Vino Intercontinentale

So The Wife and I had another blind wine-tasting party. We invited three other couples, to limit seating, and limited wine to six bottles. I found a California Tempranillo, a Bordeau, a Barbera d'Asti, an Argentinian Malbec, a South African Syrah, and an Australian Shiraz (yes, Shiraz is the same as Syrah, just spelled differently). All vintage 2006, which I thought was pretty clever on my part.

Then two of the three couples canceled, with less than two hours before "go" time. We tried scaring up other people to come, but on such short notice, no one could. The result was us and one other couple with six, count 'em six, anonymous carafes of five-year-old red wine. We had our tasting anyway, and had a very nice evening visiting with our friends.

With the result that we had nearly two and a half liters of red wine left over because really, how much are only four people going to drink? So I took one of the containers I use for infusing liquor and dumped the remains of all six carafes in it, intermingling the grape juice in a combination never before or again to ever be replicated by anyone, anywhere.

The result: vino intercontinentale. Some of that wound up in tonight's spaghetti sauce. Some of it is in glasses being drunk right now. The truth of the matter is, it's quite good. I need to let it warm up -- we stored it in the fridge for some reason that made sense to us when we were inebriated -- but even a bit on the cool side, it's quite enjoyable. I don't think I'd attach a high price tag to it, but I'm drinking it and pretty happy.

What's In A Taco Anyway?

In a maneuver clearly calculated to engender massive respect for the legal profession, an Alabama law firm has taken advantage of that state's surprisingly liberal class action laws to sue Taco Bell for claiming that the mild, grainy substance they use to fill their tacos and burritos and chalupas and enchiritos and other made-up not-really-Mexican food is only 36% beef.

What, you might reasonably ask, is the remaining 64% of whatever was stuffed in the tortillas of your fourthmeal? The answer, allegedly, is a tasty and savory blend of water, isolated oat product, wheat oats, soy lecithin, maltodrextrin, anti-dusting agent, autolyzed yeast extract, modified corn starch and sodium phosphate. Pick one of those and go do your own obligatory Homer-Simpson-drooling joke. Taco Bell has denied any wrongdoing and says it will vigorously defend itself -- but the unfortunately common gastrointestinal aftereffects of actually eating at Taco Bell suggest that there may be some substance to the allegations that your "Mexican Pizza" is, well, just a bunch of fried fatty glop laced to the point of chemical supersaturation with monosodium glutamate. But you should have known that already.

So if you want good taco flavor, you'll just have to go out and buy Doritos. Seriously, go buy taco flavored Doritos. Taco was the best flavor Doritos ever made and for some reason the marketing geniuses there think it won't sell. But since it's out in "limited release" right now you can help me prove those marketing weenies wrong. When the bags of taco flavor Doritos start flying off the shelves, they'll change their minds. And my efforts to lose weight will be for naught, but I'll have my tasty taco Doritos as consolation.

The Acne Of Middle Age

I've been coming home for lunches instead of eating at restaurants for about a week and a half. Part of it is that my usual lunch buddies are busy elsewhere, part is a desire to conserve financial resources. I didn't do it expecting to effect a significant drop in caloric intake. However, that seems to have happened. When we're out somewhere, lunch will often be something like a pasta dish, a Mexican entree, or a hot sandwich. Typically these days I heat up a can of soup and make a small salad, which is a somewhat smaller lunch than I would eat while out.

I may have lost a pound or two this way, I can't be entirely sure. My complaint is that this shift in eating habits seems to have produced a blossom of acne. Like the acne of puberty, middle-age acne seems to blossom while one sleeps, resulting in unsightly skin appearing in the morning. But unlike the acne of puberty, middle-age acne strikes all over the body instead of just around the face. It's annoying and unsightly.

There must be something in the soup or the salad dressing, which I'm eating more of, that is giving me this reaction. It probably isn't salt or MSG; I would expect that to be prevalent in restaurant food too. I wondered if it might be canola oil -- I'm eating a lot of salad dressing and that's the based of most dressings one buys in the store. But I would eat a fair amount of salads from restaurants too, and I have to imagine their dressings are also based on canola oil, since they come from foodservice providers who are functionally the same as the manufacturers of retail food products.

Wisdom From The Founders

Thanks to American Creation, we can credit a holiday recipe for eggnog to George Washington himself:

One quart cream, one quart milk, one dozen tablespoons sugar, one pint brandy, 1/2 pint rye whiskey, 1/2 pint Jamaica rum, 1/4 pint sherry—mix liquor first, then separate yolks and whites of eggs, add sugar to beaten yolks, mix well. Add milk and cream, slowly beating. Beat whites of eggs until stiff and fold slowly into mixture. Let set in cool place for several days. Taste frequently.

Sounds rich, Mr. President. And intensely alcoholic; by volume this eggnog is more than one-third booze. Not that those are bad things. My only criticism is that it looks like it lacks spice; a little cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg would do it good.

Caesar Salad

When you really want your umami, there's no substitute for this.

2 heads romaine lettuce, limp outer leaves removed
1/3 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
1/3 virgin olive oil (or extra virgin olive oil)
1 egg
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
3 tbsp. lemon juice
1 large clove garlic
½ tsp. pepper
4 anchovies
1 tsp. capers
1 tsp. brown mustard seed
a pinch of sea salt

Step 1: Coddle the egg
Bring a small saucepot of water to a rolling boil. Immerse the egg in the water for 45 seconds, holding it in a slotted spoon. Place the egg in the refrigerator until ready for use.

