feast |fēst|
noun: a large meal, typically one in celebration of something
verb [ intrans. ]: eat and drink sumptuously

The importance of cooking for those that you love (or just like a whole bunch) is the basis for a feast. Planning, scheming, and turning out food for a large crowd is thrilling, vexing, exhausting and supremely satisfying. The latter half of 2009 started and ended with large scale feasts, one in Los Angeles and one in San Jose. This is the second of two posts covering these events in detail.

(photo by wm. christman)

"It's a New Braunfels Bandera offset smoker."

Many years ago, my friend Tom had been researching Texas Barbecue and landed upon this unit as a potential (holy) grail for home barbecue. Looking over at the matte black finished smoker with its squat firebox and tall chimney, I immediately wanted one. The problem was availability. New Braunfels was a small Texas company with growing pains that didn't allow them much in the way of left coast sales. But with 40+ phone calls and two months later, I located one. Two weeks later I had done my first smoking run with a few racks of St. Louis style cut pork ribs.

Every three or four years since then, my wife Janet and I put on a giant-sized Texas barbecue. We do it because it's fun and we love Texas-style barbecue (low and slow) and frankly, the same amount of wood is used whether or not the smoking chamber is filled with meat or not. Barbecue travels well and leftovers last a long time. Most importantly, our friends always have a good time. Billed as "Bill and Jan's Texas Barbecue Party", we have been upping our game every time out for the past 12 years. The first official one had about 20 people and maybe 40 pounds of meat. Second one was 43 people and 86 pounds of meat. With the 2009 version, we were out to set a personal record. Here's how it came together...

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feast |fēst|
noun: a large meal, typically one in celebration of something
verb [ intrans. ]: eat and drink sumptuously

The importance of cooking for those that you love (or just like a whole bunch) is the perfect reason for a feast. Planning, scheming, and turning out food for a large crowd is thrilling, vexing, exhausting and supremely satisfying. The latter half of 2009 started and ended with large scale feasts, one in Los Angeles and one in San Jose. The next two posts will cover those events in detail.

(photo by wm. christman)

The usual modus operandi when I go to Los Angeles is to get together with Les, who is my one of my best friends down there, and proceed to spend two and a half days visiting as many interesting restaurants, food trucks, farmer's markets and bars as our stomachs can handle. Usual (dietary) caution is thrown to the wind as we exist for one thing during those times: feasting.

In June of 2009, as we were planning another weekend of sheer gluttony, we decided to take one of those days and cook for handful of our LA friends. Since it was in the middle of a sweltering LA summer, it seemed natural to do a Mediterranean-themed summer grill.

And as most of our feasts go, we over-planned with the expectation that we'd scale back anyway. The initial menu had items like fig and prosciutto flatbread and beer-can chicken but as we planned shopping and judged time those seemed to over-complicate the theme. So we settled on a majority of cold apps, some excellent locally baked bread from the Village Bakery in Silverlake, two or three different kinds of marinated and grilled beef and chicken with potatoes and herbed grilled vegetables. Wine, bread pudding, ice cream and fine bourbon rounded out the deal.

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(photo by wm. christman)

Mark K. of Kihei, Hawaii writes, "Are we going to hear anything about Indian food??"

Well Mark, yes and no. As it usually happens with good food, the actual item disappears before any pictures can be taken. And what is a ...but the devil... posting without a delicious looking photo to (hopefully) make you drool?

And so it happened on my current business trip to India with the carrot halwa at Chennai's Eden, a restaurant with a modern Indian bent started by some local hotel management graduates.

I got the chance to click a few photos of their carrot halwa before the table's still-hungry occupants licked the plate clean. This version is moderately dense and carrot-y sweet. The condensed milk pushes the richness over the top. In smallish spoonfuls it's really good...and you'll go on tilt if you slurped up the whole thing in one go. Not that I have ever done that.

You can see a recipe for carrot halwa here or just go ahead and Google "carrot halwa".

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(photo by janet christman)

Say "barbecue" to just about anyone and you're likely to get "ribs" as a response. I have been doing barbecue, in various forms, for years. And while one could endlessly debate the different methods of barbecue meat prep, technique, rubs and sauces, I prefer my rack of ribs cut in a "St. Louis" style.

Janet and I recently hosted our "once-every-three-or-four-years" Texas Barbecue Party and as I was doing prep for the chicken and ribs, I grabbed the camera to document the technique that Tom Dowdy taught me many years ago.

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(photo by wm. christman)

After almost two decades (really!), I finally made it to Pink's. LA's classic hot dog institution eluded me through the sublime and the ridiculous. The former being a nigh-on-cool spot to see and be seen in and the latter as fodder for the myriad of "gotta-eat-more-insanely-over-loaded-and-spiced-food-than-anyone-else-ever-could" reality sport-eating shows (paging Mr Richman, paging Adam Richman...white courtesy coronary bypass phone please...).

My best friend in LA, Les, chided me for not having ever gone. "But, but...I thought it was chili dogs as deep and as wide as your head...and I'm scared...", I whined. He shook his head then put his Freud hat on and told me that sometimes a chili dog is just a chili dog. And it just so happened that Pinks' version was pretty tasty.

So as part of my January 15th 50th birthday celebration (thanks Janet!), I finally went to Pink's. And it was very, very good. They source their own hot dogs and make their own chili. Even standing in line for 20 minutes was worth it. And I didn't walk away with any sort of bloat. In fact, I felt just shy of full. Perfect.

And as a native Californian, I hang my head in shame for not going sooner.

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It's been a long time comin'
It's goin' to be a long time gone.
"Long Time Gone", Crosby, Stills, Nash (and Young)

Though the passion for food remains constant, life remains seated squarely in the fast lane. When that happens, time just rolls on and on like you fell asleep and like all of a sudden, it's months later.

So, a belated Happy New Year to everyone who stops by ...but the devil sends the cooks. As before, this year will be full of challenges in grabbing enough time in the day to sit down and write about food, where it might be going and how it fits into life.

And it doesn't take the Amazing Kreskin to say that 2010 will also be a year of wild and somewhat unpredictable change. For the dedicated handful of folks who stop by, thanks for following along.

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(photo by wm. christman)

Tuesday October 27th, 1:13 pm, Tokyo Standard Time

My Special Ops agent, Katz M., called me up in the middle of my annual Tokyo shoe-buying frenzy.

"We need to talk", he said in a nervous voice. "Do you have a moment?"

Katz does reconnaissance for many of my missions in Tokyo which can be a little dicey and borderline dangerous at times.

"Katz, man...anything for you. You sound concerned. Do we have a blown cover problem?"

"No, no....um, I think I found what you were looking for", he said. "But this one is different. Really different."

"OK, give me the straight dirt, Katz. What'chu got for me?"

I heard him hesitate. "OK, the target is in Ginza. You know, rich beyond rich there...but it's not ultra-high end stuff..." His voice trailed off.

"Dish it, Katz!", I said impatiently. "I can take it."

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