I came back home to find green beans growing on my green bean plant that I started from seeds.  Across the back yard, another story unfolded to kill my excitement.

My grill is gone.  I just bought it.  And someone stole it.  I don’t picture backyard thieves being big charcoal grillers.  It takes time, money, and work to successfully light and use a charcoal grill, and stealing is the easy way out.  I hope the person who stole my grill burns themselves terribly using it.

The whole process was only a few days from beginning to end. That process is documented in the form of a the little video below.

Read about them at Pitchfork,  or listen at their MySpace page.

Here’s an easy way to use Google Maps, Photoshop, and 3D Studio Max to generate a pretty good site plan for architectural visualization.

(more…)

Watch out, the video’s loud.

The bus driver who wrote this sign clearly does not understand how to use quotes or punctuation. There are many ways to read this sign, but I’m going to translate it this way.

First, you’re meant to see “No Eating” and No Drinking. He literally means that you can’t drink on the bus. No water, no juice, god help us, no booze. But what is he trying to say by putting “No Eating” in quotes? Should we read this as if he’s saying it? Sometimes we use quotes in a wink-wink kind of way. To what innuendo or second meaning could he be referring?

On this bus at all! Sure, this isn’t a complete sentence, but who has time anymore in this hectic work-a-day world? At least sort of connects to sentence b4. Make sense. Sort of.

“Stop.” My first inclination is that this bus driver knows the cleaning staff where I work. They have a similar sign-writing style. By putting stop in quotes, I’m not sure if I should or not. Did George Washington or another great man or woman say “Stop” once, and the bus driver is trying to invoke that instance? If so, where is the bibliography. Maybe it’s on the back of the sign.

Or maybe the bus driver just ain’t that bright.

Just as the asparagus risotto finished up, I seared a couple of big scallops to ride along with the creamy rice to dinner.The risotto recipe and techniques comes from Mark Bittman’s show “The Best Recipes in the World.” The video which accompanies the recipe shows Mario Batali demo-ing how to cook perfect risotto, while Bittman offers color commentary.  I’m definitely a convert to Batali’s less stirring method.  Instead of using stock, I used the water I blanched the asparagus in, which was seasoned with salt and a garlic clove.

MB featured a couple of scallop treatments on his blog the other day, which brought me to the seafood counter at DiBruno’s.  Boy, scallops sure are expensive at just under $20/lb.  Four big ones cost about $12.

I missed the mark by about 10-15%.  The asparagus tips were a little too al dente, the rice just past al dente, and the scallops a pinch underseasoned.  Next time, I think I’ll nail it.   If I can afford the scallops.

The whole family went on a tour of Buenos Aires today. Rudy served as the tour guide of our car load of Juan, Kelly, Adriana, and me. We went to the Plaza de Mayo, San Telmo, Plaza San Martin, and Calle Florida. Of most interest was our stop to La Boca. (”The Mouth,” which I´m guessing is named for the port.) Docked in the port is a dilapidated boat, which used to be the brand new ferry that took the family to Punta Del Este in the summers. The first thing you notice upon opening the car door is the thick smell of damp shit wafting in from the river. It´s strong and takes some getting used to. The houses in La Boca are painted in bright colors and look like a Disney-fied tourist spot, but it´s been that way since the beginning, and people live there. We stop by the shop where Rudy´s father paints, but he´s not there, and meander the streets. The setting sun makes the area especially vibrant.

I still don´t believe the thirty five foot banner that hangs outside Don and Pili´s house.

“Welcom Challenger, Columbia, and Family.” In small letters, it reads, “Nasas Failures.” El Don has really outdone himself with this one. I thought I knew how to take a joke to the extreme, but I am proven unworthy. The man had a banner painted and hung. It´s unbelievable and hilarious.

