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.

i support global warming, and stir fry

The first real cold front came about a week ago. We've had an anticyclone anchored over our part of the world since then. It's been dry, and cold--the lows now dip into the 20sF. I've been noticing more cumuliform clouds, so perhaps some respite is immanent. Although I haven't checked the models in weeks, so I couldn't say. And even if I had, I'm not the greatest forecaster this side of the International Date Line.

Yesterday I was treated to a very nice sky, though. Sparsely scattered cumuliform clouds trailed streaks of snow. One of the more beautiful displays I've seen. I do find the fact that I could see snow from the ground somewhat disconcerting, despite the obvious fact that the streaks had melted and evaporated long before coming anywhere near me.

Lately I've been making a lot of stir fries. I started making them because I thought they would make food preparation quicker. But, now that I'm making two different dishes in one night (my partner likes to have side dishes) it takes just as long as European and Euro-American food.

My favorite dish comes from Fuchsia Dunlop's Revolutionary Chinese Cooking. This Hunan cookbook delights me with red stars and pictures or quotes from Mao on every page. (Not that I'm a Maoist, but I'm Red enough to enjoy their iconography.) "Stir-fried smoky bacon with smoked bean curd" is the title. I've modified it slightly for my tastes.

Now, the key to stir-frying is to have the wok on almost the highest heat. For my stove, I've noticed it needs to be slightly less than High to be perfect. The outside of the foodbits needs to be almost seared, and the inside almost raw. ("Almost" really is a key word here.)

Steam some bacon--oi vey have I loved discovering the joy of steamed bacon!--at the highest heat. Give it 10-15 minutes. Better not to overcook it. Then throw some bacon grease (or favorite stir-frying oil) into a highly heated wok. Stir fry the bacon for a few minutes, then throw in some tofu and brown it. Push the bacon and tofu up to the sides of the wok, allowing the oil to drain to the middle. Now throw some hot peppers and bell peppers into the smoking oil. Give it a few minutes--until the room feels like the day after a WTO meeting or GOP convention--then throw in some mushrooms. Let them soften some, then throw in some leek greens and a generous splash of light soy sauce. Be sure to use light soy sauce--the dark stuff isn't as good for this. When the greens have just wilted and warmed, the meal is done.

But what do I do with the non-green parts of the leek? you ask. Well, I like to prepare this dish first, and keep it warm. Then I prepare a vegetable stir-fry. I usually use bacon grease, yes, and anything from our CSA share that we need to eat: carrots, cabbage, potatoes, etc. Working out the timing for what gets thrown in and what gets removed and then added back ahead of time works best for me--I have a scrap of paper with notes about it. For this, instincts honed by a fair amount of kitchen time is best. One of my favorite things to do is to prepare a mirepoix-ish thing, with carrots and cabbage and maybe potatoes, and remove it, then throw in leeks andy then maybe some leafy greens, and then add the pseudo-mirepoix back to the stir fry. If I'm preparing a dish like this alone, I like to use Chiangking rice wine vinegar, and light and dark soy sauces. With the bacon-tofu dish above, I like to give it a splash of Chiangking vinegar, a bigger splash of light soy sauce, and and equal amount of mirin.

Serve over rice.

Mother Sauces: Sauce Béchamel and Sauce Velouté

Life has been busy lately. I have to work pretty much constantly if I hope to earn my Master's degree before heading out for VORTEX-II next summer. A "day off" means a day where I only work three hours rather than the 7-10 hours I normally work in a day. My cooking is restricted to a few easy dishes, except for last night and today. Last night we steamed a spaghetti squash and served it with a tomato sauce. It's a neat squash: cut it in half and scrape the insides with a fork to pull out strands of spaghetti-shaped vegetable matter with a hint of that winter squash flavor. Today I felt like making a treat, so we had Eggs Benedict for breakfast and Reuben sandwiches for lunch.

Now my computer is running a program that will take hours, and there's not a lot I can do until it is done, so I thought I'd continue with the mother sauces.

