malvasia bianca

As I have, perhaps, alluded to previously, we spent the second half of April in Paris. Notes:

• It’s the most wonderful place in the world, but I’m actually not feeling particularly compelled to visit it again any time soon. Some of this has to do with the fact that I’ve been there eight times; some of this has to do with the fact that I rather enjoyed spending the week between Christmas and New Year’s at home, and am not sure how much I want to do any vacationing for the sake of vacationing. Of course, this is all subject to change at any time, and Liesl and Miranda may have different opinions.
• We’ve had bad hotel luck in the past; based on recommendations from comments on this blog post, we decided to try renting an apartment this time. We went with absoluliving; not as cheap as a cheap hotel, but for the same price as a decent hotel, we could get two bedrooms and a living room, with a clothes washer, a stove (not that we used it), a fridge. Or at least we thought that’s what we were getting; the day before we were supposed to leave, they e-mailed us to tell us, with no explanation whatsoever, that they were changing apartments on us; we ended up in a one-bedroom apartment, which they had the gall to call an upgrade because it was in a trendier neighborhood. To be fair, the apartment wasn’t a complete unknown, since we’d marked it as acceptable from the list of apartments they’d initially proposed to us, but I still didn’t appreciate the bait-and-switch, or whatever it was, at all. (Also, to be fair, I’m happy enough with the area we ended up in, and will consider staying near République in the future, but I didn’t like being in the middle of a very long block on a side street.) The other problem with the apartment was that one window kept squeaking open and closed all night when it got really windy; I’m not really mad at them about this, because I’m not sure how they would have discovered it by inspection, but it does point out a problem with an apartment agency that you don’t have with a hotel, namely that you can’t just complain about a maintenance problem and have them move you, because they might, say, be closed on the weekend. (Fortunately, it happened on a Thursday, and they managed to get somebody in on Friday who eventually stopped the squeaking by duct-taping it shut.) Anyways, one separate bedroom (Miranda was in a sofabed in the living room) is vastly better than everybody sharing a bedroom, so the general idea was a good one.
• Poor Liesl was sick some of the time; fortunately, it wasn’t nearly as bad as when we were in Amsterdam, but she stayed in the apartment for three (two?) of the days because of that. Partly because of that, we didn’t go to as many restaurants as we might, but we still got some good food out of the trip (including one from a restaurant that apparently changed hands about a week after our last trip and was completely, surprisingly different this time); visiting salons de thé in the afternoon may have been my favorite part of the trip. (The pizza at decent Italian restaurants in Paris is quite nice, too.)
• Why had I never heard of Lovis Corinth before? My first reaction is that I’d rather look at his art than, say, that of Van Gogh or Gaugin or Seurat. Looking at labels suggested that part of the reason is that his art is scattered around museums in Germany instead of clustered in museums in Paris; glad I’m aware of him now.
• The baboons at the zoo in the Bois de Vincennes are a hoot.
• Having internet access in your apartment is a good thing. And no, this is not a sign that I need to relax and tear myself away from the internet: this is a sign that I don’t feel compelled to spend every vacationing hour traipsing from site to site and can, instead, spend time in my hotel just enjoying myself without feeling guilty that I should be doing more on vacation.
• Having a washing machine in your apartment is also a good thing. And points out another benefit to the internet: if your washing machine is refusing to wash and just blinking when you hit a number, you can google the model name and get a manual. (Answer: you accidentally hit the child lock button; hold it down for four seconds to unlock, and what you thought was the off button is actually the start button.)
• Miranda’s favorite museum turned out to be the sewer museum.
• Sacré Coeur is distinctive to look at from a distance but boring on the outside. Not so Notre Dame: there’s something to be said for thousands of people working for hundreds of years to produce something glorious.
• I really am not impressed by the current Orangina ad campaign: large-breasted zebras just don’t do it for me. Sex, fine; animals, fine; combining the two, ick.
• We forgot to buy a power converter; fortunately, the basement of BHV had them for sale. (They had one that went both directions, 110-to-220 and 220-110.)
• Traveling with several puzzle books from Nikoli was an excellent idea: not only are the puzzles top-notch, but the narrower-than-US form factor meant that I could slip one into my jeans pocket, which is very useful when walking through museums where I’ve had to check my backpack, finding myself a room or two ahead of Liesl and Miranda because we go through them at a different pace, and needing to amuse myself. I’m getting a bit burned out on Nurikabe (though I still think they’re an excellent puzzle variant), and Number Link isn’t my fave (once the puzzles get out of the easy range, I have a hard time proving my solution is unique, which frustrates me), but I’m still a big fan of Masyu and Slitherlink. I’ll have to try some of their other puzzle types.
• I really can dial down the number of books that I take on a trip these days: I have enough other entertainments that I don’t need to carry nearly as many to avoid running out of them. (And there are always bookstores if I guess wrong.)
• Heavy curtains are great for the first night or two after getting off the plane, but in retrospect I should have stopped closing them completely after that: I never really got my clock adjusted to Paris time. The flip side of which was that lying awake at night gave me lots of practice in going over my Joyo kanji…

