Daily links, incoherent ramblings, and other fun. Brought to you by Andrew Beck. http://arbeck.net I love the metric system. It makes cooking so much easier. Yesterday I wanted to brine some shrimp. Normally I'm a big fan of Alton Brown's Good Eats, so I quickly found his brine recipe for shrimp. Here it is: 1/4 cup kosher salt 1/4 cup sugar 1 cup water 2 cups ice This recipe makes enough brine for over a pound of shrimp and I'm not doing that much, so I want to cut it down, but how do I do that? Also, how exactly does one measure 2 cups of ice? Is it cubed, crushed, etc? Also, what kind of kosher salt are we talking about. Diamond Crystal is about half as dense as Morton's. So 1/4 cup of Morton's would be 1/2 cup of Diamond Crystal. Do you see my confusion? Instead I pulled out Charcuterie and found the basic brine recipe: 4 liters of water 225 grams salt 125 grams of sugar What makes this recipe so great is that 4 liters of water just so happens to be 4000 grams of water. So out comes the scale. I can quickly deduce that even one liter of water would be more than enough brine. So lets just divide that recipe by 5: 800g water 45g salt 25g sugar Wasn't that easy? I didn't even need a calculator. http://arbeck.net/index.php?id=-235 As I watched the finale of Hell's Kitchen last night, I couldn't help but notice that the cooks just weren't that good. Not only did most of the food stuff I would expect from The Olive Garden or The Cheesecake Factory, it was stuff that seemed to hard for the cooks to prepare. So they planned boring meals, that their crews couldn't cook. Not very smart. Of course, that got me to thinking. What would I have done? As far as I could tell, they each needed to have three courses with three options for each course. So I came up with my own little menu. For the first course I'd make butter poached prawns with vanilla bean buerre blanc; a sweet corn terrine with pea, corn, and cherry tomato salad; and a chicken satay with peanut sauce and coconut rice cake. Now that all sounds impressive. But it's really not. The buerre blanc, terrine, salad, rice cake, peanut sauce, and poaching liquid can all be prepared during prep. For service the only things that actually need to be cooked are the prawns and the chicken. If you have your poaching liquid heated to exactly 120F, it becomes simple to cook because they can't be over cooked. Just drop them in for the order as soon as they are called out. They will be heated through in 15 minutes, but can wait if they need to. The buerre blanc simply needs to be kept warm over a double boiler. The terrine just needs to be garnished. The hardest thing is to grill a chicken skewer! Dinner is where things can really fall apart. The dishes are really much more complex and the crews on the show are awful. Again, you want to take as much work away from service and move it to prep as possible. My three courses for dinner would be: pepper crusted rib eye with leek rings and mushroom ketchup; pinot noir poached salmon with polenta cake, mushroom ragu, and pinot noir reduction; and deconstructed pumpkin ravioli with sage butter. Again, all much more impressive than it sounds. You do 80% of the work during prep. You drop the salmon portions, plus a pinot noir ice cube, salt and pepper into a sous vide bath at 130F. The steaks are seared quickly and they go into a sous vide at the same temperature. Now technically all your meat is "done" before service. You also make your pinot noir reduction, polenta, fresh pasta sheets, mushroom stock, mushroom ketchup, ravioli filling, and cut your leek rings during prep. Now you will need to have three stations going simultaneously during service. And each cook will have to cook at least two things. But nothing is hard. Put the weakest one on the fry station. He simply drops the leeks in a batter and then into the fryer when a steak is 4 minutes to the window. He also fries a sage leaf when the ravioli one minute to window. When the salmon is 4 minutes to window, he drops a polenta cake into the fryer. I had more difficult cooking assignments as McDonald's. The next weakest chef is on meat. He simple removes the beef from the sous vide bag, dreges it in crushed pepper, and sears it off for 4 minutes a side in a hot pan, removes it from the heat, and drops in a nob of butter while it rests for four minutes. For the salmon it's even easier. Take it out of the bag, and then whack the skin for a few seconds with a blow torch. The hardest job is going to be my saute station, but again I've made it as easy as possible. He has to make the mushroom ragu, the sage butter, and ravioli. The mushroom ragu is easy. Butter and mushrooms in a pan until it glistens. Add a spoonful of flour