APRIL 2011
Wednesday 2011.4.27
Getting Organized
People who know me know that I am an organized person. Some fans of the web site or videos commented on my organization when cooking, noting that I am more precise and less organic. That is very true. When I come up with a recipe I like, whether it is one of my own creations or a modification of something I saw in a cookbook or magazine, I get everything written down so that I can reproduce the recipe again exactly. That's why my PDFs have step-by-step photographs. I want others to enjoy the same success I appreciate.
One of the recipes I will publish in the next few weeks is my Seafood Fettuccine. A restaurant chef gave me the list of ingredients and I figured out the proportions (his recipe made enough to feed 40 people). That recipe was written about 25 years ago. I made it again this past weekend, for the video, and it still tastes the same. My recipe for my grandmother's salami pie goes back even further and my recipes for egg rolls and fried rice go all the way back to my Vietnamese girlfriend in college nearly 40 years ago.
This weekend I organized my web site uploads for the next ten weeks. I have the list of dates and recipes on the wall above one of my computers, all prepared and ready to go. I am planning for the shift from spring into summer, for which I am currently editing the recipes and videos. (Today I am proofreading my Timballo recipe for Sunday's upload.) I like being organized.
Organizing my kitchen is quite another matter. There isn't a lot of room in a mobile home. When I consider buying something new, anything, I have to think about where it will be stored, what will be moved, or given away. I still walk down the cookware aisle in the warehouse store, but the challenge of making room for something new spares me from impulse buying. This morning I shifted some older books—ones I never look at anymore—from one bookcase to another to make room for some of my recent cookbook acquisitions—specifically, my baking textbooks, which had been stacked on top of other books until I made a home for them.
Organization is not an obsession; I can get pretty messy at times. It helps, however, to get things done for this web site.
Sunday 2011.4.24
Warehouse Stores
I have a pet theory about warehouse stores. I have no substantial data to back it up, just coincidental incidence. I know someone who loves conspiracy theories. I don't. I think a lot before I come to a decision, and I do some research if there is any to be found.
On Thursday I stopped at the warehouse store. I bicycle past it daily on my commute to and from work. The seafood booth was set up. I wanted to buy some shrimp for a seafood fettuccine recipe I was planning to video. I always look closely at their shrimp because in the past I bought shrimp that I ended up returning. The smell was awful. I usually ask to smell one of the shrimp before buying. On Thursday the shrimp looked good, white with a slight translucence. No yellowing. No opaqueness. So I asked for a pound.
The clerk scooped some into a bag and weighed it. Not quite a pound. He set the bag on the counter in front of me as he returned to the bin to scoop up a few more. The smell hit me. "Can I smell the bag?" I asked as he plunked the additional shrimp in. He opened the bag and I got my nose as near as I dared. Wretched smell. "Can I change my mind? They smell too foul to eat."
On Friday I stopped at the grocery store on my way home. It is conveniently located on the street right behind the warehouse store. The shrimp was on special, reduced to $5.99 per pound. The warehouse store was asking $9.99/lb. Furthermore, they looked absolutely fresh. I smelled them and they had almost no odor at all. Being on reduced price, the store was selling a lot of them and they weren't sitting in the seafood case for long.
So here is my pet theory about warehouse stores: I know they negotiate for the lowest price they can get. I suspect the distributors do not sell their best quality fish to the warehouse stores, reserving their top quality stock for the retailers and restaurants who pay more. Maybe they sell their second-quality goods, the stuff leftover from the previous day (if they have it), to the warehouse stores. I don't mind paying a little extra at the grocery store if I can get seafood that is better quality. It's just a theory. However, several times I tried to buy shrimp at the warehouse store and decided not to because the smell was so objectionable.
Wednesday 2011.4.20
Springtime
The weather is warming up. We've already had some brilliantly warm days and once or twice the temperature flirted with 80°F. It's time to start thinking about cooking easy meals that don't require an oven to be on for an hour or so. This past weekend I made New England Clam Cakes, a treat I grew up with in Connecticut, but unseen here in Southern California. I'll post that soon. And I even did a recipe and video for making a better hamburger. And, finally, the stores are stocking eggplants again. This week I am finishing up my recipe for Timballo.
Totally Unrelated (to cooking—sort of…):
I think I mentioned, either in a blog entry or on a video, that I have one of those Barnes & Noble Color Nook ebook readers. I love the thing. One way I use it is to store the PDF recipes from this web site. Sometimes when I'm cooking in the kitchen I have my Nook running and I follow the recipe on the screen. On those occasions I keep it in a ziplock bag to protect it from food, especially when my hands are covered with sticky dough.
The Nook started off as an ebook reader with potential. Supposedly, the next software update will upgrade it to a tablet with the Android 2.2 operating system. It won't compete with Apple's tablet, the iPad, or whatever it's called, but at half the price for the Nook, I got more than half the iPad.
