Viewing Category: Food
This is a puffy pancake made from 1/2 cup of flour, 1/2 cup of milk, a dash of salt, and 3 eggs. That's all...here's the recipe if you don't believe me. You bake the mix in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes in a pan lined with butter, and it puffs up! I'm told that this is a form of popover. I'm astonished that such simple ingredients can do this, and even more astonished at how easy it is to mess up.
Baking is essentially a form of chemistry, and thus there is a narrow window of excellence that's tough to nail. I would say that that this applies to all food preparation; I would guess that the vast majority of food we eat (at least here in the U.S.) is between 40-70% of its ultimate expression because of overcooking, errors in technique, or unbalance in ingredients. That's just my uninformed opinion, but it's one that generally keeps my apetite in check. Why get excited about eating something that isn't the best it could be? Those are the emptiest calories!
I never enjoyed chemistry that much in high school, with all the memorizing of reactions and so forth, but in the context of making yummy things to eat it is much more interesting. With the tiny ingredient list, making a puffy pancake is all about timing, temperature, measurement, and technique.
I wondered what would happen if I used a shiny stainless steel pan instead of the dark cast iron one. Mistake!
The result was a dense, very eggy pancake that crawled out of the sides of the pan. Not puffy at all. Very disappointing. However, it's possible that I overmixed the batter; I was reading that when making unleavened quickbreads, you don't want to mix the ingredients too much, as this releases more gluten. As the popover is leavened by steam as opposed to an active ingredient like baking soda or yeast, I guess the presence of gluten makes the dough too elastic and rubbery to rise.
And so the experimentation continues. What if I use fewer eggs? Or a higher temperature? Or try a different flour? Add baking soda? It's actually pretty exciting, sort of my own personal version of Yakitate! Japan (a manga/tv series about baking bread)...but I've gained 10 pounds since starting this experiment. Time to close the lab!
Continuing on the pancake theme, I also came across this set of cartoon instructions from a Japanese pancake mix, thoughtfully translated by everyone's favorite gaijin and robot raconteur Matt Alt. I've always wondered what those cute cartoons were saying; actually, I still do :-)
I've noticed a disturbing trend among American restaurants: the club sandwich has been downsized from three slices of bread to two, which in my mind makes it just another sandwich. I suppose it may be a return to authenticity, as this quote from food diety James Beard suggests:
[the club sandwich] is one of the great sandwiches of all time and has swept its way around the world after an American beginning. Nowdays the sandwich is bastardized because it is usually made as a three-decker, which is not authentic (whoever started that horror should be forced to eat three-deckers three times a day the rest of his life), and nowadays practically everyone uses turkey and there's a vast difference between turkey and chicken where sandwiches are concerned.
I was all set to complain about how restaurants like "Ruby Tuesday" and "Bugaboo Creek", two institutions which serve a particularly disappointing club sandwich, seem to be spearheading a move away from the three-slice stack of bread, bacon, tomato and turkey of my childhood. Authenticity be damned!
I first encountered the club sandwich as a displaced American kid in Taiwan. This was the late 70s, when the island was under martial law. This was well before any American franchises were allowed into the country; imagine a place without McDonalds, and that was Taiwan. In other words, a horrible place to live when you're a kid: no TV, no nice stores, no ice cream...nothing! Maybe it was actually good for me in some unspecified way, but it was rather depressing at the time. Our mom, sensing that we needed regular injections of Americana to bolster our spirits, took us to the only nearby Western restaurant, Foremost on (I think) Chung Hua Bei Lu in Shihlin, a suburb of Taipei. Foremost Foods was one of the only places that actually sold cows milk and western ice cream. The dairy was obviously reconstituted, watery, and a little funny tasting, but they also served burgers and club sandwiches. I don't actually remember eating many of them (sis might remember), but they anchored my sense of identity in some weird gastronomic fashion.