and let it cook for a few minutes. Add mushroom stock and bring to boil. The sage butter consists solely of melting butter with a sage leaf in it. The only hard part is the ravioli, and since it's deconstructed that isn't too bad. Drop the past sheets and put the filling in a pan at the same time. When the pasta sheets come out, dry them. Put one on the plate, the filling goes down, the other sheet goes down. I think very little could go wrong with all that. Desert is the easiest part because virtually everything is already done before hand. It consists entirely of plating and using a blow torch. The three dishes would be homemade smore with vanilla salt, shortcake with vanilla ice cream and strawberry corriander foam, and finally bourbon creme brulee with candied bacon and pecans. Everything here is made during prep. Service for the smore is: graham cracker down, piece of chocolate down, marshmallow down, brown marshmallow with tourch, another piece of chocolate, vanilla salt. Service for the ice cream is: shortcake, scoop of ice cream, apply foam, apply cilantro leaf. For the creme brulee simply carmilize the top, and sprinke candied bacon and and pecans on top, then hit the whole plate with a dusting of powdered sugar. I don't know about you. But I think I would have won. http://arbeck.net/index.php?id=-234 It's been a busy but satisfying summer so far. After our trip to Yakima, we decided to have a BBQ for the solstice parade. In anticipation I purchased a new cooker. It was finally time to retire the flower pot (it now has a tomato plant growing in it. This one was much better and allowed me to cook two whole pork shoulders and two racks of ribs at one time on my first overnight smoke. Because the smoker was going, I didn't actually make it to the parade. Thankfully, Kathrine took some great pictures. The BBQ went off without many problems, and a good time was had by all. This weekend we intended to take things easier. We ran some errands Saturday, and ate lunch at The Steelhead Diner. I must say it is excellent. Great prices and portions sizes as well. You could spend a lot here if you wanted to eat the entrees, but if you stick to the sides, sandwiches, salads, and desserts (which all looked good) you can do well. Kathrine and I both had a sandwhich, fries, sodas, and we split a dessert and the bill was only $35. Very good for good for food of this quality. For sunday dinner we used the smoker for the second time. This time I fired it up with the water pan empty and all of the bottom vents open 100%. Instead of staying at 225-250 degrees the cooker shot up to around 350. I used it like an oven to roast/smoke a pork loin that I had brined for three days. Once it hit an internal temperature of 150 degrees I took it off and put it in a 500 degree oven for just enough time to really crisp the outside. Then we sliced it up and ate it. It was great. The smoke and the brine almost made it take like a ham. I don't know what I'm going to smoke next, but I do love my cooker! I spent the rest of the weekend working on my wine website. It finally has just about every feature I could want. I had to shoehorn a few things in because my original design was not intended to expand to meet some of the things I wanted, but all in all, I was able to get it all in with a minimum of headaches. http://arbeck.net/index.php?id=-233 This weekend Kathrine and I took a trip to the wine country around Yakima. More specifically we toured the Rattlesnake Hills AVA. It was a good trip. We had a lot of fun and bought/consumed too much wine. We drove over on Saturday morning with the intention of seeing three wineries and then eating a picnic before checking into our hotel. We went to Sagelands Vineyards, Bonair Winery, and Paradisos del Sol. Unfortunately, the weather was not cooperating. It was in the low 70's with very light rain off and on, so we decided to hit one more winery, Hyatt Vineyards, before going to the hotel. The hotel was nice, but nothing special. I don't know if there are any that are really special in the Yakima area. Maybe one of the bed and breakfasts would be a nicer option for our next visit. We ate our picnic lunch in the room instead of outside and then lounged around and used the hotel spa until it was time for dinner. We ate a very good dinner at a place called the Barrel House in downtown Yakima. The food wasn't spectacular, but it was very good. They had an extensive wine list, all from Washington. The bottles were more than reasonably priced. They had multiple bottles of wine for under $20. Best of all, every thing was available by the glass. I was able to enjoy a gewurztraminer from Maryhill Winery with the tuna tartare (which was more of a