Step 2: Assemble the dry spice base
In mortar and pestle, grind the pepper and mustard. Thoroughly crush the garlic clove under the flat of a knife. Add salt, pepper, and crushed garlic to mustard powder.

Step 3: Prepare the liquid ingredients
Finely dice the anchovies and capers. In mixing bowl, combine the lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, diced anchovy, and diced caper. Mix well. Separate the yolk out from the coddled egg. Thoroughly mix all liquid ingredients until smooth using a wire or silicone whisk, then whisk in dry spice base.

Step 4: Whisk!
Very slowly -- about an ounce at a time -- pour in the olive oil. Whisk continuously while the oil is poured in until it combines before adding more oil. Ideally, the pour of oil is very slow and continuous during vigorous whisking. After all the olive oil is added to the dressing, then whisk in grated cheese.

Step 5: Adorn
Chop the lettuce into medium-sized chunks, separating out the cores. Drizzle the dressing on the lettuce and toss. If desired, shave additional cheese or add additional whole anchovies to dressed salad.

Coddling the egg first produces a creamier, better-mixed dressing than a raw egg yolk. You will not use the  albumen of the coddled egg but may retain it for use in some other dish (say, a quiche or a pie) if you wish; refrigerate it promptly.

If the idea of eating an anchovy repels you as it does many Americans, my first reaction is, "get over it," because what most people dislike about anchovies is their texture, and you should be chopping these little fishies almost into a paste. But if that is not enough to induce you to deal with the mere presence of the delicious fish, then you can swap out more capers for the anchovies. Doing so renders the salad truly vegetarian. I know of no substitute for Parmigiano-Reggiano which would then render the salad vegan -- and I can tell you that tofu won't do it because it's mainly protein and the cheese has a high fat content.

The original Caesar salad was invented by Caesar Cardini, a famous Italian immigrant who became a restaurateur in California during the early days of Hollywood. Cardini moved his restaurants from Los Angeles and San Diego to Tijuana, Mexico during prohibition, and the Cardini's restaurants, featuring Cardini's signature salad, became one of Tijuana's high-end tourist attractions during this time. His waiters would develop an elaborate show of making the dressing while telling jokes or describing their activities, particularly while pouring in the oil into the mixing bowl from a great height with one hand and whisking with the other. When you make the original Caesar salad as I've described here, you're re-creating a bit of Hollywood's golden age in addition to making a much, much better dressing for your salad than anything you could possibly buy in a bottle.

Another Suit I'll Have To Apologize For

Dr. Arturo Carvajal ate an artichoke at Houston's. An entire artichoke. Stem, spiky leaves, and all. That turned out to have what I'm sure were decidedly uncomfortable gastrointestinal consequences and consequently he sued Houston's for not warning him that there were portions of the artichoke that are not edible and you scrape the meaty, edible plant flesh off the leaves and then discard them.

Ken at Popehat more than adequately describes the massive forehead-slap lawyers around the country will go through upon hearing of this utter nonsense. We can be relatively confident that the suit will not result in a favorable verdict and very likely will be thrown out of court at an early stage of proceedings.

But shit like this doesn't make the job of opposing tort reform any easier. Seriously, Marc R. Ginsberg of Mandina & Ginsberg LLP in Miami Lakes, Florida (with a satellite office in Key West), what do you have to say for yourself when you've just fed choice ammunition to people who want to use the political process to take away your ability to make a living? And mine? Wasn't I just writing about having to exercise some discretion in case selection? You've been an attorney much longer than me -- what on Earth made you think you'd be able to get anything out of this case?

Good thing I've given up on teaching law classes. This is yet another one I might not be able to credibly apologize for.

Here's A Sign That You've Become A Grownup

When I was a kid, I turned up my nose at Brussels sprouts as thoroughly as if my mother had asked me to eat poached dog snot. But the other day, I saw a bag of Brussels sprouts at the store and thought to myself, "Self, those could be good." And they were good. I can't wait to have more Brussels sprouts. If you never thought you'd like Brussels sprouts, try this:


1 tbsp. olive oil
1 tbsp. butter
3-4 cloves of fresh garlic
pinch each of salt, black pepper, and cayenne pepper
15 (or so) medium-sized Brussels sprouts

Peel the garlic and crush the cloves under the flat of a large knife. Heat the butter and olive oil together above a medium high flame, stirring until the mixture is foamy. Reduce the flame and add the crushed garlic. Stir occasionally while you peel the outer layer out of any blemished sprouts, and then slice the sprouts in half lengthwise. Remove the now-toasted garlic (otherwise it will get bitter) and add seasonings to the foamy fat mixture. Lay the halved sprouts, cut-side down, in the fat, and cover the saute pan for about fifteen minutes. Serve fresh out of the pan, when the sprouts are firm, tender, and browned.

Next I'm going to try them steamed with dill weed and served up with a light lemon sauce.

Produce Identification Failure

Persimmons are, like, totally not pineapples.

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Three Dimensional Lime Matrix Explains All

I'm sure that real economists have thought about this issue already and my thoughts are well behind formal economic teaching. But for me, it started with The Wife asking for a packet of coffee sweetener for her margarita.  We observed that limes bought from Costco are just not as sweet as the ones we got from Trader Joe's the previous week.  It occurred to me that we paid at least twice as much for limes at Trader Joe's as we had at Costco.  But I preferred the higher-quality, higher-priced limes to the alternative, which required sweetener to overcome the sour taste.

