Nature of the Beast

Gourmets and gourmands share several defining characteristics, what sets them apart is that the gourmand's love of food is so intense that it often causes them to eat to excess. Today is our day, get to it.

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.