Normally, this would go on my other blog, but if you've read this blog any length of time, you have probably figured out my feelings on metric measurements by now and can therefore see the relevance.
This link, which I found posted by a commenter on Sadly, No!, leads back to one of the more ridiculous commentaries I've seen on CNN, claiming that with a filibuster-proof majority, the Democrats can do scary things like oh, impose the metric system. Yeah, uh... I wish.
I have to say right off the top that I don't personally cook metric, which I guess makes me a bit of a hypocrite on the issue. But I have written on the subject before, and I'm a very strong supporter of metrication, to the point where I really try to write my recipes with both metric and US units because, let's be honest, on the Internet, not everyone who might see a recipe is going to have access to equipment to measure in US measurements. It's a matter of basic politeness to me, and something that a lot of recipe writers just don't pay any damn attention to at all.
No, the metric system isn't perfect; the story of how the original meter was based on a faulty calculation of the Earth's circumference (the history is in the book The Measure of All Things by Ken Adler (2002, Free Press, ISBN 978-0743216760)). But I have a very, very hard time buying any of the arguments against -- issues of factors, division, and whatnot are rather overrated and tend to assume a certain innumeracy on the parts of the measurers (perhaps not entirely ridiculous in the US, but let us not snark), and vague arguments about "human factors" come almost entirely down to laziness and unwillingness to use a different set of units. (I saw one person arguing that 237mL -- the metric value of one US cup/8 fl oz -- is hard to multiply or divide. The argument was so mindnumbingly stupid that I'm pretty convinced the response was a troll, especially given that I know I've seen the commenter's name somewhere else.) The fun part is that, except for temperatures on non-digital ovens, you don't have to convert for the most part -- use the metric scale on your measuring cups, and weigh out ingredients that you'd normally scoop. And write your recipes down in metric as well as US or Imperial measurements -- not only will that save your readers difficulty with ambiguities (like, say, the infamous Australian 20mL tablespoon), you'll reach a much wider audience if you're posting on the net.
So will the Democratic congress go metric? Probably not; there's virtually zero chance of anyone putting their neck on the line for something that's so seemingly obvious. But wouldn't it be nice if they did?
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
"Joylessness"? In cooking?
So shortly after the #amazonfail scandal was resolved, I transferred my review of Michael Ruhlman's Ratio over to Amazon. I've been doing my reviewing thing on Amazon since 2000 (as those of you who follow me on Facebook know) and I didn't want to leave this one review out of my central list.
Now Ratio isn't perfect -- it doesn't cover all the territory it wants to. This is fine; what it does cover is pretty damn useful though, and I'm even using it as research material for my next show (expect to see it aired sometime mid to late July); the simple fact is that in order to cook improvisationally, you have to have a firm grounding in the fundamentals. Granted not everyone takes kitchen geekery to the extremes of, say, Ferran Adrià, but the idea of taking a fundamental concept and using it as a base for a more complex dish goes back some distance, to at least Escoffier; Uwe Hestnar didn't invent it, and Michael Ruhlman certainly wasn't the first to write a book about it (though he may have been the first to focus on it to quite this degree). In fact, most of the best how-to-cook cookbooks do this to some degree or another; Julia Child called it the "master recipe" technique, and it was the backbone of her best books. So it was rather startling for me to find another reviewer on Amazon describing Ratio as "joyless" and saying that a scientific approach to cooking is likely to lead to trouble. Buwha...?
Take a look at Hervé This' Molecular Gastronomy. This spends a lot of effort in that book describing things such as aïoli, the Franco-Spanish garlic sauce that is probably an ancestor to mayonnaise (as well as a likely relative of the Greek skordhalia). The chapter on aïoli goes off in some fascinating directions -- beginning with a study of the molecules in garlic that allow the sauce (with sufficient practice) to emulsify without the aid of eggs, and goes on to look at numerous progressively stranger riffs on the theme, at one point suggesting that the process can even be done with meat (the very curious "boeufoli") because many of the same binding molecules are in there. Strange and tradition-breaking as it sounds, kitchen science allows the cook to break through the lines of tradition and rote to do things that might never have even been thought of in the days of teenage scullery brats and long, tradition-bound apprenticeships. (Escoffier would certainly approve; he wholeheartedly supported the phasing out of roux in favor of pure starches like arrowroot and cornstarch, for example. The irony of his legacy being one of hidebound tradition would probably distress him no end.) And of course Julia Child's somewhat famous statement about cakemaking being mostly an assembly job once you've got a few recipes under your belt is highly relevant here.
