Stefan Beck

Hudson Valley Pop-Up: When 5&10 Comes to Town

2011-08-12T16:35:50-04:00

There are plenty of good reasons to quit the city for a small town. Some folks prefer the rural tranquility. Others want to raise their kids around character-building natural hazards, like prickers, poison ivy, and the blinding sap of the Giant Hogweed. Gastronome and mixologist Max Watman moved from New York City to Cold Spring, New York--an hour north by MTA, one and a half on the Palisades--in 2005, seeing in it an ideal place to raise a child, chickens, and a whiskey still. By 2011, something was missing: restaurants he hadn't been to a hundred times.

For Max, familiarity has bred not contempt but a wistfulness for the variety of urban life. Of course, as a food-and-drink writer, who was recently a panelist at the week-long saturnalia that is New Orleans's Tales of the Cocktail, Max suffers the culinary déjà vu less acutely than some of his neighbors. So Max and Cold Spring native Bekah Tighe, a professional baker, decided to treat their town to a new, suitably protean eatery, the 5&10 Pop-Up.

For the benefit of those who take their meals at the microwave, a pop-up is a temporary restaurant, a fine-dining Brigadoon that appears in some unusual location for a one-night-only engagement. Max and Beckah's 5&10, named for its five-dollar cocktails and ten-dollar small plates, took over a Cold Spring pub on July 28.

McGuire's on Main is small, dark, and old-school, with embossed tin ceiling panels and a bar polished to a high sheen by innumerable elbows. A POW-MIA flag hangs above Ms. Pac-Man, and there are a jukebox, a dartboard, and a pool table. BE GOOD OR BE GONE, warns a sign. Another instructs patrons to POG MO THOIN. Doing a pop-up in a place like McGuire's solves a perennial problem: how to sample sophisticated cocktails and haute cuisine without leaving the sheltering bosom of a place like McGuire's.

It was packed by quarter after six. Max, his wife Rachael, and a couple of sweat-varnished auxiliary bartenders were shaking up cocktails just fast enough to meet demand.

There were a number of Watman originals on the menu. The Cin and Smoke, made with tequila, lime, agave nectar, and a homemade chipotle-cinnamon bitters, is destined for the canon, with its fine-tuned play of citrus and sweetness, capsaicin and smoke. (Max built it around mezcal, he says--just not for five bucks a glass.) Spiciness reared its head again in the Bourbon Snap, in the form of homemade ginger syrup. The Strawberry Rhubarb Fizz, an ice-cold gulp of lime, homemade strawberry vodka, and rhubarb bitters, was a more delicate affair, a nice breather between rounds of harder stuff.

Then again, most people were buying drinks two or three at a time, so "breather" might not be the right word.

Even the "Core Curriculum," as the menu put it, was Advanced Placement: a Manhattan with Punt e Mes substituted for drab old Martini & Rossi sweet vermouth; a crisp Martini with gin, Lillet, orange bitters, and a lemon twist; and the "Taconics," gin and rum tonics with homemade tonic syrup. A high note: Remember the Maine, the Charles H. Baxter classic, with rye, sweet vermouth, American Fruits Sour Cherry, and Herbsaint.

What to eat with tipple this fancy--and potent? It's got to be urbane without being a portion-controlled bummer. Max and Bekah's menu improves on bar food in ways both obligatory and unexpected. Crispy wings in South Asian sweet-and-spicy sauce? Nobody will argue with that. Strips of tripe slow-cooked in milk, garlic, and thyme, then fried and served with mignonette? People might argue with that, until they've tried it, after which they'll never want mozzarella sticks or calamari ever again. Bars that serve pickled eggs are an endangered species, but the 5&10 served coffee-and-stout pickled eggs, with pickled sausage, beets, and carrots.

The main-course plates were mostly surf-and-turf: hangar steak with chopped onion and mint; garlic and herb grilled shrimp; and a comely octopus and olive salad. The surprising standout, though, was a plate of gnocchi with local mushrooms and tarragon. Not only was it delicious, but it also raised the question, "Why isn't this on more late-night menus?" Pure carbs--without the stigma of a Hot Pockets SideShot.

Will the 5&10 be a regular occurrence in the Hudson Valley? Probably. Time will tell. The trick, paradoxically, might be to keep it more of a secret, like the spectral game of nine-pins in "Rip Van Winkle." Big, sweaty crowds can be fun, but it's hard to get up the nerve to order over and over again when you're afraid the waitresses might drop dead of overwork and heat exhaustion. The good news is, the 5&10 proves that pop-up restaurants, far from being just another culinary fad, can help food lovers escape the monotony of small-town dining. As Max puts it, "For the audience--and that's kind of what it feels like, a performance--it offers up something new and special. That's the challenge, too. This started as something I thought we could do for our friends. It quickly became something like a dare--we didn't know if we could make it work. Can we open a restaurant for one night?"

Clearly. Now, the Hudson Valley wants to know--how about one night a week?

All photos by Stefan Beck

Must Be Jelly: Yeaworth's The Blob

2010-10-30T14:40:11-04:00

As a woefully unproductive waste of soft tissue, I spend a great deal of my time--most of it, really--eating unhealthy foods and watching appalling movies on Instant View. Last October, in hopes of fostering the illusion of productivity while leaving my habits unchanged, I wrote up a series of dinner-and-a-horror-movie pairings for my culinary blog, The Poor Mouth. My selections included The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and tacos lengua; The Exorcist (1973) and split pea soup; Let the Right One In (2008) and Swedish meatballs; The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Texas Red; Pumpkinhead (1988) and pumpkin seed mole; Dagon (2001) and stuffed squid; and The Hills Have Eyes (1977) and chicken fried steak.

I owe this idea to my shoddy memory: I'd conflated TNT's Joe Bob Briggs-hosted MonsterVision (1993-2000, R.I.P.) with TBS's Dinner and a Movie, which first aired in 1995 and is not, alas, horror-centric. As a tribute to ol' Joe Bob, whose western shirts and bolo ties loomed so large in my adolescent consciousness, I'll reprise the feature this year for a larger audience than my Facebook friends, all of whom, to judge by their status updates, are preoccupied with child-wrangling and "wishing this cold would go away." Here are my ill-advised date-night suggestions on HuffPost Food.

* * *

It's no secret that many Hollywood stars got started in the horror business. Jamie Lee Curtis debuted in John Carpenter's Halloween (1978), and followed that up with appearances in The Fog, Prom Night, and Terror Train, all in the space of 1980. You can see Kevin Bacon in Friday the 13th (1980). Jason Alexander went to camp with the Cropsy Maniac in 1981's The Burning. Johnny Depp debuted in A Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984. One year before Jennifer Connelly starred in Labyrinth, she played a psychic child in Phenomena (1985). Jennifer Aniston went toe to toe with the Leprechaun in 1993.

For my favorite example, though, we must go back two decades earlier than Halloween. In 1958, the eventual star of The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Great Escape (1963), and The Getaway (1972) made his leading-role debut--in Irvin Yeaworth's The Blob. He was credited as Steven McQueen; at nearly thirty, he played one of the oldest teenagers I've seen outside of 90210. McQueen didn't think much of the movie, opting for $3000 cash "rather than . . . profit participation," according to this Criterion essay. But it's McQueen's performance that lends urgency and credibility--seriously!--to an otherwise unapologetically half-baked concept.

You know the score. It came from outer space!--"it" being, in this case, a meteorite containing a substance like Gushers fruit snack with an appetite of its own. It's discovered in the forest by Old Man Plot Device (Olin Howland), who accidentally gets it stuck to his hand. Steve Andrews (McQueen) and his petting-averse date Jane (Aneta Corsaut), who have seen the thing crash to earth and want to investigate (note: never, ever investigate), nearly run down the shrieking Old Timer, then take him to Dr. Hallen (Alden Chase).

