Ketherian's Notebook

I bought 2kg (roughly 4.4 lbs) of couverture chocolate.
I intend to try and temper some of it this weekend and do a fair bit of dipping; but what else can I do with it?

Once tempered, can I use it like regular chocolate in baking or should I stick to filling molds and dipping stuff?
If the latter I can see myself holding a chocolate party really soon.

I was thinking of picking up some candy molds, maybe making chocolate pops.
The chocolate "expires" at the end of this month, so I'd like to use up the majority of it over the next week or so.

Menu for this week

Saturday
BBQ Chicken and corn
Romaine salad with cheese and red wine vinagrette

SUNDAY
AM: Breakfast Burritos (OAMC) (recipe)
Cheeseburgers & Salad

MONDAY
BBQ Trout with
mixed vegetables and dip
(Happy Canada Day!)

TUESDAY
Grilled chipotle Flank steak (recipe) pitas
with mixed vegetables and dip

WEDNESDAY
Balsamic soy glazed chicken parts (recipe)
and romain salad

THURSDAY
Chicken fried rice (recipe)

FRIDAY
Tacos (recipe for taco seasoning)

RPG

OMG! Dice at 150 US$. Would you actually use them? The copper are pretty, but I'd hate to see them tarnish.

Link Roundup

In 2004 this (PDF) was a military proposal, then it was an internet meme. Now it's a movie.

The ultimate rube goldberg machine Video. (Thanks Boing Boing).

The following is a Link to the boing boing post titled "Legal guide for Canadian podcasters. It's well worth reading for Canadians producing podcasts.

Lifehacker this week offered a link to Diet television. I'm still playing with it, but it does look interesting.

Steampunk

Brass goggles is an incredible steampunk site.
Thee posts from this site (now part of my bloglines) include:

• Edgar and the Voyagers! Steampunk Cartoons.
• A be-goggled paper squirrel.
• The Electrodynamic Engineer’s Primer in Five Parts

All worth reading. But then again I am a steampunk fan.

chili - ground beef and chile peppers. It's a recipe not an ingredient.
chile - Found in a variety of sizes, shapes, and hotness. If fresh remove skin before using. Also used dried and canned. It's an ingredient.
chilaquiles - Mexican casserole originally designed as a way to use up stale tortillas. The layered dish of tortillas, cheese and sauce has become such a favorite that often, fresh tortillas are now used to prepare it. It's a recipe not an ingredient.
galangal - a cousin of ginger sometimes called Siamese ginger. It is lighter in color and tinged with pink. Thai markets sell it fresh and frozen. It's an ingredient.
Chipotle - Smoked dried jalapeno chiles. The distinctive smoky heat of chipotles is used to flavor Southwestern and Mexican dishes. They are sold both dried and in cans, in a vinegary sauce called adobo. Most big supermarkets carry them, but a Latin-American market is your best bet.
Jalapeno - the plural is jalapenos, not jalapenoes.
Chayote - pale green vegetable, shaped like a pear
Chorizo - Highly seasoned hog link sausage.


The Hive-mind at meta-filter told someone this today:
Apocalypse Chow: How to Eat Well When the Power Goes Out is a book my dad  bought me when I moved out of the dorms. It's got lots of recipes you can  make with only canned or long-shelf-life foods. Recipes include  Shiitake-Happens Mushroom Soup and Consolation Couscous. It includes a  4-person week-long meal plan with shopping list. He sent me off with a  couple of boxes with everything on that list. I've really enjoyed their  black bean patty recipe. A stove is required for many of them, though.

I just love that recipe title. Shiitake-Happens Mushroom Soup and Consolation Couscous.

Slashdot tells the tale of the redistrciting game. Check it out.

No recipes this week, I'm winging it.

Saturday
Chicken sandwich on a whole wheat bun
With romain lettuce, mustard & mayo
Cole slaw and Zucchini slices

Sunday
Cheeseburgers & romain salad
with mixed beans and red wine vinagrette

Monday
Grilled steak sandwhiches on whole wheat buns
with mustard, hummus & lettuce
With romain salad, mixed beans and red wine vinagrette

Tuesday
Steamed lemon fish,
Steamed vegetables with lime butter

Wednesday
BBQ ribs
Romain salad with balsamic vinagrette

Thursday
Grilled lemon chicken breasts
With romain salad, soy nuts and red wine vinagrette

Friday
BBQ sausages
With romain salad, mixed beans and red wine vinagrette

Surprise soda. At last - they're making a soda that will always suit my mood!

