I may be in love with the wearer of this tattoo. Or the artist who did it. Or something. Click the image for a bigger version.
Tattoos byAmanda Cancilla and feet belong to Alicia (dig the toenails). Found on All Things Cupcake via a random search for cupcake images.
There are certain perfect foods in the world.
We could come up with a few each; say, an apple, or a sea urchin, or an egg. The foods that are complete, satisfying, a compliment to other foods. For you it might be a cheese, or a pork chop; it might be toast or a wedge of just-sharp-enoug cheddar. It might be a piece of dark chocolate, rich and glossy with cocoa butter.
One such food, most of us could agree, would be bacon. Oh, to be sure, there are vegans and vegetarians out there who might object or disagree. They surely speak from envy, though, and earn our pity. Poor, poor folk, denied the pleasures one of life's most noble beasts, the pig.
Now, one of the characteristics of perfect foods is that, while we might incorporate them into other things, they seem complete and perfect as they are. How does one improve upon, say, chocolate? How can chocolate be better than in it's most pure and simple state?
Well, interestingly enough, one can add bacon:
No, I am not kidding.
Someone bought me this the other day as a lark; last night, after my very last bottle of '03 sinister hand, I had one of my rare must-have-sweet-treat moments, and thought, well, there's that absurd chocolate pig, why not? (sinister hand makes me do silly things).
So I broke into the pig.
On first bite, it was simply rich, smooth, dark chocolate. After a moment, though, the palate encounters vague smoke, salt, and textures both vaguely chewy and slightly crunchy.
If you'd asked me, what's in that, I'd have been hard put to say; something smokey? Something herbal? Whatever was in it, I'd have said, give me more, and now.
As one chews successive bites, the elements become more clear. There is, without question, bacon and salt as recognizable elements of the flavor; yet they in no way interfere. After two of three bites, I wondered why there isn't always bacon in chocolate.
Now, I don't claim to be the world's greatest expert on chocolate; but I can't think of a piece of chocolate that ever pleased me more.
I must have more. And quickly.
My dear friend E asked me about making stock recently, and I figured I might as well do this in a blog entry instead of an email, so as to better share the wealth.
I make stock all the time. Basically whenever I have enough roasted birds carcasses collected in my freezer. I've talked about this before, but I didn't really talk technical.
Stock is simple. It's easy. If you think it's difficult, you're working too hard on it. In a nutshell, all you're doing is putting bones, and usually vegetables, in a pan with water, and simmering for hours. That's pretty much the whole story. You'll find books - like Michael Ruhlmann's Elements of Cooking - which will leave you thinking you need to devote days to making veal stock or why bother. Ruhlmann's book is great, but he makes that mistake of speaking as if to experts when giving basic tips. Yeah, I'm sure his results are great, but so are mine even when I do everything different that he says.
Make it easy, or you won't do it. You'll buy a box or a can.
I swear, I've been trying to sit down and write something - blog entry, even a blog commen - for more than a week now. I can't sit still. I can't concentrate when I sit down.
I've been off work since Dec 22nd, and had no travel plans nor major projects; I've been on call for work all week (the team I support are working the week, lucky to get xmas and new year's days off). Luckily those of us in support were not asked to be on site, but since one of my team's out on maternity leave (and oh-my-god was she cute pregnant; young, indian, 5 foot tall in shoes - wait, I'm distracting myself), one's on vacation in Iowa, another someplace on the border between india and pakistan visiting family, I wound up one of two who's still home for the holidays.
So mentally, I'm still 30% at work; xmas day while my kids un-wrapped gifts, I was checking for trouble tickets from my iPhone. This seems to have had the effect of making me not want to be anywhere near my computer when I'm not tending to dire emergencies involving software licenses and batch queueing ratios.
What I have done, though, is cooked. And I'm reminded how much more I like cooking than I do working. I'm reminded how good it feels to make something simple for no reason other than because I felt like it.
My family - and by that I mean my in-laws, my family consists of a mom who won't leave the house 'cause of a combination of emphysema and a panic disorder, and my own immediate family of four - postponed the usual xmas eve dinner til the 30th this year. This was traumatic; IJ (my mother-in-law) plans things with dalek-like determination; every single detail alike, year to year, decade to decade. But this year, we lost two major figures in the family drama. Holmes, my father-in-law, passed away last february after a short, brutal struggle with cancer, and auntie Glenna went last summer. No one in the family, apart from IJ, (who seemed to be over all this long before it happened, again, putting one in the mind of cyber-beings) wanted a business-as-usual family xmas. One one else could face that, so we're doing it different this year.
