Fate is a fickle temptress. The very day my diploma was placed in my hands, I received an invitation to audition to host a show for The Food Network, which will feature cheap, hidden, gourmet food around the country. The casting agents had found my bar menu deal map as well as my Chronicle piece, and requested an audition video talking about myself, inexpensive deals around Boston, and the ways they were found.

I chose to focus my audition piece on Estragon, in Boston’s South End, which serves dollar tapas at the bar from Monday through Thursday from 5:30-7pm.

Items on the dollar tapas menu may include:

• Pan Tumaca con Jamón – Serrano Ham on Tomato-Garlic Toast
• Queso de Cabra con Tomate – Warm Spanish Goats’ Cheese & Tomato on Toast
• Boquerones con Manchego y Tomate – White Anchovies, Manchego Cheese & Tomato on Toast
• Patatas Bravas – Feisty Fried Potatoes
• Lengua con Mojo Verde – Beef Tongue, Canary Island Salsa on Toast
• Torreznos - Crispy Fried Pork Belly, Salsa Picante
• Tortilla Española – Traditional Spanish Omelette
• Chorizo - Grilled Spanish Sausage on Toast
• *Pringá - Braised Beef Shank, Pork Belly & Bone Marrow on Toast – Garbanzos Fritos
• *Crispy Paprika Chickpeas – Aceitunas Marinadas
• House-marinated Olives – Alcachofas Fritas
• *Crispy Fried Artichoke Hearts, Alioli

* = Especially recommended

Estragon is among my favorite places for tapas in the city, mixing exceptional food with reasonable pricing (especially with the dollar menu). Despite its chic decor, with walls adorned with pictures of Salvador Dali and half-naked women, Estragon serves traditional tapas from Chef Julio de Haro’s childhood in Madrid. Incidentally, Chef de Haro claims that Estragon is the only tapas place in the greater Boston area in which the chef is actually a Spaniard. This is a leg up on the McDonald’s dollar menu, as I’ve yet to have a true Irishman make my McDouble.

If you do stop by for dollar tapas, make sure to order the artichoke hearts and pringá (a buttery marvel). You will not regret it.

We’ll see how the audition goes. Wish me luck….

Louis DiBiccari, chef de cuisine at Sel De La Terre Back Bay, just announced the return of Chef Louie Night to the Boston social scene on Sunday April 11, 2010 at 6pm, in the former Great Bay space at 500 Commonwealth Ave.

Tickets may be purchased at www.cheflouienight.com for $38 plus a suggested $5 donation to Haiti.

To participate in Chef Louie Night (formerly known as Iron Chef Louie), guests go online to purchase tickets, as well as to vote for the themes and ingredients in the courses served that evening. On the morning of the event, Chef Louie finds out what the winning ingredients are and creates the menu for that evening.

Here are the exciting culinary parameters to vote for April 11th:

Style:

• Louie’s a real Caribbean Jerk
• Smell that Sea Salt (& Lime) air
• This party is a gRIOT

Entree:

• Patty cake patty cake baker’s man
• Just an island in the sea
• I’m frying under this sun!

Other Ingredients (Haitian Themed):

• Diri Jon Jon (rice and mushrooms)
• Llabouyi Bannann (a banana and plantain mash)
• Picklese (spicy Haitian vinegar)
• Mais Moulin (Haitian polenta)
• Sauce Pois (Haitian bean sauce)
• Soup Joumou (pumpkin soup)

For the evening’s first activity, there will be a cocktail hour featuring Island Creek Oysters. This will be followed by a sit-down dinner with family-style table service and complimentary 1920’s style Haitian-inspired drinks created by award-winning Mixologist Jackson Cannon.

Dinner, of course, is a mystery but rumor has it that former pastry chef turned farmer, Peter Merrill, will be bringing a giant pig from Codman Farm.

This should be a wonderful event, and I look forward to seeing you there!

Come eat and chat with Chef Barbara Lynch at a signing and tasting for her new cookbook Stir, on Saturday, January 16 from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm. The event will be at Olivia Browning, located at 20 City Square, Charlestown, MA.

