During the Will Clark and Rick Reuschel days I was such a Giants fan that I actually listened to games on the radio. Now I hadn't even heard of this Jung Hoo Lee dude when I attended my first game today at Oracle/AT&T/SBC/PacBell Park in three years.
Fond childhood memory #37: going with my (probably reluctant) dad to Candlestick to watch the Giants play the Reds. My first and only live baseball game when I was into the sport. We left a bit early because the Giants were ahead and I tuned in to KNBR 680 on the way home to hear the Reds rally but ultimately lose. That's how I remember it anyway.
I finally made a successful chiffon cake and it's hanging calmly upside down.
Tomorrow I'll try my best to cleanly dislodge it from the pan (I don't have one of those fancy removable bottom pans so I used the lightly floured base technique).
Got my last minute dead center uncomfortably close for everyone except me seat for the Metreon IMAX showing of Disclosure Day, with no previews and some sort of pre show live QA with Senor Spielbergo himself. Thanks person who cancelled just before the show!
I picked up some guanciale from Eataly in order to continue my Roman pasta journey and couldn't help shopping the fresh pasta section for a new pasta: Spaghetti Alla Chitara. And also the cheese aisle for pecorino so I could force myself to get over my sheepy cheese aversion, as well as something new: grana padano.
In short I had everything to make a Carbonara based off a video I saw of some famous chef dude named Luciano Monosilio.
It's super yellow probably because it's yolk only and the pasta itself was already yellow. But quite creamy and delicious. I prefer the W2 Kitchen alternative I shared earlier, but as far as more "traditional" Carbonara goes this was a nice result.
My friend and I were walking through downtown San Jose quite drunk out of our minds when we happened upon this bar/lounge in an alley. I didn't get any pics from the inside but it's really elegant and the kind of place you don't expect in an alley and certainly not in lame downtown San Jose.
Intense discussions over a three month period resulted in an agreement with my about to turn 3 niece that I would make her a sunflower cake for her birthday. This would allow me to practice my non existent fine piping skills. As for her benefit, she likes sunflowers (at least I convinced her that she likes them because I really wanted to copy a nice design I'd seen on YouTube).
Then came the last minute news from my sister. It's a Frozen party. So sunflowers out, Frozen in. And this was the result:
This cake was quite the adventure: first I made three chiffon cake layers which took on an unattractive purple color and were nuclear dense. So I tossed those and made what is known as a "Reverse Creamed" cake. It rose up in the oven like a champ to fill two cake pans completely, so I was able to split those into a total of four layers allowing for superior height factor.
Something went horribly wrong with the color. I'd wanted to make it pink and have a slight berry taste so I used freeze dried strawberries that I'd blitzed and a bit of natural food color. The slight berry taste was there, but the color: sepia. Because chemistry apparently. I compensated by making the chattily cream layers pink which I think would have looked nicer next to whiter cake layers.
Then I tried to make a swiss meringue butter cream because I wanted to try something other than the ermine frosting I always make (in particular because I'd originally planned on piping flowers so I thought SMBC would be stronger). This turned into a herculean effort to get the temp of the meringue down to what Claude told me was supposed to be 70ish degrees. My Kitchenaide heated up hotter than it's ever heated, but it survived what ended up being a 45 minute mixing ordeal (I took 10 minute breaks a couple of times because I was afraid it was going to melt). It came together in the end, but though I purposefully increased the SMBC recipe by 1.5, that still wasn't enough for me! My struggle with disappearing frosting continues.
I was trying to use natural food colorings for everything but I just couldn't get a descent purple and blue, so in went the random synthetic colors I had sitting around. They're fine -- literally a drop or two spread out over an entire cake isn't really the problem.
The end result: a moist, delicious cake with a baffling interior color scheme and silky buttercream frosting that made my niece and her cousins' tongues blue.
I have no idea who most of the little SD characters I put on top are. I know the two sisters and the snow guy. But that's it.
My next cake will be a mini two layer 6 inch chiffon cake. I'm determined to get non dense chiffon! Determined!!!!
I don't do any "service" so this isn't really a PSP, but anchovy pasta is among the easiest things to make when you just need a carb packed dinner to recover your glycogen stores post threshold run.
Watch my number one chef obsession Adam Byatt show how it's done. (Though "10 minutes" is BS -- for me no matter how simple, minimum 30 minute start to finish for any pasta dish.)
(Since it's election day you need to drop your ballot off in a drop box -- don't mail it because starting this year it doesn't count if it doesn't arrive by election day.)
Another random recipe popped up in my YouTube feed and now it's one of my favorite green bean preps (second to the chef John slow cooked southern green beans).
The green beans are sliced into strips and end up somehow floppy and crunchy at the same time. This also passes my all important next day couple of spoonfulls straight out of the fridge test with flying colors.
Steps:
1 lbs green beans, 1lbs pork Mince
Slice the green beans length wise into little strips
Oil in pan, piping hot, add the green beans and some salt and stir fry until somewhat soft. Maybe 5 minutes?
Green beans out, pork mince in, fry until a bit browned (I press the pork flat and let it fry for a few minutes on one side to get super browned, then use my pastry cutter to break it up)
Add minced ginger, garlic and red chili and stir fry a minute or so
Add dark soy sauce and shaoxing wine and stir fry a minute or so. Add enough dark soy sauce so it's a really nice color
Add back the green beans and stir together
Clear out some space in the middle, add some soy sauce, let it sizzle a bit, then mix it all together and you're done!
Adding to my meal prep rotation because this will go great over rice!
I got the bottom earring in high school at 17. I don't know why I waited 31 years to get more, but I think the double helix is going to look quite nice when I can swap the studs with hoops in 9 months or so.
