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Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 3d

Oh, nice. Yeah, I was not eating quite so adventurously at their ages.

Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 3d

Much as I appreciate just-so cooking, at home I’m more concerned with things that taste good, and to a lesser extent, make a balanced meal. Even cocktail garnishes, unless they serve a function, usually get the boot here.

Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · Aug 19

Ralph Fiennes as the imperious, self-satisfied Chef Slowik while a brigade of cooks stand at attention in the background from the film The Menu. Text above the image reads:

Putting half an orange wheel on my brandy Old Fashioned

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Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 3d

Oh, I still fine-strain stocks. I don’t mind the cheats, but years of practicum have given me a good feel for when I can get away with them. I suppose I’m no longer quite so obsessed with learning everything I can and more focused on doing better what I already do. Buying from pros is part of that.

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Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 3d

Teens and university students are broadly more knowledgeable about food than my cohort was at the same ages. Even so, to know how to cook maybe 5-10 dishes with no recipe, just a mental template, is good dad cooking. Something to make for flatmates and friends, maybe dates. Not many, just a few.

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Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 3d

Ha. Not the sauce I had in mind. I myself have not been so fortunate as to behold the Creator, even in a glass. Or unfortunate, depending on how these sorts of meetings go.

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Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 3d

I’m kinda into typos.

The (con)fusion of interests and identity is not something that ever appealed.

Now, if a chef wants to obsess about something, carry on. Why, yes. Yes, I DO want the perfect fig leaf ice cream or whatever that took 2 years to develop. But I ain’t doing all that.

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Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 3d

As Americans become less religious yet more “spiritual,” it seems food sometimes slips into a space once occupied by the holy—with equally uncritical praise. Endless self-anointed curators as custodians of the divine, food fetishists murmuring over plates as if God Himself were hidden in the sauce.

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Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 3d

Agreed. At the same time I recall a passage from editor Terry McDonell’s memoir regarding George Plimpton that inverts the idea yet also seems fitting:

When the day finally came, it was a long, hot afternoon at the academy grounds in upper Manhattan. George was crisp in his blue-and-white seersucker suit, but he looked tired. I kept thinking about something he had said in When We Were Kings, the film about the Ali-Foreman fight in Kinshasa.

As happens with people who love a thing too much, it destroys them. Oscar Wilde said, “You destroy the thing that you love.” It’s the other way around. What you love destroys you.

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Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 3d

You’re going to want a launcher of some sort. A trebuchet or perhaps even a catapult. For inspiration, I suggest the punkin chunkin website or Jim Paul’s book Catapult:

Book cover. The text reads:

CATAPULT
Harry and I Build
a Siege Weapon
JIM PAUL

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Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 3d

There. That’s it. You’ve lain your finger on exactly the problem. This is why my interest in a conversation implodes when eaters turn to adoration of Anthony Bourdain. There’s much to admire and respect in skills hard-earned. But fawning reverence, particularly in food and drink, leaves a bad taste.

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Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 3d

I don’t eat as much organ meat as I had done before gout came roaring into my life, but when I do, fresh as possible is the way to go. None of these tubs o’ livers or hearts from the grocers that were harvested a week ago. When you find a good butcher, stick with ‘em.

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Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 3d

Exactly. I don’t mean I need to be the loudest guy at the loudest table, center of attention, pushing the volume up in the whole place. That’s not my style at all. But “hush” in a restaurant? Nah. And I don’t mean to suggest that that’s usual there. Only that last night’s room chemistry was off.

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Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 3d

Quasi-holiness is apt. It’s not that I didn’t like being there or the meal, which was excellent. But it seemed a wasted moment. Y’all have good food, good drinks, a cozy setting, a knowledgeable chef willing to entertain questions, and…you don’t speak? Makes no sense to me.

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Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 3d

It’s *a little* tedious to do, but if you’re already butchering your own birds for yakitori at home, there won’t be that many hearts. Besides, what’s a little more tedium?

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Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 3d

Seconded. A six-seat counter setup. Small place.

Last night’s vibe was strange: the other guests did not speak. Maybe the occasional mumble among those four, but otherwise near-Carthusian silence through the meal. Except for us. We chatted, laughed, talked about the food and absent friends.

Wooden box containing dozens of bamboo skewers of various cuts of chicken, all ready for the grill.

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Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 3d

Tsuchiya serves it two ways: whole (trimmed, though) and scalloped out/double butterflied. I like the greater grilled surface area of the latter.

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Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 3d

Akabu Shuzo sake to begin a three-hour omakase at Yakitori Tsuta in San Diego.

The skewers were all chicken (skin, tail, neck, thigh, butterflied wings, heart, and more.), but small dishes included fig, cucumber, black sesame tofu, smoked duck, steamed custard, ramen, etc. Outstanding meal.

A bottle of Akabu Shuzo Junmai Ginjo Iwate sake sits on a wooden counter in the foreground. In the background, chef Tatsuro Tsuchiya tends skewers on a binchotan-fueled grill.

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Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 4d

Seconded. I suppose my thoughts for wanting to do so are: preservation, ease of access for personal reasons, and to see what others might do with the same material.

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Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 4d

I am suddenly reminded of a line from Rick Bragg’s book, All Over But The Shoutin'

“My ancestors never saw a mint julep, but they sipped five-day-old likker out of ceramic jugs and Bell jars until they could not remember their Christian names.”

Charlie dog, from the 1950 Warner Brothers cartoon Dog Gone South, holds a mint julep while sitting before a fan on the veranda.

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Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 4d

I’d also like to be able to access it myself anywhere I find myself in the world as long as there’s an Internet connection.

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Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 4d

“Majestical” 🙄
Logistical.

When Covid came around, I stopped opening my library for industry types—distillers, chefs, bartenders, writers, etc. Even though book collectors can be a bit hoardy, sharing information has always appealed. It’d be nice to get some of these rarer items out there.

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Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 4d

True. Met up with an old family friend last weekend, a member of both intelligence and cake-decorating communities. “You still some kind of booze expert out west?“ he asked. “Nope,” says I. “Only a student. Always learning.“

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Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 4d

Agreed on all of that. Truncated to “scan“ for lack of space in the original post. A repository, though, raises majestical questions. Not that long ago, I considered universities fairly safe repositories. Now, at least in the US, that seems less certain.

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Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 4d

My mint julep technique has evolved over the last 40ish years, but the mint syrup method is how I’d been taught. That style, in fact, was integral to how my husband and I finally got together and such juleps became our house drink for several years in the mid-1990s.

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Matthew Rowley @mbrowley.bsky.social · 4d

You got the book, I get the meal. Sounds like a draw.

We’ve eaten there a few times. I end up watching Tsuchiya the way I used to watch bartenders—with a stream of thoughts: “What’s this? What’s that? Oh, I see why. Ahhh, that’s how you do that” and the occasional “I can do that.”

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