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Thankful for turkeys and French soft cheeses

Tonight’s dinner – white and dark turkey, whole cranberry sauce, and Gournay cheese with garlic and herbs on toasted sourdough, accompanied by a glass of cider – was almost as good as last night’s. A tad bit less effort, too.

I’ll try warmed turkey, stuffing, and gravy in the next sandwich

The gravy definitely improved the problematic mash (see below)

Good results yesterday: Five wins, one tie, one loss.

  • Best turkey I’ve roasted, tying with two I’ve done in recent weeks
  • Best gravy I’ve made
  • Best cornbread, bacon, and sage stuffing – we winged it, combining recipes of Julia Child and Martha Stewart, modifying to suit us
  • The slow-roasted sweet potatoes worked nicely – we added maple syrup, cinnamon, salt, and pepper only; no need for butter
  • Best banana cream pie, made more subtle and luxurious by decreasing the sweetness slightly and adding a half-teaspoon more than the usual two teaspoons of banana extract (the real stuff)

Neutral: The peas with mint and finely shredded wilted lettuce were good, but I missed my usual butternut squash with nutmeg and white pepper and will restore it at Christmas.

Loss: I cannot recommend slow-roasted potatoes for making mashed; there was a graininess that refused to be riced away and the taste was not right. To be honest, if there had been a store open yesterday where I could get a half-dozen potatoes, I would have tossed the lot and started again. Back to the usual boiling or steaming next time for silky smooth and pure potato-flavoured mash.

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Crunchy eggs? Ova my dead body.

America’s Test Kitchen’s idea of the perfect fried egg – offered in their weekly recipe email this morning – differs from mine in one respect: I consider fried eggs with crisp edges to be partially burnt and, like a typical Starbucks roast, a bit unpleasant. I also disagree with their use of oil in addition to butter; I think it’s in there primarily so they can burn the edges but not the butter. Oil is also going to give you rather greasy eggs unless you pat them with a paper towel before serving.

If I got such eggs at a diner, I’d cut the crunchy edges off and drop any daft plans I might have for a return visit. The same goes for scrambled eggs that look and taste like a pile of sunbaked boulders. Standards must be maintained.

Below, my perfect butter-fried over-easy eggs in progress. All they need from this point is a flip of the wrist and another couple of minutes on medium-low heat.

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The superhydrophobic diving flies of Mono Lake

Mark Twain described the odd diving flies (Ephydra hians) of Mono Lake, California in chapter XXXVIII of Roughing It – one of his finest books:

“Then there is a fly, which looks something like our house fly. These settle on the beach to eat the worms that wash ashore—and any time, you can see there a belt of flies an inch deep and six feet wide, and this belt extends clear around the lake—a belt of flies one hundred miles long. If you throw a stone among them, they swarm up so thick that they look dense, like a cloud. You can hold them under water as long as you please—they do not mind it—they are only proud of it. When you let them go, they pop up to the surface as dry as a patent office report, and walk off as unconcernedly as if they had been educated especially with a view to affording instructive entertainment to man in that particular way.”

A couple of Caltech scientists have now detailed exactly what’s going on with those superhydrophobic flies—whose Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus predates ours by a long stretch—with an overview article and video here. Links to their freely downloadable research paper and supplemental videos are at the end of that page.

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Ceci n’est pas un oxymoron

Slow-cooking as a time-saver? Yes, indeed. I need to slow-cook some bacon for Thursday’s cornbread stuffing (and a BLT or two), so I decided to slow-roast the Yukon Gold potatoes – the last of my cache from Willard Farm – and the sweet potatoes at the same time.

The potatoes are scrubbed clean, pierced with a fork several times each, and given a coat of olive oil and a sprinkling of kosher salt.