I often wondered how Foremost had come to be in Taiwan in the first place, a country not known for its love of dairy in any form; milk usually means "goat" or "soybean" (yuck). Well, the Internet is here today, so I found that the post-WWII US military presence in Taiwan probably had something to do with it; Foremost Dairies supplied milk to US forces abroad from 1932 onwards. Particularly interesting is this excerpt:
During World War 11, the U.S. military sparked Foremost's international growth and the creamery opened additional plants nationwide. Foremost Dairies became known as "the longest milk route in the world."
[...]
Wherever it set up a facility, the organization wanted to teach local people how to operate it and then share in its success.
While searching the Internet, I came across Foremost in places like Vietnam and Hawaii, the logo largely untouched. Taiwan itself benefited from the facilities and training Foremost introduced, creating a sustainable local business in a fashion similar to the Singer Corporation...or so I imagine. I find the remnants of foreign cultures fascinating, especially when they've established a foothold in a place where the original influence has disappeared. Asia is littered with this: Vietnamese cuisine, forks and spoons in Thailand, master sushi chefs in Taiwan...you get the idea. Then there's interesting ideas backwashing into the former colonial powers, like Cobra Beer importing Indian beer to go with curry served in the U.K.
Where was I? Oh yes, club sandwiches...I guess it wasn't about the number of slices of bread after all.
I was at Black Ink in Harvard Square last week, and was drawn to this green cafeteria tray with matching cup. I don't know why...I just had to have it.
My sis says I can use it to control the size of the portions I eat, much as we theorized with Mr Bento. We actually both have them now, but haven't taken any pictures of it yet. I guess I just like things that hold food...weird! :-)
Here's another shot of the tray. I may use this as a photo prop for the bizarre asian snacks that I've been trying. There are so many...they all deserve to be celebrated (and then eaten). I haven't been shooting many pictures lately, but now that it's warmer I'm feeling more in the mood.
[yes, I rewrote this article almost entirely...that's what I get for posting laaate at night when I was too tired to think straight]
A Russian-born friend of mine sent me a simple recipe for the beet soup known as Borscht. I've been very interested in cooking lately as a money-saving measure, and have been seeking out hearty soups as an inexpensive way to eat well. Borscht is one of those ethnic foods I haven't tried, and I've never seen it or tasted it. My curiosity was piqued!
Here's what it looked like (this is right out of the fridge, btw):
It's interesting to make a dish that you've never tasted or seen before, especially if you're also unfamiliar with the soup-making process. About halfway through burning my borscht, I was struck by how similar this was to creating an innovative software product. For the vast majority of development work, we can point to an existing product and say "it's going to be like that." Pre-existing patterns are a big time-saver. With the borscht, I only had a vague vision of a soup, but really no idea how it would come out. I knew intuitively that the combination of root vegetables in the "soup" form factor was appealing, but would it really work? While it's true I had a recipe, I was following it rather loosely, discovering key steps a little after I messed them up. It was invigorating!
Borscht has a lot of root vegetables in it: beets, potatoes, carrots, and onions form the base. First you boil the beets for an hour so they get soft, then take them out to cool. You cook the potatoes and carrots next in the red beet liquid in the second phase. After that, the final phase is to add the sliced beats back in with a few bay leaves with some onion and cabbage. In retrospect, it's an easy recipe.
Of course, while I was cooking it for the first time, I made all kinds of mistakes. I didn't know how to cook beets, so I just dumped them in and didn't wash them first. I figured I could toss the beet water afterwards, but then I read later that you keep it. So I had to separate the sand from it using another pot. I also discovered that beets are really easy to peel with your hands after you boil them, and they make an incredible red-purple stain on everthing they touch. I also added the onions way too early and they mushified. I added more onions later, and then I ran out of liquid while I was watching TV and the whole pot almost burned. Exciting! Then there were a dozen small details: how much water do you need to cook a given volume of beets? How much salt and pepper, added when? What shape do I need to cut the beets in for that authentic look? And really...am I making anything that resembles borscht, or am I opening myself up to ridicule by connisseurs of eastern european cuisine? I have certainly experienced that in the Asian realm, when I tried to cook pork belly stew for the father of a friend of mine who was from Shanghai in the old days. He had been very excited, but when served my made-up version, he was visibly disappointed. In his eyes, I had done the equivalent of buying a Del Monico steak and boiling it. Quel horreur! I remember once getting some lunch from the small independent cafeteria in our building, where they were serving "Asian Stir Fry". As I read this aloud off the menu in a slightly amused tone, I noticed that the chef couldn't quite meet my eye.