The first of the mother sauces is sauce béchamel. The basic recipe simply calls for milk, flour and butter. For most applications, I prefer making a slightly more elaborate version described in Joy of Cooking.

For one cup or so of sauce (which serves two to four people depending on how much sauce they like), combine 1-1/4 cups milk with about a quarter of a medium-sized white onion (chopped in big chunks), one or one and a half bay leaves, and a pinch of freshly grated nutmeg. Gently bring it to a simmer. Keep it on low or the low side of medium--heating too quickly will cause the milk to curdle. Simmer for 15-20 minutes. Strain out the solid material so you have only the milk remaining. Oh, and do yourself a huge favor and take a taste of the flavor-infused milk. You will not regret it! Most of the flavor will be muted by the time the sauce is prepared, so don't wait until later to taste it. You'll want the milk to be hot when you add it, so either strain it right before adding it to the sauce, or return it to the saucepan or pot and put it on low heat. Probably best not to let it get to a simmer again.

Next prepare a roux. It's kind of hard to describe how to do this, and I recommend looking for a cooking video on-line for a demonstration. There's several on youtube. Good Eats does a good job describing this procedure in "Gravy Confidential." The short description is to start with equal volumes of butter and flour. Figure one tablespoon of each for a cup or so of sauce. Melt the butter in a saucepan (one with sloped edges is best, because you won't have to worry as much about thick solids getting stuck in corners) over medium-high heat until it foams. Then add the flour, all at once, and start whisking. You'll probably want to reduce the heat to medium or medium-low at this point. Keep whisking--make sure it is smooth. The roux molecules will reach out through liquid added to the sauce to thicken the entire mixture. Any lumpiness (insufficient mixing) in the roux will cause lumpiness in the sauce. For béchamel, we want a white roux. This means it is cooked just until the floury flavor is gone--there will be a slight nutty aroma. This should only take two or three minutes.

Now remove the roux, and let it cool some. Next add some hot milk (either the infusion, or plain milk that has been heated if you are not using the infusion)--just a few tablespoons, to the roux. Whisk the milk and the roux together until they are combined in a paste. Add a few more tablespoons of milk to make sure it combines easily. Now you can add as much milk at a time as you like. I advise adding most, but not all, of the milk--two thirds of a cup or so. Stir it with a wooden spoon over low heat, and don't let it get to a boil again. Heat it for about eight to ten minutes, adjusting the consistency by adding more milk. Be careful--it's much easier to thin a béchamel than to thicken it. Add the milk carefully. Once you get the desired thickness, you'll want to add just a touch more milk just before serving. The sauce will thicken more as it cools, so have it just a touch too thin when you take it off the burner. Salt and pepper to taste.

This sauce can be served as is, but--as a person who delights in complicated tasks--it's more fun to make some daughter sauces!

For sauce mornay: This is a cheese sauce. Usually it is prepared with a quarter cup each of grated Gruyère and Parmesan cheese per cup of béchamel. The cheeses can be modified depending on how the sauce will be used. I often like to add a good cheddar, as well. Simply stir the cheeses into the mother sauce until they have just melted. Be careful not to cook it much longer, or the sauce might get stringy. This works great on sauteéd vegetables, as the base for a gratin, or as the cheese contribution to macaroni and cheese. I generally prefer making sauce mornay with just plain milk, not the flavor infusion described above.

For sauce soubise: Sweat half a pound (per cup béchamel) of finely sliced onions until they are soft, but don't let them brown. Add them to the mother sauce, cover, and cook over low heat for about half an hour. Works well on vegetable dishes, fish, lamb, and does okay with roasted chicken.

For sawmill gravy: Prepare the mother sauce with fat rendered from pork sausage, and use plain milk rather than the infusion. Add lots of pepper! Crumbled sausage can be mixed in to make a sausage gravy.

The highs are now generally in the 50s and low 60s (F) here, with nights now dipping into the 30s. We have not had our first frost yet, however the threat is enough that our plants are joining us indoors. Leaves are turning--a transformation that seemed to come on quite suddenly. I had not noticed any changes until last week, and now yellows and reds are being painted over the greens.

