#fourmet

[jennifer-lu]

#新店美食 #重慶烤魚 #麻辣口味 #真妮4吃喝玩樂燴生活 最近要辦慶生PART的朋友看這邊~~ 四人同行+提前電話訂位+當週壽星=免費送:多汁香脆手撕雞 #免低消有WIFI #完成店家指定打卡活動每人再送肉盤 圖文分享: https://jennifer4.com/seahood/ #fourmet #sichuan-spicy #cheap #yummy #Dinner #entertain #share #Taipei #fish #HotPot #food（在 水貨 烤魚火鍋 - 新店） https://www.instagram.com/p/BqzbMuZAzrY/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=18mzo4604nun0

[farmrun-blog]

For You

I Love food. I Love eating. I think about both a lot. In fact, the majority of my days are dedicated to thinking about food in some way. What I just ate. If I’ve eaten lunch. If not, what I’ll eat for lunch. How the bug that just landed on my ankle for the millionth time would taste. As it turns out, most of the time during which I am not eating, I am waiting until I am hungry enough to cram something else down. This is one reason I like running so much. The more you run, the more you can fit in. Anyway. Perhaps some of you know this about me. Perhaps you are wondering why I think you care. The point is that I am going to start a ‘column’ of sorts here on Farmrun. The subject will be food – writing and photographs. The title will be Fourmet. “Fourmet?!” you are thinking, “that’s just Gourmet with and F. You just took a word that already exists and tweaked it. By one twenty sixth. How unoriginal. How stupid.” I know… apparently I’m into stealing. Or at least taking clever titles and changing one little bit and then calling them my own. But before you boycot In Defense of Food…I mean Feet… hear me out. Fourmet. Clearly a rip off of gourmet. Lets start there. Defined, gourmet, (n) is a person who enjoys eating and often eats too much food. Yes and yes. Next, there is  Gourmet Magazine, which is honestly where the name came from in the first place. I have recently taken a liking to this publication (and I should be getting payed for this plug), because it is about good food, I quite enjoy the design and layout, it has travel writing and great photographs. These photographs are as delicious as the food they portray, with a very distinctive style. Geometric. Wonderfully rich yet satisfactorily demure colour schemes. Hip crops on their often aerial-style shots of prepared foods. Action shots of great moments of people eating. So it was this inspiration that made me want to start shooting food in the style of Gourmet Magazine. Hip, beautiful photos. Of beautiful food. And when Ruth gets an email with my Fourmet photos from a barrage of enthusiastic readers, she will not sue me, but rather offer a job. She will beg me to fly to the San Juan Islands to track down and photograph the country’s oldest, wrinkliest artisan baker who makes the worlds best chocolate chip cookies. She puts pistachios in them. Who knew? So photographs. Like Gourmet. But also like Andrew Plotsky. Fourmet. Because, really, the photos and essays are for me (just put a little extra sass into saying “for me,” you’ll get it). I just love the challenge of capturing the magnificence of any given goodie with words or photos. Articulating visually or descriptively can certainly give an idea as to the opulence of a hunk of cheese, but words and photos mean nothing to taste buds. They usually just taste like paper. Or computer screen. Fourmet. Because the photos are also for you. This one really has no clever or witty reference to the title. What I most want is for you to be here with me, tasting and swooning. Since that usually doesn’t happen, the best I can do to share is with my words and photographs. Fourmet. Becasuse there are four essential steps to facilitate the existence and enjoyment of food. First is growing good food. You know, local and organic and responsible and all that bullshit. Second, preparing good food. With love and intention and passion and ingenuity. Third, eating and enjoying the good food with good people. It’s nice to have a hearty ox penis soup for one, but when surrounded by friends and family, there is no comparison. Finally, and arguably most importantly, is, after tasting the soup, doing the fingers-from-the-mouth-explosion lip smacky kissy noise thing. You know, the one French people do. Or is it Italians? This is Fourmet. Episode One. ...I have a confession to make. The definition I provided for ‘gourmet’ is actually the definition for ‘gourmand.’ I understand if you never come back.

[farmrun-blog]

Fourmet! Elements of Grapeness

[farmrun-blog]

This Is a Piece of Cake

because it's true.

[farmrun-blog]