The bacon usually takes 80-90 minutes, which should be about right for the Yukon Golds at 285F/140C. I have another pound of bacon to slow-cook, and the sweet potatoes will conveniently be done around the same time as that second pound, three hours total. [Edited to add: The Yukons actually took a little over two hours at 285F/140C and the sweet potatoes were indeed done at the three-hour mark.]

The Yukon Golds are destined for mashed potatoes with butter, heavy cream, salt, and plenty of pepper. Baking instead of boiling means I won’t have to dry them out in a pan over medium-low heat before mashing – nor will the mashing take much effort at all. The sweet potatoes will get a maple-cinnamon treatment, but only enough maple syrup to taste because slow-roasting is going to make them even sweeter than usual.

Edited to add: The sweet potatoes came out fine, but I can’t recommend slow-cooking Yukon Golds for mash. In the end, there was a graininess that could not be riced away and the taste was not right. Boiling or steaming is best for those.

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My new favourite cinnamon buns

I keep the butter & cream cheese icing separate, warm the buns before serving, and let people slather on as much or as little icing as they like

Printing tip: At the bottom of each article on the site, a print/PDF/email function allows you to print or save a PDF of just the body of the article without any web site formatting. Scroll to the end of the article to find these icons and click there: In the print dialog that opens, you can click any element on the page you don’t need to remove it from the printed/saved version.

This is my new favourite recipe for cinnamon buns. With a dough not too far away from a brioche, they’re a bit crispy on the outside and, inside, beautifully soft and light but not mushy.

Cinna-Buns

Adapted and expanded from the King Arthur Flour recipe here: https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/cinna-buns-recipe

Makes 12 very large buns or 24 medium buns

Ahead of time: An hour or two ahead, take two sticks of butter (three if you’re doubling the icing), a package of cream cheese, and two eggs out of the fridge so they can warm to room temperature. Note that you can use salted butter if you want – there’s a negligible 1/8th teaspoon of salt in a quarter-pound salted stick, so it won’t make an appreciable difference.

Ratios are crucial in baking, so I measure by weight – especially important for the flour.

Ingredients

Dough

  •     1 cup (235 ml) lukewarm milk [heat in microwave about 1 minute until 115F/45C or so]
  •     2 large eggs, at room temperature
  •     1/3 cup (2 5/8 oz, 75g) softened unsalted butter, cut into half-tablespoon pieces
  •     4 1/2 cups (19 oz, 540g) all-purpose flour
  •     1 3/4 teaspoons salt
  •     1/2 cup (3 1/2 oz, 100g) granulated sugar
  •     2 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast or active dry yeast

Filling

  •     1/3 cup (2 5/8 oz, 75g) softened unsalted butter
  •     1 cup light brown sugar, packed  (7 1/2 oz, 210g)
  •     3 tablespoons ground cinnamon

Icing (original is really sweet – see my adjustments below)

  •     6 tablespoons (generous 1/3 cup, 3 oz, 85g) cream cheese, softened
  •     1/4 cup (half stick, 2 oz, 57g) unsalted butter, softened
  •     1 1/2 cups (6 oz, 170g) confectioners’ sugar (icing sugar)
  •     1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

[I usually double the icing recipe and then let guests use as much or as little as they like. I also decrease the sugar and increase the butter and cream cheese to make the icing not as sickly sweet as the original recipe. For a single icing recipe, I use 8 tablespoons (half cup, 4 oz., 115g) cream cheese, 1/3 cup (3 oz, 85g) butter, 1 cup confectioner’s/icing sugar (4 oz, 110g), and the 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract.]