Sausage and Apple Pancakes. A great breakfast for Dad!

The RSS subtitle for this article says it all: Everyone agrees that something needs to be done about Manhattan traffic, but nobody wants to have to pay for it.

A secret peak inside the new bay bridge is provided (by way of Boing Boing) by Telsar logistics on their site. The pictures are amazing.

And speaking of pictures...
The maps from the Voages Extraordinaires is a site with the scans of the maps that were included in the original editions of Jules Verne's novels. Amazing stuff. Thanks Boing Boing.

These type of stories always come out after a storm, or a blackout, or both. It's pretty rare that they link to something like SafeCanada's 72, where you can learn what you actually need to survive for 72 hours without power or water. The guide for 72 is the best place to start. Admittedly, the US sites include examples of the *types* of food you should stalk up on. Their lists also include things like duct tape and dust masks. The quebec Civil Protection site has another good list of things for an emergency kit.
Myself, I keep saying I'm going to do this. And I really should. I have most of what I need to make an emergency kit (a pretty good first aid kit, the necessary tools, a fair bit of tinned food) and a good knowledge of how to cook without power (I admit cold pasta or oatmeal doesn't sound that appealing -- but it's certainly better than nothing).
My emergency kit requires the following things:
* 6 liters of drinkable water (that's 3 pop-bottles full).
* Disposable plates/bowls (1 pack)
* Disposable cutlery (1 pack)
* Protein or fruit bars
* Dried fruit & nuts (these I cycle through regularly)
* Crackers (these I cycle through regularly)
* Canned juices (like apple juice - lasts forever)
* Skim milk powder (again, lasts forever)
* Cheese (well wrapped)
* Batteries (size D for the radio & two of the big flash lights)
* Plastic sheeting and 2 dust masks (Duct tape - we got)
* 2 pairs of sterile gloves
* Sterile dressings (gauze and things for larger-than-bandaid sized wounds)
* antibiotic towlettes
* Burn ointment (ours went out of date/spoiled recently)
* Whistle

It's kept part in the pantry and part in the bathroom. A while back Andreas got a car kit that is a very small bag. I've been through that a few times to replace the candle, the sterno & the chocolate. I also swapped out the bad tea & coffee powder for good tea. :)

So do you have an emergency kit?
Edited: typo.

I love to cook, but frankly - after work and the gym I rarely have the energy to do it properly. Fortunately for me there's a lot of cookbooks out there that focus on 30 minute cooking. Here's some notes about my favorites.

• Life's On Fire -- Cooking for the rushed. The book is layed out in a nice way that actually helps you cook. Recipes are color coded for speed, broken up into weekly sections (with a nice variety each week) and provides a lot of pretty pictures. The book is even spiral-bound which means you never have to fight it to stay open as you cook. It has my all-time favorite peanut-butter sauce (which I regularly use when roasting or barbequing chicken legs). The downside? Most of the recipes are a little bland in taste. It's something that's very easy to fix (chilli and spices are your friend). The only down-side is that if you actually make the weekly menu of recipes, you'll be buying a lot of stuff; only some of which you'll use -- and most of it won't be on sale.
• Make it in minutes. This is actually a weight watcher's cookbook. The recipes are not laid out in an easy-to-use manner, but the pictures are nice and the results are great. I've made about 1/2 the recipes.
• Joy of Cooking. While it's not a book filled with fast recipes, it does have great tips and ideas that help you speed up your dinner. I often use the recipes for sauces, vegetables and side dishes when I'm otherwise out of ideas, or need to start with a fool-proof recipe from which I can work.
  

Recipe Maven's first contest went up on the 29th of October. Since I'm a mod, I can't participate.
They're asking for recipes with mushrooms. I'm no iron chef, but here's the menu I'd recommend

Appetizer: Baked mushrooms stuffed with country sausage
Salda course: Roasted Mushroom salad
Soup course: 10 Minute cream of mushroom soup
Sorbet course: Lemongrass sorbet with truffle shavings
Meat course: Grilled dijon chicken breasts with mushroom risotto
Dessert course: Mushroom bread pudding with creme fresh and berries
Cheese: Goat cheese and mushroom fondue

Admission: of them all, I've only ever made Baked mushrooms and mushroom risotto - but the others do sound good.
Good luck to all the competitors.

