March 17, 2008

mmm, pigeon

roasted squab breast with hazelnut, pearl onion, and cocoa nibs

I took Colleen to Charlie Trotter's in Chicago for Valentine's Day. I finally got around to posting the photos. Sorry for the poor quality - my little point and shoot doesn't really take great low-light photos, and I didn't want to use the flash in the middle of the restaurant. The meal was fantastic and the wine pairings were brilliant, but it definitely isn't something that I can afford to do on a regular basis. I think my favorite dishes were the squab, pictured above, and the saffron risotto that Colleen had.

March 2, 2007

experimentation

salad with pan-seared scallops

Haven't had much opportunity lately to do any sort of interesting cooking, with the exception of Valentine's Day. The salad with pan-seared scallops shown above is probably the prettiest thing I've done in a while. Click the picture to see the other things served for that meal. The chocolate marquise was a big hit (I made a few extra and fed them to my friends).

January 18, 2007

crazy food products you never knew existed, part 1

weird food product weird food product

You've all heard of not-dogs, soyrizo, and tofurkey; now meet (pun intended) bolono and wham. I've never been more disturbed, especially since they look like virtually identical products. I mean, the only difference appears to be what variety of bread you serve them with.

April 24, 2006

science of an internet meme

Apparently someone rediscovered the fact that when you drop candy into soda, you can get a geyser effect, and it's been making the rounds on the internet (see this video or this video). It was even featured on NPR.

People are billing it as an "explosion" but it's really not. Wikipedia claims that it's a result of adding gum arabic and lowering surface tension of the soda, but that doesn't wash with me - lots of sodas already have gum arabic, and the amount you're adding is going to be minimal (and in solid form). In fact, if anything, since gum arabic is a mixture of carbohydrates and proteins, I would actually expect that it would increase surface tension slightly. What's probably going on is that by dropping candies (Mentos, in this case - I used Nerds when I was a kid) into a bottle of fresh soda, you suddenly and dramatically increase the number of potential nucleation points for the carbon dioxide in solution to come out of solution as bubbles. Those bubbles of gas take up more space than dissolved gas would (example: when divers get "the bends") causing the liquid to be ejected forcefully from the neck of the bottle.

April 21, 2005

the return of fryday

my deep frying setup
I finally went out and bought a deep fryer, and last Friday I held the seventh Houston "Fryday" event. Pictured above is my deep frying rig. On the left is the fryer, a Philips HD6161 fryer. It's pretty nice, as budget fryers go. Vented lid (with window) to prevent spattering but allow the escape of steam, the basket is maneuverable with the lid on, stainless steel modular construction for easy cleanup, and a digitally controlled heating element. On the right, the draining rig - a cookie sheet with a cooling rack set on top. I practiced using easy stuff - zucchini, potatoes, mushrooms - and then gradually started frying more interesting things, like battered scallops (fresh from J & R Seafood). My brilliant idea for this time around was fried chili. Not fried chilies, but chili - the stew-like substance that we all love on cold winter days. I put small dollops on wax paper and froze them, and then when I pulled them, dipped them in egg wash and rolled them in crushed Fritos twice. Then I threw them in the oil. They were pretty fantastic. We also fried various cookies, ice cream, sausages, pickles, and more. Clean up was not fun - frying sweet stuff generally makes the oil go bad really, really quickly, especially when people have been drinking and are no longer paying attention to the fryer. What began as light golden oil ended up a dark brown syrup, and there was a blackened sludge at the bottom of the fryer. Surprisingly enough, it was all very easy to clean - I poured the oil back into its original bottle using an improvised funnel of aluminum foil and the rest of the fryer disassembled into the component parts for easy cleaning.

February 24, 2005

valentine's day

I know this is a couple of weeks after the fact, but this was only the third Valentine's Day ever that I had actually been dating anyone, and only the second time that it wasn't long distance. In general, I feel that Valentine's Day is big load of crap invented by corporations to get us to buy more stuff, but these last couple of years it has given me a chance to exercise some creativity in the kitchen. This year dinner turned out particularly well, if a bit expensive. A couple of photos and some details on the dishes are posted after the jump.

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