Directions

  1. To make the dough: Mix together and knead all of the dough ingredients – by hand, mixer, or bread machine – to make a smooth, soft dough. [In a stand mixer with a dough hook, this will take 6 or 7 minutes. When the side of the bowl is fairly clean and the dough starts to climb the hook a bit, it’s ready. Note that, like brioche dough, which is similarly enriched with butter, sugar, and egg, this may seem too wet at the start, but it isn’t.]
  2. Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, turn to grease all sides, cover the bowl, and let the dough rise for 60 minutes, or until it’s nearly doubled in bulk. [Enriched doughs can take longer to rise – up to two hours in a cold kitchen or if your ingredients weren’t at room temperature or if your yeast is a little tired – or just because. I use a large measuring cup that has a cover – see picture below – and wait as long as it takes to rise to almost the 2 quart mark.]
  3. Deflate and roll out the dough: Gently deflate the dough, and transfer it to a lightly greased work surface. [It’s very important to grease the surface – you’ll need two feet by a foot-and-a-half – because you’re rolling a fairly wet dough to 3-4mm thickness and it would stick like tape otherwise. This may seem daunting, but don’t worry, the dough is very pliable and easy to stretch without tearing.] Pat the dough out into a rough rectangle, then roll to 16×21″/40x53cm, keeping the corners as square as practical.
  4. Filling: [For this step, I find it’s easier to microwave the butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon for about 30 seconds, then mix to form a paste that you can spread fairly evenly onto the dough. Allow it to cool a bit if it feels hot. This method also stops a bunch of the filling from falling out and ending up on the bottom of your pan.] Original method: Spread the dough with the 1/3 cup butter. Mix the brown sugar and cinnamon, and sprinkle it evenly over the dough.

Slicing note: I use a very thin and sharp boning knife to slice the roll into buns, but you may find it easier to chill the roll in the fridge for half an hour before slicing and then use a serrated bread knife.

5a. For 12 large buns [these are huge]: Starting with a short end, roll the dough into a 16″/40cm log and cut it into 12 slices. [Cut in half, then cut each half in half, then cut each quarter into three equal pieces.]

5b.  For 24 smaller buns: Starting with a long end, roll the dough into a 21″/53cm log and cut it into 24 slices. [Cut in half, then cut each half in half, then cut each quarter in half, then cut each eighth into 3 equal pieces.]

6. Place the buns in a lightly greased 9×13″/22x33cm pan. [3×4 rows for 12 buns or 4×6 rows for 24 buns.] Cover the pan and let the buns rise until they’re nearly doubled in size, about 30 minutes. [Again, your results may vary – it can take up to an hour. Be patient and let them puff up.]

7. While the buns are rising, preheat the oven to 400F/200C

8. Uncover the buns, and bake them until they’re golden brown, about 15 minutes. [Check them every couple minutes starting at 15 minutes, but I’ve found that golden brown won’t appear until 18-22 minutes have passed. If you have a probe thermometer, 190-195F/87-90C inside the center buns is your target.] While the buns are baking, make the icing.

9. To make the icing: In a small bowl, beat together the softened cream cheese, softened butter, sugar, and vanilla. [I double the icing recipe and modify by using a little more butter and cream cheese and less confectioner’s/icing sugar. See note above.]

10. Remove the buns from the oven. Spread the icing on the buns while they’re warm. [I keep the icing separate, partly so people can have as much or as little as they like and partly because only the baker normally sees that nice spiral. It would be a shame to hide it away permanently.]

11. Serve buns warm, or at room temperature. [Room temperature? Stop it.] Wrap in plastic and store at room temperature for a day or so; freeze for longer storage.

This is how slack the kneaded dough will be

The first rise will result in nearly two quarts/litres

Island surface sprayed with canola oil

Patted into a rectangle, then rolled out to about 16×21”/40x53cm and 3-4mm thick

Filling spread over dough – it doesn’t have to be perfect

Dough rolled up on long side, sliced in half, then quarters, then eighths

Those eighths cut into thirds for 24 medium buns

Arranged in buttered 9×13”/22x33cm pan for second rise – a bit wonky looking, but…

…after the second rise, the wonkiness from the slicing has corrected itself

Out of the oven

A previous bake of the larger size – they’re pretty huge

 

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Next twist: “Did I say fishermen? Obviously I meant space aliens.”

