You walk inside and enter the small, cramped antechamber of a bookstore. Three shelves, maybe, all stocked with books, and a small counter. At the counter, someone meets you, then takes you into a dark basement where everything is oak and tin and shadow and where those shadows are cast only by the flickering flame of oil lamps. No electricity. You want to read the menu? Use your cell phone, bring a flashlight, or wait for your eyes to adjust.

Welcome to The Bookstore, a faux-speakeasy in South Bethlehem. The speakeasy’s a relatively new trend, showing up only a year or so ago in places like Seattle, San Francisco, and a-durr, New York. In fact, it is Bethlehem’s relative proximity to New York that perhaps earns it a few trendy spots (the area is home to a lot of NYC commuters). As trends go, this one’s a pretty darn good one.

Why? Thanks to Mad Men and the speakeasy, America is once more falling in love with long-forgotten cocktails. Put that Natty Ice down. Drop the Mike’s Hard Lemonade. Drink what your grandfather drank, goddamnit. Find his spirit in these spirits; let these liquor ghosts teach you about your roots.

That’s a pretty great thing.

Plus, the trend is (so far) one that supports great food and great drink. My bowels tighten in fear of the day when we start seeing some kind of TGI Friday chain version of the speakeasy, some empty scrotum of a restaurant, some pre-fab bullshit that serves something called “Prohibition Poppers” without any sense of irony or understanding. They’ll call it, I dunno, Bobo Capone’s or some bullshit.

Regardless of how you feel about the trend in general, The Bookstore is a fucking great restaurant and bar. Their food menu is fairly tiny — you can go for the small bar menu or take what comes with the four-course prix fixe menu (changes weekly). The cocktail menu is alarmingly robust (and actually pasted inside the pages of an old book). That makes the menu big enough to bludgeon a drunkard should he get grabby.

The Food

The food is some of the best I’ve had. Yes, that means ever. We’re talking top ten taste here.

I had, in order:

Veal Sweetbreads (with Sweet Corn Risotto). Purists will balk at calling something that uses corn instead of rice a risotto, but hey, purists can eat a dick. Good is good, and this was great. Listen, veal sweetbreads — either thymus or pancreas, this being small enough where I think it had to be the thymus — have never possessed a challenging taste for me, but they have offered up a texture notable of organs. You bite into it and it gives you that little bit of resistance you find with, say, mushrooms. Not these. These are the finest example of sweetbreads I’ll probably ever muster: they were so creamy, so delicate, it was crazy.

Butter Poached Lobster (with Grilled Radicchio and Sherry Bacon Vinaigrette). For all my adventuresome spirit when it comes to food, I’ve never had proper lobster. Had it in smaller forms (lobster bisque, lobster stuffing), but never had just a good old-fashioned hunk of lobster. This was only the second course, so it was a small plate, but the lobster (claw meat, maybe?) had a great pop and a corn-like sweetness to it. Reminded me of the best shrimp in both taste and texture. Which makes sense, what with them all being members of the Googly-Eyed Sea Bug family. The radicchio was nice, too. Pickled, I think. Sharp, tangy, a good complement. And, of course, bacon. Bacon bacon bacon. Listen, I know that as a meat, bacon is a little played out. But say what you will, played out or not, it brings a nice salty smoky meaty umami-bite to the whole affair. Well-played, bacon.

Braised Veal Cheeks (over Parperdelle, with Green Peppercorns and Mushrooms). Never had veal cheeks (which, as it sounds, are the cute pinchable fatty cheeks of the baby cow — I know, sad, very sad, but if baby calves didn’t want to be eaten they should not have become so delicious), and I now regret my 34 years without this meal. It had the quality of pork belly: very fatty, very fall-apart, very buttery. It enters your mouth and transubstantiates to some other form of matter, some ethereal mound upon your tongue. So good. Great sauce, great pasta, just, mmm, yow. Total culinary boner.

Blackberry Zabayon (with Almond Brittle). A lot of places that do dinners well don’t necessarily do desserts well. It’s why, on something like Top Chef, these psycho-talented motherfuckers basically pee their chef pants anytime they’re forced to make dessert. Pleased to say this zabayon — here a kind of wine custard — was very good, and the almond brittle in particular was delicate and not at all overpowering.

The Drinks

Had four cocktails.

Starting with –

“Death Under A Tree.” Absinthe. Champagne. Grapefruit bitters. This is an almost gray, corpse-like concoction — almost savory, not sweet, very dry, like Champagne that’s been sitting in the mouth of a dead Hollywood starlet for a couple-few nights. And yet, despite that, you’d think I hated it. Not at all. The absinthe gives that anise-kick; the citrus bitters add complexity. Here’s the weird thing: when drinking it, I was reminded of eating Thai food. Like, maybe a red curry. I assume it’s because you find a lot of anise (or anise-esque basil) in Thai, and then that tiny bit of sour from the grapefruit bitters works on those Thai flavor profiles.

“Penicillin.” Winner-winner-chicken-dinner. Famous Grouse Scotch, lemon juice, honey syrup and muddled ginger, then atop it they float a shot of Laphroaig 10-year. The drink sits around a massive boulder of fresh-chipped ice. (You can watch the bartender going apeshit on the ice with an ice pick, doing it old-school.) Man, I could drink these all day. The ginger-honey-citrus thing is a warm-yet-refreshing balance to the intense “I killed a druid and then burned his body in a peat bog” taste of the Laphroaig. Stuck in the drink is a speared hunk of ginger candy. Serious ginger candy. It bit back when nibbled.

“Honeysuckle.” They came around with a complimentary round of drinks comprising Appleton VX rum, honey syrup and fresh lime juice. It was great, really was — actually kind of refreshing, and not at all cloying. What I don’t get is, contained within was smokiness not unlike what you get with the Laphroaig. I don’t think the rum was smoky, so…? I dunno. A mystery. Speaking of mysteries…

“Mystery Drink.” You have the option to describe a drink and have the bartender make it, trusting in his wisdom to provide you with your heart’s boozy desire. Having tasted my wife’s New Orleans classic, the Ramos Gin Fizz (gin, lemon and lime juice, orange flower water, egg white, sugar, cream, vanilla extract and club soda — basically, tasted like a creamsicle without the orange part), I said, “I want something like that, something desserty.” And they returned with a granita-type drink (a very loose slurry of ice, not a Slushie or anything, and again, hand-chipped) that the waiter could not identify. He only knew it contained creme de cacao. It was lovely. Sweet, but again, not over-sweet. Balanced nicely.