IJ does the turkey - the exact same turkey as last year and the exact same turkey as 1997 - and peas, and various jell-o salad type things. Other family members are bringing ten thousand sweet treats for after. I'm doing tasty, carb-a-riffic side dishes.
As I write this, I'm waiting for a pot of yams-or-sweet-potatoes (I never can remember what the difference is) to boil. I've a foil packet in front of me, the scent of roasted garlic wafting from it; later, that will go into mashed yukon golds. A few minutes ago I put a baking dish of creamed onions on the 'fridge, and in a moment, I need to figure out what's going in these yam-things (I've never made them, and so for once need a recipe).
While the potatoes boil, later, I have a shrimp cocktail to put together, big fat prawns and a traditional cocktail sauce, heavy with horseradish but too light on cayenne for my taste (few in the family are chili heads, apart from me and ruby).
The yams - crisp-topped with sugar and pecans, scented with vanilla and cinnamon - came out wonderfully, or so eyes and nose tell me. I do not understand serving these as a side dish beside ham or turkey; no they are a sweet dish and should come after the mean. But nevermind, they will be good and those who find sweet and savory more complimentary than I do will enjoy them.
Onions are now in the oven, topped with a cracker and bread crumbs; this year I tried browning the onions in butter before adding the cheese sauce, and it looks and smells like a good choice. Seven or eight hundred small yukon gold potatoes now sit in a big pot on my stove. In a few minutes they'll be combined with a roasted-garlic cream, butter, milk, hawaiian sea salt and white pepper.
This post should have pictures, because it's pure food porn. But hell if I can be bothered to find the camera. I'm in chef space now.
(I posted this WAY before it was done, I meant to just upload and not publish. New version of ecto, still a few bugs. Fuck it though, I guess it's done now.)
This is what I meant to post when I started the aimless ramble that became the next entry; my recipe for Black Bean Hummus. That entry went off into something else so here it is on it's own.
I got a new food processor for xmas, and of course then needed to make pureed things. I pulled out one of my favorite party-dip recipes, and decided to use it as a side dish with grilled lamb. It works *really* well as a side dish, and really, could not be much better for you with all the beans and lime and so forth.
This dinner was so good, my family demanded the exact same dinner two nights later, which I made, and it turned out even better the second go round.
Chad's Dad's Black Bean Hummus1 15oz can *unseasoned* black beans (you could use fresh cooked, but I never do); drained and lightly rinsed (you can skip the rinse if you want a darker color and beanier flavor)
1/3 cup FRESH SQUEEZED lime juice
1 large clove garlic, chopped or smashed (or more to taste, if everyone's eating it)
1/2 cup natural-style peanut butter (not that skippy crap)
1-4 jalapenos, chopped and de-seeded (to taste - it will take a LOT of chilis before it starts to taste spicy; I sometimes use serranos, and I've used habenros without making it mouth-hurting)
1 whole bunch fresh cilantro, stems removed (you could use parsley if you're one of those cilantro-hating freaks)
salt to taste (it usually needs quite a bit)Add garlic and lime to food processor, process until the garlic is well minced. Add peanut butter, and continue to process until smooth, adding water by quarter teaspoons if needed to get the PB moving. Add beans and chilis, and process til smooth (again, adding water if needed). Taste, and adjust salt (and usually, add more chilis). Should be a smooth, spreadable consistency, but not runny. Add cilantro and pulse just til well incorporated; too much processing will turn the dip green.
Garnish with thin lime slices, olives and cilantro leaves, dust with cayenne, drizzle with olive oil, and serve with toasted pita and blue corn chips.
This recipe came to me via my friend Chad, a truly beautiful human being. We used to share season tickets for 49ers games, and every home-game sunday we'd trek to Candlestick Point at ungodly hours of the morning, rain or shine, to tailgate with our crew of friends. These are the people who owned motorhomes just for tailgate parties, the people who've been going to games since kezar, the people who go no matter what.
Chad used to bring this wonderful dip once in a while; when I first tried it, I was amazed. What the hell is is, I asked, because it was gray and unlovely. I'm sure I objected, stating that hummus isn't made from black beans and peanut butter, you can't call it hummus, but then I tried it and all was forgiven; it's that fucking good.
