cellio | Entries tagged with food: cooking

A friend is recovering from surgery, so the gang organized a meal rotation. Our first day is tomorrow, to cover meals for a couple days. Our friend is a foodie, so we made something nice, which took a lot longer than we thought from reading the recipe. (James Beard's salmon tart. It started yesterday, because the dough wants to be refrigerated overnight, but most of the work was today, including rolling out a very stiff crust.)

We doubled the recipe, to make one for ourselves as well, which we had (part of) for dinner. The salmon is poached in wine, which left us about half a bottle. By definition, the wine you cooked dinner in goes with dinner, so that worked out. (Never cook with a wine you wouldn't drink.)

The recipe also called for egg yolks, which left me with a bunch of whites. I know exactly one thing to do with a bowl full of egg whites.

And that is how I came to be making meringue cookies after 9PM. If they're any good, our friend might get some dessert. Goofy-looking dessert, because I don't do this a lot and shaping meringues using a zipper bag with a corner cut off is...imprecise. But it's the taste that counts.

This seemed like an unremarkable loaf when I put it in the oven.

loaf with large asymmetrical hump

Dani called it my dromedary loaf. :-)

I wondered if there were a large air bubble under that hump, but the inside looks normal. So, one of life's mysteries! But a tasty mystery, so it's ok.

inside

I made sourdough on Friday. On Thursday I already knew that my starter was especially enthusiastic that day, and the levain (the second feed, what actually goes into the bread rather than back into the jar for next time) bubbled up much more quickly than usual. This meant I made the dough at dinnertime, rather than around 9:30 or 10 like usual.

It filled the bowl and then some on Friday morning, but, as usual, deflated some when I turned it out of the bowl. After letting it rest I formed it into two loaves, which is what I usually do, and baked them a few hours later.

True to form, it expanded more than usual in the oven, too. It was light and airy and tasty, and I'm finally getting around to providing the photographic evidence. ( Read more... )

Somebody on Twitter asked:

What did you learn in 2020 (besides how to make bread)?

I responded there:

To grow food in pots.

To cut men's hair.

To cook more new things.

That my cat loves me being home all the time.

More about community-building.

How to set up a nonprofit foundation.

To cut people w/no morals or human decency out of my life.

And yes, sourdough.

I was up against a character limit there, but I'm not here.

Back at the beginning of the pandemic, when staying at home was just starting to happen, I remember somebody asking: what will you do with this gift of time? I've had that in mind for most of the year. I miss seeing my coworkers, but I gained close to an hour back each work day in not commuting, and I gained a lot of flexibility. My team tries to work mostly normal hours for the sake of collaboration, but everybody recognizes that people have other demands on their attention too. The parents trying to work while their kids are at home attending school via Zoom gave me the opportunity to attend that mid-day (virtual) class or non-work meeting, and the flexibility to tend to things around the house while working. As one small example, sourdough -- it's a two-day process that doesn't require a lot of attention at any one time, but requires availability that wouldn't have been possible were I going to the office every day. Before this year, bread came from a store/bakery or out of a bread machine, only.

Both of us working from home is sometimes frustrating when one or the other of us has meetings, but we're also spending more time together throughout the day and that's very nice. We eat lunch together, every day, in addition to dinner. Sure, this means I'm not making things that I like but he doesn't (that I would have normally made for lunches at the office), but on the other hand, because I'm not limited to things that pack well, we're eating better, I think. Not always healthy, but less crap, more stuff made from scratch. I even grew some of it, which was new to me.

I only cut his hair the once. He held off for a long time back in the spring, thinking it would be possible to see a barber soon, but soon kept moving. He did a lot of it himself; I did the parts he couldn't see or reach. Men's hair technology sure is different from women's.

At the beginning of the year the evil deeds from people who should know better at Stack Exchange were still doing a lot of damage. It wasn't just what they did to me; they did some other nasty, bone-headed things early in 2020 and then throughout the year. A couple of the employees they drove out shared some things publicly after. (Pro tip: don't fire someone who knows about your dirty laundry without securing an NDA.) The folks there are majorly screwed up, and a couple of people I once thought decent folks in bad situations have shown themselves to be lacking in ethics and human decency. I'm well to be rid of their lies and malice.