On the other hand, I had made something new, and it was good. The next day I tried the borscht again, my friend having said that borscht is really good when it's a day old. I was warned not to re-boil it because it loses the red color if you do. The flavors had mellowed out a bit, and a new tanginess was present. It's true...day-old borscht is better!
At this point, I looked on the Internet to see what borscht was supposed to look like, and was relieved to see that mine looked similar. There were variations in viscosity, in how the beets were cut, in the amount of cabbage, and whether the dollop of yogurt was on top (I forgotten to add that). But the color was right, and that was affirming. The beets have a very strong red dye that makes everything look the way it sorta should. Ah...closure!
The process of making borscht for the first time triggered a few thoughts:
I need to be seeking this kind of experience more often. Not just in the kitchen, but in everything. A lot of the time we're afraid of messing up or looking stupid. One huge advantage that children have is that they aren't self-conscious about it until they hit a certain age. I think this is what contributes to their ease in learning new languages; I suspect that if I was completely unselfconscious about imitating noises and repeating them over and over again, I could learn a languages well. The two languages I formally studied, French and Mandarin Chinese, were in atmospheres that were authoritarian and judgmental, and I had felt highly self-conscious and stupid. Next time, I am going to really immerse myself in the silly wonder of making noises and imitatating accents over and over. In an adult class I would get some funny looks. Maybe the best thing to do would be to find some 6-9 year-old kids to teach me language basics.
I have two "making" mindsets: invention and production. In my day-to-day business thinking for 2006, I've been thinking about production and process: that's knowing how to make something and making it. This is the skill I think of as being worth money and that's what I charge for.
I never thought of invention as something I could be paid for directly. My thinking before: would you hire someone to learn how to make borscht, or would you hire someone who already knew and could serve you up a tasty bowl at their interview? I had always assumed the later, and have tended to view my contribution to the workforce as being production-oriented. However, I just realized that a lot of my shifts this year are toward building credibility as an Inventor. That's not limited to making things like The Printable CEO either; my obsession with creating original content is related to it, as is my entire design process. I'll be keeping track of which billable activities are invention and which are production. I'd like to be getting more gigs based on my inventive credentials. My marketing efforts should follow.
Now that I think about it, the Production side of me is something I learned to value through work. Invention, however, has the deeper personal history:
When I was in the 10th grade, I vowed that I would do everything I could to develop a powerful associative memory. My theory was this: the more connections I could make between disparate topics, the more inventive I could be, and therefore fewer obstacles would truly block me. I haven't thought about that vow in years, but it has colored my way of looking at things strongly. I like the idea of outflanking things, of figuring out alternative and novel ways to hard problems. I find essential patterns and make connections that didn't exist before. This is at the root of my inventive powers; I developed the production side because I couldn't figure out how to really sell that.
I never liked chess because it is a bounded problem set. Sure, it's a very large set, but never mind that. The real game, which occurs on the psychological level, requires years of study and memorization. It's fascinating and very cool, but there are other things I would rather spend my time doing. Chess, in the long run, is a game for nimble pattern-minded individuals, and I can't compete on that level without investing a lot of time. However, I know just enough about the psychology of chess playing that I can enjoy it: I draw upon my readings of non-chess strategy and body language to make moves that have high dramatic potential, then I see how the other person reacts. I don't make stupid moves, so the opponent is kept on his/her toes. Over the course of the game I learn a lot about my opponent, which for me is a much more interesting activity than shifting pieces around on a grid. I lose, but I also win :-)
One of my favorite movies: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. Some of you out there will nod, "of course."
