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- Category: Food Blog
There's a restaurant in Kirkland WA called Cafe Veloce thats a pretty cool place with old Italian racing motorcycles placed sporadically around the restaurant and the walls plastered with racing memorabilia. It also serves some decent food including one not so Italian dish - BBQ Chicken Pasta. I skimmed over that menu item quite a few times without ordering it because I'm in an Italian restaurant and I'm pretty sure that Kansas City is nowhere near Rome so the idea of putting BBQ sauce on pasta makes little sense. However, one day I did my normal routine and asked the Waitress to just bring me her absolutely favorite thing on the menu and this is what showed up. She was spot on the money. Considering that BBQ sauce is just tomato sauce with a little molasses added the Italians only missed it by that >< much. Had they thought a bit more about this (and a few other situations in the last 100 years, namely a couple of wars) they could have been on the winning team.
I suppose a shout out should got to the Mexicans since most great foods in the world require ingredients originating from that area which gained global distribution soon after their illegal immigrant problems got really bad (1521). If it were not for them the Italians would still be eating wheat porridge three times a day and tomatoes - the Italian Love Apples would still be unknown.
I'm not sure why people (myself included) are so against BBQ Chicken Pasta because we'll rip apart a BBQ Chicken Pizza and then when there's nothing left snort the crumbs with a straw to get our fix. I'm to the point that I don't eat pizza unless it has BBQ Chicken on it, why would I? Tomato sauce and pepperoni? Can you get more boring?
I don't have a recipe for BBQ Chicken Pasta even though it's a favorite in our house and I make it often just because I'm not happy with it yet. For the most part you just swap out one starch - bread for another - pasta. However, I've found the sauce to be a much pickier thing with the pasta because there's so much more of it. You don't want a smokey/tart/hot or very sweet sauce with this dish which leaves me experimenting on it. I've come to the conclusion that excessive heat is out and so is the amount of vinegar that a lot of BBQ sauces have. I lean more to a honey BBQ sauce with the dominant flavor being tomatoes and a hint of molasses. As soon as I'm satisfied I'll be uploading the recipe.
The other components are grilled chicken breasts, onions and sweet peppers grilled until caramelized and cilantro. I serve this with either a Penne or Farfalle noodle because both hold the sauce well. Four cups of sauce, two onions, two red bell peppers and 1 lb of chicken works well for 1 lb of pasta as a general rule.
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I've imported four more recipes from my old site to my new one - Pizza dough, Persian Jeweled Rice, Boniatillo and Gulab Jamon. Quite a mix for sure but they're the ones that have been requested the most so they come first.
The Pizza Dough recipe has served me well and for Italian style thin pizzas cooked on a stone it's been the best recipe I've come across. The dough is easy to work with and cooks up nice.
Persian Jeweled rice is probably the most elegant and regal way that I've ever had rice. The ingredients list is a bit harder to come by since I've specified some brands but the results are very nice.
Boniatillo is a Latin American sweet potato dessert that's fairly simple and surprisingly good. You use the orange sweet potatoes (often misnamed Yams in the store) along with some citrus flavors to make a nice dessert with the perfect balance of sweet and savory.
Gulab Jamon is an Indian (dot not feather) dessert often found in Indian restaurants.
In uploading these recipes I've found that my photography skills have improved remarkably. In fact I feel a bit ashamed at uploading these photos but as soon as I make each again I'll take new ones.
Recipes:
Pizza Dough Persian Jeweled Rice Boniatillo Gulab Jamon
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In 2009 Niels Arden Oplev directed the Swedish language movie renditions of Stieg Larsson's first book in "The Girl" series - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Two years later David Fincher directed the English language counterpart to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Both are intense films with a deep storyline. Both show the grungy side of life and have enough uncomfortable moments to make some squirm. Both are exciting and I think both will be hugely successful. Both are decent films with great casts.
However, I prefer one over the other. My review can be found in my new Movie review module of the Man, the Myth, the Legend. Everyone knows I'm a huge movie buff and have a personal collection large enough to start a movie store.