A few friends and family are greeted in the foyer as the party gets under way. The action moves to the tented area and adjoining the living room, which has been cleared to serve as a dance floor. The DJ plays lighter music, the wine and appetizers make their way through the crowd. Soon, everyone is dancing, the lamps in the living room off, in favor of a disco ball and colored lights. The party rages on, with a mix of latin and American music, and an endless stream of wine and food. I meet a fascinating ten year old girl who speaks better English than myself. She wants to know about “Happy Birthday, Harris Malden,” so I tell her the story. When I´m done, she tells me about her movies, “I’ve already invented like four, five movies. In my head. And I´m ten.” When I say, “That´s amazing,” I actually mean it. The movies are sequels to a series of movies like “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “The Chronicles of Narnia,” and “Harry Potter.” She´s going to need a lawyer to sort out the copyright issues, but they´re clevered created stories. I also found a girl closer to my age to dance with. Denise was shy, spoke English, and most importantly, laughed at my jokes. We Twisted and Shouted, and I earned another nickname from Rudy, “The Shark.” He told me to stay away from Sophia. I told him he was crazy. We hugged. Slowly, guests left, and the DJ closed up shop. We sat around the dinner table joking around until maybe six in the morning. These Argentinians know how to party, young and old alike.

Slowly, guests left, and the DJ closed up shop. We sat around the dinner table joking around until maybe six in the morning. These Argentinians know how to party, young and old alike.

We eat a light breakfast of cookies, bread, and cereal, and we’re off to the beach. It’s only two blocks away. We run into the water, which is colder than expected, but refreshing. What can I say, it’s the beach? They sell corn on the cob with butter and salt. The kernels are huge, juicy, and full of corn-itude. We walked for miles along the beach with Juan’s uncle Rudy, his kids, Sofia and Consalo, and Oriana, joking around the whole way. Rudy has a boundless supply of energy, and emanates warmth. He can tell a story with a single expression. The first day, when doling out the meat at the asado, he walked around asking, “Pig? Cow? Mother fucker?” Hilarious in a perfect Foreign Guy accent. He is in a perpetual good mood, which is contagious.

Lunch-Dinner is a mix of salads, ham (constantly present), cheese, tomatoes, and other odds and ends. Later on, I checked out an ice cream shop, flirted with the ice cream server in broken Spanish (where is the party where I dance and drink?) I need to learn more Spanish for proper flirtation. The ice cream couldn’t hold a candle to Saverio’s. Then I returned to the apartment. Juan was worried that I had gotten killed or drowned.

Juan, Rudy, Sofia and I went for a run around the peninsula. The 5km run was surprisingly easy to get through, and just beautiful. The moon, the water, the stars, and the perfect weather. Oh, the lame poetry that could be written!

The whole family went out to an Italian restaurant. After appetizers of bruschetta and margherita pizza came my entree of Spaghetti alla Puntanesca. It’s similar to the Chicken Provencal I made with anchovy, olives, capers (again, these were milder and bigger than Trader Joes’) and tomato sauce. This was Italian food done very well– let’s say it beat the Olive Garden (When You’re Here, You’re Upset!) They asked if I wanted it spicy, to which I said yes. ‘Spicy’ in Argentina sometimes means cracked black pepper, because it was mild as a lamb sleeping in a meadow. We were the loud ones in the restaurant once again, and dinner was a lot of fun. Roberto got the whole table going with stories about a group they call “The Breakers,” one of whom is Juan’s uncle, Pablo. He could barely get through the story, he was laughing so hard, which is quite a sight to see. He looks so serious when he’s just sitting there, and when he laughs it’s the complete opposite. His littlest daughter, Delfina, walks around the table doing what Juan and I call “her job.” She taps, hits, or pokes everyone as she walks by, around and around and around. It’s a lot of work, but she puts the hours in, and– end of the day– it’s rewarding. Kelly keeps her company. They’re bonding well, despite the language barrier.

The Long Night Out
We returned from dinner around 1am. Juan and I started preparing for the long night out. Coffee and scotch were consumed in large volumes as family members passed old photos around the group. The highlight was the surprise in Oriana’s face every time another photo of her father Roberto came out with a different girl he was dating. That’s not my mom, that isn’t either, that definitely isn’t my mom!