Fourmet! Puke Newtons

For the majority of my life, figs have been nothing but a word that comes before Newton. As it turns out, the fig is actually a fruit. As it turns out, I have gotten to know figs very well over the past three weeks. Having read that last sentence of the first paragraph, the hook, you may think that I’m going to relay an outrageous story about figs. Perhaps a humorous story, one where I am embarrassed or maybe utilized figs to come out on top of a seemingly bottomless situation. I regret to inform you that there is no such story. This story has no point. No humor. There are no grandiose life lessons. There is not even any flow. Merely an excuse to put up some pictures of figs. Back to the story… The teardrop shaped fruit is generally no bigger than your average spoonful of merengue, and when overripe, quite resembles a flaccid waterballoon full of snot. The fleshy exterior is edible, and delicately surrounds the inside which is equally as pleasing to look at as to eat. Anchored to the interior surface of the skin, reaching towards the center, a network of flame-eyed cycloptic snakes wriggle and writhe among a matrix of sweet sticky nectar. These are actually the flowers of the fig, as it is an aggregate fruit (like strawberries and raspberries), and is thus actually many fruits crammed into one megafruit. Kind of like the Power Rangers. Depending on the variety, the central are towards which the snakes yearn is a deep red or a sunny yellow. When I arrived on the farm to discover fig trees scattered about, I schemed to make myself absolutely sick on them. Gorge while the gorgin’s good, y’know. Take the same approach one takes with asparagus, tomatoes, peaches and other such seasonal delicacies, because when they’re gone, they’re gone. When someone mentions fig, I’ll have swirling visions of snotty balloons falling all around me, splattering my body with their putrid fermenty juices. No more Puke Newtons for me, thanks. And with the combination of overzealous casual consumption, daily gathering of buckets of spoiled figs for the pigs, and picking, peeling cooking and canning thirty five pounds of fig jam, I think that I’ve successfully met my quota for a few years.

[farmrun-blog]

Say Cheeese, Part 2

In case you missed the introduction and first steps, here they are. This is where things get interesting. We have our milk in a bucket or something, maybe a big barrel, and we must separate the two main constituent parts of the liquid: the curds and the whey. Now, in the past I have found it difficult to remember which is which, so I will share my pnemonics – curd turds, and ‘there ain’t no whey I’m drinking that shit.’ Curds are solid, whey is liquid. Curds are soft but hold the shape of a stereotypical poop (on a good day, of course), whey is an opaque gelatinous looking liquidy goop. Curd turds. No whey. “But HOW do we separate the curds and the whey!?” they cried. The separation of the two parts is called curdling, and is often accomplished using rennet (fig. 3), which is traditionally sourced from the stomach lining of baby goats (called kids), sheep (lamb), or cows (calf). You can think of this as a sort of external digestion. We make it easier for the babies to digest their mothers’ milk by killing them and harvesting their precious organs. The stomachs contain enzymes that break down, i.e. digest, the milk into it’s constituent parts. Curd turds and no whey. Nowadays large-scale producers have ways of processing the stomachs and extracting the useful enzymes, and there are vegetable based options as well, so Figure 3 isn’t quite an exact representation of the process, but I’d say its pretty close. Curds and whey. Until next time.

[farmrun-blog]

Fourmet! The New new fig

  The pomegranate is a very selfish fruit. I have to work way too hard to eat its babies. I mean, come on pomegranate. Why do you have to have so many distinct styrofoamy bitter chambers that flake off and make my mouth taste not as good as if I wasn’t eating bits of your styrofoamy bitter chambers? Not to mention your seeds, which are disproportionately monstrous in comparison to the amount of fruit that they inhabit, so that when I eat them, to maximize my gustatory pleasure, I am forced to crush the seeds with my teeth, in addition to the succulent fruit. Don’t you want me to spread your genes by way of pooping out the intact seeds in the forest? Geez. But in all seriousness, pomegranates are pretty delightful, despite the fact that I spent thirty seven minutes this morning gingerly freeing each and every one of the 613 ± 200 seeds within. And they have antioxidants!! Don’t those, like, make you lose weight?

[farmrun-blog]

Fourmet! How Do You Like Your Eggs in the Evening?

I know, you’re not sposeda kiss and tell. But I just gotta. When I was in Puglia last week, I had two wonderful dates with a jolly chef with an endearingly weaselly laugh, named Claudio. Working for Ila Casa Cefalicchio,  a combination vineyard, olive farm, hotel and restaurant, I was assigned the task of photographing a series of traditional Pugliese dishes for a cookbook the restaurant was putting together. From the personal recipe book of the owner’s Nona (grandmother), Claudio prepared between three and five dishes a night, and I’d come by with my camera, snap some shots and eat some tasty food. Twenty one dishes, eight nights. Sweet deal. Unfortunately, as a result of a suite of less-than-optimal conditions at the hotel, I was forced to flee a week earlier than I had planned, thus cutting short Claudio and my prescribed eight date relationship. Sorry Claudio. The first two were good – full of laughs and language barriers and olive oil. So here I will recap, via photographic evidence and subpar descriptions, the few dishes we got to share.

Pane Cottura e Rape

This dish is pretty wonderful, if for nothing else, then it's simplicity. Traditionally a peasant dish, pane cotto has essentially two ingredients: almost stale bread and turnip greens. With several other flicks of the wrist and culinary tricks, including enough olive oil to drown an angry brigade of marmosets, the dish comes together in two steps. Step one, fry bread cubes. Step two, boil greens. Done.

Well, i suppose its a bit more complicated than that, but the two step method certainly captures the gist. When it is complete, you have an blissful combination of colors, flavors and textures. The bread is fried in such a way that one face of each cube is crisped to perfection - the kind you can hear in your ears with every bite - and the other absorbs the oil and cooking broth from the greens. Then there are the greens that have been boiled until they are a kind of matrix of gooey tender green bits that walk the fine line between substance and soup, while retaining their quintessential green flavor. When the two come together in the oily mess of Nickelodeon slime, oh, it is quite a delight.

Stay tuned for the other five dishes.