Frustrating as it was to lose some good communities there, I've spent this year working to build the next generation at Codidact, and I'm very happy with where we are. We're building an open-source platform for Q&A and so much more, learning from those who have come before and building things that serve communities better. While our all-volunteer team is small and that limits us sometimes, we're flexible and responsive and working with our communities, and that shows. We have about a dozen communities up and running on our network now (including Judaism, yay! with some folks from Mi Yodeya), with more to come. Some of them are doing some novel things that weren't possible Somewhere Else. I'm the Community Lead, and while I had a fair bit of experience as a moderator on communities with varying characteristics, this role has allowed me to stretch and learn even more. It turns out this role makes me the most logical person to do "product management" and bug/feature prioritization and a fair bit of QA, too. Cool!

I'm now a board member; The Codidact Foundation was incorporated in November as a non-profit (I just got the confirmation letter from Companies House this week) and we'll now seek charity status. As soon as we can get a bank in pandemic times to let us open an account we'll be able to take donations and presumably get ourselves some better servers. This is all very exciting for me, and it's neat to be working with a worldwide team with quite a mix of backgrounds. Our major contributors include students and software developers and an ambulance dispatcher and a soldier and an accountant, among others.

Don't get me wrong; 2020 has been terrible in many ways. People close to me have died and I couldn't even be with or hug people, just be on Zoom. Friends and one family member are dealing with health challenges. The pandemic has greatly impeded my congregation (and so many others!). Nearly a year of not being able to socialize, go to restaurants, take in entertainment, hold conventions, attend Shabbat services, or do "normal life things" is wearing. Knowing that it's going to be at least many more months is sobering. (I'm going to call it now: I think Pennsic will be either cancelled again or severely hobbled and small.)

I'm glad to have the kind of job I can do from home; many people don't. And something I left off of that list on Twitter: I've learned how to work from home pretty effectively. I'd like some more human contact in three dimensions, but when (let's say "when", not "if") the pandemic is finally under some degree of control, I'll be able to get that from places other than work. I've learned more solidly that I could handle working for a company that's all-remote -- I suspected as much when I applied for such a position a few years back, but now I've seen it. And my employer has learned that remote works too; finally most of our engineering positions are now listed as "anywhere" instead of just the two cities in which we have engineering teams.

On the larger scale, 2020 has been a year of plague and violence and tyranny and unrest and hate and division. In the much smaller scale here at Chez Cellio, there has been good along with the bad, and I'm thankful for them.

I haven't been posting regularly. Oops.

I've been baking bread about once a week. This past week I finally scored some rye flour (that was not exorbitantly priced), so I made a rye sourdough for the first time. I think I prefer less molasses than this recipe called for, so I'll adjust that next time or try a different recipe. The bread is tasty, aside from the molasses overwhelming the caraway. Most "rye bread" recipes I've seen use rye for only one third of the flour, which sent me searching for "all rye" rye bread, which apparently works and tastes good but might not rise as much? I'll probably try it at some point, especially since I had to buy four (small) bags of rye flour to get it.

Dani and I play board games every Shabbat now, and occasionally we have two other friends (who are also careful, and I guess this is a "pod"?) over to play. We play Pandemic in every session because, well, pandemic. Yesterday we pulled out Kings and Things, a game we all had vague memories of, and by the end had concluded that while it's appealing it's also kind of tedious and maybe sort of a shorter Titan, a game I like in principle but dislike actually playing. Ok, now we've refreshed our memories...

A friend has a game called McMulti, which is an economic game (oil/gas theme)... in German. There are lots of places where text matters, so when we've played we've used cheat sheets since none of us read German. We recently became aware of an English-language derivative, called Crude, and got it recently. They've changed some of the mechanics and made one really annoying change to how the board is laid out, but other changes are positive and the game's a little faster. I like it, but am tempted to figure out how to print my own board. The game is really strongly designed for four players, but there are rules for a two-player version, which Dani and I have played once, which seen to work ok.

Codidact, the project that consumes most of my spare time, is in the process of incorporating as a non-profit. We've got our lawyer on our Discord server and having conversations about incorporation documents via Google Docs comments. It looks like we will be able to clear an important hurdle soon. Neat!

On the project front, I'm not writing code -- I keep feeling like I should learn Ruby and the dev environment so I can help, then concluding that I probably won't be helping because I'd be taking time and attention from the developers who are actually being productive. But I've taken over bug-wrangling -- some analysis and testing, clarifying vague reports, and, especially, triaging. I was surprised to find that GitHub counts filing issues as contributions. I think that's new?

We just had our first birthday, counting from when the project founder set up a Discord server to talk about maybe building an alternative to Somewhere Else. We've still got a lot of work ahead of us, both technical and community development, but I'm pleased with where we are.