Juan and I rushed out into the night at 3am, laughing, enjoying the weather. We should have paid attention to where we were going. We wandered the streets, trying to find a familiar landmark. We soldiered on, finding the Italian restaurant, gaining our bearings, we ended up at a pool hall.

The locals looked at us like we were sweethearts on honeymoon. We ordered some whiskey and sat at a booth. Eventually, we struck up a conversation with the girls playing pool. I can’t really call my part “conversation” so much as a word or two and a smile. Me llamo “Challenger.” Before you know it, the Challenger had played and lost a couple of games of pool. But I lost them loudly and with much fanfare. When Juan was asked why we were yelling so much, he said, ¨Because it’s The Challenger!!” We left for the popular bars.

It must have been five in the morning by the time we got to the next bars. We sat with a table of girls who worked there, but weren’t on the clock. One of them spoke English. Their Way-Too-Drunk Co-worker Julia brought plates of chicken fingers and fries and free drinks. We talked about nothing until they were ready to leave. The night was somehow still going.

We met a very tall English-speaking Norweigan looking for cocaine. I hope he found what he was looking for. We also met a set of stoners from Montevideo, the beach town near the ferry. They were the last standing of their friends, who were scattered amongst the tables in various states of drunkenness. They were exceptionally nice, and told us all about the sexiness of the women during the peak season of Punta del Esta, which is the first two weeks of January. We greeted the sunrise with our stoner buddies, then trekked home.

We watched the sun rise over the giant hand sculpture on the beach, then went to sleep around seven in the morning.

Brunch is mostly yesterday’s dinner with some new parts and pieces. And then the ice cream shows up again. I ate too much again.

Juan and I taxi to the Buquebus, a ferry, where we meet up with the family. It’s a big boat with Amtrak style seating and parking for the cars underneath. It’s a three hour ride to Uruguay, and then two more in the car until we get to Punta del Este. El Don’s driving is erratic, like everyone else’s in the country. I try to sleep to pass the time, but that doesn’t work. I wish I had taken more of the sleeping pills. They’ve made the six hour journey to Punta del Este multiple times a year for as long as they can remember, so it’s perfectly normal. Not for us. “Hey, guy’s let jet out to the beach…in London.”They use the word ‘apartment’ to explain our accommodations, but it’s a mistranslation. Two-thirds of a floor of a high rise overlooking the beach, with five bedrooms, multiple bathrooms, and balconies is more than just an apartment. Juan and I share a little side room with enough space for the two little beds, one of which rolls out from under the other, and our bags.

Time to go out to dinner! The Yacht Club Restaurant is empty save for a couple at a nearby table. It isn’t long before appetizers start rolling out: fried fish nuggets, fried calamari, octopus sauteed in butter, amazingly fresh langoustines, bread & butter, red wine, another calamari dish all precede the Fish with Brown Butter and Capers. The fish is a fresh and haddock-like, and the capers are bigger than the ones we’re used to and mild. The dinner is filled with laughter and a mix of languages. I gain a nickname: Challenger. I can eat and eat until I explode. Get it? Juan is Columbia. We must be bothering the couple at the table next to us, because we’re a loud bunch. I can’t understand the story Roberto is telling about Juan’s uncle Pablo, but watching him crack up trying to tell it is enough to make me burst out laughing. There is plenty of red wine and a ridiculous amount of food. I feel at home with Juan’s family, and we’re really starting to get to know each other. Sandra, Roberto’s wife, helps me decode the menu. Their youngest kids, Delfina and Marlena are too young for English, but I’m counting on funny faces and smiles to win them over. It’s slowly working. Their oldest daughter, Orianna, is 12. She knows a little bit of English, but she’s shy, and content to talk with Sofia. I don’t expect a twelve year old girl to have much to say to me anyways. I don’t keep up on ‘Hannah Montana.’ Is that what they watch? I’m not sure.

