Although overused, Proust's madelines demonstrate an important neurological fact: memories associated with smells are very powerful and long lasting. For example, the very distinct odor of petouli oil is enough for me to be transported back to the latter 1960s and early 1970s. But, I digress.
Today's Proustian memory is the smell of pancakes. I grew up on pancakes (on the weekends only). My mother cooked them using the time honored recipe from the Joy of Cooking (her standby). Once, before college, my mother sent me to Macy*s with her credit card and told me to get something "useful" for college. I came back with the Joy of Cooking. She wasn't pleased, she wanted me to buy clothes.
I've been cooking pancakes since college. Surely the hardest aspect is flipping the little devils. The edges must be firm but not too firm (otherwise they're burnt). And the inside must have bubbles. The recipe from JoC is nothing but simplicity itself: flour, egg(s), baking powder, salt, milk and oil. I used to sift the flour but I really think it doesn't make a noticeable difference to ignore that instruction. If I'm feeling awake, I might separate two eggs and whip the whites: that creates a truly fluffy pancake. And if I really want to duplicate my childhood (not very likely!), I should serve bacon
or sausages with my pancakes --- my father worshiped breakfast sausage.
And that leads me to this morning: because I made buttermilk bacon cornbread to accompany the cashew chili, I had leftover buttermilk. This was an intended consequence, because I planned on baking with it (yes, pancakes are baked in the pan). Buttermilk pancakes are old style: the only rising agent is baking powder and egg whites. I also used half whole wheat and half white: I like that combination because the whole wheat gives it a little more "punch" and flavor but without that heaviness I find in 100% whole wheat breads.
The recipe I used comes from James Beard's American Cooking. He wrote "Practically no one makes pancakes from scratch these days. With the mixes, refrigerated batters and frozen pancakes available on the market, there seems little need. However, I feel that homemade cakes are better and worth the trouble". Just better? Maybe completely different?
When we have guests staying the night, I often make pancakes in the morning. One guest, an Italian, had previously told me how his sister's American boyfriend had insisted that Krusteaz pancakes were delicious and he didn't think so at all. I told him I'd make him some fresh pancakes in the morning. He came away converted. And then, there's my in-laws: Lenny Bruce has a wonderful monologue about Jewish vs Goyish. Pancakes are definitely goyish. But my in-laws really appreciate them. Sure, they're not a bagel, but they are hot and smell of memories.
Saturday, 8 December 2012
Saturday, 1 December 2012
An ode to quenelles
A quenelle is a fish mousse. Poached in a court bouillon, it is napped with a sauce of your choosing. I was introduced to quenelles when I worked in Paris. I can no longer remember the place, but it was an amazing dish to taste: the quenelles were light and fluffy and the sauce was Sauce Nantua, a very classic french sauce built from a bechamel with the stunning addition of crayfish butter.
Now, this blog entry was inspired by finding perch at my not-so-local supermarket. Perch is a fresh water fish (sometimes combined with pike). I was wondering what to do with it (I bought it "on spec"). Then, on my way to teach my class I suddenly remembered quenelles.
If you look at the recipe in Julia or even the more classic Escoffier, you'll see they both make a panada by combining flour with melted butter and then adding the ground fish. But I have tried this and found that this is more like a dumpling than a mousse. Other recipes (like Pepin's) go straight to the fleshy part: combine the fish with an egg white and cream. Blend in the food processor. This is what I elected to do.
One of the hints in making quenelles is to have cold ingredients. The friction of the food processor blade will heat up the mixture, so keep everything cold until the last minute. You can even refrigerate the the processor bowl and blade. I used a pound of fish, one egg white and cream. How much cream? Well, in theory more than a cup. But I quickly ran out of cream (not something I typically have at home) but fortunately I have creme fraiche. This makes a great substitute. I added this until I felt the texture was right. I think it's better to have less than more. One can also add pepper (I recommend white pepper, not black).
I should add a note on the fish: I used my salmon slicer (a very thin knife used for slicing lox) to remove the skins from the flesh. Basically, I slice vertically and then angle the knife along the skin. It works perfectly.
