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Antipasti

THAT’S RIGHT, SHRIMP COCKTAIL

There comes a point in a man’s life when enough is just about goddamn enough. A time when any and all bullshit needs to be categorized as such and set aside as appropriate. Oh, you didn’t get all LOL and OMG by EOD? Well, fuck you. I’m a man. The trash is at the curb isn’t it? Those logs are split and stacked ...

NEXT TIME ON OKRA

I’ve gotta admit, I’m not as experimental as I’d like to be in the cooking department. Maybe it’s laziness. Maybe it’s age. Maybe it’s the all-too-real time limits that occur when failure means dinner doesn’t hit the table right in the narrow window after work and before bedtime, bath, mandatory book reading, ...

A SLIGHTLY OVERCOMPLICATED LOVE SONG: TO DEVILED EGGS

In my experience, there’s the things that are really, really good. And then there are the things that everybody likes. They aren’t the same things. The things that are really, really good tend to threaten or question the general way of things, and being as people like things the way they are, they tend not to like the ...

CHARCUTEPALOOZA’S FINAL CHAPTER: NERO WOULD’VE BEEN PROUD

As Charcutepalooza concluded with a call for showing off all we’ve learned, I couldn’t help but feel a small amount of glee for the bad decisions I was about to make.  Looking at the contest as a whole, there was a lot that went into it: a push to encourage local and more sustainable consumption, an affirmation of home ...

CHARCUTEPALOOZA CHALLENGE #10: PIECE OF MASTERFUL CRAFT OR THE GREATEST PRACTICAL JOKE OF THE 16TH CENTURY INVOLVING A CHICKEN?

If there’s one thing that I know to be true, it’s that the Italians taught the French how to cook. It’s true, just ask any Italian. When Caterina de’ Medici married Henry II, she departed Italy with her best cooks and delivered the gift of Florentine cuisine to the heretofore uninitiated. But after this month’s ...

IF I GET DRUNK AND EAT A WHOLE MEAT PIE, IT’S A FAMILY TRADITION

This month Charcutepalooza brought a choice: pate or meat pie. I have a little bit of history with both. In the case of pate, it’s a history I would rather forget. I have a spectacular ability to completely screw it up. Chicken liver, duck liver, doesn’t matter. My pates tend to end up somewhere between a sous vide ...