Thursday, May 22, 2008

So you want to cook?


I've been away a while - working - and a recent conversation that I overheard (and subsequently joined in) in the cooking section of Barnes & Noble made me write this post.

There were three folks looking at cookbooks this afternoon and I heard one of them mention that he hated cookbooks because they always called for ingredients he didn't have. I heard him say, "I never have fresh thyme and shallots just lying around." His buddy commented to him, "I think you could use some chopped olives for the shallots." This is where I chose to speak up, "Actually, I'd use onions for the shallots - and dried thyme for fresh time. Although, fresh thyme keeps for a while in the fridge." After that all three went back to perusing and I found a book on chocolate I started to leaf through.

As I was walking out I realized to cook - I mean really cook and make good food for yourself - you need to have a couple of things. The most important of all is commitment. I remember when I first started to cook, I had just given my Fiancee Ming Tsai's Simply Ming and I was looking at it saying the same thing, "Man I don't want to have to buy all this stuff!" And for our first couple of forays into this book, we spent some serious cash on spices and stuff I didn't have. But you need to decide that cooking is important to you, your food is important to you, and you'll go get the ingredients you need. Also, you have to have enough patience to make a menu and and use what you bought. I hate buying a cucumber and using half of it, so I'll try to have Seared Tuna with Soba & Cucumber salad within close proximity to Vietnamese Beef Salad (with cucumber). Waste not. For a more pedestrian example, if you like Asian food, ginger, garlic, and scallions are in almost everything! In addition to the will of really WANTING to make good food all the time for yourself, you need these things methinks:

1) A decent knife and honing steel. Get a Global, Shun, Henkel's, or Wustof knife from Williams Sonoma or Kitchen Arts on Newbury Street. A honing steel can be gotten for 20 bucks and will keep it sharp and straight. A good chef's knife - 8" - will cost you close to $100 bucks, but that is all you'll ever need. Ever! My Global's are all 5+ years old and still work great!

2) A decent saute pan and sauce pan. Same places and same deal, get good stainless steel pots and pans, spend some money, take care of them (clean well) and they'll stay with you forever. You may want a non-stick saute pan, but it will take a little bit of extra care (No metal utensils)

3) Most places don't say this, but a good cutting board makes all the difference. Plastic Target ones are great for cutting chicken, fish, or meat. For everything else, get a nice wooden or bamboo one. You'll have to wipe it down with mineral oil every once in a while and you can't put it in the dishwasher, but it will keep your knives sharper, longer, and give you a nice big space to work on. Don't chop garlic on it! It is a pain in the ass to get the smell out of the wood. http://www.johnboos.com/ are great and you'll notice them on the Food Network a lot.


You're ready to cook - now just buy the ingredients and remember these things.


1) You'll always need onions, so just buy the bag. Everything, and I mean everything, starts with onions (shallots, garlic, scallions, and leeks are all part of the onion family) and fat. Olive oil and canola oil are the old stand bys, but butter is the best. Don't use cooking sprays as the lecithin used as a stabilizer creates a gross buildup on your new pots and pans.

2) Just buy the jar of spices! For things like thyme, garlic, salt, cumin, coriander, chili powder, and oregano just buy it. You'll use them eventually and feel free to substitute the dried for the fresh if you have to.

3) Get a account at http://www.chow.com/. There are videos on who to cut an onion, message boards on where to get your knife fixed if you dinged it, and what is a nice place to get some brunch. The people on there can be great resources. I know, because I'm on there.



After you start cooking a little bit, you'll find out what you like and start to cook more of that. I like Asian and southwestern flavors and guess what - they're pretty similar. I got Marcus Samuelson's cookbook on African cuisine, and it was also pretty similar. You'll find out what you can substitute and what you can't and within the first couple of attempts you'll have a success on your hands. For me, it was a Chile-Tea Rubbed Salmon with Lemon Scallion Rice. Once you make something great, you'll be hooked. Happy cooking to one and all!

Friday, May 9, 2008

Friday @ 4pm


Ah, it has come at last. Not that my job is bad, quite the contrary, but I'm looking forward to nice weekend. This is right around the time when the thought of the weekend is the best - you haven't wasted any of it playing GTA IV, or going to the grocery store, but you're still at work with the all the possibilities in front of you. Of course, it isn't as far away as Friday morning or Monday morning, so you can really look forward to your own time.


Have a good weekend all!

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Sleep works

So yesterday I left work pretty frustrated. I found it difficult to get my hands around some .NET project I was working on. Accessing Excel using VSTO from vb.NET is hard, and I don't have the vocabulary yet. The real problem was knowing where to start, but I fumbled around all day yesterday, couldn't sleep last night, and finally got to sleep after some late-night blog-reading.
What I did notice when I came in today was how much clearer everything seemed. I saw this thing on the discovery channel about how sleep is a necessary part of the learning process - that is basically when our brain writes everything down and makes sense of everything from that day. The example on that show they use is soccer playing, but I've noticed it in other things. Another good example was playing Rock Band - stupid I know, but going from Medium to Hard is difficult - real difficult. You can play all day long, but not get anywhere. When you come back the next day, you can notice the progress in your skills! Makes me think we should institute nap time in the corporate world - we could come back all learned and everything!

Friday, May 2, 2008

Wedding Groupthink


Argh, My beautiful Fiancee ordered a "tea-stained" dress for a large wedding we are going to on May 30th. She thought it may be too light for a wedding, so she took a picture of herself and sent it to her buds on theknot.com message board to get their opinions. 100% of the girls said she shouldn't wear it because it is too close to white.
My freakout was there are all these rules: You can't wear anything close to white - only the bride may do that. You can't wear a bright color - you'd pull attention away from the bride. Some even say black is bad, because it can be interpreted as morose.

As long as you're not wearing a white gown, I think you're OK. I think some of these women on this board have fallen into wedding groupthink. It is very silly to think that one of your guest's dress could be a big issue unless you're a freak. Dear readers, I ask you to be the judge! Here is the picture from BCBG.COM in which it looks whiter than it is in real life!




Readers=BriLac