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A 30 MINUTE MEAL… NOT ON PURPOSE

I’ve always disliked the notion that there are magical quick fixes. That the kitchen and the time you spend there caring for your ingredients is actually just time spent waiting for the right work-around. Put that crap in a box or a jar or a cookbook, put some famous face on it and call it progress. Call it a shortcut. ...

SO NICE TO SEE YOU AGAIN, DOCTOR FATTERSON

I feel like my priorities have been all out of whack lately. The once fertile womb of my curing chamber lies fallow and has for months. My freezer is empty of the homemade bacon that makes summer tomatoes achieve their otherworldly state. My smoker has seen only one brisket this entire season, and even that was a bit of a ...

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 ...

CHARCUTEPALOOZA CHALLENGE #7: THE ART OF MAKING HOT DOGS, IN WHICH I BATTLE A DEAD POSSUM

A brief primer: I am a writer at an ad agency. That means I’m one of the people who makes up and writes the TV ads, billboards and magazine pages that people do their best to ignore. I work with a variety of clients, and over the years, the people I’ve written ads for have included a few food and/or beverage companies. To ...

CHARCUTEPALOOZA CHALLENGE #6: THIS LITTLE PIGGY AVOIDED THE GRINDER (THIS TIME)

Charcutepalooza’s June challenge brings us to stuffing. Which, if you’re used to making encased sausages, shouldn’t be that much of a challenge. But for myself, the stickier part of the assignment was to build a poultry forcemeat to stuff into it. In other words, a bird sausage. Now, I realize that chicken sausages ...

CHARCUTEPALOOZA CHALLENGE #5: SALSICCE, BY ANY OTHER NAME

There’s a picture of my grandfather, I think it’s probably taken in the 1970s, standing in a friend’s basement, smiling with a sausage grinder by his side and many, many links of tubed meat hanging from the rafters around him. I’ve always loved this picture of him, and when he died my mother found his old sausage ...