Xanh (warning: web site has completely gratuitous Flash usage), our local excellent upscale Vietnamese restaurant, just moved into larger digs; glad they’re doing well. The new digs are a bit hip for me, and in particular the room that pairs interesting artwork with green ceiling lights (washing out all the colors in the artwork; I wonder what it makes your food look like?) is not an inspired choice. But the food is superb, which is all that really matters; if it’s a little easier to find a seat at the new location and if it lets them have a slightly larger menu, I’m all for it.

Jordan, have you eaten there? If not, we should take you there the next time you’re in town. For locals, the new place is basically right across the street from the old place. (Same block, a few storefronts closer to the train tracks.)

As my coworkers can attest, I am a big fan of Trader Joe’s cocoa-covered almonds. So, on a recent trip to the store, I decided to branch out into their other chocolate/almond combinations, and bought a package of chocolate-almond clusters and a package of almonds covered with chocolate, sugar, and salt.

The former were quite yummy, in a relatively uncomplicated way. The latter, though, were different in a somewhat interesting way, but not really what I wanted to snack on for dessert.

After a few weeks, though, it turns out that I was taking the wrong approach to the latter. You see, we keep the Trader Joe’s plastic containers of chocolate (as opposed to the bars of chocolate) in the shelf on the cabinet where the garlic lives. So whenever we cook a meal involving garlic (in other words, whenever we cook a meal), we temporarily put the chocolate on the counter. (Digression: have I mentioned here my notion that any food goes well with either chocolate or garlic? And a quiz for my readers, what foods go well with both?) At which point we, of course, snack on the chocolate.

Which works well with a wide range of chocolates (including the cocoa-covered almonds that started this all off; a great time for Milk Pail dutch mints, too!), but in particular the chocolate-sugar-salt covered almonds turn out to be just the thing to snack on while, say, preparing some sort of garlic-laden pasta dish. The salt is just the thing to tie the chocolate to the other aromas that are wafting through the kitchen, to balance against the other bits of ingredients that you’re nibbling on while cooking.

I’m still waiting to find the right time for their chocolate-covered crystallized ginger, though. I think it might actually work fine as a dessert for some people, I just don’t like crystallized ginger enough…

(Hmm, have I posted the recipe for ginger chicken from the Elephant Walk? I should do so. But does anybody read those recipe posts? Not that that normally stops me…)

For future reference: gummi bears are not an acceptable substitute for gum drops when baking. They have a significantly lower melting point.

