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United States, North Carolina, Carrboro, English, Paul, Male, 56-60, All Music, All Food.

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Saturday, March 01, 2003

Nkor: Nuke War Could Be Close This is still page 5 news, bury it. Who cares. But that "NKor" thingie is kinda new. I suppose it is the new abbreviation for "North Korea." It's kinda dismissive and diminutive, don'cha think? Little acronymish thingie threatening hellish death to Seoul and Tokyo, 2 missiles = 51 million deaths. Why should we worry? They are not us.What worries us is paying $2.00/gallon for SUV gasoline. 6:34:40 PM    comment []

The other dry ingredients. They look kinda purdy. The aroma of garam masala does to my nose what the music of Aimee Mann does for my ears. 5:00:52 PM    comment []

Dancing Tellicherry Peppercorns The most spectacular part of the marinade preparation. Here is the the marinade components for a five pound batch: 2 tablespoons                ground tellicherry peppercorns 2 tablespoons                garam masala 1-tablespoon                  Tabasco sauce 1-tablespoon                  onion powder 1-tablespoon                  garlic powder 1-tablespoon                  kosher salt 1-teaspoon                    Prague powder #1 ¾ cup                           Worcestershire sauce ¾ cup                           soy sauce   Mix all the dry ingredients then add them to the sauces in the blender. Prague powder is used because the meat will be dried below 120 degrees F and there is a danger of clostridium botulinum growth during the first stages of drying without it. The long term effects of ingesting converted nitrites are debatable, some say the nitrosamines are released only when high heat is applied. There is no debate about the short term effects of botulism poisoning, it will kill you or make you blind. I use nitrites, watch me die slowly. 4:42:15 PM    comment []

So after spending nearly an hour in an Indian grocery, I was overcome with an intense craving for beef. Not ordinary grocery beef, serious beef, huge cuts in cryovac packages, suitable for a steamship round. That is not the destiny of this little morsel of bovine flesh. It will become beef jerky. Beef jerky is to roast beef what cognac is to wine, what cocaine is to coca. It is concentrated high octane beef that satisfies the palate as well as carnivorous lust. I will show you how to make some. I use a lot of special equipment, but will provide alternatives when possible. To begin, I unwrapped this shoulder cut, rinsed it under tap water, dried on paper towels, wrapped in plastic, and put it in the freezer. Yes, the freezer. It will stay there about 4 hours, until it becomes semi-rigid. That makes it easier to get uniform thin slices when it is cut. I turn it over about once an hour so keep the freezing even. It's kinda like working with most ovens, you have to fiddle with it a bit to accomplish evenness. 4:08:45 PM    comment []

A Snack Mix Here is a tasty snack and the interlinking of two little foodie adventures. You already know about the hyacinth beans. Liz mentioned them as a casual reference, how that's basically the kidney beans they had growing up near Hull. My sister got me on the right track when she told me what they were called, so then all I had to do is try and find a place that sells them. My best clue was that they are used in Indian cuisine. Earlier this week, a friend had offered me a taste of the snack mix pictured (I have kind of a reputation as someone who will eat just about anything - the one who brings "weird" food to the potlucks).  She then told me that she bought the Kashmiri mixture at Zafran (they have a weblink, but it's for the computer stuff and DVDs, not food) - they are "Indian - Pakistan  - Bangladeshi - Grocery And Fresh Halal Meat." Looks like a match, so I went there. I bought some ghee, brown mustard seeds, yellow mustard powder, and a whole pound of garam masala (for $3.79). While in the store, I studied every shelf, searching for hyacinth beans, but they were not to be found. When I took my armload to the cash register, I asked the gentleman there about hyacinth beans. He said they were out. I told him I would be back, since his store was very close to my place of employment. He asked where I worked and when I told him he lit up! He used to work there too! It was not long before we had 5 or 6 common coworkers named - including the young lady who had given me the 411 on his store. Talk drifted to the dire state of the economy. Then another gentleman joined us. He taught economics at NCCU! The conversation revolved around three topics: computers, Indian food, and the economy for 30 minutes. The economics professor was especially interested in my plans for the mustard seeds (for homemade mustard, of course), then he explained to me that a lot of unemployed people have gone back to school, where they are no longer counted as unemployed. He said they had higher registrations, but since the state is in deficit, they cannot add more instructors and must raise tuition, which will force dropouts and raise unemployment levels. He told me that people in the area had given up finding jobs and couldn't take the loss of face in doing menial labor where they would be recognized, so they were moving to northern cities to take menial jobs there. The gentleman at the register told me he had applied at "the company" as a translator, but no one had contacted him. He said to let him know if anything opened up there. I said I would. We all agreed that 8% as the real unemployment rate is the "pain point", one out of twelve people out of a job means near certain contact on nearly everyone's "inner circle". We all shrugged a bit as I left. 3:44:12 PM    comment []

