FoodTrek: Meatbutter and the Last Supper

It was an oddly apocalyptic weekend when we had two separate conversations about the supposed End of Days a-coming in December of this year. The Mayans predict the Earth bites the dust a few days before Santa Claus comes to town (December 20th, if you want to add that to your Outlook calendar), so if we're going to be robbed of our mad dash to unwrap holiday gifts this year, we may as well start crossing things off on the ol' Bucket List. Which leads to this Dead Man Walking-inspired meal: the Feast of Bone Marrow! Or as I like to call it, Meatbutter.

Meatbutter, because bone marrow doesn't sound much better - Photo by Wasabi Prime

I almost want to create a whole new category of post for this, because this marvelous meal wasn't at a restaurant, and this wasn't something I prepared -- we were lucky to be invited to dine at the house of our friends, the Amazing Katherine and Jimmy, a wonderful couple who travel the world and live a truly bon vivant life with their adorable dog, Marco. The conversation behind this meal originally started out at a restaurant, I was talking with Katherine about food and she mentioned having Melanie Dunea's My Last Supper: 50 Great Chefs and Their Final Meals, an impressive tome of a cookbook that's as much of a collection of portraits as it is recipes. Katherine was inspired by all the suggestions and is hoping to cook her way through it, one dinner party at a time. Homegirl needs to get a blog going, don't you think? Dunea's book is interesting to flip through, as some of the chefs profiled list complex, impossible meals with dinner guests both living and dead (snooty much?) and some list simple dishes with unusual ingredients, not to be eccentric, but to express something they have a genuine connection to, before the Four Horsemen come a-calling. The nice thing about the simpler recipes is you can pretty much reproduce the whole experience, from start to end. Being photographed naked with a freakishly large cow bone(r), optional.

Checking out Bourdain's bone (marrow) - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Katherine wanted to create Anthony Bourdain's last meal featuring bone marrow, topped with a simple herb sauce of fresh parsley and capers. The book's photo is certainly worth a double-take, if nothing else. Is that a femur or are you just happy to see me? So why is the fatty, gelatinous mass encased in the center of bone such a delight? And, no, I'm not talking about Bourdain. Well, there's the answer behind the magic of marrow -- it's basically fat, and when roasted, it takes on the rich, meaty flavor of the bone and the marrow's buttery texture makes it easy to spread on bread, as the French like to do. It reminds me a little of foie gras, a super-concentrated unctuous essence of an animal, but minus the food guilt hangup you may have, if you can't bring yourself to eat foie. If you can eat a hamburger without getting weepy, you can certainly suck the marrow from a cow's bones with guiltless, ghoulish delight. Even if the idea of eating it straight up makes you squeamish, chances are you've enjoyed marrow's flavor in other forms. It's a big flavor component for beef broth, especially if you have things like the Vietnamese soup, pho. If you've ever had ossobuco, an Italian dish made up of slowly braised veal shanks, all the flavor is the goodness in the bones. Food hangups, begone, and just embrace the idea of bone marrow!

Magically delicious with a pasta tossed with fresh pesto and cheese - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Marrow was something Katherine had never prepared at home, it was something on her list of Stuff I Want to Do in Life, and just needed some willing participants. One should never gnaw on bones without eager company. She was thrilled to hear Brock and I have an appreciation for the creamy center of a crunchy skeleton, and honestly, we hadn't seen Katherine and Jimmy in ages and were eager to check out their new backyard and kitchen. Priorities, man.

How does your garden grow? Way better than ours! - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Their garden is amazing, as you can see by the photos -- lots of different fruits and vegetables. New raised planters are full of fresh herbs, tomato plants going wild, squash, corn -- an impressive harvest to come, to be sure. The newly-redone backyard goes nicely with their newly-redone kitchen which is beautiful. I was ooh-ing and ahh-ing at their stove hood, which is something I'd love to eventually upgrade in our kitchen. We started out the evening in the garden, after pouring a round of local bubbly, we snipped some fresh herbs to add to the glass. Pineapple sage has always been a favorite, and it goes nicely with sparkling wine.

