Evora, Portugal: historic European city is more high-tech than San Francisco
Sent from my iPad
Theo's posterous
Homemade Kimchi!
My good college friend shared one version of his family's kimchi recipe with us in our wedding recipe book. He is visiting SF now, so of course we needed to make kimchi together! I picked up the requisite ingredients including the essential Korean wet salted shrimp and korean crushed red pepper from Woo Ri, a Korean store near Japantown. Making it together was awesome, because now I know how things are supposed to taste at different stages during the cooking process. The kimchi is fermenting right now, can't wait to eat it.
Rum taste off
While on Kauai, we stumbled upon the Koloa Rum Company. We didn't have time to take the tour, but we managed to pick up a few bottles of the award winning (2010 Rum XP Gold from the Miami Rum Renaissance Festival) Koloa Dark Rum to give out as gifts. Of course I made sure we also got one for ourselves and last weekend we had our first taste of it.
In order to have a basis for comparison, we made it a taste off between Diplomatico Venezuelan rum (our current favorite) and the Koloa Dark Rum. On first smell, the aroma of the Koloa smells awesome, sweet and vanilla-ish, while the Diplomatico is has a more muted scent. In the mouth, both are pretty tasty. After swallowing, the Diplomatico really shines, going down smooth and leaving a deliciously complex flavor in the mouth. The Koloa Dark could not quite keep up with the Diplomatico at this point, being a little harsher on the throat and not leaving that delicious flavor that I was expecting upon smelling it.
For me, Diplomatico is still the best, but Koloa Dark is good. I hear that it makes an incredible Mai Tai, so I think that needs to be the next test!
Ruby on Rails syntax highlighting for gEdit 2.30.3 on Mac OS X (Snow Leopard)
There are good guides for enabling Ruby on Rails syntax highlighting Linux (http://www.web2linux.com/06/make-gedit-more-like-textmate/), but I couldn't find anything about which directories to put the .lang and rails.xml files into for Mac OS X. After searching around in the file system and some experimentation, I found out that the appropriate directories are in the gEdit application bundle. Appropriate files and locations are listed below. I've also attached an archive with the files in case you can't find them.
put rhtml.lang, ruby_on_rails.lang, and yaml.lang into
/Applications/gedit.app/Contents/Resources/share/gtksourceview-2.0/language-specs/
put rails.xml into
/Applications/gedit.app/Contents/Resources/share/mime/packages/
(I had to create the "mime" and "packages" folders)
Paper Animation: Jungle Jim
I saw these paper animation kits somewhere on the internet and managed to buy a couple of them at the SF MOMA store last year. I finally finished putting one together, behold Jungle Jim! Interactive mechanical sculptures made out of paper! I enjoyed the building process, but it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. You can get them from Flying Pig online http://www.flying-pig.co.uk/store/robives. I especially like the T. Rex.
They also have a free model that you can print out at home, just make sure to use stiff paper or cardstock when you print it out.
http://82.165.2.248/pages/freesheep.htm Click the "Download the free file" link.
(download)
Quiche
After eating quiche at Tartine, I was challenged to see if I could make one that was as good or better (specifically to make a quiche as tasty as Tartine's, but not quite as rich). Prior to starting this challenge, I've probably only made one quiche in my life and was still mystified as to how to make a good pie crust from scratch. The only rule I've set for myself is to avoid the use of bacon. Since bacon makes everything delicious, using it would be cheating.
Online searching turned up two recipes which I thought looked promising. One recipe is for leek and mushroom quiche from Smitten Kitchen, the other is for Tartine's quiche of the gods from Local Forage. I made a hybrid of these recipes because I liked the preparation of leek and mushrooms in the Smitten Kitchen recipe, but the egg mixture in the Local Forage recipe looked more exciting. For the crust I followed the Smitten Kitchen recipe, but I didn't use a food processor, opting instead to go with my seldom used dough blender (which is AWESOME) and some muscle power. Recipes are below, scroll down for pictures.Here are the recipes with my adaptations. My notes are in orange.
Pate Brisee (short pastry crust)
Taken from Smitten Kitchen, which was adapted from Martha Stewart and Julia Child
Makes one tart dough
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon sugar (omitted since we're making a savory pie)
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small pieces (i didn't cut into small pieces)
2 to 3 tablespoons ice water
1. In the bowl of a food processor, combine flour, salt, and sugar (omitted sugar). Add butter, and process until the mixture resembles coarse meal, 8 to 10 seconds. I put the ingredients into a large stainless steel bowl and used a dough blender until the mixture resembled coarse meal, a few minutes.