Then it occurred to me that there were those sorts of people for whom the more sour limes were more desirable because they were less sensitive to the quality issue. They might be using the limes for something other than margaritas, they might be unaware of or indifferent to the idea that different limes have different tastes, they might be adding so much sweetener to whatever they were making that the sourness of the cheap limes didn't matter.  But for whatever reason, they wanted sour limes where I wanted sweet ones.

Now, I'd been considering comparative microeconomics the previous day anyway, as a result of explaining to a client that while the myth is that drug dealers make huge amounts of money for essentially no work, the reality is that there is so much competition for retail illegal drug sales that street-level dealers have to cut their profit margins to nearly nothing. The result being that drug dealers need economic support while they attempt to ascend the ladder of their criminal organizations. In our case, that economic support was the device of pooling resources: six drug dealers in a two-bedroom apartment unable to come up with $800 a month rent, ergo, an eviction against them. So if drug dealing were all that profitable, wouldn't six dealers be able to come up with $800 between them and thus avoid having to come in contact with the law? Clients angry at their tenants resist this line of reasoning, but I can find no flaw with it.

That was why I had microeconomics on my mind as I encountered the sweet-versus-sour lime dichotomy. I mentally graphed out the matrix as I'd been taught in college, with price the vertical axis and quantity on the horizontal axis, and two curves representing supply (increasing quantity as price rises) and demand (decreasing quantity as price rises) and with the intersection of those two curves representing the maximization of the rectangular area between that and the source point of the graph as the equilibrium point. Easy stuff, any microeconomics student should be able to do that.

But this did not explain the whole phenomenon with the limes. I preferred the pricier but higher-quality limes; other preferred the less-expensive but less sweet limes. I had been taught that when one good substitutes for another, that the substitute good works on its own microeconomic matrix. But here, it wasn't a question of a similar good. This isn't comparing limes and lemons. This is comparing high-quality limes to low-quality limes.

There needs to be a third dimension to the graph, I thought. Actually, I think I said it out loud, but fortunately The Wife didn't hear me because if she had, it would have been a complete non sequitur.  But the microeconomic graph representing the market for limes needs a "Z" axis, too, because sweet limes and sour limes are still within the market for limes globally, and are not really distinct goods from one another. 

Presumably, the sweet limes are more desirable than the sour limes, and therefore command a higher price. Furthermore, lime merchants can be expected to know a thing or two about the quality of the goods they are bringing to market and will demand prices accordingly.  I got to wondering what the curve would look like, and assumed that it would reflect a lower quantity of sweet limes as compared to sour limes, precisely because the price would increase, and because it dovetailed with my experience of seeing dozens of limes (which turned out to be sweet) available for purchase at Trader Joe's but hundreds of limes (which turned out to be sour) available for purchase at Costco. 

Thinking about what the graph would describe, my assumption was it would be a cone, or at least a section of a cone. A two-dimensional cross-section "slice" of the cone taken at the price apex would represent the price for the one and only superlatively sweetest possible lime in existence, the one so sweet it tastes like candy coming right off the tree.  Another "slice" would represent the price for the sourest but most plentiful limes out there, the ones used at the industrial foodservice level, for which only the tartness mattered because so much sugar would be added that the sour component of their taste was irrelevant.

But it might not necessarily be that way; it could be that most limes are sweet and command the higher price, and Costco assembles the remainders and sells them at a discount price.  Experience, however, suggested that sour limes were more plentiful but cheaper, so it seemed natural to assume that sweet limes would be more scarce and that explained the price differential.

Why aren't all limes sweet?  Wouldn't lime growers would prefer to sell limes that command a higher price as opposed to a lower price, all other things being equal?

In a world with a three-dimensional microeconomic matrix, however, all other things aren't equal.  The market will find its equilibrium point in such a world where the intersection of the supply curve, demand curve, and quality curves maximize the amount of money to be paid for the good in question.  That point might not be the point where all the goods that are available are of the highest quality. That point will be at the intersection between the arc describing where consumers find the balance between price and quality to be maximally acceptable, and the arc describing where producers find the balance between price and quantity to be maximally acceptable.

So my epiphany was that while individual consumers might prefer sweet limes to sour, the market as a whole might prefer sour limes to sweet, because that represented the efficient equilibrium point for the market. That's why my margaritas came out sour instead of sweet.

What I Learned In Cooking Class

As an early birthday present, and as an opportunity to get me back for all those times I've indulged her, The Wife enrolled us in a sous vide cooking class that we went to over the weekend. It was great fun! I was already well aware of what the sous vide water oven can do with meat so this was not a huge surprise to me. But there were plenty of things I learned about anyway.

• Better knife technique from one of the sous-chefs helping out with the class. Choke up on the handle and pinch the heel of the blade itself; don't run your index finger down the spine of the blade.
• All that stuff in my sous vide manual about avoiding alcohol, using only powdered garlic and powdered onion, and exercising restraint with other spices is all bullshit. The Doctors Eades who market the product apparently just like their food bland.
• They also like their food overcooked; the temperatures in the sous vide manual are too high.
• High temperatures will soften vegetables nicely. Pre-heat the sous vide to a high temperature, maybe 185 degrees, before adding vegetables and then immediately put them in an ice bath to blanch them while still in the bag, and they will stay greener. 
• Unlike meats, you can easily cook vegetables for too long in a sous vide.  An hour or so should do the trick.
• A ceramic santoku knife, although much lighter than the steel I'm used to, slices through raw potatoes like nobody's business. I may need to look in to lighter knives.
  