Steve is sent on an errand by the Doc, and returns just in time to watch him get eaten. From there the Blob just gets bigger and bigger, while Steve tries frantically to make the police and townsfolk believe him. (Telling wild lies to the police seems to have been fairly unremarkable behavior in the golden age of juvenile delinquency.) At last the Blob, now the size of a freight car, attacks the Colonial Theater during a midnight Lugosi flick. The sight of the Blob oozing through the projection booth window is memorable not only because it's cool, which it is, but also for the heartbreaking crappiness of the miniature. They don't make pictures like this anymore, and it's a shame.

Cheesiness is more or less why I've picked this movie for Halloween weekend. Gore is good, but Halloween is about nostalgia and atmospherics. I understand that I can't feel genuine nostalgia for a time that preceded my birth by a quarter-century. But no matter your age, watching The Blob, with its humble effects, its comic-book colors, and its dangerously infectious Bacharach & David theme song, will make you wish you were snug in a '58 Caddy, preferably with a non-petting-averse date, at a moonlit drive-in theater in Spook City, U.S.A.

What's for dinner? I'm not a big fan of the grad-school approach to horror movies, in which Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) is about commies, Dawn of the Dead (1978) is about mindless consumerism, and the recent spate of torture-porn garbage is "about" renditions and waterboarding. Sure, fine, but when the subtext is written in red neon, it's kind of beside the point. Do I need to tell you that The Blob played on people's Atomic Age anxieties? (That reminds me: Don't miss the film's final line, which opens it up to a very modern climate change interpretation.)

Nevertheless, I can't resist pairing The Blob with that forgotten hero of Fifties and Sixties cuisine, the quivering, hideous blob called an aspic. Unless it's made a cameo on Mad Men--I don't recall one--most people my age have never been face to face with this creature. I borrowed a couple molds from a friend and opened my copy of The Joy of Cooking to p. 174: tomato aspic. What followed was an unqualified disaster. I'm not even going to tell you how to make it, because it's clear that I have no idea. What I was supposed to end up with is a delicate red mound of tomato gelatin filled with crab, jalapeño, yellow bell pepper, and avocado.

What went wrong? For one thing, the aspic was far less eager to leave its mold than the Blob was to leave its meteorite shell, and it mostly disintegrated in the process. For another, the mold was too small and the pieces of crab and vegetables far too large. It's obvious why this dish is rarely attempted nowadays: I understand exactly what it feels like to be a diet-pill-addled housewife who spends twelve hours on a dish, only to have it fall apart five minutes before the dinner party starts. Approach this monster with extreme caution, or get a TV dinner instead.

Beaches: Bergman's The Seventh Seal & the Wellfleet Oyster Festival

2010-10-25T16:25:18-04:00

I owe this idea to my shoddy memory: I'd conflated TNT's Joe Bob Briggs-hosted MonsterVision (1993-2000, R.I.P.) with TBS's Dinner and a Movie, which first aired in 1995 and is not, alas, horror-centric. As a tribute to ol' Joe Bob, whose western shirts and bolo ties loomed so large in my adolescent consciousness, I'll reprise the feature this year for a larger audience than my Facebook friends, all of whom, to judge by their status updates, are preoccupied with child-wrangling and "wishing this cold would go away." Check back for new ill-advised date-night suggestions on HuffPost Food through Halloween!

* * *

It was a dark and stormy night. I'd just spent close to six hours in traffic, at least some of which had been caused by an escaped kitten scampering around on I-95 outside Providence. My reward, on arriving in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, for the tenth annual Wellfleet Oyster Festival, was an old fashioned glass brimming with ice, Gosling's ginger beer, and Myer's Dark Rum.

For all the pedants out there, lurching zombie-like toward the comments section, I'm aware that the Dark 'n' Stormy (a trademark of Gosling's) is properly made with Gosling's Black Seal in a highball glass. I was in no position to care, and the following night I reprised my devil-may-care flouting of the rules by mixing a Dark 'n' Stormy with the delicious, chocolatey Kraken Black Spiced Rum.

The Kraken depicted on its bewitching, double-handled jug is a giant octopus, but the word also refers to a giant squid--in fact, to any colossal sea monster. Tennyson gave the Kraken life in this sonnet, which speaks of its "[u]nnumber'd and enormous polypi" and reassures us that, for the time being, "[t]he Kraken sleepeth." It sounds rather like Cthulhu, the half-bat, half-octopus aquatic megafauna dreamed up by Providence's favorite son, H. P. Lovecraft.

I had nautical horror on the brain all weekend. What goes with seafood, rum, and howling, wind-lashed nights blacker than a lobster's armpits? Keeping it literal, we have classics like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1956), Jaws (1975), and Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009). The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has tentacles in slippery abundance. How about John Carpenter's seaside classic The Fog (1980) or James Cameron's The Abyss (1989)? The Lovecraft fanatic might prefer Dagon (2001) or the silent short The Call of Cthulhu (2005).

At the risk of sounding unforgivably pretentious, I recommend you prepare a batch of Clams Casino or Oysters Rockefeller, whip up a pitcher of Dark 'n' Stormies, and watch Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957). It isn't a horror movie, though it does feature the bubonic plague, Death in a wetsuit, and the line "A skull is more interesting than a naked woman." Still, its beautiful beaches give Turks and Caicos a run for their money, and its striking, high-contrast imagery is Halloween to the core. (Commenters: Were Antonius Block [Max von Sydow] and Jöns [Gunnar Björnstrand] by any chance the basis for these two?)

Maybe I'm just squeamish about sea monsters. In the front matter of Moby-Dick, William Paley's Natural Theology is quoted: "The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of the water-works at London Bridge, and the water roaring in its passage through that pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity to the blood gushing from the whale's heart."

I like my seafood a bit more manageable than that. Wellfleet oysters, crassostrea virginica, are substantial, briny but not overwhelmingly so, and do not shoot geysers of blood when you bite into them. They also make for the finest oyster stew I've ever eaten--which, apart from all this, and staggering quantities of raw oysters on the half-shell, is the best feature of the Festival.

I've tried unsuccessfully to determine how the stew is made--the stew-masters are secretive, and will cop to nothing but the use of "a little salt and pepper"--but I can say confidently that the trick is not skimping on butter, cream . . . or oysters. Eight dollars will get you more and fatter oysters in a cup of Wellfleet stew than twice that would get you in any restaurant, unless my brine-addled mind was playing tricks on me. You can fill any remaining stomach volume with sausage, roasted sweet corn dusted with sea salt and Old Bay, fried dough, and clam cakes. And remember, never eat an oyster with a funky smell, or chances are you'll find yourself sprawled on the beach, bargaining with Death--and it won't involve a friendly game of chess.

Wrap Party: Freund's The Mummy and Baba Ghanoush

2010-10-16T11:56:59-04:00

Is it safe to say that, after Suspiria and The Beyond, we could all use a breather? I, for one, have had my fill of sadistic, stomach-knotting violence for, oh, at least the next couple days. (Nothing puts a damper on one's culinary enthusiasm like watching a dozen eyeballs get popped out like grapes from their peels.) So let's take a little trip back through the gauzy mists of time, to the studio era, when horror was beautiful, mellow, and unlikely to disturb either one's sleep or one's appetite.

I've seen Tod Browning's Dracula (1931), starring Bela Lugosi, more times than I can count. The same goes for James Whale's Frankenstein (1931), which, in any case, doesn't hold a cobwebbed candelabrum to Mel Brooks's classic Young Frankenstein (1974). But I realized that I had a gap -- a gaping, festering hole, in fact -- in my horror education. I'd never seen The Mummy (1932), starring Boris Karloff and directed by Karl Freund, the cinematographer of Browning's Dracula and a member of the cinematography team responsible for Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927).

