Comic strip from Dad.

My Dad just emailed me this. Gotta love that man.

Right now I've got some bobotie cooking. It's an Afrikaans dish that is part meatloaf, part custard, part casserole. As such, there are as many recipes for bobotie as there are for meatloaf. I'll post the official one with photos tomorrow and make notes where I tend to diverge. And yes, there is an official one. There is an Afrikaans cookbook that is the equivalent of "The Joy of Cooking" and it is even published in English these days. But you can't buy it in this country (and I had searched before my mil gave me a copy) so I won't even bother trying to find a link to it. You'll have to satisfy yourselves with just the recipe.

The death of nablopomo

Ah well. It was a great idea but our Thanksgiving holiday killed it.

I have photos that will explain everything but I can't shrink them enough to upload until we get home.

Huh

Okay, so apparently following youtube's instructions for posting to a blog didn't work.

I have no idea what happened. I'll try and figure it out this weekend and get the clip posted.

Today I was able to visit with my friend Peg from Chicago. She took the only photo of the day so hopefully she'll send a copy so I can add it.

We hit only three yarn shops in Santa Monica and LA, but they weren't bad.

First up was L'Atelier, a small shop that is really focused on knit bags right now. They have a range of small skeins of novelty yarns, handles and other trimming if that's your thing.

Next up we hit Wild Fiber, a great and large shop with a decent selection of good basic yarn as well as some of Habu's line. Note to Ruth: they sell hand spun/hand dyed yarn there for $60 for less than 200 yards and it has nothing on yours. You need to increase your prices lady!

At this point it was clearly time for a late lunch but after that we made a mad dash through nearly rush hour traffic to find the shops near West Hollywood. We only made it to one, Suss. It's also a large shop with most of the space being taken up by samples from the various Suss books. While we were there some regular customers came in and appeared to be starting a knit night with wine. It was all very civilized. They also have some unique yarns with their store label so if you see something you like in one of their books and can't find it to save your life, it may be that it is only available through their shop. For what it's worth, they seemed like fairly nice yarns.

Then we stumbled back to Peg's friend, Ken's condo for wine and snacks.

Yes, very civilized.

running out of steam

It's well past the halfway mark for nablopomo and I have nothing to say.

So I've done what many participants have done, which is to mine youtube. If you haven't seen BS yet, you should, it's Mythbusters on crack.

Tomorrow I promise something more since I'll be hitting Santa Monica with my friend Peg and we will be touring all of the yarn shops we have energy for!

Filoncino Integrale and another LA car chase

Since The Wednesday Chef posted the "no-knead" bread recipe from Jim Lahey, it reminded me of one of my favorite bread books: Dunway's No Need to Knead. The focaccia alone makes the book worth owning but I haven't tried many of the other recipes so that's what I did this weekend.



While many of her recipe's are extremely quick (just check out the subtitle of the book), this is one that is a pseudo-sourdough. It starts with a biga or sponge.

Filoncino Integrale:

Biga:

1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup rye flour
1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast (and right now Costco has 2lb bags of Red Star yeast if you haven't noticed)
1 cup lukewarm water

Mix all of the ingredients in a bowl and cover tightly. Place in a warm location overnight. In the morning, it looks like this:



Dough:

1.25 cups lukewarm water
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1 cup of the biga (used nearly all of what I had but not quite all if you like to feed and save starter)
4 cups unbleached bread flour
2 teaspoons salt
3/4 cups whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 teaspoon kosher or coarse sea salt

Mix the water and the yeast in a large mixing bowl until the yeast is dissolved
Stir in the biga
Add 2.5 cups of the bread flour and the salt and stir until smooth
Add the remaining bread flour and the whole wheat flour and stir until smooth and the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl

Cover the bowl and let rise until doubled in size (~30-45 minutes)

Fold the dough a few times to allow the yeast to rest, cover again and proof a second time for another 30-45 minutes and it looks something like this:



Preheat the oven to 500F and grease a three-loaf baguette pan.
Slowly pour the dough into each slot, stopping to cut the dough in thirds (be very gentle here to not squish the nice bubbles out)
Brush the tops with olive oil and sprinkle with the salt
Allow the loaves to proof for 15-20 minutes (if you were rough with the dough, you will need much more time as I learned the hard way)

Reduce heat to 425F and bake for 20 minutes.

