Today is the 90th anniversary of the Boston Molasses Disaster, in which a large molasses tank burst and a wave of molasses rushed through the streets of the North End at an estimated 35Â mph, killing 21 and injuring 150.
Remember, food safety is not just about what you eat, but how it’s stored.
Mark Bittman’s Minimalist column last week was about getting rid of unused and unneccesary items in the fridge and pantry. Many of his suggestions (e.g. “OUT – imitation vanilla, OUT – canned vegetables, OUT – grated imitation ‘Parmesan'”) were easy to implement because those things have never been in my kitchen.
Some I have quibbles with: it’s easier to measure out lager quantities of good tomato paste from a can; frozen pure lemon juice is useful to have around when lemons are going for 50 cents each; a few cans of low-sodium chicken stock are a good backup when you run out of the homemade stuff.
But I realized it was time to dump the old spices and replace them with new. In the past I would order from Penzey’s online, but they opened a store in Arlington, just a short drive away. So, yesterday I loaded up: szechuan peppercorns, saffron, granulated garlic (for barbecue and spice rubs), oregano, chili powder, herbs de provence (too much of a bother too mix on my own), dill, cream of tartar, celery seed, and more. I have a better idea of my spice usage now, so I think I figured out how much of each to buy. I’ll know in a year how well that worked.
The store has an unusual organization, sort of a Dewey decimal system of ingredients. Baking needs in one alcove, herbs alphabetically along one wall, spices alphabetically along the opposite wall, and separate islands for salts, peppers, cinnamon, and a bewildering array of custom mixes (I may never figure out what Galena Street Rub is.)
Since Miles was with me, I turned the trip into a “teachable moment,” asking him if each item on my list was an herb, a spice, or other. He did pretty well, but I had to reward his patience with a jar of mint hot cocoa mix that he had been eyeing. Bittman would disagree with the purchase – it’s better made at home with good cocoa and a peppermint stick – but one food lesson a day is Miles’ limit.
I had a classical station on the radio while I was driving Miles home from school today. The Mendelssohn Piano Concerto No. 1 in G Minor was playing and I was humming along with it.
Miles asked “Dad, how do you know this music?”
“My dad used to play it,” I explained.
“Papa played with an orchestra? Cool!”
“No, Papa played with a recording of an orchestra. There’s a company called Music Minus One that will send you a recording of the performance without the instrument you play. So he had a record with the orchestra only, and the printed music for the piano so he could play along.”
“It sounds like Rock Band, only less fun.”
He’s right, less fun. That Mendelssohn concerto is a bitch to play. I have vivid memories of my dad practicing the part over and over again.
Having made the trasition from vinyl to CD, Music Minus One is still in business, at least until Activision publishes Symphony Hero.
As promised in an earlier post, I tried my hand at making some generative music with my small collection of musical gadgets. Here’s what I came up with:
http://blog.belm.com/belmblog/video/gadgets.flv&imageThe result is more ambient/drone-like than the Japanese original, mostly due to my not knowing how to program the Korg DS-10 synth and having to settle for the demo sequences. Still, I don’t think it’s a bad first effort.
In keeping with one of the purposes of this blog – learning how to use and customize WordPress – I folded a lot of techniques into this post. The video is recorded on a Flip video camera, copied onto my computer, and converted into a Flash video file. The file is embedded into this post with a WP plug-in called Viper’s Video Quicktags.
Next design task: fix the ugly header.
I’ve made this dish at least a dozen times since I first saw the recipe in Cook’s Illustrated a year ago. It’s a very simple, set-and-forget procedure:
Chicken cooked this way has a very concentrated flavor, but it also has flabby skin:
Yesterday I was watching the “Roast Chicken” episode of In Search of Perfection. Heston Blumenthal also slow-cooks his chicken, but solves the soft skin problem by searing the roasted bird at very high heat in oil for less than two minutes. I thought I give that a try. While the chicken rested, I wiped out the dutch oven and returned it to the stove, letting it heat up on the largest burner for 10 minutes.
Once the chicken had rested, I splashed some oil in the pot and followed it immediately with the chicken. After two minutes, I indeed had very crispy skin – mostly stuck to the pot bottom. It wasn’t a total loss:
During the resting phase I also made some braised carrots, using Blumenthal’s method: medium low heat with a few tablespoons of butter – no water or salt – tightly covered. He claims that the carrots will release enough liquid to prevent burning. He was right.