Some random notes from our recent trip to Boston and its environs:

• T tokens are no more. Which made me a little sad, but I was very happy that, when arriving Tuesday evening for a trip where we’d be leaving the next Tuesday morning and would spend three days outside of Boston, there was a week pass available that was a good value. And I now know that kids under 12 can ride for free, but didn’t know that when buying the passes…
• I was surprised that we got a good rate at the Park Plaza for a couple of days - is it normally affordable, or did we get lucky with a Tuesday/Wednesday request? Good location (though it took us a little while to find it, because we were confused by the construction at the Arlington T stop), and I could live without free internet access for two days. And an Amino set-top box on the TV - just like being at work!
• Hampton Inn has decent internet access at no extra charge. Though I was pretty annoyed at the fake nameserver at the Norwood one that sticks in an ad page if an address doesn’t resolve. Especially the one evening when, for whatever reason, a fair number of lookups were timing out, poisoning any future requests to those domains for the next 15 minutes or so. Not good if you’re reading blogs and can’t get to feedburner.com any more…
• I was impressed how we could get from downtown Boston to a turnpike entrance three short blocks away to out of town almost immediately. Especially since it doesn’t feel like there’s a turnpike cutting through downtown Boston, though I realize that I have walked on bridges over it several times.
• Sturbridge Village turned out to be a really good choice for a place to spend much of a day. Enough stuff to keep us interested, very low key, we got to see 1820’s welding technology in practice, Miranda liked it too.
• The suburbs that aren’t in the inner ring seem to kind of suck, at least near the arteries. I was not pleased with being stuck traveling at 5 miles an hour on 128 at 5pm, and route 1 in Norwood was not a place where I’d want to spend much time, if largely for aesthetic reasons.
• Got to see a couple more retirement communities. I’m glad these things are around. (Though I’m sure there are bad ones out there, too.)
• Didn’t get to see almost any friends or old haunts: we were too busy doing other stuff. Which is fine, actually: almost all of my Boston-area friends have moved away. I wish I’d had another day to just putter around places, but I can live with that.
• The MGA is still active. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it on a Tuesday or a Friday, so I didn’t get to see any of my old friends from the club, but you can get together a few people to play go on a Sunday at the Diesel Cafe. Which apparently opened about a year after I left the area; it’s a long narrow space (running all the way through the building from one street to the next), with good food and pleasant decor.
• That day, about 75 percent of the people in the cafe were using laptops, and about 20 percent of the people were reading the latest Harry Potter. (Which had come out the day before.)
• I enjoyed meeting blog reader Chris Ball in person (and other MGA members and Chris’s wife Madeleine), and we had a couple of exciting games - we turn out to be quite close in strength, conveniently! And I got to see the OLPC laptop in person, too.
• Harvard Square is doing okay; a few stores I like closed, one out-of-place building has appeared, but no wholesale destruction. Wordsworth’s has closed (though their children’s book store still exists, didn’t go in to see what it’s like these days); Harvard Book Store is still open. (I also didn’t go into the Coop to see what it’s like these days.) I’d be willing to believe that the square is declining, but I’d also be willing to believe that it’s at a steady state.
• And Schoenhof’s is still open. I broke my rule and bought several books that I don’t plan to read immediately, that indeed it’s not completely clear that I’ll ever read. But I was just so happy that the store is there! One book on learning kanji that I actually have started, a general Japanese grammar, and small individual books on verbs, particles, and connections (”Making your Japanese Flow”.)
• Grammar and verbs are pretty basic concepts, but I like the ideas of books on particles and connections. I was going to say that those seemed like “only for Japanese” sorts of things, but of course there’s The Greek Particles.
• We went to a couple of old favorite restaurants. The food at Chez Henri is still good, but the waitress we had drove me crazy. When I go out to eat, I do so for exactly two reasons: the food and the company of people I’m eating with. The waitress apparently thought that I had several other goals for the evening, prioritizing (among other things) her comedy routine above, say, getting us dessert menus. I am pleased to say, however, that the Elephant Walk still has both excellent food and excellent service. (Though it’s not that much better the food we make at home from their cookbook.)

Not sure when we’ll visit again, but I’m glad that we’ve managed to make it back every four years or so.