Where did you get this recipe, I asked? "From my dad," he said, and ever since, that's been it's name, Chad's Dad's Black Bean Hummus; I even contributed it to a cook book under that name one time.
Ok, so the 'how to eat sushi' part is all well n' good.
But how fucking cute is the girl?
I'm tellin' ya. Only, why don't they show me more of the sushi actually goin' in to her sweet little mouth? That's what I wanna see*.
(props to R for the find - you know what i like)
* ok, i admit it, that's not quite what i wanna see.
I was talking to an old, old friend and trying to 'splain blogging.
I didn't do that well, but I figured, I'l just show her. I was gonna direct her to my blog, but then I figured, no, wait, i need to start her off with a good blog so I went with Waiter Rant.
She then did me one better by following Waiter's link to Steve, Don't Eat It!, a feature of The Sneeze.
Holy christ, this is funny.
Okay, here we go-- Pulling back the lid (not recommended) lets loose an odor that punches you in the nose like a stinky fist. If you've ever smelled a can of dog food, it's just like that. Only imagine you are opening the can while your head is wedged in a horse's ass.
While perusing the "Good Lord, NOOOO!" aisle of the supermarket, I came across the atrocity known as Dolores Brand Pickled Pork Rinds. These are not the crunchy pork rinds you'll often see over by the chips. These are their grosser, soggier, potentially botulism-ier cousins.The label says "Ready to Eat." They left off "By Dumb-Asses."
On home-made prison wine:
Through some miracle, it actually tasted nothing like it smelled. In fact, there was very little flavor other than sour, watery alcohol. It's hard to believe this started out as a bag of fruit snacks and grape juice. Yet somehow these ingredients went from sweet and child-like to harsh and alcoholic quicker than Lindsay Lohan.
Oh my god, I'm gagging and laughing at the same time. I love this guy.
Yesterday, on very short notice my boss decided to take my whole team out. I guess we're at quarter end and he had budget for something that went away next week.
The result was the sort of day that works out perfectly with no planning whatsoever.
One of my co-workers is from Ethiopia, and he's introduced us to what may be the best Ethiopian restaurant in the bay area; it's certainly the best one I've ever been to and I'm a huge fan of that cuisine
http://www.zenirestaurant.com/
An absolutely wonderful meal. For those who don't know, Ethiopian food consists mostly of stew-like dishes; it's both served on, and eaten with, a unique soft, spongy flatbread called Injera which has a flavor (faintly like sourdough) and texture unlike anything else I've ever eaten.
You don't get plates. You don't get forks. You get a platter covered with Injera, with the various meat, veggie and salad dished dolloped directly on the Injera. You then tear strips of the bread and use it as your utensils.
In flavor, it's akin to Morroccan, with certain dishes having an almost indian character; red pepper, cumin, cardamom, gigner, and coriander are prominent spices.
It's a cuisine for people who are not afraid to get elbow-deep in a meal. It's also a cuisine I tend to avoid eating too often because, once started, I tend to eat until ready to absolutely explode. It's a sensual experience, rich, spicy, aromatic buttery flavors, and food experienced by touch as well as taste, smell, and vision. I can imagine taking a date (not, however, a first date) to such a meal, and feeding each other morsels of exotic-spiced meat while sharing a flask of Tej, Ethiopian mead.
It could be an awkward meal with co-workers. Luckily, my team are a bunch who like to eat, and who know each other well enough that we're not afraid to wear some food in from of each other.
After the meal, Bossman treated us to a quickly-chosen movie (based on when it was playing more than anything else); luckily also my first choice of a movie.
V for Vendetta.
Now let's say up front, I'm a huge Alan Moore fan. No disrespect to Gaiman or Frank Miller, but to my mind, Moore is the inventor of what we today called the graphic novel. He's the man who took a lame muck-monster comic, Swamp Thing, and turned it into possibly the best comic ever published. He's the guy who re-invented both comics in general and the superhero genre with Watchmen. And he's the man who wrote a bold, frightening, bizarre comic about a terrorist who dresses as Guy Fawkes.
I read V for Vendetta when it was new - I don't think I ever finished it, I can't recall why. Maybe it was one of those times when I gave up comics like one gives up smack; I have a problem with just buying one, so from time to time I have to go cold-turkey. But whatever it was, I've been waiting for someone to do something with that comic ever since.
