Blazers 09-10

Photo is from this article.

Josie and the Pussycats / OnionAV

I believe it was way back when I was under the 400 count for blog posts (two posts ago) that I mentioned something about high culture and low comedy with respect to NPR & Animal House. That's basically my life: a semi-embarrassing obsession about food quality, combined with a love for some good movies, but alot of iffy comedies, too. What's the point? Josie and the Pussycats is a sweet movie. It's actually fairly smart -- it's no Caddyshack or Hot to Trot, for instance. But it's no Dr. Strangelove. This writeup of it is good.

Hormone-free Cows / NPR

I've already done an anti-meat diatribe. Well, anti-feed lot meat. There was a nice, very NPR-ish story about french cows last night on NPR. Give a listen.

Animal House - the Case for God - NPR

So on NPR tonight there was a review of the book 'the Case for God' in which the reviewer claimed to have had her first profound thought at the age of 10, something along the lines of what if our whole solar system is just a single atom in a larger solar system. Well, guess what, that is a direct rip off of one of the funnier scenes in Animal House, wherein Donald Sutherland smokes out some undergrads and they have a profound conversation. Nothing like combining high culture and low comedy.... but, wait a minute, it got me watching Animal House again! Happy post #399.

Station Fire pics via the Boston Globe

Whole album

Nuristan / NPR / Reg

I've mentioned my other blog a couple of times before -- I'm scanning in the slides of Reg Golledge, a professor in Geography who passed away recently. Well, the best ones have been of a trip to Afghanistan, specifically Nuristan provence, in 1968. Nuristan was mentioned on NPR this morning.

Quick Pickles

From 'Make Your Own Groceries' by Daphne Metaxas Hartwig. Basically you put veggies in a hot jar with dill and corriander (I added cumin seeds, too), and boil up 2c water, 1 c vinegar, 1 1/3 T of salt, pour over. Cover. Cool. Fridge for a couple of days before you eat. This is small cukes, green tomatoes, chilies. Made it last night, we shall see.

Basil-Coconut-Lime Sorbet

A new installment in the sorbet chronicles. Was trying to make a quicker freezing one, so instead of heating the liquid to dissolve the sugar and waiting for that to cool I used powdered sugar. And then as I was making it I used a couple of lemons in pesto, so added lemon zest to the sorbet, and also basil -- it looked boring in it's just coconut milk and lime juice state. Oh, I used that crappy 'low-fat' coconut milk, which is really just coconut milk made from coconut flesh that has already been used once to make coconut milk. It isn't very exciting, but is fine for this use. Actually, this is probably the only use it is good for....
BCL sorbet:
Dissolve 1/2 lb powdered sugar into a can of coconut milk
add a little salt
add 3/4 c. fresh lime juice
add zest of some sort
freeze, stir, freeze, stir
add ~1T of lime vodka (basically limoncello before you add the sugar syrup)
add ~1c of basil leaves.
stickblender it.

Dandy Duck

Was fooling around with leftovers last night. I'd roasted a duck a while ago. Kinda meh. But duck fat is a nice by-product. And leftover cooked duck is very useful. Combined a couple of different ingredients, sweet and bitter. Had some dandelion greens from the farmer's market (bitter as all get out), and then some sweet things: lipstick peppers and pomegranate molasses. 'Twas a dark and sticky mess. Tasty. Pomegranate molasses is one of my favorite secret ingredients. Apparently it is (was?) a trendy chef-y secret ingredient, too. I read about it 10 years ago in either Sonia Uvezian's 'the Cuisine of Armenia' or Claudis Roden's 'the Book of Middle Eastern Food.' As you might surmise, it's big in the Middle East, Syria and Lebanon especially. I first used it in red sauce when I was making it with canned tomatoes, as it is sweet and acid-y like a good tomato, so helps alot. I still use it when the farmer's market tomatoes are only ok. Muhammara is the dish it is traditionally used to make -- a paste/dip of walnuts, roasted red peppers and pom molasses.

Dandy Duck 'recipe':
Saute garlic. Add cooked duck. Add sweet red peppers. cook 10 min or so.
Add dandelion greens and cream, wilt the greens. cook 5 min or so.
Add pomegranate molasses at the end, cook it till it mostly evaporates/puts a sheen on everything else.
Had it with pesto, not necessary.