After the meal, we go out to the bars with Juan’s eighteen year old cousin, Sophia. She has studied English for about nine years, so I can switch back to my native tongue. It’s relaxing. Or maybe it’s the glass of whiskey that’s relaxing. Both the Irish pub and the place with the jazz players are pretty dead. The bartender tells me things get busy around three in the morning. We turn in at about 2:45am. The party hasn’t even started yet, but we’re beat from a day of traveling. Tomorrow, we say, we’re not coming home until it’s light out.

It takes a day of travel from Philly to Baltimore, then DC, before finally arriving to the airport in Buenos Aires, where we meet Juan´s grandparents on his mother´s side, El Don and Pili. I was half conscious through most of the eleven hour plane ride thanks to a couple of sleeping pills, but I can´t say that the twenty four hours of travel was enjoyable.

The Argentinian countryside on the way to Buenos Aires is familiar. It´s a mix of New Hampshire and Europe.I´m stirred awake as the car pulls into the garage. Anna Maria, the maid– yeah, there’s a maid–, helps us with our bags. The street could be one of the nicer blocks in West Philadelphia, except the houses are more European and better kept.

Juan´s grandparents live in a gated compound of sorts. Well, compound makes it sound bigger than it is, I suppose. There´s a well manicured lawn leading to the main house, a pool, a patio and grill, and a guest apartment where Juan and I will be staying. It´s well furnished, without being stilted; comfortable and welcoming.

In the kitchen there are pastries. Buttery half moon croissants and the one with fresh dulce de leche are my favorite. There are a variety of meats on the counter. Beef ribs, pork belly, little and big sausages, and Morcilla (more’see’sha) the famed Blood Sausage. It´s Juan´s favorite food, and I´m ready to eat it– coagulated blood and fat shoved in intestines. That´s good? Okay.

We shower off the day of travel and change in anticipation for the family´s arrival. Juan´s aunt Adrianna and uncle Roberto show up with their spouses and children. There’s no way to remember all of these people and their names. Hours and hours of feasting commence.

First come appetizers of cheese, ham, salami, olives, and bread. Then, some drink called G? Americano. I can´t remember, I´ll have to ask Juan. It´s very casual, everyone´s meeting, talking, and catching up with each other. They light the traditional Argentinian grill, the parilla (pa-ree-sha), for an asado or barbecue. A natural charcoal called ‘carbon vegetal’ and wood are lit in a metal basket, fall to the brick underneath, and are spread out under the grill. The grill can be raised or lowered with a crank. It´s slowly cooked and simply seasoned, and served alongside salads, wine, soda, and breads. The food is great, the company is better. You can hear that Juan´s laugh has been passed down through the generations. I wonder if his great grandfather had the same one. The meal goes on and on, and is informal, social, and familial. They are astounded at the amount I can eat, but I just don´t want to miss anything new. Speaking of new things, the first thing I go for is the blood sausage. It´s not firm, which is unexpected compared to other sausages. I like the way it tastes, but it´s hard to push away the fact that it´s coagulated blood. I mean, it feels like coagulated blood. But when I spread it on bread, it´s pretty good. This one´s going to take a few tries.

The Ice Cream!

Juan´s uncle Roberto owns Saverio, an ice cream factory and a few shops in Buenos Aires. He brings out two big Styrofoam containers each with eight-or-so flavors of ice cream. It´s like gelato, but icier, and it’s fresh. Each flavor is distinct and perfectly strong. There is raspberry, blueberry, and lemon, dulce de leche, chocolate with orange peel, chocolate with a liqueur, mascarpone, and more more more. It´s amazing in the way that I stop paying attention to anything else just pay attention to how crazy-good the ice cream tastes. I have way too much, but they insist on refilling the bowl. I make half-assed attempts to say no, but I really want to overindulge.