Great Meals Are About Context

We ate out with great friends and had a killer time, and we were also coming off a busy two week-period (inspections, appraisals, paperwork, phone calls) and needed to expunge that shit from our spiritual records. Coupled with the fact that this restaurant has its own kooky Prohibition-era vibe going on, it becomes once again clear how great meals aren’t just about the quality of the food, but rather, the context.

When we first landed in Hawaii, we were starving and went out and found the one place still open and got ourselves some fish-and-chips. On their own, I don’t know that they were particularly special, but I can still point to that meal as one of my favorites ever: first meal in Hawaii, a warm night breeze, the distant sound of water lapping, my lovely wife, and a kind of hazy dizzy holy shit we’ve been traveling for eleven billion hours vibe. It all came together, a perfect collision of context molecules, to form a memorable meal.

Last night’s meal and drink deal was good in part because, yes, it was elegantly crafted.

But it was also good because of the company, the conversation, the build-up, the atmosphere. The most memorable meals are the product of a powerful alchemy, the sum of more than just the taste.

So. You. I wanna hear from you.

Best meals. Meals with context.

What was the meal?

What was the context?

C’mon. Share. Don’t make me get out the shockprod.

(And maybe our dinner companions will share their thoughts on The Bookstore, too.)

Today is an American day.

And while many of you might be nursing a beer all day, me, I wanna drink some goddamn cocktails. Why? Well, because the cocktail is an American convention. Sure, someone else probably invented the mixed drink, but the term “cocktail,” and the popularity of said cocktails, are all distinctly American.

One of my favorite Tumblr blogs these days is American Drink, and their first post (found right here: “Welcome to American Drink“) gives a good intro to the subject.

I know a while back we talked about Scotch whisky and what-not, but today, hell with all that. Let’s go America. Let’s get drunk and talk about some cocktails.

For instance: I made my first Tom Collins last night, except I gave the finger to superfine sugar and kicked the simple syrup to the curb and instead went with a little agave syrup.

Man, that’s a tasty summer drink.

So.

You.

Me.

Let’s talk cocktails.

What’s your favorite? Least favorite?

What makes your mouth water?

What makes your butthole pucker?

Is the power of the cocktail in part about context? About where you were? And when? And whether you were drinking with people or drinking (*snif*) alone?

Oh, and for not-so-well-known drinks, we need recipes, galldurnit.

Yesterday was all, “Rage! Fury! Tarballs! Tarballs!”

Today is all, “Mmm. Recipes.”

First a question. Then, a recipe.

See, it’s Saturday. And Saturdays are notoriously slow around these parts, so that makes them good days to punt the ball into your predefined playsphere. Meaning, I ask you something. And you answer me, because you love me. Because you’re a gaggle of sycophants. Oh, not because it’s in your nature. It’s because I’ve drugged your Internet connection. Your routers and modems now emit a calming mist. And by “calming mist,” I mean to say, “Rufie fog.” It’s nice, isn’t it? You can just sit there. Eyes droopy. Half-lidded. And I can tell you, “You love the Wendigo. You love the bearded Wendigo,” and you’re all like, “Muhguhnuhbrubduhbluh. Luh. Luh thuh Wehdeeguh. Beard. Beeaaaard. Buh.”

Good times.

So, today’s question, which is really more of a command statement:

Give me a recipe.

I need some new recipes. I have too many cookbooks and about a billion back issues of cooking magazines, and it’s getting hard to filter all that stuff out. I’d rather have targeted recipes from people I trust. Or, at least, people I happen to have Rufied into compliance.

So, get your little buttocks down there to comment lab, and cook up some food experiments for Daddy. I’ll take any recipe you care to share. And, in the meantime, feel free to bop on over to Miss Summerell’s food blog, “You’d Better Eat This.” It’s good stuff.

And now, a recipe. A little quid pro quo, Clarice.

Thai “Pesto,” Motherfuckers

I made this ass-slapping Thai pesto the other night. Er, “pesto,” I guess, because — y’know, I’m breaking rules with this dish. I had basil, and I was planning on making pesto, but then I was all like, “Damn, I really love the Thai flavors. The Bangkok deliciousness. I’m going to make some shit up.”

And make some shit up, I did.

So, get yourself a food processor. A good one. Don’t dick around with a lame food processor.

Don’t cut open your body with the blades. Those fackers are sharp.

Into the food processor, you’re going to put these things:

1 cup of basil leaves, fresh (Thai basil if you have it; I did not)

3/4 cup of ginger-glazed almonds (from Alton Brown)

4 cloves of garlic

1 TBsp ground ginger (or fresh, but I didn’t have fresh, so shut up)

A splash (unmeasured, but I’d say it’s about 1/2 TBsp) of Sriracha

A dash of salt

A squirt of honey (again, unmeasured, but probably 1/2 – 1 TBsp)

1 TBsp of almond butter (or peanut butter if you don’t have that)

The juice from two limes

[EDIT: 1 TBsp fish sauce]

Then, blend it.

While it’s choppity-chopping, time to pour in the oil. I went with:

3/4 cup dark or toasted sesame oil

Though you could probably go with some peanut oil, instead. Or walnut oil. Or tarballs from the Gulf Coast. See how I bring it back around? Somebody should be paying me for this.

