Stomachs on legs are proud to present

The German chapter of Sneaker Freaker magazine got together with our local burger joint Beef Brothers recently to make this sneaker-shaped mett cake.

With a greater than usual array of garnishes, this particular hunk of raw pork mince actually looks kind of kicking.

Kook to Cook

Pork products are big in Germany - all the way from iconic pork-snout-gelatine-infused gummy bears (and mango monkeys), to 'knackig' (snappable) wieners preserved in glass jars, down to the rendered fat infused with roasted onion that is lovingly smeared on good fresh bread.

For our part, we have found frequent use lately for pork fat in a range of Mexican recipes (e.g. mixed with black beans to spread on crispy tostadas) or in our home-made sichuan hotpots.

This brand is non-organic, so we shouldn't buy it, ...but who can resist the cute piggy image on the package?



Pictorial evidence of our last pigfat-kissed Tostada feast: fried corn tortillas topped with crispy tofu, avocado, coriander, beans, parmesan, and raw bok choi chopped &dressed with light creme fraiche whipped with two tablespoons of green habanero hot sauce. To avoid a big mess, consume in dainty unpiggylike nibbles.

Scientists have found that free-range pork can be more likely than caged pork to carry dangerous bacteria and parasites. It’s not only pistachios and 50-pound tubs of peanut paste that have been infected with salmonella but also 500-pound pigs allowed to root and to roam pastures happily before butting heads with a bolt gun.

If I lived in the States, I'd be more motivated to buy free range pork not because of taste but due to reports of the high levels of antibiotics in industrially farmed pork, and the inhumane manner in which pigs are often killed.

But if letting pigs have a more pleasant existence makes them even more unsafe to eat, argues McWilliams, what are we supposed to do? His conclusion:

If clean and humane methods of production cannot be developed, there’s only one ethical choice left for the conscientious consumer: a pork-free diet.

NOOOOOOOooooooooooo.....

We’re bacon people

Michelle Obama on ABC and "The View"

Despite Obama apparently expressing an appreciation for Michael Pollan's Open Letter to the president, Michelle Obama reaffirmed the family's" Joe The Plumber" sensibilities. Ahhhhh bacon, now elevated to the level of "every-man" political discourse

So I may have quibbled in the past with the general precepts of veganism.

In my view its moral philosophy, claims to ecological superiority and overall social value remain contentious.

But I sure do love their shoes....introducing the "Vegan" wrap around boot from Tom's Ethical Shoe Store




Not loving the dried pig ear bracelet so much

Mofongo was introduced to me by my pen pal and fellow PhD freak Andy aka Mandevu.

Mandevu is a bit quiet on the blog front these days as he's also writing his thesis

One fortunate evening in Brooklyn Andy and his lovely wife Michelle (an ER doctor at a hospital in Brooklyn) took us out to a restaurant in their hood for some good old down to earth Dominican eats at El Gran Castillo De Jagua....during which Andy proclaimed his love of mofongo



Mofongo is mashed plantains with garlic and bacon

Mofongo with a side of fried plantains


It's pretty good, imagine mashed potatos with garlic and bacon but with a hint of banana flavour and there you have it. Here is a recipe I found but I cannot vouch for "authenticity" (it says Dominican mofongo...but who knows they could be lying?)

Mofongo Appreciator


We also had king fish in tomato sauce



and soup of the day - tripe



Plus chicken and beans and bread and there was some salad in there too, far too much food and the bill a mere $37.00 USD plus tips. A feast that could have fed another three to four South Koreans or five to six North Koreans to put it in McCain terms.


This place is right at the "Seventh Avenue" stop on the Q subway line.
Take the Brooklyn-bound Q train, and get off at the "7th Avenue" stop, and go up the right-hand stairway after you pass through the turnstyle, you'll be right next to the place (and smelling the meat already!). Easy to
find. Even if you went up the left-hand stairwell, you'd see the place right across the road.

Today my pal in NYC emailed to see if I was interested in attending this event in NYC when we go on holiday in a week.

She said, "Dunno if this interests you. It's a gastropub down near South St Seaport and the Finance District."

NELSON BLUE 1st ANNUAL PIG ROAST!!!