The original Swedish films are all available on Netflix Streaming and the English version is still in theaters as of the writing of this blog post.
Movies Review: Dragon Tattoo VS Dragon Tattoo
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- Category: Recession Chef
Chicken is probably the most boring tasting animal on the planet, that's why when we don't know what something tastes like we say it tastes like chicken (meaning it has no strong flavor). However, chicken doesn't have to be boring at all and with a little work we can pick a good chicken, keep the flavor by cooking it right and even add to it using some specially selected herbs and vegetables.
This recipe's purpose is to molest the chicken as little as possible and add subtle other flavors. The chicken also contributes by giving up a certain amount of it's juices and the runoff from the garlic and rosemary paste which drizzles down into the potatoes and shallots making for a very nice accompaniment.
This time around I waited about 20 minutes into the roasting and added sliced Sweet Potatoes which was very nice. Also instead of using just Yukon Golds I found a bag of mixed tiny potatoes at the store comprising of Yukon Golds, Purple and Red Bliss. The best tasting out of these three in this recipe is the Yukon Golds so this mix doesn't add to the quality of the meal however it does make it pretty. Yukon Golds just have the right amount of waxy texture and the right amount of starch to soak up the chicken's juices and yet hold themselves together.
Try out the recipe and let me know what you think.
Recipe: Garlic and Rosemary Roasted Chicken with Yukon Golds
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Several years ago I decided it was time to get serious about smoking meat so <joke> I lit one end of a chicken</joke>.... nevermind. What I really meant to say was that I'd gotten serious about BBQ and in time started working on the absolute best version of traditional American BBQ fare according to me. It has a nice tang in it, isn't boring with the peppers, carrots and celery and is actually quite smooth and sweet too. It's a nice blend I think.
I'm a perfectionist so I can take quite a while to get it all worked out and as soon as I do I'll upload the recipes. This recipe is for the most part done. Anyone can do Macaroni Salad right? Yes if you want plain old Mayonnaise and noodles for dinner. What I've created here I really like and make it often for my lunches even if I don't BBQ. The ingredients list is longer than traditional Macaroni Salad and a few my be surprising but you should just trust me on this one and make it. I usually use the 2lb bags of mini sweet peppers but when I can't get them I'll use regular sized red, orange or yellow bell peppers. I've specified just ONE red bell pepper to keep the cost down but if I'm making a double batch I like to put one red and one yellow or orange bell pepper in it. I've tried green but to me the flavor is too bitter for what I am trying to accomplish.
Also on the recipe I've made a note about the sweetened condensed milk. I've tried several while creating the recipe and something falls flat when I use *whatever* brand. However, I've always had good luck with Nestle La Lechera sweetened condensed milk that I pick up from the local Mexican grocery for about $1.60. If you buy it from your local white man's grocery you'll pay at least double. Since you have to pick up a few veggies anyway it may warrant seeking out the Mexican Tienda.
If you're going to use nasty iodized table salt then cut the amount in half. I don't like my food tasting like bitter soap so I use fresh ground sea salt in my recipes and you should too. Also one last note. I've mentioned in the recipe that it gets better if the flavors meld. This is very true and you'll notice the noodles soak up some of the soupiness and the flavors are more balanced the next day. If I were having a BBQ I'd make this the day before. If this isn't possible don't stress it because the worst rendition of this you could make will be better than anything you can buy from the store.
Recipe: Zesty Macaroni Salad
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- Category: Transit Blog
Note: This post will mean a lot more to those of you living in the Seattle/Tacoma/Olympia area and attempting to use public transportation. It's meant to be humorous but based in reality in a sort of depressing way.
The original Sound Transit announcement for reference.
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Your current transit news from your transit news correspondent Haywood Jablomey.
Sound Transit remaps the 574 route to connect with the Sounder which goes in the OPPOSITE direction. So for those people traveling from the Airport to Seattle who want to transfer to the Sounder they can now do it at Lakewood… 35 miles from the city.