New Acquisitions

I collect things. Cookbooks, NWC art, dvds are scattered about my place. I've got something like 300 dvds, so it's kind of funny that 2 recent shipments I got have been so neat, you'd think there's a finite amount of movies worth owning. Well, that finite number is bigger than 300...

The first batch was from ebay, the second from half.com. I really like half, when you buy alot of stuff from the same person the shipping gets reduced. Anyway. All of these movies I've seen before, and all are worth owning. Terry Gilliam is awesome. And I already had the special edition of Spinal Tap, but the criterion one has different commentaries and different deleted scenes. Aguirre, the Wrath of God is crazy. Google it. An amazing movie. Hercules in NY is Arnold's first movie. The Color of Money I hadn't seen in a long time, and I remembered not thinking much of it, probably because of Tom Cruise. But Paul Newman really does kill in this movie, so that elevated it in my eyes, this time. The Sting is the first movie as a kid that completely blew my mind. I've probably seen it 30 times. The dvd is a little slim on extras, but still pretty enjoyable. Newman and Redford and a perfect, very clever script.
Found this book in the freebin the other day. There are many things in it that I already make, and those recipes I don't really agree with, so it's a little sketchy, but I'm pretty stoked on it. I've made one thing out of it, post forthcoming. The author's name is amazing.

NWC art

From 'Alaska Native Land Claims' by Robert Arnold.

Kelly Slater on Wait Wait

Bizarre. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that a surfer would make it on to Wait Wait. Perhaps this is a sign of the popularization of surfing or something. Anyway he was quite articulate, it was an enjoyable listening experience.

Cognac via David Lebovitz

Really interesting post by David Lebovitz today, about barrel making in Cognac, France.

R.I.P. Patrick Swayze

C'est la vie. I remember seeing Dirty Dancing in the drive-in we used to go to in Capetown. Red Dawn was big in Setauket, NY in 1984. Point Break when we lived in Monterey. I think we saw Road House in the drive-in, too? I'm watching it right now with the Kevin Smith commentary track, pretty enjoyable. The Outsiders was solid. Donnie Darko. OnionAV ran a funny article about him a couple of years ago.

Movies about Movies/ OnionAV

I've seen alot of the movies on this list. Heck, I own half of them. 'State and Main' is the best movie that few people have seen. But there is alot to like: 'Living in Oblivion,' 'Lost in La Mancha,' 'Hearts of Darkness,' 'Adaptation.' Nice.

Homegrown

Well my little boutique garden, feeding the gophers more than me, actually produced some nice sized, nice tasting pineapple heirlooms. Sweet.
A funny weekend. We are starting to have surf (fall is starting early in that regard) but we had summer weather with an early onshore flow, which but the kibosh on surfing. Finally got wet this morning; small but fun. Also I'm going through BSG again, and got inspired to watch the other Mary McDonnell triumph: no, not 'Dances with Wolves,' rather 'Donnie Darko.' I was tempted to throw in some quotes but once started, not sure I could stop.... Well, just one: "Excuse me, you need to go back to grad school." Indeed.

Storycorps for 9/11

Very moving.

Fried Green Tomatoes & Mozz #2

I was watering in the garden on sunday when this dude came by with a tomato plant in a wheelbarrow, muttering about how the plant didn't do good this year. Sketchy looking character, I thought he might be the infamous garden gnome, 'Rick.' I was thinking it probably had more to do with august gloom rather than the plant itself, but whatever. Anyway, I watched where he dumped the wheelbarrow and went over later. The plant had probably 15lbs of tomatoes on it -- I have no idea what the guy was thinking. Got some red tomatoes to add to sauce, but most of them were green. Also picked up the tomato cage it was in and some cool fencing. I swear, it seems like most of the people at the garden are in to growing plants, and every once in a while they decide to try and eat something they grow, but it's an afterthought.

