It’s another evening of chickens and delight. The Carnal Food Movement experiments with its 3rd Microkitchen at Chez Erin. The word of Nordo’s arrival is beginning to spread. Here and there his message is seeping into the world of Seattle. A stir is a foot.
Tonight we move ahead with our menu. The soup will once again be changed. We will serve homemade saffron pasta stuffed with chicken pate and shaped to resemble a small chick. It will lie upon a bed of leaves and grass (actually peppers and snow peas shaved) and swim in a bright yellow broth. All this seems to fit the story very well. It’s rolled out and cut, stuffed and pinched.
Other than this the meal will be same as before. Nordo cannot have unfettered change. It curls his toenails and causes the hair on the top of his feet to quiver. Do not alter the perfections in the universe for your own satisfaction.
The amuse bouche continues to open up the dinner well. The green of the pasture and the crème fraiche seem to set the right tone for everyone. The clarity and brightness delight.
On to the salad. Tonight there is a lively debate. There are those who say, “ Maybe too much sauce.” And those who say, “No, we love our sauce.” And so the world turns on the head of another debate. Some one suggests that we use the odors of pine or cedar to bring the diner into the coop. And another says we need a stronger leaf other than spinach, maybe arugula, to fold it into the chiffonade. The dish was amniotic- yielding, like a pillow, fitting the early stages of life.
(On a side note: The nest was baked to perfection by Chef Mom who can always pull us through in a pinch. Thanks Mom.)
“It’s so exciting to have food on your plate that you don’t know what to do with. It’s like nothing that you’ve seen before.” The interactivity of the food is the fun. It should be done. Don’t explain it. Let it be discovered and it will create imagination!
With so much debate we know things are on a good track tonight. We have them in our paws.
The Soup: Rainwater broth. Very matzo. The soup is more modern, somehow. This, I don’t understand. How is a soup modern? The chick shape is good, totally gotten. More obvious dirt and leaves and worms, please. These people are such gluttons. Pasta could be thinner. The vegetables should be good, American farm staples. Ah, everyone’s a critic.
We celebrate. We have a winner. We have succeeded in telling the story of our chick in a puddle just after the rain. Cute.
After a brief break we serve Henrietta. We picked a timid cutter of the bird. But, she rises to the challenge and leaps beyond her boundaries.
Entrée- this is so visceral. Like guts. “I feel that I have slaughtered this.” This time the cherries were not in the body of the bird, but instead served on the plate, pre-chicken, w/ the sauce drizzled, and everyone seemed to like it visually though they thought they should eat them and they were very hot. “Too much fire.” They say we need to deal w/ the bitchiness of the masses and dumb it down. They do not know whom they are dealing with. Nordo will NOT dumb it down for the masses. Make them eat it. True, there could be a bowl of cherries, a bowl of violence, as it were, and so, the cherries could be dumbed down and easily digested by the masses, but with the option of more pain, more violence. Nordo says do both. Do not dumb it down and give the option for more violence. That is Carnal Food.
The sausage is the key. The guts were there. The guts were seen. The guts worked.
Red wine w/ chicken works, because it is a rich chicken. Medium body pinot grigio.
The spiciness is the chop of the cleaver, while the vegetables are the viscera.
(A side note: The basics of the chile. The spice is in the ribcage of the chile. From there it slowly creeps out. It could take over the world if it wanted to as it seeps throughout the tissues of all living beings.)
There’s never any chicken left.
And finally…
Dessert. Is the violence over done? Perhaps the entrée should be a little more traditional in its presentation so that the murder of the dessert is clearer. Do we doubt our murder scene? Never.
What is beyond the eating of the chicken? What is beyond the death of the chicken? What do you want people to leave with? What is the last line? What is the cycle? How do you go back to the egg?
This is our wine fueled, philosophical portion of the evening. So, what is the story that takes it back to the egg, back to the beginning, and what does the diner take back into their life from the dinner of Henrietta? Something simple, something bright white, something that takes us back into the cycle of life and thus, creating more eggs and more life. Seeing life as it is, full circle. In this way, the dessert will not seem like an afterthought but a beginning of something else.
This is good.
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