Now, while I was preparing the mixture I started the boullion. I elected to go simple and used just celery and very large bay leaf. When you're ready, take the bowl of fish mix and using two tablespoons, scoop and smooth the top of the mixture. Then push this out of the spoon and into the waiting bubbling (but not boiling) broth. When you're all done, you should have a pot full of tasty pillows!
While they are cooking a little, make the sauce. Again, I elected for a simple sauce (I don't happen to have crayfish butter hanging around). My first thought was a mushroom sauce. But then I remembered I had shucked oysters. So, that lends itself to a sauce veloute' ... You start with a roux (1:1 ratio of butter and flour) and then I added white wine (a NZ Sauvignon Blanc). I proceeded to add more and more liquid from the poaching broth. When it smoothed out, I finished it with the oysters (n.b. if I had added mushrooms, I would have sauteed them first and then added them to the sauce veloute' in place of the oysters).
Then to serve, I removed the quenelles from the boullion and napped them with the sauce. I elected to serve them with simple white rice. And yes! They were light and fluffy! The sauce could have used a bit more to it I thought. But it was still a nice light addition to this very cream based classic french dish.
Perhaps one of the big surprises was how little time this took. You can schedule it by making the broth first, then making the quenelles, then the sauce. The rice can cook before the quenelles if you wish. There's really no reason why you can't do this as a standard weekday dish. And when I taste a quenelle, I think of Paris. Maybe you will too?
Now, this blog entry was inspired by finding perch at my not-so-local supermarket. Perch is a fresh water fish (sometimes combined with pike). I was wondering what to do with it (I bought it "on spec"). Then, on my way to teach my class I suddenly remembered quenelles.
If you look at the recipe in Julia or even the more classic Escoffier, you'll see they both make a panada by combining flour with melted butter and then adding the ground fish. But I have tried this and found that this is more like a dumpling than a mousse. Other recipes (like Pepin's) go straight to the fleshy part: combine the fish with an egg white and cream. Blend in the food processor. This is what I elected to do.
One of the hints in making quenelles is to have cold ingredients. The friction of the food processor blade will heat up the mixture, so keep everything cold until the last minute. You can even refrigerate the the processor bowl and blade. I used a pound of fish, one egg white and cream. How much cream? Well, in theory more than a cup. But I quickly ran out of cream (not something I typically have at home) but fortunately I have creme fraiche. This makes a great substitute. I added this until I felt the texture was right. I think it's better to have less than more. One can also add pepper (I recommend white pepper, not black).
I should add a note on the fish: I used my salmon slicer (a very thin knife used for slicing lox) to remove the skins from the flesh. Basically, I slice vertically and then angle the knife along the skin. It works perfectly.
Now, while I was preparing the mixture I started the boullion. I elected to go simple and used just celery and very large bay leaf. When you're ready, take the bowl of fish mix and using two tablespoons, scoop and smooth the top of the mixture. Then push this out of the spoon and into the waiting bubbling (but not boiling) broth. When you're all done, you should have a pot full of tasty pillows!
While they are cooking a little, make the sauce. Again, I elected for a simple sauce (I don't happen to have crayfish butter hanging around). My first thought was a mushroom sauce. But then I remembered I had shucked oysters. So, that lends itself to a sauce veloute' ... You start with a roux (1:1 ratio of butter and flour) and then I added white wine (a NZ Sauvignon Blanc). I proceeded to add more and more liquid from the poaching broth. When it smoothed out, I finished it with the oysters (n.b. if I had added mushrooms, I would have sauteed them first and then added them to the sauce veloute' in place of the oysters).
Then to serve, I removed the quenelles from the boullion and napped them with the sauce. I elected to serve them with simple white rice. And yes! They were light and fluffy! The sauce could have used a bit more to it I thought. But it was still a nice light addition to this very cream based classic french dish.
Perhaps one of the big surprises was how little time this took. You can schedule it by making the broth first, then making the quenelles, then the sauce. The rice can cook before the quenelles if you wish. There's really no reason why you can't do this as a standard weekday dish. And when I taste a quenelle, I think of Paris. Maybe you will too?