sashimi), while Kathrine drank a rose from Barnard Griffin. With our entrees, we were both able to change gears. Kathrine was having a sirloin and went with a syrah from Saint Laurent, while I had a bacon wrapped pork tenderloin with apple chutney paired with a viogner from Canon del Sol. The service was also impeccable. They were never intrusive, but made sure to check on us often. The waiter was never pushy and made very good food and wine suggestions. I almost felt bad because we had no room for dessert. Of course, then I saw the size of the creme brulee that came out to the table next to us, and I was glad I abstained. Even though our hotel offered a free hot breakfast, we figured we could do better. I'd heard about Waffles Caffe on Chowhound and thought it would be a great place to go. It was the perfect hearty breakfast place. My only complaint was that I didn't have room for any waffles! After breakfast we decided to hit five wineries before lunch. It was an ambitious plan, but we pulled it off. We went to Eaton Hill Winery, Tefft Cellars, Steppe Cellars, Claar Cellars, and Two Mountain Winery. By this time Kathrine was pretty wine'd out, and even I was getting a little tired of tasting wine. It was about 1:30, and even though neither of us was super hungry yet we decided to eat lunch. The place we picked for lunch was called El Ranchito. I had heard it is the best Mexican restaurant around. Possibly the best in the state. If you've spent much time in Seattle, you probably don't think that means much as our Mexican cuisine leaves much to be desired. But if you spend a few minutes driving through the Yakima wine area, you'll notice that the Mexican population there is huge and there are tons of restaurants. The food was great. Kathrine had chicken enchiladas and I had a fried burrito filled with barbacoa (I think it was brisket) and a carne asada quesadilla. What suprised me about the food was the layer of flavors. Nothing was overly hot, but they used tons of spices like cinnamon to give a great depth of flavor. Oh, and did I mention it was cheap? Now I know why the girl at Paradisos del Sol raved about it. After gorging ourselves on two giant meals and five wineries we could have left well enough alone, but we made one more stop at Piety Flats. If only we had saved room for dessert as the cute little tasting room also sold peach sundaes and root beer floats. Alas, we had to decline the desserts (can you believe I said no to dessert twice on this trip?) and started the drive home. This is a great weekend getaway from Seattle. There has to be at least thirty wineries you can try so there is plenty to do. The drive is also nice and easy. Just a touch over two hours, but very easy as it is on the interstate the whole way. I'm already thinking about our next trip there. http://arbeck.net/index.php?id=-232 This win wasn't so big. It was only $70. I also just got smacked over the head with the deck. I felt like Jamie Gold. In a 2.5 hour tournament I had AK 5x, AA's, KK's 2x, QQ's 2x. Hard not to win when you get those cards. Because I got such great cards, there is not a lot to analyze. There really was only one key hand for me. The blinds are at 100-200 and I have about 10,000 in chips. The button folds and the small blind makes it 600 to go. He has about 12,000. I look down at Q-9 of spades. I decided he would raise with any pair, any suited Ace, or A-10 or better. The pot odds of 2-1 plus the implied odds if I hit big made it an easy call. Plus I was pretty confident of my ability to outplay him after the flop. The flop comes down 9-7-2 all diamonds. He checks. He could be trapping, but I need to figure out if top pair is good here, so I lead out 600. He calls. His call gives me tons of information. I know he doesn't have an over pair, so I have the best hand. He likely has 88's or 66's with one diamond, A-9, A-7, or he has A-10+ with the Ace of diamonds. The turn comes 10c. Not a card I really wanted to see has that helps a lot of the hands he could have. It gets worse when he leads out with 1200. I could justify calling this bet, but then I'm going to most likely face another bet on the river. I decide to raise thinking he could fold now, it makes it more likely that he checks on the river, and it helps me define his hand a bit more. I make it $3500 to go. He ponders for a long time before calling. The fact that he just called tells me that the 10 helped him, but it didn't give him a hand he feels is made. I put him on either A-10 or A-J with the ace of diamonds, or 88's with one diamond. Those are the hands that the 10 helped. The river brings the 7c. And he checks to me. I consider moving all in, but I figure the 88's and the A-J fold. I don't