It’s been more than a year since I posted a recipe: it’s not clear that anybody is interested in them, and while that doesn’t stop me most of the time, it seems particularly pointless in the case of recipes. Still, every once in a while, somebody comes over for dinner and wants the recipe for whatever we serve them, so the blog posts have done some good.

Anyways, we cooked this recipe tonight, as we do every month or two, it’s really easy and good (waiting for the water to come to a boil is the longest step), and I’m in the mood to food blog. So here we are again. We actually ate at the Procope restaurant when we were last in Paris; nothing like this recipe on the menu that time. Good food, though; not sure I’ll make a point of going back, but I’m happy to have gone.

One caution: this recipe leans heavily on oil-cured olives, and good oil-cured olives are hard to find. Actually, oil-cured olives in general are hard to find, unless you patronize high-end grocery stores; and many places that have them only have one kind, which may or may not be any good. So be warned: you may have to go through a bit of searching before finding some that you like. I suspect the recipe would be okay with, say, kalamatas, but I won’t guarantee it.

You don’t really need 1/2 pound of prosciutto, but we regularly use about 6 ounces when making this, and I’m sure the extra two ounces wouldn’t hurt. I’m not the biggest thyme fan; fresh thyme isn’t the sort of ingredient that we measure carefully, but I suspect that the amount I prefer is less than the 2 tsp called for below.

Pasta Procope, from Patricia Wells’ Bistro Cooking

1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
salt to taste
1/2 cup olive oil
8 oz prosciutto
1/2 cup oil-cured black olives, pitted
2 tsp freshly snipped thyme
grated zest of 2 lemons
black pepper to taste
1 pound thin pasta (capellini, angel hair, etc.)

Mix lemon juice, salt, olive oil in a small bowl. Combine everything else. (Except for the pasta, of course!) Cook the pasta, mix everything together.

• I didn’t realize it was possible to beatbox while playing the flute.
• Gyoza stadium sounds awesome.
• Star Wars in ASCII.
• I spent a pleasant hour last weekend watching Ben and Fitz’s poisonous people talk. (And then caught myself exhibiting one of those symptoms on a mailing list last week. Sigh…)
• I suppose you’ve already seen Peter Gutmann’s cost analysis of Vista content protection, but if not, give it a read.
• I didn’t really get Line Rider the first time I saw it, but now I’m starting to understand. Also a good example of why we don’t want copyright law to get in the way of mixups.
• Map of the internet.
• The Japanese Wii safety manual.
• A nice optical illusion page.
• Go Sun!

We had dinner at the excellent Sushi Tomi tonight. Two of the tatami tables were taken over by a birthday party, hosted by a young caucasian girl, with a Bob the Builder theme. Multiculturalism at its best.

I hope that those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving had a nice one. We did; a congenial bunch of guests, a meal headed by cambodian chicken curry. Though there were other nice bits on the menu - in particular, Liesl made a very pleasant beef soup, also from The Elephant Walk Cookbook, and we made a very good (and easy!) chocolate cake from Bittersweet, which I continue to recommend highly. Zippy got bits from the soup as it was being prepared, and spent the entire meal asleep with a happily bulging stomach.

And I played several games of go today at KGS. I’d only played one other game in the last two or so years (other than the recent games against Miranda), and I hadn’t played online in more than a decade. But I had several quite pleasant games, people were very nice, I didn’t mind the online aspect as much as I’d feared (though I would hope I wouldn’t have lost one of the games in such a boneheaded fashion on a real board, but who knows), and I now have an official rating there. Of 6k, while information elsewhere suggests that, based on my AGA rating of 1k, my KGS rating should be about 4k. So, with luck, I should be able to bump it up a couple of stones.

My joseki knowledge has largely flown out the window. I should probably remedy that, but so far it doesn’t seem like a big deal - my other competitors’ joseki have also been a bit off, and they probably wouldn’t know how to punish my mistakes even if they did have joseki memorized. I’ve been surprised at how well I’ve been doing in the openings of games: that’s my traditional weakness, and even though I’ve probably been sandbagging a little, I wouldn have expected to come out of the openings more or less even at best.

