Tea Time

For my tea time sandwiches I use crackers. Each is dabbed with cream cheese, and then one of three sandwiches are made:

A single mint leaf with a slice of cucumber.

A sprig of dill with a slice of cucumber.

Or my favorite: Steam some asparagus, and then chill it and slice it into lengths appropriate to the cracker. Put some ground black pepper on the cream cheese and cracker. Then put a dab of dijon mustard on a slice of prosciutto, and wrap this around the asparagus. That goes on top of the cracker.

I am out of prosciutto and asparagus, unfortunately. Today we'll try deviled eggs (made with sour cream rather than mayonnaise) for tea time. But soon, lunch: an Italian style sandwich (three or four kinds of Italian meats, with lettuce, tomato, red onion, mustard, mayonnaise, and a slice of provolone).

VORTEX2 begins

Thursday morning, 7 May, bright and early, four Penn State students and I packed up a minivan and left State College, Pennsylvania. Our destination was Norman, Oklahoma, where we would be joining with the largest and most ambitious tornado research project in history: VORTEX2.

Joplin, Missouri, hosted us the first night of our travels. At 7 am, one of my colleagues woke me with good reason: the sky was green and hailing. Our first taste of severe weather, and the project had not yet started! We were at the apex of a derecho, a straight-line wind event that tore across the country. A tornado warning had been declared for the northern book-end vortex, and as the bow echo passed a mesovortex spun up and earned another tornado warning. With awe we watched the hurricane-force winds threaten to uproot the trees. I found the event especially wonderful because I'd wanted to experience a derecho for the past few years, but knew we would not be chasing any.

The tornado sirens sounded some thirty minutes after the danger had passed. Hotel patrons huddling on the first floor were relieved when I informed them of who I was and why they could believe me that they were completely safe.

With the power knocked out of the hotel, we decided to leave a few hours earlier than planned. We made Norman by about 1pm.

The next two days were filled with trainings and meetings.

And today, VORTEX2 officially began. But alas! A ridge to the west, cold air all around...no supercells for us. Which was fine: today we were able to work out some of the technical difficulties in our brand new equipment and software.

And that's about all I can say.

I'll conclude with some pictures of our hotel parking lot. These hardly do justice to the spectacle of seeing all of the vehicles together. Doesn't help that half of the vehicles are missing.

I drive the van labeled "Probe 7." Click on pictures for full-size images.

improvised stir fry sauce

Last night was a sauce experiment. Neither an abject failure nor a stunning success, this experiment provided me with an exciting new canvas for my second favorite form of creative play.

The meal had four components: Steamed greens and rutabegas; a stir-fried mirepoix with garlic and ginger; tofu coated in potato flour and deep fried at 350 degrees; all on a bed of rice.

The steamed vegetables and rice should be straightforward. For the tofu, I simply sliced it and, still wet, coated each piece with potato flour. Then into the deep frier! (I got a Cool Daddy in a holiday gift-exchange, so now I have a cover, a handy basket for lowering food in, and best of all: temperature control!)

For the stir fry, the ginger splashed in the hot oil first, shortly followed by garlic. When it had browned, both were removed. Then a mixture of coarsely chopped (half inch chunks) onions, carrots and celery, with light soy sauce. The ginger and garlic were added back into the mix for a few minutes, then the entire mixture removed.

Now, the sauce. On the side, I had mixed together a paste of about equal parts potato flour and water. The first step for making the sauce involved flavoring the already-flavored oil with dried and crushed (and deseeded!) serrano peppers. Let them sizzle for just a minute (and try not to choke as the blast of pepper gas meets your lungs--this is what democracy looks like!) and then pour in: about two tablespoons dark soy sauce, an equal amount of cooking sherry, a tablespoon or less of honey, and a splash of sesame oil. Use the potato flour paste to thicken the sauce after it has cooked for a few minutes.

Actually, don't do that, because it didn't turn out so well. Cooking sherry always has salt added, so the entire mixture turned out way too salty. Next time I will use either port or mirin. Either of those will also mean less honey. I also added too much sesame oil--next time I will carefully measure out less than a teaspoon. But, as I said, this did show promise as a rich, thick syrup that could go well with future stir fries.

Over the next few days, I will be making, in succession: 12 quarts of beef stock, 8 of which will then immediately go into sauce espagnole, with the other four to be later added to the sauce espagnole and further reduced to yield five quarts of demi-glace. These will be ladelled into two-cup mason jars and frozen for future use. The entire process should take about 12-15 hours, and will constitute something of a weekend for myself after I meet with my advisor on Monday.

