Eating

Whoa.

Hi, welcome to Shut Up and Eat, the podcast about food, restaurants, chefs, cooking, and everything else we're obsessed with.

I'm Kathy Erway.

And I'm Matt Gross.

We're both New Yorkers who love to cook, eat, travel, and write.

This week, we're talking to Chef Fidel Caballero of Karima, a progressive Mexican restaurant with global influences.

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And now, our conversation with Chef Fidel.

So he was curious to know what's happening.

And the bottom line was lifestyle Because one of the companions said The Holy Prophet peace and blessings of Allah be upon him Has taught us to eat but do not exaggerate Eat and drink the Quranic conjunction But do not exceed the limits Keep a balanced diet First Secondly Leave food whilst you're still hungry.

So one third of your stomach should be empty.

Don't stuff yourself with food.

Well, hello and welcome once again to Raging and Eating.

This is Rossi, better known as Chef Rossi, owner and executive chef of the Raging Skillet in New York City.

And how the hell are you? How you doing? How's it going? What have you been up to? There's all kinds of crazy things happening right now.

That's all I have to say.

And there you have it.

This is Rossi, better known as Chef Rossi, for Raging and Eating.

And as always, food is love and so are you.

And the old man set before him some moldy bread on a trencher and said

"Eat"

and some brackish water in a cup and said

"Drink."

But the leper entreated him and prayed of him, till the Star-Child had pity and gave him the piece of white gold.

And when he came to the Magician's house the Magician opened to him and brought him in and said to him, Hast thou the piece of white gold? And the Star-Child answered, I have it not.

So the Magician fell upon him and beat him, and set before him an empty trencher and said, Eat, and an empty cup and said, Drink, and flung him again into the dungeon.

And on the morrow the Magician came to him and said, If today thou bringest me not the piece of yellow gold, I will surely keep thee as my slave and give thee three hundred stripes.

now like a singing bird my feet touch earth and i must drink and eat welcome to all men i'll not care what any of my fellows wear will not let cloth divide our souls they'll swim stuck naked in the bowls welcome poor beggar i'll not see that hand of yours dislodge a flea while you sit at my side and beg or right foot scratching your left leg farewell restraint we will not now measure the ale our brains allow but drink as much as we can hold we'll count no change when we spend gold this is no time to save but spend to give for nothing not to lend Let foes make friends, let them forget The mischief-making deed, that fret, The living with complaint like this.

He wronged us once, hate him and his.

Christmas has come, let every man Eat, drink, be merry all he can.

Else my best mark.

But if port wine or whiskey's yours, let it be mine.

Let's eat and drink.

This is no time to sit and think.

farewell to study books and pens and welcome to all kinds of men let all men now get rid of care and what one has let others share then tis the same no matter which of us is poor or which is rich let each man have enough this day since those that can are glad to pay there's nothing now too rich or good for poor men not the king's own food now like a singing bird my feet touch earth and i must drink and eat welcome to all men i'll not care what any of my fellows wear we'll not let cloth divide our souls they'll swim stark naked in the bowls welcome poor beggar i'll not see that hand of yours dislodge a flea while you sit at my side and beg or right foot scratching your left leg farewell restrain we will not now measure the ale our brains allow but drink as much as we can hold we'll count no change when we spend gold there is no time to save but spend to give for nothing not to lend let foes make friends let them forget the mischief-making dead that fret the living with complaint like this he wronged us once hate him and his christmas is come let every man Eat, drink, be merry, all he can.

And the problem I have with that is

Eat.

You shouldn't say that.

Well, I'm from the ghetto.

I'm going to give you a quick acronym.

It's EAT.

Three letters, three words, and we'll be done.

We read Hebrews chapter 11.

They look around as I cross the porch and dip the gourd into the water bucket and drink.

