Big-pot blanching

…but [blanching] is not hard—you only have to decide to do it. And the results are dramatic.
—Thomas Keller, Ad Hoc at Home

Amanda has kindly allowed me to spend some time in the kitchen learning to cook — the first thing I’ve learned is how to blanch green beans. After a successful try earlier in the week, I did these for our Thanksgiving dinner:

“Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Prepare an ice bath.”

“Immerse the strainer in the boiling water, and blanch…[for] 2 minutes”

“Remove and plunge the strainer into the ice bath to cool”

Ready to be sautéed with caramelized shallots and pancetta!

Herbfarm IV: A Mycologist’s Dream

The Herbfarm is a Seattle treasure — just a few miles from our doorstep, they serve spectacular dinners featuring local ingredients and starring luscious herbs. Amanda and I have had the pleasure of dining there each year we’ve been married (I, II, III) and each visit has been a new revelation to our tastebuds. We’ve never had food so lovingly prepared.

For my 28^th birthday, we gathered a few friends together and shared dinner during Herbfarm’s “A Mycologist’s Dream” theme, featuring wild mushrooms foraged from the Pacific Northwest.

Click to enlarge

I was overwhelmed by the flavors, textures, and aromas coaxed out of each dish by Chef Luce and crew… matsutake mushrooms, duck tongues, black truffle ice cream, douglas fir, and madrona tree bark tea all danced on our tastebuds.

Herbfarm’s wine pairings are consistently excellent, but this evening held a particularly special treat — a glass of Madeira from 1795! According to the sommelier, our wine was produced in the fall of 1795 (while George Washington was president), stored in casks for ~100 years, then bottled. This particular bottle found its way to the Queen’s castle in Scotland, where it was forgotten about until recently — when it came up for auction and was purchased by the Herbfarm’s own Ron Zimmerman. It’s served in fractions of an ounce (!), so when it’s gone it’s gone — and we leapt at the opportunity.

Words can’t do it justice, so I won’t try to describe the spicy, rich flavor of the Madeira… it was outstanding.

We were also delighted to discover via Twitter that Ron himself took the time to make special placecards for us!

The six hours that we spent laughing and dining under the staff’s gentle care was nothing less than the perfect birthday dinner.

I can’t recommend Herbfarm highly enough… go read about the restaurant, choose a theme that excites your palate, and have the best dining experience of your life. It’s worth every penny.

Pick of the week: Passion Pit

One of my favorite things about Seattle is KEXP — if I’m not listening to my iPod, then I’m tuned in to our local community-supported radio station. With the possible exception of Joel, it has been my primary source of new music over the last few years.

True to form, KEXP gave me another “what song is this, and where do I get it?” moment yesterday afternoon. I’m a sucker for a well-programmed synth line, so the filtered and manipulated opening chords of Passion Pit’s track “The Reeling” had me hooked. Turns out they’re also responsible for “Sleepyhead”, another track I’d heard on KEXP but never followed up on. Both are great cuts from their first full-length album, Manners.

Click to play The Reeling:

Click to play Sleepyhead:

Filed under: Electropop.
Available from: iTunes, Amazon
Goes well with: Wave Machines Wave If You’re Really There, MGMT Oracular Spectacular

ScriptSaver updated for 64-bit Snow Leopard

By popular request, I’ve updated ScriptSaver to support 64-bit systems running Snow Leopard.

You can download the updated version here.

Tolstoy on marriage

Recently I’ve been savoring Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina — his vivid descriptive ability makes late-nineteenth–century Russia come alive. It’s in his semi-autobiographical character Levin, however, that Tolstoy really speaks to me… in my favorite passage, Levin is coming to grips with his new life as a husband and with his wife’s seeming lack of “real” interests:

Left alone, having put away his papers in the new portfolio she had bought, [Levin] washed his hands at the new washstand with the new and elegant utensils that had also appeared through her agency. He smiled at his thought and shook his head disapprovingly at it. A feeling resembling repentance tormented him. There was something contemptible, effeminate, Capuan, as he called it, in his present life. “It is not right to live so,” he thought. “Soon it will be three months since I did anything worth mentioning. This is almost the first day that I have really set to work seriously, and what has come of it? Scarcely had I begun when I stopped. Even my usual duties—all almost abandoned! The farm work—why, I hardly even go and see about that! Sometimes I am sorry to part from her, sometimes I can see she is dull. And I used to think that up to the time of my marriage life would go on just so-so, anyhow, and not count for much; but that after marriage real life was going to begin. And now that is nearly three months ago, and I have never spent my days more idly or uselessly! No, this can’t go on. I must make a beginning. Of course it is not her fault; there is nothing to reproach her with. I ought to have been firmer and upheld my independence as a man. This way I shall get into bad habits and teach them to her too….Of course it is not her fault,” he said to himself.

But it is difficult for a dissatisfied man not to reproach some one else, namely, the person most closely connected with the subject of his dissatisfaction. And Levin dimly felt that though she was not herself in fault—she never could be in fault—it was the fault of her bringing up, which was too superficial and frivolous. […] “Yes, except for the interest she takes in the housekeeping,—that interest she certainly has,—her clothes, and her embroidery, she has no real interests. She takes no interest in our work, in the farm, in the peasants, or in music, though she is quite good at that, or in books. She does nothing and is quite content.” In his heart he blamed her, but he did not understand that she was preparing herself for a period of activity which was inevitably coming, when at one at the same time she would be her husband’s wife, the mistress of the house, and a bearer, nurturer, and educator of her children. He did not understand that, but she knew it instinctively; and while getting ready for her gigantic task she did not reproach herself for the moments of careless and happy love that she now enjoyed while building her nest for the future.

— Part 5, chapter 15.

I’m looking forward to reading Middlemarch next and contrasting nineteenth-century England with Tolstoy’s Russia.

Update: just finished Anna Karenina. In my opinion, the story of Levin’s newfound faith steals the show — it comes across as heartfelt and sincere in a way unmatched by Anna’s story interwoven through the rest of the novel. What a powerful ending.