faulker054

"One man's junk is another man's treasure." By now in Los Angeles, it's not uncommon to see the words 'pig ears', 'jowels' or even 'trotters' on the menu. With this current dining trend, it's almost bizarre to find a restaurant that doesn't offer a beautiful offal. Just wait for the wonderful people at Olive Garden to offer the braised pig tongue ravioli with pig blood tomato sauce for $8.95 with coupon. Based on a ritual practiced for nearly centuries by almost every race in the world but Americans, a pig is finally consumed to the last piece of meat and thankfully it does not die in vain. When I had heard that Nathan McCall of McCall's Meat and Fish was offering a whole butchered pig that had been milk and acorn fed, I had to go in and see the butchering process. We've all tasted animals that had benefited from being milk-fed or acorn-fed. The latter being best exemplified through the mastery of Spanish charcuterie ...

When it comes to creativity in soup noodles, you've got to hand it to the Japanese for their undying passion for creating bowls of ramen fit for the gods. It was almost as though the Japanese replaced the arts and crafts class in elementary schools with Ramen 101 courses. Contrary to many soup noodles from all over Asia that follow standards in taste and preparation like Vietnamese pho and Chinese beef noodle soup , ramen is one dish that has no boundaries or hard-carved rules. When the Japanese adopted the art of ramen from the Chinese, ramen was in its simplest form. You had your soup base of pork bones, flavoring such as salt, soy sauce or miso, fish and seaweed with toppings – a style of lighter soup noodles referred to as assari-kei . But after many conversations with ramen enthusiasts like Rickmond of Rameniac , I learned that that arena expanded with the long and arduous techniques in cooking pork bones, chicken bones and even seafood, including shrimp shells, to produ...

The other day at McCall's Meat & Fish Company , which was probably the third time in a week I was there, I saw that Nathan and Karen started offering smoked ham hocks. Oh joy. This reminds me of a particular ham that the Chinese, particularly Hong Kong, use in their stir fries. It's called "Virginia ham" and it's absolutely delicious. Think of it as an Asian version of spam-on-a-bone. The Chinese use the bone primarily for flavoring soups and can be treated like bacon. According to Wikipedia, "Virginia ham" is reminiscent of Jinhua ham from Mainland China. This is all new to me. At a few bucks a pound, I bought one smokey hock. Instead of using it to flavor a split pea soup as Nathan suggested, I decided to make a "hash". I cut the meat off the bone, including my favorite parts, tendon and connective tissue. The meat is completely smoked through so you can start sampling the tasty meat. It really is tasty. Since a hash tast...

Warning: Video isn't for everybody. A reader (thank you Saori) sent me this poignant, yet powerful video of a butcher and his pig . It's shot beautifully and laced with the moving sounds of one of my favorite groups, Kings of Convenience . I thought this was done very well.

When I was commuting for the nearly 2 years to work in the Marina area, I made a point to stop over Chinatown for the Phu Huong roach coach ( Alpine & Spring ), a standard catering truck run by three very nice siblings – two brothers and a sister. They offered goodies such as Vietnamese sandwiches ( banh mi ), charbroiled pork noodles ( bun thit nuong ), dried shrimp steamed rice cakes ( banh beo ), egg rolls ( cha gio ), charbroiled cured pork meatballs ( nem nuong ) and my favorite, fried Vietnamese sausage ( cha chien ). Though not the best representation of Vietnamese food, I loved the concept of one of my favorite foods served from a truck – just like tacos and Kogi BBQ . I know sooner or later, someone will be taking it back to Vietnam's true roots by setting up tiny plastic chairs and wooden tables and serving piping hot pho right out of a roach coach. What a beautiful thing . I had come here so often that I had the guy's number on my phone. If I wanted a ...

Last week, gluttony was in effect. We had some guests over to film a documentary they are working on based on food of course. Instead of meeting at a restaurant, we invited them over for dinner. We figured it would be most organic and comforting for us to do this at home, since we enjoy cooking. Subject of the dinner was my favorite meat: pork. I was stoked to do a whole dinner based on one theme. It was quite interesting running back and forth between the kitchen and dining room, answering questions and cooking. I felt like a Jamaican with 9 jobs . For an animal that spends most of its days wallowing in mud, taking in the sun with no source of employment, you would regard the pig as a fruitless mass. But, man, it's lovely how much good food is yielded from this animal. Crispy Braised Pork Bellies with Cannellini Beans & Quail Egg With a box of Cracker Jacks, you never know what surprise gift you'll receive. Same thing applies when you buy a package of pork bellies...