Nelson Blue is proud to invite you to our KIWI PIG PARTY!! This celebration will be in full force from noon until 'THIS LITTLE PIGGY HAD NO MORE MEAT!' We will be roasting 150 lb's of succulent meat and serving portions with corn on the cob, cole slaw, potato salad and a complimentary beer or wine!!! There will be kiwi music, beer and wine specials and a whole lotta fun!!!! SAT OCT 4TH STARTS AT MIDDAY TILL WE RUN OUT OF PIG !!!

My sister also emailed me about my impending trip in late October

We went out in the boat today and I caught a fat gurnard just off Puponga Point by Cornwallis. Gurnard are so pretty, not to mention tasty. The garden has a ways to go, lots of fruit trees (heritage) have gone in but it will take a couple of years before it really starts to flourish. Meanwhile we also had our first 'breakfast on the front deck' of the season. When it's warm we have our coffee and toast out in the sun. However, there are always a couple of gorgeous weeks in September and everyone starts shrieking "summer's here!!!" and then October arrives and it gets cold and wet again.

Anyway, there are some wines in the cellar that need an occasion in order to drink them. When you are here we can do some yummy dinners and dispatch of some of the older vintages. Will you have some spare time while you are here or will you be busy with work? I'm hoping my workload will have eased a bit by then.
Gx
P.S this is a gurnard, not my actual gurnard however.

My response: pig no, gurnard yes. Would rather eat shitty American food in NYC than shitty NZ food, but fresh caught gurnard, "heritage" fruit trees and vintage cellar, yes, yes, yes

Have I mentioned that I am a lucky cow?

One of my favourite food sites is Blue Lotus. It's a simple review of home cooked meals that I find quietly riveting. I find that there is something restive about looking at photos of what other people eat on a daily basis, in the same way that checking out someone else's trolly at the supermarket is mildly interesting.

I've been cooking a lot lately to try and use up all my dry store of goods. So if you too are a food voyeur, here is what I have been cooking and eating lately.

Spring Rain Noodles


This is bean thread vermicelli, soaked in hot water and then tossed with fried pork mince, dried shitake mushrooms (soaked in hot water for 30 mins), bean sprouts, spring onions, diced eggplant (salted and rinse to remove bitterness) and Chinese chili bean paste and ginger. Basically you add pork and fry off then all the other ingredients. Then in a side bowl mix tblspn or so of light soy, xiaosheng rice wine, chicken stock or water or mushroom juice (1/4 to 1/2 cup) with 2 teaspoons of corn flour. Add to pork to make it all saucy then add noodles and toss. Finally flavour with some sesame oil and sprinkle with corriander and beansprouts. You can make a vege version of this minus the pork and chicken stock using mushroom stock or water.



I served the noodles with this really yummy tomato salad of sliced tomato, sprinkled with corriander, sichuan pepper corns and cumin seeds and a sauce made of spring onions, rice vingear, pinch of sugar, salt, crushed garlic, and sesame oil.

Thai's love branding and packaging more than most I've decided... and Vanilla Industries hits the brand loving spot. Vanilla Industries is the brainchild of the children of mega food conglomerate, S&P. S&P make pretty bad and pretty low grade bakery items for the large scale Thai market. Their children make marginally better bistro food at higher prices and better packaging.

First came the bistro and creperie...now comes dim sum and "japanese cafe" (whatever that is supposed to be)

On Ekkamai soi 12, in one of the many very cool old 1970s era houses that dominate the tree lined back sois of Sukhumvit is Vanilla Royal and Vanilla Garden.




Vanilla Royal is a dim sum...fairly bad, gluggy dim sum....edible mind you. The decor is, staff uniforms and overall presentation is, as to be expected great. So people come and they eat. Note the mercedes and bmw's in the car park. It's not that pricy by western standards but very pricy by Thai standards so its strictly high so in there.




Further down the garden path you can wash down your gluggy dim sum and fishy prawn flavour down with some decent coffee...or choose from their Western-inspired Japanese food at their Japanese Cafe...and try to remember you're in Thailand...





