Archive for the 'Food' Category

For Christmas Eve, our tradition is to serve the Feast of the Seven Fishes.

This year, my parents and one of my sisters are in town. We were joined by our neighbor Ron.

As the name implies, the meal is composed of at least seven seafood dishes. Thus, a great excuse to pull out the full china settings and go for fancy table supreme!

Since my father is allergic to soft shelled seafood, this year’s feast included oysters, squid salad, clams, mussels, scallops, sole, and freshwater bass.


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One of the problems with the Chemex coffee maker is that it is utterly useless for making more coffee than you plan on consuming in one sitting simply because it does nothing to keep the coffee warm! We have guests coming in over the holiday break and I want to be able to make a pot of chemex, pour it into a thermos, pour some more hot water over the grounds (if you use enough grounds, this works great!!) and then our that into the thermos, too.

On the recommendation of one with a clear caffeine addiction, I picked up the Thermos Nissan 51 Ounce Stainless Steel Carafe pictured at left.

It does a brilliant job! I made coffee at about 10AM this morning and it was still hot — not burning hot, but hot enough — after 5pm in the afternoon! Better yet, the coffee maintained its flavor just about as well as one could expect! The caffeine addict that recommended the carafe indicated that pretty much all of Thermos’s Nissan line are top notch, too.

I tried putting the Chemex on a Bunn Warmer — was enticed by the name, obviously — but the combination of a hot bottom plus sides that shed heat rapidly meant that the coffee quickly turned ultra-nasty flavored. Yuck. The Bunn will prove useful; it turns out it heats water to pretty much the perfect temperature for brewing certain kinds of green tea that don’t tolerate boiling water without yielding bitter flavors!

One reason I started this weblog was as a means of taking notes such that I could use google to index my brain. Another reason, though, was that others would comment on my various postings with ideas, refinements, suggestions, and criticisms. This posting is in response to just such a contribution.

Shortly after writing the turkey fryer article, a comment hit the moderation queue suggesting that I give rice oil a try for frying a turkey. Specifically, the comment pointed to the California Rice Oil Company.

I emailed the contact on the post to ensure that it wasn’t spam and, in so doing, the company offered to send me a gallon of rice oil for review.

I’m not entirely certain how I have entirely missed rice oil in my cooking explorations, but I have. And now that said company introduced me to the oil, I’m never going back.

It is a fantastic product. Better yet, it also appears to be one of the healthiest oils around (see the references).

I love to fry foods and, with the turkey burner or deep fryer, I can fry outside without stinking up the house. A common misconception is that fried foods are greasy & unhealthy. Starting with a good quality & healthy oil, neither is actually true if the fry is executed properly.

In general, the key to frying is to get the grease or oil hot enough that the waters on the surface of the food boil quickly and either seal the food or cook whatever batter or coating is on the food rapidly. Too low of a temperature and it will be greasy.

And that is what I find most amazing about rice oil.

Olive oil has a ridiculously low smoke point of 360℉. At or near that temperature, olive oil will start to smoke and, more importantly, it will start to break down, both changing flavor and greatly impacting the nutritional elements in the oil.

Canola, Peanut and Soy all have smoke points around 450℉, much more reasonable for frying. But all have nutritional deficits or somewhat questionable manufacturing practices (for example, Canola oil is largely produced from genetically modified crops).

Grape seed oil has a very high smoke point of 485℉, but is not balanced across the fats and is very expensive.

Rice oil has a ridiculously high smoke point of 490℉. The pan in the picture was at somewhere north of 450℉. I have never cooked with an oil that wouldn’t be smoking or changing flavor at that temperature!

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Just found yet another use for my turkey burner. Roasting chile peppers! Worked flawlessly and was a heck of a lot easier than a plumber’s torch.

This kind of gas burner is just incredibly useful for anyone who enjoys cooking. It is designed to be able to heat a pot of grease up to the 350°F necessary to deep fry a turkey (which I have never tried). Thus, the burners put out a truly awesome amount of heat!

Note: The Underwriter’s Laboratory will not certify turkey fryers at all. Why? Because people are stupid and need to be protected from themselves when using powerful tools. When frying, it is terribly easy to cause a grease fire. So, fry away from your house and use the nifty good-eats style turkey crane. And have a grease friendly fire extinguisher on hand.

Or just do what I do and don’t actually fry turkeys on it!

You can find the burners at any decent hardware store. If you do, make sure it has a few features (all of which the burner at left has — except the pot):

Flat Top Surface

The top of the burner should be flat. This is critical if you want to put something on it that is burgerbigger than the burner (like a grill). Yes, I was hungry when I wrote this.

Cast Two-Piece Burner

The burner, itself, should be two pieces of cast iron held together by a bolt through the middle. The burner will get stuff spilled on it and it will rust or corrode. The two piece design makes it trivial to take it apart for cleaning. A wire brush on an electric drill makes cleaning trivial.