• Mustard. Growing up I was known as the mustard kid. Other kids wanted peanut butter - me, I wanted mustard. To this day I will still put plain yellow mustard on any source of protein. Last week the San Francisco chronicle had an article on Mustard that made my mouth water.
• Pumpkin-Apple strussel For those of us who hate pie crusts, but love pie.
• According to Epicurious - rich flavor and deep colored gravey begins with turkey stock made days, or even months, ahead.
• Washinton Post's Dinner in 25 minutes features spicy ground beef with green beans.
• Soup recipes from meta filter
  

Give your resume a face lift It's a good introduction to typography in a useful setting. It also is an article with a great set of links. I think I'll use it to update my resume tonight.

This episode:
An interesting piece of flash
How one live journal is creating an RPG world
Food and Sci-Fi

All this and more 

I've a friend or two who always stand in my kitchen and carefully read my weekly menu plan as if it were the week's latest headlines. I know I'm not alone when it comes to agonizing over what's for dinner; but I do know I'm one of the few that agonizes in such a organized fashion. You see - I regularly shop with a list of food to buy and a menu already planned for the week and keep an excel spreadsheet of my menus (most weeks). At the very least there's a computer print out, or a scrap of paper with a week's menu plan written on it somewhere.

I don't waste time trying to figure out what's for lunch or what's for breakfast - I focus on what's for dinner.
As an example, here's this week's menu. It starts on Saturday because that's the day I shop.

Weekly menu for April 15th, 2006

Sat	Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thur	Fri
Stir-fry scallops and shrimp with vegetables and rice	Family dinner	BBQ Chicken breasts, converted rice, romaine & red pepper salad with red wine vinaigrette	Leftovers casserole (from the family dinner on Sunday)	BBQ pork chops and romaine & red pepper salad with red wine vinaigrette	Chicken brochettes, tzatziki, pita bread, salad and bell peppers	Mini-meatloaves, roasted potato wedges with paprika, and peas
Breakfasts	Cerials, toast, eggs, bacon, pancakes (bisquick mix), fruit, yogurt
Lunches	Hamburgers (BBQ), Spicy chick pea soup, spicy black bean soup, cold roast chicken cold steak
Grab Bag	Ginger-lemon cookies fruit (apples, pears, bananas, strawberries) bagels crackers cheese

From this I generate my grocery list. I always try to eat what's in my pantry/fridge/freezer first, and supplement what I have by buying more. It seems to work out cheaper somehow. I know a lot of folk who coupond clip, but I'm choosy. I'll only coupon clip if the coupon is for something I regularly buy (which is rare) or is at a store that I normally visit (which is even more rare). So now you know.

Taken from La Presse, cyber-edition, kitchen section Friday, 17th February, 2006 and Saturday, 18th February, 2006


Every year the Montreal Highlights festival presents a region from which the food and the culture are highlighted. This year the Wine and Dine experience focuses on the Alsace region of France and Vancouver. La Presse has two articles on the topic - L'Alsace à Montréal (Alsace in Montreal) by Robert Bauchemin (published on Friday, February 17th) speaks to the type of food that comes from the Alsace region - rich, fresh, and elegant. The Alsace region has the most high-ranking chef's in all of France, and consequently, all of Europe as well. A second article (published on Saturday, February 18th) introduces us to an Alsatian - Chef Ludovic Perraudin. Chef Perraudin is visiting Chez Alexandre et fils until the 26th of February. The article describes a meal
by the famous chef in great (and glorious) detail.

Another article from Friday - Paris, nouvelle capital du café? (Paris, the new capital of coffee by Beatriz Lecumberri - AFP Paris) wonders if, along with its haute couture, and amazing wines, could Gloria Montenegro, founder of the first Caféologie academe, could make Paris the new coffee capital of the world. This Caféologie academy focused on the origins of coffee and features coffee from
some 70 countries. For five years Gloria Montenegro has focused on this project, learning everything she can about coffee and France - including the ceremonies, rituals, the art of tasting, and more. Gloria Montenegro is convinced that coffee should have the same high status as a great wine and that it is equally good for your health.