For the tasting Chef Lynch will be preparing Tomato Tarte Tatins, Ham and Cheese Tortas, Chocolate Cookies, and few more surprises!

The book retails for $35.00 and can be purchased at the event for signing.

If you want to attend this event, you RSVP by emailing email Abby at abby@oliviabrowning.com or calling 617-242-2299.

(from Time)

Time reports that once upon a time in Stockholm, Sweden, several people decided to release their pet bunnies into the wild rather than take care of them. Their bunnies then proceeded to do it like…you know…themselves, and in a short time, Stockholm was overrun with rabbits. As a result, Stockholm called in hunters to bring the population down to healthy levels, and 6,000 rabbits were sent to the great warren in the sky.

It turns out that at this same time, the E.U. passed a law, which made it illegal to dispose of raw animal matter in landfills. Since these rabbits were wild and not controlled for human consumption, the Swedes had to decide what to do with the carcasses. The answer came from a company call Konvex that was able to incinerate the animal carcasses to heat homes.

From the Time article:

Using a new method that was developed with the help of E.U. funding, raw animal material is crushed, ground and then pumped into a boiler where it is burned together with wood chips, peat or other waste to produce heat. “It is an efficient system as it solves the problem of dealing with animal waste and it provides heat,” says Leo Virta, the managing director of Konvex. “The main part of this fuel is coming from cows, pigs and moose. Rabbits are only a small part of the total volume. We take the raw animal material, mince it up into small pieces and add some formic acid. We then take the fuel and deliver it to the heating centers. One hundred thousand tons of raw material can generate enough heat for 11,000 homes a year.”

Needless to say, tossing the corpses of Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail onto the fire on a cold winter’s night has draw some criticism.

From the Time article:

“It feels like they’re trying to turn the animals into an industry rather than look at the main problem,” says Anna Johannesson of the Society for the Protection of Wild Rabbits. Johannesson and other wildlife campaigners recommend spraying the park with a chemical that makes shrubs and plants unappetizing to the animals. Tuvuynger [One of the hunters used to reduce the population], though, has little sympathy for that argument. “If you do that you only move the problem 100 meters away. Overpopulation is not good for the animals’ well-being because they use up limited natural resources for survival, so shooting them is the only answer.”….”People like the rabbits because they are pretty. What else can we do with them though? We can’t give them bunny birth control pills. So we have to put the rabbits away.”

As unappealing as this all may sound, Time states that animal by-products have been routinely and successfully used as fuel for quite some time. Also, keeping raw animal matter out of the landfills will supposedly reduced landfill size by 35% by 2020.

In general, Time reports, many countries are getting into biofuels based around animal by-products. German biofuel company Saria turns animal matter into renewable fuel for industrial uses, and ConocoPhillips, an energy company, struck a deal with Tyson to start producing biofuels from their meat wastes.

While putting Thumper on the fire is certainly not the best place to start from as the PR firm for any of the companies, animal based biofuel is an interesting option for the use of meat that cannot be consumed by humans, and would otherwise end up in a landfill.

All the world will be your enemy, Prince of a Thousand enemies. And when they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you; digger, listener, runner, Prince with the swift warning. Be cunning, and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed.
— Richard Adams (Watership Down)

(from HollieNewton.com via b3ta)

Hollie Newton, a woman from the UK who bills herself as a copywriter, art director, and creator of stuff, got into a heated argument with her friends one day over tea (as the British are wont to do) over the proper way to coat a scone. The debate was over whether one should first apply the jam followed by the (clotted) cream, or the cream followed by the jam.

As these fine ladies of the Empire could not come to a consensus, Hollie decided to contact the experts, and drafted the following letter to the Ritz in London:

Eventually, the Ritz actually replied saying:

Which way would you go? I agree with the Ritz as to the optimality of the jam first method, as it acts as a point of adhesion between the clotted cream and the scone, as well as keeps the cream in a nice dollop shape.

Take a look at Hollie’s original post, which includes a writeup from the Evening Standard on the whole affair, by clicking here .