Tuesday, February 3, 2009

White death saga.

So instead of only getting 1-3 inches of snow this morning, we got 4-6 inches of snow at rush hour today! What is usually a 30 minute drive home from work, turned into 2 hours of torture. All of the possible roads to get home were at a stand still due to accidents. I had to drive over to 75, take that up to Middletown, and then across to Trenton just to get on our road! There were cars strung all over the sides of the roads and you couldn't see any lanes/lines.

David called me about 15 minutes before he was suppose to get off work. He is stuck at work because they can't get out due to traffic at a stand still on the road in front of the hospital. Also the 2nd shift people can't get to the hospital because all major road and highways are at a stand still.

Hopefully I can make it to work okay in the morning.

Goose fat: available soon

February 3

Boy, it was hard to find a place to eat lunch yesterday. Egg man Howard Helmer had asked me to have lunch with him and the president (and I believe the only member) of the National Goose Council, Jim Schiltz.
We had planned on eating at Bistro Desaret, because it’s near NRN’s offices and because Howard likes the kind of homey French food that they serve. But Howard had found out the day before that they no longer served lunch on Mondays, due to the fact that no one was eating there even if they were open.
So we planned on lunch at the Japanese noodle shop Menchanko-Tei, near Howard’s Midtown apartment.
A sign on the restaurant said “temporarily closed.”
So we went across the street to the La Bonne Soupe, a neighborhood favorite with a croque madame that Howard loves.
The place was quite busy, but a table was available for us. Howard had his croque madame, Jim had a daily special of red snapper in red pepper coulis, and I had brandade de moroue.
And Jim explained that he had developed a new process for harvesting his geese that got him a lot more USDA-approved goose fat than he did previously. He figured it out during the end of last autumn’s harvest cycle, so now he has 6,000 pounds of goose fat for sale. Most years he has 2,000 pounds.
But this is the big news: Next year he’ll have 80,000 pounds of the stuff, and he plans to undercut the duck fat merchants by selling it for $2 a pound.
Duck fat usually wholesales for about $3 a pound, he says.
Goose fat is most famously used in the French dish pommes sarladaise, which is basically potatoes fried in goose fat. It’s something you should try sometime in your life, maybe every day.
But it’s a wonderful frying medium for all sorts of things, and soon it will be available cheap. Hurray!

Today for lunch I had smoked goose breast at my desk.

Reinventing yourself

February 2

My friend Ben Weinberg blew into Denver in 1982 like a force of nature. The gregarious 17-year-old high school junior from Minneapolis was instantly popular. He made the soccer team, became president of our youth group chapter, and had bright and pretty girlfriends.
The way he tells it, his friends from back home would not have recognized him. In Minnesota he had been shy and bookish, but the mid-high school move to Colorado gave him a chance to reinvent himself, and that’s just what he did.
His success thrilled him. I remember him telling me so after he was elected president. I was delighted, too, as Ben was my idol — he was popular and two years older than I, and yet he deigned to talk to me — and it seemed I had chosen wisely.
We lost touch, as you do. Ben’s life took a circuitous route, but he found himself in corporate law and then financial planning. He hated it.
So a few years ago he reinvented himself again. Taking an approximately 93 percent pay cut, he quit his financial planning job and started work in a wine shop.
Since then he has achieved reasonable success as a wine writer.
Last week he was sitting across from me at Zereoué, giddy as a 17-year-old who had just reinvented himself. He was being put up at the Waldorf=Astoria to attend an Italian wine conference, meeting all the big national wine writers and tasting as much Barolo as he wanted.
Ben’s not my idol anymore, because I’m no longer 15, but I’m still delighted.
Amos Zereoué, the owner of the restaurant we were in, had to reinvent himself, too, as he used to be a professional football player — a career with a limited time span. He bought the restaurant space that once housed Frère Jacques (13 East 37th St.) and reopened it as a French restaurant called La Gorge d'Or.
Generic French food wasn’t working for the place, so he closed it and reinvented it, renaming it Zereoué, and adding themes of his native Ivory Coast into the food, décor and music (Zereoué was raised on Long Island, but he’s originally from West Africa). My buddy Chris Shott over at The New York Observer wrote about the restaurant being reworked last June, and since then, the place still hasn’t gotten much press or business.
Slowly the food has gotten more and more West African, which surprises me, because there’s very little West African food in New York, and what of it there is in Manhattan is mostly north of 115th St., and I pay attention to West African food. It’s had a special place in my heart since my Ivorian friend Fatou cooked it for me.
And yet I didn’t know anything about Zereoué.
The food there is pretty West African. It’s toned down spice-wise, to be sure, and tarted up a bit in presentation, with little domes of rice and attieke instead of heaping piles of it, but it’s still distinctive enough that there’s nothing like it for miles and miles around.
Ben said it was the best meal he’d had on this trip to New York.