Now I don't own a baguette pan so I tried to form the dough into a single loaf. In doing so I really mashed the dough more than I should have. In retrospect I should have let the loaf proof for at least half an hour. Since I didn't, I suspect the loaf I got was much more dense than if I had followed the directions or given the loaf more time to rise. It does make a great sandwich though!



Here's a close up of the crumb so you can see that it's a bit more dense than one might wish.



Dunaway starts the recipe out by saying that she does not like traditional San Francisco sourdoughs and that this recipe does not aim for that effect despite the use of a biga. My thought was that she might like the French style of sourdough which is much less tart but she never mentions it in her book. I couldn't tell that there was any natural yeast in this bread at all. The crust was pretty tasty though.

The big "advance" that Jim Lahey promotes is baking bread in a large cast iron dutch oven. He claims that this method traps the steam generated by baking similar to brick ovens. Since a little bird suggested I might be getting just such a dutch oven this holiday season, I'll try that with Dunaway's recipes (and try this bread again while giving it more time to proof) and report back.

Azuki and Whole Mung Beans, Crushed and Sauteed

Two nights ago I returned to Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian and completely messed up one of the recipes. I made Chow Ar Ni or azuki and whole mung beans, crushed and sauteed.


You start by hydrating the beans SEPARATELY. Did I read the recipe past this point? No. Why would this matter? Well it turns out that this is really two recipes served together. You have to soak each type of bean separately so that you can prepared them separately.





I soaked them together. And realized my mistake within seconds of adding the water. Instead of tossing it all and starting over again I hybridized the recipes and it turned out really well despite my early mistake. I won't even try to recreate what I did in a new recipe because although it turned out fine, to be honest, the beans take different lengths of time to cook and the azuki beans were a little firm and the mung beans were so soft that they were indeed crushed.


This is my final result:




For the real version, Jaffrey suggests serving the two dishes in a ying yang shape and I suspect it is very attractive given their color contrast.


Chow Ar Ni:

1 cup red azuki beans, picked over, washed and drained
1 cup whole unhulled mung beans treated the same


Azuki bean recipe:


2 tablespoons peanut oil (and it makes a difference in the flavor I think although you can use any veg. oil)
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
3 scallions, white parts and half the tender green part, cut into very, very thin rounds
1 teaspoon chili paste with garlic or 1/2 teaspoon cayenne (I used peri peri for a similar effect)
salt and pepper to taste
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil


Bring beans to a boil and then simmer until soft (approx. 3 cups of water for 1.5-1.75 hours)
Heat the oil in a wok or large frying pan set over high heat
When hot, add the garlic and scallions and stir-fry rapidly for 30 seconds
Add the beans and stir for another 30 seconds while crushing the beans (not very easy in my case -but if you follow the directions, it should be fine!)
Turn heat to low, add the chili paste, stir, add salt and stir
Keep warm until the mung beans are ready


Mung bean recipe:


2 tablespoons peanut oil
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
3/4 teaspoon salt
black pepper to taste
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil


Cook the beans as described above (again, they are smaller and so require less time than the azuki)
Combine the peanut oil and garlic in a second pan over high heat
When the garlic begins to brown, add the beans and stir for 30 seconds
Turn heat to low, add the salt and pepper and stir
Add the sesame oil and stir once
Remove from heat


Final prep: (I used more of both of these ingredients than the recipe called for and liked the result)


1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro


Arrange both bean dishes however you choose
Drizzle with additional sesame oil
Sprinkle with cilantro


Other than the soaking and cooking of the beans (which took virtually no effort or time on my part) these dishes take only a few minutes to put together. If you plan to serve them with rice, get that going well before you start to stir fry anything or the beans will be cold by the time your rice is ready.

