Pig - - Page 22

by Bliz

The Ultimate Recipe: Homemade Bacon

These days it’s almost cliché to rant about one’s love for bacon. What’s that t-shirt I’ve seen guys wearing? “I’m a vegetarian except for bacon” or “I put bacon on my bacon.” Yeah, yeah, we get it. Bacon is delicious. I love it, you love it, and the poor vegans are left out in the cold yet again, ignorance being bliss most likely. Of course I love bacon. It’s not a fad. It’s not like bacon is Hootie and the Blowfish and I’m in 5th grade trying to get my first kiss. Liking bacon is kind of like asking someone if they like music or sex or breathing air.

So how to take bacon mania to the next level? I decided to try my hand at making some porky heaven of my own. As usual, I grossly underestimated the amount of work that the process would require. It is a bit of a production so let me put the disclaimer out there that one needs about a month of empty fridge space, a smoking device of some sort, and of course, several pounds of fresh pork belly. Good luck finding a 5 lb slab at Whole Foods. I’ve tried more than once, so online is your best bet.

Finally, Pants Fit for a Food Blogger

We get a lot of pointless press releases here at ES, mostly for ridiculous unitaskers that we would never recommend. But once in a blue moon, we here about something that is just pure genius. This is one of those moments.

‘Tis a problem as old as the savage feast — you eat too much and your belly blasts the button right off your pants. In the past, gluttons safeguarded themselves by undoing their trousers before appetizers or by dining in elastic sweats, togas or mumus. At long last, there’s a stylish solution. San Francisco pantmaker betabrand.com teamed up with legendary chef Chris Cosentino, proprietor of Incanto (a restaurant where folks can dine on whole hogs’ heads), to create trousers for gluttons.

Yes, it’s a pair of pants that fits normally, but then allows you to expand your waist size to one of three different girths, depending on just how much of a glutton you’ve decided to be that night. I can’t tell you how many times I have wished this existed.

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by gansie

Pork and Nail Polish

I stopped the paper trail. When I lazily let my Gourmet subscription expire, I also stopped receiving Bon Appetit. Coincidentally, my dad stopped getting Cooking Light. I went from getting at most four magazines (Cook’s Illustrated expired just previously) down to tired zeros.

I realized that tired wasn’t an issue though. There was no way every month that I could flip through 4 mags. I saved the mags that were never opened. And now I have a pretty clear collection of just-old publications to scroll through. I forgot how much fun it is to flip through pages of carefully worded articles and recipes.

Blogs are pretty perfect. Perfect for their searchability. Perfect for their brevity. Not perfect, however, in the physicality. Which is why in this drunken typing state I present to you: an ad that is geared to women, possibly a sexist ad, but that I don’t care because I love nail polish that much.I’ll also see it a real live and flesh magazine. Crap. Not making sense. Sorry.

I miss magazines.

Advertisement language and commentary [Tigers and Strawberries]

in Pig 6 comments

by gansie

A Second Round of Heart

So Im in Osaka and I cant find the apostrophe on the keyboard so just go with it. I will tell you a quick story before we start our day here.

It was our first night in Japan. Tokyo. Fourteen fucking hour plane ride. We find the hotel, which is of course a story itself, quickly pull ourselves together and walk around our tiny section of Shinjuko. Its a maze of restaurants and bars with very little English signage.

We circle the area about six times, too scared to walk in anywhere. There are no other tourists in this area. We have not heard a lick of English. But we smell deliciousness all around and are ready to wash away the processed plane food.

We walk into a long narrow place with about 15 tables. The 20-something-year-old cooks greet us with wide smiles and something in Japanese. We smile. Show two fingers (as in there are two of us) and we are brought to a high-top.

When the waitress arrives the best we can do is bring our hands, in a cup shape to our mouth, and pretend we are drinking. We say beer. It works. We are brought out two drafts and are given menus. Everything is in Japanese. I look and laugh. 80 laughs.

We try to order and Im not even sure what we say. We just kinda giggle and our 20-something waitress with thick fake eyelashes and a scrounge in her hair giggles back. She walks away and 80 and I are like – what the fuck do we do. Fuck.

ES Local: What’s Eating DC

Our weekly local roundup of the best eating and drinking events going down in Washington, DC

Event of the Week: This Sunday check out COCHON 555, five pigs, five chefs, five winemakers. Chefs from restaurants, Vidalia, Bibiana, Bourbon Steak, Eola and Westend Bistro with battle it out in cooking a 125lb hog.
View ES Local: What’s Eating DC in a larger map

Remember, you can check out the constantly updated map any day of the week.

If you represent a restaurant or bar and wish to have your event listed on the ES Local: What’s Eating DC map, please write to me at britannia(at)endlesssimmer(dot)com

in Pig / Restaurants 1 comments

by Russell Warnick

ES Local: What’s Eating DC

Our weekly local roundup of the best eating and drinking events going down in Washington, DC…

Event of the Week: In true ES fashion my event pick of the week is all about pork. BLT Steak is hosting its inaugural cooking class, teaching techniques on how to prepare and cook pork, including a spit-roast. If it wasn’t my 30th this Saturday (Happy Birthday to Me) and I wasn’t getting sloshed at vineyards in Charlottesville, I’d be trotting on down there myself.
View ES Local: What’s Eating DC in a larger map

Remember, you can check out the constantly updated map any day of the week.

If you represent a restaurant or bar and wish to have your event listed on the ES Local: What’s Eating DC map, please write to me at britannia(at)endlesssimmer(dot)com.

in Pig / Restaurants 0 comments

by Tyler

The Cheese Trail: In Hot Pursuit of Sottocenere

Editor’s Note: Please welcome our newest contributor, Tyler. A Delaware native and DC resident, Tyler is a baker’s apprentice, bread salesman, and future culinary student. Clearly, we’re fired up to have him on the team.

Last week I visited my sister in Richmond and she lit up while describing an Italian cheese called sottocenere. So when I returned to DC late in the week, I went straight to the Dean & Deluca in Georgetown to find some. While waiting at the cheese counter (and listening to the gentleman on my right finish telling the associate about how Americans just don’t understand cured meats), I called my sister to double-check the spelling and pronunciation so I wouldn’t hurt my food cred in such esteemed company. “Sottocenere.”

Okay, “Excuse me, do you have any sotto–…” (voice trails off). “Sottocenere, no man, it flies out the door. It was gone six hours after our shipment on Wednesday.” Shit, I’ve stumbled on a holy relic of foodies. He told me to call next Wednesday. Well, next Wednesday rolled around, and I’ll be damned if I wasn’t getting some sottocenere.

Let me pause and say that whoever is handling this coveted cheese is about as reliable as your neighborhood weed dealer—you know, the one you’re trying to catch between his own four-hour windows of intoxication, and who never knows when his “guy” is going to come through. I called five times from morning through afternoon, each time getting a pleasant “We don’t know if it’s today or tomorrow, but try back later.” This is no offense to Dean & Deluca; in fact, one helpful woman at the cheese counter actually recommended that I call Whole Foods. So I did, and there it had been the entire time…