I mentioned needing a breather: Now consider the makeup session Karloff called "the most trying ordeal I have ever endured." You've read about how the ancient Egyptians made their mummies; here's how Universal Studios did it. As Gregory William Mank's Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: The Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration (2009) relates:

The 11:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M. transformation took place in [Jack P.] Pierce's cosmetology sanctuary, where a photograph of King Seti II served as a model. Pierce pinned back Boris's ears, dampened his face and covered every facial area (including eyelids) with thin cotton strips, covered the cotton with collodion and went to work with spirit gum and an electric drying machine... Boris's only pleasures during the procedure: a cigarette and tea. The makeup application made speech virtually impossible and the star had to pantomime every time he wanted a fresh smoke. Then came beauty clay slicking back the actor's hair... 22 different colors of makeup covering the actors face, hands, and arms, 150 yards of acid-rotted linen (passed through an oven, so it looked decayed), bandages taped in the body joints so that the star could move, and a dusting of Fuller's earth.

Well, here's the big reveal: Karloff appears as a mummy for about five minutes, in the first scene. He doesn't even kill anyone as a mummy. A young archaeologist named Norton (Bramwell Fletcher) reads a forbidden papyrus; the mummy awakens; the mummy takes his papyrus back, and takes off. Norton dissolves into hysterical laughter -- which is impressively painful to listen to -- and we're later told that he "died laughing -- in a straitjacket." That's the last we see of this or any mummy. The next time we encounter Karloff, the resurrected priest Imhotep, he is a "modern" Egyptian named Ardath Bey, who wears a fez and a veritable Lone Ranger mask of kohl.

Watching Freund's Mummy is an amusing object lesson in just how much the American moviegoer's expectations have changed. Apart from the opening scene, for which Karloff nearly suffocated, there are virtually no special effects. There are no 3-D scarab beetles. If you were expecting a walking ACE® bandage, you were probably thinking of a different movie.

This Mummy is a love story with a horror flick trying to claw its way out. Without giving up too much in the way of plot, I can say that Imhotep's chief concern is being reunited with the reincarnation of an Egyptian princess for whom he defied the gods thirty-seven centuries earlier. He speaks slowly, is scrupulously polite, and can make you obey by staring very hard (not unlike someone else I know). Depending on how much you appreciate old-school filmmaking, you'll find him either unforgettably frightening or about as menacing as a sulky cab driver.

Charles Taylor on Salon.com made the case for the former back in 2000, calling The Mummy

"the most dreamlike and creepily erotic of horror films... With skin dried to look like parchment, Karloff's Imhotep is a nightmare vision of sexual desire that persists even as the body decays. Delicately and masterfully lighted, the film is a languorous classic of perverse romanticism."

With all due respect, I remain unconvinced. The Mummy is a clumsy, albeit entertaining, look at how horror has evolved over the years -- but where Dracula is eternal, this guy is really starting to show his age.

What's for dinner? The New Best Recipe instructs us that

"[i]n Middle Eastern countries, baba ghanoush is served as part of a meze platter.. which might feature salads, various dips, small pastries, meats, olives, other condiments, and, of course, bread. The driving force behind baba ghanoush is grill-roasted eggplant, sultry and rich. The dip's beguiling creaminess and haunting flavor come from tahini (sesame paste) enhanced with a bit of garlic and brightened with both fresh lemon juice and parsley."

I won't say baba ghanoush is more beguiling and haunting than The Mummy, but it's a close-run race. To make the dip, roast two large eggplants at 500° for an hour, flipping them every fifteen minutes. Let the eggplants cool before scooping out the yellow pulp and draining it in a colander. Move it to a food processor, and add a tablespoon of real lemon juice, a large minced garlic clove, two tablespoons of tahini, and salt and pepper. Process for about ten seconds, refrigerate for one hour, and serve with parsley, a little pool of olive oil, and pita wedges. Some people (e.g., me) are mildly allergic to eggplant; to prevent my baba ghanoush from liquefying and draining my insides, I balanced it with this delicious digestive-friendly hummus.

The Murders in the Roux Morgue: Fulci's The Beyond & Creole Gumbo

2010-10-08T11:31:27-04:00

Last week, to inaugurate my Halloween movie-and-food series, I presented Huffington Post readers with as unappetizing a combination as I could think of: Dario Argento's 1977 Suspiria and Beef Heart alla Soffritto. Today we return to the world of orrore Italiano--horror gory enough to make a Borgia wince--with Lucio Fulci's The Beyond (1981). I must admit, when I picked Fulci's flick for this week's lesson, I didn't know what I was getting myself into. My friend Neil, with whom I've been attending horror conventions for years, had a Beyond poster tacked up in his bedroom in high school, so I assumed I'd seen the movie and forgotten it. I was mistaken. You don't forget The Beyond without some very expensive therapy.

I had seen Fulci's Zombie (1979), famous for its surprisingly convincing zombie versus shark fight scene, and considered pairing it with citrus-marinated mako steak. I wish I had; it would have meant I could skip The Beyond. Unfortunately, like a zombie, I'm always thinking with my stomach, and I had a hankering for some bayou cuisine.

Louisiana has long been a favorite gothic setting. The Last Exorcism and the wildly popular True Blood are fine recent examples of the bayou's persistent appeal. Perhaps you've read, or watched, Interview with a Vampire. Perhaps you've blown a few bucks on a New Orleans ghost tour or a "monkey and cock" voodoo fetish; perhaps you've been relieved of your wallet by a charming local in Saint Louis Cemetery #1.

All this belongs to the Big Cheesy, as far as Fulci is concerned. Instead of giving us vampires or voodoo, he goes straight to the source: The Beyond's setting, the dilapidated, plantation-style Seven Doors Hotel, sits on one of the seven gates to hell. This is established in a sepia-toned opening sequence--in 1927, everything was sepia-toned--in which a painter named Schweick is crucified in the hotel by a mob convinced that he's a "warlock."

Decades later, Europe is inspired to record an unforgettable rock classic, and the hotel is inherited by a young woman named Liza (Catriona MacColl), who hopes to renovate and reopen it. So it's a lot like the 1986 Tom Hanks classic The Money Pit, except with gouged-out eyes (a Fulci specialty), morgue mayhem, hungry tarantulas, crucifixions, demons, zombies, and a pretty spooky matte painting of hell. Oh, and a blind woman gets mauled by her own guide dog. Your typical screwball comedy.

What's for dinner? The truth is, unless you're a serious gore aficionado, you don't want to visit The Beyond. Stick with Sookie or Lestat or, I don't know, Easy Rider. But you do want to try The New Best Recipe's fantastic Creole-style shrimp and sausage gumbo. I made the easiest version, the one without okra or filé; I also had to substitute spicy Italian sausage for andouille. First, get a pound and a half of small to medium shrimp. Bring the shells, and four and a half cups of water, to a boil over medium-high heat. Turn down to medium-low and simmer twenty minutes, then remove the shells and add a cup of clam juice and three and a half cups of ice water. That's your stock--now set it aside.

Next, the roux. In a Dutch oven, heat a half-cup of vegetable oil over medium-high heat, to about 200°. Turn the heat to medium and stir in a half-cup of flour very, very slowly over the course of twenty minutes. Don't stop for any reason! If you suspect your glorious liquid mahogany is burning, take it off the heat for a bit, but keep that wooden spoon moving.

