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Food Thread: Fried Pork? Yup...That Would Be A Fine Last Meal!

Chicharrones is not a food that one expects in an upscale joint. Hell...it had cloth napkins and an indoor bathroom! But oh my...they made an absolutely kick-ass dish of these little nuggets of proof that God loves us.

The version we ate came with a peanut & lime sauce, and pickled kumquats. The sauce was great! The kumquats were...interesting. Sort of weird. Too firm to be really delicious, but still fun.

Whoever thought of frying chunks of fatty pork was a genius and hopefully has been beatified for his (probably a her though) efforts. There are thousands of variations across the Spanish-speaking world, and I am sure it is a staple in other places as well. As it should be, because it's cheap, easy to make, and damn...I could eat those at every meal.

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I haven't ranted and raved about food prices for a few months, in part because some prices have actually declined from their ridiculous highs. Eggs seem to have descended from stupidly pricey ($4/dozen? F*ck you!) to merely, "More Expensive Than Two Years Ago." And butter has dropped a bit too.

But I was shopping yesterday for a birthday celebration dinner (it's today, so you people better behave!), and I saw some significant ratcheting up across a wide range of foods. Vegetables, chicken, mayonnaise, ice cream, and while I don't buy much processed food, what I saw seemed to be significantly more expensive.

It is naive to expect prices to return to the status quo ante Biden. What we are experiencing is a permanent reset of the cost of living, and since wages usually lag prices, it is going to be an unpleasant future for many people.

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One of my favorite foods is Pâté, or Terrines, or Rilletes, or really, any preserved chopped meat dish. And that's all that stuff is...a way to extend the life of food. And I am all for it!

But some of them are a pain in the ass to make.

Like this one! Chicken Liver Terrine is delicious, but I can count on the fingers of one hand the times it has emerged from my kitchen. I will however order it at a restaurant at the drop of a hat, but it can be mediocre.

Or is this really a "First-World Problem?"

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Hey! Fried baitfish! Well, the restaurant called them "whitebait," but it's the same thing. And delicious. What isn't yummy about tiny little crispy fish with some nicely flavored mayo to go along?

I used to eat something like that as a kid...they were called smelts, and my mom would dust them with a bit of flour and fry them. They were even smaller than those whitebait in the photo, and they got really crispy. Even a snot-nosed little brat like me would eat them.

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Remember last week when I mentioned a good restaurant strategy"

When in doubt, order the interesting stuff on the menu and one will rarely be disappointed.

Yup...that's what I did, and it added another data point for my lifelong study.

That's a sugar-cured pork job that got a bit of smoke, and while it never would have occurred to me to pair it with some Dorset cockles, the chef at a cute Covent Garden restaurant did the thinking for the both of us.

It worked well, and the chop was nice and juicy, which suggests that the chef knows what he is doing. I have had a similar chop before, and it was good, but on the dry side. Of course the service sucked, so I'm not running around touting my restaurant choice!

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Yup...I drank the Kool-Aid and am going to put a slice of grapefruit in my Gin & Tonic this afternoon. I had a bunch of them last week, and I could get used to interestingly flavored tonics.

Too bad I don't have one of these machines!

Oh...the Brit affectation with G&Ts is to use fancy gins. I think that is stupid, because the tonic -- especially the flavored ones -- overwhelm all but the most pronounced flavors in the gin, and it's a waste of good gin and hard-earned money to use anything but a simple and inexpensive gin. My house gin is "New Amsterdam," which is made by E&J Gallo, of Boones Farm and inexpensive wine fame.

And I don't care. I have tried a bunch of gins, and this one is excellent.

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The oyster imperative remains in effect, especially now that we are in the summer months. Yup, I'm not afraid of oysters in the summer! (Except that my usual source was sold out, so I am an oysterless Dildo, and you know how bad that is!) And send pork rib roasts from the front end of the pig where all the good and fatty meat lives, carrots that don't taste like stalky chalk, garlic...lots of garlic! (but no basil! My basil is not doing well this year!), well-marbled NY strip steaks and elk backstrap to: cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com.

And don't think that the rest of you are off the hook with maple syrup and French Toast: I'm still watching you! And I am watching you perverts who shake Manhattans and keeping a list for the Burning Times.

And yes, I used to demand fancy bourbon, but let's face it, $1,200 for a bottle of bourbon is just stupid, insulting, and a ghastly affront to most people's palates and wallets. I think the sweet spot is $40-$60 for excellent and interesting bottles, and bumping that to $100 gets you an incremental improvement in quality, but nothing mind-blowing. More than that and I think you are paying for hype and rarity, which may look good in your liquor cabinet, but doesn't translate to more quality in the bottle.