Chris Amirault

Bumping this up as I just made carnitas for a taco meal (and as part of the taco cook-off). A few thoughts: I did the braise then saute method. My braise was with chicken stock, a cut-up lime, a cut-up orange, some onion, garlic, ancho, Mexican oregano, salt and black pepper. I put all of the pork skin atop the meat to braise. The saute was with both lard (rendered in the braise and a bit more) and some corn oil I'd used to fry chiles last week. Then, for good measure, I squeezed another orange and lime on 'em. I split the batch bc of the pan size but then also realized that I liked the dual texture: crunchy brown lovelies plus meatier, less-Maillardy chunks. So one batch I did to deep brown and the other batch was less so. I added turbinado sugar (1T mebbe?) to the first, more caramelized batch. That was a good thing. I also added the juice of one lime and one orange to the whole batch. My chunks are a lot smaller than those shown in this topic, more in the 1/2-1" range when raw (and thus smaller when cooked). I think that these are better for tacos, and they resemble the carnitas I have had at restaurants. Those big chunks seem, well, too big to me. All in all, I had to restrain myself from eating the whole damned batch tonight, guests tomorrow night be damned.

I think we all should commit to measuring our measuring spoons, a la the Thermometer Trust Issues topic.

Tacos with carnitas, chicken, and lots of fixin's on the way. I'm surprised no one has mentioned pickled red onions (salt, lime) for their tacos. Not done out there? Also, does anyone else have experience with a cilantro, white) not yellow) onion, and black pepper garnish? I had it on the US/Mex border in AZ once and have been addicted ever since...

I just made this in those proportions with Tanqueray for the gin and Fernet Branca for the bitters, which turns this summery citrus drink into something more herbacious, springlike.

Ever a glutton for punishment, stopped at Loie Fuller for a drink the other day (a middling Negroni made with wet ice). Discussions at the stick included my answering the question, "How do you pronounce this?" when the young woman behind the bar held up a bottle of Angostura bitters. I'm about to give up permanently here.

I've had much the same experience with the halal butcher here: inexpensive, good quality, and lots of variety cuts, to say the least. It's also very lamby, which I appreciate a great deal.

It's quite well-established that criticism, buzz, the academy PR, "the street," the media, et al contribute mightily to our sense of what these challenges are and mean, and they have for some time. Many of the aesthetic movements that we now "remember" were helmed by savvy self-promoters who knew how to create interpretations around their art that stuck. The same is true for many of these challenging restaurants. After all, save for chains and the odd "that place looks interesting," there's gotta be some non-experiential reason that diners make choices to go to one place and not another for the first time. And expectations matter: imagine if you pulled into a friendly little diner off a state highway and were told you could eat the menu as an app.

A meal can challenge your expectations about what something "should" taste, look, or feel like, for example. An item that usually is considered to be savory is prepared in a sweet form to bring out unexpected resonances in that food, or an ingredient is prepared to look like something it's not. In so doing, such a meal causes you to reflect not only on the food but also on your expectations for food, taste, and pleasure. Of course, a lot of these challenges are present in other foods but we don't notice them. The temperature juxtaposition of Alinea's hot potato/cold potato dish is similar to a hot fudge sundae, to take one of many examples.

Puttanesca.

What does that mean? Is dinner supposed to be unthrilling and unfun?

That recipe is here: It is a fantastic drink. ETA: And it needs a name.

Ditto that. Dark caramel syrup is a staple of Vietnamese cuisine, and it's not inconceivable that one could pair a bitter caramel with scallops. Butterscotch, mebbe not. But still...

Just made that with Sazerac 18 year, a verrrry old bottle of yellow Chartreuse (has the RI state liquor label on it), FB, and 5 drops each of homemade clementine bitters and Fee's barrel-aged bitters. It's freaking great -- but for serious Fernet fans only, I think. Make that baby, put on "Dark Side of the Moon," and you've got a nice transition to sleepytime.

Joy of Mixology by our own Gary Regan has a number of bottled cocktail recipes. It's a great book for a number of other reasons as well.

This post got me thinking about "challenging" restaurants: click.

