Having done enough physics for the day and evening, I sometimes just find a nice quiet (but not too quiet) bar and settle into a comfortable chair with a good book and a decent single malt.
Tonight there is rain pouring outside, the air was clear and damp with slight drizzle as I […] Click to continue reading this post
I’m a creature of habit, it must be said. Part of my morning ritual while at Aspen is to slowly stir some steel cut Irish oatmeal (click for larger view) for a while (properly spiced, of course, and soaked overnight ), while listening to NPR and making some tea. The tea is also seasoned with spices and finished in a pan for a while. Why?
Tea up here is horrible if you just pour boiled water on to tea leaves (bag or no bag). This is because at this altitude, boiling water isn’t actually very hot. This makes for […] Click to continue reading this post
They have begun to arrive!
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So I decided to experiment. Saturday started with me spontaneously mixing some ingredients together. There’s about two tablespoons of shortening, and of butter, and a sprinkling of sea salt. I put in one or two of the cups of flour and hand blended this all together. Then I mixed in a cup or so of the yeast culture that has previously featured in a few blog posts (here, here, and here). I’m sort of following my usual bread recipe that I’ve made in the past several years (with dried yeast as a starter) with a few adjustments here and there, trying to accommodate the different kind of […] Click to continue reading this post
Well, on day ten (see the earlier post, and also this one) I had no choice: I had to find the time to make some bread soon. I decided to try the default recipe, even though it was not much like the bread I make. One should try new things. The good news was that it is quick and easy to do, and so I did not need to set aside a huge amount of time. So after a bit of prepping:
…it was popped into the oven. Recipe (“remaining batter” is about 1.5 cups of the yeast starter left over from the doings on day ten… see earlier post) for this “Amish Friendship Bread”:
[…] Click to continue reading this post
Remember the Culture? Not the Iain M. Banks civilization, interesting as that is. I mean the yeast from last week’s post Culture is Science.
You’ll recall I mentioned that its primary role in the whole baking business is the production of carbon dioxide. Well, you only see that indirectly via the results of the baking, of course, but while it was going through the ten day growth phase, I got the chance (after feeding it on day 5) to get some nice pictures of the swollen bag that results from its generation of the gas after its munching down on flour and sugar: […] Click to continue reading this post
Well, on my way home on the bus just now I was the one responsible for the strange smell. Guilty as charged.
Let me explain.
This morning, a colleague, one of our teaching lab managers Joe, came by with a surprise gift. It was in a black bag, which I opened. Inside was a transparent bag with a quantity of mysterious looking goop in it. From it came the strong and very familiar smell of yeast. Along with it was a piece of paper with instructions.
Yes, it was/is a living yeast culture that Joe wanted to share with some friends. It was this that was with me in my bag on the bus just now. The idea is that you let it grow over ten days or so, and then you either make it all into a batch of bread, or you leave some over to make new cultures that you hand on to others after ten days and/or bake another batch of bread. What a remarkably unusual (these days) gift! (Thanks Joe!)
I’d actually been planning to start up my bread-making again (I used to do it a lot as a student, postdoc, and young professor-with-more-time-on-his-hands), and had […] Click to continue reading this post
[/caption]One of the offerings I whipped up for a gathering of friends at my place not […] Click to continue reading this post
It is just me, or… (#n in a series…)
For those of you who know and enjoy marmite (i.e., you’re in the UK or are probably from the UK), I have an important and most urgent question:
Well, the transformation continues apace. As of last year, North of the USC campus now has the wonderful Bacaro, and as of three weeks ago, we now have The Lab on the Eastern edge of campus. It’s a gastropub (it is quite charming to hear that quaint term from early 90s London being bandied about as new and hip over here out West now), done up with the feeling of a laboratory of sorts. I think it works rather well, and I entirely approve of the science theme.
The good news is that it actually does seem to be trying to do food somewhat a cut above the sort you get at your generic college campus dive. It succeeds with plenty of room to spare. I can see it as another place where both students and faculty can feel at home and find something on the menu that they like. There’s a surprisingly good selection of beers (no Duvel, Hoegaarden or Leffe, but I did spot a Chimay, so they pass) and several wines (did not explore the list on this first visit).
My risotto was pleasantly fresh tasting, with ingredients (including several different […] Click to continue reading this post
One of the star items that I brought out during a small food and wine gathering at […] Click to continue reading this post
Tasty goodies on display at Café Susina, as usual. Some are even appropriate to the day.
Enjoy!
It was an evening of reflection, a quick dinner, a nap, and then a moonlight walk until midnight. What was dinner? Some spontaneous improvised polenta squares. It’s been a while since we’ve been to the kitchen on Asymptotia, so come along…
Take some of the coarse ground cornmeal that’s great for making polenta (or tasty breakfast porridge, for that matter), and sprinkle it into some water, stirring immediately. Only then do you bring the water up to a boil, on a low flame. Putting the meal into hot water will make a lumpy mess. How much water to how much meal?
To be honest, I don’t really measure this. Just… enough. I use a small 5 inch shallow […] Click to continue reading this post
Well, I did a bit of an experiment the other day. I tend to have Illy coffee when I am away – Originally in Italy, when I used to visit the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, in the early ’90s. (Sigh….some very happy days were had on those trips…) At home, I routinely have reasonably good coffee made cafetiere style, using beans from GroundWork. Some months ago, however, I rediscovered one of my favourite stovetop espresso makers and started to use it again, grinding my usual coffee finer and getting quite a good cup. It started out as a treat in the morning, but gradually replaced more and more of my cafetiere cups of coffee. (Contrast here and here for example.) Then, after conversation with a friend of mine I found myself thinking about Illy coffee again and getting misty eyed. I got thinking – is it really as good as I remember it? Maybe it is partly just to do with being on my travels – the novelty, and some nostalgia for my days in Italy. Surely, a freshly ground set of good but non-Illy beans is enough to make as good a cup? I decided not to try this out, since I didn’t want to get hooked on the very expensive stuff when I was perfectly happy with my GroundWork beans.
But. I stumbled on a sampler pack of two 4.4 oz. cans of espresso preparations from Illy while browsing in a shop the other day, and so gave in.
Drat. Drat. It is so really very very good. And I’ve gone through one tasty can (the […] Click to continue reading this post
I’ve been meaning to tell you more about Michael Pollan. I’ve been planning a post or two about Summer reading, and was going to discuss the books of Michael Pollan to kick off a possible series. That plan was hatched in the late Summer of 2007… then the Fall came, and then the Winter and Spring… then Summer of 2008… never got around to it. Drat. (Checking back, I see that I started the series by talking about Haruki Murakami, here. So I’ll call this part of the series too, even though it is not really Summer.)
Anyway, the good news is that Pollan was on Fresh Air (NPR) yesterday, and as usual he was excellent:
In an open letter to the next president, author Michael Pollan writes about the waning health of America’s food systems — and warns that “the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close.”
The future president’s food policies, says Pollan, will have a large impact on a wide range of issues, including national security, climate change, energy independence and health care.
Here’s the link to the audio. Before you rush off to that, let me continue what I was going to say, at least in brief.
Pollan has risen to prominence, justifiably, mostly as a result of his excellent book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History Of Four Meals”. It is a delightful examination of the food industry, charting the route of much of the food that you eat […] Click to continue reading this post