Eat like an Olympian (Manger come un olympien, by Robert Beauchemin) provides some very good health tips culled from watching and speaking to Olympians in training.
- Water is crucial.
- During exercises you can munch on dried fruit, granola bars and nuts
- Choose vegetable fats over animal fats (which slow digestion)
- Avoid ready-made foods (too fatty, too salty).
For more information, try: http://www.coach.ca/fra/nutrition/nutrition or
http://www.radio-canada.ca/Turin/nutrition

The article goes on to include a recipe for a great drink to help you regain your strength (or fortify you), a hearty winter soup and a good pasta recipe. ( Recipes are behind the cut )

A note on sugar from CNN Money.com
<a href="http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/16/news/companies/walmart_splenda.reut/>Wal-Mart sweetener sours Splenda</a>. Posted February 16th. First sighting: Montreal Gazette Saturday's food section. Wal-Mart has its own brand of Splenda, called Altern. They tested it last year and in September, Tate & Lyle (Splenda's owners) had the company remove Altrern from its shelves. There is a question as to whether Altern infringes on Splenda patents. Wal-Mart originally made Altern in one of Tate & Lyle's own factories. Now, Wal-Mart is claiming this is "their version" of the famous sugar replacement.

Once in a while I get together with gamers to eat and game. Not too long ago the meal of choice was a cheap pizza and a can of coke. Desert was a wide assortment of chips and chocolate covered nuts (or coffee beans) with side orders of candy.Getting older does things to your taste buds; and your health. Unfortunately, this means changing what you serve and what you eat -- even at role playing games.

I know for some folks it's their night to eat bad; they want the Igor Bars along with their bags of chips, pizza, and soda. But the rest of us just can't do that anymore. So, over the past 5 years I've created three little supper clubs. These supper clubs are just gamers that come together to eat before starting to role play. Most everything is as home-made as possible, with notable exceptions. We buy a fair bit of food, but try to stay away from anything fried (like french fries or battered food), canned (tinned veggies or tinned sauces), or fatty (fatty cuts of meat, stuff with lots of saturated fat, ...). Instead we buy ingredients as fresh as possible and spend our candy money on better quality ingredients for the dinner. It's a lot easier than it sounds. If you can get a bunch of gamers to do the order-out thing, this is actually easier. Why? Gamers will eat almost anything.

Here then are a few rules I use to cook for gamers.

1. Keep it cheap.
2. Keep it simple.
3. Ask.
4. The internet is your friend.
5. Ask for help.

( Descriptions of these are available behind the cut. )( Sample menus behind the cut )

Quick hints

1. Behold the power of cheese!
2. Buy it precut.
3. Don't know? Ask. Better yet, ask anyways.
4. Buy it ready-made.
5. Pre-cook it.

( Explanations behind the cut... )

Tazo Darjeeling.

Exotic floral and nutty notes with a pungeont fresh flavor, capturing the essence of the Himalays.

Sitting on the porch of a bungalow on a tea plantation in Darjeeling, you can see the peaks of Everst and Kanchenjunga as you sip a cup of this exquisite brew. Life is good.

Wish I could claim credit - but this is acutally what's written on the filter bag's cover.

Word of the Day: Renumerate: To recount (from Wordsmith.org)

Friday posts are always a miscellany.

The Friday Blues.
It's a illness known to everyone who works on Fridays; a malaise that reduces your productivity and makes you yearn for the great outdoors. Fortunately we are not all susceptible to the Friday blues every Friday; unfortunately the blues can strike on any fine weathered day when you have to work indoors.

The Best of the Best
Today Technaut wrote an interesting article called Food Web, done right that really got me thinking. Why hasn't any website done it all in relation to food. I use del.icio,us inbox to track the tags of food and recipe and get 100's of hits each day -- and even those that are to recipe indices are predominantly lack luster in their quality and ease-of use.
I think Recipe Zaar is the best site out there, but I'm still looking.