I've been reading a lot of fiction, a mix of short stories, novellas, and novels, many through the BookFunnel network (and also StoryBundle). I'm "meeting" a lot of authors I didn't previously know. I should really write a separate post about that.

The friend who gave me the sourdough starter recently gave me a copy of Classic Sourdoughs, Revised: A Home Baker's Handbook by Ed Wood and Jean Wood. This is the book she learned from, she speaks highly of it, and she was tired of having to look things up in it when I asked her questions so she got me my own. :-)

The basic recipe in there (the authors recommend that you get this one down first before moving on to others) calls for feeding the starter to make it active, then feeding (part of) it again to get what they call a "culture proof", and then using that to make the bread. My earlier attempts didn't include that step; I was feeding the starter, waiting for it to expand, and then using that to bake with (and keeping the rest as starter). I'm getting better rise now.

There were two other differences I wanted to test (well three, but I didn't formally test the last):

The book says to feed the part of the culture proof you don't use in bread again before you put it away. That seems wasteful, so I wanted to find out if it makes a difference. Last week I divided my leftover culture proof, feeding half and not feeding the other half. (Remember, it's already been fed twice on the way to getting here.)
The book recommends putting the loaf in a cold oven and then turning it on, baking at 375F. The authors say you'll get a nice "oven spring" that you can watch happen suddenly, except that covering the bread with a bowl for humidity defeats that. (I left an earlier loaf uncovered, trying the pan of water instead for humidity, but saw no sudden spring (though it did expand) and was not happy with the resulting crust.)

The third item was using bread flour instead of all-purpose flour. The book actually uses all-purpose in its recipes, and that's what I used in my previous two loaves with this book.

Today (and yesterday, because sourdough requires time) I filled out a little two-by-two matrix: without the extra feed ("1") and with ("2"), crossed by cold-start ("C") and hot-start ("H") in which you preheat the baking sheet, deposit the dough onto it, and bake at 450F. I made two dough batches (for the different starters) following the same recipe, processes, and timings until we got to the baking stage. I divided each into two at the dough-proof stage. I baked the two "C" variants together and then the two "H" variants, which means that within each pair the dough for one had a little more pre-cook time than the dough for the other, but I'm prepared to call that not significant.

All loaves were made with bread flour. All loaves were brushed with olive oil right before baking. All loaves were covered with inverted metal bowls for the first half of their cooking time.

Also, all loaves held their shape better than in the past. I found myself adding some flour toward the end of the kneading (last night); possibly the bread flour makes a difference here too.

( results, in pictures )

Observations:

All four rose about the same amount.
The crumb (size of air bubbles) is pretty much the same for all four.
The "H" loaves taste more sour than the "C" loaves.
Dani described the "H" loaves as "more spongy", though I couldn't get a sense of what he meant by that.
The "H" crusts are darker.
We observed no taste difference between "1" and "2" variants.

Both temperatures have their uses, depending on whether I want more sour or bread that can be used in other applications (like for sandwiches that might not go as well with sour). I'll skip that extra feeding for the starter and save myself some flour, since it doesn't appear to affect the results when you later bake with it.

I'm pretty happy with these loaves. I finally feel like I'm getting bread rather than bread-like shallow mounds.

A silver lining of the pandemic is that if I were going to the office every day I wouldn't be able to make the timing work for sourdough. Maybe in the winter, when sunset is early, starting after Shabbat on Saturday and baking Sunday evening might work. But otherwise, it doesn't seem like it would work, at least following the techniques in this book. Of course there are other techniques, including suggestions from my readers, yet to be explored.

A ~~pusher~~ friend gave me some sourdough starter and I have been trying to learn to turn it into bread. In my most recent attempt I used this recipe, described as for beginners. I used the "bowl over the loaf in the oven" method, having tried the "pan of water" method with a previous loaf (but a different recipe, so no proper isolation of variables).

All of my loaves so far have been somewhat vertically challenged, like this one:

This is also the darkest loaf I've gotten so far. The recipe says 55-60 minutes so I pulled it out at 60. (Yes, I removed the bowl after 30 minutes.)

Should my bread be rising more? It's not producing hockey pucks; while the outside is pretty firm ("crusty", I guess?), the inside has regular bread consistency. The bubbles are small, not large.

That recipe says to start with starter, oil, and water and wisk them together first before adding flour. (This is different from my friend's recipe.) I've only just realized that I don't know whether that should be recently-fed starter or discard. Do any of y'all who know about bread have opinions? This loaf was made with discard; I'm wondering if that's my problem.

(The sourdough Internet tosses around lots of technical terms, but it's not always clear when which apply.)