So what was this reviewer talking about?
There is a belief in many artistic cultures that science and art are orthogonal, that fundamentals are stultifying and uncreative. (Oddly enough, in the discussion thread that followed, the reviewer in question made a strong case for fundamentals in art, cutting her own argument off at the knees.) And there is certainly a great distrust among many people for science in general -- the straw Vulcan concept that logic breeds a spartan, joyless aesthetic that sucks the life out of the finished product. There's certainly a market for that sort of thinking -- movies are filled with ManicPixieDreamGirls and people who get by on emotion and grit. But real life doesn't work like that -- one must still be competent before heart and/or pluck become part of the equation. (Especially if you're making anticuchos.)
So if you're going to have two people put together improvised meals Iron Chef-style, whose cuisine will reign supreme? Somehow I doubt the person who operates wholly on instinct is going to get as far as the person who spends time learning the foundations of whatever cuisine they're working in. This isn't "joyless", and you're not going to get in trouble by focusing on the geekier aspects of the kitchen; if anything, you'll find ways to avoid wrecking a dish, and be able to fix problems as they come along more efficiently. Along the way, you may learn some of Alton Brown's flashier tricks or even get as far as making spaghetti sauce over a bunsen burner the way Shirley Corriher used to. Even if you don't, though, you'll still be in very good shape when it comes to being able to invent your own recipes and cook off the cuff. (It's worth mentioning that reviewer was quite alone in her assessment; in fact, one commenter said, when she talked about donating the book, "I love joyless cooking! Donate it to me!")
Now Ratio isn't perfect -- it doesn't cover all the territory it wants to. This is fine; what it does cover is pretty damn useful though, and I'm even using it as research material for my next show (expect to see it aired sometime mid to late July); the simple fact is that in order to cook improvisationally, you have to have a firm grounding in the fundamentals. Granted not everyone takes kitchen geekery to the extremes of, say, Ferran Adrià, but the idea of taking a fundamental concept and using it as a base for a more complex dish goes back some distance, to at least Escoffier; Uwe Hestnar didn't invent it, and Michael Ruhlman certainly wasn't the first to write a book about it (though he may have been the first to focus on it to quite this degree). In fact, most of the best how-to-cook cookbooks do this to some degree or another; Julia Child called it the "master recipe" technique, and it was the backbone of her best books. So it was rather startling for me to find another reviewer on Amazon describing Ratio as "joyless" and saying that a scientific approach to cooking is likely to lead to trouble. Buwha...?
Take a look at Hervé This' Molecular Gastronomy. This spends a lot of effort in that book describing things such as aïoli, the Franco-Spanish garlic sauce that is probably an ancestor to mayonnaise (as well as a likely relative of the Greek skordhalia). The chapter on aïoli goes off in some fascinating directions -- beginning with a study of the molecules in garlic that allow the sauce (with sufficient practice) to emulsify without the aid of eggs, and goes on to look at numerous progressively stranger riffs on the theme, at one point suggesting that the process can even be done with meat (the very curious "boeufoli") because many of the same binding molecules are in there. Strange and tradition-breaking as it sounds, kitchen science allows the cook to break through the lines of tradition and rote to do things that might never have even been thought of in the days of teenage scullery brats and long, tradition-bound apprenticeships. (Escoffier would certainly approve; he wholeheartedly supported the phasing out of roux in favor of pure starches like arrowroot and cornstarch, for example. The irony of his legacy being one of hidebound tradition would probably distress him no end.) And of course Julia Child's somewhat famous statement about cakemaking being mostly an assembly job once you've got a few recipes under your belt is highly relevant here.
So what was this reviewer talking about?
