Pennington's Foodstory

The other night Kelly and I went out to one of our favorite restaurant in Pawleys after a very long day at work.  We sat at the bar and ordered a couple of drinks to help wash away the day.  I wasn't too hungry because I cooked two pork shoulders at the wine shop and they didn't finish until around 5pm; it's now after 8.  After my first drink I ordered just an Oyster Caesar salad to tide me over.  I guess I really wasn't hungry at all, I just ate the oysters and about a 1/4 of the salad.  I asked Jen the bartender to box it up for me.  Kelly said that the lettuce wasn't going to hold up too well over night.  I said it was cool I was just going to puree it and make a dip out of it. WHAT?!  Make a dip out of it?  Normally this may sound strange, but in this case it didn't. She didn't even look at me sideways on this one. When we were in NYC back in September our friend Cathy took us to a killer restaurant in Brooklyn called Locanda Vini e Oli...

For the past few years I've heard stories of Darwin Award candidates who have done something stupid with a turkey fryer.  Either they pour oil all over the place and burn up their yard, garage or whole damn house, or they burn themselves and/or others in the pursuit of a juicy turkey.  I heard about one particular dumb ass who injected his turkey with Jack Daniel and blew the whole thing up.  I've fried many turkeys myself and haven't had any problems other than spilling a little oil (it had cooled down) on the lawn and killed a spot of grass about a foot in diameter. The days of the turkey fryer are numbered due to a new cooker I have recently had the pleasure to use.  My boss received a "turkey cooker" right before Thanksgiving made by Char-Broil called "The Big Easy".  His Turkey Day plans didn't involve him actually cooking a turkey so he let me borrow it, which was a godsend because I was having a full house that day and would have to do some ...

    For those of you who may not yet be in the know, I've gotten out of the wine distribution game.  After 12 years in the biz I've finally decided to hang up my wine bag.  My plan is to focus on food writing.  I know, I know, some of you who read my stuff think I have possibly lost what bit of mind I have left because most of us have read bathroom graffiti that's better than my crap.  Not to mention the fact my posts are few and infrequent.  That's about to change.  I'm kind of using this blog as a crass first draft for my musings.  This will be good for first drafts because I spoke with my mother yesterday and she suggested in the nicest way that I should refrain from using the colorful language that I'm so fond of.  Fuck, shit, piss; sorry Mom, must be the Torrettes I don't have ;)  This stuff is just for fun, for now.     What sucks about writing to get paid (hopefully) is that not only can I not swear...

Despite my love for ordering pizza to go, my absolute favorite pizza is made in my kitchen. While I don't have a wood-burning oven, (yet) I do make my own dough. I have a ton of cookbooks with dough recipes from reputable sources, not some fucking "Betty Crocker" who says you can save a few pennies by making it yourself, but from real chefs who make dough, pun intended, off of their pizza. My favorite is out of a cookbook from famed San Francisco restaurant A16. The A16 pizza is a thin crust Neopolitan-style with a minimal amount of toppings. [Side note: I hate the word "topping". I don't know why, but it just sounds ultra dorky yet I've used twice in this piece, the first was in Part 1.] Since the crust is so thin, too much stuff tend to make it soggy. Leave the Meatlovers Supreme Deep Dish to the thick crust chain joints. To me this is the perfect crust.  No disrespect to a Chicago pie, but even they have to admit it's more of a casserole than a ...

I've had pizza on the brain for a few days and living in a one stoplight town, my options are limited, especially for delivery. When I got to Pawleys Island just over a year ago I found one place called Di Roma's that delivered and luckily was not part of some crapped-out giant chain. I'm not one to do chain restaurants because they mostly suck. The pizza is really good, but it's a Sicilian pie (square not round), which could be good for mathematicians because they all know that the area of a circle is "pi r squared". (OK, I'll admit that joke was lame as hell, but I couldn't resist.) I dig the traditional round pizzas because I like to fold the slice in half. I don't know why, I just do it. None the less it's a great pizza. I think there may be one other place that delivers, but I'm not sure. Gotta do some more research! :) Luckily there are two places in town that have great pizza that don't fall in the category of a "pizza pla...

    If you say to someone ('round these parts), "Hey, let's go eat some goat meat."  they're gonna look at you like you have three fucking heads.   Americans, at this stage of the game, aren't digging on goat.  It's funny because goat is the most widely consumed meat on this planet and we are a group of folks who love to rip off any and every other culture and claim it as our own.  It's a staple of authentic Mexican, Indian, North African, and Jamaican cuisines.  What makes goat different?  The answer to that question boggles even my food-lovin' mind.      Say "goat cheese" and you get tons of agreement.  Everyone has hopped on the goat cheese bandwagon in the last 20 years and now it seems pretty standard.  "Goat milk"?  Still not too far off base, but goat meat is a whole 'nother ballgame.  People seem to understand lamb pretty well, from leg of..., to chops, to sausage, even lamb bur...

    I got a call last weekend from my older brother Pete who lives on the Big Island of Hawaii asking when I was going to write some more on my blog.  I just happened to be at a friend's crawfish boil with Kelly and some folks from work, when I told him I was looking for inspiration to write.  He said why don't you write about that.  It sounded like a great idea, but  I realized that I should first write about Hawaii, seeing that Kelly and I were just there visiting with him.     It's been well over a month since we returned from our bi-annual pilgrimage to Hawaii and I'm still brimming over with the "Aloha Spirit".  We did basically the same things as we did the last time.  We stayed at the same place, went to many of the same restaurants, but as with each time we go, it feels like a brand new place.      I DVR'd the 'No Reservations' Hawaii episode where Ton...

    Needless to say, the last 6 months have been really freaking strange.  SC is awesome, but I really miss my wife.  In just 2+ hours, barring any other bullshit delays, she'll be here.  Then I can get back on the cooking train.  The last few months I haven't felt at all motivated to cook, it's just more fun to cook for/with others.  With that being said, here's the beginning of the story of how I've totally retooled my diet.     Now this cooking train that I'm about to board is on a somewhat different track.  It all started the week of 'Rohatsu' which is a Buddhist holiday in early December.  Along with a bunch of meditation, I decided that I would adhere to a totally vegetarian diet for the week, just doing that good Buddhist thang.  No death on my watch.  I always hear people say that when they totally switch things up go down a different food path (a healthy one) they feel "all brand new, invigorated,...