We went back for a second try, after the dim sum to try the cafe. Hock had the katsu pork bun, not quite what he had in mind, but tasty apparently


I had a somewhat comforting prawn and avocado sandwich drowned with seafood mayo wedged on pillowy soft white bread



It wasn't terrible but it was far from memorable.....I like a good garden, especially in Bangkok but there really is little reason food wise to visit this place

Update: well maybe I was wrong....we went back there again and had a coffee and sandwiches. The coffee is decent and the sandwiches were sandwiches of my childhood. Egg and mayo on crustless white bread and ham cheese and mushroom toasted on crustless white bread. Terribly trashy by western standards but decidedly Japanese and hi society by Thai ones. There is something strangely comforting about a well made egg sandwich that takes me and Hock back to our 1970s childhoods, vegemite and cheese sandwiches, cheese and Piccadilly sandwiches, vegemite and chip sandwiches, ham and cheese sandwiches, those strange salad rolls that always had grated carrot in them, lamingtons and custard pies....they probably just need to put asparagus rolls and some curried egg on the menu and it could quite easily be renamed the New Zealand Edmond's Cookbook Cafe. But then probably no one would go

I read Phil's post on the SBS blog about Bellota Iberico ham, so thought I should post this Bellota ham shot for posterity.

I actually think Iberico ham is kind of over-rated when you consider the range of meats available to man kind: give me head sausage any day.

We were in Barcelona recently to work at Sonar Festival, and this place was the feeding-our-faces highlight, discovered by accident in the Born area where we were staying, at midnight.
So we went there for lunch on the day that we were leaving, as well. Because we are - in a word - pigs.

It's called Set de Born, and if you are interested in sampling a range of Spanish cured meats, I really recommend you check it out and ham it up 'til you drop. There's a veritable waterfall of cured meats hanging behind the counter.

We had some of the ham above later, on the plane, sandwiched in airport croissants, and it elevated that dry and sad pastry into a whole new stratosphere.
Or maybe it was the aeroplane that did that.



After you've been in Barcelona for a few days, you get a bit sick of Iberico ham. Once you've been eating it every day, in little baguettes, you don't really care if it's the expensive version or not.

That's when you start to crave a different type of thin sliced meat.

Voila, the wild boar's head sausage, above. Sliced very thinly, it reminded me of a little bit of fine Italian mortadella (because of the pistachios I guess) but had a distinct meatiness. No spam vibe. Delicious cheeky goodness!



Mmmm... the 'patatas bravas', a typical Catalonian tapas dish, which I believe is normally served with a tomato sauce (according to 'The New Spanish Table'). These just-cooked, juicy waxy potato slices are slopped in this delicious garlicky salad cream. Not exactly diet food. I like how the Spanish consume like a litre of olive oil per day, with meat, potatoes, tomatoes, paprika, seafood and bread. It doesn't get much more Columbus' new world than that. I am slightly nervous about spending a couple of months there later in the year though. Maybe I can start to get in training for it by drinking a glass of olive oil each morning while standing on my head.

The little sausages that look like chorizos, I have the name written down at home, will amend this post later. They were damn good.

The spinach and orange salad had black truffle stuff around the outside and a shot glass of some type of yoghurt curd with pine nuts in the middle of the plate.

"You know Mum pork really is the king of meats"

Said five year old Zacky, son of Fluffy.....From the mouths of babes....

Pigs and cream

and

what to do with them

Pigs prefer 3 square meals a day

Pigs raised in conventional indoor pens have different feeding patterns from those raised under more natural conditions. Research published today in BioMed Central's open access journal Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica shows that while pigs in the wild spend much time searching for food and eat little and often, the preferred feeding regime for conventional raised pigs is three meals a day.

Lead author, Eva Persson, from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences explains that, "The natural feeding behaviour of pigs is searching for feed by rooting activities throughout the day; self-feeding pigs randomly space their activities and generally consume between ten and twelve meals in an average day. By replicating this pattern in conventional indoor kept pigs, we had hoped they would fare better than those fed the traditional three meals."

All of the 360 pigs in the study received the same amount of food, spaced out into either three meals or nine and delivered as liquid feed. Contrary to what may be expected, feeding the pigs in a more 'natural' way did not result in a better outcome. In fact, the pigs fed three times gained over 100g more per day than the pigs fed more frequently.