And that’s it. That’s that. Thai Pesto, er, “Pesto,” motherfuckers. What do you do with this? Besides eat it with a spoon? (Okay, maybe not that.) I put it on chicken thighs (deboned), but y’know what I was thinking? Pizza. Damn yeah, pizza. See, in case you missed my Easy Bullshit Made-up Delicious Pizza recipe, you get yourself some good store-bought Garlic Naan (I buy Archer Farms brand from Target), and then put the oven to 400-425, then heap shit on that naan just like it’s pizza dough, baby. Sauce, cheese, pepperoni, fishbones, the still-flapping tongues of your enemies, whatever. I figure with this stuff, your sauce could be the Thai Pesto (er, “Pesto”). And then, y’know, whatever else on top. Maybe no cheese. Because all Asians fear cheese. /falsestereotype

*pant, pant, pant*

I’m still tired from eating.

I mean, Sweet Jiminy Christ. Sixteen courses of food? Mind you — we’re talking tiny courses. Tapas courses. Even still. It’s damn near a four-hour process, this thing.

In case you missed it, the wife and I, plus two good friends of ours, went out to Honey Restaurant in Doylestown and partook in their so-called “Surrender Menu,” called so because on the one hand you surrender to the chef’s wishes (omakase!), and on the other hand you may at some point decide to “tap out” before the end of the meal and throw up the white flag.

Very cute place. Some booths have curtains on them so that you’re encased in something that feels like, I dunno, a caravan across the desert. We, however, were not in such a gauzily-cloaked booth.

Anyway. First thing’s first: you choose nothing in that tasting menu. Some tasting menus, you get a little choice: “Would you rather the lamb, or a punch to the nuts?”

Here, not so much. Our only choice was in our cocktails. Which are themselves inventive (for instance, the Alma Calma: Maker’s Mark, ginger brandy, elderflower essence, and fresh lime juice). (And for the record, I’m pretty sure they just made up “elderflower.” I’ve read the Monster Manual. You can’t juke me. It’s there on the encounter tables.)

So, the dishes as they came out are as follows (they gave us a list after we had finished):

Truffled Spring Onion Bisque

(black garlic and gruyere crouton, chive blossom)

Verdict: That crouton is the best crouton you’ll ever think of eating. Also: chive blossoms are good, but strong. A horse kick to your tongue testicles. Good stuff. A strong start both in quality and intensity of taste.

Grilled Cheese w/Tomato

(petit grilled meadow creek Grayson cheese, peppered tomato marmalade, red mustard sprouts)

Verdict: Too small. Not a comment on their food, but a comment on the quality. It could be the size of a basketball, and still be too small. That marmalade was great. The sprouts: pretty, but lost in the dish, but so what?

Beef Tartare

(minced raw American Wagyu beef, quail yolk, smoked sea salt potato chips, truffled Parmesan cream, micro bull’s blood)

Verdict: One of the best dishes of the night. Raw beef, if done right, is sublime. This was buttery and salty and fired on all cylinders.

Oyster Po’Boys

(cornmeal-crused Kumamoto oysters on toasted baguette with baby tomato, pickled shallots, arugula sprouts and saffron-chile aioli)

Verdict: Oysters comprise one of those things I’d never eaten before. Very good, and I’d try oysters again, though one of our companions was not a seafood fan and found the taste a bit funky. I can dig that; the oyster leaves you with a very briny finish, a lingering sea-soaked taste. But dang, that baby tomato. Mmm. Slowly but surely I get over my tomato rage. (Though, you know, after thinking about it, I wonder if some of the aftertaste is complicated by the arugula. Arugula is spicy and… well, an almost gamy-tasting green. It has to be notes of like, lamb or goat cheese whenever I eat it.)

Shellfish-Stuffed Squash Blossom

(Maine lobster, rock shrimp, Maryland crab, chilled curry-cauliflower bisque, cucumber-jalapeno relish)

Verdict: Never had lobster straight-up. Had a lobster bisque. This was good, but not my favorite of the night. The three shellfishies shoveled together make for a somewhat blurry taste experience (or, if you prefer, tastestravaganza). The sauce was very good though. Overall, maybe my least favorite, though that’s like saying, “I prefer a million dollars to a hundred dollars.” It’s all still money, yo.

Rock Shrimp “Cocktail”

(creamy rock shrimp tempura with sour apple, peanuts, avocado salsa, wasabi caviar)

Verdict: This is going to sound fucked up, but c’mon, look whose blog you’re reading. You know what this reminded me of? Seafood pop rocks. It’s like — shrimp! Wasabi! Sour apple! Crunchy peanuts! Pow pow pow! Mouthsplosion! Taste bud detonation! Oh my stars, isn’t this what killed Mikey the Life Cereal kid? Oh noes! Ahem. Delicious. Really stupidly delicious.

Yellowfin Tuna Ceviche

(ruby grapefruit, breakfast radish, red shiso, grilled green tea noodles)

Verdict: Not exactly how I expect my ceviche (not in a glass but on a long plate over a brick of noodles), but who gives a rat’s right nut? A tasty, straight-up dish. It’s funny how much I love raw tuna, and how little I enjoy cooked tuna. Soon as you put flame to it, it tastes like, well, tuna. But before the fire, you get the crisp taste of the ocean, of the water, of the salt and all that. Raw cold fish has the same properties as cucumber. Very refreshing dish. The tea noodles were cool, too.  I’ve no idea what a “breakfast radish” is. I think they’re just making it up to fuck with me. Huzzah, solipsistic worldview!

Sesame-Crusted Soft Shell Crab

(chilled buckwheat noodles, Mousseron mushrooms, cashews, chile-spiked Ponzu, white miso emulsion)

Verdict: Another winner winner chicken (of the sea) dinner. Also another food I’ve never eaten: soft-shell crab. I was always a bit alarmed: “I’m supposed to just eat the… whole thing? Like? All the crunchy bits? Won’t those crunchy bits perforate my trachea?” But no. It’s almost like crispy chicken skin. Consider me a fan. This also had notes of carnival food, and I mean that in a good way — deed-fried comfort is what I’m saying.

Hot Stone Beef and Rice

(Painted Hills Farm strip steak sashimi, English peas, royal trumpets, fried duck egg, micro bok choy)

Verdict: A take on the Korean Bi Bim Bop. Not much to say here except: woo! Tasty. Mix it all together, eat with happy face.