A civilized herb infused cocktail before we get primeval on those bones - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Pleasantries aside, we promptly attacked the platter of veal bones stuffed with fatty, marrow goodness. Bourdain said he likes his marrow meal with a pint of Guiness. The fellas agreed the dark beer went well with the richness of the marrow, but us ladyfolks stuck with red wine, which is just as good, the acidity cutting through that intense texture. The bones were simply prepared, roasted until the insides were soft and spreadable, and the outside bones had a nice, toasted color. The ability of the bones to retain the heat helps keep the marrow warm. You make your way through all this with a savoring pace, so it's important the marrow stays spreadable, or it just hardens into Crisco. The fresh parsley and caper topping was perfect, a bit of brightness to compliment the velvety marrow. We made jokes about Mad Cow Disease, lots of Walking Dead zombie references, but really, the only harm a meal like this could cause would be to someone on cholesterol meds. Sorry, no marrow for you, Lipitor junkies. Enjoyed with pasta and a fresh salad made from goodies from their garden, it's a meal that sounds adventurous, yet tastes comfortingly familiar. It's no wonder Bad Boy Bourdain chose this as his penultimate meal -- it's as much a celebration of simple, basic flavors, as it is showing respect for ingredients by keeping them unfussy.

Pasta with fresh pesto and a cold beer makes everything better - Photos by Wasabi Prime

We were also treated to a delicious buffalo roast, which was excellent. Don't brush off unusual cuts of meat when you're browsing the meat aisle! This wasn't part of Bourdain's final meal on earth, but we wanted to make sure it wasn't our last meal on earth by just having a feast of cholesterol. Jimmy made a lovely peach and nectarine crumble, and we all sat around the table until midnight drinking lots of wine and talking about the Zombie Apocalypse. Because, really, that's what life is all about, don't you agree? I think the only one disappointed was Marco. He didn't have his own plate, but I'm sure he got a few nibbles of meatbutter goodness, just so he didn't feel left out. Big thanks to Katherine and Jimmy for having us over, and we won't wait a whole year, a new dog/kitchen/backyard to get together again.  

Bring it on, Apocalypse, I can die a happy girl - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Mixed Plate: Put Down That Stick of Butter and Nobody Gets Hurt!

Paula Deen has diabetes. It wasn't so much the shot heard round the world but the self-satisfied guffaw of “I told you so's” and whispers of Food Karma from the Peanut Gallery that followed. As far as breaking news, it had as much impact as a big ol' "no duh," so why even bother to weigh in on this after so many armchair quarterbacks have snarked their way through this news? Because the only thing more troubling than the news of anyone getting dire word of one's health, is how the string of events following this news reveals our own food hangups and the true face of food-as-celebrity.

Buttah Makes it Bettah? Uh... not always - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Surface jokes aside about the Queen of Butter being given a big red X on her bill of health, I truly feel for the gal. While I've never met Paula Deen, she seems a perfectly charming and well-intentioned soul, and this health verdict would come as unwelcome news to TV celebrity and average 99 Percenter alike. Type 2 diabetes isn't pleasant – it requires dilligent dietary upkeep, can mean a lifetime of medication, and if unchecked, heart attack, stroke, roll end credits. It's also one of the more common types of diabetes, often brought on by poor eating habits and smoking. Paula was guilty of both. She's never promoted her Southern comfort style cooking as healthy -- if anything, her blatant disregard for common nutritional sense warmed my heart in an anarchist sort of way. And really, is it any different than seeing Anthony Bourdain, one of her most vocal critics, wallowing in yet another food masturbatory soliloquy over pork fat and duck liver?

Paula Deen is not the enemy. If anything, she's the familiar food-frenemy we all have, the one who calls out “Cheesecake Break!” and encourages everyone to have just one more slice, or the one who brings bags of Oreos to the book club because Nicholas Sparks books are love story downers with a body count and everyone really showed up to get crunked on wine. She's the one who encourages indulgence and won't give you a scrap of guilt for any of it. And while one could argue she put the buttery gun in your hand, you're the one who ultimately decided to use it. Paula Deen is a symptom of a much larger problem America as a whole suffers from, its dysfunctional relationship with food. It's in our friends and family who take a pill every day for cholesterol or blood pressure, the school lunch systems that affect our children, and our kitchens stocked with preservative-filled conveniences we justify as timesavers for a  life we are unwilling to ratchet back. And I consider myself guilty on all counts, but I know it's my responsibility to make changes, not rely on what the talking head on TV says. Paula Deen didn't cause this cycle of bad choices, and while she did nothing to aid in the remedy, she's a reflection of ourselves that we were comfortable with until the Ugly Truth showed up. And then she became the monster to chase out of town with torches, not because of what she did, but because she serves as a reminder of a fate many of us will share. For all the finger-wagging “shame on you” critics who are eager to tear Paula's buttery hide a new one, shake that finger right back at yourself. No one compels anyone to sprinkle crushed Ritz Crackers and bacon on everything, and just because someone's on television, it doesn't give them the credentials to be an expert, much less a role model. As Homer Simpson said: “It's not like I'm running for Jesus.”

