Tag Archives: Chicken

Fumigating with Coq au Vin

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[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

When my friend died I got his copy of Coyote Café, a cookbook by Mark Miller. There was a memorial gathering at a bar on the riverfront in Savannah, Georgia thrown together by few of his ex-girlfriends. Some of his stuff – cds, books, a bike helmet, etc. – was laid out on tables for people to pick up and take home as mementos.

He, my wife, and I were practically roommates for a spell. At the cusp of the century swap, we had the upper left apartment of a fourplex and he had the upper right. We still courtesy knocked, but if my wife was studying and Jeffrey, the friend, was out somewhere I’d still go over to his place if I wanted to watch TV (television) or listen to music. The best part of this communal arrangement was that Jeffery was a chef. We ate well. Very well. And he didn’t just feed us. He taught us all manner of things about food stuffs and ways to make them hot.

I don’t think he taught us anything out of Coyote Café. I picked it because the spine was sun-bleached; it was something that he’d had for a while. The Coyote Café restaurant is in New Mexico and I figured he picked the book up when he was running a kitchen in Arizona. It felt like something that made moves with him. Looking at it now, I don’t think he used it much. He was a sloppy cook at home. He was the opposite when working, but at home things got splashed around and dripped on. The pages are pristine. More than likely, the book didn’t get left.

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Chicken Spiedini with Amogio Sauce

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[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

“Spiedini” is an Italian word, but it means “skewer.” There’s nothing innately Italian about that part. People have been cooking things on sticks the world over since the first guy burnt his hand. “Amogio” is innately Italian, specifically Sicilian; old as the hills but with no good story trailing behind. It’s citrus and herbs with olive oil and a touch of spice. It’s a simple recipe that takes advantage of the island’s selective bounty.

I’ve read that when the Greeks arrived, Sicily was inhabited by the Elymi to the west, the Sicuni in the central region, and the Siculi along the east. Each had a style of cooking that, other than that they all used roughly the same ingredients – citrus, herbs, olives, nuts, seafood, and the occasional meat, I’ve read was distinct. I can’t find any commentary to enlighten me as to how they were distinct, just that they were. The Greeks didn’t change much to the cuisine other than introduce fish stew, which seems improbable. Anybody that lives by the sea and has a pot will get that notion on their own.

The Greeks had staying power. Syracuse was a force as early as the fifth century B.C. and Hellenic dialects were still dominant under Augustus when Rome was dependent on the island for wheat. In 831, under Saracen rule, the capital moved from Syracuse to Palermo and Greek influence faded. According to Waverley Root in his book The Food of Italy, the Saracens never left, “They are at any rate still with us in the kitchen. Almost everything which strikes us today as typically Sicilian is typically Saracen.”

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The Chic-faux-Lay Sandwich

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[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

Can you plagiarize yourself? This is the third time I’ve written down the recipe and step by step for this sandwich. The first time I called it an “ersatz Chic-fil-A” because in ninth grade I read Tom Robbins’s Still Life with Woodpecker and his main character used a baptismal candle as an “ersatz” sexual aid. Robbins was transgressive in way that didn’t hit you over the head with a sledgehammer. He drove the phonies nuts.

I tried to re-read one of his novels a few years ago and confirmed only good books grow up with you. Still, the word “ersatz” stuck in my head and I use it more often than I should. I like the sound and the memory of stopping to go to the dictionary. The word seemed arcane to me. Now I have problems with Robbin’s usage. He’s saying the candle was an ersatz ersatz?

I used “Chic-fil-esque” in that article, which was an unwitting segue into my second go at this sandwich, the second go being my first possible plagiarism. In that one I called it a Chic-faux-a, visually mimicking the emphatic syllable divisions in “Chic-fil-A”, but without the “L” sound the satirical similarity is reliant on a slanted assonant rhyme like this is some kind of folk or contemporary pop song and readers deserve better.

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