{"id":1722,"date":"2014-04-14T11:31:54","date_gmt":"2014-04-14T18:31:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/cookblog\/?p=1722"},"modified":"2015-05-24T09:51:53","modified_gmt":"2015-05-24T16:51:53","slug":"the-first-rule-of-cooking-club","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/cookblog\/?p=1722","title":{"rendered":"First Rule of Cooking Club"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230; is tell everyone about it on your cooking blog.<\/p>\n<p>Ditalini and I are <a href=\"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/hashblog\/?page_id=13\" target=\"_blank\">Hash House Harriers<\/a>, members of a notoriously disorganized hare &amp; hounds trail club with chapters all over the world. After a recent trail, while eight of us were cooling off at a local pub, our friend Magret de Canard told us about the weekend she spent escorting a cookbook author who&#8217;d been a speaker at Tucson&#8217;s annual book fair. The author was <a href=\"http:\/\/houston.culturemap.com\/news\/restaurants-bars\/10-16-13-a-houston-restaurant-love-story-unlikely-busboy-romance-builds-an-icon-30-years-and-counting\/\" target=\"_blank\">Hugo Ortega<\/a>, and he&#8217;d given Magret a copy of his new cookbook, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Backstreet-Kitchen-Tracy-Vaught-Ortega\/dp\/0989712702\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1397491060&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=backstreet+kitchen\" target=\"_blank\">Backstreet Kitchen<\/a>. She had the book with her and we passed it around. Somehow the idea of starting a cooking club popped into our heads.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re calling ourselves the On-On Gourmet Hash House Harriers, even though the only trails we&#8217;ll follow will be culinary ones. We&#8217;re going to cook and consume dinners together, once every other month. Our idea is to pick a chef with an online or print cookbook, then draw lots for who&#8217;ll prepare an appetizer, salad or soup course, main course, and dessert &#8212; all from that chef&#8217;s repertoire. Whoever draws the main course will host; everyone else will prepare their assigned courses at home and bring them to the host&#8217;s house for dinner. After dinner, we&#8217;ll pick a new chef and draw lots for who&#8217;ll prepare what for our next meeting, two months down the road.<\/p>\n<p>Our inaugural cooking club meeting was two nights ago, and we started with &#8212; who else &#8212; Hugo Ortega and his Backstreet Kitchen cookbook. Ditalini and I drew the main course (Slow Braised Short Ribs, pg 164),\u00a0so we hosted. We were joined by the Spezzatinos, Manzo &amp; Anitra, who prepared the dessert (Pear Tarte Tatin, pg 184); the Ceviches,\u00a0Tibur\u00f3n &amp;\u00a0Camar\u00f3n, who prepared the appetizer (Mushroom Escargot with Pesto, pg 119), the aforementioned\u00a0Magret de Canard, who prepared a side dish (Garlic Mashed Potatoes, pg 152), and another single member,\u00a0Houskov\u00fd Knedl\u00edk, who can&#8217;t cook for squat but that&#8217;s okay because we named him our resident provisioner of wines &amp; spirits.<\/p>\n<p>All hail Hugo Ortega! The On-On Gourmets Hash House Harriers is off to a great start. Here we are, setting off on our inaugural gastronomical trail (which, I admit, looks very much like sitting down to dinner):<br \/>\n<center><\/p>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td valign=\"top\">\n<p><figure style=\"width: 240px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a title=\"IMG_0574 copy by Paul Woodford, on Flickr\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/halfmind\/13821952045\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"click to view full sized image on Flickr\" alt=\"IMG_0574 copy\" src=\"https:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7332\/13821952045_9777afb4b4_m.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"160\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Magret de Canard, Houskov\u00fd Knedl\u00edk, Anitra Spezzatino<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/td>\n<td valign=\"top\">\n<p><figure style=\"width: 240px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a title=\"IMG_0575 copy by Paul Woodford, on Flickr\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/halfmind\/13821978703\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"click to view full sized image on Flickr\" alt=\"IMG_0575 copy\" src=\"https:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7236\/13821978703_4048e46f04_m.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"160\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Manzo Spezzatino, Camar\u00f3n (standing) &amp; Tibur\u00f3n Ceviche, Ditalini deMenthe<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p><\/center><br \/>\nI don&#8217;t remember who&#8217;s preparing what for our next meeting (Ditalini wrote it all down, thank goodness), but our next chef is Mario Batali.<\/p>\n<p>And now that I&#8217;ve talked up Hugo Ortega and his great cookbook, you&#8217;ll be pleased to learn that I&#8217;ve posted his Slow Braised Short Ribs recipe, along with some photos of its preparation, directly below this entry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230; is tell everyone about it on your cooking blog. Ditalini and I are Hash House Harriers, members of a notoriously disorganized hare &amp; hounds trail club with chapters all over the world. After a recent trail, while eight of us were cooling off at a local pub, our friend Magret de Canard told us about the weekend she spent escorting a cookbook author who&#8217;d been a speaker at Tucson&#8217;s annual book fair. The author was Hugo Ortega, and he&#8217;d given Magret a copy of his new cookbook, Backstreet Kitchen. She had the book with her and we passed it around. Somehow the idea of starting a cooking club popped into our heads. We&#8217;re calling ourselves the On-On Gourmet Hash House Harriers, even though the only trails we&#8217;ll follow will be culinary ones. We&#8217;re going to cook and consume dinners together, once every other month. Our idea is to pick a chef with an online or print cookbook, then draw lots for who&#8217;ll prepare an appetizer, salad or soup course, main course, and dessert &#8212; all from that chef&#8217;s repertoire. Whoever draws the main course will host; everyone else will prepare their assigned courses at home and bring them to the host&#8217;s house for dinner. After dinner, we&#8217;ll pick a new chef and draw lots for who&#8217;ll prepare what for our next meeting, two months down the road. Our inaugural cooking club meeting was two nights ago, and we started with &#8212; who else &#8212; Hugo Ortega and his Backstreet Kitchen cookbook. Ditalini and I drew the main course (Slow Braised Short Ribs, pg 164),\u00a0so we hosted. We were joined by the Spezzatinos, Manzo &amp; Anitra, who prepared the dessert (Pear Tarte Tatin, pg 184); the Ceviches,\u00a0Tibur\u00f3n &amp;\u00a0Camar\u00f3n, who prepared the appetizer (Mushroom Escargot with Pesto, pg 119), the aforementioned\u00a0Magret de Canard, who prepared a side dish (Garlic Mashed Potatoes, pg 152), and another single member,\u00a0Houskov\u00fd Knedl\u00edk, who can&#8217;t cook for squat but that&#8217;s okay because we named him our resident provisioner of wines &amp; spirits. All hail Hugo Ortega! The On-On Gourmets Hash House Harriers is off to a great start. Here we are, setting off on our inaugural gastronomical trail (which, I admit, looks very much like sitting down to dinner): I don&#8217;t remember who&#8217;s preparing what for our next meeting (Ditalini wrote it all down, thank goodness), but our next chef is Mario Batali. And now that I&#8217;ve talked up Hugo Ortega and his great cookbook, you&#8217;ll be pleased to learn that I&#8217;ve posted his Slow Braised Short Ribs recipe, along with some photos of its preparation, directly below this entry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,250],"tags":[239],"class_list":["post-1722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cookblogging","category-dinner-parties","tag-cooking-club"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pixFB-rM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/cookblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/cookblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/cookblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/cookblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/cookblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1722"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/cookblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1884,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/cookblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1722\/revisions\/1884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/cookblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/cookblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/cookblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}