J5’s Blog

Substituting stone ground corn meal for flour when dredging fish you are going to fry is great as it give it a even tastier crunch. Can you figure out why it may not go over well some people? Answer in the comments.

Thanks to Joe Shaw’s recommendations five months ago I joined the Chestnut Farm’s meat CSA.   Today, fighting Cambridge/Arlington rush hour traffic I picked up my first monthly 10lbs. share.  It was kind of funny finding a mail in my inbox stating that I had signed up some time ago and oh ya you need to go pick up your share this Wednesday.  I almost skipped the mail but after looking at the quality of the meat I’m glad I read it.

It looks really tasty, unfortunately I spent last night cooking up 3lbs. of chuck beef stew which means I can’t justify cooking anything up just this minute.  I will however be taking some of it to my parents house for the holidays and cooking some for them.

At $8 a pound it is pretty expensive but I am treating it like a learning expense.  Since I don’t know what type of meat I will get each month I have to learn to cook almost any type thrown at me.  I figure during the colder months I will stick with soups, stews and brazing while during the warmer months I will switch to grilling and slow roasting.  If I like what they are sending me I may even get adventurous and see if they can send me the more exotic bits like sweetbreads though I suspect they sell those at a premium to restaurants.

Once I figure out my budget I may just start one of the vegetable CSA’s too.

Many French Onion dips are made out of powdered French Onion soup mix.  The thing is, real French Onion dip is just as easy to make with onions, olive oil, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce and beef broth.  Basically you make a pan French Onion soup and let most of the liquids evaporate and then incorporate the results into some sour cream.  I came up with this recipe after having some sour cream left from the icing I was making for my pumpkin cheese cake.

1 cup sour cream

2 small yellow onions

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce

1/2 cup beef broth

salt and pepper to taste

Chop onion into half moons.  Add olive oil to pan and put over medium low heat.  Add onions and a pinch of salt.  Sauté for a bit and then cover with lid to sweat.  Once onions are translucent add beef broth and Worcestershire sauce.  Add salt and pepper to taste and boil down the liquids until there is very little left.  Let mixture cool down a bit and then add to sour cream, mixing thoroughly.  Add more salt as needed. Refrigerate for at least an hour and then serve with potato chips.  So much better than the mix stuff and just a tiny bit more work.

I threw together this dish a couple of days ago after sneaking out on Ty to go to the pet store and supermarket. I knew I wanted to make a mushroom cream sauce and when I passed by the Tilapia on sale at Whole Foods I thought it would be perfect. As all seafood needs some sort of acid to bring out the flavours, and since citric always works well, I was going to pick up a lemon when I remembered I had unused oranges at home. That would prove to be a great choice for this dish. I also chose string beans as a side because they are easy and are 99 cents a pound around here.  Warning, I love cream and butter (I cook mostly French style) so you can reduce and substitute to make the dish healthier but in reality when fresh, non-processed ingredients are used, health is more about portions than any one component.

Ingredients

Sauce:

• 2 cups of baby bella (cremini) mushrooms sliced
• 1/4 cups of onions diced
• 1 clove of garlic diced
• 2Tbsp. butter
• 1/4 cup of white wine
• 1/2 pint of heavy cream
• 1 bay leaf
• 1tsp. powdered cayenne pepper (adjust to taste)
• salt and pepper to taste

Side:

• olive oil (enough to coat beans)
• handful of string beans per serving
• a clove or two of garlic sliced
• salt and pepper liberally

Main:

• olive oil  (coat bottom of pan)
• 1 tilapia fillet per serving
• 1/2 orange per fillet (juice and zest)
• a small sprig of fresh rosemary (reserve some for garnish)
• fresh parsley for garnish
• salt and pepper liberally

Instructions

Prepare the fish by marinading the fillets in fresh squeezed orange juice and dusting the sides with salt, pepper,  shaved zest from the orange rind and rosemary leaves.  Set aside.  Make sure not to leave it marinading too long (5-10 minutes is good) as we are not making cevice and don’t want the acid to cook the fish.

Start the sauce by sautéing the onions in a small pot with 1Tbsp. of butter.  Add a pinch of salt.  After a few minutes add the rest of the butter and the mushrooms and some pepper.  Sauté until the onions are translucent and the mushrooms soft.   Add the garlic towards the end of the sautéing process being careful not to burn them. Next add the wine and boil off the alcohol.  Finally stir in the rest of the ingredients and adjust the seasoning.  Let the sauce reduce and thicken on the stove.