I'd like to get back into the habit of checking the weather--the models and the upper-air measurements and all that--every day. You'd be surprised how few meteorologists have much interest in the weather. I frequently lose track of what's going on in the atmosphere. I suppose this isn't too surprising--I'm mostly interested in severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, and in general prefer studying mesoscale phenomena (events that happen on the scale of about 1 - 100 km and last somewhere between an hour and a day). I confess that I am not that interested in synoptics--that's the scale of weather that happens over thousands of kilometers and lasts a week. Like frontal cyclones. Makes sense, I guess, since mesoscale meteorology is my field, after all.

Well, I don't have much more to write, so I should probably figure out something productive to do with my time as I wait for Matlab to finish making my graphs. My computer isn't frozen,(obviously) but every few minutes a graph pops up, and as long as Matlab is chugging away on these sizable files I don't want to open IDV.

Perhaps I'll have a glass of bourbon. A very fine bourbon--probably the finest I've ever had--was on sale last week so I picked up a bottle. I'm going through it a little quicker than I'd like, but hey, that's generally the case with me and alcohol.

.oOo.

Well, I have my bourbon, and I've decided that the most productive thing I could think to do is write up sauce velouté, the next of the mother sauces I'd like to share with y'all.

Velouté is made with a blond roux and white stock. "Blond" just means that the roux is cooked longer, about eight minutes or so, until it darkens some. Be careful not to burn it! White stock can mean chicken stock, fish stock, turkey stock, vegetable stock, or veal stock if you are into that sort of thing. (There's a cruelty-free veal producer near here that I've been curious to try...it is, of course, prohibitively expensive but I bet it's delicious!) Velouté derivatives are normally eaten with chicken or fish, and it's best to use chicken stock for chicken, fish stock for fish, etc. I also generally prefer to use some of the fat rendered from the meat for the roux. For example, if Andi is roasting a chicken, half an hour before the chicken will be ready I'll scoop out some of that delicious chicken fat for flavor.

To make one cup of velouté, first put about 1-3/4 cups of white stock in a saucepan and get it simmering. Next make a blond roux from a tablespoon and a half each of flour and fat (or butter). This sauce will reduce for awhile, and some of the roux will be destroyed. Thus we need slightly more to begin with. Add the stock in the same way as described above for milk. Bring it to a simmer, and reduce it over medium-low heat for about twenty minutes--until the sauce coats the back of a metal spoon.

An alternate method--one that I have not used--uses a white roux but reduces for an hour (over lower heat, naturally). Because I like to make my velouté from the chicken grease, in order for the sauce to be ready at the same time as the chicken, I have to use the shorter method.

The sauce could simply be finished with a tablespoon or so of butter and served, but it's not spectacular. Better to make the daughter sauces!

For sauce suprême: There's a couple of different ways of going about this. I'll first describe the tastier, but more time-consuming, one. Then the easier one that is still quite good, but not quite as good as the more difficult one (of course!).

James Peterson's textbook Sauces calls for "mushroom cooking liquid." This is made by simmering mushrooms in water. I have made this a few times, but in general I find the same effect can be reached by simmering the original stock to be used in the velouté with mushrooms for about fifteen or twenty minutes. Strain the stock to add it to the roux, and then you can either throw in the mushrooms at the end, or not. (I prefer having mushrooms in my sauce, for the most part.)

So, combine a cup of this mushroom-enhanced velouté with another cup of white stock, and a quarter cup of heavy cream. Reduce by about two-thirds, being careful not to let the sauce come to a full boil. Finish by whisking in a few tablespoons or so of butter and of heavy cream.

Now, this reduction is pretty time-consuming, and if you are preparing it with the chicken grease from the bird your partner is roasting, you will probably find yourself faced with an increasingly impatient partner as she or he waits half an hour or longer after the chicken is ready. For a quicker sauce suprême that will still make your partner praise your sauce-making prowess, add slightly less than half a cup of heavy creme to the a mushroom-enhanced velouté during the period of reduction. Finish with a tablespoon of butter and another of heavy cream.