Whiskey-Braised Lamb Collar

(creamy lemon grits, mint julep sauce, fried shallots, lamb collar)

Verdict: Best lamb dish I’ve ever eaten. Lamb always has that slightly-challenging “off” taste — and this had that, but in a buttery, warm, satisfying way. The lamb collar, as I understand it, comes from around the head. Not a common cut, but this was braised low and slow in whiskey. Just like me. Just like me. Seriously, though, off-the-charts good.

Buffalo Sweetbreads

(fried veal sweetbreads, honey-chipotle BBQ sauce, Rogue River blue cheese, celery salad)

Verdict: The sweetbreads were good. Solid. I’ve had them once before, and the taste is in no way challenging, though the texture is different than straight-up meat. This was breaded and fried in a way that, frankly, made it resemble a hunk of General Tso’s chicken. Good, though not off-the-charts.

Crispy Porcelet

(housemade suckling pig “scrapple,” fried quail eggs, picked veggie slaw, kimchi mayo)

Verdict: I just came in my pants. Again. I think about this dish and — oh! There it is again. Shellacked undies. If I keep thinking about it — oh! oh. Dang. Yep. Shooting blanks, now. Just dust. Ahem. Listen, this is the best thing I ate all night. I am fucking batshit for this dish. Suckling pig? Suckling pig! “Scrapple” is of course a misnomer and might put people off, but it’s really pulled suckling pig pork lumped together and fried. Fatty, salty, satisfying on so many levels. I want this. I want this all the time. In my mouth. In my pants. Shut up.

Pan-Roasted Diver Scallops

(lo mein noodles, green onions, sweet-and-sour cucumber, Chinese wild boar bolognese)

Verdict: Good, but believe it or not, the scallops were a hair overdone. Scallops are so sensitive to cooking, and I suspect that these were cooked right but then, when placed on top of hot food, maybe cooked further through? I dunno. Good. Solid. And the wild boar sauce was killer.

Cucumber-Basil Sorbet

(with extra-virgin olive oil and mint)

Verdict: A nice palate cleanser. Strong-tasting, but for me, in the best way.

American Artisan Cheese Plate

(port-fig jam, honey roasted walnuts, Bosc pear, Buckingham Valley honey — cheese was gouda, Roquefort, goat’s cheese)

Verdict: The Roquefort was a slap in the mouth. A good — nay, great — slap in the mouth, but still. A very stinky cheese. Like, underarm, under-nuts, underfoot. And yet, still awesome. A really sublime cheese. The goat cheese was made less goaty by the fig jam, and oddly, for me the most challenging cheese was the gouda. I’m a big big big gouda fan, and this was actually a little strong. Not sure why. Still tasty, though.

Booze-For-Dessert

(Jameson Whiskey bread pudding, sour cherries, Guinness ice cream, Bailey’s Irish cream glaze)

Verdict: I mean, come on. You name something “booze for dessert,” and I’m there. No messing around. Guinness ice cream is also the best idea for ice cream ever.

Callebaut Chocolate Bread Cake

(marcona almond puree, red wine-raspberry ice cream, warm chocolate caramel sauce, almond praline)

Verdict: Very good, but a little overmuch in the dessert department. Chocolate cake was good, though a hair dry — but mixed with the praline and the ice cream and the sauce in one bite, really ooh-la-la good.

It’s Mother’s Day.

So, first things first, to you Moms out there, have a happy!

To everybody else: oh, quit your mewling. Motherfucker’s Day isn’t until July. Then we can all celebrate together.

Anyway, I think about mothers, I think about breakfast. There exists a perfect thread betwixt the two, a thread of comfort, a thread of “get your ass going in the morning,” a thread of nourishment. Then again, everything makes me think about breakfast. “Manhole cover? Pancake. Burn victim? French toast. And bacon! Hand lotion? Danish. Or cinnamon bun. OH GOD I SO HUNGRY.”

The other day, we talked about oatmeal, but this proves that the wider topic of “breakfast” still has juice in it. (orangejuice)

So. To hell with it.

Let’s kick down the walls.

Let’s open this up a bit.

Let us speak of breakfast.

What’s your favorite breakfast to eat? Favorite to make? (Recipes, if you please.) Hell, go wild. Favorite breakfast meat? Favorite breakfast juice? Favorite thing for breakfast that clearly isn’t breakfast (leftover Chinese food)? Anything associated with breakfast deserves a comment, by golly. Because breakfast is the King of Meals. It’s everything Baby Jesus and his sidekick Li’l Buddha meant for this world.

So. Get crackin’, comment-monkeys. Bonus points if it has something to do with your mother. (Mine used to make me Ramen noodles before breakfast every day before junior high school. To this day it’s hard not to associate Ramen noodles with a deep sense of warm morning comfort.)

After yesterday’s heated topic, I figured I should take on something light, something airy and wonderful, which is why I decided to blog about gun control.

Hold for laughter.

I have weird ideas about gun control, and now gun control is this thing trapped in the amber of irony what with the fact that we let potential terrorists buy guns, and popular wisdom says, “Maybe we shouldn’t do that,” but then you have the GOP NRA-types who normally give a high priority to national security and keeping foreign terrorists from blowing things up until you say, “Well, maybe those guys shouldn’t buy guns,” and then the NRA tightens its butthole and starts imagining a slippery slope where suddenly you take guns out of terrorists hands and suddenly the monolithic Big Government is stealing guns from hunters and domestic abusers and babies and gang thugs (you know, those whose gun ownership rights are supported by the Second Amendment), and all of that is fascinating to me (as I am, indeed, a gun owner), so…

What I’m saying is, we should probably talk about oatmeal, instead.

The slogan for oatmeal in America should be:

Oatmeal: Fuck Yeah!

And every time you open a container of oatmeal, that container should let out a rock scream and a guitar chord with drum solo. And white doves should fly out. And then catch fire.

I used to distrust oatmeal. I mean, as a kid I didn’t eat healthy breakfasts all the time. Egg sandwiches are good, and I ate a lot of those, but before school every morning I ate a bowl of Ramen noodles. Not a wise choice, and my mother probably should’ve slapped the fork out of my hand, but hindsight is 20-20.