• Speaking of potatoes, I seemed to be the only one who thought potatoes were interesting subjects for cooking. I love eating potatoes and I notice they're popular whenever I serve them. Why don't other amateur cooks understand this and spend some time figuring out how to please their guests with this very affordable staple? Part of the ongoing and thoughtless campaign against carbohydrates, I suppose.
• As I learned through experimentation a few days later, too much fat added to the vegetable during cooking will leach out the chlorophyll and deaden the color, so I'll add to that -- sous vide your vegetables without butter or other fats, add those later. Adding fat to vegetables this way is pretty much the same thing as using a crock pot, and I already have one of those. I didn't learn this lesson at the class but I learned it as a result of the class.
• The sous vide is ideal for making delicate French dessert custards and silks, because the material will never boil and harden the egg or egg component in the ingredient. The sauvignon we had on the dessert was divine. Getting the liquid in the sealed bag, however, can be quite a trick.
• Melons can be compressed, softened, and infused with flavor (and sugar, if they are not naturally sweet enough for your taste) in the sous vide, at temperatures similar to those used for vegetables.
• Pearl onions taste great with a sprinkling of cinnamon, and they squirt free of their skins easily when you parboil and blanch them beforehand.
• Olive oil will produce the much-prized Maillard reaction just fine as long as it isn't smoking too much. Heat the pan up until the oil in it smokes, then let it cool until it stops smoking, then use the pan to brown your protein.
• We bought the right vacuum bag sealer. The one sold by the manufacturer of the Sous Vide Supreme got demo'ed at the class, was unreliable at sealing the bags, and it looked difficult to use.
• Ice baths for "blanching" the still-bagged food just out of a sous vide should be 80% ice and 20% cold water. 
• From a fellow student, a tip: the problem with using the butane torch that came as part of a gift crème brûlée kit was that it was too small and puny. No need for a special "foodservice" butane torch; one marketed for light soldering would be easier and safer to handle, cost less money, and hold more fuel. Obviously, do not handle while drunk, but that rule should have applied even for the puny torch.
• Once you've got your food above 140 degrees, the longer it cooks, the safer is is -- and thus the magic of the sous vide, which lets you keep the flavor and texture of rarer meats with the safety prized by lovers of well-done meat. The struggle with more traditional means of cooking isn't exposing the food to those kinds of temperatures, it's getting the food itself to elevate to those temperatures fast enough and for long enough that you don't lose the taste, texture, and enjoyment of what you're going to eat.

Not bad for an hour and a half, plus of course we ate the food we'd made which was quite good -- 1 hour was not quite enough for the potatoes but everything else turned out nicely. Kind of a high fat meal, because the potatoes and onions had both olive oil and butter in them and the lamb is high fat to start with even before it got seared in the olive oil. It's hard to go wrong with your taste when you use lots of good fats.

We didn't much like the traffic getting there or back but this sort of thing just isn't going to be found in the Antelope Valley. The rest of my present is on its way and should provide me with many challenging recipes and techniques to try, even if I can't realistically make use of all of them at home because I just don't have the budget or space or experience needed to upgrade from a sous vide oven to an immersion circulator or a salamander broiler around.

What I need next is a fine-mesh cone strainer for my sauces and stocks, and I think that I can do better than the price demanded for one by Snooty Kitchen Stores, Inc. They offered a nice class but their equipment isn't worth the price. In fact, I found a reasonable substitute for one-ninth the price on my very first search.

A Well Balanced Meal

Dinner last night was a martini and half a bag of potato chips. I'm sure my doctor would approve.

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More On The Brett Favre Story

[Cue music]

Anchor:  You're watching ASTN, the All-Sports Talk Network, and this is "False Start."  Here with us today is sports physiologist Jimmy Buckley, and Sterling Sharpe, Brett's former teammate and easily the best-dressed commentator on the NFL Network.  Let's start with you, Sterling.  Great suit!

Sharpe:  Thanks, man.

Anchor:  Now, Sterling, you were Brett Favre's teammate for a couple of great years back in the early 1990's.

Sharpe:  Yeah, that's right.  Thirty-four touchdowns Brett and me hooked up for.  We broke the single-season TD record, baby!

Anchor:  Boo-ya!  [Laughter, high-fives.]  Okay, let's get serious.  In that time, did you ever, you know, eat breakfast with Brett?

Sharpe:  Oh, sure.  We'd have breakfast before practice, before a game, or sometimes just hanging out.  And here's the thing that I think a lot of people on this story have overlooked.  Brett likes to eat salt and pepper on his eggs.

Anchor:  Salt and pepper, you say?

Sharpe:  Man, I seen him!  He just shakes that stuff on there like he don't care.  [Gestures wildly.]  Ketchup, too.  I went to Waffle House in Manitowoc with him one time back in '93.  Brett even had cheese on his eggs that day.  He was kind of a wild man back then, hah-hah!

Anchor:  Wow.  Okay.  Now, Jimmy, what's your reaction to this information?

Buckley:  Very interesting!  We can't be sure, because we haven't got this level of detail to know for sure if Brett did put pepper on his eggs this morning.  But if it's true that Favre made his initial sneezes right after eating eggs, this suggests that maybe it wasn't the eggs per se that made him sneeze, but maybe a stray whiff of pepper.

