brainwagon

Yeah, my blog was a little sparse on the nerd front this weekend: Carmen and I were off for a short anniversary getaway in Napa, sampling some of the local food and wine and generally trying to relax. We give a hearty thumbs up to Julia’s restaurant in the Copia center in Napa. We began with salads: I ordered a beet salad which was very delicate, Carmen had an assortment of fresh vegetables including peas and beans. Both were perhaps a bit subtle for us, but delicious. I ordered a pork chop, and was pleased when the waiter said that the pork chop was brined and assured me despite its juice texture, it was fully cooked. Bravo! People fear undercooked pork to the extent of ruining perfectly delicious chops by cooking them to 180 or higher. The best pork chops are cooked until they are slightly pink on the first cut, but turn opaque white after a couple of seconds, more like 165 or so. And brining helps. But I digress. The pork chop was excellent quality, large, delicious, flavorful and tender. It came with a tart made from cream, onions, and bacon and a side of purple potato chips. Delicious. Carmen had the rib eye steak, which I sampled and gave it my seal of approval. Also delicious. Dessert for me was a sampler of three cherry desserts, while Carmen went with a sampler of three chocolate pot de creme with small cinnamon churros. Each chocolate was infused with a different aromatic herb. Delicious again, but perhaps a bit too refined for our more rustic tastes. Still, a great meal for our anniversary.

The next morning we decided to ride the Napa Wine Train from NAPA to Calistoga, and sample their gourmet breakfast/luncheon service. I am a huge fan of Eggs Benedict (which I sample very rarely now that I am trying to lose weight, but it was our anniversary), so I went with their variation which substituted beef tenderloin for ham. Carmen had a stuffed French Toast, filled with creme cheese, craberries and grapes. Both were good, but not likely to be classic recipes. The tartness of the cranberries tended to overwhelm all the other qualities of the French Toast, and I don’t really think that Eggs Benedict is improved by the expensive beef tenderloin. Give me the classic any day.

For dinner that evening, we went to Tuscany in downtown Napa. I had an interesting pasta dish which had chunks of stewed wild boar. It was a very rustic dish, with hand made pasta served al dente. I suspect that it is a dish which originally would have been made with venison, and I enjoyed it a great deal. Carmen had a roasted half chicken, which while competently done, was nothing very exciting. The ambience of the restaurant was nice though, with an open fireplace and lots of roasting chickens. We had fun.

The following morning: a picnic at the Clos du Val winery consisting of a loaf of bread and two kinds of cheese: one, a rustic Irish cheese and a softer mild cheese. Good stuff, and a beautiful setting.

A fun time. Happy fifth anniversary honey, and I’m looking to the next five, even as I rue the scale this morning (back on weight watchers for the rest of the week).

I haven’t posted any of my culinary explorations lately, so I thought that I would rectify this wrong by detailing something that I tried for yesterday’s dinner. I’m a huge fan of pulled pork, especially in the form of barbecue pork sandwiches. I like getting a toasted bunn, piling it with this shredded pork, and then slathering on tons of a nice spicy barbecue sauce, and eating that with some delicious potato salad.

But that’s not very Weight Watchers friendly, so I don’t get to do it very often.

But, I did see a good idea on Calorie Commandos the other day, which was to make the same kind of thing, but use turkey legs instead of pork. I took ideas from their recipe and adapted it to what I had on hand.

I began by heating a tiny bit of olive oil and sweating a diced onion and a diced red pepper over medium heat. I didn’t have any shredded carrots, but I did have some of those tiny baby carrots (I buy them by the 5 lb bag for munching) so I just dumped in a handful of those, and let them sweat for a bit. I then added the seasoning: chili powder, cumin, paprika, red pepper flake, cayenne, black pepper and let that go for just a few more minutes, until it begins to smell and look good. Then I turned off the heat. The original recipe called for these to be cooked in the oven for four hours, but I work, so starting this in the evening would mean dinner @ 9:30 at the earliest, so I did it slightly differently: I skinned my turkey legs, and dumped them in my crockpot in the morning. I then covered them with this vegetable mixture, and then added enough canned nonfat chicken stock to cover. Plugged in the crockpot, set it to low, and left for work.

When I returned, the meat was literally falling off the bone. Took some tongs, and fished out all the legs, and let them cool on a rack. Then, I went through and pulled out all the bones and any tiny bits of skin that I missed before, and shredded all the meat by hand. The turkey legs actually contain a fair number of smallish sharp bones, so take good care while doing this step. You’ll be left with a pile of deliciously seasoned seasoned meat, very soft and delicious. I then toasted some buns, and piled on this meat mixture, and added some of my favorite barbecue sauce. I like Sweet Baby Ray’s among all the store brands I have tried, it’s actually quite acceptable in a pinch. I also had some fat-free vegetarian baked beans, and a side salad.