I've been talking to a few people about eating at Alinea lately, and this recent post by heightsgtltd in the eG Forums Alinea topic reminded me of a theme that has been recurring in those discussions: I've just read through a few topics, and this notion of a "challenging" meal threads through a lot of responses about Alinea, El Bulli, WD-50, and other restaurants delivering food from the forefront of the molecular gastronomy movement. I use the word "movement" carefully here, intending to reference the avant garde movements of the early 20th century that sought to remake our experiences with and through art. Risking oversimplification (and being told that I'm not the first to make this comparison), I'd argue that the "manipulation" of Achatz, Adria, Blumenthal, Dufresne, et al has parallels with the confrontations of Hugo Ball, F. T. Marinetti, André Breton, et al in dada, Futurism, and Surrealism respectively. For example, I think that a meal at Alinea is not accidentally related to a meal with F. T. Marinetti, the father of the Futurism movement and the writer of a cookbook of the same name: though there may not be direct parallels (though my chat with Will Goldfarb at the now defunct Room 4 Dessert would suggest there are), the desire to challenge the consumer of art at a Futurist event bears some resemblance to the desire to challenge the consumer of food at Alinea. That's context for heightsgtltd's point above, a point that was echoed by at least three other people who have eaten at Alinea. Don't get me wrong: my meal there was the best I've ever had. But I'm also able to enjoy a challenging aesthetic experience that leaves me exhilirated, exhausted, and "full" on every level. Others have stated that, while Alinea was an experience they'd never want to replace, they don't really feel that they gained any enjoyment in a classic sense. They meant classic in a good way, of course; they didn't spit it out the way Breton would have done. I had dinner at Oleana a few days ago, Ana Sortun's fantastic restaurant in Cambridge MA. As I was polishing off a hefty scoop of salted caramel ice cream with a friend, I thought about the difference between the utterly pleasurable meal we were having at Oleana and our meals at Alinea. Her point was that we had enjoyed our lamb steak and crispy duck skin in a way that she hadn't enjoyed Alinea a few weeks earlier. Nothing wrong with a challenging avant garde meal, she argued, but at some level it's just not as pleasurable and satisfying as a meal such as this. False consciousness? Differences in taste? Retrograde embrace of pre-21st century approaches to food? I can't quite tell myself, having licked up the sauce on plates at both Alinea and Oleana. What do you think?

Thanks for the input, heightsgtltd. I and my guests had discussions about some of the issues you raise here, most particularly the "level of control that is exerted over the diners." The meal definitely pushes the "customer is always right" maxim off the table and requires a trusting acquiescence on the part of the diner. I gave in and enjoyed that, as have many others; can you say a bit about why you disliked it? I'd also be very interested to know some specifics. Which dishes were indeed memorable? Which bombed?

What're you going to do with them on Sunday? If you'll be blanching them before doing whatever else, then, yeah, blanch 'em. If not, then I'd wash them, wrap them still wet in a paper towel, and stick 'em in a plastic bag. Should be ok until Sunday.

I think that's a good point. Of course, you'll want to make sure all the right people are around the table to determine the mission, or else you'll have that preaching/choir problem again.... To me that sounds like two policy initiatives and an ag training program, so you'd want local/state policy types on the start-up cmte as well as whatever MD farmers' groups are around. Good luck and do keep us posted!

Does anyone have the recipe for that Ode To Ankarah? I'd also be interested in the gin.

Just an update. All of the sausages seem excellent, but the kielbasa is outstanding, the best links I've ever made. I'm eager to try another few batches soon.

Yes they are -- and they're also aiming to preach to the choir. This is a perfect example of the point I'm trying to make. Here are the questions they're asking: The rest of the text in the website is the same. As far as I can tell, any genuine educational content (in the sense an educator would mean it) is merely an afterthought, if that.