I wonder if bad things would happen if I baked in a loaf pan to encourage more verticality (which would work better for sandwiches). All the recipes I've seen end with shaping the dough and putting it on a sheet or in a dutch oven; sourdough seems to be sculpture, not shape-assisted. But I might try that next.

I do not plan to buy, and have to store, a dutch oven just for this. I like bread, but not that much.

Working from home seems to be mostly going ok for my company. We have several standing "coffee break" video chats each week for the human connection and are using video more for other meetings. We have learned how to add custom background images to Microsoft Teams and this is a source of amusement. (I would like to find some from Babylon 5, particularly images from (a) Minbar and (b) inside the station, but have had no luck so far.) My team has a new person who started a few weeks ago, so he started in quarantine and hasn't yet been to the office. I'm his mentor, so I'm trying to make sure he's getting all the support and human connection he needs. The situation seems roughest on the people who live alone, though the ones with small children at home have challenges too. I'm fortunate to have Dani and the cat.

I have read a little more fiction than usual, some of it made available for free by authors because of the quarantine. Thank you! One that I just finished is Dragon of Glass by Zoe Chant, a delightful, lightweight novel about a transplant from another world and the woman who released him; watching him try to fit into our world is a lot of fun. Tor is making the Murderbot novellas available this week for free (leading up to a novel release next month); I'd read the first a while back but hadn't read the others yet, so this is good timing. I also have a gift waiting from a Kickstarter for a different book (while you're waiting and stuck at home, here...). I also just read (not free) The Body in the Building, a novella by a friend and fellow SE refugee. The point-of-view character is an architect who discovers problems with a major project, and then discovers that those problems were only the tip of an iceberg of bigger problems... I figured out the mystery before the reveal but also fell for some misdirection, so neither too easy nor too hard.

I have been spending more time in the kitchen. Yes I'm cooking all our meals at home aside from very occasional takeout from local restaurants, but also: with the food supply being sometimes erratic, I've upped the produce deliveries and am doing some low-key preserving. I've never canned and don't have the equipment, but I'm pickling things (to refrigerate, not shelf-stable). So far I've pickled eggs, beets, cauliflower, and jalapenos, and will do some carrots next. I also plan to dry some fruit, dried fruit not requiring refrigeration. (I'm trying to keep the fridge full.) I haven't been able to get bread flour since Pesach ended, so I guess I'll try making bread with all-purpose flour. (Also haven't been able to get rye flour.) I would like to get some more seedlings for container gardening, but I don't know if I want to go to Home Depot for them and nobody delivers. (Insert rant about how Home Depot gets to sell plants because they sell stuff for home repair, but local nurseries had to close.)

Someone I know indirectly from Mi Yodeya suggested a book and a series of videos on Reb Nachman that look very personally relevant. (I've read one chapter of the book and seen one of the videos so far; more soon.) I joined an online talmud class (by R' Ethan Tucker of Hadar). A friend pointed out to me that since we're all stuck at home anyway, synagogues in other cities are just as available to me as my local ones. There's one in DC that seems like a good fit for me. Closer to home, my synagogue's two rabbis and cantor each hold a weekly open chat on Zoom, so I'll get to see my rabbi that way tomorrow.

Our choir director sends out daily music selections with accompanying (short) history essays. I'm enjoying these.

I have barely watched any TV.

We're under a stay-at-home order (which, granted, isn't exactly the same as a quarantine), so much cooking is happening. I don't think any of my cooking is especially exciting, but since I enjoy seeing what others are doing and coworkers have asked for pictures of some of mine, I'll go ahead and share some. I'm also pretty happy with a soup I made tonight (recipe below).

( food, including soup recipe )

I asked what to do with kale and some of you suggested braising for a while. I haven't done that yet, but I used some of it in this recipe for Thai red curry and that worked well. And I remembered to snap a picture before we'd eaten too much of it!

The aromatics are onion, ginger, and garlic and the vegetables are red bell pepper, carrots, and kale. (I should have also used a yellow or orange pepper. Next time.) This worked well, and I think it could even absorb more kale! I found myself wanting another vegetable to bit into besides the carrots and peppers; maybe next time I'll add some radish or parsnips or cauliflower. (I don't always have cauliflower on hand.) I know that potatoes are used in Indian curry-like dishes; I don't know about Thai, but that's a possibility too. Maybe sweet potatoes?

The recipe says four servings, but even over rice I disbelieve. I had planned to have leftovers for lunch, but we ate it all. (I have some leftover rice; I started with a cup dry.)