Oatmeal for me was this bland gluey library paste: a glop of flavorless mush that looked no different from a dissected hunk of scrapple. I mean, texturally, stuff was a challenge for me as a kid. Not sure why that was, but anything with a funky texture did me in. Mushrooms, for instance, were like eating little human ears. Chew, chew, chew, rubber, rubber, cartilage, chew, bleagh. Of course, now I love mushrooms. In fact, nearly all the things I hated as a kid I’m into now, and I wish I could’ve gotten into them sooner.

Texture’s funny for people. You look at someone like Andrew Zimmern of the ever-awesome Bizarre Foods show (Travel Channel), and you see a guy who will eat like, fermented duck fetus still in the shell or a fistful of dung beetles, but he blanches if you put Spam in front of him. Or Jell-o. Anything with that gelatinous texture gives that crazy dude the vapors.

Anyway.

Within the last year or so, I’ve slapped on my hip waders and have stepped deep into a love of the goopy slurry known as oatmeal.

I bounce between the baby-food texture of rolled oats and the awesome pop-betwixt-your-teeth texture of steel-cut. I’ve never tried the… what are the uncut oats called? Groats? Right? Goddamn that’s a horrible name for anything, unless that anything is, say, a cave-dwelling troglodyte. You got an ogre or a troll, you call it a groat. You got food, I guess you cut the “gr-” off it and call it an “-oat.”

I mean, groat. Damn. It sounds like a crotch tumor. “I got a bad groat forming. Feels like a sock full of Superballs coming together. Don’t have health care, so I’m-a burn it off with a propane torch.”

Actually, I remember at Friendly’s they had a fish dinner called a “scrod,” and sometimes they had a “scrod boat platter.” Scrod? For real? Scrod? And people ate that? Folks, branding matters. Scrod and Groat could be a pair of troglodyte detectives. One’s an Ogre. The other a Troll! They solve crime. The Scrod and Groat Show. Eventually Groat could yell, “KNEEL BEFORE SCROD!” Scrod is just a whitefish. So call it that.

Eeesh.

I dunno. We were talking about oatmeal (not, thankfully groatmeal).

What I’m saying is, oatmeal. Fuck yeah.

The thing I learned about oatmeal is that it’s like the foundation to a delicious house. I’m sure some people eat oatmeal straight-up. My mother eats it with salt and… I think that’s it. Me, though, I see oatmeal as the canvas. And pretty much every damn ingredient in my house serve as the paints.

Every morning, I can do a different oatmeal breakfast. It’s like a nutrient-delivery-system. I wondered how I could easily get more fruit in my diet? Wham! Oatmeal, fuckers! (Which is different than oatmeal-fuckers.) Maybe berries? Or a little grated apple or pear? Craisins or raisins? Boom. Do I need some extra sweetening? A bit of honey, maybe? Or real maple syrup (never that fake-ass shit)? A spoonful of jam? A dab of brown sugar and cinnamon? What about the dairy? Yes to dairy? A little milk? Heavy cream? Butter? Or rather, almond milk, soy milk, coconut milk? Howzabout some texture? Granola? Crushed nuts? (Heh, nuts.) (Shut up.) Heck, you can cook steel-cut oats then toast a spoonful of oats after, and put the uncooked oats atop the cooked oats for a goddamn crunchgasm betwixt your teefuses.

It’s like, I just bought some ginger jam the other day.

Does that have room in my oatmeal?

Or, I look at Indian-style rice pudding, with the fragrant cardamom and what-not — what if I let cardamom and coconut milk make sweet love in my oatmeal? I bet that’d be delicious.

Your turn.

Tell me of your oatmeal exploits.

What do you put in your oatmeal? Hell, let’s all think outside the oatmeal box. What haven’t you tried that might be good? Get creative. Let’s go nuts. Let’s all take off our pants and run around. Eeeee!

*looks around*

*drags over his soapbox*

Ahem.

*taps the mic*

Is this thing on? I’m here all week. Try the swordfish. Don’t forget to tip your waitstaff.

Today marks the start of farmers’ market season.

Which means, it’s time to get a little preachy and pretentious. Hey, at least I know it. And you’re going to suffer through it. Because you love me. And because if you avert your gaze from this blog, that metal collar around your neck will start beeping faster and faster. You have 30 seconds to continue reading. If you fail to reorient your eyes to to my blog post, well, let’s just say that collar is loaded with enough C4 to turn a city bus into an inhalable substance. Mm-hmm. That’s right. Swing those eyes right back over here, pardner. There you go.

I appreciate your loyalty.

Now, let’s talk about food.

The first day of farmers’ market season for me feels like the first day the amusement park opens. This is the ritual: wife and I go. We buy vegetables not from pretentious local buyers, but from people who look like farmers. We pay a lot less than we do at the grocery store, and we buy vegetables that come from a place within ten miles of where we are standing. Then we buy other stuff as we need it: jams from local folk, honey from the local apiary, meats from the local butcher, and so on and so forth. And then we have breakfast. We buy pastries. Or, if he’s there, we say, “Fuck it,” and we buy a sausage sandwich with peppers and onions from the sausage sandwich guy. And then we go and sit on one of the nearby picnic tables and watch the market and read the awesome profanity kids have scrawled into the table’s wood.

This first farmers’ market thereby begins the first day of the Fresh Table Experiment, Round Two.

In case you missed last year’s explanation, I’ll go over it again. The experiment was this: I say “go suck a dick” to the grocery chains and I shop semi-exclusively at local food institutions. Farmers’ markets, yes. Local farms, yes. Local butchers, ayup. Local bakers, sho’ nuff. Now, this has its limits. Some things I can’t buy locally. Honey, yes. Soy sauce, no. Some things I could probably make (chili-garlic sauce), but hell with that, I want my Sriracha. So, those kinds of things I get at chain places because I don’t have much choice.

That means I end up at the grocery store or Target buying food maybe once a month.

The rest is pure locavore behavior.

This isn’t about eating organically, really — “organic” as a term no longer means much thanks  to the lobbyists of Big Food.

