The end of the climate cult

In the early 1970s, celebrity chef Jacques Pépin and his wife bought a dilapidated house in the Catskills so they could go skiing on the weekends. It was a real fixer-upper. Groups of friends would come up from New York City and pitch in on the renovation effort, and Pépin would serve dinner at the end of the day. These weekends were so much fun Pépin decided to memorialize them by hand-lettering and painting special menus. How Pépin convinced his friends to let him sit in the kitchen sketching petits poissons and heads of broccoli while they slaved away at framing and drywalling his winter getaway is, admittedly, mysterious.

Summer is usually associated with outdoor cooking which is a perfectly reasonable association. But standing over a hot grill or smoker when the mercury is rising is not the most pleasant of activities. Whatever you are cooking becomes seasoned with droplets of sweat. Another oft-overlooked issue, particularly when it comes to smoking meats, is that temperature regulation of the cooking apparatus can be difficult when the ambient heat surrounding it is working in synergy with the heat inside it. While I have a friend who does competition cooking and isn’t a stranger to winning (he pushes his smoker up to 300°F) most of us lack the requisite skill for smoking a pork shoulder or brisket at that heat and pulling out a tender product at the end.