This is a recipe given to me by Michael Lenagar from Neola Farms, a local black angus beef farmer who attends the Memphis Farmer’s Market. I’ve eaten nothing but his beef since discovering him here when the market began. This is a great stew!

Here’s the recipe:

Makes 6 – 8 Servings

• 1½lbs Beef Stew Meat cut in 1” cubes
• 2 tblsp Flour
• 1tsp Salt
• 2 tblsp Oil
• 1½ cups Strong Coffee
• 2 tblsp Molasses
• 1 clove Minced Garlic (I used chopped fresh)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1tsp Worcester Sauce
• ½tsp dried Oregano crushed
• 1/8th tsp Cayenne Pepper (I used an entire dried red chili)
• 1½ cups water
• 4 carrots cut in 1/2” slices
• 4 small onions quartered
• 3 medium potatoes peeled and cut up (I used two potatoes and a parsnip)
• ¼ cup cold water
• 3 tblsp Flour
• I added a couple of bay leaves too.

Coat the beef cubes with a mixture of 2tblsp flour & 1 tsp salt. In a dutch oven brown meat on all sides in hot oil. Stir in coffee, molasses, garlic, Oregano. Cayenne,1 tsp salt, worcestershire sauce. Cover & simmer over a low heat until the meat is tender, about 30mins. Blend ¼ cup cold water in to 3tblsp flour,add to the stew mixture. Cook and stir until mixture is thickened and bubbly. Serve in bowls. Great served with hot cornbread muffins.

WKNO FM is streaming the “Live Lunch” for Rent on Friday, June 26 at 6:12pm GMT. Listen here! I’ll be singing and being interviewed. I’ll put the recording up here shortly after the broadcast.

This is the poster I designed for Romeo and Juliet running at Playhouse on the Square March 20 to April 19, 2009. I’m also in the show, playing Tybalt. Come and see it!

Romeo and Juliet

Six years ago today I came to Memphis for the first time. It was warm and humid in contrast to the stark cold of British March, and immediately upon landing, collecting my bags, and barely assembling myself after the flight, I was gathered up in a battered early 90s Toyota Camry, handed a swiftly opened Corona, and driven into the sunset heading west into Arkansas. A vast bleeding melting sunset toward which every road appeared to lead, and for which the bridge crossing the Mississippi River seemed designed solely to make a spectacle of. There was no stereo in the car, it had been stolen at some earlier misadventure, but if there was to have been, it would no doubt have been playing Thin Lizzy, or REO Speedwagon, something of that nature.

(continue reading…)

Hello! After years and years and years of putting it off, here is the new rorydale.com. It’s very basic for now, and I will put more stuff on it, so if you care, keep an eye on it.

Be seeing you,

Rory

That’s a bold statement to make isn’t it? Well let me explain. No, I don’t know what you’re thinking, that would suggest I had the sort of powers Nicolas Cage often appears to have in some of his terrible, predictable, and yet unfortunately unmissable movies. Their appeal is like movie-crack. The trailers tantalise you and promise a pleasure that is near-impossible to resist, and for such a small amount of money. Go on, one hit won’t hurt you. Add to that the ability to witness these films in a cinema with digital projection and exceptional surround sound, and there I already am, eating popcorn that I don’t really want and finding myself watching another terrible film. (continue reading…)

Greetings. I’m writing from the men’s dressing room backstage at Playhouse on the Square, and I am dead. Not physically, or emotionally, but theatrically. Alas, as the Prince of Cats I manage, every Thursday to Sunday until April 19th, to massively redirect the lives of history’s most famous young lovers. Nasty piece of work me, and for that, I get to be dead for, what is in our production, all of Act 2.

I spend this time in a number of different ways. Today I read several pages of Slash’s “autobiography.” The first 51 pages have been monstrously boring. Slash’s ghost writer embellishing rather uninteresting stories of his childhood and his early-age epiphanies that turned him into the Slash that we all know. Boring. Get to the tours and whores. I don’t care that you rode a BMX and stole a lot of shit.

The second thing I attempted was to watch Toy Soldiers. I love this movie, but I don’t have time to watch all of it, so I stopped.

The third thing I did today was create this blog. And now I must put on my pants and go and bow a dead man’s bow.

Be seeing you,

Rory

Shiitake Mushroom Pasta

Very pleased to have got to the little pre-farmer’s market drop-off today. Picked up some lovely shiitake mushrooms, sweet red onions, a couple of varieties of baby lettuce, mustard spinach, and half a dozen eggs. Shopping doesn’t get better than this! I love the excitement of buying fresh stuff straight from the farmer’s, and I’m subsequently consumed by the potential it tempts upon my culinary imagination.

Well, today was this: Shiitake mushroom, sweet onion, garlic, sage and thyme cream sauce with spaghetti and grated parmesan.

It turned out very light and incredibly fresh, a testament to the ingredients more than to the chef.