Anchor:  So if that's the case, then how does this affect his ability to play?

Buckley:  Well, that's where the antihistamine comes in.  You see, an antihistamine, sometimes called a "histomine antagonist," suppresses the body's reaction to allergic stimulants.

Anchor:  Stimulants, pills -- uh-oh!  Brett's had enough trouble with that sort of thing in his career!

Buckley:  No kidding.  So if he's using this --

Sharpe:  [Interrupts]  Whoa, whoa, whoa.  You guys are talking about a cold pill.  An over-the-counter thing.

Anchor:  What's your point, Sterling?

Sharpe:  Look, Brett went through a rough time back then, and he came out stronger for it.  That's the kind of guy he is, he always comes out tougher and stronger.  That's what I'm saying.

Buckley:  Well, the thing to remember here is that there are some kinds of histamine antagonists that have significant side effects, like drowsiness, dizziness, or even nausea, in some people.  [Sharpe shrugs, anchor nods.]  I can tell you that I wouldn't want to be out there playing football like that, for sure.

Anchor:  So if he suffers these side effects, that might affect his ability to perform?

Buckley:  Sure.  It slows him down, maybe just a fraction of a second, but --

Sharpe:  Man, a fraction of a second is an eternity out there on the field!  [Looks directly at camera.]  Brett, man, stay healthy.  For you and Deanna and those girls, not just all those fans out there pulling for you.

Buckley:  I should add, guys, that eggs are a really rich source of protein, and there's no doubt that for an athlete, especially of Brett's age, getting a lot of good healthy protein is an important part of an athlete's diet.  Now, all that cholestrol, I don't know.  But if it's pepper and not the eggs, that's more good news than bad.

Anchor:  Jimmy?  Does this affect whether Favre is gonna play?

Buckley:  Let me put it this way:  I'm in a keeper league, and Favre's been my guy since nineteen ninety five.

Sterling:  Sure, cause before that, you must have had me!  [Laughter]

Anchor:  Sterling, do you think he's going to play?

Sharpe:  Oh, yeah.  Brett's hungry, that's why he's eating eggs!  If his ankle is in shape, look out for Old Number Four.

Anchor:  Okay, thanks, fellahs.  Exclusively here an ASTN -- but wait, there's more.  Stay tuned for Molly McKleinquist's interview with a guy who used to be the mailroom clerk at Brett's agent's office, who says he's heard Favre sneeze like this in the past.  Is Brett Favre conjuring up old demons?  Find out after the break, only here on ASTN.  You're watching "False Start!"

[Music, fade-out to jock itch relief cream commercial]

...Yes, Readers, I'm getting a little tired of the inanity of sports radio.  I can't wait for the NPR pledge drive to be over and my research for fantasy football completed.

Axe Man

The Wife and I took out some bushes from our front yard over the weekend and replaced them with flowering plants.  Taking out the bushes involved me chopping them out with an axe and then digging out the taproots with a garden spade.  The post-yardwork margaritas made me feel better that evening but alas, I've no ability to enjoy such a painkiller today at work.

Summertime Margaritas:

6 limes
6 tangerines
1 cup añejo tequila
1 oz. agave nectar
6 cups ice
Splash of Grand Marinier

Juice the fruit, add all ingredients to blender, drink.  Repeat as necessary.

Tangerine Martinis

After getting home from work tonight, I took out one of the mason jars, the one with the fruit that is supposed to have the strongest flavor and therefore infuse the fastest -- the tangerines.  I strained out the excess pulp and got the vodka into a new mason jar.  The color was a pale, transparent orange, enough to hint at the flavor.

Of course, the real test is the taste, which was not so intense as I'd like.  Maybe it needed longer than a week.  The Wife thought they were a little bitter.  So next time I'll pulp and zest the tangerines and discard the rinds.  It makes me a little apprehensive about the cucumber, since the primary infusion there were peelings, and those are the bitterest part of that fruit.  (Fruit?  Vegetable?  I've always thought the meat of cucumbers was a little bit sweet, and sweetness is something you associate with fruit.)  But the berry and cucumber vodka need a while longer according to the infusion guides.

Still, the results are visually quite appealing and I like the touch of bitterness in the resulting martini.

Infusions

A little bit of extra money here at Soffit House has produced mason jars full of mid-range vodka steeping in cucumber peelings, tangerines, and raspberries.  Daily we take these jars out of the refrigerator and shake up the contents inside.  The cucumbers are holding up well but the berries are breaking down into mush, with the tangerines somewhere in between.  The clear vodka has preserved the brilliant colors of the food and, we hope, will capture the essence of their flavors for consumption in a few weeks.  We're looking forward to the martinis these will produce even if mason jars are not the most elegant-looking vessels in which to serve them.  Future projects will include pears, blackberries, and fresh herbs.

Deluxe Pabst Blue Ribbon

No, I'm not kidding.  The owners of Pabst Blue Ribbon are releasing an up-market, premium beer branded with the PBR label, called "PBR 1844."  In China.  For thirty times the price of the ordinary stuff sold there.

If there was ever an offender in the "hoppy, semi-sweet, tasteless, too-carbonated barley pop" category, it would be PBR.  There was never a sillier trend than when affluent urban hipsters collectively decided to drink PBR as an ironic affectation of their communion with the blue collar lifestyle.