As Persson reports, "Increased daily feeding occasions among group-housed pigs resulted in a poorer daily weight gain and an increased number of stomach problems. It will be of great interest to those in the farming and animal welfare fields that this study does not support increased daily feeding occasions in fattening pigs".

Each group of nine pigs in this study had to share one 3 m trough. Due to the fact that pigs will naturally fight for prime feeding positions, one likely explanation for the poorer performance in the pigs fed more often is increased competition within the group. The authors note 'More feeds mend smaller ratios each time and it is possible that each feeding occasion in our study did not offer enough feed to satisfy the hunger of all the pigs".

Link

I got home at 9 pm tonight and went to borrow a cup of milk from my neighbour/ landlord/ co-supervisor/ dept convenor/ professor and he invited me to eat his strange pork chop with pumpkin concoction that he had cooked

And so I had a glass of wine and ate and then drank some more and ate junk food that his 14 year old son had left around the place....

Cheese Balls

And we chatted and I was told him about Hock, my husband, and how lovely he is and that when people meet him they tend to rethink their opinion of me in a good way

and my landlord/ prof/ supervisor said

"You mean he's the yoghurt to your curry"

And I giggled for a long time and said "yes"

Photo: Carl Parks

As some of you may know, when Thailand's new right-wing conservative prime minister, Samak Sundaravej, isn't passing draconian internet censorship laws, defending the military junta of Burma (and cooking them dinner), or underhandedly supporting extra-judicial killings via the "war on drugs", he can be found cooking up a storm in the kitchen.

On his show Cooking and Complaining, Samak shows viewers how to make pigs legs in coca cola and fried rice.

Samak told the Guardian

"The constitution does not restrict a prime minister from talking about food. I think I’ll have a one-hour programme on Sundays,’ Mr Samak said. ‘Even the Prime Minister of New Zealand can be a tour guide to promote the country’s tourism. I may host a similar tourism programme in the future.’

I shudder to think what that will entail.....given that Thailand's tourism still relies heavily of boozing sexpats looking to score a good time with young Thai women from the provinces....It's not exactly white water rafting but quite possibly just as perilous


Samak's Pigs' leg in Coca-Cola

Ingredients (serves five):
Five pig legs
Four bottles of Coca-Cola
Three tablespoons salt
Fish sauce
Garlic, chopped
See-uan (a sweet, dark sauce)
Four to five cinnamon sticks
Coriander root
Ground pepper
Five tablespoons "pongpalo" powder
Shitake mushrooms

Method:
Place the pig legs in a large pot. Pour over the Coca-Cola and bring to the boil. Add the coriander root, garlic, pepper, salt, fish sauce, "pongpalo" and cinnamon sticks.
Add sufficient water to cover. Cut the stalks off the Shitake mushrooms and add hot water to soften. Then add to the main pot. Bring to boil and simmer or at least three hours. Make sweet sauce with see-uan. Serve chilli and vinegar sauce.

Samak's Fried Rice

Ingredients (serves 8-10):
500g chicken pieces
500g chopped ham
Six tomatoes, chopped
Six onions, chopped
10 chillies (hot northern Thai variety)
One cup mushrooms
Five to six kale leaves
Eight small cucumbers
20 spring onions Boiled rice

For the sauce:
Fish sauce
Pepper
Oil
Butter

Method:
Fry the chicken and ham. Fry all the vegetables except the spring onions and cucumbers, which are for garnish. When vegetables are softened add the chicken, sauce and ketchup, along with the rice. Stir-fry.


Either way it seems there is no escaping the truth of the matter.....Samak is bad for your health

Thai/ Chinese porky stew goodness with star anise, cinnamon and whole boiled eggs...what's not to like?