Anywho, fried green tomatoes are one of those legendary american foods that I haven't tried, though they've been on the radar, so I immediately knew what was going to happen. Amy told me the best way to do them (dip in egg/milk, bread with cornmeal/polenta) and man were they good. Especially cause Traves did all of the work! I owe him. In my defense I had made a duck fat, okra, homegrown chilies, tomato stock rice thingy, and I'd like to think I was generally helpful, but I differ to him when it comes to hot oil.... Keely made 2 gallons of milk worth of mozzarella, Tammy brought a bitchin' sweet potato pie (made with acorn squash), Andrew a good potato salad, and Baguskas brought her sunny disposition. A great communal dinner.

fried green tomatoes draining on paper towels

mmmmmmm

Ball of mozz in salted water with a thing right out of the freezer to cool the water

I took some 'disaster area' pics after. This wasn't so bad.

This was

4 Strauss milk bottles, a gallon of whey, citric acid, plus my usual overstuffed kitchen mess

From L to R, collander for draining curds, pot we breaded tomatoes in, rice pot, cutting board for kneading the mozz, mozz pot 1, mozz pot 2, pot I drained whey into, cast iron dutch oven for frying food.

Draining whey from whey ricotta

Cops are weird

Biking in this morning, noticed a couple of bike cops were ahead of me on the bike path, sped up to watch them at this one ridiculous roundabout by the admin building. It used to be a yield, but they changed it to a silly intersection that is on a hill + off camber + an extremely tight turning radius. No one obeys the painted lines. The cops didn't either. It was classic.

Fresh Mozzarella + Whey Ricotta

Keely and I made mozzarella on sunday. I had the special ingredients from when I got all excited about it after reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. But the one time I did it it bombed, and I got discouraged. Also the yield from yogurt, ricotta, and fromage blanc is so much better. But she is reading the book, now, and she's enthusiastic.... so I supplied the tools, the citric acid, and the rennet tab, and Keely went to town. Recipe from Ricki, the cheese queen.
Getting the curds out of the whey. Yes, all the pics are yellow. Damn CFL bulbs.

curds draining

collected whey

kneading the cheese

stretching the cheese

braided mozz! fancy

my plate. pineapple heirloom and pink lady heirloom.

A Keely-sized serving

Update: I let the whey sit out over night, added some more citric acid, ~1t, brought it to a boil, let it coagulate, and ladeled it into some cheesecloth. Ricotta from whey is totally different from the whole milk ricotta that I usually make, still pretty tasty. One thing of note, the recipes on the web call for making the ricotta immediately after mozz. They are puritanical about it. It is BS. It actually worked less well as we made mozz again last night and I tried it that way with less yield.

Reg Golledge Slide Collection II

I'm adding pics from his Afghanistan trip in 1968 today. Many are quite epic. I'm trying to add them chronologically, so not sure I'll get to the snowy ones today, but rest assured, they are amazing. Some nuggets:

I cheated and skipped to the top-of-the-world, Hindu Kush-style ones

Foraging for fruit, David Lebovitz-style

I hate it when I bike around and see fruit rotting on the ground cause the homeowner/renter thinks their fruit tree is an ornamental. I really don't get it, do people think food only comes from the store??? Anyway, David Lebovitz who has a sweet blog to go along with his sweet book on ice cream making has a post on this very topic today. Nice.

Cool Photography

Outside Online has a cool feature on shots that were very very hard to get and the stories behind them. Two examples:

Processing Tomatoes

Got home yesterday and my weekly stash of romas from Givens were starting to go overripe, so had to process them. Normally I cut them in half, squeeze the insides in to a low, wide pot, and put the tomatoes in the 20Q Vollrath. But I wanted to go to bed at a reasonable hour (a.k.a. 9) so I just cut them in half, put the lid on, low heat overnight. As they cooked down the lid settled in to place. This is something like 25-30 lbs of tomatoes.
In the morning I ladeled out the juice to reduce it to tomato molasses and put the tomato meat through a foodmill. Got about 7-8Q of juice, 6-7Q of puree, 2Q of tomato skins/seeds for stock.

Foodmill, fine french craftmanship, from the 60s or 70s, I think

Skins, puree, empty pot, tomato juice

Skins and the disc from the foodmill which I'll clean out into the stockpot. Tomato stock is epic for couscous or bulghur

Update: that 7-8Q of juice, 6-7Q puree + 6 onions reduced to a little over 2.5 Q of sauce.