OCTOBER 2010
Sunday 2010.10.31
Cat's Got My Tongue
Okay, that's a little tongue-in-cheek. The puns just keep coming.
I'm feeling a little playful because I posted my Cats Tongues recipe here on this site, along with an associated video on YouTube, this weekend. These are my all-time favorite cookies and this is one of my all-time favorite recipes. My Almond Biscotti (which one friend refers to as "crack cookies"—as in addictive) are among my most popular, but the Cats Tongues get the most requests. I like this recipe because it's fun to make. I feel like I'm playing rather than cooking.
Maybe that's why I was feeling playful when making the video. Be sure to watch the outtake after the final credits.
As a second surprise, we did another video this weekend. I wasn't expecting it, but my video guy, Eric, wanted to do Almond Biscotti. The recipe, now in the Recipe Archive, will have its own video in the next few days. We also filmed one quick clip that I needed to finish the Bread recipe. That leaves only one video remaining to give all archived recipes their own video, Eggplant Parmesan. I love eggplant; so I'm looking forward to making that video.
Halloween is this evening. I have my plans and my backup plans. I'll either go down into the city with my camera and photograph the costumed people on State Street, or I'll hunker down in my home office and listen to all the idiotry taking place on the police scanner. I live in a college town where Halloween is popular and the police scanner can be very entertaining. Maybe I'll strap my scanner to my belt and use the earphones while I'm taking pictures on State Street. Boys and their toys.
I might just carry some Cats Tongues and Almond Biscotti with me on State Street and see how far they get me. Well, let's not go there...
Enjoy your Halloween.
Wednesday 2010.10.27
Halloween
Halloween is a weird time of year for me. I don't mind all the ghouls and goblins stuff. It's the people at work that give me the heebie-jeebies. Alternate egos come out when they get into costume, and some of those egos can be downright frightening.
A couple of years ago someone who worked in our front office, where the public goes first when they visit, fancied himself a stripper stud. He came to work dressed as a Chippendale dancer—Speedos, bow tie, and shoes on his feet. Nothing more. At one point during the morning he was practicing his dance routine on the front counter, in front of the public. Okayyyyyy. Last year he was a rock star. What will he be this year? A nurse in a sperm bank?
Then there are the offices that compete for the Best Decorations prize. Every year there is one office that looks like a cave of iniquities. Thankfully the department in which I work keeps it minimal.
And, of course, there is the costume parade for the prize of Best Costume. (The Chippendale stud danced his routine that year, but he didn't win.) Witches are ubiquitous, as are cowboys, clowns, and firemen. The parade used to be right outside my office window. Two years ago—maybe because of the Chippendale dancer—I moved my office to another part of the building where I can now watch bicyclists peddle by all day. Much nicer.
On Monday there will be bowls of candy all around the office—either the candy they couldn't give away or the candy they don't want their kids to eat. I found a pretty good sized pebble in a Butterfingers candy bar three years ago. Thankfully I was proceeding cautiously (Halloween candy also gives me the heebie-jeebies) and I didn't break a tooth.
It all settles down quickly enough and office life gets back to normal. Halloween really belongs to the children, and sometimes I wonder if the inner child ever grows up.
Sunday 2010.10.24
Statistics
It's a guy thing. When I was in college my favorite math classes were my statistics courses. In one course I had a British professor who threw us a curve one day. "You all know about the Dufora Theorem..." We're thinking, Dufora? Is that in the textbook? "You're watching a baseball game and the batter steps up to the plate. The commentator says, 'Clyde Spitnick hasn't had a hit his last three times at bat. He's due for a hit.' Analyze that."
I watch closely the stats of this web site. It's only about two months old, so the numbers really aren't significant yet. Do you want to know more about yourselves?
You jumped on the Boning a Chicken PDF when I published it. It has been the most popular download so far, way ahead of the second most popular PDF, White Bread. Pasta From Scratch and Almond Biscotti are running neck and neck to capture third place. Although it is way too early to be significant, Roma Cheesecake is limping along in last place (and I was hoping a dessert would be a smash hit). Of the videos, Mascarpone Cheese and Trout With Mascarpone are the runaway hits so far. That's encouraging because my trout recipe is purely my own invention. I created that one from scratch, although I was inspired by the women in the BBC's TV series Two Fat Ladies.
As for that baseball player, was he due for a hit? No. Each time at bat is a unique statistical event. If his batting average is .300, his probability of a hit when he steps up to the plate is 30%. Other than contributing to his overall batting average, his past few times at bat are insignificant. They do not affect his current performance at the plate.
Wednesday 2010.10.20
Stormy Weather
We are finally getting our winter weather. It has been raining, heavy at times, the last few days and at one point yesterday there was lightning and thunder as the rain pounded down. It sounded like hail on the roof. In a mobile home, which has a metal roof, a heavy downpour is loud. I hope this portends a rainy winter. Last year we had enough rain to fill our reservoir to 95% full (it is currently at 80%). I'm hoping for 100% this winter.