Another friend was telling me about a sport in which you draw a straight line on a map, and then you must follow that line through any means necessary. Giant mountain in the way? Sorry, you've got to go over it. It's an extreme real-world obstacle course. I can't remember the name of the sport at the moment, but it struck me that this is so opposite of how I would ordinarily deal with a situation. I can think of a million ways to get around something, but I haven't developed my direct confrontation methodology to the same degree. I believe I've known this subconsciously; studying competitive activities and training regimens has been one of my pastimes in the past few years. I've also been a lot more willing to go into an unknown situation to test my ability to deal. I like training with this in mind now; in the past I haven't appreciated it.
I didn't expect borscht to be so intellectually nourishing. Highly recommended if you've never made it before.
Quickie post...a picture of some ribs I made last week to show cousin Jason how it's done. These were made under the broiler, as the deck is being worked on. It's Rib Recipe 5.0 Alpha 1. except using store-bought sauce (Bullseye™ Original Recipe) as the coating.
Too bad the background is so unappealingly gray. Thanks Jeff for knocking out the gray background :-)
Last week, my cousin Jason and I saw the commercial for these new Chicken Fries from Burger King. We vowed we would try them the very next day for lunch, which we did. Our verdict: meh.
The chicken fry seems like a good idea...a flavorful, seasoned strip of white chicken breast with a crispy light batter on the outside, delivered in a novel french-fry form factor. Conceptually, it's similar to the venerable Chicken McNugget, but promises to be more fun. The container itself shows some thought: it's designed to fit in your car's cup holder (though I didn't try this). The lid flips up with a place to stick your dipping sauce container, which is rather clever.
In reality, the chicken fry experience leaves something to be desired. It's a rather dry product, which the ranch/buffalo sauce did nothing to help because of its overall acidic saltiness. The batter on the chicken fry is very well bonded to the chicken, but it fails to work as a delightful contrast in texture. It's more like a protective layer, similar to that spray-on rubber you see on pliers. The batter really needs to be chewed into oblivion before any satisfying chicken flavor is released...I counted 5-6 good chews before I thought, "yeah, that tastes pretty good".
The chicken itself seemed to be formed. Its consistency reminded me of artificial crab meat, which you can find in asian markets. Artificial crab meat is made of fish paste, somehow formed into a "muscle fiber" texture. Tastes OK, but it's just a little too smooth. I'm not sure if the chicken fry uses formed chicken meat or just sliced breast meat; the uniform quality of the fry itself makes me think it has to be manufactured, or they have perfected some kind of amazing chicken process. Jason said it reminded him of a Costco Chicken Finger. That does not bode well.
Glad I tried it, but probably won't be trying it any time soon. The McD's Chicken McNugget kicks its ass, despite its obvious manufactured attributes. First, the McNugget is actually crispy and juicy. The moment you bite into a nugget, you get a tri-burst of texture / flavor / juice sensation in your mouth. You've really got to work a Chicken Fry to get anything like that, and by then you're already bored. Second, the sauces (particularly the hot mustard variety) are better balanced with the taste of the nugget, in my opinion.
About 10 years ago, I figured that everyone should have a signature dish. As a young bachelor making his way through the world, I chose a dish that's both comfort food and crowd pleaser: Pork Spareribs. I've worked this dish over and over, trying to get it a little closer to that ideal flavor, in memory of my Mom and the good ole' days back in college.
This past month, I've been asked several times about The Recipe, so I'm finally documenting the current build for all of youse. Enjoy!