For sauce aurore: Combine a cup of velouté with about a third of a cup of tomato puree. Adjust the consistency by either reducing or thinning with more white stock. Finish with a tablespoon or so of butter. A splash of white wine vinegar isn't a bad thing to throw in neither, but not necessary.

For sauce hongroise: Finely chop about a quarter of a large onion. Sweat it in butter, but don't let it brown. Add half a tablespoon of paprika (I like Hungarian paprika, but I think that's because I love the novel Dracula). Add a cup of velouté. The sauce can be thinned with white stock, milk, heavy cream, or a mixture thereof. Finish with a tablespoon of butter.

For sauce smitane: Sweat a handful of finely chopped onions in butter without browning. Add half a cup of dry white wine (I prefer sauvignon blanc, but chardonnay is also good and plain old dry vermouth will do in a pinch), reduce by half. Stir in one cup of velouté and simmer for about five minutes. Remove from heat and finish with half a cup of sour cream.

Anyone who knows their sauces will note the glaring omission of sauce allemande--a derivative of velouté that was considered a mother sauce in its own right a few centuries ago. I have only made allemande once or twice, and it did not turn out terribly well. I learned a lot, of course, but I haven't worked on this sauce enough to really get it. Perhaps later.

I do think I've written quite enough now, haven't I?

.oOo.

Oh, I almost forgot! I wanted to share a great recipe for a sauce bercy for white fish. This is technically a velouté derivative, but I only ever make it in this integral form.

Preheat your oven to 400F. Sprinkle one medium shallot, finely chopped, and one tablespoon parsley, also finely chopped, over the bottom of a pan that can be in the oven or the stovetop (like a cast iron or carbon steel pan). Lay over the shallots and parsley three or four white fillets (like tilapia, cod, haddock or even catfish), white side up. They should completely cover the bottom of the pan and should not overlap. Season with salt and pepper, then pour a quarter cup of dry white wine and a quarter cup of fish stock over them. Cover loosely with aluminum foil. Heat on a stovetop on high until liquids simmer. Move the pan immediately to the oven. Cook the fish until done--this should not take more than ten minutes.

Remove the pan from the oven, remove the fish carefully and keep them warm. Place the pan on a stovetop, and reduce the liquid until it is slightly syrup-like. Whisk in an ounce of cold butter, and adjust seasonings. Serve the fish and the sauce.

This is simple, quick, and absolutely delicious. Be very careful not to overcook the fish, though! I tried to show this dish off to some friends in Austin, and overcooked the fish. Not only was the texture rubbery, but the water from the fish thinned out and ultimately broke the sauce. They were courteous enough to offer praise, but I was thoroughly embarrassed.

presidential debates, and teaching "creation science" in schools

This post involves neither food nor the weather, and I apologize for that. Especially since there's interesting weather in the west Atlantic, what with Tropical Storm Kyle probably reaching hurricane status in the next few days, and possibly merging with a storm system currently over the Carolinas to form one hell of a whopper.

Last night Obama and McCain had their first debate. Now, I must confess that though I am a Wobbly (albeit years behind in dues) and an Anarchist, I am going to vote for the Democrat. I can't say that I support him, but quite frankly the Republican ticket scares me. Yes, yes, I want to see the state and the capitalist system torn down, but until we have something in place (like the network of workers' co-operatives and collectives my partner wants to build, or a powerful revolutionary union like the Wobblies once were and will probably never be again), it would be foolhardy to take it out now. We should resist, and we should enlarge the spaces in which we live. But the far right is much better organized, and has much more space, and if the liberal system collapses, they are in a much better position to fill the vacuum than we are.

So, with that disclaimer, a few thoughts on the debate.

1. On economic policy: I vastly prefer what Obama advocates. I find difficulty comprehending howt the Reaganomics espoused by McCain has any credibility with anyone who isn't independently wealthy. Making green energy a central goal, and taking the bottom-up approach, are both the best thing that can be done in the liberal system. I would double-plus love it if some of that money went into grants and loans to start workers' co-ops, like in Venezuela.

