Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Joe Needs Some Assistance

Here's something to occupy your time while sitting through this snowstorm wishing you weren't at work.

You'll notice a bit of disparity in the number of posts each of the blog authors has put up here on Scrumptulescence. I'll leave the counting to you.

Joe claims that his lack of posting is due to some lack of culinary abilities. I've tasted his food. And believe me, he can cook. He just doesn't choose to cook as often as he should. And he seems to feel that only a truly interesting gastronomic experience is worthy of posting about. I obviously don't share that view.

But in keeping with the spirit of Joe's wishes, I decided to ask you, the five readers of this blog, to leave some comments about what food-related adventure Joe should embark upon, ideally leading to a blog post, or series of posts. We are getting started with sourdough, raising a culture from scratch. We won't know for two weeks whether it will be a viable culture to use for breadmaking, but if it is, hopefully he will write about that. But think bigger.

Perhaps he should go the traditional route, and master some historic dish, like coq au vin. Or maybe he should focus on learning the building blocks of classic cooking, like learning to make the best roasted veal stock possible. Perhaps he should apprentice at a live poultry store for a week and learn to butcher and dress a chicken in under 15 minutes. Or maybe he should find the ten best ethnic grocers in a specific Chicago neighborhood. What about figuring out the 5 meals made at home that are sure to impress a date. Or he could just cook his way through a cool cookbook, perhaps by Rick Bayless or Patricia Wells. How about erotic cooking, like in that Patrick Stewart SNL sketch. He could even model them after his friends. Tell me you wouldn't want to hear about his attempts at a Tiger Titillating Tamale, Jayadev's Jackfruit Jellyroll, Luscious Lyrica's Ladyfingers, Akira's Amorous ASSpic, or George's Generous Galantine. Just reading him write about trying to get Akira to model for an Amorous ASSpic mold would be worth the price of admission.

What comestible adventure would you like to see Joe undertake? Lets get some good brainstorming going on. If we get enough good comments, we'll take the best ideas and have a little poll thing to track them.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

I went way back to his old blog, April 2005, because of something I remembered that I would like to know more about: wild foods. He talked about a book: Stalking the Wild Asparagus. On second thought, having him find wild food in Chicago might be a bad idea. Or a good one. But that of course might be giving away a future topic that I've heard him discuss which is better suited to warmer weather.

I want shorter posts. I want a week, a month, his entire diet. What he ate, where he bought it, how it was prepared, who prepared it, and his thoughts on it. Nothing big, nothing long, just something every day.

Bryan said...

Yeah, my posts have been a bit wordy and not funny recently. The food was good though. I like the idea of Joe writing every day about what he's eating.

jess said...

i like your posts bryan.

i want a post from joe little thats begins with the words 'daybreak... irving park' and ends with the word 'amen'.

i also want some posts about us going to dinner. not even fancy shmancy ones necessarily although marche would be nice.

Unknown said...

Foodie Book Review.

And along those lines, Food Network Show reviews, if he watches.

I like your posts, too, Bryan. I have nothing against long posts, as long as they're good. Which yours are. But size of post can sometimes be seen as a limit as to whether to post or not. Just have him post every day. No matter the size. Even something like:
Strawberry Pop Tart.
Celery Sticks.
Pot Roast.
And then we could make fun of him in the comments.

jsa said...

You could ask Joe to recap the halycon days of Dinner Club, where themed potluck dinners were all the rage. The Magellan themed one was pretty good, as he and I made a "Golden Hind" (the name of Magellan's ship), a pretty tasty roast...

pbgipper said...

I like the idea of Joe becoming a dishwasher in a gourmet restaurant and working his way up to sous chef. Really, this could be a show. Who wouldn't love the idea of JL interacting with the other bus boys and pearl divers.

Pacific Midwest said...

whatever happened to pickling Joe? How about a great canning adventure involving wild foods of the prairie or something like that? Despite my non-meat inclinations, I would be impressed by pickled wild boar's feet I think.