Saturday, July 28, 2012
Charly's soul food
Menu included goat cheese crostini with a small piece of rat meat and a shot glass of gazpacho, two circles of rat and pork terrine over a deconstructed salad. Also featured was "Rat Two Ways"--braised rat and a roasted half rat over a sweet corn salad -- a rat-free lemon sorbet garnished with an edible flower, and finally, French toast topped with a slice of crispy rat jerky (head, claws, and all).
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25 comments:
Bored aristos indulging in empty amusements to while away the hours before extinction.
Lovely.
Not just aristos. People in the LA swamps have been enjoying nutria meat (a big rat) for generations and I seldom see any of them from my windows.
My theory about Louisiana cooking is that it was discovered early that any cooked animal, with enough tasso and andouille, is not bad with beer, even the horrible beer called "Abita".
I have not tried eating it, but I bet that even "buoy shit," (barnacles in US Navy slang) is pretty good if you cook it with tasso and andouille right.
You nekelturny that haven't yet tried these porcine delicacies, tasso and andouille from Louisiana, ought to put that stuff on the shopping list the next time you go to Savenor or some other specialty foods store. I don't think there are many specialty food places around you because Boston is populated by coprophages. I suggest Googling or driving to Lake Charles, LA.
"Not just aristos. People in the LA swamps have been enjoying nutria meat (a big rat) for generations and I seldom see any of them from my windows."
In the LA swamps, it's a matter of a food that fits what they can afford. It ain't out of boredom.
There's plenty of food in the swamp. Regrettably, the nutria aren't endemic to the region and their population over-expanded in the last decade or so, causing a variety of problems with the local species. Someone then thought of doing a "nutria as food" campaign to address the issue.
In a land where in which a majority of people think nothing of ingesting junk food, eating a large rat is not a large step backward. Arguably, the aristos you sneer at are smarter than that and are just toying with the idea, not making it a way of life and from a darwinist standpoint, they'll come out on top.
roT - yep, it's always been a mystery what the fuss is about Louisiana cooking. Take the leftovers from yesterday's leftovers, add tabasco and call it a fresh meal.
Wowsers! Mr Rot, Charly is really providing inspiration for you. I must say, you kicked your prose into higher gear lately. Keep on trucking, man!
I am very flattered by the fine way in which you express the scribblings of a poor scribbler whose efforts are diluted by an effort diluted by also simultaneously to be thinking seriously about the galactic vacuum of mathematics. Still, I think that the gold ring of the week goes to you. In a rare of agreement with that with that diabolical offender of the rules of Classical Legitimate Logick, known here as Tecs he and I agreed on the fineness of a comment of yours about cleaving to shallows while contemplating the infinity of the whole ocean. This has in me, of course caused me another to run again a frequent course of imaginary flights. This of course is a poetic snippet of Isaac Newton's in which he goes through his feelings when admirers ask what it is like to be such an outstanding scientist. He replies beautifully that he thinks of himself as follows: I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Go to Courmayeur and try not to think of that!
I am sorry if I bore you granite - hearts abhor any repetition. I will try when I find it finally overdone. I predict a long wait.
But, how can one see the seashore from Courmayeur? I think a better venue to pine for is a place where the mountains go all the way right up to the sea. I've seen only very few such places: Monaco and Vancouver come to mind. You guys know a better one? I think there are some where the Andes meet the Pacific, but, alas, I've never been there.
I've been to Acapulco. I was a kid then, but I still remember the beauty of the place. Like the members of your list, there is an ocean in play. The water is the Pacific Ocean , the mountains are some flavor of the Sierra Madre. Importantly, the food was great. I remember the fish, the beef, and the huge American breakfast which I will not forget those meals in paradise. While my parents and I were in town, a gigantic hurricane passed by close by in the Pacific, scared the the shit. This storm was gigantic and raised huge waves on Acapulco's gorgeous beach. Dad and I, as usual, went out in the wind and supersonic rain and watched.
Sounds like a wonderful place. Of course, now it may be rather dangerous to go to Acapulco, what with all those drug wars.
First time I heard of Acapulco was in the early 60's, when I saw this movie with Elvis. Movie was silly, but I liked Elvis' deep voice (I think it was one of the first times I heard him sing), and I was impressed by those guys jumping into the water from on, waiting for just the right moment to take the plunge.
Did you see this movie before going to Acapulco?
If you want water in Courm, go to Lac de Liconi. I posted pictures here at VCP too. The food in Courm. is a mix between Val de Aostan (the stars are spezzatino--basically Boeuf Bourguignonne, but loaded with rosemary and wild mountain herbs and occasionally wild mushrooms) and French. As you know, Courmayeur is right across a minor massif from another paradise, Chamonix, which we also have discussed here on humble VCP. So Tartiflette and other French cardiologist-bait are available without finger-wagging American waiters suggesting healthier alfalfa colonics.
Nope, but I saw those death-lovers jump off the cliffs into the ocean, it seemed, a mile below. I was surprised then that they all survived. My parents and I were all scared shitless that they'd hang up on a protruding point of rock and be very rapidly gutted alive thinking that at that speed the poor man wouldn't feel a thing and be sent into a coma the millisecond in which his head touched stone. I am surprised now that I didn't stay scared. Luckily, my parents played it cool and we walked off as if we were walking away from a controlled circus show with nets and safety gear. Wrong. As you know, the cliff was real stone and the little inlet of sea was churning in the wave action like water in a blender.
Don't screw up, Diver or you're spattered hamburger meat.
"But, how can one see the seashore from Courmayeur? I think a better venue to pine for is a place where the mountains go all the way right up to the sea. I've seen only very few such places: Monaco and Vancouver come to mind. You guys know a better one?"
