; I sent Bombshell a text about pork fat on a Monday, and we were fanning ourselves in the languid heat of the tiny restaurant by Tuesday night.

If you require speedy service or air conditioning, this isn't the place to be.  But if you have patience to spare and a hankering for home-style Filipino food, pull up a seat and ready the Pepcid.

Surprise!  We unconsciously incorporated pork into everything we ate! Of course, there was the keystone lechon:

See how blistered-yet-glossy, burnished and beautiful?  Drool.  Crispy skin and moist, fat-laced meat, with a goodly cushion of, yep, MORE FAT separating the two layers.  The dipping sauce is a vinegar-spiked, sweet, liver-y affair that manages to cleave through the lipid wonderland.  THIS is fatty pork before fatty pork jumped the phucking shark.

Christmas Came Early! Murray's Bourbon and Cheese Pairing Class, West Village, NYC

When I saw "Bourbon and Cheese" on Murray's Cheese Class Schedule, I couldn't click fast enough. 

If my loved ones were forced to stage an intervention on my behalf, it would probably have less to do with sweet, sweet booze, and more to do with stinky, stinky cheese.

As much as I enjoy gnawing and cataloging my way through Murray's Everest o' Queso on my own, nothing lights me up quite like Murray's classes.

Yes, there is booze AND cheese.  But more importantly, most of us aren't born with an intrinsic knowledge of which boozes and cheeses were meant to be together, and Murray's classes have stepped in to reduce the guesswork of pairing.

The fantabu-rrific cheese empath, Nora Singley (formerly of Murray's and currently cooking in Martha Stewart's test kitchens), and overall-clad LeNell Smothers (Brooklyn/'Bama's own bourbon expert and spunky purveyor of spirits), presided over the merry marriage of congealed curd and brown booze with wit, ease, expertise, and bawdy tales.

Stuck on the idea of bourbon and cheese together?  To be fair, it is a matter of taste; if you favor, say, white wine spritzers and mild cheeses, these pairings may be a hard sell.  For me, I tend to heart the rankest of the rank, cheeses that are tough to pair with wines, ports and sherries--so bourbon and scotch pairings seem like the next logical step.