2. On foreign policy: They did not sound too different to me. I found it curious how it was only mentioned in passing that the (U.S.-installed) Iraqi government wants the U.S. out now. This whole timetable question seems ridiculous to me--they asked for one. I mean, sure, any idiot could see through the claims that Iraq would have national sovereignty. I don't know whether I'm more surprised by the barefaced hypocrisy, or the fact that no one seems to be commenting on it. Also, though they did not sound too different to me, I get the impression most of the rest of the world (except Vietnam) would prefer Obama, and that's significant.

3. More on foreign policy: Barack said something that scared me, and reminded me of one good part to this whole obsession with Iraq. I remember noting a few years ago, in fact, that the recent resurgence of left wing populist movements throughout South America came after the CIA and State Department turned their attention primarily to southern and southwest Asia. Barack said that he would like to turn U.S. attention back to a number of places including Latin America. Bad, bad news. Look out Chavez--you might get that coup you're afraid of after all!

4. On earmarks: I am quite bothered that most of the examples of wasteful earmarks I've heard over the last week or so is money for scientific research. I mean, "bridge to nowhere?" That's wasteful. But money to study crabs mating or catalogue bear DNA? Or, better still, the millions of dollars that will finance VORTEX-II, part of which pays my current salary and will continue to pay me through my Ph.D.? I don't know, maybe the public has more interest in studying tornadoes. But out of simple self-interest as well as a belief that increasing our understanding of the natural world is a worthwhile project that deserves funding (which is why I am a scientist!), I hope that the next administration and Congress don't slash the budget of the National Science Foundation.

I think that's all for now. I remain with my evaluation that Obama would improve the general situation of the world, although I definitely do not consider him in a favorable light and could not in good consience endorse him--except to the extent that Palin-McCain are even scarier.

One last note: a few days ago I switched my position on whether or not "creation science" or "intelligent design" (different beasts, I know, but closely related) should be taught in science classes. The average scientific education of Americans is very poor indeed. People actually think there is evidence contradicting evolution, or that some kind of debate exists within the scientific community. Most people are taught science simply as a body of knowledge, and not also as a method for producing that knowledge. So most people cannot tell the difference between science and pseudoscience. For this reason, I would like every science teacher to take a week or so to teach kids about that difference. Both "creation science" and "intelligent design" are excellent examples to illustrate this difference.

Buerre Blanc and a hacked Sauce Béarnaise

Okay, I'm not going to begin my treatment of the mother sauces quite yet. The last few days, besides being busy with schoolwork and my research, and haven't had time to collect my thoughts on roux. My cooking has been occupied with trying variations on sauce béarnaise until finally hitting upon something I would be proud to serve to people. It's a bit elaborate.

First prepare the flavor infusion. Equal parts white wine and white wine vinegar, shallots and tarragon should be reduced by a third or so. This can be done on a different day--the infusion keeps well in the refrigerator.

To make the sauce, I like to begin with a buerre blanc. Shallots, equal parts white wine and white wine vinegar (a half cup or so of each). Reduce until there is almost no liquid left (and during the reduction, cut a few sticks of butter into one-inch chunks). Add a few tablespoons of heavy cream. The begin adding the butter, one chunk at a time. It's not super-delicate, but be careful not to heat it so much without stirring that the butter clarifies.

Now, this sauce can be served as is, over fish or eggs or vegetables or anything else that goes well with butter. But for a bit extra trouble, it can be turned into the sauce béarnaise.

Let the buerre blanc cool. Add just a little of the cold wine/vinegar/shallot/tarragon infusion to egg yolks--about a teaspoon and a half or so for three egg yolks. Make a sabayon (see my earlier post on hollandaise). Now whisk in the buerre blanc. Some might like to clarify the butter first, but I prefer it unclarified--more body, more flavor, more creamy goodness.

Flavor can be adjusted with the infusion and with pure butter (but be careful--it's easy for the flavor of unclarified butter to overwhelm the shallotty goodess).

