digging deeper, too: "gourmet's adventures with ruth"

where some might say there are, at this point, too many food shows on television, i'll gladly stand up and argue the counterpoint that no, there really aren't. if you take the phenomenon of the food network, and stand it side by side with a show like "anthony bourdain: no reservations," nothing in the food network's lineup holds a candle to the grit and raw honesty that bourdain broadcasts with. there's a ton to learn from alton brown, and the amateur chef can truly absorb a wealth of knowledge on technique and gastronomic whatnot from emeril lagasse and mario batali, that for the most part had previously been limited to culinary school and restaurant kitchen exclusivity—julia aside—but the network is far too content to just settle with where they'd previously set their own bar.

the food network erupted on the scene not so long ago, and while the going was still to be had, continually raised the bar, capturing talent after talent to help shape the network—which is where they went wrong. it's not talent that programs need to focus on, it's content. based on the advertising during commercial breaks, and the campy, painfully bland humor every single host takes on each of the network's shows, it's painfully obvious that middle america is their target demographic. which makes a heck of a lot of sense profit wise, but worries me in one painful way.

the problem with middle america is that we've settled for complacency, and where, if pushed, we should raise to the challenge of intellectual adversity and change, we're instead sitting on our couches, time passing idly by, because there's just nobody tipping the couch and throwing us off.

that's where my excitement for this piece comes in. though i still can't stand the word and the thought of my having one, this blog, though so small and still such a work in progress, and minute in reach, has somehow turned some heads somewhere—enough so that i received in the mail an exclusive preview to ruth reichl's new wgbh program on pbs, "gourmet's adventures with ruth."

the title alone foreshadows this show is a) no doubt about food, but also b) not your middle america food network mediocrity. one word comes to mind when i look at the photo above: exotic. this is a show, hosted by a woman known for her triumphs through some of the finest food publications in the country—though a position of envy, one also of seeming safety and relative celebrity—that's going to pull at the roots of food, its cultivation and how it's eaten, and maybe even ask, finally, in what esteem this thing called food is held in parts of the world more than likely unknown to that middle america safety net of the food network.

we're talking bourdain, here. we're talking the salt of the earth. grit and gruff and god knows what else. or so i thought going into watching the season's premiere episode.


instead, what i watched was a program that was soft, nurturing even, nestled indeed within the salt of the earth, but minus the vulgarity and uncensored spontaneity, that admittedly i'd fear to subject my grandparents to, of an episode with bourdain.

the show's producers were smart with this first episode, casting its story in the tennessee foothills of the smoky mountains on the self-sustained grounds of blackberry farm. the episode was country. very country. with magnificent shots of bright green tree canopy and the call of roosters in the background, aided by the bluegrass duet of softly strummed strings, the tertiary elements of the farm played right into what i foresee the show is out to accomplish: an attempt to learn, and in return exploit, the truths that have somehow been forgotten about the way we eat and why, despite the increased ease and affordability to do differently, we need to invest far more trust and faith in the farmer and his cultivation of our foods.

in its element, the show is structured well. the actress frances mcdormand tags along side with ruth for the episode, and together they harvest the foods they then prepare with the farm's proprietor, sam beall. frances is a familiar face, and a safe one, too. she's funny and smart, and out of character, though donned in overalls, seemingly fits right in to the whole way of country living—which is further exploited when the two women give fly fishing a shot, and frances seems to naturally hone in, her face locked and concentrated on the natural methodicalness of the catch, while ruth repeatedly sticks her lure in the branches above the stream. it's not hilarious, but it's not campy neither. it's an honest example of just how far removed we've come from sustainable living, ruth a product of new york city—though when it comes to filleting the trout for dinner, the roles reverse and ruth comes off as the pro, and frances the rookie.