There is a belief in many artistic cultures that science and art are orthogonal, that fundamentals are stultifying and uncreative. (Oddly enough, in the discussion thread that followed, the reviewer in question made a strong case for fundamentals in art, cutting her own argument off at the knees.) And there is certainly a great distrust among many people for science in general -- the straw Vulcan concept that logic breeds a spartan, joyless aesthetic that sucks the life out of the finished product. There's certainly a market for that sort of thinking -- movies are filled with ManicPixieDreamGirls and people who get by on emotion and grit. But real life doesn't work like that -- one must still be competent before heart and/or pluck become part of the equation. (Especially if you're making anticuchos.)
So if you're going to have two people put together improvised meals Iron Chef-style, whose cuisine will reign supreme? Somehow I doubt the person who operates wholly on instinct is going to get as far as the person who spends time learning the foundations of whatever cuisine they're working in. This isn't "joyless", and you're not going to get in trouble by focusing on the geekier aspects of the kitchen; if anything, you'll find ways to avoid wrecking a dish, and be able to fix problems as they come along more efficiently. Along the way, you may learn some of Alton Brown's flashier tricks or even get as far as making spaghetti sauce over a bunsen burner the way Shirley Corriher used to. Even if you don't, though, you'll still be in very good shape when it comes to being able to invent your own recipes and cook off the cuff. (It's worth mentioning that reviewer was quite alone in her assessment; in fact, one commenter said, when she talked about donating the book, "I love joyless cooking! Donate it to me!")
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Shellfishly pigging out
This was dinner tonight. It was expensive, and it was awesome. Serve with corn and lots of beer.
Crabmeat pie
Okay, so I'm being lazy. This is transcribed as I typed it in an IM chat. I've bolded the ingredients for easy reading. What you've got here is a pretty common dish in Massachusetts seafood restaurants; it's made with either lobster or crab, and when made with the former it's often known as "lazy man's lobster". You can, if you like it greasier and less good for you, add extra butter while baking.
Mussels are often cooked in a wine or beer broth. I saw them for cheap tonight and figured they'd make a good appetizer. I used a hoppy brown ale from John Harvard's Brew House in Cambridge, MA; you might substitute something like Pete's Wicked Ale. (If you don't like the vaguely medicinal smell, try something less hoppy like Newcastle.)
Serve with a decent-sized shell bucket and a roll of paper towels. Trust me on the paper towels.
Crabmeat pie
Okay, so I'm being lazy. This is transcribed as I typed it in an IM chat. I've bolded the ingredients for easy reading. What you've got here is a pretty common dish in Massachusetts seafood restaurants; it's made with either lobster or crab, and when made with the former it's often known as "lazy man's lobster". You can, if you like it greasier and less good for you, add extra butter while baking.
- take half a loaf of scali bread, blitz it in the food processor till it's crumbs
- mix in half a teaspoon of salt, a couple of pinches of paprika, some parsley, some fresh-ground pepper
- then take a pound of crab meat, the juice of one lemon, a splash of olive oil, and a teaspoon or so of mustard. mix them all together and set aside.
- now melt a stick of butter in a nonstick pan and add a couple of cloves of crushed garlic
- mix in the breadcrumbs till they're all buttery, then cook over medium heat or so until browned and crisp
- portion the crabmeat out into ramekins and cover with the breadcrumbs, then bake at 350 until heated through
Mussels are often cooked in a wine or beer broth. I saw them for cheap tonight and figured they'd make a good appetizer. I used a hoppy brown ale from John Harvard's Brew House in Cambridge, MA; you might substitute something like Pete's Wicked Ale. (If you don't like the vaguely medicinal smell, try something less hoppy like Newcastle.)
Serve with a decent-sized shell bucket and a roll of paper towels. Trust me on the paper towels.
- 2 lbs/1kg mussels, live in shells
- 16 oz/500mL hoppy brown ale
- 3 cloves of garlic, sliced or chopped
- juice from half a lemon
- 3 bay leaves
- 1/4 c finely chopped parsley
- salt to taste
Well goddammit...
