There is a long a rich history documenting the relationship of Korea’s national dish of fermented cabbage and chilies to human flatulence. Although delicious and extraordinarily versatile, it is admittedly low-hanging comedic fruit. I, myself, find them to be pretty ridiculous and unnecessary.

            Biryani is the quintessential dish of the Indian subcontinent, and there are as many different variations as there are communities that eat it. At its most elemental it consists of two ingredients and two cooking techniques. Rice and some kind of meat/vegetables/cheese/something are prepared separately, and then sealed in a pot with dough and cooked together. That’s about it, and although it is extremely modest in its most basic forms, it is a dish that can be elevated to the royal dinner table.

I have received more credible threats of physical harm, insinuations that sex will thereafter exist only in theory for cooking it, and the phrase “monster” hurled in my direction for even mentioning cooking a rabbit.

     The problem is very simple: other people routinely misrepresent the words coming out of my mouth when I say “cook a rabbit.”

 The partridge is one of the Lord’s great offerings to the mouthal papillae whose responsibility it is to deliver electrical interpretations the collection of chemicals that make up the bird directly to the pleasure center of the brain.

     If you’ve ever applied a nine-volt battery to the apex or median sulcus area of said organ, you have some subjective knowledge that not all electrical impulses are created equal.  However, the partridge imparts other things well beyond its flavor that enhance its value:

I cooked a lobster tonight, and this thing was a 2.5 lb. monster. I asked the guy at HMart (Asian grocery store where you can buy duck penises and shit) for a small lobster and the asshole gave me one that, given a few millennia, would have ancestors that could fly its claws were so big.

A few months back I made a big deal out of a magical new pasta that, to the best of my knowledge, is a rare and possibly singular thought I can claim in the cooking realm.

    I will now share that recipe as well as the principles involved.

 Eating brains is very simple. You insert a piece of it into the orifice slightly below your own brain, chew about twice, and slowly encourage it to find its way down the length of your spinal cord to the orifice slightly below where it branches off. Only the first part is tricky, and in order to surmount this difficulty certain things must be done.

  I want to start off by saying, “I get it. Brains are one of those things that foodie (I hate that word...) douchebags can say they’ve eaten because it’s hardcore”. 

     Let me dispel that myth. Foodies are not hardcore. There is nothing hardcore or exotic about eating something that tastes really good, and there’s nothing worthwhile about eating something that tastes like shit and saying your palate is refined enough to find the miracle in it.

Regarding quail, I think the trickiest step for most people in the cooking process is slightly increasing the temperature by removing them from the poultry department freezer and placing them in the cart. The average format in which quail are delivered to the public involves completely removing their cavity bones (ribcage, etc.), flattening them out, and vacuum packing so they appear very much like a used, bird-shaped prophylactic that had been shot into the bag off an elephant’s trunk. Although they appear completely destroyed to the novice, in reality this unfortunate flaccidity is an incredibly useful state for the poor little things. 

 Unfortunately and unfairly, the game bird is taken as odd food by many, as we live in a four meat world: beef, chicken, pork and seafood. From a practical standpoint I think it’s fair to say that bacon is a fifth meat; although technically pork, it’s not “pork” any more than beer is a staple grain. I know too many Jewish people who don't care where Yahweh thinks bacon comes from, and are fully prepared to have their house caved in, family wiped out, and live destitute and covered in boils if he really wants to gets uppity about it.

 Escargot evokes a profoundly polarized reaction from diners and restauranteurs everywhere. It's understandable, in the sense that there is virtually no way to disguise the mental image or the actual image sitting on the plate in front of you. You are eating a snail, and you will have one of two reactions: either they are absolutely delicious, or completely, utterly putrid.
 

       There are several reasons people don’t eat oxtail, but they all generally boil down to “I’m a vegetarian”, “I’m lying about being a vegetarian”, “I’m on a fake diet for only tonight”, and by far most commonly, “erf...it’s...um...it just seems...gee...I’m sure it tastes good, but....”

       I have never understood the concept of not putting something into my mouth simply because it was flapping around in an animal’s poo at one point. If you can’t handle that, don’t eat a lobster or a shrimp ever again; that vein in the middle is not exactly a spinal cord, I hate to tell you. Calm down and allow me to dispel the revulsion:

I'm here to help! Your fridge and pantry are full of gold! I check this email religiously:  benivarius@gmail.com.

Also, got a special evening in the works? I can help you with anything from family-style joy to fine dining memories.

Tell me the following and I'll help you cook:

Far too often we throw away things or compost what could easily be turned into deliciousness. It’s actually one of the great disasters of the modern food culture. We are taught how to properly clean a chicken, trim vegetables, and generally speaking find the tastiest bits of whatever we’re cooking and pitch the rest. To my mind this is not good cooking. This is bad cooking, and moreover, in the worst traditions of our culinary heritage.

Odd Food—Pig Trotter pt. 3: Cooking Time!

In the words of Auguste Escoffier, "Cook in the usual manner."

Odd Food—The Pig Trotter pt. 1

There is an easy way to tell when you call a butcher or meat counter if the individual on the other end of the line is someone worth paying a little extra to get you good meat:

Ask if they sell pig’s trotters. You will get one of three answers:

Odd Food—Pig Trotter pt. 2

The plan:

You have no idea how excited I am just typing this. Marco Pierre White and Pierre Koffman described this as “the greatest main course of all time”. They are correct. There is nothing like it on earth or in the heavens above, but that doesn’t mean everybody will like it. If you don’t, there’s nothing wrong with you; you have your textures and flavors you like and that’s fine. Make no mistake, the trotter is offal—understand that going in.