here's a teaser to give you an idea of the show:

will this show capture an audience like "no reservations" has? probably not. it just doesn't have the balls out machismo that embodies who anthony bourdain is. but, like i said earlier, i'd fear subjecting my grandparents to his show, yet i very much encourage not only friends and followers alike, but my family and all generations thus encompassed, to truly consider what's happened to our food and the way we eat it. and this is a show i'd hands-down-in-a-heartbeat pass along to my grandparents. it's safe and solitary, yet manages to pose a challenge of its viewer to rise to the occasion of its subject matter. and there's no reason this show can't capture its own audience, perhaps composed in part by those who meddle with bourdain, but so too one would hope of that middle america heartbeat that's the true target for progressive change in agriculture and food systems.

it wasn't so long ago that it was common to find things like possum and squirell and wild greens picked from the forest floor on dinner tables in the south, and so too oysters harvested from the shores of manhattan and the chewy cuts of conch in abundance on plates in florida. ruth picks up on that vein when in the episode she eats a cut of lamb she's never had before—its neck—which is baffling given the positions she's held, and so too admits, with such a trained palette, that she has no idea what a salad of sugar snap peas, cheese curds, mint, and black walnuts will taste like. that's encouraging given the vast separation that's grown between foodies and everyone else, and allows, i would think, a friendly invite for those maybe off put by the pretense and elitism of gourmet and "fancy" foods, especially things specific to a region or even eaten of necessity, as the offal of an animal once was, and in some places even still is.

ruth hits on the self-sufficiency of the farm and how it's a way of looking at both the past and future, "the way we really want to cook." i'm not suggesting we all pack up and leave the city, because the cities are only growing larger. but we all need to open our minds just a bit more. we need to take a look back to the generations before us and understand how they got by, and as i've said before, ask what might be gained from a sustained economy that thrives greatly on locally cultivated agriculture? indeed, it's happening in cities like chicago and boston and new york already, but how can we build on this, rather than celebrate a modest and minute accomplishment—in effect, how might we refuse to repeat where others have failed? how might we toss complacency off the bus? because, in actuality, that bar needs to be raised far, far higher.

and here's a look at the season beyond its initial episode:

a night at the chopping block

i'm in the middle of working on a different kind of piece compared to what i've been doing—hopefully the good kind of different—that i'll have finished tomorrow, but in the meantime i wanted to get something up before the day closed out on me.

a couple weeks ago stephanie asked if i wouldn't mind taking pictures at an event she was doing downtown. if you read about our first event together, you know i rock out at these things, pretending i know what i'm doing when asked to help out in the kitchen. but pictures? no problem.

we were at the chopping block, which is on the first floor of the merchandise mart on wells. for those versed in chicago architecture, you know the merchandise mart has the most square footage of almost any building in the world—so much footage that the thing has its own zip code. and the chopping block itself is the closest thing to a cook's chuckie cheese you'll ever find. a retail store semi-resemblant of williams-sonoma dorns the front, and down below are glass walls that stretch from floor to ceiling, showcasing the enormous test kitchen where classes are held ritually. the appliances are new and sparkling and the tile work is immaculately laid, its sandstone hue emitting something like old world charm to a place so modern and fabricated. like something out of a dream. and across from this, secluded by thick rolling partitions, was the demo kitchen, where steph played host for the night.

fifty guests paid a pretty penny for the event, and in turn sat down to a printed menu showcasing five courses, each course broken down step by step for the guest to not only take home, but to follow along with as steph prepared each dish throughout the evening. and to boot, appliances called for with each dish were marked at a discounted price for everybody there. not such a bad marketing scheme, eh?

dave wound up needing my hands in the kitchen, and as the night progressed, the photo taking slipped farther and farther away. and no, this time no arugula was harmed by my hands in the making of the dinner. though maybe a tomato or two didn't find as much luck...

the menu:

mini bacon yorkshire pudding with smoked salmon and mascarpone
•
chilled yellow tomato and vanilla bean soup with lump crab and basil
•
seared diver scallops with heirloom tomato and truffle-poblano vinaigrette
•
roasted pork tenderloin with savory oatmeal, fig sauce and fig tapenade
•
frozen nougat with peach and tomato coulis

and shots that made the cut...










like i said, tomorrow i'll be rolling with something a little different. keep your eyes peeled. and in the meantime, i'll soon begin a routine guest commentary portion to the site, and you'd do me a huge thrill to show interest in pitching an idea on a piece for it. comment with interest, or shoot me a more detailed email: johnnyauer@gmail.com!

