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Food Thread: Lamb, Mac & Cheese, And The Perils Of Eating Food

Why yes, that does look delicious! That is a friend's 4H lamb after it was lovingly roasted in his pizza oven. The particulars of the recipe are a bit hazy, for reasons that I will leave to your imagination, but might have to do with fermented grapes.

What I find interesting about that sort of cooking is that the temperature is variable and not easily adjustable, so the cook actually has to pay attention to the food! That is by no means an onerous demand, in fact it is part of the joy of cooking, but it is a requirement when using fire!

And for more background about the meal, head below the fold.

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That is cauliflower roasted in the same oven, and I had a hard time deciding which food deserved to be on the main page! The cauliflower was delicious! Cooked perfectly, with a delicious herb dressing topped with pomegranate seeds and pine nuts. It's also a great looking presentation!

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Coblogger Misanthropic Humanitarian is clearly losing a step or two. He is fond of spamming me with weird recipes that make me wonder about his mental health, but recently he sent me Lemon-Marinated Tuscan-Jewish Fried Chicken, which sounds...great! That's a PDF download,because the recipe is from "Serious Eats," and I don't link to that TDS prick Kenji López-Alt. And yes, I am being ridiculously strict, because the website is now owned by People Magazine, but I am nothing if not obsessively rigid.
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One of the pleasures of some Italian cooking is how ridiculously simple it is. Sure, they have their share of complex recipes, but a lot of italian cooking is ingredient-driven and delightfully simple. Here is a link for spaghetti aglio e olio, which is pretty damned simple, and pretty damned delicious. Hell, this is from a cook book writer from NYC, which is a testament to the simplicity of the dish and how widespread Italian cooking is!
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I am sick and f*cking tired of the hysterical over-reaction to food-borne illness in America. We have much better reporting systems now than we did in previous generations. We have amazingly sensitive diagnostic tests that detect pathogens at minuscule concentrations. And we have a media that are maniacal in their desire to amplify every bit of equivocal data into some worldwide pandemic.

Yes, we have food-borne illness. No, it is not a crisis. No it is not increasing much, if at all.

Do you want to minimize your risk? Wash produce before consuming. learn basic food safety techniques to minimize cross-contamination. Don't eat day-old tacos from the illegal stand on the corner. Wash your hands with hot soapy water before during and after cooking.

Yeah...nothing particularly complicated there!

I would add: minimize eating take-out food or prepared food. But that's because I don't much trust strangers to follow the simple, basic rules of food safety.

Like the five-second rule! Because being afraid of food is just silly, and the media desperately tries to make us terrified!

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Leftover sushi rice, mayonnaise, and Sriracha hot sauce. Don't judge me until you have tried it! But you have to warm the rice...only a savage would eat that dish cold!
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We had a gaggle of small children in the house recently, so of course I bought Kraft Mac & Cheese! And not the fancy kind with the cheese in a can. No, for Chez Dildo only the original will do.

And...it is pretty damned tasty! I am not nearly snobbish enough to scoff at that stuff.

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The great garlic experiment of 2025-2026 was a resounding...meh. Send all of your excellent home-grown garlic to: cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com.

Rumor has it that the Bourbon Bubble is bursting. I have seen no evidence of decreasing prices, but maybe the bursting started somewhere else! I think the sweet spot is $40-$60 for excellent and interesting bottles, and bumping that to $100 gets you an incremental improvement in quality, but nothing mind-blowing. More than that and I think you are paying for hype and rarity, which may look good in your liquor cabinet, but doesn't translate to more quality in the bottle.

The problem...or the solution...is to buy lots of bourbon, take tasting notes, and eventually arrive at your favorites! It should take forty or fifty years, but it is worth it!