Add the "holy trinity" (Creole for mirepoix), in this case two finely chopped onions, one diced bell pepper, and one diced stalk of celery. Add six gloves pressed garlic, as well as cayenne, salt, and pepper to your liking (I think the Best Recipe skimps on cayenne). Keep stirring for ten minutes, and don't worry, it's supposed to be a thick, stubborn paste. Drizzle in one quart of stock while stirring hard, and then dump in the rest. Add a couple bay leaves, simmer and skim for thirty minutes; add as much sausage as you please, simmer for thirty minutes; add shrimp, cook five minutes; serve over rice, with a Sazerac, an Abita, or a foaming goblet of Tabasco sauce.

Heart & Soul: Dario Argento's Suspiria

2010-10-01T09:21:39-04:00

I owe this idea to my shoddy memory: I'd conflated TNT's Joe Bob Briggs-hosted MonsterVision (1993-2000, R.I.P.) with TBS's Dinner and a Movie, which first aired in 1995 and is not, alas, horror-centric. As a tribute to ol' Joe Bob, whose western shirts and bolo ties loomed so large in my adolescent consciousness, I'll reprise the feature this year for a larger audience than my Facebook friends, all of whom, to judge by their status updates, are preoccupied with child-wrangling and "wishing this cold would go away." Check back for a new ill-advised date-night suggestion every Friday from today until Halloween!

* * *And now, for our feature presentation: Dario Argento's Suspiria (1977). In brief, Suspiria is about a young woman, Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper), who has the misfortune to enroll in a dance academy run by a coven of witches. If this sounds to you like some new thousand-page bestseller for tweens, you've got a few surprises ahead of you, like Entertainment Weekly's nomination for "the most vicious murder scene ever filmed." I won't even mention the broken window, the maggots, or the piano wire. For what it's worth, Jessica Harper seems to have devoted her entire post-Suspiria career to thinking happy thoughts.

Despite several grisly scenes, Suspiria, which takes its name from Thomas de Quincey's Suspiria de Profundis, is not schlock. Schlock rarely boasts so singular--albeit not quite beautiful--an aesthetic. The film is shot in such luridly saturated color that it looks like a stained glass window come to life; Argento has said of the film's production that he was "trying to reproduce the color of Walt Disney's Snow White; it has been said from the beginning that Technicolor lacked subdued shades, was without nuances--like cut-out cartoons." Some of Suzy's fellow dancers would look at home in a Klimt painting.

Though the acting frequently leaves something to be desired, the film never plays its deficiencies, or its nightmarish absurdities, for laughs. You will search in vain for anything like comic relief in Suspiria: To quote from its promotional material, "The only thing more terrifying than the last 12 minutes of this film are the first 92." These days, it's not unusual to hear a hipster name-check Argento with the proprietary reverence once reserved for a Fellini or a Bergman. Nevertheless, on the assumption that most readers haven't seen Suspiria a few dozen times, I'll say no more about the plot. Just watch it--and then wash your eyeballs thoroughly with soap and warm water.

What's for dinner? For the cocktail portion, I'm recommend something profondo rosso like a Manhattan or, better yet, a Bella Ruffina. (There's also red wine, of course, but I guarantee you know more about that than I do.) For the entrée, with special thanks to the Colavita archive, here's a treat that may be as unfamiliar as Suspiria: Beef Heart alla Soffritto. It's difficult to find good beef heart recipes, and I pondered weak and weary over about twenty Italian cookbooks at my local library before deciding to settle on an Internet recipe. This dish, unlike other stuff I've prepared with beef heart, is anything but ghastly--a delicious, low-calorie, and inexpensive sauce to enjoy with the pasta of your choice. It's also easy to make.

First, procure a cow's heart. One should do the trick, unless you're having a big horror-themed dinner party, in which case you ought to spring for something fancier than beef heart. Rinse the heart thoroughly. It looks pretty awful, with its stringy "membranes" and hard, white, waxy fat deposits, but remind yourself that at least it's muscle and not organ meat. Simmer for one and a half to two hours. When the heart is tender, cut off every hint of white--this is health food, remember?--and anything else you wouldn't want to put in your mouth. Cube the remainder. I like pieces about the size of the carrots in a frozen vegetable medley. Sauté a chopped onion and a minced garlic clove in olive oil. Add the pieces of heart, tomato paste (I recommend more than Colavita's recommended six ounces), dried basil and oregano, and at least one cup of water. Simmer for a half hour. And, for God's sake, eat this before you watch the movie, or you won't want to eat it at all.

The Grog Days of Summer (PHOTOS)

2010-09-01T17:35:38-04:00

We are well and truly living in the Last Days.

True, I tend to start complaining about summer's imminent demise about a week after the Fourth of July. I'm an hourglass-half-empty type, and without a solid two months of summer fun stretching out before me, all I can think about are encroaching darkness, extortionary heating bills, and medicating my SAD with tearful candy corn binges. Now autumn is days away. How best to wring that final cocktail of salt water, citrus juice, and Panama Jack tanning oil from summer 2010?

"In the depth of winter," Albert Camus wrote, "I learned that within me there lay an invincible summer." He might have been channeling my old pal Mike Stutzman, whose passion for all things tiki informed much of my summer fun this year. Recently, after having browsed in Trader Vic's Tiki Party! (2005), I marinated a cha siu pork tenderloin, bought a fat sack of limes, and took the train to Mike's place in New Haven.

He seems like a mild-mannered poet and teacher, but step into his cabana and you've entered, with apologies to Ferlinghetti, the Cook Islands of the Mind. A glass cabinet of tiki mugs sits, imposing as an Easter Island mo'ai, against the far wall of the dining room. An antique shortwave radio serves as bar, where the visitor finds, among much else, an assortment of fancy-schmancy rums. Here and there one glimpses Mike's piratical, one-eyed cat, Willie.

The impression that Mike must have multiple graduate degrees in the Leisure Arts is strengthened by a peek into his office, a veritable museum of tobacco pipes, tins, and packets. But the proof is in Mike's cocktail-making expertise. Mike and his sister Annie and I shared a pitcher of Navy Grog and one of Painkillers, ate a tenderloin marinated in equal parts sugar, ketchup, hoisin sauce, and soy sauce (then sliced, garnished with toasted sesame seeds--which he just happened to have!--and dunked in Chinese hot mustard), and slipped into a hibiscus-scented reverie. As the Stutzmans and I are old friends, we didn't spend much time talking about the theory and praxis of tikiculture. I saved that for email.

Who is Trader Vic? What does he have to do with the tiki gestalt?

Trader Vic--Victor Bergeron--ran an eponymous chain of restaurants that became the quintessential representations of post-WWII tiki and exotica culture: tiki mugs, bamboo décor, a good strong rum drink, Martin Denny soundtrack, and the proverbial "whole lot of crazy crap on the walls." Vic invented the Mai Tai; any claims otherwise are god damned lies, to paraphrase the man himself. He and rival tikitrepreneur Donn "The Beachcomber" Beach (né Gantt) lay claim to creating or perfecting most of the "tropical" drinks we associate with tiki culture.

Your Navy Grog was delicious. Can you explain what grog is, and what's so naval about it?

As Wayne Curtis writes in And a Bottle of Rum (2006), the first rums were essentially distilled industrial waste, the molasses left over from refining sugarcane. It was the Navy tot of choice as it wouldn't spoil in the barrel, but would quite efficiently spoil the livers and brain cells of sailors. Grog was a way to make the rum ration more palatable and less fierce: dilute with water, sweeten (if sugar was on hand), and add citrus to ward off scurvy. Some variety of it was served aboard each of Her Majesty's fleet until the rum ration was ended in the 1970s.

I'm not a fan of specialty glassware, but naturally I'll make an exception for tiki mugs. Now, what are they?