and check out steph's post about the night, as well (we both have an informality with capitalization).

an old farmer's advice

received these words of wisdom this morning from a friend and mentor in response to the site. fit to be shared, for sure.

an old farmer's advice

-your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong.
-keep skunks and bankers at a distance.
-life is simpler when you plow around the stump.
-a bumble bee is considerably faster than a john deere tractor.
-words that soak into your ears are whispered...not yelled.
-meanness don't jes' happen overnight.
-forgive your enemies. it messes up their heads.
-do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.
-it don't take a very big person to carry a grudge.
-you cannot unsay a cruel word.
-every path has a few puddles.
-when you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.
-the best sermons are lived, not preached.
-most of the stuff people worry about ain't never gonna happen anyway.
-don't judge folks by their relatives.
-remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
-live a good, honorable life. then when you get older and think back, you'll enjoy it a second time.
-don't interfere with somethin' that ain't bothering you none.
-timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.
-if you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin '.
-sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.
-the biggest troublemaker you'll probably ever have to deal with, watches you from the mirror every mornin'.
-always drink upstream from the herd.
-good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.
-lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin' it back in.
-if you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around.
-live simply. love generously. care deeply.
-speak kindly. leave the rest to god.

--

and,

-don't pick a fight with an old man. if he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you.

doompadee doo

the market is still on the rise, with 10,000 points square in its cross hairs, but the economy's downfall has posed a question worth at least considering: have we become too sloppy in how we invest? globalization is a nice word, and it seems to fit the natural human ambition, which is to dream big, doesn't it? as silly as it might seem, take charlie and the chocolate factory for example.

here's a story that exemplifies globalization, with wonka's golden ticket promotion gripping the people of the world from end to end. the obsession and greed that follow are what feed the story's satire, which as a whole serves to antagonize our beloved hero: sweet and innocent charlie bucket. in the end, greed is shown the boot by pint-sized orange men who sing, and it's the innocence and selflessness of the hero who savors the day. somehow, despite the truths in such a simple story, i have a hard time believing that many of the parallels in charlie bucket, despite the prophetic tendencies of the rest of roald dahl's story, will cross to our current predicament, and its outcome.

but why not? for all i feature on local foods and small farms and taking a step back to do things the old, and sometimes anicent, fashioned way, how many people are actually following suit? michael pollan is scheduled to speak at the university of wisconsin tomorrow evening, no doubt to capacity attendance, the sentiment of which is echoed in the linked article above. but despite the call for solidarity and support for pollan by the state's farmers, for how many people will his words be nothing more than a thought provoking tickle? a gentle humph at such brilliant and simple ideas that mount so great against the ease and cost-friendly ways of corporations and supermarkets and mass-produced commodities. it's nice that we have people like michael pollan who think so progressively, because the world does need its great thinkers after all, but isn't that the extent of their worth these days? a tickle?

well, not everyone is content to settle for just a stimulating tickle. and apparently, inspiration is not yet extinct. meet the slow money alliance:



relatively speaking, this is a toddler of an organization. it's only just barely hit the ground and though its press coverage has reached a national and widespread scale (time, wsj, la times), its legs have not yet been found, moving at a crawl—though rapid—on its hands and knees, its first step still yet to be taken—which is said not to be critical, but rather with a heart heavy of hope.

the slow money alliance, which piggy backs in many ways off the much entrenched slow food usa, is a non-profit organization of investors, for investors, who fear capitalism has gone too far. but membership and participation require a thing that rebukes all things capitalistic: the return on your investment comes to you not in dollars and cents, but in the restructuring of our food systems and economies. a charlie bucket of an idea, if you will. it's a charity of sorts, aimed not at a specific demographic or targeted area, but rather the prospective future we all face. and it's groundbreaking.

founding members and advisers stretch a wide and necessary spectrum of backgrounds and expertise. there's richard rominger (former deputy secretary at the department of agriculture); jack acree (co-founder terra potato chips); neil chrisman (former managing director at jp morgan); paul dolan (winemaker, fetzer vineyards and mendocino wine company); and wade green (former editor of newsweek, ny times magazine, the saturday review), to name a few.