I will say the thing that left me most unsettled was how calculated the whole affair seemed to be, and how carefully everything was positioned in her culinary empire before the D-Bomb was dropped. Deen waited several years to reveal this news, having already started on insulin medication. She's given full disclosure about becoming the new spokesperson for the medication she's on (her publicist has since quit), leading to new criticism that along with being hot for money, she's using the drugs as a crutch to continue eating maple bacon ice cream sundaes in the public eye. I'd like to use Bourdain as another comparative visual aid – he's admitted he's on cholesterol medication and continues to dine on fatty swine. I don't see anyone decrying his use of meds as a crutch, likely because it's less about nutrition and more of a high school popularity contest. Yes, Deen's sponsorhip is a ham-fisted (har-har) show of good ol' American Capitalism, which has made a lot of people upset, but really, for the longtime critics who find her actions reprehensible, she was already on their Nixon List and disappointed-er is not a real word. It would be like expecting more from Donald Trump, why he didn't marry a homely-looking girl with a nice personality. Chalk it up to chronic bad decision-making that the Queen of Butter is becoming the purveyor of pharm-fresh goods. The sponsorship was likely a move to mitigate the future financial losses of not being able to put out another cookbook dripping with butter and frosting. While that's all sorts of wrong, I think the shine needs to be thoroughly rubbed off all celebrity cooks in general. I have my personal favorites of famous food personalities, but I hold no illusions that the food is just window dressing, because at the end of the day, it's all Food Inc.

Over the weekend I watched the new cooking show, Not My Momma's Meals, by Bobby Deen, one of Paula's sons on the Cooking Channel, where he tries to health-up his Momma's recipes and reduce calorie and fat counts. Not a bad concept, but it was of course part of the planned effort to start the slow, eventual rebranding of Paula Deen's Kingdom of Butter, carving it down to more of a slim margarine tub. It seems unthinkable now, something calorie-conscious coming from the woman who makes Krispy Kreme bread pudding, but I think that's why it's her son hosting the series, acting as a buffer to initiate the ultimate goal, change a branded lifestyle of carbs, fat and sugar into something balanced and maybe someday, nutritionally sound. It's what anyone diagnosed with diabetes would do, the only difference is Deen is doing it in the public eye, and has million dollar sponsors to avoid alienating, as well as her minions who want her to continue to legitimize their own bad eating habits. And that's the shame – when the cameras are off, she may be on a lemon-chili-water juice diet for all we know, but because food fame is less about principle and more about moving product, there is a need to keep up appearances until polls are taken and demographics are realigned, to see if the public is poised to accept a more health conscious Paula Deen. Welcome to the industry of celebrity food, where TV networks and flashy products will always take the side of sales numbers. Yes, it's the choice of the individual to dance with the Devil in the pale moon light, and Deen continues to remain a cog in this Machiavelian food machine at the risk of personal health, it's just a sad state of affairs to see this kind of co-dependency. It speaks to our own media dependencies and how we rely on broadcasting to channel ideas and people into our lifestyles. The umbrage at Paula Deen is misdirected -- don't hate the player, hate the game. 

This reshaping of a high profile cooking personality makes me think of Graham Kerr, the Galloping Gourmet. He started out in the 60s and 70s as a celebrity chef with cookbooks and a television show. His style was classic French cooking – full-fat butter, cream, the whole nine. And then his health started to fail and he had to make drastic changes which eventually led him to where he is today, being a well known healthy cook. It took time to reestablish himself, but that was probably twenty years ago, and it's nothing like how it is now, where as a food celeb, in order to truly “make it,” you have to give yourself over to sponsors who make you align yourself with their product. It's all well and good until that product is the enemy that's slowly hardening your arteries. The food-as-celeb factory that puts edibles into the spotlight is a devourer of its own young, ambivalent of the choices and risks people accept to keep themselves relevant, which continues my disdain over the notion of celebrity as a whole. But it also reiterates the idea of choice. People choose to do whatever it takes to get famous, even risking one's well-being, so that's a fate one walks into knowingly. And consumers can also choose what goes onto their plate, make smart choices on their own, including the best choice you'll ever make, to turn the Idiot Box off. Or as the movie Cable Guy put it best: Kill the Babysitter.