What we ate:
Sautéed calamari with red pepper Ivory Coast sauce
Duck spring rolls drizzled with a sweet sambal glaze and served with mixed greens
Beet salad
Aromatic crushed eggplant stew served with a white fish in an Ivorian sauce that I should probably describe better than that
Kedjenou: chicken stew in a peanut sauce
Crème brûlée

Hanging By A Prayer


Recently I shared a sermon thought with the congregation that came from a reading of Mark 2:1-12. It is the story of the paralytic being lowered through the roof of a house by some friends so that he could be touched by Jesus.

The story ends with the crowd being amazed and glorifying God, saying, "We never saw anything like this!"

I guess not. I guess they never had seen anything like it before, at least not in relationship to the church. Imagine a community of faith willing to tear off the roof of where they meet for worship so that people could get closer to Jesus. Imagine the Church (big "C" intentional) willing to have a rope dropped into their midst as a lifeline for those paralyzed either physically, emotionally, or spiritually; disrupting the flow of worship.

The norm is to be far more concerned that the pews remain pretty, rather than used. The norm is make sure the flowers are arranged on the altar the same each week, rather than arranging every moment so that lives might be altered.

What would it take for your faith community to cause those around you to be amazed and glorify God?

rehat seketika

currently...
sedang cube menghabiskan assignment.
individual assignment - genre studies.
esok submit n ade presentation.
hurm. sumpah banyak yg amat!

demam hari ke-8. huk3.
ye. tempoh plg lame utk sy demam.
dulu ade la drjh 4. demam campak. huu...
tp demam dah ok skit. jap panas jap sejuk.

skrng nih sakit tekak n sakit kepale je.
khamis n jumaat lepas MC.
juge hari ini. since g klinik lg td.
obat gi clinic last week abis dah pon.
tp pagi td g jgk class. de presentation.

di sini. ingin ambil kesempatan.
mintak maaf ketat2, banyak2 if x reply msg.
x reply comment. and so on. huh. x sempat lg.
bnyk kerja + demam. nnt. semua da settle.
akan di balas juge. seperti biase. insya allah.
bukan tibe2 mendiam. tp x dpt dielakkan.

tlg fhm sy. mmg ske buat keje last minute.
bkn suke actually. kelam kabot kot. tp keadaan.
time demam last week. mmg x blh tdow. skt pale.
and bile blh tdow pas g clinic, mmg tdow je.
jd. keje nih x terbuat sbb mmg x larat.
bkn sengaje. jd. bile sy start buat. sy focus.
sy serious. gangguan, sy x bape nak ske.
sy tolak ke tepi dulu. maaf ye.

ni pon tulis post ni. sbb rehat jap. baru buat synopsis.
2 pages td. dah lah ngantok gle. even awal lg. haha.
owh ye. de perkembangan ttg julia. tp...
x ter-update. settle sume ni, akan di update.
thanks semua sbb bnyk support ttg julia.
and bagi komen n cadangan. thanks a lot.
okay. till we meet again. nitey nite.


Cooking With The Chef, Kerjasama Tristar Culinary Institute & Surabaya TV Channel 44 UHF

Program Cooking With The Chef, ditayangkan di Surabaya TV channel 44UHF setiap hari Minggu & Senin Pukul 09.30.
Diajarkan teknik Memasak yang benar, mulai dari memilih bahan untuk resep masakan, teknik memotong daging & sayuran yang benar, serta Teknik Memasak sehingga dapat menghasilkan Masakan yang Sempurna. Bersama Chef & Mahasiswa Tristar Culinary Institute.


RESEP MASAKAN AYAM SAUCE LEMON
TRISTAR CULINARY INSTITUTE

Bahan Bahan yang disiapkan sebelumnya oleh Argo, Mahasiswa Jurusan Kuliner untuk Memasak Resep Ayam Sauce Lemon.



Pak Yanuar Kadaryanto, Dosen Kuliner Tristar Sekolah Kuliner Pencetak Chef sedang memperagakan cara memasak Ayam Sauce Lemon. Bersama Presenter dari Surabaya TV.




Masakan Ayam Sauce Lemon, salah satu menu yang disajikan di VCD cooking with the Chef.
Bersama Bpk. Yanuar Kadaryanto, Dosen Senior program Studi Ilmu Kuliner Tristar Culinary Institute.