I'm so lazy I check my own weatherpixie now instead of just going outside to see the weather. I first noticed one of these at Rayne's, then another at Jan's. The other morning, I decided to chuck the useless sitemeter and get my own weatherpixie. At first, I thought I'd done something wrong because, instead of weatherboy:6, all I was getting was a fat red X in a blank rectangle. I planned to give it a day to start working. Later on in the day, I checked my site for comments and there it was - a weatherpixie and a kitty! (I am easily amused) 12:02:50 PM    comment []

Thanks to some help from the family, I've found the purple beans. They are hyacinth beans or lablab. They are used mostly onrnamentally, but there are some recipes out there:  In Boccacco's Decameron (9: 8) a group of men sit down for a breakfast of fagioli al tonno and a fritto misto of fish. The "beans and tuna" those thirteenth century Tuscan companions ate that morning were probably prepared in a manner similar to this recipe. But the beans they ate were chickpeas, fava beans, lupine beans (Lupinus albus), or hyacinth beans (Dolichos lablab syn. Lablab purpurus [L. niger] L.); the cannellini bean and the tomato had not yet arrived from the New World. 11:29:13 AM    comment []

So just...give up 6:21:41 AM    comment []

Wonderful Healthy Living From Cans! It's CAN-venient! 5:37:59 AM    comment []

I'm on a Google walkabout looking for purple kidney beans. Liz says they're common in the UK, but I've found only red, dark red, striped, and white. She says the color could be more accurately described as "lilac". Here is one tidbit I did not know, even though food safety is always on my mind: Red kidney beans: Incidents of food poisoning have been reported associated with the consumption of raw or undercooked red kidney beans. Symptoms may develop after eating only four raw beans and include nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain followed by diarrhoea. A naturally occurring haemaglutin is responsible for the illness, but can be destroyed by high temperature cooking, making the beans completely safe to eat. For this reason, kidney beans must not be sprouted. Kidney beans should be soaked for at least 8 hours in enough cold water to keep them covered. After soaking, drain and rinse the beans, discarding the soaking water. Put them into a pan with cold water to cover and bring to the boil. The beans must now boil for 10 minutes to destroy the toxin. After this the beans should be simmered until cooked (approximately 45-60 minutes) and they should have an even creamy texture throughout - if the centre is still hard and white, they require longer cooking. But here is something I do all the time now: Pressure cooking: The temperatures achieved in pressure cooking are adequate to destroy both haemaglutins and the trypsin inhibitor. Pressure cooking also considerably reduces cooking times - kidney beans 10-20 minutes, soya beans 1 hour. Aha! Here's a page about purple kidney beans, but they don't seem to know much either. They are Phaseolus Vulgaris - which brings to mind, why is there not a 1 to 10 scale for the "ypu know what" factor in beans? They could put it right on the package, with the nutritional information. (later - forget it - Phaseolus Vulgaris is just another name for common bean. A lot of beans are lumped together in this Linnaen burrito) 5:12:24 AM    comment []