No NaNo

It's November and that means that NaNoWriMo is in full swing. I can imagine the entire legion of the makeshift novelists click-clacking away on their laptops, looking broody, brows furrowed, hands unsteady from drinking way too much caffeine, while watching their word-count plummet as their blood-pressure skyrockets. That's how it works though. You type a lot of crap and you write a novel in a month. Or at least 50,000 words of a novel.

I am not participating in NaNoWriMo this year, but plan on being back in action by next year. Last year's trip to London pretty much killed my chances last time around, but I still know the taste of victory from crossing that fifty "K" mark back in ought seven and it is kind of like when you find a morsel of bacon in your teeth later in the day—nostalgic and delicious. This is a very challenging competition to impose upon yourself, yet I suggest everyone try it at some point just for the hell of it. You occasionally will write something that will impress you later, but for the most part it feels like you are writing crap and desperately trying to carry a narrative. Good fun!

I recently landed a cookbook reviewer gig for ChefTalk.com. Should be neat. You can read my first review here.

The Things You Overhear in a Grocery Store

SON

Can we get some of these bananas?

FATHER

No. . .they're Dole.

SON

But I want bananas.

FATHER

NO. They're Dole bananas.

SON

But we always get those bananas.

FATHER

No we don't.

SON

Why can't we get them?

FATHER

Cause they keep South America down.

From One Belly to Another

It's interesting how food trends seem to permeate all media at once in what seems to be a bizarre widespread synchronistic event. I've been waiting for a few weeks to cook this piece of pork belly and while I waited, everyone else was digging in. The Statesman ran a piece on pork belly and this week's Top Chef featured Pigs and Pinot, with two cheftestants doing belly.

Interesting. Of course, pork belly is nothing new, but it has been getting a lot of play over the past year or so. If you've ever enjoyed it then you understand why. This is one of things that lets you use the word unctuous in a positive way. Yum.

Slabbage.

Last week I ventured down to the North Buda Bungalow to feast with Shaddley & Co. I already had this nice piece of Niman Ranch pork belly so we were going to go about the evening in the usual fashion of multi-course Dionysian decadence. After a brief stop at a centrally-located market, it was off to the newly revamped kitchen of Shaddley and YogaMarketingBrownieGirl.

I was really excited about the pork belly and even the late start time couldn't deter me from braising it in the loving way it deserved. Yes, we had a late start, around eight or so, which made for an extended evening of dining and drinking.

There was much prep to do for all the other dishes, so I got the belly in the oven as quickly as possible, reserving a small amount for use in other dishes. The belly was the fourth course of this small plates feast. I had time to drink some wine and go about my business preparing the rest of the meal as the pork belly sat in the oven discovering itself.

There was a gap of time between the third course of lamb and tiny dutch potatoes, and the belly. A gap that was long enough, apparently, for one of the guests to suggest that they watch The Dark Knight. I think this time out of the eating and drinking pocket was the demise of two of our feast mates. Shaddley came back from the realms of dreamy floor land just in time to eat this dish. Of course, being that some of the inspiration for this plate was a play on bacon and eggs, it's almost appropriate to eat it after waking up. Then again it was one thirty a.m. and not noon.

Pork belly, I love you.

The braised belly was lightly fried, then coated in a sweet and sour Shochu glaze and served with rutabaga puree, egg white, an egg and apple emulsion and parsley puree. The pork was fun to eat, sticky and sweet with grounding, earthy flavors of pork, star anise and cinnamon. Like the best bacon you could eat. There was something reminiscent of sweet and sour pork as well, which is often made from this cut. The sticky Shochu glaze paired well with the pork belly's unctuous nature.

Bacon candy.

Unfortunately, only YogaMarketingBrownieGirl and I were able to feast on the desert of bacon toffee and panna cotta. I crisped some of the reserved belly for use in the toffee, which came out nicely, redeeming my last overdone batch. Shaddley was forced to enjoy the dessert after coffee the following morning.