Bond, James Bond please

As much as I hate to admit it, we went to see the latest Bond film tonight and for the first time ever, they have cast a man in the role that looks like he could kill a man with his bare hands even if it does support a face that is perhaps more interesting than traditionally handsome or pretty.

Not only does the man have a body that most women in the audience were lusting after, but the producers wisely subjected Bond to the worst torture a man could imagine during the same scene where they highlighted the man's physical beauty. Just in case any guy in the theater got at all jealous about what his wife/significant other/"just friends" friend might be thinking as they showed him naked and posed in the perfect light to show of his physique, the bad guy comes along and repeatedly hits Bond in the genitals to try and get a password out of him. A little something for the ladies and a little something for the guys to make them not care so much.

It was reminiscent of choosing Meg Ryan for Sleepless in Seattle. The folks in charge said that they wanted a woman to play the role that every man would want but that no woman would mind them wanting.

I sort of feel like this was the reversal of that but to make sure no man would mind, they had to throw in a little ball breaking.

What exactly does this tell you about men? (insert evil cackle here)

knitting the durrow

Okay, we'll save the food for later.

I've been working on the Durrow sweater for Marius. So far I have the body done and have started the first sleeve.

I'm using a cone yarn (thus oiled) so the fabric is a bit open. That will change when I wash it the first time and remove the oil. Here's a close-up of the fabric:

This photo of the sleeve is probably the closest match to the actual color (without the pink undertones). However, I have ripped this sucker out several times and am still a stitch off on the left side.

So instead of ripping it out yet another time I decided I needed a break and so started on another durrow that I'm knitting in the round. You'll have to wait until January to see any photos of it though!

Attention foodies and wanna-bes

How is it that Harold McGee has a blog and there are less than 100 subscribers????!!!??

Go, now, subscribe and learn about your food.

And if you haven't read his book yet you should consider it required reading (not that I'm opinionated or anything). It's geeky, it's about food AND it's really well written.

And I promise both knitting and food in my next entry... really!

what did we do last night?

The only way to celebrate getting the job you really wanted.

HE GOT IT!!!!!

That's all I really needed to say. Ruth and I went to Dr. Bob's for ice cream today but we took photos with her camera so I'll blog about it when I get copies.

Now we just have to figure out Marius' living arrangements in St. George before his semester starts the first week of January!

fashion/garment district photos

Well we're still biting finger nails over Marius' job interview. We were told we would hear today but didn't and so we figure they are still having a hard time reaching Joel.
_________________

However, Jo and I had a great time exploring the fashion district in LA this weekend. So much so that she is now arranging a return with several of her friends from work for early December.

What's so great about this area? Well, we didn't go to any of the clothing or accessory shops in the area. We limited ourselves to the fabric intersection of Maple and 9th. We hit the "mall" first and fell in love with many fabrics. Although we didn't find much at the famous Em-Be's Fabrics , we did right across the hall at Niki's where they even did a burn test for us before we bought.

However, before we could commit to buying any fabric we felt we needed to see as much as possible. As a result our first purchases were beads and findings. Very inexpensive beads and findings at that. The string of agate below was only $20!!!

and a close up of a couple of them...

I also found leather lace super cheap. Each spool below is 100 m and I only paid $14 for each of them. I'll knit them up into a bag like one I did a few years ago with cotton suede tape that may not last much longer. It was space dyed so I used linen stitch. Stay tuned for swatches for the new bag.

When we had finally exhausted the nearby fabric shops (and nearly all of our energy), we returned to Niki's to buy fabric. Jo bought five different fabrics for a fire bird (bird not the car) quilt she's working on and I got this butterfly brocade. Some day it will be a jacket.

While, it wasn't expensive in the grand scheme of things, it was for the garment district. I'm sorry I'm switching names here but when I was double checking store names I realized some people refer to the rodeo drive area as the fashion district. We certainly didn't go on a shopping spree there!