Pierce Transit after a massive service hour cut adds the 400 route to duplicate the service offered by the Sounder. Sound Transit counters by canceling a portion of the 578 route that duplicates what the PT 400 duplicates of the Sounder route thus saving tax payers $12 which is handed over to Piece Transit and immediately applied to it’s million dollar shortfall easing the tension between Piece Transit and all the cities that pay for it but it no longer services.
Sound Transit add Sunday service to the 578 for all the people who can’t connect to it using Sounder or Pierce Transit 400 due to there not being any weekend service on either.
Sound Transit discontinues the downtown Tacoma portion of the 586 because countless other services cover that route including the Oly Express which doesn’t stop at Tacoma Dome on hours ending with consonants on days ending in y (unless it’s raining then there’s a 50/50 chance due to the letter y not always being considered a vowel) resulting in 605 riders to the U District moving from a 2 seat ride to a 3 seat ride either 30%, 35% or 48% of the time.
Sound Transit extends Sounder south to get closer to 820 parking spots which couldn’t seem to squeeze near the 2283 already available stalls at Tacoma Dome Station thus encouraging people to drive south to park so they can catch the Sounder north back past their houses giving working husbands and wives a second chance to wave to their spouses and check on their lawns. Nobody else notices since the Oly Express still won’t make any sort of intelligent connection to the Sounder effectively keeping the 59x buses annoyingly full.
To discourage people from taking the Sounder Commuter Train Sound Transit has doubled the frequency of both the 590 and 594 in commute direction only thus making better use of empty parking spaces in the city that so far have not been fully utilized because in the past the buses were busy carrying people around. Coffee shops expect to see an increase in ticket sales from the hordes of ST bus drivers milling about during the day. It’s been proposed that cardboard “Occupy Wall Street” signs be added to their uniform so people won’t notice they are in fact employed bus drivers with nothing better to do.
Afraid that there may be some good news buried in the changes somewhere for at least ONE line Sound Transit has doubled the service runs of the 592 bus but stops short of actually delivering passengers anywhere useful. Options are to take the Sounder, walk a block to board the Link and travel one or two stops further north or south. Proposed changes are intended to either leave 592 riders stranded or irritated. Either is acceptable. Rumors of a conspiracy by Jamie Oliver to force long transit connection in an attempt to “slim Americans down” go unfounded. Rumors of him being awarded a second TED prize for an upcoming speech however just will not go away.
Not to leave a sour taste in anyone’s mouth Sound Transit has added ONE extra ST 510 run per day to Everett. It isn’t presently clear at what time a day it runs and it’s existence hasn’t been proven.
And that’s it for this week folks. Have a happy new year.
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- Category: Recession Chef
Using Food Subsidies at Home
Something I'll surely be talking about later is food subsidies. I often hear the argument that people can't afford to eat well. I understand that money is tight but I also understand that when the cost of each plate is important (as apposed to the monthly food bill) and the cost of each ingredient on that plate is known you have a lot of power and flexibility to afford better food. Maybe I need to explain. In the restaurant business inventory cost is everything. You can't just make great food and send it out the door without knowing what it costs and one of the tricks to providing a great meal for a profit is to know the cost of *everything* on that plate. If you go out to dinner at a decent restaurant and you analyze the food on your plate you'd think that a bit of meat, some veggies and a starch is a balanced meal but you may be surprised to know that the items on that plate have little to do with nutrition and a lot to do with economics. Restaurants are in business to make money, not go broke.