I understand the corporation that bought out the original rights to the brand name wants to get value for their money and that the profit margin on premium beer may well be enough to justify making and selling something more on the order of barley wine than ordinary suds.  But the niche they've carved out for themselves is one that borders on the edge of kitsch; their other branding properties include Colt 45 Malt Liquor, Lone Star, Schaefer, Schlitz, Schmidt's, Old Milwaukee, Old Style, Stroh's, and St. Ides Malt Liquor. 

So did they not also get the rights to use "Best Select" along with the PBR brand?  That was the original name, after all.  Maybe you tie an actual blue ribbon around the neck of the bottle in another nod to the brand's history.  Seems like a good idea to me, but then again I chose a career in law, not in marketing.  So let's just add this to the "world turns upside down" file.

Via James Joyner.

Calabrian Umamimania Pizza

For a friend's "assemble your own pizza" party, this was my contribution. I confess I used pre-made crust and ragu for this today, because we just didn't have time today for me to make these things from scratch unless I skipped playing golf this morning after watching the gamecast of Italy-New Zealand's exciting tie.

Focaccia (or if you're in a hurry, pre-made) pizza crust
6 tbsp. ragu Bolongese
7-8 small globes of fresh buffalo mozzarella cheese, marinated in olive oil, oregano, and red pepper flakes
7-8 slices Salami Calabrese
½ shallot
5-6 cloves garlic
½ white onion
1 red pepper
6-8 anchovies
Extra-virgin olive oil (there should be plenty of this on hand at all times in any kitchen that is there for more than mere compliance with the building code)
A few pinches of corn meal (if using pre-made crust instead of your own focaccia)

Julienne the pepper, and mince the garlic, shallot, and onion.  Place on aluminum foil, drizzle olive oil on top, roast at 325° for about 20 minutes. Spread about 1 tsp. of olive oil over the bottom of the focaccia; sprinkle corn meal on bottom.* Spoon the ragu on the focaccia, spread around. Place roasted aromatics on top. Carve the mozzarella globes in half, distribute on pizza roughly evenly. Then distribute salami and anchovies on top of the rest. Bake until bread is a golden brown and cheese has melted. If necessary, allow to stand for a few minutes before serving to allow excess liquids to absorb.

Several things proved controversial with my very white-bread friends here. First, the cheese is not shredded and instead simply melts where it comes to rest on the distribution. Why there must be an even distribution of massive amounts of cheese on the pizza is beyond me because using good cheese is more important than using a lot of it. Second, many people fear the anchovy. They shouldn't; it's savory, salty, and absolutely delicious.** Third, some people seem to think salami only belongs in a sandwich. How is it different than pepperoni?***

Some people just can't stand this much umami.

On the other hand, some people had some other rather creative ideas for pizza.  I wasn't entirely sure what to think of spaghetti pizza -- it came last in the service and just about sent me into carbohydrate overload.  It came with some nice crumbled pork sausage and tasted pretty good, though.  Another person put three of the four seasons on a single pizza -- artichoke, olive, and mushroom; she omitted the ham because she is (mostly) vegetarian.

The Wife bypassed sauce altogether, spreading only some olive oil around and topped it with more of the roasted aromatics I used in the Calabrian Umamimania pizza (without the peppers, which she does not care for). I pulled a tricky one and bought Crimini mushrooms for her instead of those tasteless white things passed off as "food" to unsuspecting Americans. The Criminis and some black olives got marinated in some more olive oil, oregano, basil, garlic, and salt before being put on top of the pizza, and although I'm not usually much of a mushroom fan this was damn good stuff.  As I understand it, this is close to a traditional Sicilian pizza, in that the ingredients are baked directly into the crust.

But the biggest revelation was Caribbean-style pizza.  Hawaiian pizza, as some may know, is topped with Canadian bacon and pineapple.  Caribbean pizza is topped with banana and green onions. Surprisingly good.  A little looking around reveals that the use of banana and other sweet fruits on pizza may have originated in Brazil, which sort of makes sense when you think about it -- there is a large Italian expatriate and immigrant population and sweeter fruits are more plentiful there than the more savory vegetables and pork products favored in Italian and American pizzas.


* If you've made your own focaccia and done it correctly, this has happened already.  The corn meal is to help prevent the crust from sticking to the pizza stone.
** The Wife claims to like the flavor but dislike the "hairy" texture. It's no fuzzier than a peach, if you ask me, and it's packed to the gills (literally) with savory, salty yumminess.
*** Pepperoni is also good on sandwiches.  Come on, there's no rule against that.

French Garden Chicken

Four ½ breasts of chicken, filleted
¼ pound black forest ham, sliced very thinly
½ cup salt
¼ cup sugar
1 cup white wine
1 cucumber
2 carrots
3 stalks celery
1 medium shallot
1 white onion
2 lemons
8 oz. crème fraîche
plenty of freshly-chopped parsley
plenty of freshly-chopped chives

powdered garlic
ground white pepper
cayenne pepper
thyme

Zest both lemons thoroughly, conserve zest.

Begin the day before your meal by brining the chicken breasts overnight in plenty of water with ¼ cup of sugar, ¼ cup of salt, a bay leaf, and the juice of about ¼ of one of the lemons per chicken breast.

The next morning, slice the remaining lemon into thin rounds. Bring the white wine to a boil to remove the alcohol, cool rapidly in freezer. Vacuum-seal each brined breast with an equal distribution of the lemon wedges and wine, and moderate amounts of the herbs and spices (reserve some herbs for later). Sous vide at 63.5°C (145°F) for at least 4 hours and no more than 12 hours.