In an attempt to fend off urges to buy it I gave into an evil, evil, man who kept lowering his price on this other fabric until I ended up paying only $2.50/yd. It isn't silk or even part silk like the butterfly fabric but at $2.50/yd. who cares? Not me certainly!

Of course buying it didn't serve it's intended purpose as I clearly went ahead and bought the butterfly fabric as well. Oh well.

Here we are once we finally made it back to Montclair. Notice the ever-present shiny forehead I'm sporting. This time I felt like the activities of the day could actually explain it if nothing else. It was fun and we were exhausted!

urgh and ice cream

Okay, I had no time to even get the photos off of the camera much less shrunk to upload to blogger.

Instead, for today's post I feel the need to gloat. I dragged (yes, much arm twisting was involved here folks) Joanne to Handel's Homemade Ice Cream stand last night. While there, we noticed that they had posted a list of the 10 best ice cream places in the U.S. since they were ranked number one. I must admit that their hot fudge is pretty good but they are many places and so not so very deserving of a good gloat. However, second on the list is Dr. Bob's ice cream. Now they are deserving of a gloat. They were closed last night, today and tomorrow but I promise a full report with photos on Tuesday when they are open again. They have an entire line of ice cream that uses Scharffen Berger Chocolate AND the only place where you can get an ice cream cone with their ice cream is in the next town over. Yeah baby!

Oh, yeah. We also find out if Marius got the job in St. George tomorrow (we think). Keep your fingers crossed!

Fashion District

Joanne, a friend from college, is visiting this weekend from Flagstaff.

We were supposed to go camping in Joshua Tree but (again, always with the buts) it's peak season there so there wasn't a campsite to be found.

Instead we went to the Fashion District in LA. An obvious alternative to rock climbing eh? We hit every fabric, bead and notion shop within five block of the 9th and Maple intersection and spent way more money than we should have.

I didn't want to lug our SLR around with us but I'll take photos of everything tomorrow and post them.

If you've never been and you do anything that involves fabric, you need to go.

Running out of fingernails to chew

So Marius wrote a quick email to the folks in St. George.

It turns out that they can't reach Joel, our Ph.D. advisor. Those of you who are at all familiar with Joel are groaning right about now. The man is notoriously difficult to reach much less get a response from unless you are standing in front of him.

It's funny. For a job that I would almost be happy if Marius didn't get, and that I was certain just yesterday he would get, I'm very nervous. He really wants this job and in his heart of hearts is really hoping that I don't get a position someplace else. I don't mind this since he is willing to take my ambitions into consideration and WILL leave if I get a great job someplace else. Since it is so important to him though, I hope this comes through even if he ultimately leaves it for me.

We've been told that he will hear from them on Monday regardless of their success at reaching Joel (who knows what that means, that they'll call to let him know they're still having problems?). Keep your fingers crossed folks.

cooking with intention photos

We had enough of the black-eyed peas and Swiss chard left over last week that I was able to take a photo of it. Don't be afraid, the photo was taken the night after I made the meal. It's hard to tell with the contrast of the chard but those black-eyed peas really are pink. It was a very girly looking dish that tasted really good. This photo is of the only left-overs and they were gone by lunch the following day.





And I used the cream I bought during my frustrating shopping trip yesterday, but not in the way I originally planned. For various reasons we decided we needed mushrooms last night. I don't know if the rest of you feel this way about mushrooms but Marius and I periodically have cravings for them. Normally I just dump them in a pan with some olive oil but since I signed on for the cook-along, it seemed like doing something else with them was required.




I had a huge bag of dried shiitake [sic] mushrooms I had bought a while ago at an Asian supermarket in the City of Industry so I reconstituted them and used that water to cook some really nice fettuccine I got at Whole Foods.







All of this super nice pasta you hear me mention is all the fault of reading Heat. Buford starts repeating Mario Batali's thing about how sauce should be a condiment to your pasta if you have really good pasta. Me, I've always drowned the pasta in sauce so I wanted to give the sauce as condiment approach a try. But I figured, a little sauce wasn't going to be good on crappy pasta. Not that I know good pasta but the book gives some descriptors (surface like sandpaper or a cat's tongue) and I found something at the store that matched.


