Yearly Archives: 2010

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Michael’s Old Country Sabbath Challah from Chernowitz

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My daily bread for this week is challah bread. Specifically, it is Chernowitzer Challah bread from my current favorite iPhone app, Epicurious. I have always felt the pull of Judaica since I was a child in the shtetl of Jacksonville, Florida. Now, I can partake of a little bit of manna.
This bread took about 6 hours to make -my kitchen is a bit cooler than that called for leavening dough. The bread out of the oven looked great but was “biscuit-y” according to my wife. The difference was that I used bread flour rather than plain enriched white flour -perhaps the enriched flour is more gluten-rich?
I will try when it has cooled -perhaps the structure will set in as it cools giving the inner texture that one associates with the best challahs. That may be it or the Chernowitzers just prefer cakey challah.
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Ramen for People with Easily Upset Stomachs

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Hoo Roo Rook is an onomatopeia for the sound you make slurping ramen

My in-laws sent me the latest instant ramen to hit L.A. It is called Hoo Roo Rook which is a new trend in instant ramens -the premium, health conscious, instant ramen. The noodle, unlike the original instant ramen, is not fried but rather just dried. It is a capellini grade noodle that unravels almost instantly in boiling water -always boil the noodles separately from the soup and rinse them in cold water to stop the cooking process. Unfortunately, thin noodles are hard to gauge and this noodle basically is ready to rinse very soon after unravelling, otherwise, you will go past al dente and enter over cooked territory.

The soup is also a new trend among instant Ramens -it is meant to be less salty and more subtle. I think it is also meant to help out with older Koreans who don’t want to wake up with acid reflux from the chili pepper red soups found in more popular instant ramen brands. It’s okay, but really kind of boring. It specifically says no MSG, but you can’t escape the umami 5th taste in the fish stock that is hinted in the soup -it is balanced and subtle, but again -you won’t be seeking this out to cure a hangover.

You have to remember to make the soup a little more concentrated if you are separating the soup from the noodle during production because the noodles add water to the mix, diluting the soup, and cooling it as well.

The noodles were overdone in this first batch, but if pulled out withing a few moments after unraveling, they would be in fact perfectly al dente and give wonderful chewy mouth feel. The noodles are of highest quality, and that is what I think the point of this ramen is about. That and the fact that the soup won’t give you acid reflux.

Impression: Instant ramen for old people and those with digestive problems. Also, good for feeding toddlers and children.

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My Favorite Bar In Manhattan

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In celebration of St. Patrick’s day, I will give out the location of my favorite bar. The Landmark Tavern (link) is my favorite bar in Manhattan. It is old, classy, with naked lady sculptures and bas-reliefs meant to mesmerize 19th century gentlemen. The barkeeps are fastidious and silent -the place is never full, usually empty, and nearly impossible to find from just memory, hard to get to by public transit, and there is a Hotel California kind of vibe if you go there at night. The picture above implies that the place is sunny and it is absolutely not -it’s dark and gloomy, and best visited on a rainy afternoon. Its the place to go for solitude, for breaking up (although awkward because there are literally no cabs and the nearest subway is two avenue blocks or so to my recollection, but aren’t they always awkward), for catching up with long lost friends, and for the best shepherd’s pie on the island. I half expect to sit down to a drink with Ullyses S. Grant in the place. There are no college students, and no loud drunk tourists. It’s a serious bar for serious people who want to meditate in the twilight zone.

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It Begins

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Of the public courses around Des Moines, I like the Legacy the best for tuning up my game. The private clubs are waiting for the course to drain of residual snow, but the Legacy will let you play about two to three weeks earlier. Bless them!

There were 15mph winds gusting to 25, and it was drizzling. Temperatures were a Scottish 40 degrees. Nae wind, nae rain, nae golf. The ground was sodden and this took twenty yards off every club. The greens were like the fake grass welcome mats. There was snow in the bunkers. Still I loved every minute of my nine holes.

I shot 48 with a 1.9 putting average, 5 of 8 fairways from the tips. My circle of certitude was the green. The approaches were all muddled -my most effective shot with this wind usually into the face was a punch-draw with my 7 iron -I did get pin high on 3 holes, but was in a bunker or off the green at pitch length. I’ll have to work on my irons, but I also credit the soggy fairways. I also counted two penalty strokes for ball in water (meltwater -would this be casual water and not subject to penalty -will have to review).

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My Daily Bread

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In my quest to master the basics of post-industrial cooking, bread has been a bit of a mystery. I grew up with rice and can tell the basic qualities and provenances of rice with ease, but bread I just like to eat. I think the difference is that I never saw my mother bake bread, and therefore, it is mysterious.

I used a simple no-knead recipe from the NY Times(link here). This is my second try -my first was a gooey mess. The results above are my second effort, and it looks really edible. The crust cracks fiercely and there is wonderful topography to this bread. It took very little effort, and I think this is how we’ll make our bread from here on.

