Spam : Redux

Just a quick note that ads and other spam are not allowed on this blog.

This blog has been receiving increasing spam of the form:

Hey, love your recipe for X.

Link to Business.

The CC is quite clearly never going to make a freakin' penny out of blogging so he might as well keep it "purist" and "ol' school" as opposed to the bling-bling, ad-driven, lets-pretend-that-clicks-matter, lets-link-to-twitter-facebook-mobile-phone school.

The blog gets plenty of traffic as the records show. There's just not a breathless fanboi element which suits the CC just fine.

The CC doesn't want to be forced to moderate comments since that slows things down — not that there are many comments but still! — but he may very well be forced to.

Apologies to those who subscribe to the comment updates as email!

Water

There are three properties of water that make it unique.

Every single one of these properties is used in every single cuisine so it helps to understand how things work.

Water is a polar molecule.

Water may be H₂O but the two hydrogen atoms are attached at a 109.5° angle. This polarizes the water molecule because there is more positive charge on one side (H₂⁺) rather than the other (O^-.)

This means water can dissolve polar molecules. Specifically, any salt.

Most importantly, the salts will be split into their ionized components when dissolved because the positive ions will be attracted to the negative portion of the water molecule (O^-) and the negative ions to the positive portion (H₂⁺.)

Water has a very high boiling point.

Water is a very small molecule. However, compared to molecules of its size, it has an absurdly high boiling point. This is due to its polar nature. Water molecules naturally attract each other and it's quite hard to separate them. That's also why the phase transitions (ice → water, water → steam) take so much heat.

Water has a very high specific heat.

This just means that water can hold a tremendous amount of heat i.e. it has a high thermal capacity.

Heat is just the average energy of motion of a molecule.

This is a tricky point so it requires some explanation.

Whenever a molecule is symmetric, its bonds restrict a certain degree of vibration along the bonds because too much movement would break the bonds.

So a linear molecule is restricted in its motion along the line. If you had a molecule symmetric in two directions, its motion would be restricted in the plane but it could still rotate along both axes.

Water is so asymmetric that all three rotational degrees of freedom are possible as well as vibrating along both bonds, and perpendicular to them, and none of them break up the molecule so it can absorb energy to "spin" in three directions, and "vibrate" in three as well. Hence, it can absorb a lot of energy to "move".

Most importantly, it's the smallest molecule that has this property.

Soba with Miso

This is a classic example of Japanese nabemono which are "one pot" dishes.

nabe (pot) + mono (food) = nabemono "one-pot food"

Which tells you right away that it's for regular consumption, and relatively straightforward.

One of the important things to note about this format is that it is endlessly malleable. This is the criterion by which cultures save themselves from boredom. Once, you get the knack of it, and the rules of the washoku which seem to arise from both an aesthetic and a nutritional perspective, you can shuffle this stuff endlessly and not repeat yourself in a year.

The dish may seem to have a lot of ingredients and it may "seem" complex but it really is not. You could assemble it fairly easily with about twenty minutes of effort. It will take about an hour in real time but you can spend most of it with your feet up with a glass of wine if you so choose.



Ingredients

4 cups dashi
tofu
1 carrot (cut thin at a steep angle)
1 cup spinach
8-10 shiitake mushrooms

2 tbsp miso paste

2 scallions (sliced at a steep angle)
hijiki (soaked cold for 30 minutes)
wakame (soaked cold for only 5 minutes)

2 eggs
mirin
soy sauce
rice vinegar

soba

Recipe

First prep the egg. Mix the egg with 2 tbsp mirin, 1 tsp soy sauce and 1/2 tsp rice vinegar. Make a very thin omelette on medium-low heat and set aside.

When cool, roll it tight and slice it into thin rounds.

Assemble the ingredients in a pot — tofu, carrots, spinach, shiitake mushrooms, soba. Heat the dashi with some mirin and pour it over the mixture. Bring to a low boil. After about 10 minutes, turn off the heat. Stir in the soy sauce (to taste) and the miso.

Do NOT boil after adding the miso.

Serve with the scallions, hijiki and wakame as toppings.

No, it isn't!

We already know that Indian cookbooks screw up the translation of "lemon". They really mean lime which is what is actually used.

They also screw up the translation for tej which is frequently translated as cinnamon.

There's only one problem.

What you really get is cassia not true cinnamon. Admittedly, they are related but the distinction is real. In most of the world, what is actually called cinnamon is really cassia (since it's cheaper) so perhaps a relabeling is in order?

Worst of all, what gets translated in Indian cookbooks as "bay leaves" is anything but. If you start using true bay leaves à la Mediterranean in your Indian food, you are doomed.

The etymology gives it away. They are tej patta in Hindi (quite literally: leaves of cassia.) That's what you need. And that's why rice flavored with tej patta is a totally different beast from rice flavored with the bay laurel leaf.

The CC is a fan of all of the above but one must keep the ingredients correctly and precisely defined.

Rice Bran

Bet you didn't know that the rice bran had a tiny amount of fat in it from which can be extracted oil. It's frequently labelled as "rice oil" but it's really from the bran.

It has a very high smoke point being devoid of solid material, and has a neutral flavor. Hence, it's very much preferred in Japanese cooking since they harvest a ton of rice to begin with.

Rice bran (nuka) is a big thing in Japan. It's used to make a super turbo-charged, on-steroids version of sourdough except in the form of pickles (nukazuke.)

These pickles require a lot of love. They need to be turned daily twice a day so that they don't spoil. Supposedly, the pickles are insanely good, and like good sourdough the base material basically lives on forever but anything that requires love twice a day is way more commitment than even the CC can manage.

Edible German Food

There is only one thing that's wonderful about German food. It's called marzipan.

They really do it better than anyone else. Yes, it's only almonds and sugar — how hard can it be, etc.? So why do all other attempts suck, huh?!?

A friend was visiting recently from Germany. She asked what the CC wanted as a gift, and the answer was "lots of marzipan."

And he got it.

Nabemono

Howto: Poach Fish

All poaching is the same idea. Cook the object in the presence of aromatics in a suitable broth.

While fish may be poached in anything from tomato broth to chicken broth, one of the ways to do it well is to add a cup of white wine to the poaching liquid, and slowly bring the liquid to boiling.

The reason is simple.

Alcohol has a far lower boiling point than water. It boils at 78°C as opposed to water's 100°C.

Because fish poaches so quickly, the temperature will not rise above 78°C and you will not overcook the fish.

The same technique works for eggs as well.