I don't have good luck with stir-frying beef, but the quasi-marinade of this recipe made a big difference -- soy sauce, lime juice, a little sugar, and some Thai chili paste (because I didn't have a chile pepper).

I used different vegetables. That's shaved carrots, shaved green-meat radishes, tat soi (that's the greens), shallots, and garlic. Yum!

My first CSA box came with local flour (with a milling date! never seen that before), and one of their recipe suggestions was Japanese milk rolls. My first try did not go well; it seems I did not knead it long enough, and so I got dense blobs where fluffy rolls were supposed to be. (Still edible, but clearly not the intended results.) The second time, today, I said hey, I have tools for this, and used the bread machine to do the kneading. (I've never used it to make dough before, always finished bread.)

At the end of the kneading the dough formed a nice ball; after the rise it was bigger (not doubled) and more of a blob. That is, it didn't make a bigger ball. I don't know if it's supposed to. The next step was to separate it, make eight balls, and put them in a pan to rise again for 45-50 minutes. The dough was very sticky and that made it hard to shape; I sprinkled a little flour onto it while working with it so it didn't all stick to my hands. I don't know if that's so standard with bread that it goes without saying (this beginner didn't know, if so), or if that's not supposed to be necessary and I did something wrong.

The proto-rolls did expand in this second rise (I failed to take a "before" picture). The final product is definitely better than try #1, though they're still less fluffy than I expected from reading the recipe. I wouldn't be embarrassed to serve them to guests, but I will probably stick with less-fussy breads in the future. (This one involves making a "starter" (tangzhong) that's sort of like a roux. That, too, is new to me for bread.)

Dear LJ brain trust, help me figure out what to feed my camp-mates at Pennsic. :-)

We take turns cooking dinner for everybody, where "everybody" is around 25 people, give or take. Cooking facilities are propane-fueled stoves and grills; it's camping, so no electricity, and our camp doesn't build a firepit (especially this year when we'll probably be packed like sardines). We do also have a small propane oven, big enough to bake a dozen muffins, but I'm not sure what role it could play in dinner for twice that many people.

My night is late this year and I don't like to leave site once I'm there, so my usual of grilled fish (and/or grilled meat) doesn't work (I wouldn't trust either in a cooler for the better part of a week). We tend to be a meat-heavy camp, more than I'm used to eating, so I personally lean toward vegetarian (or fish, if that worked). We have a couple people in camp who are lactose-intolerant.

Dry goods (or canned) can obviously be stored for the week with no problem and there is a vegetable stand on site.

I prefer to make food that is period or plausible as opposed to modern.

Any suggestions? I'm currently thinking that something with chickpeas could provide protein, and I could have rice and grilled veggies, but can I improve on this?

I was surprised and a little weirded out, the other night, when I typed "parme" into Google and it offered to auto-complete to "parmesan crusted tilapia recipe". That was in fact what I was searching for, though I was going to just say "fish", but I hadn't realized Google's mind-reading was that good. :-) I didn't remember to follow up at first opportunity from a different IP address, though, so I don't know if profiling was involved.

(My question, still not satisfyingly answered as this recipe didn't do it so well, was: how do you get the cheese to stay on the fish? I was speculating about egg, as you often do for breading, but this recipe called for olive oil. I ended up with fish and cheese in proximity to each other, which was tasty but not what I was going for.)

Larry Osterman passed along this video showing upgrades from Windows 1.0 through to Windows 7 with all intermediate steps (except Windows ME, which doesn't play the upgrade game well, it appears). It was amusing to see what did and didn't survive upgrade (Doom almost hit 100%!), and amazing that it actually worked.

Bohemian Rhapsody on ukelele (video), from siderea. I didn't think I could imagine it, and I was right. Nifty!

Cool bedroom, and not just for kids! Link from talvinamarich.

The internet is for cats. Cats in sinks. Be careful; this is like TV Tropes on four legs. Don't say I didn't warn you.

And finishing up with another one from siderea: this funny ad for milk (involves cats).

I'm in a bit of a rut, so I turn to you, oh LiveJournal readers, in hopes that you won't be shy. :-)

My congregation maintains a freezer of ready-to-reheat food to send to homes where people are sick, someone has just died, etc -- families in the congregation that, at the moment, have more important things to worry about, and the least we can do is bring them dinner. Since, at the time of cooking, we don't know where it's going, I try to cook for a family that might or might not have kids, people with food allergies, diabetics, etc. (It should go without saying that everything gets a complete ingredient list.) Naturally, it should be kosher. (Not everyone keeps a kosher kitchen, but I do and label my contributions to so indicate.)