"Where's Jule?" Pa says When I was a boy, I first learned how much better water tastes when it has set a while in a cedar bucket Warmish cool With a faint taste like the hot July wind and cedar trees smells It has to set at least six hours and be drunk from a gourd Water should never be drunk from metal And at night it is better still I used to lie on the pallet in the hall Waiting until I could hear them all asleep So I could get up and go back to the bucket It would be black, the shelf black The still surface of the water a round orifice in nothingness Where before I stirred it awake with the dipper I could see maybe a star or two in the bucket And maybe in the dipper a star or two before I drank After that I was bigger, older And then I would wait until they all went to sleep So I could lie with my shirt tail up Hearing them asleep Feeling myself without touching myself Feeling the cool silence blowing upon my parts And wondering if Cash was yonder in the darkness doing it too Had been doing it perhaps for the last two years Before I could have wanted to or could have Pa's feet are badly splayed His toes cramped and bent and warped With no toenail at all on his little toes From working so hard in the wet in homemade shoes When he was a boy Beside his chair his brogans sit They look as though they had been hacked with a blunt axe out of pig iron Vernon has been to town I have never seen him go to town in overalls His wife, they say She taught school too once I fling the dipper dregs to the ground and wipe my mouth on my sleeve It is going to rain before morning Maybe before dark Down to the barn, I say Harnessing the team Down there fooling with that horse He will go on through the barn into the pasture The horse will not be in sight He is up there among the pine seedlings in the cool Jule whistles once and shrill The horse snorts Then Jule sees him Glinting for a gaudy instant among the blue shadows Jule whistles again The horse comes dropping down the slope Stiff-legged His ears cocking and flicking His mismatched eyes rolling And fetches up twenty feet away Broadside on Watching Jule over his shoulder in an attitude kittenish and alert Come here, sir, Jule says He moves Moving that quick His coat bunching Tongues swirling like so many flames With tossing mane and tail and rolling eye The horse makes another short curvetting rush And stops again Feet bunched Watching Jule Jule walks steadily toward him His hands at his sides Save for Jule's legs They are like two figures carved for a tableau Savage in the sun When Jule can almost touch him The horse stands on his hind legs and slashes down at Jule Then Jule is enclosed by a glittering maze of hooves As by an illusion of wings Among them, beneath the upreared chest He moves with the flashing limberness of a snake For an instant Before the jerk comes onto his arms He sees his whole body earth-free Horizontal Whipping snake limber Until he finds the horse's nostrils and touches earth again Then they are rigid Motionless Terrific The horse back thrust on stiffened quivering legs With lowered head Jule with dug heels Shutting off the horse's wind with one hand With the other patting the horse's neck in short strokes Myriad and caressing Cursing the horse with obscene ferocity They stand in rigid terrific hiatus The horse trembling and groaning Then Jule is on the horse's back He flows upward in a stooping swirl Like the lash of a whip His body in midair shaped to the horse For another moment the horse stands Spraddled with lowered head Before it bursts into motion They descend the hill In a series of spine-jolting jumps Jule high Leech-like on the withers To the fence Where the horse bunches to a scuttering halt again Well, Jule says You can quit now if you got a plenty Inside the barn Jule slides running to the ground before the horse stops The horse enters the stall Jule following Without looking back the horse kicks at him Slamming a single hoof into the wall With a pistol-like report Jule kicks him in the stomach The horse arches his neck back Crop-toothed Jule strikes him across the face with his fist And slides onto the trough And mounts upon it Clinging to the hay rack he lowers his head And peers out across the stall tops And through the doorway The path is empty From here he cannot even hear Cash sawing He reaches up and drags down hay In hurried armfuls And crams it into the rack Eat, he says Get the goddamn stuff out of sight while you got a chance You pussled-gutted bastard You sweet son of a bitch He says Jule.

It's because he stays out there right under the window, hammering and sawing on that goddamn box where she's got to see him, where every breath she draws is full of his knocking and sawing, where she can see him saying, see, see what a good one I am making for you.

I told him to go somewhere else.