Let's take a closer look at what they do. I've somewhat randomly picked a menu from a local Seattle restaurant – The Pink Door. A swanky Italian/American restaurant with no visible name to be exact just a.... wait for it.... pink door in Post Alley near the very famous and tourist infested Pike Place Market. http://thepinkdoor.net/
Example Food Subsidy
We'll take a look at a few items on their dinner menu.
b u t t e r n u t s q u a s h r a v i o l i d e - c o n s t r u c t e d burst in your mouth mushroom consommé ravioli over creamy squash purée & fresh herbs 19
Let's assume they're going to give you 1.5 lbs of food here and we're going to divide the weight into pasta and squash since the latter is not only the filling but has it as a base too. That leaves us with ¾ lb of pasta dough and ¾ lb of butternut squash. Naturally the squash is going to have some herbs and spices in it which we don't know but they will be mere fractions of an ounce in weight so for our purposes negligible. We also see that we have a mushroom consommé in the filling. The material cost of making a pound of pasta is roughly 60 cents. The cost per pound for butternut squash is about $1. We don't know the mushrooms used but just for the sake of argument they're Portobella which usually run about $7/lb. That's a lot of money in comparison to the rest of the meal but if we only have ¾ lb of ravioli filling then the amount of mushrooms is probably in the 2 oz range or about 45 cents. Add in a half an ounce of fresh shaved cave aged Parmesan ($25/lb) and we're sitting squarely at $2.50 cents for this meal. If you want to really do it up some nice home baked rolls would be great. That would bump the cost to a whopping $2.75.
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¾ lb pasta - $.90/lb
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¾ lb squash – $1/lb
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2 oz Mushrooms - $7/lb
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½ oz grated Parmesan - $25/lb
Total material cost is $2.75. How do they get away with charging $19 then? Part of it is to cover the cost of the building, wages for the chefs and wait staff, profit for the owner and so on. We made a dish with $25/lb imported cheese and fairly expensive mushrooms by subsidizing the cost of the expensive items with the cost of the cheap ones. In this case pasta, squash and bread are the cheap items. I'd bet that part of this dish also subsidizes more expensive dishes. That's right, not only do we have subsidies going on within a dish but between them. Let's do another one with even more specialty items. More after the jump.
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- Category: Recession Chef
Desi Ghee
Ghee is for the most part clarified butter. In French cooking the butter is clarified until the milk solids drop to the bottom and the foam rises to the top. The foam is skimmed and the butter poared off. With Indian cooking the butter is clarified long enough for the water to evaporate. What you're left with is pure butter with no milk solids or moisture. Because Desi Ghee has no milk solids or water it can be stored at room temperature without fear of spoilage.
The reason you'd want to go through the process of clarifying it yourself is that Desi Ghee can be very expensive in the store. A mayonnaise jar of Ghee can run you 15 dollars. You can make that amount yourself for about $5 or less depending on what kind of deal you get on butter.
See the Desi Ghee recipe for more details.
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- Category: Humor
Each letter of the alphabet creates a different dance move. Create your own combos to bug-out to!
Now you have the KEYS to dance!!!
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- Category: Python
Grep in Linux is an amazing tool. Sometimes I just want the simplicity of grep in Python. This isn't the equal to grep but it will take a regular expression as an argument (two examples shown) and give a return code of success if found or None if not. It will also return the line just like grep.
#!/usr/bin/env python import re def grep(patt,file): """ finds patt in file - patt is a compiled regex returns all lines that match patt """ matchlines = []
filetxt = open(file) lines = filetxt.readlines() for line in lines: match = patt.search(line) if match: matchline = match.group() matchlines.append(matchline) results = '\n '.join(matchlines) if results: return results else: return None # Example use textfile = "/etc/hosts" file = open(textfile) criteria = "localhost" expr = re.compile(r'.*%s.*' % criteria) # finds line that starts with anything, ends with anything and has criteria in it #expr = re.compile(r'[0-9].*filename:(%s)\schecksum:.*result: (.*)' % criteria) # more complex example # using return code if grep(expr, file): print criteria + " is in " + textfile else: print criteria + " is not in " + textfile file.seek(0) # rewind file for next test # printing all matching lines results = grep(expr, file) print results file.close()
Since Python is so picky about indention (drives me crazy) you can download grep.py from my downloads section.