Dead Can Dance - Saltarello

With thanks again to WMG for taking down a video of Dead Can Dance's Saltarello, I was forced to go hunt and find another. There are a few live performances out there, but shot from a distance. Rather than go that route, I discovered this little bit with the studio recording from the album Aion paired with the visuals of an... get this... Enya video.

Best I've ever heard from Enya. =)

Updatia Type Stuff

The posts today will be Legion.

I thought about writing them all out and spreading them across a few or a dozen days, but hey, maybe I'll just flood the market.

Food will, of course, take up most of them. Some measure of all, really. Even the two posts on architecture and home design (from the How to Tell if ... are from Another Planet series... see the other episodes here and here) will be related to food preparation. There will also be six recipes: three main dishes, one sauce, one component, and one overall Plan for the entire meal.

I've mentioned before that I get into things in waves. I can be really intensely focused for a while, and then I'll move on to other things. Obviously, the food wave is cresting now. Thursday had the recipe for sweet lemon cod and winey 'zo 'n 'zo. Saturday had the Valentine's Feast that will generate all the food posts mentioned above, and was previewed here and had results depicted here. Yesterday, there were egg rolls which also works fairly well as a stir fry recipe ~ thought I had posted a stir fry one before, but if I did, I failed to tag it with either food or recipes.

There's likely to be more food recipes ahead in the near future. Maybe. I have some hamburger, and I'm likely to try something different for making burgers, so maybe something on that at the end of the week. Everything else for the next week or so will involve less of the recipe and more of the open-package-and-heat variety, unfortunately. Although I've seen some newspaper articles claim that healthy, fresh foods are cheaper than the pre-processed crap out there, Deb goes into conniptions when I get into a cooking phase because I like to work with ingredients instead of heat-n-serve stuff, and, apparently, her issue with this doesn't involve taste or health, rather money, of which we have, well, none.

In other news, aequitaslevitas drove to college today. All by his own self. Next step will be him getting a job ~ beyond the part time work with me* ~ so he can pay for gas.

~ ~ ~

* He's very restricted on what times he can work; even if he doesn't have high school classes or college classes, his working permit is based on the school district we live in, not that he attends... so no work while they are in school, even if he is not. Which pretty much limits any landscaping help to the summer vacation ~ can't exactly do that sort of thing in the night time, or, even, schedule it to start late enough in the day to take him along. I suppose now that he's driving, he'll be able to come out in the afternoon for a few hours a day... hadn't thought of that until typing it... but that may work, although it means two vehicles going to the site... =)

Recipe: Roasted Garlic

• 7 garlic bulbs
• olive oil
• sea salt
• fresh ground pepper

( Constructions and pictures of most steps under the cut... )

Oh, if you thought I told the story well, or, more importantly, if you felt I flubbed it, go read how Pioneer Woman did it ~ there's better photographs and more entertaining reading there. Besides, I was just following along with her recipe. Thanks, Ree! =)

How to Tell if Architects & Home Builders are from Another Planet, #57103

As you might have noticed in that last recipe, I took pictures. In my kitchen.

Yes, some had the flash and came out decently enough, except where stainless steel or aluminum foil was present. Can you say blinded? Yes I thought you could. I couldn't see you nodding your head though, on account of...

Well, yes.

You see, the kitchen I have was not designed as a photography studio. You can't really blame the architect or home builder for that, of course, how would they know I'd be trying to drop my camera in hot oil?

However, when I'm working with oil, especially hot oil, it's nice to see what's going on.

Now, there's a light over the stove (at the back, so it can shadow things on the front burners), and there's a light over the sink (so you can see when cleaning things).

But there is no light over the counter.

The kitchen light itself? A ceiling fixture, with a single 60 watt bulb maximum.

Might as well wear a blindfold.

The table on the other side of the counter has a chandelier hanging over it. With a fluorescent bulb in the center and 25 watt candelabra bulbs surrounding it. It's usually bright.

Unless you're trying to see things at the counter.

Strong overhead lighting can not be left out of the kitchen. It needs to be there in that central fixture. It needs to be over all work surfaces, and not just back against the wall, but right there, centered over the area.

