Starry Wisdom

Both the AC and Heat are on at the same time. And even though the AC vent is right over my desk, and the heat vent is about 10 feet away, it’s way too warm in here. And I wore a long sleeve shirt over a tshirt. Good day!

Basically, I am posting to get a post in, since I doubt I will have time to later today. Up next on my planned agenda is a book review!

Yes, three in a row.

So, I roasted a chicken tonight, using World’s Most Difficult Roasted Chicken Recipe from Michael Ruhlman. Highly recommended as a lazy Sunday roast dinner. Smashed celeriac (which might be the second best vegetable of 2011, by the way) was the side.

Mackenzie made the leftover meat into chicken salad (yay lunch tomorrow!), and the carcass is in the fridge ready to be turned into stock later this week. But this got me thinking two things:

1) I should roast chicken more often, this is good (and easy and economical)
2) If I do so, what are other recipes for the leftover meat?

As promised, one of the subjects I am blogging about this month is bread. I have posted about bread a couple times in the past – once to ‘pan’ the infamous no-knead bread recipe that’s been floating around for a few years, and at least once to sing the praises of kneaded bread. Well, rest assured this is a kneaded bread. Kneaded in my KitchenAid.

To start out my bread making for the month (I plan on baking bread at least a few more times), I made some Challah. Challah, of course, is Jewish Sabbath/Holiday bread. It’s a very rich dough made with eggs and butter, and slightly sweetened. It’s great for eating slice with some butter, and even better for french toast.

The recipe I followed is from Baking Illustrated – if there is interest I can post it, but for now I will just paraphrase a bit. After kneading in the standing mixer, you do a double rise, then divide it into pieces so you can braid it. Traditionally, one might use a six braid pattern to create a tall loaf, but this recipe cheats by making two separate braids, and stacking the smaller on top of the larger using an egg wash to bind them.

This seems like a pretty good idea, but the way it rose in the oven caused the top braid to fall sideways a bit. I also over cooked the bread by a couple of minutes – of course, last time I tried to make bread in my flat (using my own starter) I righteously burned the bottom, so this is a step in the right direction. A little more practice and I’ll have the oven down.

It might not be the prettiest bread anyone’s ever made, but it looks OK. And the crumb is fantastic. We had some with dinner tonight, and I predict breakfast tomorrow will be french toast!

Now the question is, what kind of bread should I make next?

The year is early, but there is a strong contender for vegetable of the year already. It is:

Roasted Romanesco.

For those that don’t know, romanesco is a cultivar of cauliflower, or broccoli. It’s more like the former, but not completely unlike the latter. And since those are both cultivars of the same species, I think the specifics aren’t important. What is important is that roasting it creates a delightful, and healthy vegetable side dish.

Approximate recipe:

1. Preheat oven to 425
2. Cut off thickest part of stem out of head of romanesco. Break off big ‘bit sized’ branches. When they start getting small, cut out the rest stem into the middle, and slice into bite sized chunks. Quarter (or sixth, depending on size) the top bit.
3. Toss romanesco with a tablespoon or so of olive oil, and some kosher salt. You can add a couple of cloves of minced garlic too.
4. Put romanesco in a baking dish and bake for 30-40 minutes until browned and crispy.

Of course, I’m sure there are many other things you can do, this is just what I’ve done so far, and immensely enjoyed.

Also coming soon: A post about bread!

A while ago, as you probably don’t remember, I wrote a post about white athletic socks almost a year ago. Well, I’m back to talk about some other socks. Because I need to make a post since I didn’t get around to one yesterday.

In addition to oodles of white athletic socks, I also had a few pairs of rather nice hiking boot socks. Socks that are designed to wick moisture away from your skin, and provide extra padding in hiking boots which are, you know, not as comfy as sneakers. But the moisture part is more important, since hiking boots tend to be waterproof, which works both ways – water doesn’t get in, and sweat doesn’t get out. When sweat stays in, and you are wearing normal cotton socks, the sweat stays close to your feet, and you end up with wet, and sad feet at the end of the day. Also, there is sometimes some squeaking. Also, I’m getting the feeling that my small readership will be dropping off here…

The above is important because for the past couple of months, post ankle surgery, I’ve been relegated to wearing only hiking boots, for added support and protection. The boot socks of course get worn whenever they are clean, but it’s hard to keep 3 pairs of socks clean at all times. So I’ve been wearing white socks more than I’d like to. Well, the other day I got an email coupon for free shipping and 40% off clearance items (or such) from landsend, a company which I’ve been ordering a bunch of basic clothes – solid tshirts, sweaters, button down collar shirts from in the past few months. I do recommend them for reasonably quality clothes at a pretty good price, particularly on sale, but that’s not the main review here. Instead, I shall be reviewing their Ragg socks of which I purchased 4 pairs of recently.

