J5’s Blog

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.

A little birdy reminded me that GNOME’s 10 year anniversary is coming up and I thought it would be nice to do something a little bit unusual to commemorate the creativity and passion which exemplifies our members.   Since I have been talking about cooking classes and so many people in the GNOME community have also expressed their love for the culinary arts I thought it would be nice to publish a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licensed cook book full of recipes from members of the GNOME community.

The rules are simple, e-mail me (you can ask me for my e-mail on IRC) with your favorite recipes along with pictures if you can.  If it is a recipe you got from a cookbook you may still submit it as long as the description for creating the recipe is your own and not copied from the cookbook.  Ingredient lists are not copyrightable but it is courtesy to try to make the recipe your own by changing some of the ingredients to add your own twist to the dish.  It is also courtesy to acknowledge the chef who’s dish you based yours off of if you have not changed it significantly.

I will also need help with layout, graphics and other such publishing details.  The plan is to have it published as a PDF and bound book through lulu.com with the source resting in GNOME SVN for adding to and publishing later editions.

I’m not a vegetarian but looking back to the things I cook, I mostly stick with vegetables, legumes and pasta. It is mostly because it is easier, safer and less expensive but at times I just prefer it. One such dish which has become a staple in my arsenal of
quick and tasty foods is the portobello mushroom burger.

Unlike most other vegi-burgers this one does not pretend to be a burger in disguise that ends up tasting like burnt vegetables. This is a straight, unprocessed mushroom which happens to be put on a burger bun and topped with cheese. Portobello mushrooms are perfect for this because they can usually be found at your grocer’s in a size that is comparable to a standard burger.

What you need for the basics:

portobello mushroom caps
salt
pepper
extra virgin olive oil
honey wheat roll
a mild cheese (my favorite is Jarlsberg)

First clean the mushrooms by lightly wiping them with a damp cloth. Do not run them under water as mushrooms are sponges and will soak up any liquid. Now sprinkle the olive oil liberally over each side. Salt and pepper each side like you would a good steak. Depending on how strong a taste your wheat rolls have you may want to use more or less salt. Place the mushroom on a heated grill or pan and cook on each side until soft. Put it on a roll and layer some cheese on top.  That is it. You will be amazed at how much taste comes out of such a simple process.

Being that it is so easy I am also amazed that I have yet to find a restaurant that makes a good portobello mushroom burger. Usually the bread is so huge you cant taste the mushroom, there isn’t enough salt to bring out the taste or they get too fancy and put ingredients which are overpowering.

Other topping that go well:

sauteed onions
caramelized tomato
Worcestershire sauce
a marinated and grilled slice of eggplant

I always keep pasta ready in the cupboards for times I don’t feel like running to the market for food.  Not only is it inexpensive, it is also quick to make and lasts forever.   Being of Italian decent I would be disowned if I ever considered using premade sauces.  The great thing about tomato sauce is that it can be easily made from ingredients which also have long shelf lives.  Adding a few fresh ingredients to the mix, whatever you can find in your fridge, allows for a different experience every time.

A good tomato sauce for me always starts with sauteed garlic and onions.  It doesn’t matter what onions you use.  Tonight I used shallots because that is what I had.  It is more of a French ingredient but I don’t think anyone was looking.

I also had some large portobello mushrooms which I use for grilling.  Simply slicing them up made them ready for the pan.  If you wanted to you could brown up some sausage or other meats at this point.  Even  some anchovies would really spice things up.  I kept things simple and just sauteed the vegetables in butter and added a little olive oil later.

This is the point you want to add your salt and pepper.  You can always add more later but the salt draws out the liquids, and hences the flavor from the veggies, leaving them like sponges to soak up all of the flavors that end up mingling with one another.

Once they are sauteed up, and the meat browned if you used any, it is time to deglaze the pan and get any of the flavors that have been sitting on the bottom.  If you are browning fatty meats you might want to drain some of the grease out of the pan before going to deglaze.  I usually use an acidic liquid to deglaze – lemon juice, tomato juice (from the can of tomatoes you are using not V-8), vinegar, or my favorite, a nice table wine.  You can also use water if you want.  I used some Fallegro Favorita, a white wine from the Piedmont area of Italy that I happen to have a case of.  Any white wine you like will do.  Just add a bit to taste, stir and let the alcohol boil away.

The next step is adding the tomatoes.  What tomatoes you use is all dependent on what you have around and what is in season.  Since I was making a quick sauce I decided to try the canned, diced tomatoes I had in the cupboard.  To spice things up a bit more I decided to use the one with jalapeno peppers in it.  Another way to spice up tomato sauce is adding some red pepper flakes but the jalapenos gave it a different dimension.  If you have time I suggest using canned plum tomatoes and dicing some fresh tomatoes to be added right before taking the sauce off the heat.  That gives it a bit more of a fresh taste and a better texture.  You can also add fresh herbs like basil or oregano at this point but I didn’t have any and I really don’t like the dried variety in my sauces.  The one thing I will do next time is cut the can of tomatoes and jalapeno with a can of regular tomatoes just to bring the heat down a bit.  It tasted awesome but was just a bit too hot.

At this point if you like what you got it is ready to serve but I personally like my sauces a bit thicker.  You can get the sauce somewhat thicker by simply keeping it on the heat for longer and reducing the liquid.  You can also do what I do and add a bit of tomato paste.  The more you add the thicker it gets but watch out because too much paste will ruin the texture.  It also changes the taste somewhat.