For one, think of how much nicer those photographs would look if the area was well lit?

For another, think of the possibility of cooking in the kitchen and actually being able to see what you're chopping with that knife! Imagine how many finger tips could be saved! Oh, the humanity!

Oh, and since I'm picking on the light fixture over the stove ~ that's in a hood... do not ever. Ever. EVER. Install a hood that cycles air back into the room. Useless. Poof. Right into the tall guy's eyeballs. Irritating. Poof. Sets off the smoke alarms at the least amount of notice possible.

If you're building the house, prove you're not an alien. Prove you have human eyesight, and provide adequate light. Prove you have eyeballs, a nose, and/or ears, and vent the exhaust outside.

It's easy to do when you're building the place, costs heaps less than it would to retrofit later, and will prevent mobs of angry homeowners from marching you at torch-and-pitchfork-point to the nearest space exploration facility so that they can send you back to the planet you came from. Or, perhaps, the nearest ball of flaming superheated gasses, whichever is closer.

Come on, you've already mastered faster-than-light travel to get here, you have the technology to include decent lights and exhaust venting, so use it!

The Bain-Marie

I'm breaking this out from the recipe for Béarnaise sauce and posting it independently, just because.

I needed a bain-marie to make the sauce, and I didn't have one. So, whilst on our last minute ingredients gathering, aequitaslevitas and Mr. B scoured (pun quite intended, thankyouverymuch) our local fine shopping establishments ~ and even Evil*Mart ~ for this rare and, for hot egg sauces and melted chocolates and alchemy oh my, critical tool.

Wait! Stop the presses! What exactly is a bain-marie, you ask? Why, no, it is not, strictly speaking and despite what so many kitchen tool sites that should know better seem to state, a common double boiler ~ and even that thing, however common, isn't to be found in these here parts, at least not in a decent size for a decent price. No, it is a rarer creature, even more unavailable than the common double boiler.

It is, I suppose rather begrudgingly, a distant cousin, but, whereas a double boiler works by action of steam heating the upper pan, a bain-marie works by immersing one pan in the water. I expect that if our double boiler hadn't died a sad and pitiful death some years ago, I would have slummed with the rest of the chefs who confuse the two items, but, alas, without one or the other I was out of luck.

Since this area is without a chefs supply store of any stripe ~ there was a kitchen supply shop in scenic, historic Weissport, but it never seemed to be open and now seems to be gone ~ I had to go to the hardware store. As they say, if Marzen's Feed & Hardware doesn't have it, you don't need it.

Now, they didn't have double boilers or bain-maries there, because that would be silly, but what they did have was a u-bolt and some wing nuts.

I made the bain-marie from a WearEver Cook & Strain 1-1/2-Quart Covered Sauce Pan (although the Premium flavor, much heavier and nicer than the standard line) and a WearEver 10" Cook & Strain Premium pan (I'd provide a link, but the only one I found has a non-stick coating and I like non-stick pans about as much as I like drinking molten metal, except that at least the molten metal is natural and not full of all kinds of crap you're generally trying to avoid by making your own foods from less processed ingredients).

To turn the two pans into a bain-marie, you just need something to clasp the two handles and hold them together. I used the u-bolt with wing nuts so I can easily loosen and separate the two when the saucepan needs to come out of its hot water bath. I used a silicone potholder/pot rest pad as a liner mostly because the u-bolt was a bit big and couldn't tighten up on the handles ~ a smaller size would work better, but there's the advantage of covering the all-steel handles. You need a pot holder to move these when hot (which is fine, and to be expected, despite a few reviewers whining about things like that) and getting a pot holder tangled with the u-bolt could create a dangerous situation, so it's probably safer to have it set up in this configuration anywho.

Enough with the text, here's a shot of it at rest and in action:

( ...under the cut, of course! )

Recipe: Béarnaise Sauce

• 1/4 cup dry white wine
• 2 tb tarragon vinegar
• 2 shallots, finely chopped
• 1 tb chervil, finely chopped
• 1 tb tarragon, finely chopped
• 2 crushed white peppercorns
• 3 egg yolks
• 3/4 cup melted butter

( Under the cut, with some pictures! )