I have not been keeping up with the weather, so I have nothing to say about that. My apologies.

salmon baked with dill, with a white wine/shallot/mustard sauce, butternut squash bisque, and the possibility of a snowstorm next week

Last night, after coding for awhile and completing my main task for that work session, the desire to cook up a storm carried me to the kitchen, as it so often does. This was one of those work-with-what-we-have cooking adventures. We have at least a gallon of stock made from our vegetable scraps, and we have more carrots and celery than we can handle. Not to mention Squash Mountain, the central geographic feauture of our dining room table. No meat defrosted, but we did have a nice thick salmon fillet in the freezer, which I knew would defrost quickly.

For the sauce: Sweat a quarter cup or so of shallots in butter, gently, for a few minutes. Add about a cup of white wine, and reduce by two-thirds. Prepare two cups of velouté (see: 4 October, 2008 post). Fish stock would probably work just great, but I used vegetable stock. And, I must say, it's often the case that a velouté tastes fine on its own. This did not! And after I stirred in the white wine/shallot infusion (note: next time I will use onions for a mustard sauce), the taste was not improved. But once I stirred in the half tablespoon of white sugar and the tablespoon and a half of Dijon mustard, it was perfect (with a little salt and pepper, of course). Before adding the seasonings, be sure to simmer the sauce for 10-20 minutes. After adding the mustard, do not allow the sauce to come to a boil again.

For the salmon: Brushed the salmon with olive oil. Rubbed in salt and chopped dill. Stuck it in an oven at 350 degrees F. I began checking it at 12 minutes. The filet was about an inch and a half thick, which meant it should have been done at 15 minutes (reading 120 -125F on a meat thermometer). After 15 minutes, this had not yet been achieved, so I turned the oven up to 450F. Another six minutes after that was required. And the salmon turned out perfect--this is the second best fish I've ever prepared, I think.

For the butternut squash bisque: Prepare a mirepoix by sauteéing a half to three quarters of a cup each of chopped onions, chopped celery, and chopped carrots. After the onions are getting translucent, add about four cups of cubed butternut squash flesh. Let this sauteé for a few more minutes, then add three cups of vegetable stock and simmer until the vegetables are soft. When they are, let the mixture cool. Then pureé in a blender. At this point, the mixture can be refrigerated or frozen. Any amount that is to be used should be reheated, seasoned with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, and finished with an appropriate amount of heavy cream.

Two days ago, a nasty storm started showing up in the long-range runs of the GFS (Global Forecast System) model. The two runs I saw for that day strongly suggested an intense precipitation event, likely involving freezing rain and snow. The later run put better chances on the snow (using both the 540 dam 1000-500 hPa thickness contour as well as the 850 mb 0C isotherm as proxies for the snow line). Quite naturally, I find this disturbing. It looks like the GFS runs for today have amplified the disagreement on this point. Both have pushed the storm somewhat to the west, but one definitely gives us rain, while the other gives us winter precipitation. The Canadian CMC model runs from today mostly agree with the rainy version of GFS. By tomorrow the WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting) models--which go out to 84 hours--should offer another view on how the storm will evolve.

taproot gratin and Bauern Frühstück, and how I'm starting to get this whole Solstice thing

Having realized taproots can be substituted for potatoes in many different recipes, thus altering the flavor of the dish, I have succeeded in two experiments.

Gratin is a sort of casserole involving layers of potatoes, cheese, and béchamel (or just cream or milk), baked to perfection. My most recent gratin cleaned out our refrigerator some. First, I grated enough butternut squash to coat the bottom of a baking dish by slightly less than an inch or so. Then a layer of thinly sliced turnips, followed by a layer of thinly sliced rutabegas. A layer of thinly sliced potato on top. I made a sauce mornay (see my earlier post on béchamel) with Parmesan and Jarlsberg cheeses. Poured the hot sauce into the baking dish, so that the layers of vegetables were barely covered...I think I made three cups of sauce for a gratin that was 10" x 18" x 1.5". Oven preheated to 350 degrees F, sprinkle some grated Parmesan on top, cover with aluminum foil and bake for a little less than half an hour. Then remove the cover and continue baking for another twenty minutes or so. Be sure to begin checking on it after about 45 minutes. You generally want the top to be browning, and a stainless steel butterknife should slide cleanly in and out of the gratin. Sprinkle with parsley as it cools.

Bauern Frühstück or German Farmers' Breakfast is one of those "garbage eggs" or "refrigerator velcro" kind of dishes. I diced a cup or so of turnip and potato (the potato had been left in the refrigerator half-used and needed to be finished off), about three quarters of a cup each of green bell pepper and onion, and sliced some large cloves of garlic. Whisked several eggs into a more homogenous mixture. Pulled out some sliced, cooked turkey ham that had been in the fridge for almost two weeks. I think I put a few mushrooms in there, too.