Gosh, they left out the juiciest part a couple weeks ago. Not mentioned in the linked Focus Taiwan story is the further claim, also only revealed once they got on network TV, that after the inexplicably murderous Taiwanese commercial fishermen rammed them on purpose, she floated over to their ship in the night on a surfboard and used their satellite phone to call the Coast Guard. One presumes she craftily presented her book pitch to incapacitate the homicidal sailors as they rolled around the deck helpless with laughter.

“Anybody can tell lies: there is no merit in a mere lie, it must possess art, it must exhibit a splendid & plausible & convincing probability; that is to say, it must be powerfully calculated to deceive.”
– Mark Twain in his Autobiography, Volume 3

“A thunderstorm made Beranger a poet, a mother’s kiss made Benjamin West a painter, and a salary of $15 a week makes us a journalist.”
– Mark Twain, opening the first story he filed for the Virginia City, Nevada Enterprise, 1862

 

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What could possibly go wrong?

So a simple straight-line driverless shuttle spots ahead an 18-wheeler backing into a loading dock in front of it and stops – a smidge late and directly in the truck’s turning arc. Incapable of, say, tootling its horn melodiously while bellowing “Yo, dummy!” or quickly backing up 48 inches because “that numbnut doesn’t see me”, it sits there, obstacle stop logic performing perfectly, happily getting its bumper smushed. And it’s sponsored by the American Automobile Association.

For some reason, the local news story is not framed in the manner I just used, maybe because everyone wants driverless cars, don’t they, and we’ve all agreed not to be negative about them, haven’t we, and what’s Mr. Just-Ate-a-Lemon’s problem over there, anyway?

In related news, $300m of driverless and aptly-named imagocurrency Ether was accidentally stolen and then promptly digitally burned to a whisp as the inadvertent thief tried to return it. No smoke, no muss, no cleanup. Not even a sound effect, I’ll wager.

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The long con fish story

A fine-toothed comb is passed through that “five months stranded in a sailboat” story from the other day in a delightfully expert fashion here.

When I initially read the story in the news, it was the fantastical shark details that wafted up to my crinkling nose not unlike a stagnant rock pool, but nothing about the story they told made sense, really. The not-so-finely crafted fish tale struck me as the ramblings of two small children who’ve broken a lamp and quickly invent a fairly complete but nonsensical alternate universe in which impish goblins did it, not them. In this case, one presumes with the hope of selling the Fantastic Unbelievable Story of the Broken Lamp and the Goblins for six or seven figures.

“And then, and then, and then, a force eleventy-‘leven storm hit for three days and it didn’t even show up on the satellite because the goblins hid it and stuff!”

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Tales of the Bizarro World

Stylist: “I’ve never had corn myself, but I imagine people serve it something like this.”

Photographer: “Yes, probably so. All done?”

Stylist: “Yup!”

Be sure to click for a larger, more disturbing version

Found here, about three-quarters of the way down the page.

It’s possible, I suppose, that this is somehow imaged directly from a food stylist student’s cold-sweat nightmare just hours before a final exam.

Think of this: They actually had a marketing meeting at Rubbermaid, probably a fairly lengthy one, during which this photograph was shown, discussed, and approved, probably by all present. Amazing.

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Nature at my window

One of the last videotapes I needed to convert was this half-hour of fox cub footage I took at my old place. Recorded years ago with a cheap VHS camera borrowed from the office and shot from behind a screen window, so it’s not the best quality, but it’s still fun to watch. I described the scenario on a UK forum back in 2008:

Here, [foxes are] not the rubbish-rooting scavengers they seem to be in the UK (I saw mom with a rabbit in her mouth more than once), and are a fair amount rarer, so it’s always nice to spot them. In the two or three weeks before I taped that, I had caught brief glimpses among the undergrowth of tiny foxes, as small as 8″ long, and decided to get a bag of dry dog food – figuring they’re closely related to canines – for a bit of nature-watching on a Saturday.