Typically, when I heard it was going to be a movie, I was both afraid and excited. I hate, hate a holywood ruing of something important. *cough*Ask the Dust*Cough. But some things just cry out to be done right, and given the guys in charge (the Matrix brothers, Andrew and Larry Wachowski), and given the source material, I was hoping, just maybe, they nailed it.
Ok, so Alan Moore disowned it. But he's Alan Moore. Look at him, you can see the guy's a couple inmates short of an asylum. I haven't found the details on what he objected to, but in the end, you gotta look at the movie, like Kubrick's The Shining and say, forget the book, did they make a good movie?
They did. And fuckin' how.
This isn't an easy movie to make. To start you have a plot that depends on some idea of who the fuck Guy Fawkes is any why The Fifth of November is important. Not an easy sell in the USA. Then you have a lead who never takes off his mask.
It works; part of it's due to the incredibly charismatic, sexy presence of Natalie Portman, with whom I've been in love since I spent all of Phantom Menace thinking about her mouth. She turns in what is certainly the performance of her career thus far (though I'm betting she's go lots of brilliant performances ahead of her). A girl who manages to look that intensely sexy while sobbing on a prison floor is someone I could watch all damned day.
It works despite the dead plastic face Hugo Weaving wears all the way through it; he does a great job in what's almost completely a voice gig. He resists the temptation too over-do the physical performance, to over-do the voice. He's a man in a mask, but he just plays it, and by the end of the movie when he's asked to take off the mask and doesn't, you're rooting for him not to. You don't want to see what's under it, you want him to be what he is, an enigmatic presence with no face and no name.
James McTeigue, who was an assistant director for some or all of the Matrix films, avoids the major pitfalls of so many sci fi epics; he doesn't try to make things look far away and futuristic. He doesn't overwhelm us with special effects or elaborate makeup or bizarre technology. This movie doesn't play as sci-fi, it could be any time, now, the late 90's (the date in Moore's original comic), or it could be 2020. He lets the characters and ideas run the story, not the special effects.
This is a story about ideas. It's easy to simply say it's a movie about today's american government, and to be sure, you can't escape that idea. This is where we're headed if our current regime is taken to it's ultimate conclusion. The hitler-like figure played so effectively by John Hurt is scary because you can hear echos of today's politics.
But it's not as direct and simple as that. Moore's story is about anarchy vs. fascism, not about republicans vs democrats. It's about the extremes in both directions. It's about fighting a fight that will kill you and drive you mad.
It's about terrorism; but we're seeing it from the side of the terrorist, the man who fights an ideological battle with bombs and murder. It's about a monster fighting a monster system. There's no clear high moral ground he stands on; the enemies are evil, but are they any worse than our hero?
There are flaws. It's a comic-book style story, so some of the plot logic doesn't hold up to intense scrutiny. V's hair, which made sense in the comic, winds up being dorky rather than threatening in real life. I kept thinking bad wig. And some of the plot developments late in the movie seem to happen to abruptly without adequate explanation (I'd explain but no spoilers).
But the quibbles are small. The movie looks great, it's well cast, well acted, well paced for such a long movie (2.5 hours). The dialog is well written (I will have to get the graphic novel, I can't recall how much of this was direct from the comic and how much was written by Wachowskis). It works well as pure escapist, and as political commentary. And it's got some choice dialog I'll be quoting until you all get sick of it.
And oh my god is Natalie Portman hot with her head shaved. Holy christ. I want her.
I've never done a food porn posting. I figured it's about time. Pictures and recipe below the cut.
Ok, Ray pointed this out and then Andie demanded I read it.
Waiter Rant rules.
Why oh why do people like Dr. Zamir think it's ok to do the sand-in-the-vaseline trick to thier servers and then ask for special treatment? Special treatment is for special people, and unless you're god or the president or the hottest celeb in town, special means people who treat servers with respect.
Say please. Say thank you. Say thank you to the busboy who cleans up your fucking mess. Say thank you to the food runner who carries all that heavy shit to your table. Say thank you to the cocktail person. Say thank you EVEN IF THEY FUCK IT UP.
Servers work fucking hard. It's a rough job.
This is a kind of wrong that's hard to describe.
Twinkie Sushi:
From the twinkie web site, via BoingBoing (Where else?)
No, I'm not talking about IPOs or dotcoms.
Nor am I talking livestock.
Not taking stock of oneself.
I'm talking about cooking.
Specifically, one of the most basic, core ingredients; something that goes into almost every sauce, stew, soup.
Stock.
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