We are, alas, moving to the main Menlo Park office - no more horses and beautiful scenery around. But maybe I’ll be able to occasionally get games against real players over my lunch break. I should see if there’s some Sun Menlo Park social mailing list where I can ask about that.

I should really catch up on my blogging; in the mean time, some random links:

• Will it blend? I know where I’m buying my next blender from.
• John Baez on the state of fundamental physics.
• Just the link for the panda fan in your family.
• A followup to a traffic experiments article that I mentioned before.
• An interesting discussion of options and their applications to software development.
• Gender, kids, careers, surprises.
• Botnets turn out to be kind of cool.
• Nice use of AJAX for commenting on public drafts.
• Yum?

I had not realized until recently that carpaccio only dates back to around 1950.

I’m pretty sure this is from The Top One Hundred Pasta Sauces, by Diane Reed, but that book was Jordan’s, so I can’t say for sure. The original recipe recommends spaghetti (or even vermicelli, which really doesn’t sound like a fit to me), but I prefer the fusilli that another recipe recommends: that way, the capers can nestle in the spirals.

The eggplant is the chief determiner of the quality of the dish. I’m too lazy to do the whole “purge eggplant by salting it” deal, but I put in a lot of olive oil (not quite deep-fry level, but close - actually, deep frying would probably work great!) when cooking the eggplant, and cook it for a while. (And then pour out some of the olive oil after cooking the eggplant.)

Quite a substantial sauce, but everything in it is good.

1 lb fusilli
1 eggplant
olive oil
3 cloves garlic
4 anchovy fillets
14 oz can tomatoes
12 oz jar roasted red or yellow peppers
2 Tbsp capers
12 pitted black olives
a bit of minced basil, or dried basil
1/2 cup parmesan cheese

Cube the eggplant, and fry until soft in the olive oil. Mince garlic and anchovies, chop tomatoes, and add them to the sauce. Cook for about ten minutes. Slice peppers into strips add peppers, capers, olives, and basil, and cook for another ten or fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, cook pasta; mix pasta, sauce, and cheese.

Cleaning out my list of saved links:

• A visit to the Ghibli museum.
• Lean manufacturing books are next up on my reading list.
• I’m glad some Congresspeople are seeing the DRM light…
• Because the bad guys aren’t about to let up.
• I repeat: the bad guys aren’t about to let up.
• Google’s hardly a saint, either.
• Some random 37signals posts.
• I’m curious, though not necessarily curious enough to trek up to San Francisco just for that purpose. I’m sure Jordan would be up for a joint visit, though.
• People, process, problems.
• Okay…
• Looking for textures?
• Letterfu.
• My favorite is the “Quality With a Name” bit.
• I really like the wall palimpset.
• Something I’m bad at.
• Shades of Beggars in Spain.

Wow - that was too long. (16 bulletpoints, if my mathematical skills haven’t atrophied.) In a spirit of kaizen, let’s see if we can uncover some underlying process problems.

First, an analysis of what was in my saved links list. (There were seventy-odd entries, now only thirty.)

• Book recommendations.
• Music recommendations.
• Articles that I thought I might want to blog about.
• A bunch of GPLv3 stuff. (A special case of the previous, but big enough to break out.)
• Articles containing interesting-looking links that I didn’t have time to follow up on.
• Articles linking to works in other formats (podcasts, mostly) that I haven’t had time to look into.
• Articles from Lawrence Lessig’s blog and How the World Works. (Special cases of one or both of the previous two, but big enough to break out.)
• Stuff from Simon Phipps’ del.icio.us feed.