I sauteéd the green peppers and onions and mushrooms in bacon grease on medium-high heat. The green peppers were undercooked, so next time I'll add those first, then the onions and mushrooms. When I judged the onions done, I transferred the vegetables to a bowl and kept them warm. Then another tablespoon or so of bacon grease, and browned the root vegetables. Shredded ham was sprinkled on this, along with the slices of garlic. A minute or so later the other vegetables were added back to the main dish. Then I poured the eggs over the entire mixture. Next time I will add the spices to the eggs before adding them--adding the spices while trying to scramble the mixture proved inconvenient. For spices, I went with rosemary (because we had some drying above the sink so it was within reach) and rubbed sage (because we have a big bag of it that needs to get used). The original recipe calls for parsley, but I elected against that partly because I would like to use our parsley for other purposes, but mostly because I had not prepared any of the parsley. Anyway, scramble for a bit (lowering the heat to medium or lower) and when it seems done, remove it from the heat and coat it with a layer of grated cheese (sharp cheddar works great!).

So that's how we are using our winter vegetables. One of my favorite things about my life right now is that almost all of my food comes from local producers, and that this requires my diet to be in tune with the seasons. I still find myself going to the grocery store for out-of-season produce, but that happens less and less, and when it does, it's because I'm making a dish showcasing some seasonal vegetable. This is one of the many ways I'm learning to cope with--even appreciate!--the winter. (If I haven't mentioned this before, I really, really hate the winter...especially snow!)

I've been quite sluggish recently. I blame this on the latitude. By 6pm, it's as dark as night here. Not to mention that at high noon the sun seems to have barely risen, so long are the shadows. I miss living in a subtropical latitude. But one thing about this whole experience up North is that I'm really getting to understand what I call the "natural holidays." Take winter solstice, or Yule. That will be the longest night of the year. It heralds at least two more months of darkness and cold, snow and ice. Yet that day is the promise of the new summer. The night will swallow not another minute of the daily cycle; the sun pushes warmth and light back into our lives. I can see why they used to include the Divine Infant in the images for the celebration of Yule (still do, I guess).

why does it feel like winter now?

I'm glad that all three expressions of the American hatred of love are now law. Especially Prop8! See, as you might guess from my last post, I had forgotten how terrible the people here are. I mean, not only was an African-American with an Arabic name elected to the leadership of the planet, but all of the extreme anti-choice measures met with The Fail! North Americans seemed almost not despicable! But, the clear will of The People here is that people who are in love can't get married (i.e., make a huge pile of legal arrangements that are completely reasonable for life-partners) unless there's something about their genitalia--or more honestly which boxes they check on The Forms--that satisfies some judge.

All snark aside, my natural enemy has descended from the skies. Okay, the snark isn't quite over yet. But yo what's with this winter thing yo? SRSLY (as the kids might text). Unseasonably cold, I'm told...by people who actually understand the weather.

Soooo....last night's cooking adventure was a "Clean Out the Winter Vegetables from the Fridge" game. (Tonight will be, too.) We have all these taproots from our CSA--and we have a whole stalk with Brussels sprouts!--so I had to figure out what to do with them. Dinner was: turnips and squash roast, brussels sprouts cockaigne, and sauteéd pork chops with sauce piquante.

The taproots included turnip, rutabegas, and something I failed to identify, but was a deep pink and somewhat elongated. These were cut into chunks that were a little less than an inch thick. An appropriate amount of shallots should also be peeled--probably about a 1:4 or 1:5 proportion by volume. Also a slightly less than equal amount of butternut squash--oi we have too many of those!

The recipe called for fat rendered from whatever meat I had cooked. The recipe also called for about 90 minutes of cooking time, and I wasn't about to sauteé a pork chop and just let it sit for an hour and a half. I mingled bacon fat from the fridge with pure olive oil. This was melted on the stove with butter, for a 1:3 ratio of butter:other fat. An essential part of this flavoring was rosemary.

I put the taproots into a baking dish and spooned the flavored fat over them, and slid the mixture into an oven whose kob was turned to 375. Every twenty minutes or so, the ensemble was stirred. What came out was just delightful! I now will consider taproots a reasonable generic replacement for potatoes. I found the squash a bit too sweet--like eating yams or sweet potatoes (neither of which I like)--but otherwise the dish was just perfect. And, the next morning, sauteé some onions and mushrooms, add the leftovers and some ham, pour a few well whisked eggs into the pan, and you have a yummy breakfast.

For the brussels sprouts, I cut them off the stalk. Butter and olive oil were heated with a few cloves of garlic. The sprouts were cut lengthwise and lain face down in the garlic butter. Cover on low heat for about twenty minutes, and finish with parmesan cheese.

The pork chops were simply sauteéd. I will describe the sauce whenever I get around to my entry on sauce espagnole, the next of the mother sauces I promised I'd share here.

the whole world parties today

I surprised myself earlier today, when I realized that, for the first time in many years, I don't feel ashamed to be an American, and I don't feel a general sense of revulsion for the majority of the people in this country.

I'm sure it will pass, but it's kind of nice right now.