Speaking of rice...

Has anyone out there ever heard of pilafi? It seems that few, if any, of my friends in Utah valley have ever heard of it. I had to start talking to friends in Salt Lake about it, because most of them have not only heard of it, but indeed, even enjoyed it with me at many of the fine Greek restaurants in Salt Lake. There seems to be very few of those in Orem. Anyway, pilafi is a Greek rice pilaf. I've always wondered how it was made. It's kind of lemony and chickeny, and usually a pretty decent shade of yellow. We always assumed the color was from saffron. So the whole rice bit had me thinking about it yesterday, and I decided to look up some recipes.

Has ANYONE out there EVER heard of pilafi? Okay, so I found a few scattered recipes online. Most of them didn't look like they would create the same dish that I was looking for. In fact, only one did. Oddly, it was just about the only one that didn't include paprika. The thought occurred to me that perhaps the color was from the paprika, instead of the saffron. So I began to create my own version.

Start with our standard cup of rice, browned in a wee bit of Greek olive oil, and maybe a wee bit of butter too. When its' browned, stir in 1/4 teaspoon of white pepper and 1/2 teaspoon of paprika. Add 2 cups chicken stock, and bring to a boil. Cover, drop to low, let sit 20 minute, remove from heat, let sit 10 minutes. Wasn't that easy?

Well, it might have ended up a little too lemony, and not really chickeny enough. It also seemed a little bit bland. The commercial stock I use has salt, but not very much, so I'm thinking I might need to add a little more. In fact, I may try starting with closer to 2 1/3 to 3 cups of stock, reduce to 2 cups, and then add that. That would increase both the salt and the chicken content. Also, there was no color from the paprika. None! It was a pale shade of off-white. Maybe it's time to try out the saffron, or maybe just turmeric or something. Other than that, it was actually pretty good stuff.

If anyone out there happens to have a decent pilafi recipe, I wouldn't mind taking a look at it. I love the stuff, and would love to not have to drive to Salt Lake every time I want it.

Oh, right. Photo.

Hawaii kara desu!

Maybe it's time to think about writing a book. A book about rice. "50 Easy Rice Dishes Your Family Will Love" or something. Because, guess what! That's right, I came up with another rice recipe last night! This one is very Hawaiian. I started with my standard cup of rice. Browned in a wee bit of oil, etc. Then I added 1 1/4 cups of chicken broth and 1/4 cup of Wingers Original Amazing Sauce.

For those of you that don't live in Utah, Wingers is a diner that makes killer chicken wings, using sauce that's more sweet than spicy, and still has a decent kick. And they sell it by the bottle too. If you can't get ahold of it, I bet sweet and sour sauce would work too, though it won't be nearly as spicy.

Anyway, then I added 1/2 cup of pineapple juice and 1/2 cup of pineapple tidbits, measured by displacement (add 1/2 cup pineapple juice to the measuring cup, and then add pineapple tidbits until you have a full cup of both). Then standard procedure, bring to a boil, cover, drop to low, let sit for 20 minutes, remove from the heat, let sit for 10 minutes, uncover and serve.

We ate it plain, and it was pretty good. But if I'd have had some thick-cut ham, I might have grilled it, diced it up, and stirred it in once the rice was finished. I bet this would also go well with some kind of chicken. But if you make the rice spicy, don't make the chicken spicy. That's just overkill. If it were me, I might make a dry rub of garlic powder, onion powder, some kind of mild chile like ancho or guajillo, and a pinch of allspice. Then I would oil the chicken, coat it liberally with said rub, and grill it.

Big old slab of rock

So I've decided to try and get back into sugar and chocolate work. I played with it a little at school, and quite frankly, I was lousy at it. I know that I just need to practice, but who has the time? Not me. So I've decided to make the time, and to buy the equipment. But what I needed was a big old slab of rock. That's what the pros use, and the amateurs too: a big old slab of granite or marble. But where do I get such a thing? I started with Froogle. It quickly became obvious that I didn't know how to look for slabs of rock. So I walked over to Pete and said, "hey Pete, you know stuff, right?"

Pete recommended I call up Artesan Water Jet, in Orem (UT). You see, when you decide to install marble countertops in your kitchen, you have to buy the whole slab, and then have it cut to fit. And one of the things that needs to get cut out is a space for the sink. That's what these people do; they cut the countertops for you, and then hang on to a bunch of the scraps. When I drove down there and told the guy I needed to buy a sink cutout to do chocolate work, he said "oh, you need a candy board! Yeah, come on back, I'll show you what we have." Apparently, I'm not the first person to do this.

He showed me a few stacks of the stuff. I grabbed the top piece of granite from a stack, and said "how much?" $15 later, he was helping me load it into my back seat, and explaining to me how I needed to carry it on its side, so that it didn't buckle from its own weight. This thing is about 17"x30", give or take, and about 3/4" thick. Heavy, but perfect! Now I just need to wash off all the dust and I've got me a candy board! All I need now is an infrared thermometer. Fortunately, they sell them at CostCo.

Open Recipe Format

Well, I suppose after all my ranting and raving, it's time to start putting my money where my mouth is. Since I'm sick of existing "standards" for computer recipe storage formats, I've decided to go and create my own, doing it the right way. And since so many of my friends would argue that the open source is the right way (and I certainly agree on this project), that's how I'm doing it.

So, to all those people who might be interested in getting serious with kitchen software, head on over to http://openrecipeformat.org/ and send me an email. Hopefully we'll have a mailing list going soon enough, and more of a website than the message I have up there now. I have a few professional chefs that I'm trying to recruit for the project, so that we can get input from the people that would really use the software in a professional setting.