The last category is most relevant to this discussion: if I’m counting correctly, 8 of the 16 bullet points came from that feed. I was aware of them building up, but I felt bad at not only posting links without adding value myself, but not even being motivated enough to dig up my own interesting links, instead sponging off of somebody else! After all, if that’s what people want, they can just subscribe to Simon’s feed themselves. But, thinking about this more clearly, feeling guilty about that is pretty silly. Some better thoughts:

• Most of you doubtless don’t subscribe to his feed, so I am potentially adding value by copying a judicious subset of the links. (If you like them, though, I encourage you to subscribe to his feed directly.)
• The fact that I enjoy reading his feed means that I shouldn’t feel guilty about occasionally providing links with minimal commentary myself. I wouldn’t be happy with this blog if I didn’t spend a fair amount of time immortalizing my own thoughts, but there’s no need to do that exclusively.
• The fact that I enjoy reading his feed suggests that I should spend some more time browsing del.icio.us for other interesting feeds. (Then again, it’s not like I need to spend even more time web browsing.)

So: process improvements.

• Once every week or so, make a post of random links, for stuff I’ve seen recently that I want to point out without commenting on.
• While I’m at it, go through my saved link list; for each link, figure out if I should delete it, do something with it, or postpone a decision for another week.
• Recommendations can easily get promoted into another list that I keep of books/music/etc. that I’m planning to buy or get at the library.
• Articles that I’m planning to blog about can get demoted into articles that I’ll just link to.

That should work well enough.

I hope that this post has satisfied your cravings for bullet points.

Last night, I had dinner with friends at Korea House in Santa Clara. (Which I recommend.) They had a raspberry wine on the menu, which I decided to try; it was okay, but the best part was the explanation of the name (punctuation, grammar as in the original):

A hungry monk, eating wild black raspberry on the mountain by chance found his chamber pot turned over while urinating the follow morning. He knew his urine was too strong because the wild raspberries had reinfonced his stamina. As a result, the fruit was first called ‘Bok-Bun-Ja’, ‘Bok’ meaning ‘turning over’ combined with ‘Bun’ representing ‘chamber pot’ and ‘Ja’ which stands for ‘man’.

You’ve (or at least I’ve) got to love this:

Among those who ate the most chocolate–averaging more than four grams a day–average systolic and diastolic blood pressure was 3.7 and 2.1 millimeters of mercury lower than their chocolate-spurning peers. This result did not hold true for other sweet foods nor did it vary among men who also smoked, were inactive or consumed a lot of alcohol. And, despite being strongly associated with greater intake of calories, chocolate lowered the overall risk of cardiovascular or any other disease by as much as 50 percent.

I was a little dubious, though: the high consumption group only averaged four grams a day? A bit of googling turned this article up:

The 4.18g/d intake of cocoa in the highest tertile is equal to 10 g of dark chocolate a day and about a 10th the dose used in most intervention studies, Buijsse said. This suggests that a small amount of cocoa may lower blood pressure.

So that 4g is cocoa powder, and even dark chocolate (by which they mean what exactly - 50%?) contains a fair amount of other stuff. Still, 10g of chocolate is a really low amount: most evenings, for example, we split a bar of good chocolate three ways; that gives us each an ounce or so of chocolate, which is a good deal more than 10g. So I guess I can’t really use this as an excuse to further increase my chocolate consumption; but I’m not about to stop eating the stuff, either.

I would appreciate it if researchers could next turn to proving that milk fat is good for you. I suggest cheese as a place to start - honestly, does it sound all that implausible that some kinds of cheese might have mysterious health benefits? I suppose ice cream would be a bit of a stretch, though…

A total cheese bomb - one pound of cheese is a lot of cheese if you’re pairing it with one pound of pasta. Requires managing three pots simultaneously, but it’s actually about as easy as can be imagined given that. It does take a bit of time, though, partially because of that but mostly because of the baking time.

This would seem to be the first recipe I’ve given from the best cookbook ever. Really, that cookbook was a total godsend - we got it a month or so before Miranda was born, and it’s a wonderful collection of quite good, varied recipes that are easy enough that, even if one of us was too zonked to help with the cooking, the other of us didn’t mind.