Adjustable Air Vents

This is needed to be able to tune the flame. Not just for maximum heat output, but sometimes also for maximum flame height.

Long hose with valve on or after regulator

The gas coming out of the tank is relatively high pressure. The burner’s secondary regulator will take care of regulating down to something more reasonable. The valve after or integrated into the regulator is critical because the pressure off the tank, while high, will change considerably as the tank empties. That and it is nearly impossible to make fine adjustments on the high pressure side of the line.

Stainless Steel Pot

If you get a kit, try to find one with a stainless steel pot. It will last longer and corrode less than aluminum.

Stable Design

Some burners have legs that go straight down or are relatively tall. Stupid. Ideally, you want a three or four legged burner with relatively wide set legs. If three legs, they should spread quite wide for stability (like the one to the left).

OK — so you have the beast of a burner. What can you do with it? I’m sure there is more — comments welcome — but these are just some of the things I have done with mine:

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I used to be a complete french press fiend. However, the combination of the tedium of cleaning with the potential, now largely considered true, of increased cholesterol pushed me over to drip. (Espresso is like a pet snake — awesome when I get experience someone else’s but I ain’t gonna deal with that crap on a daily basis).

I tried a couple of electric drip pots but they pissed me off. The first featured a carafe that would drip coffee all over no matter how you poured and the second was optimized towards ensuring maximal grounds in your coffee cup.

Disgusted with technology, I decided to go the luddite route. Simple as possible. Carafe. Filter holder. Filter. Done.

In looking around, the Chemex Coffeemakers kept popping up. Gorgeous, simple design. Given the raves I read about the chemex coffeemakers, I decided to give one a try (like the one at left) and, also given reviews, decided to compare Chemex filters with a gold plated reusable coffee filter.

End result?

The Chemex + the Chemex filters produce the smoothest cup of drip coffee I have ever had. Flat out delicious. Start with a really good bean, freshly ground, and the Chemex consistently delivers an amazing cup of joe.

Frankly, I don’t believe for a second that it is the Chemex, itself, that is imparting such quality to the coffee. It is really the filter and the Chemex is just a gorgeously designed carafe to carry it.

In particular, the Chemex filters are a surprisingly heavy paper that seems to do a brilliant job of filtering both the really fine bits of the ground beans (which the metal filters let through), but also the oils and other nasty bits that contribute to the bitter flavors (and, potentially, cholesterol).

Frankly, coffee through the metal reusable filters flat out suck by comparison.

I have since bought a second Chemex for the office and have picked up a couple of Chemex for friends who have been amazed by the quality of the resulting coffee.

Again — the filters do seem to be the key (as long as you are brewing into a non-reactive vessel). The filters can be found online and at both esoteric hardware stores and your more obsessed coffee shops (Barefoot Cafe, for example — awesome place, coffee obsessed).

Highly recommended.

Update: I’m not interested in “fixing” french press or espresso. Espresso is too damned fiddly and I don’t want that many tubes, pipes, pumps and boilers between me and my coffee in the AM. The Aero-Press is an awesome contraption but, again, not interested. French Press with a filter sounds double-plus-fiddly & annoying.

No, I’m not trying to convince anyone that drip is superior, just that the Chemex filtered drip is superior to other drip.

I will, however, be perfectly happy to test drive a cup of coffee in any form, if you want to demonstrate the awesomeness of your extraction device & beans.

My favorite restaurants are ones where I don’t have to think about what I’m going to eat. Just as I wouldn’t expect a chef to tell me how he wants me to implement some specific feature in a piece of software I work on, my ideal relationship with a restaurant is one where the chef is free to serve to me whatever they feel is optimal.

Which makes Furu Sato one of a handful of my very favorite restaurants.

The Japanese refer to this style of dining as omakase. Another favorite restaurant — Tanto — has served me some fantastic omakase meals.

What follows are a series of photos of a couple of typical meals consumed at Furu Sato.

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Way back in February, I racked the persimmon wine between the various glass carboys to get it off the yeast poo (lees).

At the time, the two carboys showed 11.5% and 12.5% ABV. Not bad. But it didn’t taste very good in early March/April; way too bitter and *bleh*.

So, I let it sit until last week. The flavors have mellowed and, chilled, it is quite a drinkable beverage.

At about 12% ABV, it is obviously a dry wine. There simply isn’t any sugar left!

The sweet essence of persimmon is both present in the nose and in the flavor. And the characteristic astringency of persimmon carries through, too, giving the wine a slight “pucker” at the end.

I bottled a bunch of it in 750ml tequila bottles that I have lying around. However, I also mostly filled a couple of 2 liter soda bottles, chilled the wine to near freezing and then force carbonating.

It makes for a delicious wine cooler. Very drinkable and, at that level of ABV, it tends to sneak up on you!