Meanwhile, clean the celery, carrots, and onion, and then purée them together with some salt. Set aside.

Shortly before service, skin the cucumber and clean the shallot. Purée cucumber and shallot into crème fraîche, along with the reserved lemon zest, a pinch of the powdered garlic, and the balance of the chives and parsley. If preparing in advance, keep crème fraîche sauce refrigerated until immediately before service.

About half an hour before service, begin to sautée the vegetable purée. Remove chicken from sous vide oven; allow meat to rest. Fold conserved liquid into vegetable purée, reduce until about half of the liquid is boiled away.

Place chicken breasts on grill for finishing and curing. Using silicone brush, generously coat both sides of each breast with the vegetable reduction, while on the grill. Allow heat from grill to adhere vegetable coating to breast and to lightly brown the chicken, roughly 60 seconds per side, turning twice. After the third turn over, drape the top of each chicken breast with a thin slice of the black forest ham.

Plate and dress with the crème fraîche sauce. Serves well with whipped potatoes with roasted garlic, pasta dressed in olive oil, or a fresh baugette, alongside steamed, blanched haricots verts.

Notes:

If no sous vide is available, roast the chicken until it is cooked through but not dried out, and finish over medium-high heat in sauté pan with a smaller amount of the vegetable reduction than described here, adding your own chicken stock as the liquid for the reduction.  The objective is to coat the chicken with the purée so as to blend the meat and vegetable flavors.

I suppose if you're a big mushroom fan, or you don't want to eat the ham for some reason, you could add mushrooms to this at some point, possibly swapping out the ham to make room for the fungus.  If you try this, beware the devoid-of-flavor white mushrooms Americans claim to love so much unless they are also sautéed in butter, in which case you're really overpowering the chicken and the sauce.  Similarly, the stronger earthy flavors of varieties like criminis, portabellas, or shitakes would weigh down the otherwise light feel of the dish.  Of course, if you don't mind a heavier dish, then maybe you go for both mushrooms and ham.  When you make it, it's your dish, do what you like.  But for me, using mushrooms in French-inspired cooking says "autumn" or "winter", and with this dish, I'm trying to say "summer."

As far as I'm concerned, there is no substitute for crème fraîche -- yogurt, sour cream, and buttermilk are all sort of similar, but not really the same thing as crème fraîche.  There is a product sold in some California markets I've seen called crema Mexicana which is about as close to crème fraîche as I've seen in the States; Wikipedia claims that there is a dairy product made in Appalachia called bonny clabber that is similar, but I never saw anything like that in Tennessee and it's not wise to believe everything you read on Wikipedia anyway.  But I just couldn't bring myself to name the dish after the delightful French town where I first encountered crème fraîche.

Service Matters

Last weekend, The Wife and I went out to our Friday night date.  We went to a new restaurant in the area, one that advertises that its very name refers to its excellence.  We, however, were underwhelmed, and in the process learned something about ourselves.

The food was actually quite good, for the price.  That wasn't the problem.  Neither was the beer selection, which was excellent, and the decor, that was interesting and enjoyable.  The problem was the service.

The service model appears to be "we will take care of you when it's convenient for us to do so."  When you show up, you wait in line to get a pager, and once you get that, you have to mill around the sidewalk in front of the restaurant looking at a high-gloss copy of the menu.  In this sense, the restaurant resembles nothing so much as the Department of Motor Vehicles.

When your pager buzzes, you are then given the privilege of standing in another line, which takes you to a counter, where your food order is taken and you are given a paper receipt to take with you.  If you order a soft drink, they give you a waxy-cardboard container.  Now, your experience has been upgraded to McDonald's.

Then, a hostess takes you to your seat.  You are met by a "D&D Specialist," meaning that she is in charge of bringing you "D"rinks and "D"esserts.  She runs a scanner over the receipt and explains that she's going to bring you your alcohol and later, your dessert.  She wants your order RIGHT NOW, even though you haven't had a chance to look at the drink list yet.  If you're one of those people who always orders the same thing, that's probably not such a big deal; but if you're there to sample new beers, the feeling is a bit rushed.  The "D&D Specialist" also informs you that even though it's six o'clock in the evening, they are almost out of desserts for the entire day, so if you want one, you'd better put your order in first.

Meanwhile, expediters from the kitchen run your food out to you.  As soon as it's ready.  One dish at a time.  The Wife got her soup within sixty seconds of our sitting down; my sandwich came a few minutes later, and the french fries came a good ten minutes after we were seated.

You might take for granted that things like plates, napkins, and utensils were either waiting for us at the table or were brought along with the food.  Not so.  If you want a napkin or a fork or a plate, you have to get up and walk over to the service station yourself and carry it back to your table yourself.  This has some minor upsides -- if you are having soup, for instance, you don't need a knife or fork so you can leave them there.  On the other hand, if you're going to sample your companion's food, that gets slowed down.  The utensils are also stored next to the soda fountains where you pour yourself your soft drinks or water, which are also near the pump stations for ketchup and other "dipping sauces" for your food along with the disposable paper mini-cups in which you are expected to take it all back to your table.

You are charged separately for the drink and dinner tab. No suggestions are offered about the tip -- do you tip for the entire meal, for just the drinks and dessert, at a counter-service tip rate for the food and a full-service rate for the drinks?  Are the tips pooled for the staff, since a massive number of people have actually waited on you?