It’s about eating food. And it’s about supporting the local economy.

When I say, “It’s about eating food,” what I mean is, a lot of the garbage we funnel into our greasy mouths isn’t food, per se. It’s close to food. It’s food-plus. It’s food science. It starts with a food product and then ladles atop it a world of fake flavoring, a swamp of corn-based products, a smattering of sweetness, a heap of preservatives. Now, I’m no “back to nature” type — I love the conveniences of modern life. I’m also not anti-science. And, in fact, science says that eating all this shit is pretty fucking awful for your body.

Sure, High Fructose Corn Syrup is just sugar, right? It’s all good.

Except, maybe, just maybe, because America subsidizes the unholy hell out of corn, that’s what the Big Food Lobby wants you to believe.

Maybe, just maybe, other countries say, “Hey, this shit actually hurts our kids.”

Maybe some say, “Hey, this shit causes non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.”

Could even be that HFCS has the potential to damage the metabolic process and some might conclude, “Wow, this is probably part of the reason we’re all fat and dying from the diabeedus.”

HFCS isn’t the only problem. We’re not just addicted to oil in this country. We’re addicted to fucking corn. (Er, we’re not addicted to having sex with corn. I mean, I guess metaphorically? CORN SEX SO HOT)

Or, hell, look at the ingredient list on any processed foods. Like, say, Cool Whip. Newsflash: you can make your own whipped cream super holy shit easy. You do not need to ingest things that are unpronounceable and flammable. (And you don’t need to ingest sexual lubricants, either, like Polysorbate 60! “More Astroglide with your dessert, sir? Ma’am?”)

To me, the logic behind not eating processed foods is easy: food is good, but food that is made to do things food’s not supposed to do is less than good. The more you put between food and your body, the harder is is for your body to actually process the things it needs to process. Your body is made to eat, digest, process and utilize food. It is not made to eat, digest, process and utilize food science.

You eat at a farmers’ market, you significantly increase the actual food you put into your body.

You eat at the grocery store, you make it a lot harder to do that.

At the farmers’ market, you have no intermediary, no third party. You have that farmer guy. You talk to him. You say, “What the hell is this?” And he says, “I grew it this morning.”

You go to the grocery store, you suffer a lot of separation from you and the food. Shipping. Packing. The store itself. The food conglomerate that produced that food. The food conglomerate that made the science behind that food. Who are you going to ask? You going to ask a question of that mopey, slack-jawed, mule-kicked lackwit who’s forever mopping up the spill from a broken pickle jar? You think he knows jack shit about what’s in those taco shells you just bought? The grocery store is just renting shelf space. They don’t give a rat’s right foot what you put in your body.

Plus, supporting your local economy is a good thing.

I’d much rather give five bucks to a guy who lives down the street or two towns over than some fat-cat food executive playing golf in his lunar colony. Fuck that dick.

In terms of food, I spend less money on farmers’ market expenditures than I do on grocery trips. So, I save money. And, all last summer I felt a helluva lot better. Farmers’ market eating coupled with daily walks lost me about 15 pounds (weight I have almost entirely put back on over the winter despite having a new gym membership that, yes, does get used).

Lighter belly, heavier wallet? Sounds like a check mark in the “win” column.

So, here’s the deal.

Last year, I did this.

This year, I want you to try it.

Even if you don’t go whole hog (pun not intended until now), try it out.

Give the middle finger to your local grocery beast.

Shake hands with a farmer, and buy what the guy is offering, and put that food into your body.

Accept the challenge of seasonal food. Enjoy local-grown meats and veggies and fruits. You want a pie, buy one from a guy who just made it an hour ago. Just try it. See if you feel better.

No moral mandate or anything — unless you have kids, at which point I’d say, have you looked at the stuff you’re putting into your kid’s body? I’m just putting that out there. When you put another life into it, the moral obligation narrows a little, doesn’t it?

I’m gonna be over here doing it. And the other great thing about farmers’ market eating is that I learn a lot of new recipes by necessity — you buy what’s there, you suddenly have to figure out what to do with it. I’ll post the results as I find them. Maybe you’ll care to do the same?

Oh.

One other mandate.

(You thought you could walk away, didn’t you? Didn’t you hear the collar beeping? Get back here.)

Try new food.

Seriously. We finally found a Vietnamese place in the Lehigh Valley (Little Saigon in Allentown), and there I had the “Pho Deluxe,” a noodle soup with a ton of beef cuts I didn’t recognize (tendon, navel, and something called “omosa”). Well, omosa is tripe. And tripe is intestine. Cow guts.

White, fringy cow guts, cut to look like the noodles in the soup.

Hot damn! Delicious. I once said I’d never really be willing to stomach tripe (pun not intended until now). Never thought I’d try it except, there it was, and I didn’t know what it was, and I put it into my mouth, and it was fantastic. As Bourdain puts it, a “textural Disneyland.” Not chewy, but pleasantly firm, and carrying a subtle beef flavor. Very nicely done, Little Saigon.

See, I’d rather eat fresh cow guts than whipped cream made from sex lube.

I’m just saying.

So, join me in this weird experiment? See how you feel after a couple months.

A couple resources to get you going:

Local Harvest is a really good way to find local markets, butchers, farms, CSAs, etc.

In fact, this whole list from Michael Pollan (whose books you should read) is a nicely comprehensive list to get you going.

Check it out. Try it out.

Join me.

Don’t make the collar go boom.

*steps off his soapbox*

*heads to the Saucon Valley Farmers’ Market*

Last night, ended up at some rooftop bar in the Saucon Valley, a kind of hoity-toity mall area around these parts, and next thing I know I’m sitting at a stone bar that glows and someone asks me what I want and I point at a Laphroaig 10-year, and say, “Baby want that.” I ordered it in a glass, neat, and the bartender asked me “straight up?” which — and I am not a certifiable boozehound — sounded right to me. And it was. Scotch in a belled glass, good to swirl, good to sniff.

Also: revelatory.