My standard contributions are: roasted chicken; baked chicken with some sauce (usually barbecue); chili (mild); cheesy noodle casserole; quiches. Occasionally I bake. You'll notice that this is pretty light on vegetables; aside from soup, what are good veggie options that freeze well?

What else would you cook if you were doing this?

Let me sing the praises of the disposable foil pan. Yes, it's wasteful, bad for the environment, etc; I get that. But because of disposable foil pans, there is an entire category of cookware that I do not have to have a duplicate set of for one week a year. That means I'm not shlepping heavy casseroles and roaster pans up and down the basement steps, storing them, etc. It is a marvelous thing to be able to cook for a dozen or more people without maintaining all the extra items I would otherwise need.

But alas, all is not perfect.

Dear manufacturer: I have certain expectations of even disposable cookware. I expect a pan called a "roaster" to be able to hold the weight of a roast, for instance. My pan of root veggies weighs considerably less than a roast, and is more distributed across the pan. And roasters, of course, should be able to handle fat -- juices from meat or, in my case, the oil poured over the veggies.

Your loss of structural integrity while I was rotating the pan was not welcome on this particular night. I already cleaned the oven once. :-( Yes yes, I know -- my oven sucks, and if I replaced it with a modern one maybe I wouldn't have to rotate my pans so things cook evenly. But, oh maker of the foil cookware, that should be my call, not yours.

Oh well. The oven is clean (again), maybe not as clean as the first time but good enough. Hey, it's not smoking. And my veggies are once again on their way.

I'd been meaning to try making my own candied ginger and then someone on my reading list mentioned doing so recently, so on Sunday I took a shot at this. The result resembles most candied ginger I've seen for sale (which is tasty). I still have no idea how to replicate the best candied ginger I've ever had, which was darker and more "mellowed" than most. It still had plenty of strong ginger flavor, but it didn't have that initial sharpness. (For those who know the reference, I mean the stuff that the Pepperers' Guild used to sell at Pennsic.)

An unanticipated bonus of making candied ginger is the syrup. Yum -- I can make some good ginger-ale from this!

Last week I made chicken paprikash for the first time. This dish isn't part of my culinary experience, but it's a staple of Dani's past. Most recipes I've found (and this matches Dani's memory) involve sour cream; I found one that's dairy-free but it wasn't very tasty. By the time the chicken (cooked in a skillet) was up to a safe temperature it was dried out. Maybe dark meat would work better than light? And maybe boneless? (The recipe called for a cut-up chicken, which says bone-in to me. I used two breasts.)

I also made shepherd's pie a few days ago. (More Dani comfort-food. No, it does not contain actual shepherds; the apostrophe is important. :-) ) It was better on reheating than it was on the first night. I wonder why.

Dear LJ brain trust,

I'm having folks over for lunch on Wednesday (second day of Rosh Hashana) and I want to serve salmon. I almost always buy fresh fish the day I'm going to cook it, but that won't work then. The Google-aggregated wisdom of the net seems to hold that you can keep salmon in the fridge for two days. But I would want to buy it Sunday rather than adding a grocery stop to Monday, which will already be hectic with trying to get home from work in enough time to do prep and get to services that night.

What are my options? Can I freeze fresh salmon -- and if so, would I regret it? Do any of you have recipes that I can cook Monday that would reheat ok on Wednesday? (I was going to bake it.) Any other ideas? I guess the current default is that I'll buy frozen salmon filets if I can get them, but I was hoping to cook one big piece -- it looks mice on the big platter surrounded by veggies and stuff that way.

I've mentioned before that my synagogue maintains a freezer of donated, cooked food to have on hand for houses of mourning, families where someone's sick, and similar acute cases of need. I think this is a great idea; if you're cooking anyway you can cook a little more to donate and help someone out. Yesterday I got email from the person who monitors this saying they're low on meat and pareve dishes, so tonight I'm roasting an oven-full of chicken to take over (less one meal's worth for ourselves this week), and tomorrow night I will make some vegetarian soup. I love being able to help in this way.

Speaking of soups, recently Dani and I were at a restaurant where I had a really fabulous butternut-squash soup. This one was dairy (I detected cream), and I couldn't identify all the spices. Web-surfing has led me to some promising recipes; I'm open to specific suggestions. I have now procured one butternut squash with which to experiment.

I'm about 40% of the way through the second book of His Dark Materials. I am pretty sure I know what the deal was with Grummon (the explorer Asriel went off in search of). So either I'm right or the author is being clever and has something up his sleeve. It feels pretty darn obvious, so I'm not ruling out the latter. (No, please don't tell me; I'll know on my own soon.)