A feast!

You can do the same recipe with chicken thighs. Delicious.

Wish I had left overs.

While I was on Julian’s website, I noticed that he still hadn’t mastered the fine art of meat loaf. I thought that he should check out Good Eats Meat Loaf for inspiration.

It’s not a perfect recipe, but it’s not bad. They use a mixture of ground chuck and ground sirloin to get the right amount of fat, and some crusty garlic croutons to balance it out. Getting precisely the right mix of bread to meat is essential to avoid making a doorstop. I like the spice mix generally, but you should consider using red onions (I like meat loaf mostly on the second day, in sandwhiches with slices of red onion on it, yum!). It never hurts to put strips of bacon on top either.

Curse my Weight Watchers diet.

Oh well, another thing to try is to use an even greater variety of meats. I like a 1/3 split of ground chuck, ground pork and ground veal for meatballs, although I’m mostly opposed to using veal, I sometimes succumb to it for dishes like this. I’m in good company, Emeril’s Kicked Up Meat Loaf uses a similar meat mix.

Oh, and Julian, if you are listening to this, I liked the Chopin, keep up the recordings!

I’m fascinated by old cookbooks and the like, which is why I found The Cyder-Maker’s Instructor, Sweet-Maker’s Assistant, and Victualler’s and Housekeeper’s Director to be interesting. I mean really, who thinks about making cider anymore?

Old knowledge, preserved.

A special circle of hell is reserved just for this guy, where rabbits will gnaw on this guys privates for eternity while munching on carrots whose greens resemble dollar bills.

That dog won’t hunt, Monsenior.

Update: I’ve been had. Check out Snopes. (Thanks John!)

I’m about as much of a technology geek as you can imagine, but when I read the Slashdot headline Sushi Prepared on a Printer I must admit, my inner geek packed it’s bags and ran away, leaving the inner gourmand to merely shake his head.

You see, I have a philosophy about food. Take good fresh ingredients, do as little as humanly possible to them, and serve them in a basic, straightforward way. Sushi is close to the apex of this basic philosophy. Rice. Vinegar. Fish. Soy. Wasabi. What could be wrong with that?

Sushi is all about the important stuff. The size. The cut. The texture. The aroma. The freshness. The combinations. Whenever I get an assortment of Nigiri, it’s always about “which fish is the freshest”. Here in California, we often get good salmon (sake). Not the stuff that’s been lightly smoked, but real fresh salmon. Most of the time it beats the maguro, but maguro is nice too, and if you are in a high class place, can be better. I also am a fan of hamachi. There is a place I frequent that makes good negihama rolls, which are maki with hamachi and green onion. The combination is one of my favorites. I also rather like Ebisu’s saba and ginger maki.

Sushi can, of course, be obsessive and extravagant, but I tend not to go to those places. To me, it’s all about the basics. Fish. Rice. Soy. Wasabi. Tea.

Mr. Cantu believes that restaurant-goers, particularly diners who are willing to spend $240 per person for a meal (the cost of a 20-course tasting menu with wine at Moto) are often disappointed by conventional dining experiences. “They’re sick and tired of steak and eggs,” he said. “They’re tired of just going to a restaurant, having food placed on the table, having it cleared, and there’s no more mental input into it other than the basic needs of a caveman, just eat and nourish.”

At Moto, he said, “there’s so much more we can do.”

Frankly, I just want my caveman needs met.

Wikipes is a cool site which creates a global cookbook using Wiki technology. There aren’t a whole lot of recipes yet, and they seem to be less sophisticated than those on epicurious, but I like the idea.

Not content with OpenCola? How ’bout Our Beer instead?

It does have one drawback:

It is based on classic ale brewing traditions but with added guarana for a natural energy-boost.

Call me a purist, but that seems, well, wrong.

While researching Cory Doctorow, I found he founded a company called Opencola. Now defunct, the primary result of their company seems to have been the release of an open source softdrink recipe, released under the GPL. Wacky!

For Christmas Eve dinner, I like a dish which combines simple rustic flavors with little prep and cleanup. The big meal after all will be Christmas dinner. For the last couple of years, we’ve got some Christmas Pasta from Cost Plus, and whipped up some of Rachel Ray’s Christmas Pasta sauce. Takes one pan and about twenty minutes of prep, makes a big pile of sauce. Combine that with some fresh homemade bread (or good bakery style Italian loafs if you aren’t so inclined) and you’ll have a meal that will warm your heart and fill your belly.

Stepping back from podcasting and intellectual property for a minute, I noticed that Lisa Williams posted a link to her husband’s pot roast recipe.