think he folds the A-10 enough of the time to make it worth trying. Best to just check behind. He shows 8's and I scoop a rather large pot. http://arbeck.net/index.php?id=-231 As I was walking to lunch today I got to thinking about terroir. If you've spent anytime tasting wine, you will soon come to realize that although it may be the same grape it tastes different depending on where it is grown. A riesling will always taste like a riesling, but in general you can pick out whether it was grown in Washington, California, Germany or France. All of Europe seems to recognize this. Which is why we have Sancerre versus Pouilly Fume and Tinto Ribera Del Duero versus Rioja even though they use the same grapes. It goes beyond grapes though. We have Asagio and Parmigiano cheese, Bresse chicken, Dijon mustard, etc. Europeans are very comfortable with this concept. And it makes sense. Evolution and human selection make it obvious that over time you can breed animals and agricultural products to best suit the environment. They've also had almost 2000 years of agricultural experimentation to get it right. My question is this. Why isn't this a big deal in the United States? Sure there are a few exceptions (Vidialia Onions, Florida Orange Juice, etc), but in general no one cares where any of their food comes from. Does Washington Asparagus taste better than the stuff from Chile or Mexico? What happens if you grow the same tomato in two different locations? Does it taste different, probably. Does it have different nutritional values? Most likely. So why don't we seem to care? http://arbeck.net/index.php?id=-230 I won a big home tournament this weekend and took home $315. I thought it might be fun to post a few of the big hands. I played a very good tight aggressive game and avoided going on tilt after some really bad beats. Early in the tournament blinds are still at $25/$50. I'm in middle position with two limpers in front of me. I look down at queens and make it $300 to go. The button and both blinds both call. I didn't really want to see the flop 6 ways, but oh well. The flop comes down Qd-7h-2c, Gin! It's checked to me I make it $600. Everyone folds but the big blind who calls. The turn brings an 8d. It's checked to me and fire out $1500. The big blind calls. The river comes 9d. Not a great card for me, especially when the big blind fires out $2000. If he made a runner runner straight or flush I'm going to be mad, so I just call. He shows Qc-9h, and I rake in a big pot. My first bad beat (if you can call it that) happened just a little later. I've got a stack of about $10000, far and away the chip leader at my table. So far I've only showed down pocket queens and pocket kings. The only other two hands I've played I've won before the flop and won with a continuation bet on a ragged flop. I'm dealt A-10 off suit in middle position with one limper in front of me. The limper is very weak passive. I make it $450 to go. The cut off and the button both call. I would classify both of them as weak passive. Both blinds fold and the original limper calls. We see the flop four ways, with the pot at $1950. The flop comes down Ks-Qh-8d. The original limper checks, I throw out a continuation semi-bluff of $600. The button and cutoff both call, the limper folds. We head to the turn with the pot now at $3750. The turn is the Jc. I bet $1200. Both players call, although neither is happy. The river brings a horrible card for me, the 10d. I move all in, since both players have very little left. They both call with an ace in their hand, to split the pot three ways. We get to five handed. I've had a small fluctuation in chips, but am back up to being in the top two stacks. I have about $25000. I'd moved all in preflop three of the last five hands. Even though I had fairly good cards, I didn't have to show them down, and I think people are going to start playing back at me. I'm dealt pocket threes under the gun. Blinds are at $1000-$2000. Even though I hate limping when I'm first in the pot, I decide to do it here. Everyone else follows my lead and we see the flop five handed. The flops comes 3c-3h-4s. Wow, nice flop for me, but I figure I'm really unlikely to win much more than the $10000 already in the pot. I prepare to slow play and hope someone catches something. But then the magic happens. The small blind moves in for $9500. The big blind thinks and calls leaving her with about $10000. I figure there is no point in smooth calling as no one else is going to come along for the ride. I move all in myself. The big blind doesn't want to call but with $39000 in the pot she is getting 4-1 on her money. She makes the call. There are a lot of groans as I flip over the quads. Now we are three