And Now For Something Completely Different In Reading Material


On the cookbook front I have the album Au Pied de Cochon, which I have been wanting to test and review for some time now. It is not to every one's taste or philosophy, which makes it all that more interesting to ponder. For those not familiar with the Montreal institution, Anthony Bourdain captures it best.

" A one man Dionysian orgy of my favorite things ... a completely unrestrained in-your-face feast of crispy duck fat, unctuous duck livers, moist flavourful blood sausages, marrow-filled bones, tender, lovingly slow-cooked birds, stuffed rabbit, sumptuous and hearty stews - and always: pork, pork, pork - in all its fatty, crispy, and inspiring glory." He has "his own madly enthusiastic signature takes on Quebecois sugar-shack staples like poutine, heaping thick slabs of melting foie gras, foie gras sauce and foie gras fat on the already artery-clogging goodness of hand-cut frits, demi-glace and fresh curds."
As you can see, the book and restaurant has the potential to be unpopular with some folks. Myself, I am looking forward to trying out the recipes, and would love to experience Martin Picard's enthusiasm in person. I don't like to eat slabs of foie gras for the simple reason that I get full so fast from all the richness. But if prepared perfectly I enjoy it. Thankfully my friends who are better human beings allow me my occasional forays into the forbidden. You can be sure the politically correct will not be invited to the recipe testing feast coming up this summer!

OK, I am a tinge troubled by my enthusiasm in looking forward to eating foie gras. Perhaps this calls for a post on how it produced. For now I will provide two articles on foie gras production. The first is on production in France. The smallish farm produces goose foie gras, and the article is from the perspective of someone who eats foie gras. The second is from an animal rights group. Foie gras production is not for the squeamish.

Books for Thoughts on Food


I have got quite a substantial reading list for this summer...although no summer novels yet. Any suggestions?
Perhaps I should finish Don Quixote. Candy and * were reading it last year, so I thought I would give it a go yet once again. Got as far as the windmills, perhaps a little further. I have noticed that everyone talks about the windmills whenever they mention the novel. I believe the reason the windmills are referred to so often is that no one actually reads any further than the bloody windmills.
That said, I am determined to finish it, so voila, another book on the list.
So far the list looks like this:

Hungry Planet: What the World Eats
Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism WARNING: This is an unpleasant clip. If you want to stick to light food topics, skip it, if you want to think about food globally and politically, then the idea of Klein's "shock doctrine" goes hand in hand with it.
Stuffed and Starved Here is a clip of Patel talking about biofuels, the contradiction of too many fat and too many thin people, and trade policies related to food.
Don Quixote
The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Coutries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It
Extraordinary Evil