Gluttons Club

I hope to make this a recurring feature of the blog; a roundup of what the major papers are featuring in their wednesday food sections.
I have to be quick today due to too many things going and too little time to get them done.

The NY Times has an interesting article on wine and cheese pairings. This reminds me of the time Karl, Antonio, Rob and I went to Portland ME in college and Antonio was whining all day so Rob kept saying "Do you want some cheese with your whine?". This kept up for several hours until we came across a sidewalk sign outside a restaurant advertising their wine and cheese special. We all laughed, Antonio posed for a picture and uh, we all went on to become famous for our hairstyles.

But I digress. Also in the NYT is a duck-off between the minimalist and some chef guy. I haven't actually read the article but I bet it rules. The minimalist is one of my favorite food columns so I hope he wins.

The Boston Globe has in its food section bupkis, as usual. And by bupkis, I mean diddly-squat. Their food section sucks mightily. They don't even have a wine column. THEY DON'T HAVE A WINE COLUMN! As Robyn might say: wtf? Anyway, there's something in there about pie.

That's all I got for today. Hopefully next week will be better.

Bu-bye.

Last night when I went to the ole liquor cabinet for a nightcap, I ended up with more than I expected. I wanted something out of the ordinary so I looked past the frequently used whiskys and way in the back, under a cover of dust, I found a bottle of Norman calvados. We got this bottle a few years ago when my female roomies briefly hitched on to the apple martini craze. As a purist and curmudgeon, I poo-poohed their trendy drink but welcomed the addition to the cabinet. Calvados is the sort of bottle that gives a touch of class to any liquor cabinet and keeps things interesting when you get sick of the usual ole drink.

Calvados is an apple brandy with origins in Normandy, France. Normandy is renown for its orchards so apples make their way into many dishes and drinks in the region. Just as conventional brandy is made by distilling grape wine to fortify regular wine with, the Normans make calvados with hard cider. The result is a pleasant enough brandy with just a touch of apple-y sourness to make it distinct.

I first drank it while studying abroad in Dublin and my friend Fred, who was from Normandy, came back from a trip home with an unlabelled bottle of brownish liquor. It was made by his grandfather and was supposedly known to be of good quality. He opened it up and passed it around the table for a handful of us to try. It had the sort of fiery essence that sends vapors through the top of your head and siezes your throat on the way down. It was good but not what anyone expected--somewhere in there you could tell that an apple was involved but it wasn't clear what happened to the poor thing along the way. We happily drank it as a nice alternative to the usual whisky and cheap lager we always had on hand and I fondly remember the coughs, gasps and grimaces as the bottle made its way around the room.

I've since lost touch with Fred and sadly, most of my friends from that year in Dublin. Some couples ended up together but most of us drifted apart, heading back to our homes throughout Europe and the US. After a couple of years of postcards and holiday greetings, addresses changed and letters went unanswered as we moved on with our lives. No matter how much time passes however, I'll always remember the good times we had through association with the particular types of food and drink we shared. We shared our cultures through care packages from home and the filter of poorly stocked Irish grocery stores. Nowadays, when I come across something familiar, the mere taste conjures up happy memories. Often, as it did last night, it comes from the most unlikely of sources, the back of the liquor cabinet.

To me this is further testament to the importance of eating and drinking for enjoyment over mere sustenance. Looking back at pictures from those days, there are more of us sitting around a kitchen with empty plates and beer cans on the table than any other setting. It was typical for us to cook for eachother and share our native habits so I got to eat a lot things that I would have normally had to travel throughout Europe for. At times the offering wasn't always the most pleasant, as in the case of lard and snuff night, but it was always an occasion that brought us together and the tastes and smells will be with me for a long time.

Fred, just in case you're reading this, tu es un poisson.

As you may be aware, there has been a lot of legal activities in the US recently threatening the availability of foie gras. In case you didn't know, fois gras is the tasty liver of a goose/duck that had been force fed a diet of fat and herbs in order to enlarge the liver and impart flavor. The force-feeding is the source of the controversey--animal rights activists don't like the practice and I guess I have to agree that it isn't a pleasant thing to do to an animal but I'm not sure a ban is a good idea.

I've had foie gras maybe a handful of times in my life. It isn't something I crave or come across too often and to be honest it took a couple of years to figure out how to pronounce it properly. However, I'd like to see it remain available in case I did want some. Banning a meat product for cruel treatment could lead to a slippery slope where other products are banned for real or perceived cruelties. This I cannot abide by. I prefer my meat to come from free range, grass fed, happy, singing in harmony animals but let's face it, the modern food industry can't keep our bellys full of food and smiles on the faces of cows at the same time.

So basically, I am somewhat neutral on the issue. I enjoyed it when I've had it but don't really eat it that often so a ban on foie gras would have very little impact on my eating habits. It's the precedent that more concerns me. I have no fear that PETA etc. will soon force the meat industry to close up shop but what if, say, pancetta is next? I wouldn't be able to go on...

I decided recently that I need to start drinking more for free. I figure I know a bit about wine, how its made, the major varieties and what it should taste like but don't have a lot of experience actually drinking it. That is, I haven't had the money, time or resources to sit around sampling a wide variety of wines. This is a problem in that it limits my ability to detect the subtle differences that terroir, method and vintage create.

To counter this, I pledge to visit quality wine stores at least one saturday a month to take advantage of the free tastings. There are some good stores around that feature excellent wines at these things so it's truly a goldmine for someone like me. Vino di Vino, out in Newton Centre, does good work and often pair up with the whole foods across the street for wine and food specials. Brookline liquors, On Comm Ave, has been known to put some rare and pricey wines up on the tasting table. For example, back in February, they were offering a '68 burgundy. I missed it of course but you never know what else they might bring up from the cellar to just give away to people.

Why would they do this? Because people who walk into stores often buy things that they would have no intention of buying otherwise. Offer them a chance to sample that thing beforehand and they might buy more than one. The more contact with the customer, the greater the chance of making a sale.

That, and they like to drink.

The carnivegans site that is sort of responsible for all this is a funny sort of response to veganism but as friend Molly asked, "are they serious?"

I don't think so but if you read they exchange they had with a self righteous veg, some people think they are. Personally, I think that veggies/vegans shortchange themselves by limiting their options. Carniveganism would be doing the same. For example, the site references mead as the only true carnivegan alcoholic drink. Mead sucks. I'd rather give up cow than drink nothing but mead.

Omnivores like myself get to enjoy all the best of meats, veggies, minerals, and whatever else they can consume. I limit my diet along lines like avoiding overly processed foods, trans fats, and things like tripe and offal. Otherwise I'm likely to eat whatever appeals to me and that's why I'm here with a blog devoted to eating and drinking.

So my sister sends me this thing about "carnivegans" yesterday because I enjoy eating meat and can usually be relied on to annoy vegetarians about it. We went back and forth via email about it and she says I should start a blog about eating and drinking because I do alot of that. I don't usually take good advice because I'm mad that I didn't think of it first but this one was too good to pass up (that, and I'm bored at work today). Thank you, dear sister of mine, I owe you one good idea.

So this will be about enjoying life through consumption. I hope to share my tastes, thoughts and opinions about food, wine and beer by passing judgement on commercial foods and bevvies, providing recipes and background for some of my favorite things and slipping in the occasional late night drunken rant/rave about what I've been up to in the kitchen. In other words, I'll be blogging with my mouthful.