but i fear grassroots operations like the slow money alliance, which is based out of my old hood in brookline, mass, won't receive the type of support needed to combat corporate dollars and current infrastructure. the as-of-now goal is to gain one million signatures in accordance with the group's principles, one of which draws from paul newman once saying, "i just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer who puts back into the soil what he takes out." paul newman of course returned profits of his newman's own line to charity, a total that stands at over $270 million to date. but is that enough? seriously, will that even make a dent?

unfortunately, the power of persuasion lies in the hands of the media. people do as they are told. sure, free thought and interpretation exist, and there are those who definitely utilize that free enterprise, but for change to happen, there is no doubt that people will have to be persuaded. and not modestly, but overwhelmingly. convincingly. and hopefully before it reaches the point of too late, when there's no other choice, and persuasion becomes synonymous with necessity.

and it's going to take a lot more than michael pollan appearances at universities and farmers dressed in green and grass root organizations based out of boston.

it wasn't so long ago that a person didn't travel more than ten miles from his or her home over the span of their lifetime. absolutely, there's no going back to those times, but shouldn't we at least explore the advantages to the bubbles that spawn from locally sustained and supported agro-economies? maybe, just maybe, there's something to this slow money idea, and starting small will have a much larger impact.

taking a sick day

i have the computer on a pillow that's covering my lap and am flat on my back, still in bed. i'm sick. so with that, a quickie with a picture of something i'd give so much to have right now:

i made this after the first big snow in boston last year. it's a shredded chicken soup that came out better than i could have imagined. it was spicy and hearty and the spoon always emerged from the bowl with strand after strand after strand of tender, juicy slow-cooked chicken that i cooked in beer. yum.

for the love of ham

i'm finally reading the sun also rises, and thinking back on my one night stay in the big apple before jumping the east coast ship and packing the moving truck for chicago, this was a place my friend jessica and i stumbled upon that truly seemed to be ripped from the binding of a hemingway novel. bar jamón on seventeenth st. in union square.

a spanish wine list with more spanish wines than i'd ever seen and things like mussels en escabeche and bacalao with arbequinas and manteca with boquerones, all handwritten on a distressed mirror that spanned the entire length of the small place behind the bar. it's a place that requires little work of the imagination to think of robert cohn and lady ashley, and the rest of hemingway's lost generation characters, drinking bottle after bottle of albarino and rioja, nestled over the comnunal high tables, deep into the night. and then there was the ham. sliced thin on antique berkel slicers like the one we used at il casale, it took just one plate and my trip to new york was fulfilled.

i'm a throwback guy. i want my fingers dirty with the oil of the cured swine and the grain of the cheese after tearing each, bit by bit, and tossing it back with a sip of wine. i like the gruff of thick wood and the darkness of candlelight when the sun sets. hemingway had paris. for now, i don't mind having to settle for new york.

michael pollan's done it again

there he is, yet again, creeping within the remains of the orb of the national spotlight that was meant to shine elsewhere. he's sneaky, but dammit, he's doing just what it is that we need.

an op-ed piece in today's new york times by michael pollan picks right up on where the pulse of this country is beating so rampant:

"to listen to president obama’s speech on wednesday night, or to just about anyone else in the health care debate, you would think that the biggest problem with health care in america is the system itself — perverse incentives, inefficiencies, unnecessary tests and procedures, lack of competition, and greed."

his thesis, it seems, will cover what one would think a michael pollan piece would never cover. something other than food. well, yet again, that just wasn't the case.

pollan narrows the health care problem in our country down to one major catalyst. we're too damn fat. and you know what, he's right. we've all seen the numbers, and he repeats them: one in three americans born after the year 2000 will be inflicted with type 2 diabetes, which draws a direct correlation to obesity. and he than draws a correlation of this to the neo robber barons of today's health care system:

"as things stand, the health care industry finds it more profitable to treat chronic diseases than to prevent them. there’s more money in amputating the limbs of diabetics than in counseling them on diet and exercise.