Bold Moves

I've never even heard of Eater. Maybe that says something about me or how little I care for the foodienistas out there in the abyss, but I do find it to be a bold move to put a call out for bloggers to hang up their keyboards "in order to make way for stronger reporting of the food world."

Sure, not all blogs are created equal—I actually don't read more than a handful and haven't had the time to keep mine up and running over the past few months—but there is something disconcerting about a food related website asking bloggers to shut it down for a nominal fee. Poking around on this Eater website, I found the usual poorly written foodie crap that I personally don't care about or write about (who cares about Rocco DiSpirito's newest pitch on his long road to selling out?). So, this leaves me poised to ask why—why ask us to stop writing about our passion? Sounds wack.

I'll ramble about whatever mundane shit I want to motherfucker.

Food bloggers out there, don't do it. Resist the temptation of making a quick $25 bucks and don't stop writing about food. Food bloggers in Austin seem more apt to cover locally produced foods, locally owned restaurants and the scene than some shitty national website that thinks it has its finger on the pulse. This move is nothing new. Eater seems to have a lot of advertising dollars coming in from the Food Network and the like, folks who have turned eating into a sport and homogenized food trends and styles into neat little marketable packages with frosted blonde tips, like Guy Fieri. The idea that they will be releasing an 'Eater's Bill of Rights' today, and that it should be in any way taken serious, is a joke.

Keep writing and cooking and eating and loving food the way you want to, not the way the Big Foodie in the Sky tells you is cool. Fuck that shit.

Night of the Michelada

Summer in Austin. Been there, done that. This has been one for the record books, too. So hot and dry that sometimes I think I live on Tatooine. About a month ago, Blackberry Shortcake and I left this arid wasteland in search of cooler, more moist climes. We ended up in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico.

I miss you PV.

When our plane touched down on the tarmac, the captain announced that it was 78º at our destination. It was about one in the afternoon. We ate before we crashed. I had tacos, she had nachos; we both had micheladas. The food was good, as were the micheladas.

Tacos and nachos. Just like at home.

A damn fine michelada from Costa Vida, I mean Playa del Sol.

The michelada. This version of the cerveza preparada seems to vary in composition nearly as much as the margarita—and becoming just as ubiquitous in Austin bars and eateries. Breaking it down to the fundamental ingredients, you have ice (helada), lime, hot sauce or some sort if spice, salt (if you like), Worcestershire sauce (no thanks), and beer (slang: chela)—preferably a Mexican lager, although any lager will do. I prefer Pacifico. In the end it is yours, or mine (mi). Thus, the michelada. My iced beer. Not a bad concept. Frankly, I don't mind adding ice to a beer that is already rather watery; I would never imagine doing this to a lovely IPA or Wisconsin Belgian Red.

Blackberry Shortcake and I have enjoyed many a michelada thus far this summer. We've even been making them at home—she contends that ours are better than most that we have had out in the world and I tend to agree with her. What's our secret? What makes ours better than the store-bought options? Trechas. Yes. You read right, trechas: the chile salt that little brown kids love to put on mangos and watermelons. I swear up and down that this is the key to a great michelada.

In Mexico, however, there was no trechas. Most of the micheladas that I had had some kind of hot sauce in them. A few had Worcestershire (salsa inglesia) and even fewer were served with tomato juice and no lime. A few times, our micheladas were served with some extra sauces for you to add to taste. Brown sauce, much like the Brit's HP sauce was served, as was hot sauce and Worcestershire. I can honestly say that I enjoyed them all, yet would have preferred to have one of our trechas jobs over any of them.

Worcestershire heavy at Vista Grill.

This is my favorite photo.

Lime heavy at Mariscos Tino.

Summer drinks are funny. Actually, seasonal drinks in general are funny. I used to get all bent out of shape listening to people talk about how they couldn't drink stouts or eat heavy food in the summer. I always got the point, yet out of shear irreverence adopted the attitude of: Fuck you, I'll drink and eat what I want, when I want, damn it—which in hindsight is as dumb as every other attitude or position that I've adopted out of irreverence or for the sake of being a contrarian.