Sunday, 13 May 2012
A plague of capacitors
On Passover, one of the rituals is the recitation of the 10 plagues visited upon the Egyptians. Next year, I'm going to add one more: the capacitor plague.
What? Capacitors?
That's right. Electrolytic Capacitors. They are a plague of my life (OK, probably not the ancient Egyptians).
Yesterday I took my ASUS motherboard from the first PC I ever built to the recycling depot. Why? Because it died on me one night. And when I looked inside, it was obvious: All the electrolytic capacitors had popped! No wonder the SCSI port had died months earier... I should add that all I did was move my disk to another PC that was standing by and I was back in service.
And today, I just repaired the converter box that allows us to receive television "over the air". I had to replace 5 capacitors. Now, what's interesting about this repair is that the capacitors didn't pop --- they just lost one of their electrical properties. In other words, no outside signs of abuse, just failure.
I also repaired my Dell LCD display for the same reason. And I've had other power supplies die for this reason. And not to mention our HP inkjet printer: it kept reporting a strange error code. Eventually I found a web post that stated it was the electrolytic capacitors. Let me add that at this point I was at the end of my rope: what did I have to lose? So, I took the printer apart and lo-and-behold, there they were --- standing there with their tops popped off. Replaced and it's worked since then.
So, you might ask, why is this the cause of our increasing electronic junk pile? The answer lies in several places. First, there was a rumor years ago that a foreign capacitor company stole the formula but made a mistake. Second, designers of consumer products cut corners, so they specify cheap parts with low temperature bounds and so the parts literally fry.
Whatever the cause, it causes me nothing but consternation and vexation!
What? Capacitors?
That's right. Electrolytic Capacitors. They are a plague of my life (OK, probably not the ancient Egyptians).
Yesterday I took my ASUS motherboard from the first PC I ever built to the recycling depot. Why? Because it died on me one night. And when I looked inside, it was obvious: All the electrolytic capacitors had popped! No wonder the SCSI port had died months earier... I should add that all I did was move my disk to another PC that was standing by and I was back in service.
And today, I just repaired the converter box that allows us to receive television "over the air". I had to replace 5 capacitors. Now, what's interesting about this repair is that the capacitors didn't pop --- they just lost one of their electrical properties. In other words, no outside signs of abuse, just failure.
I also repaired my Dell LCD display for the same reason. And I've had other power supplies die for this reason. And not to mention our HP inkjet printer: it kept reporting a strange error code. Eventually I found a web post that stated it was the electrolytic capacitors. Let me add that at this point I was at the end of my rope: what did I have to lose? So, I took the printer apart and lo-and-behold, there they were --- standing there with their tops popped off. Replaced and it's worked since then.
So, you might ask, why is this the cause of our increasing electronic junk pile? The answer lies in several places. First, there was a rumor years ago that a foreign capacitor company stole the formula but made a mistake. Second, designers of consumer products cut corners, so they specify cheap parts with low temperature bounds and so the parts literally fry.
Whatever the cause, it causes me nothing but consternation and vexation!
Thursday, 26 April 2012
Memories of Joe Condon
Although completely unnoticed by the press, Joe Condon died recently. I want to remember Joe in print: Joe was an important mentor of mine when I was at Bell Labs. He knew an incredible amount about hardware design... And as well he should, since he was a physicist. He always looked at design problems through physics. He came from an illustrious family (his father, E.U. Condon was very important to 20th century physics). So, Joe's most important lesson to me was that engineering problems can be reduced to physics. And if you could reason about electrons and their (sometimes) irrational behavior, then you could find the problem in your circuit.
I can't remember all he taught me, but I do remember the time he found a power ground short in a wirewrap board by using a voltmeter and looking at the voltage drops. I also recall how he helped me to find a catastrophic bug. Tom Killian and I had invited Yamaha over to Murray Hill to see our multiprocessor synthesizer. We moved the machine to the conference room --- and it died. We couldn't figure it out. I took it back to the lab and it was still failing. Joe told me to use the Tektronix 2467B (what a 'scope, microchannel plate, 400 MHz, etc). He told me to turn up the intensity and look. Sure enough, there were glitches on a signal line. He then advised me to add a terminator, which I did (the reasoning was that this was due to an impedance mismatch between logic families). It worked.