It's hard to state particulars without knowing more about the context. How old are the students? What kind(s) of school(s) are we talking about? Gimme them details, and I'll try to respond with greater precision. For now, here are some general points. First, it's best to recognize that the reason that you're planning an educational program is because both sides do not recognize the fundamental importance of the other to their own endeavors. If they did, well, you wouldn't have to create a program -- it would exist already! I can't stress how important the differences of perspective are to any planning and implementation. If you begin from the presumption that you're speaking roughly the same language and share roughly the same priorities, you're bound to run into trouble. Please allow me to be blunt. Educators are no more nor less interested in local/organic/artisanal/sustainable farming than the average citizen. Unless you are Alice Waters, living in the San Francisco bay area, and thus can count on a sizable community willing to reflect your values back at you, you'll need to recognize that you'll be committing to work with at least a few people who eat lunch from vending machines, who think organic means "tastes bad from all that cow poop," and who will take you for a nutcase until you prove otherwise. Those educators will be prone to think that you're there to promote an environmental or political perspective with which they and the families they serve do not agree, and your lack of interest in the things that they value -- teaching kids what they need to function in the world -- will just redouble their contempt. That's pretty pessimistic, I know. But you will always benefit if you keep in mind that you are the umpteenth person who has come down the pike with a "great idea." After all, most of the people promoting those "great ideas" didn't make any real attempt to find out whether the educators thought the ideas were any good. That's why I'm emphasizing the early planning and consistent follow-through. One tried-and-true approach is planning backwards, getting all potentially interested parties in the room and asking, "When this is done, what exactly will we have accomplished?" Educators tend to describe success in terms of what students know and can do; non-educators promoting certain perspectives (local/organic, say) tend to describe success in terms of transmitting a particular set of beliefs or values. Hashing out the ways that those two matters are at odds is a critical part of early planning. Are you trying to crank out organic activists? teach people the science of composting? debate the global legitimacy of sustainability? convince kids that healthy food tastes good? Getting down to those brass tacks is essential. I've seen literally dozens of programs collapse months in because everyone assumed that they agreed -- and they didn't. In early childhood education, we talk about "developmentally appropriate practice," which is just shorthand for setting instructional goals that are appropriate for the particular kids we're teaching. There are radical differences in cognitive ability, scientific reasoning, social awareness, gross and fine motor skills, and lots of other areas depending on how old kids are. Educators are going to care about whether you're taking those issues into consideration, and you'll stand out among the extra-curricular crowd if you learn a bit about the population you're trying to teach. For example, we teach three year olds the scientific method, but it doesn't resemble what 11th graders call the scientific method. When we ask them to hypothesize about what will happen when a seed and a wet paper towel are put in a clear plastic bag, we know that "it will turn pink" is a legitimate response. Cause and effect, temperature, temporality, states of matter... these are all fundamentally invisible to most three-year-olds. But being able to state a prediction, wait, describe results, and evaluate the accuracy of a hypothesis are reasonable goals for preschoolers. By the time they're in kindergarten, we hope that their hypotheses will reflect the laws of material reality a bit more closely, but not by a whole lot! Even if you understand the developmental continua of the children with whom you want to work, you've still got another big instructional hurdle: scheduling. Excepting adequate resources, the biggest challenge of most school administrators by far is orchestrating classroom, teacher, and student schedules, and many people who want to promote programs simply don't understand the complexity of that task. Some of the questions that are easiest to ask -- when would we do this? who is "we"? what spaces would we use? how would kids get there and back? etc. -- are the most difficult to answer. This is particularly true if you're seeking to fit the program into an existing school day, which will in most cases already be full of required curricula that cannot be reduced to fit your program. And don't think that "after school," the fantasy oasis of most program designers, is an easy solution either; all of those questions get much trickier once core staff go home, buses leave the building, and teachers want to know why you're screwing around with their rooms. In short, the only way to pull this off is to build a truly collaborative process in which all sides are at the table, willing to talk frankly about what they'll give and what they'll get. In our program, we required the students coordinating the project to volunteer twice a week, go through training, and read up on early childhood education. Only after they'd gotten to know our school and profession were they allowed to talk to the teachers (whom they now respected) about their instructional ideas (which they now realized were far more complex than they had assumed) for our kids (whom they now perceived as the intricate, wonderful beings they are). They met in pairs with teacher teams to talk about what, when, why, where, and how, developed small steps to get started, and then worked into more complicated components over the last few weeks. That's just the tip of the iceberg -- or the sprout poking out of the soil, I suppose. I'd be happy to provide more specific feedback about your plans, but I'd need to know a lot more. But I promise you this: if that farm develops programs that set out to meet educators where they are, then they'll be one step ahead of the game from the outset.

Well, you will definitely want some schmaltz for starters. Sorry. Couldn't resist. If you're going for camp, the possibilities are endless: the rainbow and dream motifs, all the sibling rivalry, a Pharaoh, a song all about cows and corn (I'm not kidding).... Surely, Rob, you can work miracles with that. If you are going straight up, then go middle eastern, mainly Egyptian. But where's the fun in that?

As several have already stated, it's hard for members that don't volunteer to realize just how much Susan has done over the years. Singlehandedly, it seemed, she retitled, merged, and cleaned up literally thousands of topics in the non-regional reorganization; every time you search for a topic you owe her a debt of gratitude. RecipeGullet, the eG Foodblogs, eG Spotlights... the list goes on and on, and only those of us on late at night chatting about all this behind-the-scenes work truly know how dedicated she has been to the Society. Of course, we all can understand her contributions to eG Forums by reading about butts, larb, and lots more. Her presence in our little Society is immense, and we're all richer for it. Raise your highball of Campari to snowangel, all -- and, Susan, may your glass be ever full.