Now, not only do I see the point, I chose to accept it and enjoy these seasonal treats when they come. Like stone-fruit—why the hell would I want to eat a peach in the dead of winter? I can ask that very question about the michelada or the mojito or Campari and orange. As I get older—and inevitably wiser—I'm coming to appreciate these types of things more and more. This doing of things when things should be done. Dare I say that I almost respect the appropriateness of it all. Coming from someone who has striven to be as inappropriate as possible as often as possible, I'd say I just added a +1 to my maturity rating. However, I find it rather ironic that thinking about an alcoholic beverage can cause one to contemplate how appropriate their behavior has become. Fuck it.

Things Done Changed

Fear not, dear reader. We're still keeping it bearded and weird over here, just felt the need for a minor name change. I realized at one of those blogger events as I said aloud the former title of this blog that it was rather long and clunky to say. "The Life and Times of a Bearded Weirdo" doesn't even imply that this is a food blog, right? We don't plan on changing the variety of the content that gets posted here though—"As if you post any content. . ." You joke.

Seriously though, folks, things have been crazy busy around here. Work and food and work and food and work and beer and wine and food and work. You see how this goes. There has been more reading of words than writing going on, as well. So are the way of things. The way of the Force. Anywho, there are good things a coming (which, after all, is what you get for waiting oh-so-patiently).

Bacon and potatoes, bakin' in the Sun! Besos.

Something Summery

This was the statement that Shaddley made as we g-chatted about cooking dinner a few Fridays back: 'something summery'. It had been a while since we had hung out and eaten and drank to excess. Annoying summer allergies had forced Blackberry Shortcake and I to cancel a barbeque the week prior and now, feeling better, it was on. 

I had some ideas for something summery. I sell produce for a living, so knowing what was in season was already covered. When I think about something summery, I think about grills. I think about fish. I think about fruit and booze. Unfortunately, whenever we get together for these multi-coursed Dionysian affairs it tends to be on a Friday, which happens to be my day off. This means that rather than going to Wheatsville, where I work, we go to a more centrally-located market down south. The selection is good, but it is never the same. At least for me, being mostly concerning the produce. 

Shaddley came by and scooped me up and we headed down to the grocery store. I had a few ideas, but wanted to see what kind of proteins they had to work with. I was thinking strictly seafood. I wanted to keep this thing light. I wanted to do several courses and have the ladies be able to keep up. This mostly means that I didn't want to bog them down in the first two or three courses as we have done a few times in the colder, distant past. 

We spent a good amount of time in the produce section, selecting seasonal varieties of squash, eggplant, stone-fruits, berries, rhubarb, figs and snap peas. After that it was off to the meat market. Unlike my place of employment, this centrally-located market offers seafood that is not sustainable. I try and eat seafood in good standing according to the list generated by the Monterey Bay Aquarium—I even keep one of the guides in my wallet—so Chilean sea bass was a big no, as were a few other delicious looking items. 

We sampled some wild caught sockeye and picked out some halibut, Gulf shrimp and Gulf red snapper (red snapper is on the avoid list, yet the piece was so small they gave it to us for free and I imagine it would have been thrown away otherwise—to me throwing away food is a greater atrocity then helping it go extinct). After our brief stint in the seafood section, we only had a few odds and ends to get from the rest of the maze-like cavernous expanse that is this southern, centrally-located market. This had Shaddley a bit freaked. "That's it? We don't need any _____ or _____ ?" Nope. 

As soon as we got to YogaMarketingBrownieGirl and Shaddley's house, I got to work on sauces for the meal and dessert. After all the veggie prep was done, it was time to get started on individual dishes. Since 'something summery' was the goal, a good portion of this meal would consist of cold dishes that could be made in advance. The grill was lit, wine was poured, gazpacho strained and chilled. We were on the track for a great meal. 

