If you're trying to feed some of the lumberjack hipsters of Brooklyn, you might try serving up some Huevos Machismos. And if you're seeking the next cleanse trend, look no further than the Ultimate Gushy Protein Sewage Blast. Like any balanced smoothie, it incorporates one ounce of "pure, uncut cocaine (for the boost)."
FUDS, a complete encyclofoodia, is by Kelly Hudson, Dan Klein and Arthur Meyer writing as the fictional Mizretti twins.
These are the recipes and advice you'd receive from the Mizretti brothers, two fictional restaurateurs who just published an "encyclofoodia" and cookbook called FUDS.
Who are these characters? Alfredo Mizretti prefers baths to showers, listens to reggae parody music and has intentionally poisoned 64 customers. Antonio Mizretti is the taller of the two, is allergic to sandpaper, and has pulled his hamstring, quadriceps and butt muscles while cooking.
Of course, any comprehensive encyclofoodia will also contain instructions for how to cook when you haven't been grocery shopping and all that remains in the fridge are six hot dogs.
Two of the Mizretti brothers' three inventors, Kelly Hudson and Dan Klein, spoke with Melissa Block on All Things Considered about the inspiration for FUDS and their most necessary kitchen tools.
"A spankler is, it really is essential in any kitchen, and that's for spanking the food if it does anything wrong or it doesn't taste the way that you want it to, you've got to give it a little bit of a spanking," says Klein. "And I use mine all the time."
"A closed spoon is good for getting nothing on your spoon," adds Hudson. "Everything just runs off."
The book also features a foreword by Mario Batali and displays an atlas of regional dishes, like Creamed Trout with a Pilgrim's Belt Buckle from the Northeast and So Deeply Fried Snapping Turtle Knees from the Deep South. Visit the Southwest for a taste of Those Hot Tamale Candy Things and the Midwest for Corn-Coated Corn-Stuffed Anything.
Hudson and Klein started the FUDS project soon after they met. "We both did comedy and to make each other laugh we would text each other these weird little food descriptions," says Hudson. They started building their dish ideas into full menus to poke fun at the foodies around them.
"And then we heard about this food festival called the Great Googa Mooga and it was happening in Prospect Park," says Hudson. They passed out 5,000 menus for a fake restaurant called FUDS, and the festival attendees did not appreciate the humor. "The trash can a few feet away was just piled high with these menus," she says. "A lot of people were yelling at us."
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Transcript
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Picture a restaurant. The lights are low, the music soft, the server obliging.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED SERVER: (As character) Welcome, can I tell you about our chef's creations this evening?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (As character) Please.
UNIDENTIFIED SERVER: (As character) Wonderful. For a first course we're offering our Devil's meat cup christened with a side of grade chicken spikes.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (As character) Do you have any vegetarian options?
UNIDENTIFIED SERVER: (As character) Oh, we sure do. We have Prussian-style beach oats, sat on by sour-juice bippies (ph) and haystack seeds.
BLOCK: Those of the fanciful creations of the fictional twin chefs, the Mizretti brothers, as dreamed up by comedians Kelly Hudson and Dan Klein. Their sendup of the absurd vocabulary of foodie culture is now a book, a complete encyclofoodia. It's titled, "Fuds." That's F, U, D, S - or maybe it's fuds.
DAN KLEIN: Actually, you could pronounce it any way that you'd like. And that's part of...
KELLY HUDSON: The fun.
KLEIN: The fun.
HUDSON: The fun.
(LAUGHTER)
KLEIN: It's open to interpretation.
HUDSON: Yes.
BLOCK: Well, apart from many, many recipes in this book, there are also all sorts of tips and advice and things that I actually did not know would be considered essential kitchen tools, which the Mizretti brothers say are, you know, must-haves, right? So...
HUDSON: Right.
BLOCK: A broadsword (ph) and a spankler.
KLEIN: A spankler is - it really is essential in any kitchen. And that's for spanking the food if it does anything wrong or it doesn't taste the way that you want it to. You got to give it a little bit of a spanking. And I use mine all the time.
BLOCK: It's well-worn?
HUDSON: Oh, yes.
KLEIN: Oh, yeah. We might need a new spankler, actually.
HUDSON: Actually, yeah, or the - a spankler sharpener.
KLEIN: Yes. But - and there's other great things - the closed spoon.
HUDSON: Yeah, closed spoon is good for getting nothing on your spoon. Everything just runs off.
BLOCK: Oh, really?
KLEIN: Yeah, you know sometimes when you use a spoon and you get liquid in there, a closed spoon helps stop that from happening.