1 tablespoon oil
4 garlic cloves (kratiem), minced
1 lb (500 g) side pork/pork flap, cut in 1-in (2.5-cm) cubes ( used short ribs because its all I could find in the dumb stores of Canberra, you can use trotters)
8 oz (250 g) fried tofu
1 teaspoon five spice powder
1 stick of cinnamon
2 star anise
2 -3 cloves
1/4 cup coriander root (raak pak chee), minced
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
1/4 cup (2 fl oz/60 ml) sweet soy sauce (I forgot to buy and just used normal soy with extra sugar)
2 tablespoons light soy sauce
1/4 cup (2 fl oz/60 ml) fish sauce (nam pla)
3 tablespoons sugar or brown sugar (palm sugar is probably more ideal)
2 cups (16 fl oz/500 ml) water
6 hard-boiled eggs

fry pork and then garlic and then add all ingredients and bring to the boil. Rapidly simmer for as long as possible to bring out all the juicy flavours, or until the pork is cooked if you are a greedy guts and just can't wait



Serve with white rice (or brown if you're a freak) and steamed gai lan or other green asian vege (not bok choy unless you want to anger the gods or if you're white) and pickled mustard greens if you're all about "authenticity"

Sprinkle with coriander leaves if you want to make it less beige

You can also put little sliced chilis in fish sauce and serve this on the side for extra salty spice

Today I found a cool site that provides a basic historical timeline of food.

Earliest known foods are

water & ice
salt I & II
shellfish & fish
eggs & mushrooms
insects
rice I, II & III

if you want to know more about salt part one and part two, and more interestingly rice I, II and III click on the link

with the agricultural revolution around 10,000 BC came, soup, bread and beer.....4000 BC bought us yeast breads, and chestnuts apparently hail the beginning of "bible era foods"

Although it hasn't been included yet, I'm sure 2008 will be recorded at the year of the french fry battered bacon on a stick

Early morning pig carcasses on the north side of the St. Lawrence Market, Toronto.

I'm ashamed to admit we only knew about this place through a visitor from NYC who had read about it in a Wallpaper magazine supplement.

At this hour of the morning, the handful of people browsing (as well as the stall-holders) were less Marc Jacobs and Northface, decidedly more in the arena of ancient parkers and homespun knits.



On Saturdays the smaller North hall is used for an organic farmer's market. We went there straight from the afterhours (in Toronto anything open past 2am is called an afterhours) at about 6am...eschewing dodgy home fries at Fran's diner for the warm, familial atmosphere of a market in its calm and sleepy opening hours. No one seemed too hurried, no one was hussling or shouting at each other – maybe it was because of the laid back Canadian temperament but the atmosphere was comparable to a provincial library, especially the spectacled, brown-cardiganned woman who stutteringly sold us her malted, hand made 7 grain bread. No shortage of strapping sons helping their dad load piles of potatoes, elk venison or jars of honey either though.





Top notch cider (we drank 2 litres in about 2 seconds):



Home made apple cranberry crisp and wild blueberry pies (we bought a pumpkin pie):



Across the street is the South hall of the St Lawrence Market which is open daily except Monday:



We were convinced by a Ukrainian lady in the basement to buy a piece of a big coiled up sausage she had just baked, which was herby and juicy. We also bought a still-warm hot cross bun:



Smoked pork hocks:



Famous Canadian peameal bacon, a variety of unsmoked lean back bacon that has been sweet pickle-cured and coated in yellow cornmeal, though originally, as the name suggests, peameal was used. This should be distinguished from the imposter that is often called Canadian bacon in the U.S. but which is actually just sliced ham. Goes great with maple syrup.



Later on that night... we cracked open the pie, which was distinguishable from store-bought pies by its light, flaky and carameralised-around-the-edges crust:



and the bread. Top marks to the lady in the brown cardigan. The bread had a dense but light crumb, just soft and crumbly enough, with a pleasant molasses undertone. With avocado and a glass of cider, a remarkably effective hang over cure.

aaahhh Brunswick, Melbourne in the spring....feel the searing heat of an ozone free sun pierce you delicate asian skin

sit under a fig tree while your very own Jewish hostess, Fluffy, cooks you bacon and eggs on the barbie, served with spinach, babaganoush, tahini, pesto on a piece of toasted turkish bread. Move over Nigella here comes Fluffy with her exquisite aussie, turkish, jewish, lebanese Melbourne bbq mix up.

Sit and watch the tomato plants grow and pretty blonde haired children pluck the first ripe strawberries....it's all overwhelmingly exotic for me right now