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."