It is perfect weather for baking. I made a custard pie yesterday, photographing the steps and writing the PDF recipe. That's recipe #36. I always feel a sense of accomplishment after I write and photograph a recipe. I first wrote this recipe about five years ago, and I didn't take photographs back then. It took me a long time to give up film photography. It was only when Kodak announced it would stop making Kodachrome 64 that I finally resigned myself to the fact that digital photography is here to stay. (I still have an unexposed roll of Kodachrome 64, a keepsake of days past.) Now that I've joined the digital photography revolution, I really like my Nikon digital SLR.
My mother made custard pie for the holidays and it was my favorite. After she passed away I decided I would learn to make it myself. I remember making it at least ten times before I was satisfied with the recipe. I ate them too, all ten of them. A friend at work warned me, "Dennis! You must stop doing that! You'll turn into a custard pie!"
Custard pie brings back childhood memories. My mother's pie was pure custard in a baked pie shell. I've tried ordering custard pie for dessert in restaurants, but the pie is always adulterated with something, like coconut. It just isn't the same. No custard pie is finer than homemade custard pie. And that's that. As for the one I made yesterday, I waited until today to cut into it, all the more to relish it. Delicious! The recipe will be posted here eventually.
Sunday 2010.10.17
Pork Chow Mein Disaster
This week I made my first attempt to reproduce one of my favorite Chinese American dishes, Pork Chow Mein. Disaster! It was just awful. I made fresh pasta from scratch for the noodles. When I tried cooking them they congealed into a mass in the bottom of the wok. The pork tasted bland. The sauce turned into a gelatinous mass with the noodles. The failure gives me some ideas for how I might do things differently in my next attempt. I do achieve some spectacular failures sometimes. To confess: I never looked at a cookbook. I charged ahead blindly. Okay. I'm dumb sometimes. I have since looked at one of my Chinese cookbooks and enjoyed my "Ah-hah!" moment. "So that's where I went wrong." (Don't try to cook the fresh pasta in the liquid you intend to use for the sauce. Cook separately in boiling water.)
This weekend was cold and wet, perfect weather to stay indoors and cook. As an added benefit, I had made no commitments other than that memorial I mentioned on Wednesday (at which there were smokers and I am still airing out my clothes). I had nearly the entire weekend to myself. I need that occasionally. I worked on my recipe for Cats Tongues. Not literally—they're cookies! Hopefully the recipe and video will be posted next week.
The only other cooking and writing I did was two large loaves of artisan bread. To split hairs, all the bread I bake is technically "artisan" bread because it is not mass produced in huge quantities in factories. But I define artisan bread as a loaf I shape myself from dough that varies from the standard ingredients of flour, sugar, yeast, salt, and water. Rather than plunking the dough in loaf pans, I made a braided loaf. I did a similar loaf in which the strands were twisted like a rope rather than braided. That loaf looked like a giant caterpillar. I swear, the aroma of baking bread reached all the way into the city, because immediately the phone started ringing. I split the first loaf between my friends who showed up and kept the second loaf for myself. As I write this I am enjoying two slices of caterpillar bread, toasted and coated with butter and honey. Yum. The bread is great for sandwiches too.
Wednesday 2010.10.13
More About Photographs
I might make a dish three or four times to get enough photographs for the PDF. Thankfully I have people to whom I can give all this food. I am still making Roma Cheesecake in preparation for posting the recipe next week. I take dozens of photographs, sometimes more than 100, to get what I want (and yet one friend, who never photographs anything, critiques my photos as if he is the professional photographer and "food stylist" and I am the newbie who can only benefit from his wisdom and expertise—go figure—and he wonders why I refuse to listen to him). I'll end up making the cheesecake four times before I'm done. The last one will go to a memorial to honor a neighbor who passed away last week.
The camera never gets put away. I'm taking pictures almost every day. I have five micro SD cards that I will sometimes label with the names of different dishes as I switch back and forth between recipes. What a pain when I forget to switch cards and my cats tongues get mixed in with my artisan bread.
I did a lot of research before taking the salmon jerky photograph that represents this week's Feature Recipe. Do a Google search for jerky images and you'll find there is almost no way to photograph jerky in an appetizing way. It's dried dead flesh. What can you do with that? So I gave up and put four pieces on a dish and called it a day.
This week I am delving into bread again. I've already learned a few new tricks from that book I mentioned in Sunday's blog. I've been cooking for decades, but I sometimes think one lifetime is not nearly long enough to learn everything I would like to know. At what point should we stop learning? On my deathbed I'll probably be reading a new cookbook.
As for the photography, no amount of reading or practice will ever cover all the possibilities. Each new project is a new challenge.