The highs have been in the 70sF, and the lows in the 40sF. This is so awful. We even had frost advisories a few days ago. I suppose it is nearing the end of September, and this is probably considered normal around here. I think I've pinpointed my frustration with this climate--I feel like summer never really happened. I only put on shorts once, and regretted it all day. One other day I wished I had worn shorts, but that was because I was in a poorly venilated building (with no AC, not that there was any point this summer where I felt the need for AC). My only experience of summer was the two weeks I spent in Austin this June. Perhaps next year I'll visit for two weeks in August so the constant spring/autumn actually feels refreshing instead of infuriating and depressing.

Mother Sauces

I have almost completed a goal I've had for a year and a half: a tour of the mother sauces of French cuisine. The approach of this goal was heralded by nothing--I'd long last track of the goal in my culinary adventuring. Until a few nights ago, while reducing tomatoes to a sauce, I realized I had nearly completed the journey. All that remains is sauce béarnaise, and for that I have both reduced an infusion of shallots and tarragon in white wine and white wine vinegar, and prepared a buerre blanc eager for clarification. This seems a fair place to begin a systematic treatment of those 1.5 dozen months.

The concept of the mother sauces is central to French theory on saucemaking. Five sauces are generally considered the mother sauces: béchamel, velouté, espagnole, hollandaise, and tomato sauce. The first three are made from roux--a paste made from equal parts hot butter and flour. The roux is cooked to an appropriate degree of darkness--white roux for béchamel, blond for velouté, brown for espagnole. Each uses a different liquid component--milk, white stock and brown stock respectively. Hollandaise is considered a mother sauce, but I take it as referring to sabayon-thickened butter sauces in general. Tomato is simply a reduction.

In the next few posts, I'll go over these in a bit more detail.

In other news, the remains of Ike blew through last night. When tropical cyclones transition to extratropical form, their structure changes. We find rain on their left side, and wind on the right side. I was fortunate enough to be on the wind side. A few branches were blown down, power flickered and was knocked out in some nearby towns. It was all quite beautiful.

Preparing for autumn, thinking about qi, and scrambling eggs

This cool, crisp morning heralds the approach of autumn. A mere twelve days from now, the night and day will be evenly matched in duration. This holy day brings mixed feelings for me--excitement that a new season is beginning, trepidation for the promise of bitter cold spoken by every chilly breeze, and bone-deep homesickness.

This will be the second autumn I have experienced since I first moved away from the harsh northern winters when I was still young. Last autumn was the first one I'd seen in twelve years. I had forgotten how beautiful the leaves are when they change. Sadly this summer has been so dry that there's not as good a chance at another breathtakingly brilliant display, but it will still outshine any of what I saw in Texas. Ah, Texas--the homesickness. I miss living in a place where the low in August is in the 80s, and where 50 F would be considered unusually cold for an October day. My coping strategy revolves somewhat around meditations on the seasons patterned after the old European pagan holidays. I think of them as the "natural holidays." One for each seasonal transition, and the mid-season holidays (Samhain/Halloween, Imbolc/Groundhog Day, Mid-summer, Beltane/May Day). They are far more meaningful to observe up here where we have winters, as compared to Texas.

I've taken up tai chi practice again. It's fun having a practice that is simultaneously a meditation and an art of hand-to-hand combat. My routine involves about half an hour of qigong--to really get the qi moving--and then half an hour of work on my form. Right now it's Chen Man Ching's 37 posture Yang short form. Honestly, I would prefer continuing my work from 2000 or so in the Old Chen Style, but teachers of that art are hard to find. I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity when I was younger.