I do read books. For many years I converted books to the Palm eReader format and read them on my Palm Tungsten T3 PDA. Some people like the feel of holding a real book in their hands. I agree. However, there are times when it is impractical to carry a book. I enjoyed the convenience of slipping my PDA out of a holster attached to my belt and reading wherever I was. The Nook doesn't offer the same convenience because it is large and heavy. What it lacks in pocketability it makes up for in a large and beautifully colorful screen. I even convert some movies to a compatible format and watch them on the Nook.
Now I am converting my ebooks to the EPUB format. At last count I had nearly 100 books in Palm eReader format. I never run out of projects.
Sunday 2011.4.17
Pain de Mie Pains
This week's recipe, Pain de Mie, was one of the first I wrote for this web site. I created the recipe and did the photography more than a year ago when this web site was only in the planning and testing stages. Comparing the photographs to the ones I am shooting today, I can see that I've come a long way. Back then I wasn't even thinking of videos. Now I have nearly 40 videos on YouTube.
I've been trying for many weeks to get a satisfactory video assembled for this recipe. The written recipe is fine. I just kept making dumb mistakes each time I did a video. I'd forget one or two ingredients, or measure something incorrectly, or knock something to the floor in a scene I couldn't start again. (At one point I was making iced coffee because the day was so warm. I dropped my full box of ice cubes—eight trays!—on the kitchen floor.)
I attempted this video four times and toward the end I just threw continuity to the wind and didn't even check to see if the clothes would match. You'll see my clothes change color during the video because I combined the best clips from each of the four videos as I worked around the mistakes or mishaps. It's a good thing that I am not superstitious.
I've made so many loaves of Pain de Mie, I haven't used my conventional bread pans in a few months. I've also had to find ways to use up my Pain de Mie. Besides the French toast and strawberries with whipped cream—almost my sole reason for making this bread—I've also made croûtes for serving chicken liver pâté. In fact, I made so much pâté with croûtes I decided to do a video of that as well. I'll be posting it next week, if all goes according to plan.
I still love making bread and I haven't finished exploring this culinary challenge yet. I've been making bread since before I went to college. I still have the bread pans I bought back then. It took me a long time to get good at baking bread. The trick is in weighing the flour rather than just scooping it out of the storage container with a measuring cup. Even Julia Child had to learn that trick, as can be seen in some of her early videos.
I really like watching Julia Child make bread. I have the collection of videos on DVD and the bread videos are the ones I've watched most often. I also have the full collection of videos of Two Fat Ladies, made by the BBC. In fact, I think I'll pour myself a glass of wine and watch a few of those videos this evening. It will feel good to just sit and relax.
Wednesday 2011.4.13
Buy Cheap, Buy Twice
It seems like such a cliché, but ask any carpenter. Skill alone isn't enough to build a great house. You need good materials and excellent tools.
Many years ago I had a job in which I maintained a do-it-yourself car wash. Among my responsibilities was keeping the equipment running. For tools, my boss would drive to the nearest K-Mart (within walking distance) and come back with the most god-awful stuff. (This was before K-Mart was bought by Sears, which sells good quality Craftsman tools.) Because of the constant moisture, pulley wheels would rust to the motor shaft, no matter how well I greased them. A proper gear puller was essential. There was a cheap puller in the shed, but the threads had stripped long ago. Without ever telling the boss, I went to a specialty tool outlet and bought an expensive ($90 at the time) gear puller (using his money), which I kept hidden in my own toolbox. I also spent $30 of his money on one open-end/box-end wrench specifically for removing the pump valve covers. Those tools made my job easier. When he sold the car wash, I kept those two tools. I doubt I'll ever need a gear puller, but if I ever do I've got a beauty!
Whether it's a stand mixer, food processor, springform pan, bread pans, potato ricer, sieve, spatula or spoon, the right tool for the job is a joy to work with in the kitchen. Many tools are expensive, but you don't need to buy all your tools at once. I collected mine slowly, through many years. Some of my tools go all the way back to my college days, and the fact that they are still doing the job 40 years later is proof of quality.
Keep your eyes open for bargains. When Henckels discontinued their 9-inch Professional-S chef's knife (a model that was manufactured exclusively for the USA market), I bought a new one on "clearance," still in the package, for $60. For other items, just bite the bullet and buy the best you can afford. I once bought a cheap ($40) pressure cooker (made in China) in a warehouse store. The plastic in the pressure regulator wasn't heat resistant. After only a dozen uses it was useless (and probably dangerous). I replaced it with a $250 Kuhn Rikon. The pressure regulator is all stainless steel. That cooker will last for the remainder of my life.
There's another side to this coin. When a former friend was asked if she could cook, she answered, “Of course. I have a Kitchenaid.” The best tools in the world won't automatically make you a fantastic cook simply because you own them. That is one thing I love about cooking—the practice necessary to be a good cook is so satisfying.