A while back, The Mighty Hindmarch wrote a Post About Scotch which I may have pointed you to. It is an excellent post, and for me raised the question of, “What is peaty?” I didn’t understand at the time, having never tasted Scotch whisky it in a way that was particularly meaningful to me. I kind of half-assumed that peaty didn’t mean a goddamn thing besides “earthy,” because, let’s be frank: alcohol connoisseurs get a little uppity with the descriptors. I’m not saying you can’t taste complex flavors in a glass of wine or a mouth full of whisky. You can. Peach, cherry, woodsmoke, oak, whatever. But let’s not get crazy. You listen to some people, it’s like, “In this Pinot Noir I taste road tar and asbestos siding. It has the mouthfeel of a weeping clown. I sense the freedom of youth. In my mouth is the sensation of books burning, and it calls to mind the hazy recollections of grass clippings and stardust.” And I’m like, “Fuck off, I taste great whisky.”

Back to this Laphroaig 10-year.

I swirled it. Whisky had mad legs.

Took a drink.

Did I say “revelatory?”

Let me also say, “holy shit, peaty.”

I get it. Good God Damn, I get it. I tasted fire and, and, swamp mulch, and a spreading warmth, and amber goodness. Can something be equal parts intense and mellow? Do I sound like I’m slinging bullshit? I sling no bullshit. It was both those things, holding hands, skipping rope, and sacrificing druids over a peat fire.

It was enough to make me forget — for the duration of the glass, at least — that the bar sucked. Bunch of hollow-eyed yuppie fuckheads while a DJ played some weak-ass Beyonce remixes uber-loud — and yet, no dance floor, so you can’t dance, but you can’t talk, so all you can do is look around the room at all the vapid douche-swabs. Sure, we could’ve actually gone all the way outside except — oh! All the tables were reserved, and yet nobody sat at them. I digress.

We went downstairs to the first floor bar.

Quieter.

There I had a Knob Creek bourbon (I ordered this “straight up,” and the waitress said, “Chilled and in a martini glass?” And I said, “neat,” instead. I almost suggested she engage in Thunderdome bloodsport with the upstairs bartender so that they may come to an accord over their drink definitions.)

The Knob Creek was fine and all, really, but after that Laphroaig, it was like drinking a fist full of brined razor blades. Oaky and fierce and punching the inside of my nose.

My mind went back to the Laphroaig.

I love wine and I love coffee and I love cheese because you get that terroir thing — that sense of place, that mingling of culture and ecology and weather and earth that comes together in a single product. It’s a thing we lose any time we microwave processed Mac And Cheese, really. Hell, we don’t just lose it, we piss in its eyes. I read an article recently where an Icelandic farmer boasted that he could drink a glass of Icelandic milk and tell you what meadow in which the cows pasture. Probably hyperbole, but I bet he can get close. Food in this way is like an accent; married to region, tied to the people, anchored to the land.

Anyway. What was I saying?

Right. Whisky.

I think I love whisky for this quality, too. I haven’t really engaged with it, though — wine, coffee and cheese is already full of pretension and sometimes heavy on the wallet.

Still. Whisky. Whisky!

Baby want. Baby want.

So, let’s say I’m in the market for a bottle of single malt Scotch whisky. I’m not angry at bourbon; it’s just not what I want right now. I want a good, righteous bottle. Price is always an issue, but let’s not make it a huge issue. Let’s play around and say I can afford something up to a hundred bucks.

Recommend to me.

Peaty. Floral. Well-rounded. Anything.

What do you drink? When do you drink it? Why do you drink it?

And, while you’re at it, you can talk to me about booze well-beyond the single-malts. You drink bourbon? Whattya drink? Wine? Got a favorite cocktail? Share and share alike. Let us all marinate in our love of the grain, the grape, the potato, the berry, the cactus, and so on.

Let us all be alcoholic chickens together:

Heard of it?

“Rooster Sauce.”

Occasionally called “Cock Sauce.”

*pause for laughter*

Hot pepper paste. Vinegar. Garlic.

Red bottle. Green cap.

Good on anything.

Utter deliciousness.

Fiery diarrhea.

***

First time I had Sriracha — note that this post talks largely about the brand, the brand made (perhaps unexpectedly) by an American company — was in Los Angeles.

Went out for Vietnamese food between meetings. Had some kind of “wrap-your-own” concoction with thin rice paper and various meats and vegetables, and I lumped it together so clumsily it looked like I was eating a diaper. A squirrel’s diaper, maybe, but a diaper. I saw Sriracha on the table, and I thought, I wonder if there’s anything special about this? Heck, I’d had chili-garlic sauce before. Had a bottle in the fridge at home. Was generally tangy; a little sweet to go with the spicy. So, I squirted a liberal helping of Sriracha into my Vietnamese squirrel diaper — pbbt — and chowed down.

Fireworks.

Pain.

Taste.

A paroxysm of delight.

An orgasm of mouth anger.

I about wept. In joy and misery. I was like Saul on the Damascene Road, a blast of god-chosen chili sauce right to my taste buds, so hot and tasty it burned the scales from my tongue. I didn’t use a little bit of this stuff. I used like, a generous couple tablespoons. A baby’s fist-sized dollop of the stuff. I am now Paul.

I did not have fiery diarrhea that night. I had appeased the gods, it seemed.

This would not always be true.

***

A battle rages.

Zhu Rong, god of fire, leaps onto your tongue riding a tiger whose orange stripes are licking flames.

He prances. He pounces. He thrusts his spear into the meat of your tongue, with the speed of a sewing machine needle — thip thip thip thip. Stab stab stab.

Then he and his flame-tiger make for the esophagus. Then for the stomach.

Down there, Zhu Rong meets Gong Gong.

Gong Gong is his son. Gong Gong is a demon. A water demon. Fire and water, clashing together. Demon jaws clamping down on the armor of the fire god. Tiger roaring. Gong Gong answering. Spear thrusting. Acids brewing. Gastrointestinal tides rising as jets of flame dance this way, then that.

Sometimes, Zhu Rong wins. When this is true, fire lances into the throat — scorch marks and tiger tracks, heartburn in the esophageal meats.