Next start on the string beans.  In a bowl coat them with olive oil, salt and pepper.  Drop into a hot pan and sauté them until cooked but still crunchy.  Getting a sear on one side of the beans will enhance the texture and flavour.  At the last minute add the garlic slivers.  Put this mixture in tin foil to keep them warm.

In the same pan, wiped with a clean dish towel, put enough olive oil to coat the bottom.  Make sure the oil is hot and place the tilapia fillet in the pan.  Cook until the fish becomes flaky and delicate (3-6 minutes per side).

On a plate place the string beans to one side and the tilapia on the other.  Top the tilapia with the sauce making sure to include a heaping of mushrooms.  Garnish with rosemary and parsley.

The contrast between the heavy cream sauce and the light taste of the orange and flakiness of the fish was amazing. There was a good balance of spiceyness and sweetness with a little bitterness provided by the parsley and string beans. About the only thing I would add would be a bed of rice. I even used the sauce to great effect on a pan fried chicken breast the next day.

Ty even hangs around when I cook. And the truth is now that I have to feed, wait an hour and walk him at night I have a set hour in which to relax and cook every day. Go figure.

Before leaving for GUADEC I had purchased a pound of frozen shrimp because they were on sale.  Last night I needed to figure out what to eat so I decided to make some shrimp scampi over pasta.  I pulled out some of the shrimp and proceeded to defrost them by putting them in a bag and running cold water over them.  When I went to reach for the garlic I noticed they were all rotten.  I quickly rummaged around my kitchen and found a frozen ginger root and some green onions (also known as scallions).  The resulting mix was amazing as the ginger had carmalized on the surface leaving little bits of crunchy flavour explosions.  Here is the recipe for one serving.

Ingredients:

Pasta
5 large shrimp, shelled
1 sliver of ginger root, brunoise
1 Tbls. of fresh sliced scallions
1 Tbls. Sweet Cream/unsalted butter
1 leaf of fresh sage
salt and pepper to taste

Cook the pasta in boiling water. When the pasta is almost done start the sauce. Melt the butter in a sauté pan and add the ginger, scallions and fresh sage. Add a pinch or two of salt and sauté until the butter just starts to turn brown. Add shrimp with some more salt and pepper and cook on both sides until orange to the eye and firm to the touch. You need to manage your heat here as you don’t want to burn the butter and you don’t want to move the shrimp except to turn them once. This will also allow the ginger to start to caramelize. Toss the finished pasta in the pan and get it coated with the butter sauce. Take off the heat, let it sit for a minute and then plate and serve. Sprinkle some fresh scallion on for colour.

I would have taken pictures but it was so good it was gone before I remembered I had a camera.

Fudcon is great but when I like to unwind I go to the American Craft Beer Fest. Right now I’m getting ready for the beer and food pairing seminar. Like wine, beer is very versatile as an ingredient (if you have ever had a beer can roasted chicken you would understand). In any case we are about to start
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In other related news Gravity of Debian X fame was here. Great minds think alike and Linux hacker’s minds often think of beer.

Update

I tried to sneak off with the cutting board the food for the tasting was served on but to my dismay they let us just take them. Way to take the thrill out of the equation. I was however happy enough to get a high quality cutting board with the phrase “Here’s to BEER” branded on the top, and here is the proof:

I won’t be at the Gnome Summit on Saturday because of prior engagements (literally, I am going to a wedding).  We were however fortunate to get money from Google to host a Beer Summit on Sunday night starting at 7:00pm at Flat Top Johnny’s.  There are a couple of pool tables reserved and free beer available so hackers can exchange ideas, build friendships and hustle each other in an enjoyable setting.

Now for a small update on the Cookbook.  I haven’t had much progress since a large number of unexpected distractions have popped up.  The good news is Lulu.com updated their site and one of the options is a wizzard for cookbooks.  Of the three designs for page layout submitted by,  Vinicius Depizzol, Silvia Miranda, and Diego Escalante Urrelo, I liked them all and they all fit very well with each other so you all are going to be the first to get a book, payed for by me, once it is published.