Very scientific of me, I know.


I made the cream and butter sauce from Hazan's book which is just a cup of heavy whipping cream heated with 2 tablespoons of "good" butter until it thickens. You turn off the heat and cook the pasta and at this point I threw the largely softened mushrooms into the sauce hoping they would absorb some of it. That worked so well that I had considerably less sauce than before so I topped it off a bit and heated it again (fortunately the dried mushrooms could take it) and then added the cooked pasta. You toss it until coated and then add 2/3 a cup of Parmesan cheese (or more if you're me) and pinches of salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste and toss again.





And a close up:



I know some of you are sitting there wondering if I've lost my mind using shi(i)take mushrooms in an alfredo sauce. If it makes you happier, call it fusion cooking or some such nonsense. All I know is it tasted great and it definitely satisfied our mushroom craving. A tasty heart attack on a plate that is ready in about ten minutes. It turns out that super nice pasta (or at least super nice fettuccine) cooks in about four minutes. Next time I'll use chicken and put lemon zest in as all of the cooks seem to be doing these days.

pet peeve #1

I was at the supermarket (to get cream for the linguine obviously) when I discovered a new pet peeve. Since I'm supposed to be blogging every day, I figure 3x a day will make everyone so much happier -don't you agree? So I'll share.

I was walking around the produce section (of a major chain that shall remain nameless since I'd rather you all imagine me at the local farmers' markets or at least at Trader Joe's) where they have set up t.v.'s playing videos about the produce. Primarily they have some guy showing you how to cook things in a way that you could never duplicate given your lack of note taking material but that's okay since you're really shopping and are only barely paying attention.

Today the video was to entice you into playing with root vegetables. It's autumn and most of us start thinking about squash, meat and root vegetables as a good idea so it makes sense. They had lovely images of things that I immediately thought would make great dinner material (clearly the purpose of the video). I go to look for said root vegetables.

Do I find them?

Of course not.

They don't have a single root vegetable for sale that they don't carry year round (meaning carrots and potatoes).

WTF! Here they are, clearly paying a great deal to reach my subconscious and insinuate the thought to buy what they want me to buy (and quite successfully I must say again) and yet they don't have the friggin' stuff for sale! If I weren't going out of town this weekend, I'd just realize it was fate reminding me how much better the farmers' markets are. But I will be going out of town this weekend so I wasn't even left with that solace.

Hence, this is now a new pet peeve. Supermarkets take note. If you don't have the stuff for sale, don't try and convince me to buy it. It only results in me associating your store with serious frustration.

Seriously.

cooking with intention gone awry

So last night I had some very high-end (non-machine extruded) linguine that I planned to serve with Hazan's cream and prosciutto sauce. But when I went to start dinner I discovered that while we had nearly all of the ingredients we had no cream. Given that we both take cream with our coffee and we drink coffee every day, this was a bit of a surprise.

So we just broke out the standard comfort food of pasta carbonara. If you haven't tried it with whole wheat spaghetti, I suggest you do. The flavor really accentuates the simple sauce. I never make it with regular pasta these days because the whole wheat is so much better. I have to admit that I don't follow a recipe for carbonara. I just throw olive oil, garlic and bacon into a pan to heat, add the cooked spaghetti and toss, crack 2-3 eggs on top and toss and then add a ton of chopped fresh parsley and toss. Only once or twice have the eggs cooked too fast and ended up as bits of egg with noodle as opposed to sauce.

If I have a chance to get to the store before this evening, I'll cook up the linguine tonight and post photos of it all.

elections

I am very grumpy today. Not with blogger but with the state of California.

When I moved from Santa Barbara at the end of the summer, I sent in my change of address form to the DMV and checked the box to change my voter registration. I never received a new voter card or anything which made it virtually impossible for me to vote yesterday. I was told I could have driven back up to Santa Barbara and probably voted but who is going to drive for six hours to vote? I'm not that much of a patriot.