When I first met Joe he was a smoker. His teeth were stained and he had a fierce coffee habit. In fact, when the first espresso machine arrived in Murray Hill, Joe was instrumental in getting it to work. The deal was that the management refused to pay for the machine, but agreed to pay for coffee for a year. So, a small consortium was founded and they arranged to buy a machine (as I recall, Alan Berenbaum asked his local coffee shop for help). So, when the machine arrived, every coffee drinker was in a powerful hurry to get it up and running. But, it used "house water". So, this required plumbing ... and a plumber. No body was going to wait for the work order. Joe took charge and together with Tom (another physicist), they just connected it to the water line (soldering with a torch, etc...). The end of the story is that management realized that the espresso machine was a huge draw (that's how I met many 1122 acoustics labs types) and agreed to pay for coffee.
So, Joe did eventually quit the tobacco habit: he went on vacation to Hilton Head with the express purpose of quitting. Joe often had a smile on his face and he would always ask me what I was up to. When I was maintaining the CAD system we would exchange thoughts on what was needed and what was in the infinite future. When the labs split into Lucent and AT&T Labs, Joe went to AT&T. I saw him there a few times but I lost track of him over the years.
He was always kind to me (which I appreciated in the aggressive atmosphere of the labs) and he took time to explain any and everything down to the last detail. Even now, when I am thinking about a circuit, I think: "What would Joe tell me to do?". The answer, as always, is "think physics!".
I can't remember all he taught me, but I do remember the time he found a power ground short in a wirewrap board by using a voltmeter and looking at the voltage drops. I also recall how he helped me to find a catastrophic bug. Tom Killian and I had invited Yamaha over to Murray Hill to see our multiprocessor synthesizer. We moved the machine to the conference room --- and it died. We couldn't figure it out. I took it back to the lab and it was still failing. Joe told me to use the Tektronix 2467B (what a 'scope, microchannel plate, 400 MHz, etc). He told me to turn up the intensity and look. Sure enough, there were glitches on a signal line. He then advised me to add a terminator, which I did (the reasoning was that this was due to an impedance mismatch between logic families). It worked.
When I first met Joe he was a smoker. His teeth were stained and he had a fierce coffee habit. In fact, when the first espresso machine arrived in Murray Hill, Joe was instrumental in getting it to work. The deal was that the management refused to pay for the machine, but agreed to pay for coffee for a year. So, a small consortium was founded and they arranged to buy a machine (as I recall, Alan Berenbaum asked his local coffee shop for help). So, when the machine arrived, every coffee drinker was in a powerful hurry to get it up and running. But, it used "house water". So, this required plumbing ... and a plumber. No body was going to wait for the work order. Joe took charge and together with Tom (another physicist), they just connected it to the water line (soldering with a torch, etc...). The end of the story is that management realized that the espresso machine was a huge draw (that's how I met many 1122 acoustics labs types) and agreed to pay for coffee.
So, Joe did eventually quit the tobacco habit: he went on vacation to Hilton Head with the express purpose of quitting. Joe often had a smile on his face and he would always ask me what I was up to. When I was maintaining the CAD system we would exchange thoughts on what was needed and what was in the infinite future. When the labs split into Lucent and AT&T Labs, Joe went to AT&T. I saw him there a few times but I lost track of him over the years.
He was always kind to me (which I appreciated in the aggressive atmosphere of the labs) and he took time to explain any and everything down to the last detail. Even now, when I am thinking about a circuit, I think: "What would Joe tell me to do?". The answer, as always, is "think physics!".
Sunday, 26 February 2012
Cassoulet and me
Mark Bittman's recent post on Cassoulet hits a highly resonant note with me. As many people know, I prepare Cassoulet once a year (I dub it "Cassoulet-fest"). This celebration of meat and beans can only reasonably be prepared in winter. I consider it one of the high points of rustic French cooking because not only does it have that rustic "stick to your ribs" quality, but it also demonstrates how various cooking techniques (confit, braised meats, sausage making, etc.) combine to form a harmonious whole.