BLOCK: You don't want that.
KLEIN: Exactly.
BLOCK: Well, Kelly and Dan, how did all of this start? - doing a pivot here in terms of...
HUDSON: OK.
KLEIN: Sure.
HUDSON: To actual reality?
BLOCK: Yeah, actually reality and how this all...
KLEIN: Oh, it's beautiful.
BLOCK: Ah, it's such a great place to be.
HUDSON: Ah, there's color here. Well, this all started - Dan and I met in 2009, and it was kind of the beginning of a romantic relationship. And to make each other laugh we would text each other these weird, little food descriptions.
BLOCK: This was your courtship basically?
HUDSON: Really, yes.
BLOCK: Yeah?
HUDSON: It was our courtship.
KLEIN: Very sexy, very cool to send each other fake food names.
HUDSON: Yet repulsive descriptions.
KLEIN: It's my little tip to all the single guys out there.
HUDSON: Yeah.
BLOCK: It worked for you guys.
KLEIN: Yeah.
HUDSON: Yes, it was...
BLOCK: You're getting married, right?
KLEIN: Yes, we are.
HUDSON: We - yeah, we are getting married. So this was a long time ago, and then we just went from there. We decided to make a menu out of it.
BLOCK: Yeah.
HUDSON: And then we heard about this food festival called The Great GoogaMooga. And we stood at the entrance with 5,000 menus and passed them out.
KLEIN: To literally everyone that walked into the festival.
HUDSON: Yes, and you would just - the trash can a few feet away was just piled high with these menus.
BLOCK: (Laughter) Because these were real foodies - right? - going to the festival?
KLEIN: Yeah.
HUDSON: Yeah, so a lot of people were yelling at us and like, what is this? And like, you have too much time on your hands. So that next week we saw the menu starting to appear online on different blogs, and it kind of went viral, and we had a few book deal offers after that. So that's...
BLOCK: And here you are.
HUDSON: And here we are, with a book.
BLOCK: Is there one particular food word that just makes your skin crawl? - you know, a foodie kind of word, a restaurant word?
KLEIN: Well, you know what one gets me a lot, and this one isn't even that fancy. It's when things say gluten-free but that would never have had gluten in the first place.
HUDSON: Yes, that is super annoying.
KLEIN: And it's like, are you allowed to do that? You're allowed to just put that on a bag because it has nothing to do with gluten?
HUDSON: Yes.
KLEIN: It's like, popcorn is gluten-free. It's like, yeah. It's one of those loopholes, you know?
HUDSON: Yeah.
KLEIN: It's like, well, I'm not doing anything wrong.
(LAUGHTER)
KLEIN: You're like, that's what they say to, like, USDA.
HUDSON: Yeah, that is really funny to imagine all these companies going, well, I'm not doing anything wrong.
KLEIN: We're not lying.
HUDSON: I'm just selling my products.
BLOCK: Here is my - I was - that was a leading question because I have one of my own, my own pet peeves.
KLEIN: Oh, good.
HUDSON: Let's hear it.
BLOCK: Yeah, yeah. So here is my least-favorite food menu/food writing word - tangle.
KLEIN: Oh, I don't even know if I've ever seen tangle.
BLOCK: Oh, it's everywhere, like a tangle of...
KLEIN: Is that like a salad thing? We should try to guess what a tangle is.
HUDSON: Yeah, what does that mean?
BLOCK: Last night it was a tangle of onion rings, you know? Or...
KLEIN: Oh, I've seen that.
HUDSON: Really? I wonder if this is a D.C. thing.
BLOCK: No, no, it's everywhere. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. It's everywhere.
HUDSON: Oh, geez.
KLEIN: So by tangle, they just mean a pile? Is that what that is?
BLOCK: A big messy pile, yeah.
HUDSON: A big messy pile. See...
KLEIN: Slop?
HUDSON: Yeah, see, a lot of writing this book has just been sort of breaking down exactly what it is they're talking about because food can be so gross so easily. Like if you have the wrong lighting, a beautiful plate of food can look like slop.
BLOCK: Kelly and Dan, thanks so much. Great luck with your wedding.
HUDSON: Thank you.
KLEIN: Thank you.
BLOCK: And give our best to the Mizretti brothers, please.
KLEIN: Yes, if we see them. We haven't seen them in a while.
HUDSON: We will. They're rude people, so...
KLEIN: Yeah, they don't like us.
BLOCK: Comedians Kelly Hudson and Dan Klein. You'll find the Mizretti brothers' recipes for chicken ethylene oxide and much more in their book "Fuds: A Complete Encyclofoodia." Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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