As for my name on this list, I would like to thank the Acadamy, my Mom – hi Mom – Roderick’s Mom, and…what I don’t get to make a speech for being on the “B” list and I still have to wait in line at Spagos?  That’s it, I’m firing my agent.

Here is another update on the progress of the cookbook.

Recipe’s

We’ve gotten tones of recipes, keep posting them to the wiki. I’m going to start editing them this weekend and e-mailing people with requests for clarification. For instance I already did this with Adam Schreiber’s Plain Yogurt recipe. In it he mentioned keeping the yogurt at 110 degrees Fahrenheit so I asked him to describe in detail how and why this step is needed. For that he produced the incubator and yogurt science section which fit in really nice with the theme of a cookbook for people who like to tinker and find out how things work. I’m not going to ask that of all the recipes but I may ask for elaborations or clerifications. Please be timely with replys as we have two weeks after this weekend to have something in a publishable state (yikes!!!). One thing I will ask everyone to do is give their recipies a “title”. In other word, make my mouth water with the name of the dish. We can always put a common name next to it to make it clear what it is but food is as much about presentation as with taste. As we say, you eat with your eyes first. If your native language is something other than English then show it off.

Layout

Three people have submitted excelent layouts. There is room for more though I am not so worried about this aspect as I was a few weeks ago. There is still time to enter the design contest. Entries are due by the end of Sunday.

Cover Art

No one has sumbitted anything yet. I am getting a bit worried here. The contest may need to be extended, hopefully not up to the day we publish.

Cash from Book Sales

Though I don’t expect a windfall from sales of the book, if the cost to publish the book is reasonable enough we may wish to charge a small markup which would go to GNOME and be earmarked for promoting such projects in the future. I will have to talk to the GNOME Foundation about it and see what they think. It is hard to say without knowing how much money will be brought in but it could go to simple things like buying books for raffles at confrences or large thing such as buying studio time for the Drooling Macaque to record a GNOME song. The PDF itself and sources will be free with a suggested donation.

GNOME’s 10 year aniversary happened last week and we are celebrating for a month to mark such an auspicious milestone.  The cookbook is going at a good pace.  We didn’t expect to be done before the anniversary as we didn’t want it to be a rush job.  Recipes are coming in at a steady pace however we are lacking in one area.  We need designers to produce a cover and a coherent design for the recipes.

To up the incentive even more I am implementing a Cookbook Design contest.  The winners will get a copy of the book payed for by myself.  I’ll even have it shipped to my place, signed and reshipped to the winners if they would like.  Who knows, that signature could be worth something someday (when you happen on one of my blank checks and are able to forge it).

There will be a winner for the cover design and two winners for the interior design.  Bonus point go to those who produce designs that we can be changed around depending on layout and section.  For instance having simple colors allows us to change the color for different sections and having variations on the layout allow us to make the book more interesting.

To enter please add your design to the wiki.  Designs should be at 300dpi lossless for bitmaps or be vector based, preferably in an open format.  The size of the book has yet to be determined so designs may need to be altered in the end.  Designs can also take into account what size and orientation the designer thinks the book should be in.  Go to Lulu.com to see the options available to us.  Winners must stick around to help us tweak the design for the finished product.  The contest will be over September 2nd.  If we don’t have enough entries by then I think I will cry.  Happy designing!!!

Recipes

The GNOME Cookbook Project is now in full swing. We now have a wiki and mailing list. Anyone who has mailed me with a recipe can you please post it up somewhere and provide a link on the wiki. Feel free to add the recipe as a wikipage. We also need more contributers. Please pile on as many recipes as you wish.

Photos

Remeber we also need high def pictures ready for print so all you GNOMIES out there with SLR cameras, it is time to team up with some cooks and get snapping. Hey you might even get a free lunch or dinner out of it.

Design

Design is also very important. All you design gurus out there we need to slap together a workable layout using open source tools. Are you up to the challenge or are you affraid your hunger will get the best of you? Feel free to take breaks and cook up the recipies you are laying out.

Cover Art

Have you ever said to yourself, I wish my design would end up on the front of a GNOME Cookbook? Well now is your chance…to say that to yourself and compete to get your art on the cover. Whoever wins I will personally come over, if am ever in their neighborhood, and cook them a dish from the book.

Remeber GNOMERS, feet are vehicals for finding food and fine food is worth finding. So run, don’t walk, to contribute to this wonderful symbol of our community on this, the tenth anniversary of GNOME.