Eat It, Bitchezzz

Here are the brilliant ideas you come up with when you're drunk on Christmas with friends;

hosting a blog of portraits of people in front of food they've prepared, posing with mock gang hand symbols.

At the time, I would have given you an impassioned though unarticulated (and poorly enunciated) diatribe about overwrought food photography and how I'm sick of looking at beautiful pictures of food in rich tones and low f-stop settings, but really, this is more about taking pride in one's accomplishments, and having the guts, or lack of shame, to pose with the fruits of your labor.

Here, I'm representin' a Yorkshire Pudding made on Christmas Day for my friends Joe and Jessica Staples, a Cockney/Australian duo with the most ridiculous accents you've ever heard. Being "proper" citizens of the British Empire, they hosted a holiday dinner with all the traditional trimmings. Though a Prosecco-and-Oregon-cranberry-liqueur cocktail we christened the "Oregon Royale" was a Fusion/Artisan Cocktail Movement interloper, and really the impetus for the coffee table book (to accompany the blog) due out for Holidays 2010.

I've made Yorkshire pudding a few times, always accompanied by a standing rib roast. Tonight we had a Christmas turkey, so in lieu of pan drippings (which we saved for the gravy), I brought my own rendered duck fat along with a simple dutch baby/ Yorkshire pudding/popover batter consisting of flour, eggs enriched with yolks, milk water and salt. Thank you Hugh Fearnley Whittinstall for your impeccable and "dead simple" recipe. The secret is mixing the batter well, letting it rest for at least 30 minutes (and in this case, more than 2 hours), getting your fat and cooking vessel scorching hot, and consuming enough Oregon Royales to create a gentle, festive atmosphere in which any proper oven pancake would perfectly leaven and brown to perfection.

If only I had been encourage to drink more, I would have had my new blog, eatitbitchezz.com tattoo'd across my forehead.