I’m a bloody rock star!

I’ve wanted to be a rock star ever since I first saw real live rock stars on the stage at the Fillmore East in, I think, 1969. I was 13 when I saw Albert King, Chuck Berry and The Who tearing it up a what was arguably one of the two best venues for rock concerts in the world (The Fillmore West being the other). And given how thrilled I was to see Chuck do whatever that dance he did was called (duck walk?) and the maniacal Keith Moon breaking drum sticks as he played faster, and with more skill than any rock drummer I can think of, you would be forgiven for thinking that I ran home and formed a band.

But no, I’ve never been serious enough about music to actually learn how to play and instrument and singing loud enough to be taken seriously as a R&R singer has always felt to me to be, I don’t know, impolite?

So, even though I’ve always wanted to be a rock star, I never bothered to become one, until now.
And check it out: I did not have to pick up a guitar or open my mouth to do it. All I had to do was butcher.

See, according to Kim Severson writing for the New York Times, butchers are competing with chefs to be the rock stars of the culinary world. (So as a chef and a butcher I must be competing with myself? Odd.) She cites people who say butchers are hot, and that they like the fact that we wield big knives and are often covered in blood.

So now I’m a rock star and I’ve got Kim Severson and the NY Times to thank for it. Of course I have to thank my audience too, because without my fans, I could have never become the bloody awesome super star that I always knew I was but was too lazy and untalented to achieve on my own!

Never mind the bollocks, here’s the butcher

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Alcohol’s Good for You? Some Scientists Doubt It

So what are these scientists going to doubt next: the health dealing benefits of pastured acorn fed hog fat and grass fed beef; the wisdom of universal vaccinations against flu viri; the existence of god and reality of life after death? I mean: how dare they?

Alcohol’s Good for You? Some Scientists Doubt It – NYTimes.com

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Origins

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Yeast Poll Results Reveal Pattern of Bread Doping

What do bread bakers who work from starter, students who pay other people to take tests for them and professional athletes have in common?

Well, from my poll results (look left) it appears that most of them are not above doping their path to success. Of the 22 bakers who respond positively to the statement “I occasionally add commercial yeast to bread starter,” only 5 answered “Never.”

So now it’s official people. The epidemic of cheating and dishonesty that has been plaguing our society and has corrupted and undermined the integrity everything from politics to banking, professional sports and academia, has begun to work it’s way through what is perhaps the last corner of virtuous endeavor: the subculture of bakers who eschew the use of unsustainable factory made yeast in favor of culturing yeast that is ambient in the atmosphere and the flour itself.

Who’s next?

Organic farmers who dope manure with Miracle Grow? Vegan chefs who fry their setan in bacon fat to get a leg over the neck of competitors who use hydrolzed vegetable protein to add umami? Do we now have to worry about raw milk dairy farmers spiking their milk with melamine?

Look, I occasionally add yeast to my bread starter. But I’m no hypocrite so don’t think that just because I do it, it’s okay for you to do it too.

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Yeast Poll Results Reveal Pattern of Bread Doping

What do bread bakers who work from starter, students who pay other people to take tests for them and professional athletes have in common?

Well, from my poll results (look left) it appears that most of them are not above doping their path to success. Of the 22 bakers who respond positively to the statement “I occasionally add commercial yeast to bread starter,” only 5 answered “Never.”

So now it’s official people. The epidemic of cheating and dishonesty that has been plaguing our society and has corrupted and undermined the integrity everything from politics to banking, professional sports and academia, has begun to work it’s way through what is perhaps the last corner of virtuous endeavor: the subculture of bakers who eschew the use of unsustainable factory made yeast in favor of culturing yeast that is ambient in the atmosphere and the flour itself.

Who’s next?

Organic farmers who dope manure with Miracle Grow? Vegan chefs who fry their setan in bacon fat to get a leg over the neck of competitors who use hydrolzed vegetable protein to add umami? Do we now have to worry about raw milk dairy farmers spiking their milk with melamine?

Look, I occasionally add yeast to my bread starter. But I’m no hypocrite so don’t think that just because I do it, it’s okay for you to do it too.

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Thanks for the votes!

v

From Hudson Valley

Bob del Grosso and Mike Pardus thank all of you who voted in the recent Best Food Blog by a Chef poll at Well Fed Network.

