Fine Food

As I have stated before, I like to eat. One of my favorite past-times is discovering a great new place to eat with the Brain, and then sharing our discovery with our gaggle of friends. I love to cook, too, and I often try to cook dinner for friends as well. Just last Sunday, for example, I made up a batch of tomato and pea risotto for a small dinner party. Risotto is one of those "foot intensive" dishes - the cook (or some unlucky helper) must stand at the stove, stirring and slowly adding liquid to the rice continuously for about 30 minutes. However, the ingredients are almost always simple. Arborio rice, butter, onion, garlic, broth, and parmesan form the foundation, while the cook's improvisation floats above it. The adjuncts rarely involve more than a handful of additional ingredients -- you could add saffron and wild mushrooms or truffles, or just some lemon zest and lemon juice, or, as I did, some tomatoes and peas.

It's the ingredients, of course, that matter. Take my butter for example. Central Market has recently started carrying Reggiano butter. This is butter made with the same milk, from the same cows, as Parmesan Reggiano. It is absolutely fantastic, with a delicate parmesan aroma and tang. I've been serving it at room temperature, sprinkled with smoked Spanish sea salt and a hunk of bread. And I've been using it in my risottos.

Between the dining and feeding my friends, I derive some of the most intense happiness in my life. There is something so very primally pleasing about ensuring that a person gets not only nourishment of the body, but an experience that nourishes the mind and spirit as well.

Anyway...

Let's talk about the Chinese. I have always maintained - in fact, I've been told by Chinese friends - that the Chinese do not often eat something because it is good, but because it is expensive. I've been to two Chinese weddings, massive affairs of eating these, and this "fact" was borne out. The most awful things served - the things even the Chinese guests only nibbled politely at before turning to tastier stuffs - were, yes, the most expensive.

Of course, Europeans and their descendents spend inordinate amounts of money and time consuming rotted milk. Who am I to judge?

Well...for your enjoyment, I present the following AP wire snippet:

Chinese Eatery Sold Donkey in Tiger Urine

September 08,2005 | SHANGHAI, China -- A restaurant in northeastern China that advertised illegal tiger meat dishes was found instead to be selling donkey flesh -- marinated in tiger urine, a newspaper reported Thursday.

The Hufulou restaurant, located beside the Heidaohezi tiger reserve near the city of Hailin, had advertised stir-fried tiger meat with chilies for $98 as well as liquor flavored with tiger bone for $74 a bottle, the China Daily reported.

Isn't that delightful?