Well, now that the tyranny of the travel (nice phrase, huh?)
is finally behind us (collective sigh of relief) we can move on to whittle down
the mountain of things that have been bugging me lately, tie on the apron, food
writing and social media, and then maybe a little visit to the Buffalo Moon…
Blue Apron –
well, Blue Apron has two edges we find out after quite an extensive run with them (every page is a meal)...
The sharp edge is
that you get some interesting meals using ingredients which you don’t normally
run across, and the dull edge is that besides the cooking, you have to do all the prep work yourself. Which is fine, but on those nights when
you’re pooped, hungry, and late, “wash and carefully peel the carrots, slice
lengthwise, then thinly cut on an angle…” is not exactly what you want to take
on (along with the other many directions).
Not only that, if you enjoy a cocktail hour before dinner, sometimes you
turn into a slave of the timer, popping up and down to do this and that. Plus, there’s that bag of Kale in the
refrigerator that you really didn’t want to “Carefully wash, inspect, and
discard any leaves have……” and you’re still left with………kale. Something to
think about.
Tongs a lot! As you might remember MFO was recently up in
Annapolis for a conference on saving your collections in light of “water
rise”. Not just documents, but what
about historic buildings, furniture, etc. But, despite her grumblings and
misgivings, she begrudgingly had to admit that she did learn a lot of
interesting stuff, one of which was about food (sort of). As with most of these conferences food is
sometimes supplied and usually in the form of a buffet. As you know, I have problems with buffets in
general (please give us money so you can get your own food) a companion of MFO
made an observation which I will pass along.
One of those things which when you hear it, you go “Oh yeah! Me too!”, and it’s not about the food, rather
the tools you use to get it. For
instance, there might be a delicate scallop in bacon, or maybe a light
spanakopita, and there are tongs supplied that might handle hot rivets. And they are sprung so strongly it would take
a riveter to compress them. So you
either maul the piece or drop it. Then
you move on to say, the pasta or potato dish to find a spoon handle attached to
a glob of pasta or potato that completely fills the spoon so that getting some
for yourself is impossible. Or the soup
tureen that has a 4 cup ladle for you to fill your small bowl. Just another aggravation.
Speed Cooking (and
drinking!) - And I guess lastly, just a general comment on our food culture
(as perceived by me). I suppose it is a
spillover from the social media fervor to “get it out now!” Instant information, no time, two thumb a
text to somebody which is delivered in seconds.
Don’t think, compose, consider construction, grammar, just whack, whack,
whack, ….send! One of the myriad food
mags I subscribe to is the post Christopher Kimball Cook’s Illustrated. More and more articles are devoted to
finding a way to speed up cooking.
“Caramelized onions can take over an hour to achieve the golden brown,
sweet flavored consistency we are used to… I wanted to find a way to get the
same results in under (exaggerated) 10 minutes!” fine, cut corners, pressure cook, oven, etc. I also get “Milk Street” Chris’s new effort
which tends to be leaning a bit more toward international (“from Cambodia, a
Savory Mushroom- Pork Omelet”; or Tunisian Couscous Recipe) and classical time
honored techniques that, hey! Stock may take four hours!
So I was disappointed to see an article in sort of the “holiday
section under “Cocktails” entitled “A Martini.
Blended, not Stirred”… WTF? It talks about infused liquors more in use
by professional (ugh!) mixologists.
“conventional wisdom
is that infusing is a slow and persnickety process. Traditional infusions call for letting a
flavorful ingredient – fruit, spices, herbs, steep in a liquor for at least a
day, but often for week or more, then straining”
Yes, it does. Very wise, and how hard is that. Fine. What
else do you have to do? And then you get a quality ingredient for your well
appointed bar.
Okay, then comes the bombshell from the author:
“That’s crazy
talk. We get better results in about 5
minutes. Our secret? The Blender!” and then proceeds to tell
you how to put your flavoring agent with
the liquor in the blender, pulse briefly until finely chopped, strain, let it
rest a few minutes, and voila!
His example is a Lemon Grass Martini. Goes through the
rigmarole of the Lemon Grass…. Whirrrrrrrrr.
And out comes a CLOUDY MARTINI with entrained air. There is no crime to parallel letting a pristine Martini get spoiled by all that air. The joys of martini’s are that chilled,crystal clear liquid held high over a stemmed glass with a golden strip of lemon
gracefully floating within. (and the
second crime is stemless glasses).
Now I’m thirsty (is it five someplace?)
Okay, enough of that.
Last week was the full November (Beaver) Moon. Being a noted couch potato I didn’t get out
the tripod, trudge into the back yard mess with settings, I just sat on the
couch and shot through our windows.
Hence a ghost image here and there and a doubling because of the
thermopane. Besides, I’m not going to
publish them, just share with you. I
cranked the ISO way up, and had at it. Not
too bad..
Started with moon rise to a cloudy sky over the river...
And then as it climbed into the night sky more nice peeks between the clouds.
Kinda nice.
Speaking of sky, we’ve had quite a few Laughing Gulls
assembling out back, sometimes on the river, sometimes in the air
They were feeding on something, all were pretty much
DFD