Tiki mugs are meant as homage to the stone and wood statues found throughout Polynesia, Micronesia, and Oceania. Depending where you go, "tiki" is a first-man character, a male fertility symbol, and/or a collective noun for that sort of mythic character and its figural representation. Most contemporary tiki mugs, though, are original designs in the style of other tiki mugs. It's a bit postmodern, which is why copious drinking helps one's understanding of the subject.

How did your tiki passion get started? And what's that weird bowl that your grandfather gave you?

I come by it honestly, I suppose. The Red Cross Blood Bank informed my father that he has a blood factor usually found only in Pacific Islanders. My mother went into labor with me performing "Hawaiian War Dance" whilst watching Sha Na Na. And being raised Jewish, I spent many hours in old-school Chinese-American restaurants, a hotbed of tiki drinks. So when I was gifted a four-pack of tiki mugs in college, it was really fulfilling my destiny. Overdoing it followed.

That bowl is an authentic kava bowl, from the Marshall Islands, I believe. It's used to mix a mildly hallucinogenic tisane made from kava, a cousin of the pepper plant. It tastes, as my grandfather reported, like dishwater.

Walk me through those Painkillers you made. (I think I have the name right. At first I
remembered it as "Paint Thinners.")

Painkillers are, it turns out, a registered trademark of Pusser's brand rum, and as it happens I used a Cruzán amber rum instead. So strictly speaking, we were drinking a Painkiller-inspired cocktail . . . let us call it, for argument's sake, the Paracetamol. That would be one part each OJ and Crème of Coconut, two-plus parts amber rum (very plus for us), and four parts pineapple juice, garnished with fresh-grated nutmeg. It's what a Piña Colada ought to be--a little more forward with the rum flavor, and its bouquet not so reminiscent of suntan lotion.

Suppose one is in a state of crippling anguish over the end of summer, and hoping to go out with a tiki-themed bang. What do I need?

If there are Mai-Tais, or better yet, cocktails designed for multiple drinkers (like the Scorpion Bowl), guests are usually game, but hospitality comes first: If you know your guests will want beer, or martinis, or soft drinks, get plenty of 'em. (Though perhaps you could convince them to pour their Schaefer into a tiki mug, of which you should also have many on hand.)

You'll need pupus (finger food). Asian appetizers are de rigueur for a tiki party--spare ribs, dumplings, Korean BBQ, satay skewers, etc. I like to add in some Hawaiian dishes like poke (a cousin of ceviche) or lau-lau. Spam is also Hawaii's adopted meat product of choice--a Spam musubi (rice ball) is real Local Style. If you can find poi, go for it--almost everyone is curious how it tastes, and inevitably one person will adore it and finish the bowl.

Of the remaining "luau" trappings, I run a bit conservative. Tiki torches are good, especially filled with functional citronella oil. But plastic leis will give your guests itchy necks. I learned this the hard way. Hours of Arthur Lyman-style exotica and slack-key guitar music get lost in the background--as with drinks, generously mix in music that will make the guests happy. Of course, if someone plays ukulele, they should absolutely bring it along. Most of all, you need people. It won't be a proper hukilau without plenty of guests.

We're conversing for an Internet audience, and the commenters usually manage to find something to be upset about. How do you respond to the inevitable charges that tiki is an insulting, reductive appropriation of Polynesian culture?

I'd say have a drink, and try not to overthink it. Most of what tiki culture borrows from other cultures--Pacific, Asian, Caribbean--is just another version of the stuff we all love: good food, drink, music, hospitality. Yes, the mugs themselves are inspired by a style of figural carving that's used for subjects that include mythic figures, as something beautiful and evocative of place. Recreating and re-imagining cultural touchstones can be tacky, sure, but it's not appropriation any more than a Great Pyramid of Giza paperweight is grave robbery. It's a souvenir of tourism, not the spoils of war.

I also like the idea that despite wave after wave of missionaries to the Pacific islands, smashing statues and preaching doctrine, tiki has survived as part of our culture that embraces intemperance, leisure, and good-natured idolatry.

Meatopia: Meat-Up on Governors Island (PHOTOS)

2010-07-28T15:10:49-04:00

As of this writing, Google returns about 21,700 hits for "bacon-flavored condom." How do I happen to know this? I just thought of the stupidest possible use for bacon, and then dared the Internet to come up empty-handed. My suspicion about the long-lived and very tiresome bacon craze is that the rise of vegetarianism and veganism, dietary choices often (but by no means always) promoted by the smug and priggish, has lent meat-eating a kind of roguish cachet, like letting your child go to play-date without his elbow pads. In New York City, anyway.

At the first-ever Meatopia, a food festival hosted by Josh Ozersky (a James Beard Award-winning food writer and the author of The Hamburger: A History), Robert Richter (the pit master of Fatty 'Cue), and Jimmy Carbone (Good Beer Month Founder and Taste of Tribeca Co-Chair) on Governors Island, July 11, I spotted a t-shirt reading MEAT IS MURDER. TASTY, TASTY MURDER. Did I find this funny? Of course. Did I appreciate the sentiment? You bet, although I do think this shirt is pithier.

Still, a part of me wishes to go back to that prelapsarian time when meat-eating was taken for granted--when people just ate their bacon, instead of crafting it into Star Wars memorabilia. The last time anybody made a decent joke about meat was 258 A.D., when St. Lawrence was roasted on a gridiron by the Roman Emperor Valerian. Lawrence is said to have quipped (okay, shrieked), "Assum est, inquit, versa et manduca!" ("This side's done, flip me over and dig in!") Not for nothing is he the patron saint of comedians and spareribs.

Meat is nothing to laugh at, though it's certainly something to sniff at. We ought to eat as much of it as possible, without the self-conscious pride of defying the nanny-statist health nuts or sanctimonious cow-huggers. It should be our daily bread.

Well, the stuff on offer at Meatopia was not meat in that quotidian sense. There was no North Carolina chopped barbecue, no Kansas City ribs, no Texas Red, and certainly no pre-formed, shrink-wrapped, Grade-Z burger patties. This was meat imitating art, and I hope I'm not betraying my common-manly sensibilities when I report that it was pretty damned delicious.

Preposterously long lines and a distracting beverage tent, featuring a variety of beers from Sixpoint Craft Ales, made it impossible to try everything, but I made a decent effort. Seamus Mullen of Boqueria (53 W 19th; 212-255-4160), one of around thirty chefs featured at Meatopia (and the t-shirt culprit), roasted a whole lamb, a glassy-eyed dinosaur that looked as malevolent in death as it must have looked peaceful and fluffy in life. He also sold slices, below cost, of a black-hoofed leg of Jámon Ibérico de Bellota, acorn-fed cured ham he claimed to have smuggled into the States in a suitcase.

High Plains Bison, the "Official Lean Meat of the Chicago Cubs," offered little Styrofoam cups of sliced bison steak with a kimchi salsa, thus combining the bragging rights of a meat I'd never eaten with the reliable pleasure of anything involving kimchi. The bison itself is touted as a lean alternative to beef, but cooked slowly, barbecue-style, it doesn't let on that it's any healthier. It doesn't let on that it's any different, either, but that didn't bother me much.

Chipotle Mexican Grill isn't an outfit I'd expect to see at a fancy meat festival, but I'm glad it was there. Its carne asada tacos, prepared with Niman Ranch beef, were proof that people who reflexively declare franchise food inferior are not thinking with their tongues. (All of Chipotle's pork comes from the Oakland-based Niman Ranch, though I didn't catch and don't especially care whether the same is true of the beef--though it was excellent beef.)

Akhtar Nawab of La Esquina (114 Kenmare; 646-613-7100) served up roasted Fudge Farms pork shoulder, marinated with "leche condensada, eqazote [sic], ajo, y naranjas." Let me translate: condensed milk, epazote (About.com: "a Mexican herb that has a very strong taste and sometimes a gasoline or perfumey type odor"--gasoline or perfumey?), garlic, and orange.