And special thanks to those of you who voted for us in what was clearly the most important election in recent history. We are not sure who won. But that doesn’t matter because we emerge from the heat of this historic contest as bright and refreshed as faggots bundles of haricots vert in an ice bath. We are full of the hope that whoever it was who won, will bring about the changes we need to create a better, more perfect nation of food bloggers.

All kidding aside: Thanks!

Update: The winner in the category of Best Food Bog by a Chef was the fetchingly framed pastry blog Tartelette.

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Deep Thought: Artisan Bread?

ar·ti·san (ärt′ə zən, -sən)

noun

a worker in a skilled trade; craftsman

Etymology: Fr < It artigiano; ult. < L ars,

It may be only children and pedants who believe that once a word is codified coded into a more than one dictionary its meaning becomes fixed and immutable. But nothing could be further from the truth. Consider the word fuck (Click the link, you’ll split a gut. I promise!) which can mean virtually anything depending upon the context in which it occurs.

The word artisan, which in its nominative form indicates a person who is skilled in a trade and works largely with his hands and hand tools, can actually refer to someone with only enough skill to operate a dough mixer or cut and slash a loaf of bread in exactly the same way ten thousand times a day. Although, as some sources indicate, there is an assumption of variability in expression or uniqueness associated with each product made by an artisan, this notion while charming, appears not to be true of some of the products available to contemporary consumers of artisanal products.

For example, this loaf of artisan bread purchased at the local supermarket, looked just like all the other loaves of the same type (“French”). It was the same color, and shaped and slashed in precisely the same way. In fact, if the label did not indicate that it was hand made by an artisan, one would swear that it was the product of some form of automated baking process.

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Deep Thought: Artisan Bread?

ar·ti·san (ärt′ə zən, -sən)

noun

a worker in a skilled trade; craftsman

Etymology: Fr < It artigiano; ult. < L ars,

It may be only children and pedants who believe that once a word is codified coded into a more than one dictionary its meaning becomes fixed and immutable. But nothing could be further from the truth. Consider the word fuck (Click the link, you’ll split a gut. I promise!) which can mean virtually anything depending upon the context in which it occurs.

The word artisan, which in its nominative form indicates a person who is skilled in a trade and works largely with his hands and hand tools, can actually refer to someone with only enough skill to operate a dough mixer or cut and slash a loaf of bread in exactly the same way ten thousand times a day. Although, as some sources indicate, there is an assumption of variability in expression or uniqueness associated with each product made by an artisan, this notion while charming, appears not to be true of some of the products available to contemporary consumers of artisanal products.

For example, this loaf of artisan bread purchased at the local supermarket, looked just like all the other loaves of the same type (“French”). It was the same color, and shaped and slashed in precisely the same way. In fact, if the label did not indicate that it was hand made by an artisan, one would swear that it was the product of some form of automated baking process.

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

My Latest Invention: The Dorsavent Chef’s Jacket (Satire)

I am proud to announce that I have invented a product that promises to revolutionize the way chefs look and SAVE MONEY by cutting laundry and wardrobe costs by 50%!  

The Dorsavent ( from dorsal  and ventral) is the  first reversible chefs coat that is designed so that the back is a mirror image of the front. Now when the front of  the jacket gets dirty, the chef does not have to change to a new jacket!  He/she merely takes the jacket off, turns the back to the front and voila! The chef looks clean again.

This jacket will be especially attractive to chefs who work double shifts and restaurateurs whose budgets are being squeezed by the drop off in business that has crept in behind the freeze-up of the global credit market.

And for chefs who feel like schmucks  walking around with buttons and food smears on their back, there is an optional cape (available in black and white). I’m a fraking marketing genius. Get used to it. 

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

My Latest Invention: The Dorsavent Chef’s Jacket (Satire)

I am proud to announce that I have invented a product that promises to revolutionize the way chefs look and SAVE MONEY by cutting laundry and wardrobe costs by 50%!  

The Dorsavent ( from dorsal  and ventral) is the  first reversible chefs coat that is designed so that the back is a mirror image of the front. Now when the front of  the jacket gets dirty, the chef does not have to change to a new jacket!  He/she merely takes the jacket off, turns the back to the front and voila! The chef looks clean again.

This jacket will be especially attractive to chefs who work double shifts and restaurateurs whose budgets are being squeezed by the drop off in business that has crept in behind the freeze-up of the global credit market.

And for chefs who feel like schmucks  walking around with buttons and food smears on their back, there is an optional cape (available in black and white). I’m a fraking marketing genius. Get used to it. 

The best sauce in the world is hunger.