Given the ease of making wine — much easier & less involved than beer — anyone with an overabundance of fruit (or veggies, even — I have a recipe for a tomato wine that sounds pretty good. Onions, too, even) should give it a try.

All you really need is a plastic bucket (primary fermenter), a glass carboy (secondary fermenter), some tubing, an air lock, fruit, sugar, yeast, and something to sterilize everything (I use sodium metabisulfite and/or an iodine solution — both very cheap). The glass carboy is the most expensive component and three gallon carboys can be had for less than $30.

(Again, for those in the South Bay, the folks at Fermentation Solutions have everything you need and are extremely helpful.)

Update: I have taken to bottling the persimmon wine into 2 liter plastic soda bottles. To these, I add about 3 tablespoons of cane sugar and then use my forced carbonation rig to lightly carbonate the wine. Very refreshing served chilled.

Update: Since posting this, a number of friends in the bay area have asked me about this rig and where to obtain the parts. You can buy all the bits and pieces separately if you want, but for not much more money you can just get a kit that has all the parts + a cornelious keg.

I picked up the full tank, gauges, regulator, hosing, clamps, 5 gallon cornelious keg, and dispensing spigot for about $250 from Fermentation Solutions in Campbell. Again — great store, very supportive, nice people, know their stuff.

For CO2 refills, I’m going to Carbonic Services. Refilling the 5# tank will cost me $12. They sell tanks, many different gas mixtures (need nitrogen? no problem), syrups, etc.. You can also get your tank refilled at many welding supply houses, but “food grade” and “welding” are not generally compatible.

For “the carbonator” cap, you can mail order it from any of a number of places. Do a google search. I have found that shipping can be a killer when ordering brew stuff. Find someone relatively local.

For folks in the South Bay area, Seven Bridges Cooperative has The Carbonator, along with a pretty awesome selection of really high quality brewing ingredients and, even, coffee beans.

I love carbonated beverages, as long as they don’t have a ton of sugar (including the various sugar substitutes). I find the scrubby bubbles are a bit of a flavor enhancer as well as adding a bunch of texture.

But, damn, it is an expensive habit! And painful to drag all those bottles of carbonated water home. Worse, any kind of fizzed flavored water is 3x more expensive or more. Ever price out those yummy “italian flavored bubbly water” drinks? Ridiculous.

Problem now solved, though.

I picked up a kegerator kit from our local homebrew store (Fermentation Solutions on Winchester — right next to Luigi’s extremely yummy italian restaurant).

The kegerator kit includes everything you need to, generally, produce, and/or carbonate, and then serve, about 5 gallons of beer (or other beverage).

However, you need one more piece of the puzzle. That blue piece at the lower right is “The Carbonator“. It is a bit of patented plastic that screws on to your everyday average 1 to 3 liter soda bottle and has a connection for the standard ball lock connection on the other end. Expect to pay about $14 for one. Get three to five while you are at it.

You can make it yourself out of a tire fill valve (search Google). I chose not too as “tire” and “food grade” are not remotely related.

Once you have your basic setup, it is time to carbonate some beverages!

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At left is one of my favorite styles of sandwich (in the strict “once slice of bread w/stuff on it” definition of sandwich…), the open faced sandwich with cheese as the top structural element in lieu of bread.

This particular melt was built on top of a slice of home made bread with heirloom tomato slices, dungeness crab, and cabernet finished goat cheddar cheese. It was seasoned with black pepper, mayo, italian seasoning, and a touch of fresh squeezed lemon juice.

Done right, it can be picked up and eaten like a regular sandwich.

The key to doing it right is in the construction. Yes, I take my sandwich making very seriously.

Detailed construction techniques after the fold.


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At left is a picture of the first loaf of bread I have ever made.

Simple bread; the dough was comprised of nothing more than flour, water, yeast, a touch of salt and some finely minced rosemary. It was baked in a cast iron dutch oven, lid on for 30 minutes and off for 20 (the captured steam yields an amazing crunchy crust without requiring a steam injecting oven).

But that isn’t the point of this post.

Flour… water… yeast….

Minus the yeast, add some fat. And… pie dough!

No yeast, add fat, and add sugar? Cookies. Just flour and egg? Pasta.

They are all that simple. But not that simple. The key is the ratio of the ingredients.

And that brings me to the point.

Cooking is generally about taking some foundation — some basic combination of ingredients — combining them in the appropriate ratio, adding some additional goodies for flavor (cookie dough + chocolate chips…. basic bread dough + honey + nuts…. etc.), and then changing the temperature in the right way to yield good eats.

Not just doughs, but batters, sauces, stocks, sausages, brines, custards, and many other forms of food are all based around a simple set of ratios. Know the ratio of a given type of food, and you have the foundation that will yield a basic, delicious, meal or be the carrier for more far flung culinary adventures.

This book — Ruhlman’s Ratio — describes a number of the foundation ratios, the basic science behind them and then describes a handful of recipes built upon each.

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