Yahoo is closing GeoCities. I am not happy about this, since although Geocities was always a pretty crap service (FSM help you if you were Farked or Slashdotted), it was at least free and widely recognized.
By the beginning of July, I should have moved most of the content there over to my new personal site at Google Sites. I'm not especially happy with the interface at Google as it seems to allow far less flexibility than GeoCities did, but unlike Yahoo, Google isn't barely keeping above water. Unfortunately, this is going to wind up breaking a lot of links in old posts here; I can't do much about that.
To those of you out there unconvinced of the merits of free software, may I suggest taking a look at wget? That's the software that's allowing me to save my site history...
By the beginning of July, I should have moved most of the content there over to my new personal site at Google Sites. I'm not especially happy with the interface at Google as it seems to allow far less flexibility than GeoCities did, but unlike Yahoo, Google isn't barely keeping above water. Unfortunately, this is going to wind up breaking a lot of links in old posts here; I can't do much about that.
To those of you out there unconvinced of the merits of free software, may I suggest taking a look at wget? That's the software that's allowing me to save my site history...
Monday, May 18, 2009
Shrimp with Cider Sauce
This is a dish that is based on a mix of French and Spanish influences but probably wouldn't be quite at home with either. It's still awfully good. You may want a bit extra acidity if the cider doesn't quite have enough punch for you; in that case, a dash of white wine or rice vinegar or a squeeze of lemon should help a bit.
- 1 lb/450g uncooked, peeled shrimp (25-30 count)
- 6 oz/175mL dry hard apple cider
- 1 shallot, minced
- 3 cloves garlic, crushed
- 1 tbsp butter
- 1 tbsp flour
- olive oil
- salt
- red pepper flakes
- oregano
- parsley
- Melt the butter with about the same amount of olive oil and add the minced shallot and a pinch of salt. Cook the shallot over low heat until it's becoming jammy, but not caramelized, about ten minutes.
- Add the garlic, then turn up the heat to medium high and add the shrimp. Saute the shrimp until just barely cooked through, then add the flour and cook briefly in the oil and butter.
- Add the cider and spices (to taste), correct for salt, and cook until just thickened, then serve with crusty bread and rice or pasta.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Mustard? Really?
There are no words to describe the epic torrent of stupid that is "Dijongate" except one:
*headdesk*
If Obama wanted horseradish and a fried egg on his burger, I'd be a tad grossed out by it, but I wouldn't have a problem with it. And the fact that MSNBC left out his choice of condiment in the report qualifies as a coverup the way Fox News qualifies as news. It's official -- political discussion has now descended to the level of an unmedicated schizophrenic ranting and handing out flyers on a street corner, and a perfectly innocent food product has been dragged down with it. (And believe me, as someone who was once faced with portioning out a 4kg can of the stuff, there's nothing the slightest bit snobbish about Dijon mustard.. Riot police would lose their jobs for using it as an area denial weapon.)
(Oddly enough, one day shy of one year since my last post on food and politics. Coincidence amuses me.)
*headdesk*
If Obama wanted horseradish and a fried egg on his burger, I'd be a tad grossed out by it, but I wouldn't have a problem with it. And the fact that MSNBC left out his choice of condiment in the report qualifies as a coverup the way Fox News qualifies as news. It's official -- political discussion has now descended to the level of an unmedicated schizophrenic ranting and handing out flyers on a street corner, and a perfectly innocent food product has been dragged down with it. (And believe me, as someone who was once faced with portioning out a 4kg can of the stuff, there's nothing the slightest bit snobbish about Dijon mustard.. Riot police would lose their jobs for using it as an area denial weapon.)
(Oddly enough, one day shy of one year since my last post on food and politics. Coincidence amuses me.)
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Notice about comments
Recently someone followed my link from a comment I made on Pandagon and, rather than calling me out in public (which was wise as said commenter didn't even come close to understanding my point), decided to post a response here. It was as off-topic as it was inept and was deleted. I'm going on record right now and saying that comments that aren't food related will be deleted from this blog. (Especially from people that can't quite comprehend a) context, b) hypocrisy, or c) analogies.)
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