After the meal, I lay on the grass like a big, fat beached whale, soaking up the rest of the sun. Later on, we kick around the soccer ball, pass around the mate and wine, and I decipher what I can of the stories everyone´s telling. The remnants of my Spanish education is getting a workout, but Juan and his mom are translating, and the family knows enough English to make it work.

It feels like 2am when the family leaves. It´s actually 9:30. What a long day. We turn in early.

But not before eating again. And then the ice cream comes out. I over-overindulge once again.

There´s another day of travel ahead.

A great way to test a Mexican joint is by their carnitas. Jose failed. Twice I ordered the $5 (not $3.50 like it says in their online menu) tacos which come with two corn tortillas hugging raw onion, cilantro, and your choice of chicken, beef or carnitas. Both times the shredded meat was dry, lacking porky punch. The first time they came with rice and beans, the second time, no such luck. Or maybe it was better that they skipped the R&B since both my own and the side dish were bone dry. The rice was actually crunchy. I suspect that it wasn’t undercooked, it had just been sitting out far too long.

The carnitas did work well in burrito form, but it’s pretty easy to mask boring meat in all of that other stuff they shove in there. The pork empanadas were good because they are deep fried Hot Pockets. You could have stuffed paper in the shell and it would have tasted fine. The filling lacked character. The grouper tacos had so much spicy mayo slathered on that one of my eating companions could barely finish. I also watched other friends suffer through over-jalapeno’ed quesadillas. Maybe they just have low tolerances for spicy food, but it got in the way of enjoying their meals. I’m not done with those grouper tacos yet– the fish is battered and fried to death so it’s barely recognizable as fish. They might as well use tofu instead.

We also ordered the chips and guacamole. The guac was a good mix of creamy and chunky; the chips were salt licks.

Alvy Singer: [addressing the camera] There’s an old joke - um… two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of ‘em says, “Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.” The other one says, “Yeah, I know; and such small portions.” [Annie Hall, imdb]

I ate the chips.

Service was friendly and helpful both times.

This food would be good if more care was taken in the preparation. But it’s not. Yet I wonder if the food was better before chef Issac McCrimmon left to pursue his arcade themed restaurant, “Heroes.”

Go to Taqueria La Veracruzana for your Mexican food, and bring your own ‘B.’

Jose Pistolas
213 S. 15th St. (b/t Locust & Spruce)
Philadelphia, PA 19146

But you don’t have to take my word for it!
[Philadelphia Weekly Review] [Beer Advocate Review]

If you’re completely unfamiliar with cured meats, Wikipedia will come to your rescue:

Pancetta is an Italian cured meat similar to American bacon. It is pork that has been salt cured, salted and spiced (nutmeg, pepper, fennel, dried ground hot peppers and garlic are often featured), and dried for about three months (but usually not smoked). There are many varieties, and each part of Italy produces its own type. In Corsica, it is considered a regional flavour.

Pancetta can be rolled (the most common type available outside of Italy, see photograph), or straight (with all the fat on one side). The straight variety is more common in Italy than elsewhere, especially where home-made pancetta is still produced. [Pancetta on Wikipedia]

I made mine using the detailed instructions from Chow, where they have a traditional recipe and a step-by-step illustrated guide. You’ll see in the slide show, a bowl full of the cure, which filled the kitchen with an amazing smell. I kept sticking my face near the bowl just to suck in the goodness. Nearly everything went according to plan, except near the end of the drying phase, when my pancetta got attacked by MOLD. I think it might have happened right as I left for my skiing trip. The weather got warmer and the basement partially flooded when the hose became disconnected from the washing machine. I’m no scientist, but a muggy, warm, floody basement doesn’t sound like ideal conditions in which to hang pork. My first instinct was, “it’s only mold, who cares. I didn’t spend three weeks of curing and drying just to throw this thing away. I’ll just cut it off.” The internet supported my cause:

L. Mold growth - As with aged cheese, mold growth is common among cured meats that are aged. Molds may be removed with a mixture of 10% acetic acid and 90% water or other equivalent rinses. After the mold is trimmed or removed by scrubbing and rinsing, the product is satisfactory for consumption.