One-Sided

Okay, so I end up looking at a lot of weird things from time to time. Yesterday, I happened across an article on the Wikipedia about herbalism. Two sentences in this article caught my eye: "Physicians may not be the best sources of information because most have no knowledge of herbal medicine. There is little known about interactions of herbal remedies with pharmaceuticals because, contrary to pharmaceutical medicine, there is no official system, database, or hotline to report and publish adverse interactions, so even herbalists may not be aware of adverse interactions."

It got me to thinking about things. How many efforts end up like this because two concepts are so seemingly different that the few who dare to find correlation end up so horribly wrong? I'm going back to open-source here. Personally, I love the concept of open source. I also love cooking. And as previously stated, I'm not the first person to consider a combination of the two. Keeping the above quote in mind, I started thinking about the Open Source Cookbook again. This was quite the undertaking, started by an individual who is very knowledgeable about open source, but possibly only a hobbiest in cooking. He stated to me at one point that much of the information came from a well-known tome of cookery which I had personally long-since written off as a collection of half-true and largely unresearched wives' tales.

I also started thinking about recipe software. When was the last time you used a recipe program that wasn't absolutely painful to use, at least on a regular basis? The interface is either obtuse (at least for entering recipes) or largely featureless. And rarely does it take everything into account that you feel is necessary. No wonder Food Network offers on option on their site for printing recipe cards, but not for RecipeML export. I once had a chef tell me that while his company had purchased a high-end recipe management program, he never used it because it was ultimately a waste of time. Every recipe in that restaurant was kept in sheet protectors in binders, and most of them were still hand-written.

My theory is that chefs and programmers are not the same people. A good number of chefs would not consider themselves computer savvy, and the majority of programmers have never schooled in culinary arts, nor spent any significant time (if any) working in restaurants without drive-thru windows. Yet, having been a programmer and having been studied in culinary arts, I've found several similarities between the two. For instance, both tend to be used to long days. A chef may be the first to arrive at the restaurant before it opens, and not be surprised if he does not find time to go home (or even take a break) until well after closing. And doing this 6 days in a row, while possibly annoying, will also not surprise him. Let's compare to a serious debugging session, or an upcoming project deadline that may find a programmer working late for consecutive weeks, with more caffeine than blood in his veins. Between my brief forays into catering and some 14-hour Perl sessions I've involved myself in, I don't think I could personally tell you which left me feeling more exhasted and fulfilled.

I suppose this explains why Alton Brown has become so popular in geek circles of late. The man is not a programmer. He's a film major that happened to go to culinary school, and used the two talents and passions to build himself a professional career on Food Network. But he dissects food, he explains it in terms that programmers love. Cooking with Alton is almost like coding in C++; you understand a lot of the foundations that are causing your code to work (be it memory registers or brining), yet you have the advantage of working in a little bit higher-level language. It makes me wonder if a more complete combination of food and programming is emergent. Will we start to see more projects like the Open Source Cookbook and RecipeML in the near future?

Hollandaise vs Curd

So the mother-in-law calls today asking about asparagus. We were having dinner at my wife's parents' place this evening, and she wanted to know how to cook asparagus. She had never made it herself before. So I recommended steaming and hung up. And I started thinking, if they're gonna have asparagus, what would be more perfect than hollandaise, right? I figured I would just put something together when I got there.

I grabbed a lemon and some unsalted butter and headed over. When we got there, I set up a double boiler and seperated 3 eggs. I added the juice of the lemon and the 3 yolks to a metal bowl and started whisking. This is kind of delicate stuff, so I had to keep moving the bowl on the heat and off the heat again. Believe me, this stuff scrambles pretty quick. When it started to thicken, I started adding butter. And in a move that would make every one of my chefs cringe and make Alton Brown proud, I started adding whole, unmelted butter, a little at a time. When one piece was dissolved, I added another. I probably ended up adding about two Tablespoons altogether. I seasoned with a little salt, a little white pepper, and a little ground chipotle. It was a big hit.

And then I started thinking... replace the seasonings with a Tablespoon or two of sugar, add a little lemon zest, and I have lemon curd! But there is more of a difference. When hollandaise is usually made, it requires the cook to slowly drizzle in melted clarified butter. Oh, and there's a little water and/or white wine in with the lemon juice. And unlike curd, it pretty much has to be done a la minute... meaning, at the last minute. Because this stuff doesn't set up very well at all. Or rather, once set it, it doesn't stay set up for long. I wonder why they (the French, of course) decided to do hollandaise like that, and still make lemon curd in a way that will actually stay set up?

Very interesting.

Sweet Taters

Never played with 'em before. Thought I'd give it a shot. According to Alton Brown, "anything a white potato can do, a sweet potato can do." So I thought I'd give it a shot. He went for mashers. I went for hash browns. We both decided to start by cubing (1/2" cubes) and steaming (if you check my Red Butter post). Ingredients were simple, 1 long sweet potato, 1/2 large red bell pepper, 5 strips of bacon. While the potatoes steamed, I cut the bacon into about 3/4" pieces and fried till crispy. I drained most of the fat, moved the bacon pieces to a towel to drain, and added the sweet potatoes, the red bell pepper (1/4" cubes) and a couple pinches of salt. I kept tossing them on high heat, adding a splash of Worcestershire sauce and a couple of teaspoons of chipotle Tobasco. When they started to get nice and crusty on the outside, I added a shake of garlic powder, a couple of shakes each of onion powder and chile powder and a few grinds of fresh black pepper. Finally I added the bacon back in to warm it up, and a couple of ounces of chicken stock. It was absorbed into the pototoes pretty quick. I served, of course, with with a sprinkle of cheddar. Okay, lots of cheddar. I like cheddar.