Now, anyone who knows me and knows how I'm more or less a hard-nosed scientist who withholds belief in the absence of evidence should be surprised to read that I like to "really get the qi moving." Qi or ch'i is generally dismissed by skeptics as nonsense. And I tend to agree, insofar as I have no reason to believe in some sort of real, measurable "vital force" or "life force" or whatever besides what has been studied through the biological sciences. I sincerely doubt anyone will become a Jedi Master through qigong--although, as always, I am open to being proven wrong. However, no one can say there isn't energy involved in life. The first chapter of any introductory college-level biology textbook these days must talk about transformations of energy, throughout the ecosystem and organisms. Eating and breathing (both methods of taking in qi according to ancient Taoist scholars) initiate a series of transformations of biochemical energy that is ultimately put to use for the organism--heating, thinking, moving. And as I practice tai chi, I really do feel like there's some sort of "energy" or "fullness," like my breath is inside of my body and moving around. Does that mean qi is real? Of course not. But it is an incredibly useful image for understanding those feelings and using them for balanced and relaxed motion. Qigong and tai chi would be impossible without imagining that qi exists and can be moved.

It's not unlike my relationship with the Buddha. I have a statue of the Buddha that sits in zazen pose at the edge of my desk. While I'm working at my desk, I sometimes get distracted or frustrated. And sometimes--if I seem to be unable to do it on my own--I'll even look at the statue and talk to the Buddha, asking him for help in clearing my mind and focusing my attention. Similarly, sometimes while walking to work (on those days when I can't work at home), if I'm particularly scattered or upset, I might imagine the Buddha is there with me, with golden radiance streaming out from him, and I might ask him for help in calming me. Does that mean the Buddha is really somehow here with me, helping me? Of course not. That's just silly--at least if taken in a literal rather than literary sense. But it does mean that certain imagination games have positive benefits. I have spent many hours in sitting-meditation, sometimes simply keeping my mind clear, sometimes focusing on an image like the Buddha's smile. I've cued the mental state of relaxed, joyful calmness to the Buddha and thoughts of him. Much like qi, just because it's not real doesn't mean it doesn't have real effects. I still think Aleister Crowley put it best in Liber O: "In this book it is spoken of Paths and Sephiroth and Gods and Spirits and many things which may or may not exist. By doing certain practices, certain results follow. The Student is most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophical validity to any of them." Now, he was writing about magic--carefully constructing a religious delusion in order to achieve certain practical results in life--which no longer interests me. Even so, I still do find practices like talking to the Buddha, or working with qi, useful with this principle kept in mind. I'm not sure what kind of skeptic that makes me!

Hm. I'd hoped for more cohesion in this blogging exercise. But it seems I'm just jumping around and sharing whatever thoughts have occupied my idle time over the last few days. So there you have it.

Scrambled eggs for breakfast. The key to successfully scrambled eggs is low heat. I am so pleased to have learned that--my scrambled eggs used to turn out kind of watery and messy. But now the curds are perfect and firm and fluffy. I think sometime in the next week I'm going to spend and evening making tortillas with the intention of preparing migas the next morning. Oh, great tip on making tortillas: After they have been pressed but before they have been heated, they can be put on wax paper on a cookie sheet and frozen. Then, to use them, simply take the frozen tortilla-shaped dough and heat it on medium-high to high heat in a lightly greased pan, just as you would if you hadn't frozen them.

I conclude with a link to Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog on Hulu. If you have not seen this supervillain musical starring Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion, well, your life is a bit more drab and less full than those of us who have seen it (and can sing along).

Haddock Filet with Sauce Vin Blanc

for the sauce:

I was in the mood to make some derivative of Hollandaise on Saturday, so I went to the textbook Sauces (James Peterson) and flipped through the chapter on non-integral fish sauces for something to go with the haddock filet defrosted and waiting in the refrigerator. I came across sauce vin blanc and remembered we had a little seafood stock leftover in the freezer downstairs that needed to get used. Half a cup, in fact...the perfect amount for about a cup of sauce (which turned out to be way, way too much for two people and a pound of fish).

The sauce was supposed to have white wine in it (thus the name vin blanc!). The instructions in the textbook had the white wine included in the recipe for the stock...I did not know whether or not there was white wine in the stock, so I added about a tablespoon of vermouth to the half cup of fish stock. Reduced it by about two thirds--removing the water and concentrating the flavor. Some precipitate formed--probably delicious lipids or lipophilic proteins. After removing the reduced stock from the heat and letting it cool, I whisked in two egg yolks.