If you can’t find orecchiette, shells are fine. But orecchiette really does work better.

1 lb orecchiette
olive oil
1 large eggplant, diced
28-oz can crushed tomatoes
3 cloves garlic, minced
pinch red papper flakes
1 lb smoked mozzarella, diced
freshly grated Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cook orecchiette. Meanwhile, heat garlic and pepper flakes in olive oil in another pan, add tomatoes, and cook for a bit. Heat more olive oil in a skillet (quite a bit: eggplant is thirsty), and fry the eggplant.

Mix pasta, tomato sauce, eggplant, mozzarella, salt, pepper, and a handful of Parmesan. Put in a 9 1/2 by 12-inch baking dish; sprinkle another handful of Parmesan on top. Cover with aluminum foil, and bake for 40 minutes. Raise heat to 400 degrees, remove foil, and bake for another 5 to 10 minutes more.

Somebody was just asking about this recipe recently, so here it is. From the excellent Bittersweet; I’ve presented the version that is for standard bittersweet/semisweet chocolate (50 to 62 percent); if you’re using darker chocolate than that and want to know how to modify the recipe, buy the book! I did include some of the other variations; in particular, you can make this non-dairy if you wish.

We had chocolate mousse many times in Paris; in general, I liked their texture a bit better than mine (it was somewhat firmer), but mine tastes better. For which I can take no credit: I think I was just using slightly better quality chocolate than they were. (Scharffen Berger; I do hope their acquisition by Hershey doesn’t spoil them.)

I’m writing this for a double boiler, but you can just float a stainless steel bowl in a wide skillet of simmering water instead. Also, if you’re paranoid about egg yolks, you can heat the egg mixture in a double boiler (or substitute) until they reach 160 degrees. Do this before beating it, but whisk the mixture first.

Works well with whipped cream on top, but even better is the cocoa bean cream from the same cookbook. And if you don’t have ramekins around, just put it in some coffee mugs or something.

6 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped
1/4 cup water, coffee, or milk, or 1/2 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 Tbsp brandy, rum, or liquor of choice (optional)
3 large eggs, at room temperature
3 Tbsp water
3 Tbsp sugar
Six to eight 4- to 6-ounce ramekins

Place chocolate and water/coffee/milk/cream in the top of a double boiler over barely simmering water. Stir frequently until the chocolate is nearly melted. Remove from heat and stir until it’s completely melted. Stir in the liquor, if using, and set aside.

Combine the eggs, the 3 Tbsp of water, and the sugar in a bowl; beat with an electric mixer at high speed for 3 to 4 minutes, until the eggs have a texture like softly whipped cream. Fold a quarter of the eggs into the chocolate. Scrape the chocolate mixture back into the remaining egg mixture, and fold just until evenly combined.

Divide the mousse among the ramekins, and chill them for at least one hour, or until set, before serving.

The third in our “chicken curry by country” series. Or, I suppose, the fourth in our “chicken curry” series; I don’t have a single Indian version to highlight, but we’ve already seen one from (or at least inspired by) that country, and I’ll doubtless come up with more.

Don’t worry about finding all the ingredients for this one: it will be fine if you leave off lemongrass, curry leaves, and/or cardamom pods. For that matter, if you happen to have access to rampa, feel free to throw three one-inch pieces into the pot; I’m not quite sure what the stuff even is! Also, don’t let the number of ingredients deter you from making this one: all you have to do is chop stuff up, marinade overnight, and dump it in a pot. It’s actually quite nice for evenings when you have a bit of extra energy and want to prepare something simple but (quite) good to make when you come home from work the next day.

I only have this in a xerox copy (I borrowed the book from my Pali professor a long time ago); searching on Amazon, I think it’s the book of that title by Balasuriya and Winegar, but I could be wrong.