Molds are common in the air and will thrive if proper temperature and moisture conditions (as during curing and aging) exist. An effective way to prevent molds on cured and smoked meats is to store them in a dry, well ventilated room with a temperature range of 45 - 55°F and a relative humidity of less than 68%. Unwrapped meat should not touch other meat. This method of holding increases dehydration, but weight loss is less expensive than loss from trimming mold. [Some Solutions To Difficulties Of Home-Curing Pork]

Chow addresses the mold as well:

However, some chefs choose to break the rules. Mold flavors the meat, and to grow mold you need certain temperature and humidity levels—levels that the law might not always permit. “If you take [mold] . . . away, it’s just not gonna happen,” says Mullen. “You’re not gonna get the ‘wow’ factor.”

Here’s our recipe for homemade pancetta. It’ll make you feel powerful. Or at the very least, it will add bacony, fatty goodness to whatever it touches. Just don’t be scared of a little mold. [Pancetta on Chow]

Some people even had mold in the comments section. It didn’t seem like too big a deal. So I washed the mold off with a vinegar and water solution, dried with with paper towels and left it to dry another day (new James Bond movie) to see if more mold developed. I also cut off a small portion and fried it up.

Was it good? Are you ready for it? Here it comes!

AMAZING! A lot of food writing used the word ‘revelation.’ I don’t want to be just like them, so I’ll thesaurus.com a synonym. Okay. It was an eye-opening realization of what pancetta can be. Prior to this moment I had eaten ‘Pretty Good’ and ‘Much Better’ versions of pancetta from Di Bruno’s. Now I really get it: Deeply flavorful and complex, great texture, and MINE. When I get back from Argentina, I’m getting some jowls to make guanciale.

Smithfield Foods, the largest and most profitable pork processor in the world, killed 27 million hogs last year. That’s a number worth considering. A slaughter-weight hog is fifty percent heavier than a person. The logistical challenge of processing that many pigs each year is roughly equivalent to butchering and boxing the entire human populations of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Detroit, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, San Francisco, Columbus, Austin, Memphis, Baltimore, Fort Worth, Charlotte, El Paso, Milwaukee, Seattle, Boston, Denver, Louisville, Washington, D.C., Nashville, Las Vegas, Portland, Oklahoma City and Tucson.

Read it. Then go buy some responsibly raised dead animals and eat them.

It’s not just pigs, by the way. Animals turned into an industrial product are all treated like shit to make a profit. I want to eat animals, not disease ridden, antibiotic pumped, shit wallowing, mutants.

Enough from me, take it away, Jamie Oliver, tell us about those cheap chickens.

The first time I tried the recipe, I also combined it with America’s Test Kitchen’s baking powder skin [Paupered Chef] and a one day dry brine with better (excellent) results. After I try this combo method a couple more times, I’ll write up a recipe. The skin was super crisp, and the meat moist and seasoned throughout, despite being slightly overcooked (no one could tell anyways.)

The broccoli was boiled until tender and tossed with some butter, parmigiano-reggiano, salt & pepper. I went a little heavy on the sea salt (still figuring out how much is the right amount with that stuff), but it was still very good. The potatoes sat in a glass baking dish next to the chicken. They were in too long or something, because they developed too hard an exterior. I’m still figuring out those guys.

“Overnight, everybody you meet has become lactose intolerant.  It is the chic food fear at the moment.  But the truth is that very, very few of us are so seriously afflicted that we cannot drink even a whole glass of milk a day without ill effects.  I know several people who have given up cheese to avoid lactose.  But fermented cheeses contain no lactose! Lactose is the sugar found in milk; 98 percent of it is drained off with the whey (cheese is made from the curds), and the other 2 percent is quickly consumed by the lactic-acid bacteria in the act of fermentation.” (p.8)

I fell victim to this food myth as well, but wonder why some cheese gives me an upset stomach.  Maybe when I was eating a cheesy food like pizza, I was also ove