The local SCA choir is singing at an event this weekend. I think we sounded really good at Monday's practice; I'm looking forward to the performance. We'll also be doing one piece jointly with our instrumental group, which is nifty. We haven't done that in years.

Jericho returns for a short second season (half-season?) next week. I really liked this show, so I'm glad to see it unharmed by the writers' strike. Whether it is harmed by its network is yet to be seen. (They cancelled it and then responded to a fan campaign.)

Assorted links (most sources lost, sorry):

Baby dos and don'ts. That the site is not in English really doesn't matter.

Surfing cat. It's not entirely clear to me that this is the cat's idea.

Joel on Software recommends Tripit for keeping track of the assorted confirmation numbers involved in travelling. Sounds useful especially for us infrequent travellers who don't have the routine down already.

Bruce Schneier on security versus privacy. Too many people think it's a zero-sum game; it's not.

Bookmarking (haven't finished reading yet): Rands in Repose on preparing presentations. It's odd: in most contexts public speaking is, ahem, not my strong suit. Really not my strong suit, even in fields I know very well. I get nervous and fumbly-mouthed. The exception? While I'm not as skilled at the mechanics yet as I'd like to be, giving sermons or divrei torah does not make me nervous.

I pass this on too late for voters in half the primaries in the country, but even so, there's a general election coming, so:

jducoeur nails what's really important in choosing a candidate. (PA doesn't vote until late April. It's possible we won't actually be irrelevant this time, but we'll see how today turns out.)

George Bush v Mohammed ibn Tugluq by David Director Friedman, on whom the law binds.

The interview "meme" returns. Here are my answers to five questions from

loosecanon.

( Read more... )

If you want to participate, post a comment asking to be interviewed and I'll ask you questions, which you'll then answer in your own journal.

Words that are often misused #1: "periodic". To be meaningful, this word needs to be accompanied by some indication of the period. "Daily" is "periodic", but probably not what is meant in a recipe's direction to "stir periodically". :-)

Two facts that seem to be at odds with each other: (1) a lot of medieval Islamic recipes call for vinegar; and (2) Islam forbids the consumption of wine.

Our baron (who lives in a castle) shared one way to get your castle past the zoning board. I wonder how that's going to work out for the owners in the end, now that the neighbors have noticed. (Who would have thought you could build a castle on the sly in a populated area?)

Two interesting posts that showed up on my reading list within a few hours of each other, serendipitously: whom do you friend? (from

cahwyguy) and who owns the conversation? (from

jducoeur). Both have lots of comments that I haven't yet digested.

Words that are often misused #2: "rebate". A rebate is a refund of monies paid. If you give money to someone who didn't pay any (or as much as is being given out), the correct word is "gift" (or "grant", if you want to be more governmental about it). Just sayin'.

Query: can anyone reading this point me to a neutral high-level discussion of economics, that I can consume in an hour, that explains how merely pushing small amounts of money into the economy helps fend off a recession? What does the mere act of one-time spending accomplish, and does it matter whether it's splurge-buying or spending you would have done anyway? My knowledge of macro-economics is, as you can tell, a little on the spotty side. I don't care enough to read a tome, but I'd like to read something shorter, particularly if it doesn't come with an agenda. And yes, I realize that the rhetoric and the real reasons behind the stimulus package probably differ; I'm exploring the stated reason here.

My congregation recently started selling gift cards for the local grocery chain. You know the deal: you pay face value for the card and they get a cut -- everyone wins. (Well, except the taxpayers who cover the amount the store gets to deduct as a charitable contribution.) I figured the congregation must get 1%, maybe 2% out of this deal. I learned today that they get 5%. I didn't think grocery stores even had 5% margins... Sure, their prices are probably inflated to cover this, the discounts for the affinity card, and the "fuel perks" (10 cents a gallon off one fill-up for each $50 spent; I assume they share that cost with the gas chain), but their prices still don't seem that high compared to other local options. I guess they're gambling on people not getting the affinity cards, not using up the gift cards, and not cashing in the fuel perks.

Locals who rent: where are the good landlords, properties, or listings for Squirrel Hill and Shadyside? I know what shows up in Google, but if you've got recommendations or anti-recommendations, please send 'em along. I'm trying to help out a friend of a friend who'll be moving here soon (for one year), but I've been out of the renting scene for quite a while now.

