Chef Clint

Everybody knows Marie is a wonderful cook, but few know there is another force to be reckoned with in the kitchen - Me.

Last night, after a productive day of playing Bowmaster at work and generally failing to do anything of any value, including eating lunch, I decided to get off my ass and cook. With the help of one of Marie's cookbooks (and her telling me where everything was in the kitchen), I managed to fix Spanish Rice with Chorizo.

Cook 1 diced red onion and 1 clove of minced garlic in 2 tablespoons of olive oil

Add 1 diced red bell pepper, 1 cup of rice, and 1 teaspoon of turmeric. Cook for a bit.

Add 1 1/2 cups of chicken broth. Bring to a boil and cover, reducing heat to low.

After 5 minutes, toss in about 6 oz of chorizo.

Cook a couple of minutes, then add 1 small bunch of fresh sage, chopped, and 6 oz of frozen peas.

Cook for 5 or 6 minutes. Done.

Cold

Boy, it's been cold here. Cold, cold, cold. Today grass in the shadows stayed frozen all day! Check out the morning temp. I almost had to wear gloves today! I guess winter eventually had to come.

Of course, it is supposed to get to 7 or 8 degrees Celsius tomorrow, with bright sunshine. I wonder what it's like to live in perpetual darkness. Buz?

Seriously though, still no snow. It's been beautiful weather, but it's my last chance to go alpine touring, and at this rate I won't make it. I had hoped to go before the baby came, but that's probably best. My luck I would have been at the peak when Marie went into labor.

Apple Brandy II

I did the first run through the still, and I'm pretty happy how it came out.

Here's the setup. Pretty basic. The wash (alcohol containing mixture you're distilling) is dumped in the kettle on the bottom and boiled. Cold water runs from the blue tub through the hoses and back, cooling down the condenser (sticking out of the right of the column). The alcohol drips out of the condenser, and is collected in a bottle.

Once the wash (alcohol containing mixture you're distilling) begins to boil, or when the thermometer on the top of the column reads 60 degrees Celsius, you turn on the cooling water. Soon, a clear liquid begins dripping out. The first stuff to come out is called the "foreshots", and contains all kinds of nasty little organic compounds, including methanol. You collect the first 100ml and toss it. Don't even think about keeping it, just get rid of it.

The run is divided into: Foreshots, Heads, Hearts, and Tails. In theory, you will toss the foreshots. The head swill contain lots of alcohol but not taste good, so you keep them to add to the next batch. The hearts is the best. The tails begin to taste bad, and get thrown into the next batch.

Collection of the alcohol should be limited to about a half liter at a time. Collect a half a liter, then start on another bottle. This way you can decide what to keep on flavor. After the run, keep the best half liter separate, then just mix the others that taste good. Any that are off can be dumped into the next batch or thrown away.

Watch your thermometer and taste the distillate. You'll have times where the temperature jumps or climbs rapidly (this is why you start the cooling water so early) then holds at a point for a long time. When the temperature holds, something is evaporating. Taste the distillate. If it tastes great, that's the point you are after.

The actual numbers on the thermometer are not that important, since they can be up to 10 degrees Celsius off in either direction due to still design. Rules of thumb can be not to collect below 75 and above 95. The rest depends on taste.

I wound up with about 3 1/2 liters of alcohol. Tastes pretty good!

PROBLEMS

The guy who gave me the gas burner told me it sucked. No lie! Hardly any heat output. This run took 7 hours, as opposed to about 3 to 3 1/2 it should have taken.

I don't have an alcoholmeter yet, so I don't know what % this stuff is.

Moka

About every house in Italy has a moka, a coffee maker for espresso. The traditional brand is Bialetti. The beauty of this is almost anything that can break is replaceable. Check out this display, in a normal little corner store.

I love the mentality, compared to the Walmart - everything is disposable attitude - of America.

On a side note - If you have a Bialetti coffee maker, the coffee should always be brewed on the lowest heat setting possible! Never on high heat as it will scorch the coffee.

Apple Brandy

My brother-in-law makes about 25 liters of plum brandy a year. He uses only pure fruit, fermenting in wooden barrels with wild yeasts. Unfortunately, he has to have someone else distill it for him, at a cost of about €8 a liter. I decided to fix that for him, and bought him a still.

As this will be his Christmas present, I decided I'd give it a run first.

The work of the last few weeks has been apple brandy. I'm not real sure how much longer it will take, or how it will all turn out, but here's the story up until now.

First, I started with 20 kg of windfall (the ones lying on the ground) apples taken from the neighbor.

Then I cut out any bad parts and chopped them up a little. It is better to mash them, but I didn't have a fruit press for that.

Then I dumped in 20 liters of spring water I get from up in the mountains, or right behind the house if it's flowing.

Next I pitched a yeast starter going with purchased wine yeast. You can use baker's yeast, but wine yeasts produce more consistent, flavorful results and tolerate higher alcohol percentages.

The yeast is stirred into the apples and left. The next morning you could tell they were starting to work.

A few days later a nice wort had formed

I stirred the whole concoction daily, and covered it with a towel. It's ready for the next step when the wort falls. It basically just disappears - there one day, gone the next. That took about 2 weeks.

Then we strained the liquid.

Poured it into demijohns.

Pressed the juice out of the remaining bits using nylon leggings - again, no fruit press.

Here's the remains of the apples. Not much.

I wound up with about 35 liters of juice. Not much alcohol in it at this point. I capped the demijohns and monitored them for a few days for fermentation - nothing. The apples I used weren't very sweet, but the juice definitely still had sugar in it and I want enough alcohol to distill, so I added 5 kilos of sugar and moved the demijohns from the cold basement to the office. Then I pitched some more yeast and tossed it in. The juice is still bubbling happily. Once it stops, the fermentation will be done and it's time to distill.

My driving future - when Kia makes one!

Just the other day I was thinking about how someone should debut an electric sports car. I had been reading about hybrids and the writer made a comment about how this is one of the few technologies not used for the racetrack first.

Anyway, someone IS bringing out an electric sport scar, and a pretty nice one. It’s basically an electric Lotus Elise, a car that just so happens to have the lightest and most rigid chassis in the world. Check it out:

http://www.teslamotors.com/

So, if any of you have a spare $90,000 laying around, go for it. However, anyone who doesn’t spend the extra $10K or so to cover their garage with solar panels and power this thing with 100% renewable energy is a LOSER.

A small step.

New York has banned trans fats! Actually, it's a phased process, but hey, baby steps.

How much further will it go? Hopefully, very far. Just think of the junk we are pretty much forced to eat through lack of choices. Some use the capitalism argument, saying it's just the system's way of giving people the cheap food they want. Of course, once the choice has been sufficiently limited, how can you say the consumer is deciding? Also, we must remember driving costs down gives the large profit margins the corporations demand.

For well written articles on this, check out Christopher Wanjek on Live Science:

Trans Fats

The Food Supply

Family Farms

Commercial Organic

Going down to Whole Foods Market may be good for you, but it's certainly not enough for the environment, physical and social.

Dirty Birds

The other night Marie and I cooked stuffed quail. Wonderful!

Unfortunatly, we neglected to tie the legs togeather, so our birds came out a little "promiscuous".

Quail a'la Porn!