I am wearing the light grey heather sock today, and so far it’s rather comfortable. The sock is a bit longer than I expected (very much over the calf) and longer than my other boot socks. They are definitely not as nice as my $25 dollar a pair smartwool socks, but they are nice and soft. So far, and it’s only been a few hours, they’ve done a good job at keeping my feet dry, despite being warm and thick. I might have to update this review tonight, but right now, I am definitely endorsing these socks, particularly if you can get them on sale – but even at full price, they are a good deal.

OAK – great parking. I can’t say much about the services here, but at least I was able to get coffee and a donut of decent quality before my flight. The free wifi seems to be only normal http ports, which is a pain.

BUR – free wifi that works almost right (no success in setting up a vpn tunnel through it). Very fast security. Awful food choices.

I took a few minutes during lunch to install the Disqus commenting system, on a whim. Let’s see how it goes…

They say you should wait until later at night to shop, because it will be less busy. Well, we went at 9PM, and it was still busy. Also, they were out of bananas :(.

They also say to not shop hungry, because you’ll buy too much stuff. Well I was stuffed from dinner and still got 2 boxes of microwave popcorn, and a 20 pack of bags of sunchips and…

Basically, grocery shopping rules of thumb are BOGUS.

For years now, I made coffee at home with a Moka pot – the little Italian ‘stove top espresso’ maker that’s been in use in Italy since the 1930s. This makes pretty decent coffee usually, but I have been known to burn it on occasion from not paying attention, and the volume of coffee produced isn’t very much.

Enter the Chemex:

(Please pardon the moving boxes etc, Mackenzie moved into my flat last weekend and we hadn’t had time to unpack her kitchen stuff when I took these pictures)

This is another old coffee technology, made from bits of laboratory glass fused together into a single, quite striking, functional piece. Making coffee is fairly simple, but there are multiple steps. This process is basically like single-cup drip from places like Philz or Blue Bottle, etc.

1. Start boiling water.
2. Grind your beans (unless they are preground). This is the trickiest step, I think – I’m still trying to get the right grind. I guess working with a blade grinder is not ideal, but I can’t justify a burr grinder – maybe that can be another post someday.
3. Put a paper filter (chemex makes special ones that are ‘optimal’ for the device – I’m not sure I 100% buy into this yet, but I got some of them so, I’m using them) into your Chemex.
4. After the kettle boils, turn off the stove. Pour a small bit of water to wet the filter (and to warm the carafe if it’s cold!) into the carafe. Pour this water out into the sink.
5. Put your ground coffee into the filter.



6. Put a small amount of hot water into the grounds, just enough to make them wet. Wait 30 seconds or so – this will ‘bloom’ the coffee and help the brewing process.
7. Slowly pour the appropriate amount of the hot (no longer boiling) water over the grounds, it will filter through the grinds and the cone filter at the proper rate to ensure ‘perfect extraction’ of coffee flavors.



Yes, it is a bit fidly, and it’s not a way to make a quick cup of coffee before work, but the coffee that it does produce is fantastically tasty – smooth and well-balanced. I’ll note that I am using some Kona beans that are probably no longer super fresh, and as I said before, my grinding is not really optimal, and it’s still something I’m playing with. All this being said, it is definitely the best coffee I’ve ever made at home. Plus, the Chemex pot itself just looks damn cool!

I plan to play with some different beans this month, and my technique in general – I’ll try to post some future observations and updates as I learn more, but I welcome comments and suggestions!

Yes, I am cheating and back dating a post, because I didn’t have a chance to finish my Chemex post which I should finish tonight and make for the official Sunday post.

Anyway, I wanted to talk about a really interesting story I heard on the Radiolab podcast. Radiolab is a Public Radio show, not too dissimilar to This American Life, but the stories are more targeted towards science. It’s also very highly ‘produced’, since one of the hosts seems to be fascinated with that. Anyway, it’s an interesting show and I recommend downloading and listening to some of it.

Back to the point of this post – in the latest podcast, there is a story about a young woman who was hit by an 18 wheeler while riding her bicycle in New York. I don’t want to give too much away, but I will say that the story is uplifting despite the dire start of it. I recommend taking twenty minutes or so to listen to Finding Emilie.