Pot roast is another one of these recipes that has gotten short-changed in recent years, mainly because people don’t do a very good job of it, despite the fact that it’s pretty easy. The keys:

• Use the right cut of meat. I like chuck for potroast. It has a fair amount of connective tissue in it (more on that later) and lots of really beefy flavor.
• Brown the meat really well. As Evan’s recipe says, don’t pepper the meat prior to this treatment. The pepper will just burn on the outside if you are browning it at the “freakin’ hot” temperature it really needs. I do put kosher salt on the outside of my meat before browning. It helps draw some of the moisture out of the surface of the meat and give it a really good brown.
• Cook it for a long time over low heat. A really long time. A really really long time. The temperature of the meat has to come up to around 190 or so to melt all the connective tissue. That’s when pot roast becomes tender. If your pot roast is tough, chances are it is undercooked rather than overcooked.
• Season it well. I like cumin, thyme and black pepper. Some Worchester sauce isn’t bad either. Carrots and onions will add some sweetness to the dish, which can be nice.

Damn, I’m making myself hungry. I’ll have to put one of these on this week.

It’s cold (or what passes for cold in California) and rainy today, so it’s time to cook up something healthy and delicious. Here’s my recipe (such as it is) for home-made Chicken and Dumplings, inspired by a similar recipe that I saw on Rachel Ray’s 30 minute meals. Nothing about this meal is cast in stone, substitute whatever you like.

• Begin by putting your largest pot onto the stove and heat it to medium high. Dice a largish onion or two smaller ones, and cook those in a tablespoon of olive oil until they are translucent. Or until you get the rest of the veggies chopped.
• The rest of the veggies are a couple stalks of celery and two carrots. Dice them up, and add them to the onions. Add a pinch or two of kosher salt. Cook until bored.
• Chop up some boneless chicken into inch size chunks. Dump into the pot. Stir occasionally. Brown until bored.
• Open a big can of lowfat/low sodium chicken broth. Add it in, and then turn up the heat until it begins to bubble.
• Peel and chop two russet potatoes. Dump ‘em in.
• Let cook at a strong simmer for 15 minutes.
• Take two cups of Bisquick, 3/4 cup of milk, and some chopped sage. Mix into a biscuit batter, which you drop by spoonfuls into the boiling pot of chickeny goodness. Dump some sage into the broth too.
• Wait 15 or 20 minutes. Serve in big bowls with some fresh ground black pepper.

Each batch I make turns out a bit different. My wife loves this stuff. Guaranteed to make you feel warm inside. Chicken thighs actually make for a better tasting stew, but a little higher in fat. You can also add bayleaf or oregano or thyme or rosemary, whatever you like. This dish goes back to my basic philosophy of food: start with good ingredients, don’t screw with ‘em too much and you’ll make something tasty.

Addendum: Cooking is a great geek hobby, with obvious benefits. Plenty of gadgets and books to buy, a modicum of science and lots of hands on work.

It seems that large inflatable SpongeBob Squarepants figures have been hot items in the world of petty theft. People are apparently stealing them from rooftops in significant numbers. Perhaps sending the wrong message, Burger King Corporation has been threatening those responsible for their return with a years supply of Whoppers.

A Whopper of course is about 700 calories, 370 of which come from fat. You can trim about 160 of that off by leaving off mayonaise, but you can leave 700 off by driving past, and then use that 700 to at something which is much better for you (or at least tastes better).

I shudder to think back of the day when I’d pound two of those back with fries and a large shake for lunch.

I’m as obsessive compulsive as the next guy (actually, I’m twice as obsessive), but even I am amazed at the dedication that resulted in this site full of Gingerbread House Patterns. Cool tips for a neat holiday craft!

Where your host rambles and meanders through the topics that seem appropriate on a Saturday. Links from the show:

• I use lots of command-line tools to process and convert video files. Some of the more important ones are mplayer, transcode and ffmpeg. All three are useful and powerful, but have steep learning curves. Still, for mass conversion and ripping of video files, they annoy me much less than other alternatives, and they are all open-source.
• Mark Tilden is the inventor of BEAM robotics and also the Robosapien, a cute remote controlled robot toy with surprisingly long battery life. You can look for other Robosapien hacks here.
• Dave Slusher uses blosxom as his blogging software: a good choice. I use Wordpress, and have recently begun testing the newest version at a mirror of my text weblog. Verdict: nice, but generates illegal RSS for enclosures (multiple enclosures per item).
• Get ready for the holidays! Try these recipes from the web:
  • You could do worse than using Alton Brown’s Good Eats Roast Turkey. Be prepared for a good amount of smoke during the initial roast: 500 degrees for 30 minutes usually sets off my smoke alarm. Still, good stuff.
  • I really like epicurious.com for recipes. Winners from my personal file include Pumpkin Pecan Cheesecake and Mashed Sweet Potatos with Brown Sugar and Pecans. My wife usually doubles the topping, so it turns out like candy on top. Good stuff.