This is not done for the purpose of reducing the demand for service.  The place is crawling with help -- busboys, expediters, "D&D" girls (who are all appropriately hot), hostesses, counter clerks, bartenders, and cooks.  If anything, there are more employees working here than at a standard full-service restaurant.  No, the customer-operated service stations appear to be an intentionally designed feature of the restaurant.

The Wife later theorized that the idea is to force you to interact with other customers, which might be an advantage if you're single and looking to meet other single people while waiting in line for a squirt of the pesto remoulade.

I noticed, however, that we were not in the place for very long.  Once we were allowed to enter, we were in the premises for not much more than half an hour, pretty much just as long as it took to eat the food.  So my theory is that it's set up this way so that the restaurant can turn the tables around faster and get more customers in.  We the customers get to wait outside and not enjoy the ambiance of the place, and in exchange the people who work there are able to perform their jobs more conveniently. 

Which is a bargain one can make, I suppose, but not one that sounds so great to me, the one whose role is also to pay for it all.

The result was that we both felt treated like livestock, and enjoyed what we had hoped would be a nice night out together a lot less than we would have otherwise.  So what we learned about ourselves is that we have risen above a threshold for service.  I don't mind ordering at a counter and doing some of my own table-bussing at a fast food restaurant, but I'm also paying a lot less, and it's not the sort of place that I would go expecting to have a nice date with my wife.  But at the point where I'm paying ten bucks or so per meal, my expectations are such that I expect to have someone wait on me so that I can relax and enjoy the company of my companions rather than doing the work of enabling a meal to be prepared, served, and eaten.

So this week, The Wife and I drove to Santa Clarita and tried another place that wound up offering a similar service model.  If anything, I enjoyed it less, because the quality of the food and the drink options were not nearly as good as what we had available closer to home.  However, we found that there were other options available afterwards -- not wanting to muscle our way in to a place like a bar at a chain restaurant, we chose to pay a little bit extra to have a drink and dessert afterwards at a swanky hotel bar, which was quiet enough that we could talk to each other and unpopulated enough that we were able to sit and relax easily.  We got good service, a good atmosphere, and didn't have to fight crowds or stand in line.  That's the way to go for a nice night out with your spouse.

Guidelines For Dinner Parties At Soffit House

1. If you aren't invited to dinner this time around, please don't be offended.  We can't have everyone over all the time.  We try to bring together interesting people interacting with one another.  Singles are welcome to, but not obliged to, bring dates even if we don't know them.  Married guests leaving their spouses at home got some 'splainin to do.
2. We like to start around 6:00 p.m. and generally, we're sorry to see you go whenever that time comes.  But we understand if you want to be home and in bed before midnight.  We have a spare bed available in an allergen-free room if you have a little too much to drink.
3. All food will be prepared from scratch, or very close to it. We might use dried pasta rather than rolling out our own. Or, as we've done with other guests who had a great time helping us out with it, we might just conscript you to help us roll out the pasta.
4. Booze, beer and/or wine will be consumed.  You don't have to drink it.  But we're going to imbibe freely.  The house drink is a vodka Aviation and if you haven't had one, it's worth trying.  So come thirsty.
5. The only thing we really want a guest to bring is interesting conversation.  Bottles of wine, dishes to pass, flowers, and other gifts are warmly appreciated and will be graciously accepted as tokens of friendship, but they are absolutely unnecessary.
6. Soffit House is not child-friendly.  We have no television, no toys, no video games, glass-topped coffee tables, unsafeguarded electrical outlets and unhatched cabinets.  There is nothing for your child to do here other than play with our pets, and they will lose interest in your child after about half an hour of play.  There are some power tools and spare sheets of lumber in the garage so if your child can amuse herself for hours on end with a double-miter saw while you booze it up in the other room, I suppose we can set her up there.  But if not, and you simply cannot leave your kids with a sitter or a grandparent for an evening, well, The Wife and I would be happy to to meet up with you and your charming-and-well-behaved children in some other venue, at some other time.
7. We love our proteins here.  Most likely, meat of some kind will be served as the focal point of the meal, and in generous quantities.  Sometimes, fish may be served.  If you are vegetarian, not a fish-eater, or are otherwise picky about your protein, you may be out of luck.  There will be plenty of other food for you and you wouldn't be our first dinner guest to make a (typically quite enjoyable) meal out of side dishes.
8. 
   Special dietary needs can be accommodated.  A preference for meat cooked to a temperature higher than "medium rare" is a "special dietary need" around here, and I'll need at least 48 hours notice that you want your steak medium or well done.  No vegetarian dinner guest has ever left Soffit House hungry.  But if you're a vegan, I can't offer the same assurance; see guideline #9.
9. You really ought to think of dinner over here as your "break day" from whatever diet or weight loss program you're on.  You're almost certain to be offered foods made using some kind of tasty animal fat.  I'm talking real butter, real bacon grease, real cheese, real cream.  No apologies will be made for the high fat content of any of these ingredients.  They taste good and the purported substitutes for these products produce unacceptably inferior results.  The Wife typically uses liquor (tequila and whiskey are her favorites for this purpose) instead of milk as the liquid ingredient in her batters, and butter cream frosting (primary ingredients being powdered sugar and butter-not-no-stinking-margarine).  This is all very tasty but none of it is even remotely dietetic.
10. If you leave hungry, it's surely going to be your own damn fault.  And we will try to send extra food home with you no matter how stuffed you say you are.