However, the election went exactly as most expected for the state so I suppose I can take comfort in the fact that scary propositions were all shot down. However a few propositions I was in favor of also went down.

I honestly believe that if California doesn't dump a ton of money into alternative fuel research, no one else will. The whole accountability thing was a red herring since NSF isn't expected to produce specific results. They are expected to keep track of the research they fund and to not continue to fund unproductive research programs. Most folks would agree that that's reasonable and there was nothing said to indicate the new research program in California would not have done likewise. Sadly the state fell prey to the huge advertising campaign funded by the oil companies claiming that it would raise gas prices. This is in spite of the fact that FactCheck.org did an independent analysis showing that if it did raise prices, it would be so minimal as to not have an effect on the state budget or consumers.

Maybe next time.

Philadelphia and the Main Line

I had so much fun visiting Bryn Mawr again. It's always nice to find out that the students from your alma mater are as intelligent and motivated as you remember.

I gave a math heavy lecture on applying game theory to ecology in the morning. Given that I had only arrived the evening before and it was 6am PST (9am EST) it went rather well. Students asked good questions and there may even be one that ultimately wants to do similar research in grad school (the ultimate compliment). I then had a chance to eat lunch with some undergrads in my old dorm and talk about getting into grad school, being a female scientist and all of that fun stuff.

In the afternoon I gave a seminar on my dissertation research and nearly every one seemed to enjoy it and find it interesting. I also had an opportunity to reconnect with an old acquaintance who was the only other ecologist Bryn Mawr produced during the 90's. She is there for the year teaching classes for a faculty member on sabbatical for the year.

The next day my parents drove up from D.C. and we spent the day in Philadelphia's art museums. Here I am at the Gates of Hell at the Rodin Museum. This is a project that Rodin worked on his entire life. The only reason it looks the way it does today is because he died and wasn't able to keep working on it. His studio used to store it wrapped in wet cloth so that he could continue messing with it.

Next is my father and me inside the museum in front of the Burghers of Calais. This was a commission from Calais who expected the figures to be depicted in a very heroic manner. They were very upset when they saw the finished product as Rodin's style was to show real emotion. Each man in the piece is based on one of his friends whom he had read the story of the siege of Calais and then chose one of the men to model for Rodin.

We also made it to the Philadelphia Museum of Art right down the road but we found out that the art my father was interested in seeing again had been a temporary visiting display and the pieces were no longer there. Instead we had a nice time wandering around looking at the great impressionist collection they have there. Here I am with my mother in front of "the pond."

That evening when we got back to the hotel we alarmed to hear an employee apologizing to a guest for being unable to find a dinner reservation before 9:30 for that evening at any of the local restaurants. My dad is not a night owl and cannot handle eating late. So we went back to our rooms and I flipped through the hotel guide and started calling around. On the first try I got a reservation for 6:30 (a bit early for me but just fine for my dad) at a place called Savona. I had never heard of the place, nor had my parents. The description in their little ad looked fine though so we headed out... and hit the jackpot!!!!

This place is fantastic. If you are in the area and can afford a rather expensive meal (entrees ranged from $30-50 and there weren't many bottles of wine for under $100, although we did find one that was good), go to eat at this place. Below is the only photo I have of us there because we were too busy eating to think of photographing the food. I had a venison steak with a mushroom flan, a currant and chestnut risotto and wilted brussel sprout leaves. It was excellent. It was incredible. It tasted wonderful and interesting at the same time. And I am a bit jaded when it comes to good restaurants as I have found that many do not deserve their reputations so that is saying something. My mother had a dover sole that was perfect and felt very indulgent and my father had lobster that was good but he learned he wasn't a big fan of gnocchi that was the base for the dish. For desert we split a serving of chocolate four-ways which consisted of coconut white hot chocolate, raspberry and chocolate swirled panna cotta with raspberry foam, vanilla sugar cookie and 64Valrhona gelato sandwich and (my favorite) a dark chocolate and hazelnut creme brulee. I will dream about this food.