Final plating: chicken (with skin from the bottom), sauce, carrots, and some re-crisped leftover roasted fingerling potatoes.
Yes, the plate needs something green. They can’t all be beauty shots.
I’ll try the crisping step again the next time I make this, but I will pat the chicken dry before adding it to the hot oil, since it had accumulated moisture from sitting under the foil. I might also skip the foil altogether and let the chicken skin air dry.
While adding new music to the iTunes library today, I noticed that I had broken the 70,000 song mark. It’s not Robert Klein’s “every record ever recorded,” but it’s a substantial amount of music. I’m waiting for the half-terabyte iPod that would hold the whole library. It would need a better search function; I’d probably sprain my wrist scrolling through the song list.
Di gave me a set of tools for Xmas. It wasn’t a collection of sockety things for repairing aperture flywheel gromises (with rotary gaskets), but something better – a matched set of kitchen knives.
Knife sets, like sets of pots & pans, can be dubious purchases. You wind up with a few good pieces and bunch of stuff you never use. I had been getting by for years with a 6″ Sabatier utility knife I bought in 1984, a cheap workhorse Forschner chef’s knife, and few other specialized blades (cleaver, boning knife, parer). My one indulgence had been a Shun santoku, which had become my go-to knife of choice for everything.
I had been making noises about wanting a Shun chef’s knife to match, and look what I was given:
Shun knife set
The original santoku is top left, and a parer I bought on sale is bottom left. The rest are the new set. Notice that 10 degree angle where the handle joins the blade – it provides more clearance for the hand, and adds a bit more force when you rock the blade.
I love these knives. They’re wicked sharp and stay that way, perfectly balanced, and they look prety cool to boot. And the whole set – including a bamboo knife block – was on sale for the price of the chef’s knife alone.
I love char siu, Cantonese barbecued pork. Unfortunately, it’s not often prepared well, usually presented as sticky-sweet neon pink “boneless spare ribs.” So when I saw this recipe for making char siu at home, I had to give it a try. I live a few blocks away from Reliable Market, one of the best Asian groceries in the Boston area. (The best, Super 88, is the subject of another post.) So I went shopping for pork belly, dark soy sauce, and maltose syrup. It took a while to find the syrup: “maltose” and “reliable” are not words you want to have the store employees try to pronounce.
I ignored the prepackaged five-spice powder, opting instead to make my own from scratch. Then I bought enough pork for at least three meals, figuring a time-consuming recipe like this should have a long-term payoff.
Two days later I had marinated pork, which I slow-roasted in the oven. It didn’t turn out pink – or even red – but had a lovely mahogany color instead.
I sauteed some snow peas and made a quick sauce with ginger, garlic, soy, and sesame oil (a technique I picked up from Mark Bittman). I sliced the pork and served it with the peas over steamed white rice, garnishing the plate with scallions. Here’s the end result:
Char siu pork with snow peas over rice
The taste of the pork was so much more complex than the restaurant junk. The toasted spices, hoisin, soy, and maltose were perfectly balanced, and the pork flavor still came through.
This recipe is a keeper. Now that I have extra pork stashed away, making this meal again will take 30 minutes from start to finish.
I grew up outside of New York City, so it was inevitable that I would be dragged to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I resisted what I thought would be a day-long exercise on boredom, changing my opinion only when I discovered the early music collection. From then on, every visit to the museum had to include a stop to look at the instruments. It was in this room that I first saw a Stradivarius violin, and the oldest existing piano, constructed by its inventor, Bartolomeo Christofiori.
Last week the MMA put a large portion of its musical instrument collection online. I encourage everyone toi have a look, you’ll be surprised at what you’ll find. While randomly browsing through the keyboard instruments, I found this claviorganum:
Claviorganum, constructed 1598
I was immediately struck by how much it reminded me of a much more modern instrument:
Moog Modular 55 synthesizer, constructed 1975
I’m a mediocre keyboard player at best, but I remain fascinated by the developments in keyboard technology.
I’m not one to pay a lot of attention to lyrics, especially for songs I only hear on the radio instead of in my music library. I was playing Rock Band, and selected “Lump” by The Presidents of the United States of America. This was probably the first time I could hear the words clearly.
Shes lump shes lump
Shes in my head
Shes lump shes lump shes lump
She might be deadIs this lump out of my head I think so
Does the song really boil dowm to “I could be in love or I could have brain cancer”?