As long as I'm doing the "dear lazyweb" thing... this one's for me: can you tell me anything interesting about synagogues in Newton Center, MA, within walking distance of Hebrew College? Names, addresses, and affiliations I've got, and some of them have web sites, but reports from people who've actually visited any of them are more interesting.

Cheese update, for those who asked: I took the remaining paneer, sliced it, and fried it in butter. This was quite yummy, and the cheese held up just fine (did not get gooey and melty). The thinnest slice I tried was about a quarter inch; somewhere between that and half an inch seemed to give the best performance.

magid recently linked to this recipe for making paneer, an Indian cheese. I like mattar paneer and generally use soft mozzerella for the cheese, so I decided to try making my own.

( here there be pictures... )

Tonight I tried this recipe for rosemary lamb chops (from Cooking for Engineers). The name is a bit misleading; there is rosemary in it, but also orange juice, pineapple juice, onion, thyme, garlic, and pepper. Marinate, then sear, then use some of the (set-aside) marinade to deglaze the pan and make a sauce. Yummy!

One thing I like about Cooking for Engineers is that the author explains things but doesn't talk down to you while doing so. So, for instance, he described how you'd know that the sauce is thick enough, rather than assuming you'd know or saying something vague like "until it thickens".

I went looking for lamb recipes in the first place because my broiler usually sets off the smoke detector. (Dunno why.) Searing the lamb emitted a few chirps too even though I was running the vent fan. Oh well. The meat was not overdone, however.

Dani forwarded me this interesting article about mustard and ketchup. It's long, but I found it worth reading. Basic question: why are there entire sections in the grocery store for mustard, but there are still only a few players for ketchup? (I'm not much of a ketchup person myself; I generally find it boring. For french fries or burgers or hot dogs, my condiment of choice is brown mustard. I've also been known to dip fries in barbeque sauce.)

When I last went fish shopping the person at the counter informed me that they no longer carry grouper (a versatile fish that I like to cook with), but that what they label as "basa" (not bass) is the same fish. Google tells me that both names are used for the same fish, so I guess this means they've changed their source and the sources used different labelling. My basa fillets were a little thinner than the grouper fillets I used to get, but otherwise it seems to be indistinguishable.

This was good: take basa fillets, put in a lightly-oiled casserole (I used olive oil) and drizzle oil on top, coat with "Auntie Arwen's fish blend" (assorted herbs, garlic, onion, I think paprika), bake at 425 for about 10 minutes, then add thinly-sliced havarti cheese on top and bake just until melted.

I went surfing for a recipe for cold cherry soup (not being satisfied with the one I know) and found something that mostly worked. (Dani has previously described a cherry soup with sour cream; the key word seems to be "Hungarian".) Boil water, pitted cherries, and sugar for a while until the cherries soften; in a bowl beat cream (if the cherries are sweet) or sour cream (if not) with a little flour, stir in some of the hot mixture, and then pour everything into the pot and simmer (don't boil). Chill well before serving. The flour's job, I presume, is to thicken the broth, but even though I beat it with the cream for a while, I got little globs of flour in the resulting soup. Maybe I used too much flour? (I had non-sour cherries, so I used cream. The recipe didn't specify the type of cream; I used heavy and will probably try light next time.)

Tonight after Shabbat Dani wanted to go to Longhorn, a steak house at the waterfront (don't know if that's a chain or a local instance). They have two non-shellfish fish dishes, both salmon. The grilled salmon was very good, and the steamed broccoli was tasty and not overcooked. The seasoned fries were reasonable, though I failed to procure brown mustard for them and had to settle for yellow. I didn't see anything vegetarian on the menu, but I like salmon so I'd definitely go there again.

But next time we'll sit at a table, not a booth. This isn't the first restaurant I've been to lately where the seats in the booths are really far from the table. In some (like Gullifty's), if I sit all the way back my feet don't touch the floor. So I end up having to sit on the front of the seat, with no back support at all. I'm short, but I don't think I'm farther out than one standard deviation. Are restaurants now planning booth layouts around very large people? (Ironically, the very large people I've had occasion to observe seem to prefer tables with chairs.)

Monica

waste not, want not

sometimes the bread has plans of its own

runaway levain

2020

odds and ends

more sourdough science

talk with me about sourdough, please

quarantine rambles

quarantine cooking

kale works in curry

stir-fry from the CSA box

Japanese milk rolls (second try)

camp cooking

short takes

culinary ideas wanted

the conveniences [sic] of modern life

first-time dishes

food safety

random bits

interviewed by loosecanon

short takes

random bits

fun with cheese!

mmm, lamb chops

food (condiments, fish, fruit soup)

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