i'm sorry, but that is disgusting. does reading that not fill you with rage? our health is the key to our longevity, but our health is the one thing that we have little control over. we haven't been trained, nor taught enough, to prevent disease, which is what grants us more control over own bodies. our longevity. so, as we stand, bad things will happen. and when they do, as pollan is so blatantly broadcasting, people are making money. a lot of it. which for me was a revelation, like pollan had lifted the veil from the dream that is the american way of life, and revealed a corrupt and plotting network of profiteering puppet masters, dancing their hands with strings attached while the puppets weave through a maze of cackling flames.

how many steps removed are we from a controlled society like the one drawn up by aldous huxley in a brave new world? you see, there's a fallacy that i'm realizing is true. money trees? they do exist. they're us. we are the money trees.

"as for the insurers, you would think preventing chronic diseases would be good business, but, at least under the current rules, it’s much better business simply to keep patients at risk for chronic disease out of your pool of customers, whether through lifetime caps on coverage or rules against pre-existing conditions or by figuring out ways to toss patients overboard when they become ill."

but, dare i say it, if things were to change. if the president were to succeed. if this government were to properly function... look at these numbers:

"a patient with type 2 diabetes incurs additional health care costs of more than $6,600 a year; over a lifetime, that can come to more than $400,000. insurers will quickly figure out that every case of type 2 diabetes they can prevent adds $400,000 to their bottom line. suddenly, every can of soda or happy meal or chicken nugget on a school lunch menu will look like a threat to future profits."

all of a sudden, our health becomes a premium for these guys.

if insurance companies no longer view a ban on sodas and fatty foods as a threat to future profits, then we're suddenly finding ourselves in a system where preventative measures of health are promoted. can you imagine a chicken nugget or a can of soda as a threat to these big insurance companies? and the persecution of that junky foodstuff that would follow? it'd be enough to rise senator mccarthy from his grave.

and most importantly i think to pollan, and so too for myself, he finds a way to link all of this, which is a topic far too large for the several hundred words he'd written or i am writing now, to the focus of our food consumption to a far more regional and local scale than the one that currently thrives:

"recently a team of designers from m.i.t. and columbia was asked by the foundation of the insurer unitedhealthcare to develop an innovative systems approach to tackling childhood obesity in america. their conclusion surprised the designers as much as their sponsor: they determined that promoting the concept of a 'foodshed'— a diversified, regional food economy — could be the key to improving the american diet."

can you believe that? childhood obesity, and the american diet, best combated by a regional food system? somehow, it's all coming full circle.

got milk?

growing up, i loved things like kraft singles cheese sandwiches with mayo, mustard, and margarine—my mom was raised on margarine, and not butter, so too then were we. i loved cheeseburgers and chicken fingers and strawberry shakes from in-n-out. and most of all, i loved my mom's mashed potatoes. but when it came to things like peas and green beans, i found ways to avoid the vial foods from ever entering my mouth. there was the usual suspects like the napkin—precisely executed when one parent left the table and the other wasn't looking—or even, though it was one heck of a sacrifice, the subtle shovel of the food beneath a just-enough-eaten mound of mashed potatoes. and then, and i don't think i ever was caught pulling this one off, there was the innocent request for a glass of milk with dinner—milk one of the few non transparent beverages that kept those disgusting vegetables perfectly hidden.

i didn't eat salads until i was sixteen. no joke. and things like fish and pork, forget about it. my parents still deny it to this day, but one night my mom made veal cutlets, and when mikey and i asked what veal was, and its identity was eventually revealed, we both shut down in trauma, refusing to even look at the stuff. you can imagine the scene that stirred.

that's why, though for the longest time his diet consisted of seventy-five percent chicken fingers, i'm so proud of my little brother. in the picture above, which was taken at hungry mother in cambridge last summer, tommy is about to dig in on braised cow tongue. and the crispy stuff in the foreground? fried oysters. at eastern standard the night before, he ordered frog legs. who is this kid, right?

