Hey Becky-

Tried a new recipe today... lamb ragu. It's amazing how a $4/lb shrink wrapped appendage can be transformed into such a richly delicious stew. Anthony Bourdain wrote in The Nasty Bits that "any cretin can grill a steak after a few tries. It takes a cook to transform a humble pig's foot into something people clamor for"(20). Think about it... the steak in the grocery store on display beckons hungry customers to purchase it's cleanly cut and trimmed slab, an orb of red bloody perfection.
Meanwhile, the lamb legs, beef cheeks, and calf livers are piled into a cooler like the leftovers that they are. I tried beef cheek pierogis at a restaurant called Lola in Cleveland a few months ago... rich, marrowy flavor that I've been dying to recreate. Then I found the package of beef cheek not at Whole Foods or Fresh Market but at WalMart- $2/lb and it was enormous... literally half of a cow face trimmed. "How in the hell am I supposed to cook that?" I pondered. I don't even own a pot large enough to cook the monstrosity. A package of flank steak hit my basket.
So there I was yesterday, reading the recipe for lamb ragu- and it called for "lamb shank." Ok, leg of lamb, how bad can it be? Said leg of lamb was located in the requisite cooler next to the other parts... shrink wrapped five times and on sale. Covered in a layer of skin and fat, no less. It's amazing what slow cooking for three hours will do to even the most offending cuts. The fat dissipated, the marrow created a deep, flavorful broth and the remaining meat was tender. Ok, so it probably doesn't take a real cook to prepare unsavory cuts of meat... it just takes one to have the nuts to do it.

RIP, Yuca, and Becky's First Post

Hi Anna,

I always hoped that my first post on the blog would be a thoughtful and well-written piece that would herald my entry into the food-writing world. Alas, you'll be getting a slapdash post that was cobbled together in between my studying for 2 horrifying midterms this week. Oh well.

This is probably bordering on food-blasphemy, but I've never actually read Gourmet magazine, though I know how much it means to you. Our house subscribes to Cooks Illustrated, Cooks Country (by accident) and Food and Wine. We own one issue of Gourmet that highlights Latino cooking from 2007, but we haven't read it (...yet. It's on the list.)

On my chili...for the life of me, I can't remember the story about the knife. I recall that I fed myself on chili for a good part of our sophomore year and that I paid an outlandish price for the knife (a cleaver, really) at Wegman's.

I haven't really been up to any food adventures lately, mostly because grad school and my internship are sucking out any culinary creativity I might have had. My food world has consisted of oatmeal, Starbucks, and Trader Joe's frozen entrees lately. On the other hand, The Boy has been having fun with The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart; he made pizza dough from scratch last weekend, and it turned out awesome.

Well, this social policy and human behavior material isn't going to study itself. Talk to you later.

Becky

RIP

Hey Becky-

Can you believe Gourmet is shutting down? Found out at work today when a co-worker sent the below via instant message:
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/conde-nast-to-close-gourmet-magazine/?hp

Responses I've seen have been succinct:

"Noooooooo."
"Why?"
"Wtf"

Really, it's worse than if Pepsi swallowed Coke or NBC merged with ABC. My food magazine choices will now be limited to Bon Appeptit and smaller publications like Food and Wine and Saveur. Granted, both Gourmet and Bon Appetit are owned by Conde Nast, with the latter beating in circulation by 400,000 issues each month. But who didn't wait in breathless expectation each month to crack open Bon Appetit and Gourmet to decide which magazine had better content.

In the late 1990's, it was definitely Gourmet that boasted more interesting recipes, prettier photos, and more attractive menus. Actually, reading Bon Appetit was like reading a dowdier, more cluttered version of Gourmet. Then, the magazine took Gourmet by storm in January 2008 with a redesign that suddenly made it the more useful, practical, and interesting of the two publications. Even I- among the most die hard Gourmet fans- began gravitating toward Bon Appetit's newly sharp, luscious covers that highlight the details of the featured dish while simultaneously crafting the shot into focus (ancho beefsteak chili with butternut squash, anyone?)... its aptly organized recipe spreads (mix and match Thanksgiving, by course)... and its punchy, entertaining articles (good call on featuring blogger Molly Wizenberg).

Hence, Gourmet became the dowdier version of Bon Appetit. But I really don't understand why Conde Nast would shut the door on a magazine that has accumulated 68 years of brand recognition... surely that is worth more than a few subscriptions? And I'll miss Ruth Reichl's uplifting Letter to the Editor... there's always an anecdote about food, life, enjoying both... hope she keeps signing book deals.