A little history: Mom used to make pork spareribs for special company when I was a kid, and it was one of my favorite dishes. It was sort of a hybrid Japanese / 1960's Betty Crocker recipe, involving ketchup, soy sauce, and green onions. The rib dish I make today is quite a bit different, though the soy sauce and ketchup are retained.
I create the marinade from scratch from whatever happens to be tasting good, but the fundamental ingredients remain the same. I taste as I mix things together; this is a good recipe to practice that on before you put the raw ribs in.
The Basic Recipe
My current method of cooking ribs involves cooking them completely on the stovetop using a sort of hot marinade / poaching approach, then coating them with the BBQ sauce and charring them on the gas (I know, yuck) grill. This isn't a true BBQ by any means, but you can make some pretty decent pork ribs in your oven and broiler. There probably is a cooking term for this "hot marinade" thing I'm doing (it might be braising), but it seems to work. I think I might have to add a little sherry or ginger to the marinade to kill a slight off-taste with the ribs, but that's an experiment for another day.
Anyway, the recipe follows:
MEAT
- A half-rack of fresh spare ribs (about 2 lbs). Not baby-back ribs. Spare ribs.
LIQUID
- 12oz beer
- 1 cup low sodium soy sauce (I use Trader Joe's low sodium soy sauce, which kicks Wisconsin Kikkoman butt)
- 1 cup water
- 1/4 tsp all spice
- 2 tsp garlic powder
- 2 shakes of chinese 5 spice
- 4 tsp sugar
- a couple dashes of black pepper
- 1 tsp oregano or some other fragrant spice (for aroma)
- a couple dashs of Chinese Pork Secret: Monosodium Glutamate!
DIRECTIONS
Prepare liquid in a pot with a tight fitting lid. A 4 or 6 quart pot should work fine. Mix everything together well. You might want to taste the liquid...it should be somewhat salty/savory with a touch of sweetness and earthiness. It should taste a bit weak, and the raw beer/oregano combo will make you feel a little queasy, but don't worry about it. You don't want the taste of the rib to overpower the yummy sauce you're going to put on it, so control the saltiness now. You can't take it out once it's in, so taste as you go.
Cut the rack into individual ribs, and put it in the pot. Add water or low-sodium chicken broth if ribs are not covered. You should pack the ribs nicely so you don't need much more liquid.
Cover the pot, bring to a boil, then reduce to a bare simmer. We want to gently cook the ribs and have the flavors permeate the meat, without battering them into ragged fibers. The bare simmer will assure that.
Simmer for 45 minutes. On a side note, this long simmering step melts away some of the fat in the rib, making them leaner while adding flavor. It's win-win! And...don't peek under the lid. Patience!
Your ribs will look something like this, fully cooked and ready for basting:
You can sample the ribs at this point...they're fully cooked, and should be rather delicious. They are a little under-flavored to serve as a main meal, but that's the point; you will add the finishing taste with whatever wonderful BBQ sauce you are going to use, charred to perfection on your grill!
This is a good time to reflect how the liquid tasted (before you added the ribs), and how that taste transformed as the meat interacted with it.
Making Sister-Approved Sauce
When I'm making ribs for myself and my friends, I just go get some Bull's Eye Original Recipe and use that. Unfortunately, my sister is allergic to commercial BBQ sauces (we think it might be mesquite or liquid smoke). So, what I've been doing lately is making the sauce from the rib liquid.
First reduce the liquid by 1/2. I started with about 3 cups of liquid left over the rib cooking, and reduced it to about 1.5 cups in 10 minutes over high heat in a 12" saucier.
Then, skim off the fat from the liquid. If I'm in a hurry, I chill the pot by plunging it into a sink of ice water, stirring it to chill everything down to a slight coolness, then pour the liquid into a plastic bowl. Put the bowl in the freezer for about 30 minutes. The fat will solidify, and you can easily pick it out of the liquid. Don't freeze it, though!