I use the recipe from Julia Child's masterpiece "Mastering the Art". My copy was given to me by my friends and colleagues at Bell Labs when I was recuperating from back surgery. I used to read it in bed as I waited to heal. The recipe itself is somewhat long and involved, but not complicated. Julia, in her humorous style used the phrase with the subtitle "Order of Battle" --- but that overstates the case and I suspect frightens many off this very hearty and savory dish.
Let's start with confit. I used to buy this from D'Artagnan at about $10 a "pop" (thigh and drumstick). The conventional recipe uses a kind of Catch-22. You're supposed to confit the duck in a pot of duck fat. But you're supposed to use the leftover duck fat from your last confit! The new style recipe is to use Olive Oil to partial cover the meat and then slow roast (and I mean slow, as in 200-225 F). So, not only do you control the cooking, you save money. Big time money.
Next: the beans. Of course, one can buy the French white beans. When we lived in NJ, I bought the beans and also saucisson d'ail from the famed Balducci's at 6th Ave. and 9th. (Conveniently right around the corner from the PATH station). But today I just buy a two pound bag of Great Northern Beans (a wonderful bean) and deal with the sausage question myself.
And, speaking of sausages: You can, of course, use any one you find. I don't personally feel the need to use sausages. Julia has a delightful subrecipe for garlicky pork patties on the cassoulet page. I've made these numerous times. But if I'm feeling lazy, I just don't bother, particularly if I'm making the roast pork loin.
What makes Julia's recipe so nice (in my opinion) is the use of lamb. She slowly braises the lamb in a tomato white wine sauce. The result, when combined with the beans, is nothing short of delightful. The real fun of course is the "assemblage": the layering of beans and meats until both are gone. Then, top it off with the juices, cover with the breadcrumbs and away you go.
I've occasionally produced that wonderful crust, but I'm content just to pull my Paderno pot out of the oven to see the parsleyed browned breadcrumbs on top. Then pull the cork on a bottle of red from Southern France (Rhone, Languedoc...) and inhale the fragrant vapors. Who can resist?
I use the recipe from Julia Child's masterpiece "Mastering the Art". My copy was given to me by my friends and colleagues at Bell Labs when I was recuperating from back surgery. I used to read it in bed as I waited to heal. The recipe itself is somewhat long and involved, but not complicated. Julia, in her humorous style used the phrase with the subtitle "Order of Battle" --- but that overstates the case and I suspect frightens many off this very hearty and savory dish.
Let's start with confit. I used to buy this from D'Artagnan at about $10 a "pop" (thigh and drumstick). The conventional recipe uses a kind of Catch-22. You're supposed to confit the duck in a pot of duck fat. But you're supposed to use the leftover duck fat from your last confit! The new style recipe is to use Olive Oil to partial cover the meat and then slow roast (and I mean slow, as in 200-225 F). So, not only do you control the cooking, you save money. Big time money.
Next: the beans. Of course, one can buy the French white beans. When we lived in NJ, I bought the beans and also saucisson d'ail from the famed Balducci's at 6th Ave. and 9th. (Conveniently right around the corner from the PATH station). But today I just buy a two pound bag of Great Northern Beans (a wonderful bean) and deal with the sausage question myself.
And, speaking of sausages: You can, of course, use any one you find. I don't personally feel the need to use sausages. Julia has a delightful subrecipe for garlicky pork patties on the cassoulet page. I've made these numerous times. But if I'm feeling lazy, I just don't bother, particularly if I'm making the roast pork loin.
What makes Julia's recipe so nice (in my opinion) is the use of lamb. She slowly braises the lamb in a tomato white wine sauce. The result, when combined with the beans, is nothing short of delightful. The real fun of course is the "assemblage": the layering of beans and meats until both are gone. Then, top it off with the juices, cover with the breadcrumbs and away you go.
I've occasionally produced that wonderful crust, but I'm content just to pull my Paderno pot out of the oven to see the parsleyed browned breadcrumbs on top. Then pull the cork on a bottle of red from Southern France (Rhone, Languedoc...) and inhale the fragrant vapors. Who can resist?
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