my point is, we shouldn't be afraid of our foods. people have been eating things, that on the whole, this country has classified as disgusting for centuries. what it was that removed the grotesque factor from my twelve year old brother's palette i don't know, but as his oldest—and it goes without saying, natuarally wise—sibling, i couldn't be more proud.

millions of peaches, peaches for me

labor day. the end of summer. and for alicia and johnny, a first trip to the lake michigan shore.

it was a fog heavy morning, and after first trying out the beach my dad used to spend his high school summers at in winnetka, only to turn away with our tails between our legs because the fog was so thick, the air so cold, we wound up in evanston, walking something like a half mile, cooler and beach bag in tow, only to be turned away at the entrance because we didn't have a) a season pass or b) sixteen bucks cash. so, we picnicked on the grass, behind the iron curtain of a wooden fence that kept the likes of us ragamuffins from the patrons of the beach, for free.

(after finishing this post, alicia told me she'd used the same all-telling picture. well, on the risk of being slapped with an infringement lawsuit by my girlfriend, i'm keeping it. but here's her post, too...)

i popped open a bottle of a white spanish blend and we drank from red solo cups, which somehow was fittingly perfect; we noshed on a baguette and tore pieces of prosciutto from the deli packaging; sliced away at a hunk of smoked gouda and plucked crackers from a box that we slabbed the cheese on; popped open tupperware lids and dipped our forks into a chopped caprese salad with sweet 100 tomatoes from nichols farm, basil, and mozzerella and so too juicy red raspberries from another container, also from nichols farm; and licked our fingers clean of the melted peanut butter that covered the pretzels we bought from olivia's. and to top it all off, alicia and i slipped on our mits and tossed a ball around for the very first time. we even had a couple stop on their bikes and sit at a picnic table to watch us—and by that, i mean get a kick out of the twenty-something, backward hat wearing kid in glasses try to teach the twenty-something, pink skirt wearing girlfriend how to catch a baseball.

and then came dinner, which meant my first return to the grill since dad nearly s'mored my arm over the thing.

though i jumped away like a school girl everytime i dropped a match over the coals, i had a good fire going. and for dinner, just the two of us, i grilled the one foodstuff i've eaten more of than anything else: cheeseburgers. and i served them with peaches.


we came home sunday with gorgeous peaches from seedling farm and like always, while at the market, my demented mind thought of what was at home that i could throw on the burger. it's a pretty barren kitchen right now so naturally, when the only thing that really came to mind was the brown bag full of peaches that was on our butcher block, i said yeah, that's the stuff!

and so, along with thick cut red onion, i sliced up a peach and charred the summer fruit over the grill, drizzling oil over the coals, giddy and bouncing like a kid when the fire leapt up and engulfed the onion and peach in flames. since i wanted the char, i went with a smoked gruyere from the market to kick the smoky factor from the grill up another rung, and spooned bbq sauce over the buns.

and grilled peach? on a burger? in all seriousness, it might just've been the best thing i've ever tasted on a patty, sandwiched between two buns.

the farmers' market capital of the world

newspapers have changed, and so too has journalism. the frontier of this once juggernaut news format is unknown and the days of past reporting are sliding farther and farther away. the la times, the paper i grew up reading at the breakfast table, is no exception to this. and the first time i opened the chicago tribune, which owns the la times, i couldn't believe how bad the paper was. ads larger than articles and poor typefaces and mismanaged formatting. it was hard to even read. and the la times, simply, is just not the paper that it used to be.

but, lately—and maybe it's a glimmer of hope—i've been damn impressed by the food section.

on the newspaper's food section of the website right now, there's not only the farmers' market map that i'd written about a few weeks back, and also a write-up on saving the season, which i also featured more recently, but there's a newly posted guide to seasonal foods and how to cook through the seasons. for bartlett pears, they encourage that it's okay to buy unripe fruit from the market, because they will, and need, to ripen at room temperature, and it is then that they can be refridgerated. there's tips for persimmons and peaches and grapes, and so too cranberry beans and apples and figs and zuchinni, and recipes to boot. and all with perfect timing as coming home with peaches and cranberry, or shelling, beans from the wicker park farmers' market yesterday suggests.