Movies and TV series
More and more TV series are coming out on DVD; specifically the series that TV stations like DejaView use to fill their programming. Some series seem so very campy today (Dukes of Hazard, S.W.A.T, Police Woman, C.H.i.P, ...) that you have to wonder why you watched them when they first aired (my excuse is that I was young and foolish).

Lately I picked up the first seasons of Hogan's Heroes and the M.A.S.H. Both were TV series that I loved when I first saw them, and loved again during re-runs. There are a few others that I hope to see available some day, like: Star Cops, and Space Island One). There's already dozens out there that I want to get (Babylon 5, The Outer Limits (1963), Allo'Allo, MI5, and Cowboy Bebop to name a few); and more coming out almost every day.

Sometimes I think I should start a 'lending' club. I already borrow a fair number of DVDs from friends - but I should take a page from one guy I know who already does this - and share lists of DVDs so that I can lend and borrow more freely. If I'm going to do that though, I'll need to get some sort of sign-out system going or I'll never remember who has what of mine.

Shot What in the Who now?
It's a phrase a friend says when he doesn't quite hear the question and isn't sure what to reply. The first time he said it I almost bust a gut laughing. But it does bring up a good point. Are you comfortable enough to just answer a question without knowing the discussion that preceded it?

For example, if someone asked you "Flopped or Dragged?" and you just knew there was more to the question than what you were asked, would you answer - and what would you say?

I'd say, "Shot what in the who now?".

Favorite links of the week
* Bloglines an online RSS reader.
* Del.icio.us an online bookmark aggregator.
* Uncle Phaedrus They find answers to questions and solutions to problems. Who? What? Where? When? Why? Which? How? Recipes, food, cooking, beverages, history, science, popular culture, geography, sociology, psychology, trivia, etc....
* LifeHacker Computers make us more productive. Yeah, right. Lifehacker recommends the downloads, web sites and shortcuts that actually save time. Don't live to geek; geek to live.

It's the question I hate the most.
It's also the one I answer at least once a day (and twice on Friday's).

I was reading Lifehacking your grocery list and realized that I didn't really want to do quite that much work.

I actually shop with a shopping list (most times). And when I don't shop with a shopping list I rarely buy something I won't use.

My problem is that most of the recipes I make with exotic ingredients call for a tablespoon (at most) and the least I can buy is several cups worth. Once or twice a year I go through my pantry and try to take a careful inventory of it. Then I tailor my menu list to what I have in the pantry; unfortunately other than the staples, each recipie only takes a tablespoon (at most) of the stuff that seems to live permanently in my pantry.

I've started trying to use stuff like the Pantry Chef at the Cooking Light website. It's OK, but doesn't list the exotic ingredients that clog my pantry.

Anyone know of a system for dealing with this problem? At this point I'm going to have to clean out my pantry and make another index to try and get rid of some of the stuff that's in there. Or at least rotate the stuff at the back to the front.

Last night I tried to make polenta in the Microwave.

Polenta is a traditional mixture of water, salt and cornmeal. My SO prefers it when I use coarse-ground cornmeal, but any type will do. The traditional method of making polenta is on the stovetop. It requires constant attention and fussing, but goes quickly from a soup to a very loose bread. The longer you let it stand off the heat, the harder it gets. The bread is very bland, often with salt as its only seasoning; but is a terrific side dish when serving anything with a sauce (e.g.: chicken and sauce or a wet chili).

See How to make Polenta the old fashioned way.

There are literally thousands of variations - everything from throwing butter and cheese on top and grilling it to create a crust, to adding a wide variety of herbs and spices to the base recipe. Much like a bread recipe, there is no wrong way to make Polenta.

The original recipe

The following was taken from RecipeZaar.com's microwave polenta recipe. Recipe by Chia. Reformatted and simplfied by me.

Equipment:

• 2-quart soufflé dish.
• Wooden spoon
• Measuring cups and spoons

Ingredients

4	cups	water
3/4	cup	cornmeal
2	teaspoons	kosher salt

Instructions

1. in 2 quart soufflé dish combine water, salt, and cornmeal.
2. cook on hi for 6 minutes
3. remove from microwave and stir
4. cover with paper towel and cook on hi for 6 minutes.

My microwave isn't quite as powerful as the one used in this recipe, and I didn't wait long enough for the polenta to sit and become a solid mass. So last night I served polenta soup with chili and cheese. Mixed together, it tasted quite good.