This didn't leave a very powerful impression on me, and I regret that many of the more basic-sounding pork tastings had run out or developed formidable lines by the time I got to them. I'd have picked a slow-cooked pig over any number of sophisticated bilingual marinades.

High marks to The Meatball Shop (84 Stanton; 212-982-8895) for its mini meatball salad with white beans and watercress, a dish seemingly designed to be as un-manly as possible while still including meat. I suspect I gravitated toward it to test the mettle of Meatopia's wussier-sounding offerings. Mini meatball salad! Sounds a bit like Spaghetti-Os, doesn't it? Well, I couldn't pick a wood-grilled Bell and Evans chicken out of a line-up, but I can attest that it yields a remarkable meatball. Friends, there is no shame in loving a mini meatball salad.

The list of things I didn't get to eat includes, among many other fleshly delights, pecan-smoked short ribs, smoked duck tacos, char-grilled English lamb chops, and a baron of beef (which is not, as I initially guessed, a figure from McDonaldland's feudal past), and all I can do now is linger tearfully over my photos. I leave you with this final thought: Meatopia was terrific, I daresay inspiring -- albeit a bit undersupplied -- but meat-eating doesn't need to be a special occasion, an indulgence, a guilty pleasure. Just as paradise is a state of mind, Meatopia can and should be your own kitchen, every single day of the year. Vaya con carne.

What Deaner Was Talkin' About: Sausage King, R.I.P.

2010-07-08T14:54:15-04:00

Jimmy Dean, who died last month aged 81, may be out of the news cycle, but he's lodged in the lining of my heart as firmly as a small piece of Polish sausage. You see, thanks to a strange concatenation of events, Mr. Dean recently (sort of, maybe) saved my life. Allow me to explain.

A few years ago, when I first took an interest in preparing and eating foods other than sardines, croutons, and March of Dimes gumballs, a friend bought me a Bass Pro Shops Sausage Kit. I suspect his intention was to steer my new hobby away from creme brulee and polenta and toward the more gender-appropriate piles of ground meat. I'd already inherited an antique meat grinder, so I should have been all set.

Unfortunately, not only am I lazy, but I also have trouble assembling anything more complex than a Duplo set. Plus, I spent much of 2009 living out of my car. So, until June, the sausage-stuffing apparatus sat in a mildewed box in my trunk. It wasn't until I'd settled down in southern Connecticut, the Fertile Crescent of hot dogs, that I decided it was time to pump my own casings full of coarsely ground pork shoulder and tenderloin.

Upon googling "sausage," I learned that Jimmy Dean, the man whose name has long been linked with tube steak, had just shuffled off this greasy coil while watching TV at his home in Varina, Virginia. This was no coincidence, I thought--it was synchronicity, almost as though the spirit of Mr. Dean was passing me the torch.

On a sunny afternoon I began carrying the components of my sausage stuffer out to the porch for a photo op. In short order I became distracted (by meat) and started doing something (eating meat) in my kitchen, leaving my front door ajar. Through a window I saw that an unsavory-looking character had noticed the open door and then, instead of minding his own business, decided to make a beeline for it.

If you ever have to chase a would-be intruder off your porch, it helps to have a forty-pound elbow pipe handy. My visitor, who didn't appear to be selling Mormonism, Thin Mints, or magazine subscriptions, jumped backwards into the driveway, lamely offered that he was "looking for a Band-Aid," and beat a cringing retreat. Repelling the invasion made me feel manly enough; doing it with a sausage-stuffing machine made me feel like the Duke, the Gipper, and Conan the Barbarian, all rolled into one.

I celebrated victory by stuffing my first breakfast sausage. The process is somewhat intimidating, but once you've got the hang of it, you'll wonder why this skill isn't taught as early as Kindergarten. It is, after all, one of those "rewarding hobbies" likely to "keep kids off the street," to say nothing of the fact that it makes a breakfast far superior to Fruity Pebbles. Ingredients-wise, all one needs are pork, kosher salt (i.e., non-iodized; nothing about this will be kosher), cracked or ground pepper, sage, thyme, paprika, and whatever else you want in in there. Adjust proprortions to your taste, but please try to use common sense.

As Mr. Dean once put it in an ad, according to his obit in the New York Times, "Sausage is a great deal like life. You get out of it what you put into it." I recommend ground cayenne or ancho peppers.

The stuffing (n.) is a simple matter. Just grind it, chill it, and grind it again, working in the spices with your hands. The stuffing (v.) is really a trial and error deal. First you'll need natural hog casings, which come with the Pro Shops kit. These look like shredded, nicotine-stained latex gloves out of a horror movie. Also, they'll be totally encrusted in salt, so remember to soak (at least a half hour) and rinse them prior to use. Pull a strand of casing over the extruder pipe of your stuffer. The casing looks too small for this, but, as you'll soon learn, it can stretch to truly unsettling dimensions.

Depress the plunger slowly. The casing will survive a fair amount of pressure, but overeagerness may result in misshapen or even ruptured links. Use your hands to slide the meat down the casing until an agreeable form is achieved. You can tie knots in the casing ends themselves, or around the ends with butcher's twine. Refrigerate your links if you aren't eating them immediately (you are, aren't you?), and freeze them if you don't plan to finish them in a few days.

I prepared breakfast sausage as an offering to the great spirit of Jimmy Dean, but of course there are innumerable varieties with which to experiment: bangers (U.K.), chorizo, andouille, boudin noir, and, of course, good old franks.

Excrabaganza: A Crab Quest on the Atlantic Coast

2010-05-30T06:17:57-04:00

People collect all sorts of crap: matchbooks, stamps, campaign buttons, shot glasses, G.I. Joes, telegraph line insulators, taxidermy, Hummels, Klingon weaponry, even gently used underwear. I collect U.S. states. I've dreamed of having my own road show; it'd be called "Food Gas Longing," and I'd sign off every episode "with Slim Jim wishes and Gatorade dreams." Since I don't have any sponsors, it's been slow going, but in April I logged my forty-third state--South Carolina.

Every state I've seen has been by car. Traveling to Charleston and Edisto Island from Connecticut (one of the nine states I've called home, for readers tempted to picture me in madras shorts and a Vineyard Vines ascot) meant passing through old favorites, most notably Delaware, Virginia, and North Carolina.

Along this route I can recommend, for starters, Sambo's Tavern (283 Front St; 302-674-9724) in Leipsic, Delaware. About Sambo's, which I didn't visit on this outing, my friend John B-- wrote, "Pictures of every NASCAR driver of the early 1990s ring the dining room. . . . [T]he crabs make it. High quality, fresh, local crabs. We got our dozen for $35 and had a fun afternoon banging them with mallets and washing down the brine with lager." (Yuengling, in these parts.) Sambo's was my introduction to crab croquet. I can report that a basket of salt-encrusted blue crabs is a meal like no other. In heaven, these will be the bar snack, mark my words.

In Virginia, I spent the night on Chincoteague Island, renowned for its population of wild ponies, immortalized by Marguerite Henry in Misty of Chincoteague (1947), Sea Star, Orphan of Chincoteague (1949), and others. I can't vouch for Ms. Henry's oeuvre, with which I'm unfamiliar; Publishers Weekly had hard words for the "grating overuse of exclamation points" in her "disappointing" novel Brown Sunshine of Sawdust Valley (1998). I can promise that the sight of raggedy, ruminative feral ponies in the adjacent Assateague Island State Park is nothing short of magical.

