Salute The Pig or salutate porcum

Why don't we eat peacocks?

Ever wondered why chefs don’t have much peacock on their menus? Because they’re “difficult to cook” and in addition “its flesh is so hard that it scarcely putrefies” so asking for it in the restaurant is “hard hearted” on the kitchen team. What’s that? You thought maybe it was because they’re difficult to get hold… Read More »Why don’t we eat peacocks?

Food is community.

Asturian chef José Andrés setup World Central Kitchen in 2010 and since has regularly partnered with local cooks and restaurants and suppliers to feed people who are hungry, starving, in need to comfort and warmth, inc. in Haiti, Puerto Rico and, most recently, Ukraine. You can and should donate if you have the means The… Read More »

"If I had known the world was ending, I would’ve brought better food…"

OK, I confess to a teenage crush on the leather clad Suzie Quatro in the ‘70s. This is her running through “Can The Can” nearly 50 years later… I was reminded of the track when I came across a graphic from the Can The Can restaurant in Lisbon whilst checking… Read more

IDGAF

I know I’m not alone — Val concurs —  in finding this whole “carry on as normal, work, eat, sleep, repeat” shit a little hard to pay attention to. A little tricky to whip up any enthusiasm for much of anything, you know what I mean? My grandson sports a… Read more

"Bad day at the office, dear?"

My suggested “go-to” is a congee, here via the estimable @madamehuang, which soothes the soul. From her excellent “The Dim Sum Field Guide: A Taxonomy of Dumplings, Buns, Meats, Sweets, and Other Specialties of the Chinese Teahouse“… Read more

Smoked mushroom garum?

Am I interested in trying this one? Yes, of course. It’s a garum after all and one made using koji, not the kinda canonical fish guts. Interested enough to pay the £18 they’re extorting plus whatever horrendous shipping charges the courier will impose plus a 20% UK import tax  — thanks to Brexit, the… Read more

Always here for Valentine’s Meat Juice

This morning, it seems kind of apposite to mention this American Bovril clone that was invented around 1870, so pretty much synchronous with ‘Johnston’s Fluid Beef’. More background on Valentine’s tonic here and an earlier piece by me on Bovril here. Read more

Has anyone seen my Niederlassungserlaubnis?

I mean, how hard can it be? Come on good people of Germany. I need you to say “Ja!” to a residency application… To encourage you to bring this fine mission to a rapid and happy conclusion, you should remember that we Bülow’s have a Wiki page that shows that the… Read more

Once upon a time, via Anatolia

Until I read this 2021 Vittles London “What Is Kurdish Food” piece, I’d not (consciously) heard of Musa Dağdeviren. That’s on me of course, as he’s possibly the most famous extant Turkish chef — ‘the saviour of Turkish cuisine’, or so at least claims his publisher Phaidon — as well… Read more

It's Big. It's Green. It's kinda egg shaped.

Today I read, via @JamesWhetlor (of Cabrito Goat fame), how the Big Green Egg is produced. Including why it has those dimples… A single ‘matrix mould’ is produced by hand, even the etching in of each dimple, with the ceramic slurry poured into moulds made from that one matrix. It is… Read more

Five Michelin man bounce into a bar...

Or a restaurant, or a garage… Another eBay shopping accident (blaming this on @coquus69 Paul Cunningham), means that — for not very many of your English pounds — I am now having to decide where in the house to cement these beauties… He looks to have his located above a stove… Read more

Masked meat madness at Manteca

I’m not saying I’d like one of these heads hanging outside our house; but then I’m not not saying I wouldn’t (hi Val!)… First though, I need to point you to an article about the “piglet squid” (Helicocranchia pfefferi) which grows to about 8 or 10 cm long. It’s found… Read more

Perfect pie pastry prevents piss poor partaking

Is there anyone, who, deep in their heart of hearts, doesn’t like a pie? Whilst I’m sure there’s a metric fuck-ton of various foods that — under intense questioning — others would choose as their comfort items and the traditional Death Row prisoner’s “last meal” is a continual moveable feast for… Read more

St. John.

Pig pieces via Fergus & team. ’nuff said… Read more

Go, garum, go

I know I sometimes bang on about fish sauce. No apologies from here though — sorry —  ‘cos if you know, you know… A rather spiffing new book came out just after Christmas 2021, one co-written with chef Diep Tran of Good Girl Dinette in LA, author Tien Nguyen (who… Read more

There's a migrant in the kitchen. What are you gonna do?

As an immigrant, I understand how the soul gets lonely for its origins. —MADELEINE KAMMAN But then there’s always a migrant in the kitchens. I’ve written little bits before about how their lived experience has, of necessity, changed for them, much of it of course as a direct consequence of… Continue reading

Fine feasting on Fergus' faggots

Yeah, sorry good people of America, I know that’s a problematic word for you. But us Brits were here first with this UK food item, so just live with the ambiguity. Life is after all ambiguity. There’s rough edges, there’s gaps and holes. There’s uncertainty. That’s how it is. And those of you… Continue reading