Marinade:
1 onion, chopped
1/2 cup celery, chopped
1/4 cup garlic, chopped
1/4 cup ginger, minced
1 tsp each turmeric, ground coriander, ground cumin, and cayenne pepper
4 whole cloves
4 cardamom pods, crushed
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 1/2 Tbsp cider vinegar

1 - 1 1/2 lbs chicken, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 can coconut milk
1 stick cinnamon
salt to taste
8 curry leaves
2 one-inch pieces of lemongrass

Combine marinade ingredients with chicken; marinate several hours our overnight. Dump everything in a pot and cook over low heat for about half an hour.

The third recipe in my “curry paste” series, and the second recipe in my “chicken curry by country” series. I’m a bit dubious about this recipe’s authenticity, even before my alterations. But it’s yummy, which is what counts. Though admittedly not as stunning as the first installment in the latter; I can’t think of the another week where I’ve enjoyed leftovers so much.

vegetable oil
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 inch cube ginger, minced
1 onion, chopped
1/2 tsp turmeric
2 Tbsp mild curry paste
1 1/2 lb chicken, cut into bite-sized pieces
5 dried red chiles
14 oz can diced tomatoes, mostly drained
2 Tbsp peanut butter
4 Tbsp dried shredded coconut
1 Tbsp soy sauce
2 Tbsp lemon juice
salt to taste

Heat oil in a skillet; fry garlic, ginger, onion, and turmeric for 5 minutes. Add curry paste, fry for 3 minutes more. Add chicken, and cook for a few minutes until cooked on all sides. Add remaining ingredients, and cook for another 10-20 minutes.

Tonight’s dinner. It takes a bit too long to make on a weekday: it’s not as complicated as the list of ingredients might make you think, but it does take a little while and requires you to juggle a few skillets. Nice if you’re looking for something a bit special to cook during the weekend; also, it is a rare guest in my experience who won’t be pleased by being served this.

It’s from The Elephant Walk Cookbook; I trust the restaurants continue to serve the populace of the Boston area well. I’ve modified the recipe lightly to reflect the way we actually cook it; the most significant difference is that the original recipe calls for a couple of pounds of whole chicken pieces. (I’m just not into large pieces of meat.) I did, however, leave all of the esoteric ingredients intact, despite the fact that we rarely or never use several of them; please don’t let their absence from your local supermarket dissuade you from cooking this recipe. We did use star anise once when cooking this, but I didn’t notice a difference; we’ve never used shrimp paste whith it, and while I imagine I probably would notice a difference there, our kitchen isn’t well enough ventilated to want to play around with the stuff. (Rotting fish; yum!)

Paste:
1/4 cup vegetable oil
4 stalks lemongrass, trimmed and sliced
3 dried New Mexico (or Anaheim) chiles, soaked, seeded, and deveined
5 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
1 large shallot, coarsely chopped
1/2 inch piece of ginger (or galangal, if you can find it)
1 1/2 cinnamon sticks, cracked
4 whole star anise
9 cardamom seeds
1 small Asian nutmeg
16 peppercorns
1/2 tsp coriander seeds
1/2 tsp fennel seeds

1 cup water
1/4 cup coarsely chopped fresh cilantro stems
1/4 tsp turmeric
2 1/2 tsp shrimp paste
1/2 cup plus 1 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 can unsweetened coconut milk
1 - 1 1/2 lb chicken breast
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
2 Tbsp fish sauce
4 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 - 1 1/2 lb potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/4 inch thick slices

First, make the paste: heat oil in skillet, and add the rest of the paste ingredients. Fry for about 5 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to move it to a blender, and combine with water, cilantro, turmeric, and shrimp paste; blend until smooth.

In a large, heavy pot, heat 1 Tbsp oil, add half the coconut milk, and cook for 2-3 minutes. And curry paste and cook for another 2 minutes. Add the chicken, onion, fish sauce, sugar, and salt, and cook for 5 minutes. Add rest of coconut milk, and continue to cook.

Meanwhile, heat 1/2 cup oil in a large skillet; fry potatoes until golden brown. Add them to the main pot when done; cook for a few more minutes to let the sauce pervade the potatoes.