handed, and I'm in the money. We are still three handed, and I'm on the button. I've been raising and taking down quite a few pots uncontested. I have about $60000, the small blind has around $32000, and the big blind has around $12000. Blinds are at $1500/$3000. I look down at pocket rockets. I make it $9000 to go. The small blind moves all in, the big blind folds, and I instacall. He flips over Kd-10c. Sweet, I'm 86% to win. If I take this down it'll be $94000 to $10000, and I can just move in dark until I win. The flop comes down 7h-6h-9s. Not great for me, he's got four outs now. I'm still 80% to win though. The turn brings the 8d. Now that is a bad card. I went from 80% to win, down to 0% to win. At least I have three outs to a chop. Unfortunately, the river brings the Ad. So I lose with a set of aces. He and I have basically swapped chip positions. After I battle back for a while, and he knocks out the short stack, the chips are about 60/40% with him in the lead. But I win a race with Ac-9c versus his pocket eights and I'm back to my commanding chip lead. With the blinds at $4000/$8000, I'm dealt 5h-2h on the button. I limp and he checks. The flop comes down 5c-3c-10c. He moves all in. I don't think he has a pair or the flush. At worst I figure I'm up against a flush draw. If he has a flush draw it's a coin flip. If he has a three, I'm a huge favorite. If he is bluffing I'm a huge favorite. I go ahead and call and he has Qd-7h. The turn is a blank and the river another five, giving me the win! http://arbeck.net/index.php?id=-229 So, it has been a long time since my last post. I actually have a good excuse this time. I had holiday plans and a trip to Oklahoma that took up most of my time until the new year. And then I wanted my next post to include my best of lists. Unfortunately, like always, there are a ton of movies with January release dates that I wanted to see. I felt bad making a list without including at least some of them. I didn't see that many of them though, and felt I could no longer put it off. So, here it is, My Best of 2006. Just so you don't think I'm totally lazy, I have been doing something else. I've developed an interest in wine and have started tasting and collecting quite a few bottles. I've developed a second site/blog devoted entirely to that. I unveil to you The Seattle Wino. Clever name, don't you think? http://arbeck.net/index.php?id=-228 I'm trying to write something for this site, but I don't have much to say. I guess I live a pretty boring life. I recently read The Omnivore's Dilemma and it really made me think. I feel like I really should start eating better. I've been trying to make a real effort to buy as much local food as I can and avoid factory and processed food. I don't know how successful I will be in the long run, but so far so good. We joined a CSA program from Full Circle Farms. We hope to get the majority of our produce from them. We've also been buying our meat from Skagit River Ranch at the University Farmers Market. I've learned from all this that grass fed beef makes a world of difference in flavor. The flat-iron steak that we used to get was pretty flavorful and tender; the new one, although not as tender, just blows it away in the flavor department. The best dish I've made with the new stuff was definitely a stracotto. The recipe is as follows: 3 lbs of beef roast (I used a cross rib roast) 2 carrots 1 onion 1 leek 3 cloves of garlic 1 oz dried porcini mushrooms 2 bay leaves 28 ounce can of peeled tomatoes (San Marzano style) dried thyme dried rosemary beef stock (I used store bough stock) dry red wine (If you can use a chianti it will be best) olive oil butter Salt and Pepper Pre heat your oven to 300. Simmer one cup of beef stock. Take it off the heat and drop in the porcinis to rehydrate and set aside. Finely dice the carrots, onion, and leek (I made 1/8 inch cubes and that seemed to work). Mince the garlic. Drain and hand crush the tomatoes and set aside. Heat a heavy dutch oven over high heat. Liberally coat the roast with salt and pepper. Add enough oil to cover the pan and a pat of butter. Brown the meat on all sides (and I mean really brown, it should be a dark color on all sides). Remove the meat and then add the onion carrot and leeks to the pan. While the vegetables are cooking remove the mushrooms from the stock and shop them into 1/2 inch pieces. Once the onions are translucent, add the garlic and mushrooms and cook for a few more minutes. Now add about cup of the red wine and deglaze the bottom of the pan. Make sure you get all the good bits scrapped up. Now add in the tomatoes and the beef stock from the mushrooms. Place the roast back into the pan. If there is not enough liquid