Now, add the extra ingredients...I added:
- 4 tbs of sugar
- 2 cups of ketchup
- 1 tsp of chili and garlic paste
Taste as you build the sauce! The end result should be about as strong as commercial BBQ sauce...if it seems too salty or soy-saucy (a kind of headache-inducing intensity), dillute with some chicken broth or a little more beer.
A note on the chili and garlic paste: I added this for a little kick, and also because the color of this paste is very red...there must be some kind of dye in it. I thought it would be cool.
I coated the ribs with this sauce (bottom left picture) then stuck them on the grill for maybe 3 or 4 minutes per side, until I smelled the caramelization start. Then I was done. Behold the fruits of my labor!
So that's the current version of my rib recipe. It would not be optimal for a slow-cookin' rib BBQ or a charcoal grill, but it's fast and tastes pretty good. They are fairly mild ribs, but yummy.
I was at the Burlington Mall the other day, and tried the new Godiva Chocolate Chocolixir. My impression: not great. I had the "Dark Chocolate Decadance". The experience was marginally above-average, I suppose, for a chocolate beverage you would buy at the mall, but nothing to get excited by. I was at least expecting a deep chocolate taste that one would assume would be within the province of Godiva. And with a name like "Chocolixir", I expected something of a life-sustaining kick to the palate. But no. This may stem from the powdery origin of the beverage; no yummy-looking syrups went in that I could see, just ice and powder in a blender. As a baseline comparison, I found the humble Starbuck Frappuccino a more satisfying experience. And their hot 'n chewy Chantico beverage completely blows it away.
Some friends sent me some interesting food-related resources:
From Cara, via Jeff, comes Roadfood
Great regional meals along highways, in small towns and in city neighborhoods. It is sleeves-up food made by cooks, bakers, pitmasters, and sandwich-makers who are America’s culinary folk artists
I've been crawling through The Phantom Gourmet, which is a restaurant review organization that covers the New England region. They even have a local TV show now. The web site is growing; while it's far from comprehensive, it's definitely becoming a Force for Good (Eating) in my neck of the woods.
Today we had a special meeting of our New Media Group at David Kelleher's office. He has space at TechSpace Boston, a kind of high-tech office incubator oriented toward startups and small business:
Located in the South End, this handsome brick and beam facility consists of 20,000 square feet of office space, onsite parking, café, copy center, administrative support and concierge service available to all clients.
It's pretty easy to get to from I-93...we got off at exit 20 onto Albany St, and drove along Harrison Ave through the SoWa district. The building itself is located at 580 Harrison Ave, though this is actually a vanity address (the real one is 715 Albany Street). As you're driving along Harrison, look for the sign that says "580 Harrison Street Parking" if you have an access code, or park on one of the side streets / Washington St. The closest bus is the Silver Line on Washington St. The building has a big "580" on the roof so you can't miss it. Just look up!
It's a pretty nice space, funky in that Dot-Com way but somehow still humble. DaveK's office was small but furnished with Internet and phone service. Apparently you can rent just a couple days a week to keep costs down (you basically timeshare an office) and visitors have access to free WiFi. There's a pool table too. The only bad thing is that the whole facility (like Boston) seems to shut down at 5PM. What's up with this town?
After our meeting, we ate at a place called Morse Fish Co. on Washington Street. I had some misgivings going in, but it was very good: fresh and crispy. I just had fried haddock and fries (fish and chips, basically), but you can choose from a wider variety of seafood. The fries were particularly notable: seasoned, crispy, and golden-brown. It may have been the best fish-and-chips experience I've had in this area, beating out a couple clam shacks and one fancy restaurant, but admittedly it's not usually the sort of thing I eat. Definitely good, though. And CHEAP! They serve lunch all day (basically, a smaller portion than dinner) for about 6-7 bucks.
The New Media Group meeting was good too...did some debugging of one of David Cort's projects, talked about a bunch of interesting data-vis applications using real-time capture, and touched on some 3D tools (gMax, Celestia). A couple new faces at the meeting. The non-networking network grows!