Sunday 2010.10.10
Kind of a Mish Mash
The videos are going well. This week I uploaded five videos to YouTube. More are planned.
Desserts are on my mind. So far I've only posted savory dishes. Today, if all goes according to plan, we will video Roma Cheesecake and the video and recipe will be posted here next week.
This week's Salmon Jerky is perhaps the weirdest thing I've done. In my very first blog on August 14th I wrote about it. At the time there was wild sockeye salmon in the warehouse store. Last week they had wild coho salmon. It is probably the healthiest snack food I make, a lot better than my Johann Sebastian Bach cookies (recipe coming someday) which are made with homemade ice cream and very thin cookies that are similar to my Cats' Tongues recipe (also coming someday). I try to keep some salmon jerky in my little refrigerator at work. Like Milton in Office Space, I was moved to the far corner of the worst office space in our department. To compensate, I assembled my own little private kitchen back there. It's mine, all mine! I go outside to eat my jerky because it has such a strong salmon fragrance.
I am a member of the Borders Rewards program. I like their coupons. I only ever use the 40%-off coupons. Even if there is nothing I need, I go to the store with the coupon and look for something to buy. They stopped sending me the coupons. A friend, however, gets them in his email and he always forwards them to me. So I still use only the 40%-off coupons. This week I bought an expensive book, The Professional Pastry Chef by Bo Friberg. Original price: $70. With discount and tax I paid $45.68. At Amazon it sells for $44.10 (free shipping, no tax). That's why I only use the 40%-off coupon. When I really need something and I have no coupon, I buy from Amazon. I bought the book to hone my dessert skills for upcoming recipes.
And Tying Up a Few Loose Ends
For those of you who might be keeping track: The Nikon lens mounting ring arrived on Tuesday and it took only about 15 minutes to replace. It went very smoothly and the lens works perfectly. On Friday the replacement lens I had ordered arrived. It's almost the same lens, an 18-55mm zoom, as the kit lens that broke. Its one improvement is Vibration Reduction. So I put the new lens on the camera and put the older kit lens in the box for storage. Now I have a spare, should something break again.
Wednesday 2010.10.06
Another Notch
Having videos on the site fulfills another goal and elevates it to another level. Besides the Steelhead Trout With Mascarpone video panel on the home page, a video illustrating the technique for deboning an entire chicken was added to the Recipe Archive page. More will follow.
We've done, perhaps, ten videos so far. The first one was a proof of concept. The sound was awful, which led to the purchase of a lavalier microphone. Lighting was the next obstacle to overcome, and we're still not 100% satisfied. Then came the problem with shooting angle. In my mobile home all the kitchen counters face a solid wall—there is nowhere to put a video camera in front of me. That led to building a temporary counter that spans across the archway leading into the dining area. I can now face the camera directly. Then there was that incident in which I needed to reload one of my computers and I accidentally formatted the wrong hard disk, losing all the videos. We don't talk about that, but regular backups are now part of my routine.
Eric, my cinematographer and advisor, has been instrumental in helping solve all these problems. In fact, without Eric none of these videos would have existed. He owns the camera equipment! We work well together.
So that leaves just one more goal—more recipes in PDF format.
Sunday 2010.10.03
Almost Totally Unrelated
All the photographs on this web site were taken with my trusty Nikon D40x...well, almost trusty. This weekend I worked on my recipe for Pesto Lamb (coming soon to this site) and my camera reported that the lens was not mounted. But there it was! On closer inspection I saw that the lens was hanging by two of the the three mounting thingies. The top one had broken off. I searched everywhere, but I could not find the little moon-shaped piece of black plastic. I'm pretty handy with plastic glue, but without the plastic....
The camera still works. I took all the pictures I needed with the busted lens. With two of the three mounting lugs it holds well enough to make all the contacts and the pictures are in focus. A better replacement lens is under $200, so that's on its way.
Tomorrow I'll order a replacement mounting ring from the Nikon parts depot in Los Angeles. It's not my first purchase from them.
Several months ago I accidentally knocked my camera off the table while setting up a shot. The flash unit, a Nikon Speedlight SB-600, was mounted on top. The camera hit the floor flash first. The flash wouldn't fire. I immediately ordered a new one, but I also did a little research on line and found out the bulb is usually the only problem. The bulb could be replaced inexpensively with a lot of patience, time, and perhaps a good stiff drink on the side. I ordered the bulb. Replacement required soldering, a skill at which I am not totally lost in the woods at night. Ta-da! The flash works fine and I've been using it ever since. The replacement sits in its box, ready to go to work for me, should an accident happen again.
So, I'll try my hand at replacing the lens mounting ring. Perhaps I'll be just as lucky and the replacement lens will remain in its box. Perhaps I'll store it along side the replacement flash. They'll keep each other company.