Chincoteague is underwhelming in the off-season. Most restaurants are closed, and one's inner animal-rights fanatic may be awakened by the sight of ponies penned up on commercial property--presumably for those vacationers more intrigued by soft-serve and souvenirs than a patient foray into the state park. But there's serviceable seafood, and I suspect it only gets better in the summertime. Try Bill's Seafood Restaurant (4040 Main St; 757-336-5831), an unpretentious spot ("honey, there's nothing wrong with the butter--it's cheese spread") which boasts a classic oyster stew with Virginia ham, and a generous shellfish "tower," which will be removed from its display stand as soon as you've had a moment to admire it. The stone crab claws and raw oysters are fat and fresh.

When leaving Chincoteague, one should be vigilant for peanut stands. Boiled peanuts (or "balt peanuts," as they're called in Tennessee) are exactly what they sound like: raw peanuts boiled in salt water. They're sold self-serve in Ziploc along some of the less-trafficked byways. A welcome alternative to Slim Jims.

I'll mention Wilmington, North Carolina's Firebelly Lounge (265 North Front St; 910-763-0141) in passing, because I don't remember what I ate there--not the frog legs, which a waiter warned me were a novelty food that tastes just like . . . etc. Firebelly is of interest primarily because it offers generous portions (of whatever I ate) and because Steve Buscemi was stabbed there while filming something with Vince Vaughn. Just don't leave Wilmington without marveling at its well-stocked Serpentarium, where no one will prevent you from taunting a King Cobra until it tries to bite you through the glass.

The highlight of this route is the SeeWee Restaurant in Awendaw, South Carolina (4808 U.S. 17; 843-928-3609‎), technically inside the Francis Marion State Park. SeeWee is no secret, having been promoted by Jane and Michael Stern of Roadfood fame, but it deserves all the enthusiastic publicity it can get. Be sure to get fried oysters, fried shrimp, fried okra, fried green tomatoes, macaroni and cheese, butter beans, collard greens, hush puppies, Nehi grape soda, banana pudding, and, best of all, she-crab soup. The soup comes with a NyQuil cup of sherry, to mix in to one's taste.

Summer is soft-shell crab season, as many readers are doubtless aware. I scored only one soft crab, in Charleston, at the Amen Street Fish and Raw Bar (205 East Bay St; 843-853-8600). This may be a tourist magnet--though not on the order of the Myrtle-worthy Noisy Oyster or A.W. Shuck's--but if it is, that's fine by me, because what am I if not a professional tourist? I ordered a deep-fried crab with a succotash of bacon and corn, and the second thing I did upon returning home, after preparing an alligator steak bought on Edisto Island, was buy five soft-shell blue crabs and go to town on them.

A quick guide to eating this summery delicacy:

A soft-shell crab is one that's molting. If you live on the Atlantic Coast, the soft-shell crabs you'll find at your local fish market are blue crabs. It's best to buy these live, but it can be hard to tell if they are, as they'll come out of a fridge, barely moving (if at all), and will not snap at you like a lobster. As long as they've been refrigerated, it doesn't matter if they're essentially dead. They should be cleaned as close to dinnertime as possible.

Cleaning a soft-shell crab is faith-shaking. You'll need to shear the crab's face off with scissors. Don't be alarmed by its bloodcurdling scream . . . no, really, it's probably dead, and even if it's not, it won't run around like a chicken does when you cut its head off. It's definitely incapable of running around. You'll need to strip its gills, the feathery things under the shell that look like you wouldn't want to eat them. You'll also need to yank off the "apron," the panel on the ass-end of the crab's underbelly.

Bread the crab in a mixture of egg, flour, cornmeal, and special seasoning--a little salt and cayenne pepper, or Cajun spice. Fry it in oil or butter, about four minutes on each side. For a Gullah-style sandwich, serve the crab on a roll with lettuce, tomato, black pepper, and seasoned mayo.

And check out Max Watman's grilled soft-shell crab post and recipes.

The Most Disappointing Game: A Muskrat Ramble in Smyrna, Delaware (PHOTOS)

2010-04-26T09:35:51-04:00

Some time ago, a friend of mine chewed my ear off about an "Australian delicacy" introduced to her by an Oz-born colleague. (The friend in question lives in Brooklyn and, like many Brooklyners, seeks out culinary oddities with the fervor once reserved for philately or numismatics.) You prepare potatoes, carrots, and cabbage, she said, and then let them sit out overnight--breathing, as it were. Then you fashion them into a sort of crepe, and--wait, I said, is this Bubble and Squeak? The British Empire's traditional alternative to a compost heap?

An aspiring food pedant myself, this encounter gave me pause. Is there nothing, I wondered, so nauseating--or, as in this case, merely unfamiliar--that those of us raised on tuna noodle casserole and its dim-witted twin, creamed tuna on toast, won't shell out for the privilege of choking it down?

In the few years since I began to consider food a hobby, I've gorged on bull testicles (less prairie oyster than prairie calamari, and not especially noteworthy); kokoretsi (Greek for "intestines wrapped in innards"); beef tacos lengua (tongue) and cabeza (cheeks, lips); beef tripe; calf liver in abundance; lamb kidneys; pig ears and tails; roasted beef marrow bones; chicken gizzards; alligator; minnows; &c. &c.

That isn't a boast. You couldn't throw a bicycle lock in Bushwick without killing someone who'd sampled all that plus live octopus, hákarl (putrefied Greenlandic shark), and, I don't know, elk eyelids cured in antifreeze. Why, then, when everyone and his bro are connoisseurs of offal, sommeliers of the animal kingdom's vital juices, has Esquire published yet another piece on the pleasures of "EATING HEARTS. AND BRAINS. AND MAYBE BALLS"?

Tom Junod's essay, "Those Parts," in the April Esquire is, by and large, delightful. It includes a terrific (-sounding--I haven't tried it yet) recipe for kidneys. It describes "[t]he promotion of offal" as "the kind of 'trend' that is either celebrated or lamented among people who cogitate excessively over what the body instinctively knows--i.e., 'foodies.'"

There isn't a foodie alive who wouldn't raise a glass of snake wine or boutique white dog to that territorial sentiment, having convinced himself long ago that he alone among eaters of that kidney is not a foodie but a Natural Man. (Junod puts one foot very wrong, when he says that offal is "no longer poor people's food; it is, for one thing, expensive." Tell that to the Shop-Rite in my town, which offers more varieties of cheap offal--including head-scratchers like chicken feet and hogmaws--than the pricier Stop and Shop across the street offers cuts of meat, period.)

I think "those parts" have had enough time in the limelight.

Recently I drove to Delaware to try a particular item, mostly for the bragging rights. I've never considered the First State a hotbed of culinary adventurism, but another food-obsessed friend supplied the tip. By the end of the weekend I was sure that this item, alone among God's creatures, could check the reflexive Bourdainism that keeps many fledgling explorers, myself included, from trying that truly outré category, "expensive dishes prepared with high-quality ingredients."

"What makes the muskrat guard his musk?" asked Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion, back in 1939.

Who knows? It's not like anybody covets it--nor do many desire its flesh, which is without question the most offensive thing I've ever tried to digest. My associate and I sidled into a booth at the Wagon Wheel Family Restaurant in Smyrna, Delaware (110 South Dupont Blvd; 302-653-1457) hoping for a photo op and quick bite of a whole roasted "marsh rabbit." What we got were two heaping bowls of slow-cooked "pulled" muskrat, the meat soaking in three inches of rich, dark, salty, oleaginous broth.

"It must," I thought, "be that famous musk."