Taiwan, particularly the bow from the cold and rainy northern point at Keelung, swinging out along the eastern shore past Hualien, and then down to the tropical beachhead at Kenting. It is a massive series of mountains cascading into the ocean.
There is a reason it was called, by those first lost Portuguese navigadores, "Formosa
Sounds like a beautiful island, indeed. Didn't know they have such tall mountains there. Close to 4,000 meters? Wow.
Yes, and they rise sharply from sealevel. So the base can be tropical rainforest and at the peak is a ski-resort. In between is every environmental gradation. There was once a beautiful alpine lake below the top of Yu Shan ["Jade Mountain"], known as Sun-Moon Lake. But it was pretty much kaput after the great earthquake of 9/21, in 1999.
Thank you for expressing such a positive assessment of my writing, Tecs. Coming from you, another Safire fan like me, this means a lot to me. I admit that I am cheating since I am still stuck here in isolation in the hospital and not allowed any visitors unless we are all masked like surgeons and the visitors are allowed in for only a short period each day. This isolation puts me in a peaceful, forced isolation, in particular from my always haranguing and usually near-omnipresent wife. I prefer to email with my old, gorgeous Romanian admirer. All that of her messages toward me is a positivity I need a sandblaster to get off. Thank God for her and other good friends like you, my FCP conspirators, in the mafia of plain good sense. Let's ask everyone to kindly make sense from now on. It's a bitch, about like teaching in an undergrad class in the US for sure and likely, this sickness has penetrated every place except isolated, harsh country. This puts me closer to Milarepa than everyone else. I detest all philosophers other than those that try to keep their feet on the ground and try to solve real problems. Those highfalutin morons that get fixated on existence, like CDers, should be banished to their deserved solitude and made to work on something productive. I suggest the beautiful partial differential equation as the most beautiful and meaningful object of study.
Everyone else, in my estimation, should be throwed in gaol. Poww!!
Philosopher- guru Milarepa is very concrete. In a hyper-nutshell, his message is this: If lots of shitheads are crowding you in town, then go to the deserted fockfields of the high mountains. There you trade the chaos of city life for a life of infinite peace.
It all makes sense, except for the bit about PDEs. I mean, what else is there to it, besides solving obvious ODEs like dy/dx=y? What does this have to do with beauty?
Of that Strife between CD's and PDE's there will never be an end. Of course the Geometers mock, and the Constructivists/CS'ers scorn, ye both.
Of course, deep down I'm doing Geometry, albeit with no stinkin' ruler and compass. But where's the Geometry in those pesky PDEs? Ah, I know, I know. These are fighting words for Herr Rott. Let he come out swinging, I'm all braced for that.
Geometers mock and other deep thoughts from the fever swamp called Tecsaa. Sorry you deniers. Perhaps you were able to read the funnies or your news source (The National Retard?) and have not found out that an "important problem in topology" (question: What could it mean that a little game (and one for the dumbest little boys in the low elementary school years) be important?) the Pork-and-beans Conjecture in that game was solved by a guy called Greasy who solved that overblown trivia question with, of course a trick called the Ricci flow, which swaps that stupid problem to one which can be solved with much effort by changing the dumb problem to another problem which is moderately interesting about PDE.
Of course, Tecs and AA insist that the the puerile game is "beautiful" or some effeminate characterization of the problems they stare at blankly, drooling, and have in the end to ask a guy like Greasy in to use his big PDE guns and help them bring order to their mess.
Greasy strolls in and throws the solution of the dinky puzzle in the dumb little boys' faces and stalks out of the room.
Tecs and AA wear black and don't give howling tsuica parties for two years. roT doesn't participate in their ostentatious costume masquerade party, puts on a starched, white linen shirt, and proves theorems about QFT and Geometry. The real stuff, not the AA kind, which is to imagine a dice game on the surface of a bagel or something like that. Yawn.
I was bracing myself for a tropical storm, but this was Cat 5 that landed on me, like a ton of bricks. Boy, oh boy. How can I reply? You can't argue with such a forceful tirade. You simply can't.
Thanks, Tecs, but now I feel bad. I would never thrash you, but I think that when Greasy solved the PDE end, I think that a few days later we went to the Mission, as was our custom then, in the good old days, and you said you knew that I would never stop busting your gonads about Greasy solving Pork-and-Beans. I waited years to make your prediction come true now as a way of thanking you for years of friendship and learning from you how mathematics is done as profession. You taught me, for instance, that doing math is not just doing a shitload homework sets. I took your observation and adding an application of Zorn's lemma, concluded that I would do no more homework and concentrate on good red wine and the truffle ribeyes and onion rings at the Mission.
It was a revelation. Unencumbered by dogwork, I started thinking about science. Notably, my billiards game improved rapidly and my girl-chasing skills reached the heights that you know about.
And now you're becoming my diatribe-writing coach.
Thanks, Tecs. You made me a Renaissance sponge.
I'm always there to help. And, yes, I remember those days when we were bantering about the power of PDEs vs CDs, and "Greasy" gave you a 2x4 to wield with abandon.
But one thing you never, ever gave me credit for (or at least, not enough). Namely, for teaching you how to click on things, way back when the Internet was young. How come?
Also, how come we all crave to be given credit where credit is due? I think it's worth meditating on this basic human urge, which never quite gets satiated, unless one gives up, and becomes a monk, perched upon a rock.
Tecs, I got plenty of due credit from the Romanian. That was tough to pass up, man.
Light a candle for me, Tecs, please.
Hope you're OK. Hang in there, willya?
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