Now, I've attempted Hollandaise many a time, and it never turns out quite right. I'm no longer intimidated by it...it's a pretty simple sauce to make...but I could never get it perfect. This is because I did not understand the sabayon. See, any sauce needs a thickener full of emulsifiers. I had thought egg would be enough, but did not understand that the egg needed to be heated as it was whisked in order to denature the proteins necessary for the emulsion: the egg needs to be made into a sabayon.

The sabayon requires a very gentle heat applied to an egg/liquid mixture that is being furiously beaten with a whisk. I don't have a double boiler, so I filled a deep stainless steel pan with an ince of water and kept it barely at a simmer. The egg/stock mixture was in a stainless steel bowl that fit snugly into the pan without touching the water. If the bowl got too hot to touch, I lifted it out for a bit to cool it a little.

After a few minutes of beating over gentle heat, the mixture had become a viscous foam, and tripled in volume. Some liquid was still present, but I judged that the mixture was ready. I used Alton Brown's method from "Hittin' The Sauce" (first episode of the eighth season): remove from heat, and whisk in chilled butter cut into tablespoon-sized chunks, returning to heat whenever the residual internal energy of the mixture was insufficient to melt the butter. Peterson says that the traditional recipe calls for 4 oz butter per egg yolk, but that can be halved for a lighter sauce. I ended up using about 6 oz for the two egg yolks to get the sauce to a perfect consistency.

This was, by far, the very best hot egg emulsion sauce I have ever made. It had a thick, creamy consistency and a buttery flavor that coated the tongue with goodness. The fish stock remained as the slightest hint that rather meekly made an appearence after the main blast of butteryum. Andi mistook it for lemon at first, which was interesting to note, as whitefish/butter/lemon is a rather natural ensemble of tastes. Next time (or as a suggestion to anyone who plans to try this sauce) I would use clarified butter. Most of the overwhelming elements of the buttery flavor (like the whey proteins and other milk solids) are removed through clarification, and I think this would allow the fish flavor to come through more completely.

for the fish:

I typically broil fish, but have increasingly found that I get distracted too easily for the fish to turn out well--far too often it's overcooked (including a culinary disaster when I visited Austin and tried to make an integral sauce bercy--may my friends forgive my sins against their palates). So I figured I'd try pan-frying this time. Brushed the filets in pure olive oil while I heated a few tablespoons of the same oil in our carbon steel skillet. Sautéed skin side down for about four minutes, salted the white side, turned, and cooked for one or two minutes longer. (The filets were about three quarters of an inch thick.)

This turned out to be the best job I'd done cooking a fish in quite a while. It was almost difficult to eat, as the fork cut through the buttery (have I used that word too much?) texture. Unfortunately, the skin did not turn out so well--it was cooked to the pan. Probably doesn't help that the pan still hasn't fully recovered from a quiche that was burned in it a week or so ago...needs more scrubbing and serious re-seasoning.

for keeping leftover sauce:

I heard it could be done. The remainder of the sauce spent the night in a mason jar in the fridge. It looked perfect. We figured, omelettes with the sauce for breakfast the next morning! And I'd read that, though risky, if the sauce breaks from the cooling, it can be easily repaired by preparing another sabayon and then whisking in the broken sauce. I failed to do that successfully. And not only did the sauce break, but the whey separated from the milk fat--it broke and curdled! Ah well...for the forseeable future, I'll only prepare hot egg emulsion sauces if all of it will be eaten right away.

During this cooking adventure, we were at the edge of Tropical Storm Hannah (she had not yet transitioned to extratropical form). A light shower all day and an overcast day, with a blustery evening, was all we got from her. Such a disappointment--I'm only ever at the edge of a good tropical cyclone. The clouds weren't even as neat as the ones that I saw in Austin when Rita approached.

Thus concludes my first-ever blog post. Actually, before I go, here is Mark Strand's "The President's Resignation."