Sometimes, Gong Gong wins and in anger smashes his head against the pillars of heaven, loosing a mighty flood into the bowels, rushing toward the river’s mouth, the waters boiling: fiery diarrhea.

***

I went home straightaway from Los Angeles and bought Sriracha. The branded stuff. Not tangy. Not sweet. Just hot, garlic fire.

But not so hot that it fails to have a flavor. Those monkey-headed garbage-eaters, those cocky balless scrotums, those beefy dudes with wee willy winkies, they always love to get together and pour the hottest “nuclear” death sauce into their mouths like it’s a mark of manhood or some shit. “Ghost chili! Insanity! Nuclear! Death! Skull! Eat it!” and then they ejaculate it into their mouths and they weep and blubber and their eyes foam and they drool and their faces go redder than the chilis used to make the sauce in the first damn place, and nobody sits around thinking, “Look at those manly men.” They think, “Look at those weeping girls with their frothy eyes and swollen lips.”

Sriracha is not for the men with tiny peeners.

It is for people who like heat, but also like taste.

***

At first, I figured, well, it’s an Asian sauce. Pan-Asian. Made by an American company owned by a Chinese-Vietnamese man and made to ape a Thai sauce.

I thus used it in Asian dishes.

And then one day, I thought, fuck it, I’m going to squirt a little of this red magic straight onto a hot dog.

Once more, the scales were ripped from my tongue.

I can put this shit on anything!

I just ate an egg sandwich ten minutes ago — ketchup, yes, but also, a splash of Sriracha, baby.

Hamburgers? Sure. Wing sauce? Why the fuck not? Mix it with sugar to make it tangier? Mix it with ketchup or barbecue sauce to glaze meat? A little dab on some steamed vegetables?

Yes. Yes! Yes.

I’d eat my fucking baseball hat if it were covered in Sriracha.

If you were the brilliant David Hill, you might even concoct a Thai Buffalo Chicken Pizza.

Starring, of course, Sriracha.

***

Except, to remind –

Fiery diarrhea.

***

Ah, but you can ameliorate that. You can mitigate the churning bowel-waters of Gong Gong’s rage.

Here’s how.

Sometime in the hour before you are going to eat said Sriracha, you will take a pair of Antacids. You could also, were you worried about heartburn, take a heartburn pill. Me, I’m on those anyway. “Proton pump inhibitors,” which sounds like something from the motherfucking future. Because, y’know, protons.

Then, drink a whole glass of water. Two if you can manage.

That’s when it’s time to eat the Sriracha.

You want to cut down on stomach acid but also give the Sriracha room to explode — basically, you’re tossing a helmet or throwing a body on the grenade before it goes off. You must dampen the detonation.

You do that, you will stop the fiery diarrhea from destroying your soul. Or, at least, your anus. Because, man, I know, too much information, but that shit will tear you up. It’s like running a pair of underwear through a lawnmower — the elastic is going to get fucking ruined. It’s like attacking a rubber band with a pair of scissors. It’s like holding a lit Zippo under a ring of calamari. It’s no good. It’s not just the diarrhea that gets you. I mean, it’s what happens to your rosebud. Imagine if you opened a cage and let loose a pack of starving wolverines. And then you hosed the wolverines in gasoline and set them on fire. And then you gave them only one route of escape: your butthole. That’s what we’re talking about. A berserker clot of burning wolverines trying to free themselves via your anus.

***

Now, I ask:

What do you do with Sriracha?

On what dishes does it go?

PHOTO CREDIT:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/teamperks/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Ahh, sweet ambition. Foolish naivete. You taste of buttercream and tears.

Clearly that didn’t happen. I’ve made three recipes in three months, which is a bit under what I promised.

So, fuck that. Forget the schedule.

But I will continue to work my way through this book. For the rest of my insane life.

This time? I made Paprika Chicken With Sour Cream Gravy.

Recipe, in a nutshell, is as follows:

Ingredients

• 1 to 3 lb frying or stewer chicken, cut up
• 3 TBsp fat
• 1 med onion
• 1 small green pepper seeded, chopped
• 1 TBsp salt
• 1 tsp paprika
• 2 cups hot water
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 carrot
• 1 stalk celery

Prep

Brown chicken until golden on all sides in hot fat in heavy large saucepan. Remove. Cook chopped onion & pepper in the hot fat until yellowed, stir in paprika. Add browned chicken, salt, water, carrot and celery for flavor and summer slowly 1 to 2 hours until tender. Remove carrot and celery. Place chicken on hot platter surrounded with hot fluffy rice. Add sour cream to paprika gravy in pan, bring to boil and pour over chicken.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

First, I actually bought a rotisserie chicken from Fresh Market for ease of use.

Also, instead of simply putting that into its “parts,” I actually chopped it up and then kept the bones for a creamy chicken and rice soup the next day (which, with dashes of sriracha, was pretty phenom).

I did not remove the carrots or celery, because hotdangit, I like carrots and celery.

Paprika used to be a “one spice fits all” thing in this country, but since that time we’re now able to buy lots of different types — I have a paprika that is equal sweet and smoky, and I used that (image above).

Finally, I upped the sour cream to add in, well, more sour cream flavor, for it was lacking.

The Result

Ehhhh?

Kind of the textbook definition of, “Well, okay.”

Certainly not bad.

Definitely a little boring.

Let’s be clear: this is a barebones recipe for Chicken Paprikash. Except, it’s missing some of the things that make a Paprikash recipe pop. White wine? Stock? Some use bay leaves, ginger, garlic, or spicier paprika. (Christ, you look at Puck’s recipe for that, and it’s off-the-charts with ingredients. Maybe too much so.)

Now, my changes re: the chicken may have hindered the flavor a little bit. Taking the chicken off the bone might have reduced its ability to inhabit more flavor, and further, using a rotisserie instead of roasting it myself may have been an issue. (Though their chicken was flavorful.)

I think the bigger problem comes in using straight-up hot water for the base, and hoping it’ll make a nice enough broth. Better to have made stock and used a little white wine, and maybe put in some dumplings. And more spices. Definitely more spice needed.