and then there's this story, in commeration of the first l.a. farmers' market thirty years ago. mayor antonio villaraigosa, who in conjunction with the huge party that will be thrown in honor of the first market, has announced a food policy task force, its primary function to "help turn l.a. into the farmers' market capital of the world." with 121 markets, the county already has by far the most farmers' markets in the country, and i can't help but scratch my head at the thought of it becoming the epicenter of the market in the world. think about all of the agricultural history in europe and asia and other parts of the world, where organized markets, where farmers and fishermen sell directly to their customers, have long been the practice. has l.a. really come that far? the things you take foregranted about the places you once called home...

a quirky sense of ostentation

the fallout from a monday night dinner for two:

late that night, standing on the sidewalk drinking a glass of wine with a friend before we attempted to move a cooler full of pork belly and ice that might've weighed more than two hundred pounds to the second floor of a building, my friend told me, while he dipped a baguette in the bolognese i'd pulled off the stove an hour before, that the italian in me really shined through that bolognese.

there's not a single drop of italian blood in my veins.

this guy is a chef, which means he knows what can be said to really get to a person's soul when tasting their food. and for an italian, which he admittedly thought i was, is anything more important to the soul than a ragù, which my bolognese was a version of? so maybe it was premeditated flattery, but it worked, and given how italians feel about bolognese, it worked really well.

this post, for all its meaty worth, will be on the making of that dish, which was the first time i'd ever come close to cooking anything like it. it was a process that began months ago, and it was only the spontaneity of alicia asking if i'd make a bolognese for dinner, and my assuming that she wanted that bastardized impostor of ground beef and tomatoes that the olive garden calls a bolognese, that the thing finally came to fruition. i'd learned too much from dante. i'd read a book that even went into detail about bolognese. i had to do the thing right. so when, at five 0'clock, she asked when dinner would be ready, i guiltily lied to her when i said maybe sometime around seven. no way was i taking the easy way out.

and for the sake of trying something different, and having a bit of fun, i'm going to pair excerpts from bill buford's memoir heat throughout this post, because like me, working in an italian restaurant—with a chef who'd caked his fingernails thick with the foodstuff of true italian soil on italian soil—changed his entire perspective on food. and his naïveté, another thing we share, is abundantly apparent when he first talks about that hodge-podge of a native dish to bologna in italy, the bolognese.

"fundamentally," he says, "a ragù is an equation involving a solid (meat) and a liquid (broth or wine), plus a slow heat, until you reach a result that is neither solid nor liquid. the most famous ragù is a bolognese, although there is not one bolognese but many."

"an italian ragù and a french ragout are more or less the same thing. in any language, the process involves taking a piece of meat and, as it was described to me in the vernacular of the kitchen, cooking the shit out of the fucker."

hence, exhibit a):

to the right is the product of a visit to olivia's across the street. i came home with over a half pound of half-inch cut pancetta, a half pound of skirt steak, and a half pound of pork chop. i cut the steak a bit finer than the pork, since it's a fairly lean cut of beef and is best when cooked fast, or like in buford's learned kitchen vernacular, cooked the shit out of, which was obviously the direction i was heading. the small bits react better to the slow heat, and the larger bits of pork render better when browned with fast heat, which is the first step. and cutting the meat when raw makes the job that much easier.

but the surprise to the whole thing was in the bowl to the left.

a lot of my time in the recent days has been spent uploading content to the yet-to-be launched face lift of stephanieizard.com, not to mention knocking out the little nagging things that kept popping up for her second wandering goat dinner, which is why i've lagged on posting content on my own site. it's taken a lot of work. but, that work has its benefits, which were reaped monday night when steph found out i was gonna cook a bolognese for dinner. while talking to her she'd literally taken two hotel pans of pork belly from the oven, from which she'd pulled fiber-by-tender-and-barely-hanging-on-fiber of braised beef short ribs. it'd be perfect for it, she said of my ragù.

like i was gonna turn that offer down.