The crust is wonderfuly crisp and the center is fluffy and chewy. It is bread heaven.

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What does Bowie’s Major Tom mean?

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The David Bowie song has taken a lifetime to decipher. When I first heard it, I though it was a groovy song tuned to the psychedelic times -this is the most common interpretation that I got on the internet. Here are the lyrics.

Ground Control to Major Tom
Ground Control to Major Tom
Take your protein pills and put your helmet on
Ground Control to Major Tom
Commencing countdown, engines on
Check ignition and may God’s love be with you
Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, Five,
Four, Three, Two, One, Liftoff
This is Ground Control to Major Tom
You’ve really made the grade
And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear
Now it’s time to leave the capsule if you dare
“This is Major Tom to Ground Control
I’m stepping through the door
And I’m floating in a most peculiar way
And the stars look very different today
For here
Am I sitting in a tin can
Far above the world
Planet Earth is blue
And there’s nothing I can do
Though I’m past one hundred thousand miles
I’m feeling very still
And I think my spaceship knows which way to go
Tell my wife I love her very much she knows”
Ground Control to Major Tom
Your circuit’s dead, there’s something wrong
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you….
“Here am I floating round my tin can
Far above the Moon
Planet Earth is blue
And there’s nothing I can do.”

It’s after the passage of 42 years that I understand the true meaning of the song. The song has to do with transformation. The hero is an astronaut. In that era, astronauts were the straightest of straight arrows. Buzzcut illuminati of American manhood, these men were walking statues of virtue, and for Bowie, an easy group to symbolize as the American Everyman, who worked for a large corporation, drove an American car out to a suburb, with a pretty wife and cute children.

The disembodied voice of Houston is in fact the voice of society and her expectations. It is also the voice of authority. When Major Tom leaves his government-issued cocoon, he undergoes a transformation. He’s floating in a most peculiar way, and the stars look different today. It is the awakening of the man, and he understands he can’t go back to the way things were. This happens to some men after they reach the top of the hill and look back and then look forward. Some can’t help themselves and decide to go sideways. The middle-aged man is typically at the height of his powers, but is in essence impotent in the face of the inexorable passage of time, the enormity of the universe, and unbearable blueness of the Earth.

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Dreaming in PBS

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I dreamt a strange dream tonight. it was my first dream in PBS. I was seeing a documentary play on TV. It featured Yvalisse Sondag, a Brazilian scientist who discovered a parasitic frog (pictured).

translated,

I was walking to my laboratory and it began to rain. I felt a big drop fall on my back and I didn’t pay attention because I was running to the bathroom. in the bathroom I felt something strange between my legs and it dropped into the commode. it was a small green frog but it swam away into the plumbing. I noticed something on myself, a tiny red egg which I recognized as a frogs egg. It was on me.

narrator’s voice
Yvalisse is a professor of vertebrate biology. She placed the egg in a controlled environment. She had a hunch that thus was no ordinary tree frog. the egg was kept in a moist environment at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Yvalisse translated
The feeling of a raindrop on my back that day did not feel like the rain we were getting at that moment. I suspected that it was the frog that landed on my back. I found the frog as I was wiping myself. I incubated the egg in the conditions found in a vaginal canal and it hatched a very strange looking tadpole that didn’t survive long.

pan to picture of tadpole with no visible eyes, row of very sharp teeth.

narrator
Dr. Sondag thought she was onto something -a parasitic vertebrate. She postulated that the frog is a short lived adult form whose purpose is to mate, and then jump onto the backs of females and deposit the egg in the vagina. on hatching, the tadpole swims up the canal and bites down and forms vascular attachments to the host, deriving it’s nutrients. When the time came it would complete it’s development and exit to lay eggs on other hosts.

Dr. Sondag, translated
The key was finding the host. There are native tapirs in the forests around the university and we captured several. for a long time, we came up with nothing but last year we found a young female.

narrator
A fiberoptic camera was inserted and revealed a clutch of tadpoles attached to the cervix. Serial images show the deveopment of these into a small green frog with small orange spots. It is the first instance of parasitism involving vertebrates as host and parasite.

Dr. Sondag, translated
we have discovered the frog secretes a topical anesthetic – that’s why it felt like a rain drop. We’re developing the chemical it secretes as a pharmaceutical.

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The right side of history

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It is the right thing to do -to get health care available to those with pre-existing conditions, to avoid the situation of modern indentured servitude for the sake of healthcare, to avoid bankruptcies in the name of healthcare, to bring order to what is a patchwork of coverage, to bring science to bear. Health care is like clean public tap water -we chose to offer the clean water to all, and those who wish to, can pay for bottled. A nation is held together by its institutions, and healthcare has always been absent as a force compared to defense, agriculture, and commerce. The promise of a healthy life is part of the bounty that we are compelled to share if we are to call ourselves a United States of America.