Bulletin Board 50
Summer reads, Japanese fire trucks and my gator katsu recipe.
THE READING LIST
A lot of people use summer downtime to crack the spine of a new book, and I’m no exception—although the two recent volumes that caught my eye aren’t exactly beach reads (i.e., they’d look best on a coffee table).
The first is Wheels & Watches by Oriol Vilanova, which was published last year in a special collector’s edition of 1,000 copies. Now, if you’ve enjoyed A Man & His Car and A Man & His Watch (second volume coming soon!), you’ll be into Wheels & Watches, which is sort of like if my two books had a baby. In it, Vilanova profiles 50 interesting folks—car and watch designers, race car drivers, entrepreneurs, etc.—and shares the stories behind their favorite car + watch pairings. Brilliant! It doesn’t hurt that there are also hundreds of gorgeously photographed cars and timepieces to gawk at, too.
The second is On Any Sunday 40, which owes its idiosyncratic title to the Instagram handle of its author, Andrea Ventura. A born-and-raised Roman style consultant and serious vintage hunter, this self-published book is Ventura’s third (he’s also written a book on Alessandro Squarzi’s archive) and documents his own impressive vintage collection—much of it sourced from Roman flea markets—over its 300 pages. Impressively, all of the photographs were taken by Ventura, too.
The whole book was a DIY labor of love: if you want to secure a copy for yourself, just drop Ventura a message on his Instagram.
CAR TALK
For as long as I can remember, my dad has collected cars—the odder and more obscure, the better. Growing up, it was a semi-frequent occurrence to find some stranger at the front door, announcing that he’d just hauled up the Peugeot 504 or Citroën 2CV (with a polka-dot interior!) that my dad had recently won in an eBay auction, typically unbeknownst to my mother. Off the machines would go, stashed somewhere up the street or in one of the numerous small garages my dad later scooped up to store them around my rural hometown.
But the undisputed jewel, in my view, is a 1997 Mitsubishi Minicab Firetruck. A variant on the ubiquitous Minicab the maker has been building since 1966, it’s essentially a children’s fire truck toy come to life, complete with a working siren (the hose itself has been removed). As adorable as it is, make no mistake that it was at one point a real firefighting vehicle: its tiny size allowed it to be driven onto the floor of a Japanese factory to respond to emergencies.
In its present dotage, it comes out for local car parades (where my dad pilots it with his immense English sheepdog, Watson, in the left-hand passenger seat), wedding caravans, and yes, kids’ birthday parties. It delighted my two-year-old at his recent fête, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say that my own inner child thrilled at the sound of its siren, too. —Eric Twardzik
THE KITCHEN
On the recent Louisiana alligator hunt (featured in our latest summer issue!) at my buddy Jady’s hunting camp on Bourbe Lake, I got inspired by some local ingredients—namely gator (tail meat) and some pecans from Jady’s pecan emporium, Crane River. I decided to make a katsu riff using the gator meat and crusted pecans. It all got fried golden in some peanut oil and served sliced along with some lemon and mayo. It was the perfect accompaniment to a cold margarita.
Check out the video below for the how to…
adding these reads to my list!
It was so good.