Before bringing out this prize, our waitress asked us if we'd ever tried it, and assured us we were in for a treat. Mostly the meat was like the shreds of pulled pork you leave in the crock pot, except gamier, darker, stringier. It had more bones in it than the Sedlec Ossuary, ranging in size from "recognizably mammalian" to "sardine spine" to "oyster grit." Several employees emerged to watch our faces. I recalled a passage from Kingsley Amis's Take a Girl Like You:

Mrs Thompson put a plate of fish and potatoes in front of Jenny. The fish was probably haddock, with a horny, pimply skin. There were a lot of potatoes, with some unexpected colours to be seen among them here and there. . . . All Jenny had been able to manage . . . was sucking at a few mouthfuls of fish as if they were toffees, until they were small enough to swallow. She looked down at her plate. On it was a lot of fish, haddock actually, almost as much as had been there when she began. In fact--although this could not be right--there seemed to be slightly more.

We requested Styrofoam boxes to take the rest home in. My friend told the waitress that it was nothing to do with the 'rat; he doubted that he could have finished so generous a portion of anything. She studied him with a combination of disgust and skepticism, like he'd just confessed a fondness for Gerber's stewed apples or crustless Wonder bread, and clucked, "Really?"

The next day, at Cool Springs Fish Bar & Restaurant in Dover (2463 S State St; 302-698-1955), we ate two broiled sacs of shad roe, each about the size of a piece of calves' liver. Like most offal, this sounds weirder than it is; each sac contains thousands of tiny eggs, but mostly it just tastes like fish. Driving home in darkness through the marshes, we nearly hit several muskrats errant. They didn't look like much, but we knew now what evil lurks in their tiny hearts and glands--and we knew down in our soon-to-be-detonating guts that it was time for some much better raw materials.

A Sober Conversation with Max Watman, Author of Chasing the White Dog, on the Rise of White Whiskey (PHOTOS)

2010-04-15T14:25:13-04:00

I drank my first moonshine by moonlight, squatting in a culvert behind an elastika, or tire repair shop, on the Bay of Euboea in Greece. I was surrounded by garbage, and enormous fish skeletons kept darting past my head, thrown away by the guests of the party I'd just wandered away from. I clutched to my bosom an unmarked plastic bottle of tsipouro, a spirit (more of a ghoul, really) home-distilled from pomace, the residue left over in a wine press.

I sniffed and took a pull. Then came a lot of choking and spluttering. It reminded me of being tossed into a pool as a child, had that pool been full of iced turpentine. When I returned to the States, my friend Max Watman told me he'd begun distilling moonshine in his backyard. My first thought, even before I considered the legal ramifications, was: "Why would anyone want to do that, when glorious quality-controlled booze is just a Google Map away?"

The answer, in Watman's case, is that he doesn't see the fun in taking the path of least resistance. So he set up his still, as the old song goes, a humble yet gorgeous copper Erector Set of coils and tubs, and proceeded to learn everything about white lightning, from the Whiskey Rebellion to the wretched inner-city "nip joints" of today. His new book, Chasing the White Dog, is calculated to make readers wonder, "Could I get away with that? Would it taste any good?"

Last spring I visited Max in the Hudson Valley, where he resides with his wife, son, a yard full of Araucana, Golden Laced Wyandotes, and a blue-ribbon-winning Buff Orpington hen, and the coolest clubhouse an adult male is allowed to have--a little red barn nicknamed "Kansas City," decorated with skulls, paperbacks, memorabilia from a bar once owned by Al Capone, and, of course, the still. We spent the afternoon drinking Jack Daniel's and Coors Banquet Beer, and by 2 or 3 a.m. Max was trying to convince me to get married and have kids, and I was trying to convince him to run the goddamn still already.

What happened between staggering to the corner gas station for propane and being ordered by an enraged wife to GO TO [expletive deleted] BED, ca. 4:30 a.m., remains a mystery. So I returned to the scene of the crime.

Remind me what we did with the still. I can sort of picture a copper coil, a white or maybe orange bucket, and a clear, hot liquid running directly into my mouth. Then I woke up at noon and found you downstairs with [your son], who was banging a pot with a spoon while you cradled your head in agony.

The keg stand (still stand?) was inadvisable, and I told you not to do it. It's no wonder you slept through all the early morning percussion.

Once the gear is set up, the process is pretty straightforward. You take a mash or a wash--something with an alcohol content in the neighborhood of wine or beer--and boil it slowly, catching the steam in a copper coil, which condenses the steam back into liquid. Since alcohol boils before water, you'll leave most of the water behind, and take out the alcohol. That stuff you were slurping right off the line was probably 150 proof.

What did you expect when you started White Dog, and what were the biggest surprises?

I expected something more pacific and bucolic than what I got. My research led me in strange directions, away from hillbillies, away from the Smoky Mountains. I thought I'd spend a lot of time at a party like the one in the old Mountain Dew commercial--a rope swing, a swimming hole, and cut-off blue jeans. Instead, I spent a lot of time reading federal indictments and working through evidentiary minutiae. I thought that most of the liquor I found would be good stuff made by people who wanted to carry on a mountain tradition. It's not that I didn't find any traditionalists--I did--it's just that they don't actually make much of the illicit booze floating around out there. The biggest still ever busted was a daisy-chained system of 800-gallon boilers in a building in Virginia; there were thirty-six of them. That's 28,800 gallons.

How did [your wife] take the news that you were going to be committing crimes in the backyard?

She's game. And anyway, our relationship is founded upon good-natured ribbing. Throughout the book I have a recurring joke in the footnotes--it's a kind of PSA for aspiring ne'er-do-wells--about "How to be a good criminal." When my wife edited the book, she put in her own series: "How to be a bad parent." Entries included: "Boil highly flammable liquids in the kitchen while everyone is asleep."

You write, "Most moonshine is drunk by African-Americans in unlicensed bars called nip joints or shot houses. . . ." You visited a nip joint with "Skillet," who "has been a paratrooper, a numbers runner, a crackhead, and a marijuana dealer." You also met NASCAR great Junior Johnson and learned to drive a stock car. Which of these two car quests was scarier?

I'm always more afraid of things over which I have no control. It was scarier, for instance, to be a passenger in a stock car than it was to drive one. (Clearly, I overestimate myself.) But these things are fun. They might be edgy, but they aren't scary. Alarm clocks are scary. Politics are scary. Race cars? Nip joints? That's entertainment.

You spent a fair amount of time hanging around both lawmen and moonshiners. Where do your sympathies lie now?

The lawmen I got to know impressed me a great deal. Most of the law enforcement in this country takes place after the crime has been committed. Any time you have a group of people working honestly and hard to find the bad guys, rather than simply to mop up the mess, you've got to respect them. I also visited a big, working moonshine operation. The place was very clean, very well put together, and the product they were making was very obviously high quality. It didn't have to be--it's not as if the health inspector was going to show up. But they had pride in what they do. That's the only way I can divide my sympathies.

Last year a Los Angeles Times article criticized the genre Steve Almond called "shtick lit," i.e., books by people who undertook weird projects in order to write about them. Is moonshining a shtick, or is it a lost art?

There are shtick books, for sure, but that's a dishonest approach to writing. There's only one reason to write a book, and that's because you think you have something to write about. We certainly run the risk of being forced into the artificial fabrication of originality--sort of like what happened with doctoral dissertations, where one must go further and further afield to find something that has gone unsaid. But a book has to be about something, and there's nothing shticky about an authentic experience that resonates. Moonshining is all of the above--a lost art, a trend, a continuing criminal enterprise, and, for some, a shtick.

Why shouldn't we leave whiskey to the big professional distillers?

Most people should. But those of us who want to get our hands on the process should be allowed to do it. I like to cure my own meat. I like my chickens. I think that if we can make 300 gallons of wine per year without legal consequence, we ought to be able to boil the alcohol out of that wine as well. It's an arbitrary line--spirits versus wine and beer--and it should be erased. This is something that people love, and they spend money on it, and if we invigorated the world of hobby distilling, rather than criminalized it, we'd end up with smarter drinkers.