Sunday 2011.4.10
Feelings of Accomplishment
Every Sunday I always enjoy a feeling of accomplishment when I update the site with the latest recipe PDF and video. This week the feeling is especially good.
Yesterday I had to work a very long day because we had a huge special event. I began my day at 6:00 in the morning and there were almost no breaks during the day. A moment of rest grabbed here and there was the most we could hope for. The day ended at 4:00 in the afternoon, at which time I came home and went straight to bed. The problem was that I was so tired and sore, I couldn't sleep. I did crash at night though, and I got plenty of sleep.
The bright side is that I picked up 15 hours of comp time to take off and enjoy whenever I like. I now have two weeks built up. I am very much thinking of burning off those hours as an extra two-week vacation this summer. I need the videos.
Today I did yet another video of Pain de Mie. I think this is my fourth attempt to get a video I can use on this site. As I do more and more of these videos I seem to get more and more fussy. While I was waiting for the bread dough to rise for the Pain de Mie, I worked on the video and PDF for the Pizza recipe that was published today. The video was uploaded while the bread was in the oven. Normally, I would do most of this work on Saturday and only update the site on Sunday.
And that is why there is a greater feeling of accomplishment this week. I worked 10 hours yesterday, came home exhausted, and then got up this morning and did two day's of work for this web site. Thankfully my regular Monday through Friday job is not exhausting work.
As for the pizza, working on the video and PDF was difficult because I am trying to lose weight and all those pictures and video shots sure made me hungry. Nonetheless, I had a good day today, as far as the diet goes.
Wednesday 2011.4.6
Season Change
I often joke about the seasons here in Southern California. We have only two seasons— summer and sort of summer.
I grew up in New England where there were real seasons. I don't miss them. There was something about shoveling snow out of the driveway early in the morning so that I could get my car onto the road in time to arrive at work without being late...those memories never fade. College was my ticket to California and I never regretted the move. I have lived here since 1975.
Summer is the season for lighter cooking. Who wants to bake when the days are warm? So I am planning some summer recipes. One of them will be my version of homemade chocolate ice cream. The ice cream makers are inexpensive and convenient. Also planned is my picnic food, Finger Lickin' Chicken. This past weekend I wrote up my recipe for making hamburgers. I cannot understand why most people put a patty of plain ground beef on the grill when it is so easy to season the meat with a few herbs and spices for added flavor.
I am even going to try to persuade some of you to try my chicken liver pâté. Oh, I know, I know. Liver—yuck! I've heard it before. I brought some pâté to a backyard picnic one time because a friend who loves my pâté was going to be there. His son-in-law looked at the pâté doubtfully, but my friend convinced him to give it a try. One bite and I had made another addict. I give another friend an occasional gift of chicken liver pâté and homemade croûts. She makes a meal of it. (Her husband won't touch pâté—oh well, more for her.) Hmm, I just had an epiphany—why not make croûts by cutting up and toasting thin slices of pain de mie? I'll work on that this week.
I'm not done using the oven yet. I just finished writing up my recipe for pizza and I still want to do pain de mie, a bread baked in an enclosed Pullman pan. Sliced pain de mie is especially useful during the summer because it makes excellent French toast. Top it with sliced fresh fruit and whipped cream, maybe a little powdered sugar, and you have an easy and delicious dessert, or even breakfast.
Yes, summer is getting near. Dormancy is ending. The sap is rising. The winter fuzz is leaving the brain. Lots of ideas are springing up. I love summer.
Sunday 2011.4.03
Dieting
I need to lose some weight. I'm not rotund, but I'm not a healthy weight either. My doctor doesn't like my blood pressure. It isn't in the hypertension zone, but it's close. My blood pressure this morning (I have a meter at home) was 130/89. Either number at 140/90 or higher is considered high blood pressure.
I've successfully lost weight before, but then I get interested in rich and exotic foods again and there goes the waistline. Creating this web site, with all the cooking and photography and videos, didn't do me any favors. I love food and I love cooking.
Most of the meals I eat each week are my Lazy Man Meals. The portions are the correct size, the balance of nutrients is good, and they are controlled. There is no extra food in the pan that results in "going back for seconds." Nonetheless, I do enjoy pampering myself with comfort food or extravagant creations. Almost anything rich and delicious is comfort food.
The trick is to cook for the web site and invite people to come do all the eating for me. I do enjoy my quiet time, however.
So I decided to make my effort to lose weight a part of this web site. During the course of the diet I blogged about it on this web site. I created the Diet Blog hoping that my having something to answer to would increase my sense of responsibility and this will keep me from wavering too much. I lost most of the weight I wanted to lose, and therefore I eventually removed the Diet Blog from the site. Also, I ran out of things to say about dieting.
I'll do what I can and hopefully my success will be longer term this time.