2. With machine running, add ice water in a slow, steady stream through feed tube. Pulse until dough holds together without being wet or sticky; be careful not to process more than 30 seconds. To test, squeeze a small amount together: If it is crumbly, add more ice water, 1 tablespoon at a time. I gradually added the ice water (1T at a time), tossing the mixture with a fork until the dough just comes together. (it took me about 5 T of water)
3. Form dough into a single ball, flatten it into a disk, and wrap in plastic. Transfer to the refrigerator, and chill at least 1 hour. Dough may be stored, frozen, up to 1 month.
4. To par-bake the shell: Roll out the chilled dough as quickly as possible on a lightly-floured surface until is about 2 inches large all around than your pie pan. Either reverse the dough onto the rolling pin and unroll it over the mold or fold it into quarters and lay it over the mold, unfolding it. Press the dough lightly into the bottom of the pan, lifting the edges and working it gently down into the mold. Trim off excess dough by rolling the pin over the top of the mold. I used a 9.5 inch pyrex glass pie pan.
5. With your thumbs, push the dough 1/8-inch above the edge of the mold, to make an even, rounded rim of dough around the inside circumference of the mold. You can then press a decorative edge around the rim of the pastry with the dull edge of a knife. Prick the bottom of the pastry with a fork at 1/2-inch intervals. I didn't push the dough 1/8 inch above the edge of the mold and pricked the crust less often than 1/2 inch intervals.
6. Line the pastry with foil and fill it with pie weights, uncooked rice or beans and bake in a preheated 400 degree oven for 8 to 9 minutes. Remove the foil and bake the shell for 2 to 3 minutes more. Remove it from the oven when the shell is just starting to color and just beginning to shrink from the sides of the mold.
7. If it seems to you that the sides of the shell are too fragile, or liable to crack or leak with the weight of the pie filling to come, do not unmold until your tart or quiche is filled and fully baked. To unmold it, slip it onto a rack so air will circulate and cool it, preventing it from getting soggy.
Mushroom and Leek Quiche
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen and Local Forage
5 large eggs
3 Tablespoons all purpose flour
1 cup crème fraîche (I substituted 1 cup Greek yogurt because I couldn't find creme fraiche)
1 cup whole milk (I substituted 1 cup 2% milk)
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground back pepper
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh thyme (I substituted 1/4 t dried thyme)
3 to 4 leeks, white part only, sliced
1/2 cup water
Salt
3 tablespoons butter
5 to 6 large white mushrooms, sliced
1 tablespoon port
1/4 cup grated Swiss cheese (mozzarella works too)
1 recipe pate brisee, par baked in pie pan
Boil the leeks over moderately high heat in a heavy-bottomed, covered saucepan with 1/2 cup water, two tablespoons butter and a teaspoon of salt until the liquid has almost evaporated. Lower heat and stew gently for 20 to 30 minutes until leeks are very tender. Put them aside in a bowl.
Add a tablespoon of butter to the pan along with the sliced mushrooms, 1/4 teaspoon of salt and port. Cover pan and cook over moderately low heat for 8 minutes. Uncover. Raise heat and boil for several minutes until liquid is completely evaporated and mushrooms are beginning to saute in their butter. Remove from heat and stir cooked mushrooms into leek mixture.
Place 1 egg and flour in bowl of a stand mixer or a large mixing bowl and mix at high speed. Whisk/mix the remaining 4 eggs until blended.
In a medium bowl, whisk the crème fraîche until perfectly smooth, then whisk in the milk. Pour the egg mixture through a fine-mesh sieve held over the milk mixture. Whisk in the salt, pepper and thyme. Stir in leek and mushroom mixture. The Greek yogurt was already perfectly smooth without whisking
Pour egg mixture into fully baked deep tart or pie shell. Sprinkle grated swiss cheese evenly over the egg mixture. Place in the oven and bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 325 degrees and bake until the filling is set, about 30 minutes or longer. I had a lot of leftover egg mixture after filling my pie shell, I used it to make a bunch of crustless mini-quiches in cupcake wrappers. On one of my iterations, I substituted mozzarella for swiss, it worked well.
The center of the quiche should feel slightly firm. Let quiche cool on a wire rack for at least 20 minutes to allow the custard to set up, so it will slice neatly. It can be served warm or at room temperature.
Heavy Cream + 4ish Months in Fridge = Butter!
Today I found a carton of heavy cream in the refrigerator that had
been forgotten for around four months (we've all done it!). In emptying
the carton for recycling, I discovered, unsurprisingly, that the cream
had solidified. However, instead of some foul smelling mass of rotten
cream, the solid I pulled out of the carton smelled and felt like
butter!
would be delicious.
The Cat!
Mochi the cat.