Saturday morning, I set the camera up in a front window and set it recording, thinking I’d rewind after a couple hours and keep trying until they showed up – but they started showing up just ten minutes after I set it up. I got about thirty minutes of footage of them eating and frolicking and chasing each other around like kittens before they each went down the hill, one by one, to the abandoned and quite dilapidated barn where they lived, until one straggler was left, going ’round in circles looking for his brothers and sisters.

For weeks afterward, until they went their separate ways, one or two of the litter would generally be to one side of the driveway when I got home and would nonchalantly look up at me as I passed.

The old place was a modest cottage of 1950s vintage I rented for more than a decade that was situated in the middle of twelve acres of woodland, back about 500 feet from the road. Though the place was tiny, it was fairly quiet – some background noise from the nearby highway – and home to lots of wildlife. The house was quick to heat in the winter and electricity was 1960s cheap because the town makes its own power and, at the time, charged about a third of National Grid’s rates, even giving everyone in town rebates three or four months of the year when they sold excess generated power. Now I’m one town away and paying through the nose for National Grid’s juice.* On the plus side, it’s even quieter where I live now – the loudest intrusion is the occasional low rumble of a freight train moving through town at a stately 4 or 5 mph.

I would have stayed there even longer had the heirs of the elderly lady who owned it not sold the land to a developer a year after she passed – with what I thought a rather discourteous thirty days notice to me. Now, instead of the bubbling brook, a nice mix of evergreens and deciduous, and the deer, pheasants, turkeys, owls, foxes, and turtles, there are three expensive homes with manicured lawns and neat rows of more manageable trees. What a shame.

I believe the soundtrack here is from Tony Furtado’s “Within Reach” (1992).

6am one Saturday morning, an hour after the snow stopped. It really was this striking blue. Click for the original size (this was March 2001, so not all that big).

Click for the original size

“Okay, fellas, let’s knock all this down,” someone probably said. This was the only size of this autumn photo I could locate. That’s unusual and probably means I mistakenly saved the edited smaller version over the original years ago.

*”Choose your own electricity provider” they tell us. Yeah, I looked into that. All the providers offer one- or two-year good deals, but then they can do whatever they like to you. And they do – shocking, ain’t it? – so you’re forced to go to another provider. In my case, I’d save maybe five to eight dollars a month. That’s not worth the admin trouble and what I feel would be intense aggravation at being gouged and re-gouged every year or two.

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My 15 seconds

So there I was, recording today’s Quote…Unquote S53E02 off iPlayer after grabbing The Unbelievable Truth S19E02 earlier. One minute in, my eyebrows like to shoot off my head as host Nigel Rees and Charlotte Green open the show with…well, me and a quotation I sent him last year. Pretty cool.

I wrote five years ago of the strange enmity UK comics seem to have for the show. I still hear it derided a few times a year and I still don’t understand. This is a 53-series programme panelled by the likes of Douglas Adams, Graham Linehan, Peter Cook, and John Lloyd. Sheesh.

Once every several weeks, I hear some comedian or other on a Radio 4 show or TV panel show slag off “Quote…Unquote”, a panel show also on Radio 4. Most make dismissive comments, but some seem to despise the programme with a passion, which puzzles me because I like it. It’s not my favourite Radio 4 programme (that’d be “The News Quiz”, which itself slags off “Quote…Unquote” approximately every fourth programme), but I always listen to QU and can usually identify about half the quotations before they’re through reciting them. There’s good humour and good stories in most episodes.

Why do all those comedians hate it so, and with such bizarre frequency? It’s a minor show that airs only very infrequently – six episodes a year in recent years – yet I hear more negative mentions of it in any given year than the number of QU episodes that aired that year. Is it simply because they know none of the quotations and are perhaps made to feel small, or did presenter Nigel Rees line up all their dogs in a row and run them over with a steamroller years ago?

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