Taste you sauce when you are done and add some more salt and pepper if needed.  Put on top of pasta and you have a meal.  Next time just switch up some ingredients and you will have a whole new sauce.   It is really hard to get wrong and believe me will be a hundred times better than anything you can get in the pasta sauce isle of your local grocery store.

There have been requests for me to post some of my recipies. Here is a quick recipie that litterally takes 10 to 20 minutes to make.

6 cups chicken broth (vegetable if you are vegetarian )
6 ounces of dried tortellini – cheese or vegetable
1/2 a bag of baby spinach or bundle of spinach
salt and pepper to taste

Bring broth up to a boil and add seasonings. Add in half the spinach and all the tortellini. Cook until tortellini is done. Add more broth if tortellini has soked up most of the liquid. You will have to experiment with the tortellini to liquid ratio depening on what kind of tortellini you use.

To finish off add a bed of spinach to bowls and pour soup over top. Add a couple of leaves of baby spinach or chiffonade some spinach leaves for garnish.

Makes about 4 to 6 servings.

After hearing from a number of people that they enjoy reading my entries about cooking class (I think I have already convinced a few to start taking classes) what do I go and do? Stop blogging about food for a couple of weeks, of course. Sorry for the hiatus but every time I went to post I got a case of writers block. Well last week was my last French course but fear not. I will be taking a break until the spring or summer, depending when the Italian course starts but as it turns out our class got along so well together we are going to do a dinner party at some point and I will blog about all the wonderful meals made there.

Until then let me start with my second to last class, the Burgundy region. If you are a fine wine and fine food enthusiast this is the place to be. Unfortunately I was a bit hung over and tired from the Red Hat holiday party the night before (which by the way had excellent food catered by Wolfgang Puck’s catering company). So while everyone else was taking on two dishes, it was a small class this time around, I did one.

What you see is the hanging mass of Cervelle de Canut. That is correct, for you French readers out there – Brain! It isn’t really brain but a herbed cottage cheese that when placed on the plate does somewhat resemble gray matter. Case in point:

That is basically how my brain felt but hey, it tasted really good. The rest of the dishes turned out amazing.

The French Onion soup, my favorite soup in the Universe, was rendered lighter with half of the beef stock replaced with chicken stock and white wine used instead of red. Who knew there were so many ways to make it and all of them pretty easy.

The Salad Lyonnaise, which was basically a salad with bacon fat as dressing, along with the Gougere, an egg and cheese bread, were the perfect
first plates to get the digestive system going.

My brains were served right along side the Flageolets a la Creme or green beans in cream. And the piece de resistance Longe de Porc Dijonnaise – a pork dish with a dijon glaze surrounded by apples sauteed in butter.

Those apples were great. They reminded me of apple chips which I suppose you would get if you took those and baked them.

And then there was desert.

The Pain D’epices was a flowerless molasses bread, the Clafoutis aux Cerises, a cherry pie and the Le Gateau au Chocolate a la Bourguignonne a decadent chocolate cake with raspberry jam filling.

It was a great meal, made with good friends but by far not the best. That honor goes to the last class of Normandy/Brittany in which I made what I would say was the best dish I have ever cooked or for that matter eaten. If the reaction I got out of a couple of female classmates is any measure, this is one the dish every man should know how to prepare…but you will have to wait awhile to find out what it was.

P.S. There is a wine expo going on this weekend in Boston for those who are interested. I will be there on Saturday.

I picked up an excellent Riesling from my local wine shop. It paired well with the monkfish I cooked. This time I rushed out the door so I forgot my camera at home. Luckily I got a picture of the wine bottle the day before but missing a chance of showing the starting product was a bit of a letdown. I literally felt like I was thrown into an episode of Iron Chef where the secret ingredient is some slimy creature. “And the secret ingredient is Lockness Monster. Have fun!!!”. When I opted for the recipe a couple of people turned around and said they wondered who was going to take that recipe.

Thank god the head was cut off. Those suckers are ugly. However after skinning and filleting the fish (it has a slimy rubbery skin) the fillets looked like any other white fish you might eat. The cooking procedure was simple. Wrap fillets in bacon, put in oven and check back in fifteen minutes. Bacon wrapped seafood is awesome because it requires little to no seasoning and the fatty bacon allows for mistakes as it keeps the seafood moist. The hardest part of the dish was the prep work and keeping the side garnishes of broccoli and wild mushrooms warm. There was also a butter emulsion sauce made from butter, sherry vinegar and shallots. Lorraine-Alsace is not known for their low fat foods being so close to Germany We also had an awesome cheese salad, and a pork and kraut dish among others (sorry no quiche).

This coming Sunday is Burgundy. I am itching to pick up a nice pinot noir which counts among my favorite types of Red Wine (that and chianti). Hopefully I will remember to bring my camera this time around.

Thanks for all those who had suggestions on wine last week. Please feel free to point me in a good direction for Burgundy too. Also if anyone will be in the Boston area around February 10th and 11th there is a huge wine expo going down at the Seaport World Trade Center. With over 440 wineries one can’t go wrong.

Next weeks cooking class focuses on Alsace and Lorraine. Since others brought such good wine last time I figured one good turn deserves another. I would like to get a perspective on what wines from this region of France, that I can get locally in Boston, I should look for. I understand the region is primarily known for their white wines of which I am particularly fond of Rieslings. In any case please post a comment on your own favorite wine that I should look for and the price range I would be looking at. Bonus points for those who can tell me where I find their favorite Alsace-Lorraine wine in the Boston area.