so in went the raw meat and boom, just like that, the thing was on. it sizzled and snapped and several minutes later, after scooping the rendered result from the pan, i was left with the brown and flavor seducing remnants of the drippings, or that word that's become so forbidden to say, fat. when it comes to fat, to each their own. my dad would probably spoon it all out and hit the pan with oil all over again, because that's just the way he likes to do it. for me, i want the fat. fat, always always always, equates to flavor. so i kept the drippings, though rather than roast my vegetables in a pool of the stuff, i spooned a good amount from the pan and poured it over my meat while it rested—this makes the meat happy. in then went a diced onion and a couple diced carrots, and lots of salt and pepper. my dilemma, at this point, was whether or not to throw in more.

this, in a nutshell, is the beauty of a bolognese. i bought a few seranno peppers from olivia's, toying with the idea of adding a punch of heat to the ragù, and if i'd used them, though my bolognese would have been far different than your mother's grandma's or your best friend's father's grandma's, it still would have worked. take a look at what buford says about it:

"a bolognese is made with a medieval kitchen's quirky sense of ostentation and flavorings. there are at least two meats (beef and pork, although local variations can insist on veal instead of beef, prosciutto instead of pork, and sometimes prosciutto, pancetta, sausage, and pork, not to mention capon, turkey, or chicken livers) and three liquids (milk, wine, and broth), and either tomatoes (if your family recipe is modern) or no tomatoes (if the family recipe is older than columbus), plus nutmeg, sometimes cinnamon, and whatever else your great-grandmother said was essential."

so, i toyed with serranos. but that's as far as it went. they never saw my knife, and are sitting still on the butcher block in the kitchen. i stayed away from nutmeg and cinnamon as well—though when next time rolls around, for sure the autumn spices will flavor my meats. so too did i avoid a classic mirepoix, opting to leave the celery out, and running instead with only garlic in addition to the onion and carrots. i wanted this sauce to be about the meat as much as possible, hankered down not by the texture and distraction of my sloppy and pathetic dice of the crunchy, sweetly-hydrated vegetable best known for something called ants on a log.

and consider this as to why i'd fear a thing like that:

"gianni speaks of the erotics of a new ragù as it cooks, filling the house with its perfume, a promise of an appetite that will mount until it's satisfied. actually, what he said was the cooking of a fresh ragù mi da libidine—gives him a hard-on—and until he can eat some he walks around in a condition of high arousal."

a ragù is something like a mexican mole, the sauce a thing of layers. each step along the way a new layer is added, and then so too another, and sometimes a previous layer is then manipulated by the addition of another layer, until the end result is this complex thing, something like "a crumbly stickiness, a condition of being neither liquid nor solid, more dry than wet, a dressing more than a sauce..."

so celery omitted, and the meat back once again in the pot, i hit the mixture with my favorite part. the tomatoes. for me, it's the san marzanos that heighten the sense of arousal for the ragù. when their fiery sugars begin to wrap around the melted fats and oils in the pot, and the first spat of heat explodes from the molten juice in a boiling pop, it's like the atomic release of the big bang and a whole new universe has been born from the seeds of the italian tomato.

which i realize is over the top and pathetically ridiculous, but still is altogether familiar to the italian's admitted state of arousal when a ragù is doing it's thing.

from this point on though, the thing took care of itself. other than dicing the short rib meat—which she cooked i think in pineapple juice and asian flavors, lending a hand to the italian/orient tradition of marco polo—to a super fine grain-like consistency and tossing that in and pouring in some red wine and later on adding some torn basil leaves, i just reduced the heat to a simmer and covered the pot with the lid. piece of cake. so much so that i did more work for the website and even hopped across the street with alicia to grab a drink with a couple friends, all while the slow heat did its business, and the ragù methodically took its form.

then, just after ten o'clock, it was done.

at il casale, dante served his bolognese over tagliatelle, and in it was everything from veal to pork to beef to pancetta, and even chicken livers and mortadella. this meek version, over paperdelle, was mine.

with a glass of red wine and a baguette we broke piece by piece over our plates, we had our dinner. and was it good? i thought so, but then again i'm german-irish and some trace of every other western european country, with absolutely no italian lines in my family tree. so when someone says, the italian in you really shines through in this, it can go both ways...