The ladies arrived, more wine was poured and I started to plate up the first course: cherry gazpacho. I really like gazpacho. I like it both ways that I've seen it served, strained with a velvety texture and chunky like salsa. I'd say the latter is the more commonly seen option around town. For this celebration of cherry season we went for the former. The result was a cooling, creamy, delicately-flavored soup that had a near bisque-like quality to it. It was very rich for a mix of vegetables, fruit and herbs. If I hadn't have made it myself I would have been certain there was some heavy cream in it. 

Soup shooters. 

Following the pallet-piquing gazpacho, we had a small portion of sockeye sashimi served with a sweet red miso-shozu sauce, toasted nori and a small slice of fresh Texas peach. I would have preferred the more subtle Coho salmon for this dish, but the option at the centrally- located market was farm raised and I don't play that either. The result was beautiful. I was a bit worried about the intensity of the red miso, yet didn't see the reasoning to purchase white miso when I knew that Scotts had the red on hand. All in all, it was good so I'll stop complaining about what-ifs and could-have-beens.

Sockeye it to me.

We had a small salad of snap peas, red onion and garlic dressed in a simple white wine vinaigrette. This was a delicious and crisp little salad, yet you can see from the photograph that I probably should have either cut back on the raw garlic or minced it. Some found it to be a bit too 'spicy'. I had one bite in particular that pretty much wiped out my palette for the rest of the dish. Fortunately, we had plenty of dry, salty Spanish white on hand to rinse out the overly acrid garlic sensation. If you see any of this Txacolina around while you are out and about you should get some. It has a refreshing saltiness about it like Gatorade without all the annoying colored-sweat laden commercials. 

Raw garlic all up in yo face.

Chaw-koe-leena

After the salad, it was on to some lovely red snapper and strawberry ceviche. This was a really fresh ceviche, tossed with valencia orange juice and a sploosh of extra vigin olive oil right before serving as to not tense up the snapper and allow for its taste to still stand out. I love the combination of fruit and fish. This may be the islander in me, but for some reason it just makes sense. We had moved on to the Albarino and it was delicious and complementary to the subtle acidity of the ceviche. This dish was a hit. 

Unsustainably delicious. 

Delicious. 

Just about the time that we finished up the ceviche, the paprika-rubbed halibut and summer veggies were ready to pull from the grill. Continuing with our theme of fruit and fish, the halibut was dressed with a spicy Texas peach relish and a grilled Gulf shrimp. The grilled eggplant and baby zucchini were dolled up with a little dollop of creme fraiche. This dish was a hit as well. 

"Just for the halibut." - Blackberry Shortcake

Well, it wouldn't be a meal with Shaddley without fromage. The funny thing about this course was that we ate the cheese we bought for it before we started our meal. Good thing he is such a cheese head that he had an extra wedge laying about in his fridge. Grilled figs and balsamic were served with this chunk of semi-hard cheese. I had drank some wine by then, so I have no clue what we were having. 

Figs et fromage.

Normally, I don't eat ice cream because it causes me to pass out in about thirty minutes, but I was feeling ballsy. After all, we live in Texas and nothing says 'something summery' like Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla. This lovable treat was served along side some nice fried plantains with a strawberry-rhubarb compote. Shaddley had said he'd never had something with rhubarb that was done 'right', so I endeavored to do so. When he and YogaMarketingBrownieGirl went back for a larger bowl of seconds, I knew I had won. 

I also endeavor to take a photo of dessert that isn't blurry. 

As usual, we drank way too much wine. I don't have any fancy list this time to prove it, but trust me, we did a damn fine job. This meal was the gateway to a summer full of culinary promise and seasonal revelry. The company was great and the food spectacular. It was yet another great night at the North Buda bungaloo. I sat on the couch eating my ice cream as the sustained notes of Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain put the finishing touch on a meal that fused Spain, Japan and Texas into a refined taste experience. Content, I went back for seconds too. I sat there on the couch amongst great friends, full from a fantastic meal and was able to stay awake to enjoy the rest of an evening that was a testament to everything I love about the life I am able to live.