Dapatkan VCD Cooking with The Chef, yang dilengkapi dengan Resep, Step by Step, & Foto Produk, hanya di
TRISTAR CULINARY INSTITUTE
Program Pendidikan D1-D2-D3
Kuliah Kuliner dengan metode Setiap Hari Praktek.
Jurusan Culinary Art & Baking & Pastry Art.
Kunci Sukses Berkarir & Berbisnis Kuliner

Program Kursus Kuliner di Tristar.
Setiap hari, Tristar Culinary Institute mengadakan kursus aneka resep masakan indonesia & internasionl: eropa, chinesse food, asian food, italian food, mexican food, dll.
Kue kue internasional & tradisional, bakery, pastry, croissant, pudding, cake decorating, dll.
Peserta Kursus tidak hanya melihat demo masak saja, tetapi langsung praktek, dibimbing dosen yang berpengalaman dibidangnya, dengan fasilitas peralatan masak yang paling lengkap & mutakhir. Tempat Kursus yang nyaman & bahan kursus yang sesuai dengan standard bintang 5.

TRISTAR Pusat Ilmu Kuliner Terlengkap
Jln. Raya Jemursari 234 Surabaya.
Telp. 62-31-8433224-25. 031-81639992.
Fax: 031-8432050.
Email: tristarkuliner@yahoo.co.id
website: www.tristarculinaryinstitute.com
blog: kursus-masakan-kue.blogspot.com

Making Marmalade

What’s the first image that bounces into your head when you think of oranges? Sun-drenched Floridian orange groves? A cool glass of juice on a warm summer’s morning? A Spanish hillside covered with dark-leafed trees punctuated with glistening fruits? A cold February day with the heaviest snow in almost two decades?



Well. Perhaps not the last one.

For most people oranges mean summer. They scream sunshine and refreshment – glorious bursts of evocative taste, that perfect balance of sweet and sour and a delicious onslaught of juice. But for one type of orange, much beloved by preserve makers the world over, the short season comes in the dead of winter.

Seville oranges are famed for their unique bitterness and unusually high pectin content: two qualities that make them ideal for making British-style marmalade – a bitter-sweet fruit preserve that is one of the best ways to start the morning. Smothered lavishly onto thickly sliced toast and served with a mug of steaming coffee, it is almost as traditional as the Full English (but significantly less likely to give you a coronary).

It is kick-start and a treat of the sort that makes getting out of bed a little less painful. Which is exactly what breakfast should do.

The Seville orange season is short which leaves a little window for making up a batch that should (hopefully) last you the year. Providing you don’t give away too many jars.

With the snow forcing the entire country to come to a grinding halt yesterday, we decided to do something productive, something that would make the house smell delicious and something that would make the prospect of getting up this morning a shade more appealing.

We already had a couple of kilos of oranges ready and waiting along with two lemons and a large bag of sugar but we hadn’t got round to turning this pile of citrus into something worthy of gracing a slice of toast. Yesterday, however, the conditions were ideal.

It was cold outside and a layer of snow was providing the surrounding countryside with a pretty and appealing blanket. After the obligatory walk, snow angel making and snowman building, the prospect of cooking up a batch of marmalade to warm ourselves up was made even more tempting.

It is a fairly laborious process but in a way that is both therapeutic and satisfying. After the vaguely leathery peel has been removed, it has to be sliced – it forms the main constituent of marmalade – and then boiled up with the juice from the oranges along with some water and the pith and pips housed inside a muslin bag (this is where that glorious pectin lies).



Other recipes are less time consuming, Nigella Lawson’s is possibly the simplest we saw but it was Nigel Slater’s from last weekend’s newspaper that we chose to try.

Once the peel has been simmered for an hour, or until it has turned translucent, the muslin bag is removed and in goes the sugar. The whole lot is boiled hard until the setting point is reached when it is decanted into sterilised jars, sealed and left to cool.

The great thing about making your own preserves is you can tailor it to your exact tastes. Want it sweet with tiny slices of orange peel that melt into your toast? Fine. Prefer a bitter, chunky marmalade to see you right until lunchtime? Not a problem.

We plumped for the latter and now have seven jars of delicious preserve just waiting to be spooned over thick slices of bread and melting butter. We didn’t wait long before diving in and despite the cold and the dark and the wind this morning, getting out of bed was that little bit easier knowing that we had little jars of sunshine ready to wake us up.



For the full recipe, see Nigel Slater’s page on guardian.co.uk

Want more? Follow me on Twitter

Strawberry Smoothie

So what to do with all the Strawberries around at the minute.
Make Smoothies and Shakes.
It only takes 5 minutes.
I made a Strawberry and Kiwi.
I used ice and orange juice.
I used some milk you could use yogurt or ice-cream .