to come up to about 3/4 of the roast, top it off with water. Put in the two bay leaves and the dried herbs (I used about two teaspoons of rosemary and one teaspoon of thyme, but feel free to vary this). Check the seasoning and add salt and pepper as needed. Once it's back to the boil cover it and put it into the oven. It will cook for about three hours, or until the meat is very tender. Turn the roast every half hour or so and make sure nothing is sticking. If you want to be anal put a meat thermometer into the roast and set it to go off when it hits 210 degrees Fahrenheit. Once it gets there cook it for one hour more. Take the roast out of the liquid and let it rest for about ten minutes before carving. Remove the bay leaves from the sauce. If the stock is still very thin, boil it to thicken on top of the stove (you shouldn't need to as the vegetables just about disintegrate to thicken the sauce). Unless you are feeding five or six people you will have left overs. The best thing to do is shred the roast with a fork and add it back to the sauce. When you reheat it, add enough beef stock to make a pasta sauce consistency and then toss it with egg noodles. Thanksgiving is almost hear as well, and I'm very excited about roasting a chicken for the first time. If all goes well, you might just hear about it. If it doesn't, just assume that I screwed it up royally. In other news, Kathrine has finally gotten fed up with CRT televisions. Apparently she is very susceptible to the 16kHz sound that most of them emit. So we decided we need a LCD TV. Since they have gotten cheap recently, we decided that would be our Christmas present. Of course then buy.com decided to have a one day sale on exactly the model that I wanted. the final price was $175 less than newegg.com. I couldn't pass that up, so we went ahead and ordered it. I'm soon to have a HDTV, and a life long dream will be fulfilled. This is the TV that gets here on Friday. I've also been playing quite a bit of PlayStation lately. I recently purchased both Guitar Hero 2 and Bully. Both fun games. Although, I'm not sure I like Guitar Hero 2 as much as I did the original. There are more songs this time around, but I think I liked that last group of songs more. Plus it sure feels like the easy and medium settings are less difficult this time around. I've got 100% of notes hit on almost every song on easy, and five stars on almost every song on medium. But, the hard setting seems much harder this time around. The jump seems to be dramatic. Bully is super fun. I think I might like it more than the GTA games. The story line is fun and the NPC's are much cooler than anything in GTA. You know a games is good when it makes mowing the lawn and serving detention fun. http://arbeck.net/index.php?id=-227 Okay, I'm a lazy bastard. Very lazy. So lazy in fact that I don't do any housework, just sit on the couch and watch TV, and can't even be motivated to update my website. I'm pretty much worthless. Of course, no one reads this anyway; so it's not like it's a big deal. Summer's almost over and I really haven't got much to show for it. Kind of like the Mariners. I really have finally adopted the Mariners as my team. They've replaced the Mavericks. I'm sure it was only a matter of time. I'm a baseball fan much more than a basketball fan. I just could never get into the Rangers when I lived in Texas. Even thought I was always a fan of the Mets growing up, it's really hard to follow a team seriously unless you see them play A LOT of games. Well, with the Mariners on TV just about every night, I watch a lot of games. We also have three of the best baseball blogs around (USS Mariner, Lookout Landing, Prospect Insider) that I read non stop. Because of that, I know just about all there is to know about the team including their minor league system. Lately I've been excited because Chris Snelling is finally with the team. I only pray he stays healthy and give my man crush on him time to reach its full peak. Of course, I should be referring to him as "Doyle" (his middle name) which he was dubbed by the USS Mariner in hopes of driving off the injury curse that has plagued him. Speaking of Doyle. I just about spit a drink on the floor watching a day game a few sunday's back when the ingame box score showed this. Apparently the KSTW broadcast crew reads blogs too. Did I mention I have a man crush? I did love Jeremey Reed, but what can I say, I'm fickle. I have a new love now and if he gets through this year healthy, I will be purchasing a #32 Snelling Jersey. I mean Snelling loves Yoda. What more can you say? Other than that, I've got nothing. But maybe I'll have something of interest to say later. http://arbeck.net/index.php?id=-226