This morning I was able to cut the polenta into wedges. It's a bit bland, but very firm. I'm surprised it didn't puff up as much as it does when made on the stove top.

Recipe modifications:

Equipment:

• 2-quart soufflé dish or 2-quart casserole dish.
• Wire whisk
• Measuring cups and spoons

Ingredients:

3 1/2	cups	water (we like our polenta very dry)
3/4	cup	coarse cornmeal
2	teaspoons	kosher salt

Instructions

1. In 2 quart soufflé dish combine water, kosher salt, and coarse cornmeal. Stir well.
2. Place uncovered in the microwave and cook on HI for 6 minutes.
3. Remove from microwave. A thin layer of boiling, filmy water should be visible on the top of the mixture.
4. Whisk until all the cornmeal on the bottom has been mixed and the layer of filmy water is no longer present.
5. Cover with 2 layers of paper towel and cook on HI for an additional 6 minutes.
6. Remove the soufflé dish from the microwave and peel off the paper towel. Discard paper towel and any polenta stuck to it.
7. Run a knife around the outer-edge of the polenta and the dish. This loosens the dry upper lip and exposes more polenta to the air. It also helps reduce the amount of sticking.
8. Let stand 15 minutes before serving, or until polenta reaches desired firmness. For quicker drying, turn out the polenta onto a slightly greased board and immediately rinse the soufflé dish.

Note that polenta is an incredible glue when allowed to set on a dish or spoon. Rinse everything thoroughly when you're cooking with it - either that or be prepared to pre-soak your dishes before washing.

Modifications:

For variations, try adding the following;

• 1/2 to 1 cup of grated cheese (sprinkled on top once set or whisked into the mixture before it sets).
• 1 to 2 tablespoons of butter (whisked into the mixture before it sets).
• spices and/or herbs to taste (with the base ingredients before microwaving).
• pre-cooked, diced meats (with the base ingredients, or at any point in the recipe).
• Any combination of the above.
• Replace the water of the base recipe with your favorite soup stock.
• Replace the water of the base recipe with 1/2 milk and 1/2 water.

Polenta can be reheated under a grill or in a toaster oven, as needed.

Polenta can be kept at room temperature for about 2-3 days. If made with spoilable ingredients, keep it well wrapped and in the fridge.

This sounds really yummy:
Skillet Paella

I was looking for a meal to make for friends on Saturday night and thought using the crock pot would be the best idea. I found a neat recipe on RecipeZaar for Crockpot Rigatoni. Now it looks like I can't get a lift to the game, so I have to convert it back to something in the oven.

The original recipe:
Ingredients

*28 ounces spaghetti sauce, jarred or home-made
*12 ounces rigatoni pasta, cooked
*1 1/2 lbs ground beef or sausage, browned
*3 cups    shredded mozzarella cheese
*1/2-3/4lb sliced pepperoni
*          sliced mushrooms or onions (etc.) (optional)

Directions
1. Layer half of each ingredient in the order listed.
2. Repeat.
3. Cover, Cook on low 4-5 hours.

My version:
1. I was asked to reduce the amount of meat, so I replaced the pepperoni with mushrooms, and reduced the amount of beef by half.
2. I have to transport all of this to the site of the dinner by public transport.
3. I love a challenge and I love cooking, so I modified the recipe and planned accordingly.

Ingredients

   28 ounces spaghetti sauce, home-made
   12 ounces rigatoni pasta, cooked
   3/4 lbs   ground beef, browned and drained
   3 cups    shredded mozzarella cheese
   1 tsp     olive oil
  10-12	     mushrooms, slicked thick

Directions
1. Cook pasta and drain it well.
2. Arrange in layers (spaghetti, sauce, mushrooms, cheese, repeat) in a lightly greased casserole.
3. Sprinkle the top with remaining cheese.
4. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes until heated through.
5. Broil for 5 minutes to brown the cheese.

Planning:
1. Cook and drain ground beef at home, earlier in the day. Pack in Tupperware.
2. Shred cheese. Pack in Tupperware.
3. Pack ingredients inside casserole dishes and place them in a gym bag - use towels to support them.
4. At destination, unpack and begin cooking.

I'll let you know how well the meal is received.