Science educators often skim off the top, as it were. They regale young minds with the marvels of science while remaining silent about the problems to which it has contributed.
When I was in grade school as a member of a different younger generation, we had routine drills in which we took cover under our desks. This was to prepare us to act quickly in case the Russians decided to nuke our playground. No one ever explained how this pathetic maneuver would save us, but it seemed to make the teachers feel better. Today's youngsters are treated to a different menu of menaces. Their nuclear hazard is more likely to come in the form of a dirty nuclear device detonated by a terrorist instead of from a Russian plane or missile. Then there is global warming, nuclear waste, environmental degradation, polluted air, water and soil. There are acidified oceans, melting polar ice, oceanic dead zones, dying coral reefs, vanishing species, on and on, all of which are due in some measure to the downside of science and technology. The mantra that only science can save us from these perils rings hollow to many youngsters, since it was largely science and technology that bequeathed them in the first place. As anthropologist and educator Loren Eiseley put it,
We have lived to see the technological progress that was hailed in one age as the savior of man become the horror of the next. We have observed that the same able and energetic minds which built lights, steamships and telephones turn with equal facility to the creation of what euphemistically is termed the “ultimate weapon.” It is in this reversal that the modern age comes off so badly.
The usual defense from the science community toward views such as Eiseley's is that it is technology, not science itself, that has made a mess of things. This is no doubt true to a certain extent. But scientists sometimes take risks in their research that appear breathtakingly irresponsible and reckless, which they usually justify in the name of pure or basic science. Some of these risks are so obvious they draw fire from scientists themselves. Consider a recent editorial in the respected British publication New Scientist titled “The Scary Business of Tinkering with Life”:
“By tinkering with the cell's natural machinery …[the research team] has found a way of making proteins with entirely new properties, opening up a future of exotic designer organisms…. This is a fundamental advance that could lead to new drugs, materials and energy sources. But tampering with life's operating system will inevitably raise safety concerns — and it's true that we have no way of predicting the fallout of this work. Synthetic biologists need to confront openly and honestly public fears that they are “playing God [emphasis added].”
Science boosters should wake up. Kids aren't dumb. To borrow novelist Ernest Hemingway's term, they have excellent “built-in bullshit detectors.” And nothing triggers the warning more than when those in charge present only one side of a story.
Must Science Be Depressing?
Why would anyone who is psychologically healthy pick a career that demands a view of the world that is morbid, pessimistic and depressing? That's precisely the worldview advocated by some of the most outstanding scientists of our day. This can be a turnoff to any optimistic, questing, curious, intelligent kid who stumbles onto it. Perhaps that is why the advocates of science education almost never acknowledge this prevailing view when promoting the wonders of science to youngsters.
Typical of the gloomy perspective is that of Nobel physicist Steven Weinberg in his 1977 book The First Three Minutes. In a now-famous passage, he writes,
It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in from the beginning… It is hard to realize that this all [i.e., life on Earth] is just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. It is even harder to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.
By the time Weinberg unveiled his gloomy view, the notion of a purposeless, meaningless universe was already on a roll in science. One of the most influential supporters of this perspective was the Nobel molecular biologist Jacques Monod (1910-1976), whose 1972 book Chance and Necessity powerfully influenced a generation of scientists. For Monod, purpose and meaning in nature were outlaw concepts; for a scientist to believe in them was unbecoming at best and a moral failing at worst. As he confidently proclaimed, “The cornerstone of scientific method is the systematic denial that 'true' knowledge can be got at by interpreting phenomena in terms of final causes–that is to say, of 'purpose.'”
Cognitive scientist and philosopher Daniel C. Dennett of Tufts University has joined the chorus of meaninglessness by dissing free will. “When we consider whether free will is an illusion or reality,” he says, “we are looking into an abyss. What seems to confront us is a plunge into nihilism and despair.”
Although prevalent, this depressing verdict on the status of meaning, direction and purpose in the world is not unanimous, and kids who intuitively reject this view have a few strong shoulders to stand on, as we'll see in the next blog.
References
Eiseley L. The Man Who Saw Through Time. New York, NY: Scribner; 1973: 106.
The scary business of tinkering with life. Unsigned editorial. New Scientist. February 20, 2010; 205(2748): 3.
Geddes L. Rewriting life in four-letter words. New Scientist. February 20, 2010; 205(2748): 14.
Hemingway E. Quoted in: Thinkexist.com. http://thinkexist.com/quotation/develop_a_built-in_bullshit_detector/204440.html. Accessed February 17, 2010.
Weinberg S. The First Three Minutes. New York, NY: Basic Books; 1993: 154.
Monod J. Chance and Necessity. New York, NY: Random House; 1972:21.
Dennett DC. Quoted in: “Overbye D. Free will: Now you have it, now you don't.” New York Times online. January 2, 2007.
@(Unverified)
OK first, everyone wants to cry about sub fees for MMO's. So I'll break it down. Say you bought Call of Duty and there were no glitchers or cheaters, the game ran pretty flawless, and they gave you LARGE amounts of new maps, guns, acheivements, etc. every few months or so. And in order to allow them to do that, you needed to subscribe for $15/month and they provided support and consistently give new content. Considering the amount of people who bought the map packs at $15 each, I bet a lot of people would pay that for their favorite game that they play every day.
That is how an MMO works. You aren't just paying for the right to play. You are paying for a persistant online world, with servers running all the time with people playing on them, even when you are offline. You are paying for updates, additions, patches, banhammers for cheaters, and so on. Plus most MMOer's play that as their primary game. $180/yr. + $60 to buy the game is the same as buying only 4 games at full price all year. Most non-MMO players (and even some MMOer's too) buy more games than that in a year, right? Not such a bad deal when you look at it that way.
{
|
THIS. @ToxicLED: Jim Cantiello and Justin Lee Collins need to do every interview with Adam ever okay. Make this happen universe.
|
Tagged: god, moon, sun June 25, 2010
My wife and doorman have got a pretty sweet deal. All they have to do is nothing, and they get hot, fresh food delivered to them several times a day. Of course, they do have to be content with eating, say, fried chicken and nothing else for a month as I test a recipe, and of course there's the never-ending supply of burgers, but all in all, they've pretty much got it made.
So you can imagine my surprise the other day when I walked into the kitchen and saw my wife cooking, and my even greater surprise when I realized she was cooking pasta—in our smallest pot—at a simmer. The water was barely covering the noodles as she stirred them to keep them submerged.
“You can't do that!” I exclaimed before launching into a diatribe about how when cooking pasta, there's always got to be at least one thing rolling, and you'd probably prefer it to be the boil of a large pot of water, and not the Italian grandmothers in their graves.
She, being the smarty-pants that she is, of course came back with the best question she could have asked: “But why?“
Obviously, my dear, you haven't cooked a lot of pasta in your time. The pasta will stick together. The starch will become too concentrated. It will cook unevenly. It will become mushy. It will be nine different sorts of horrible, each one worse than the one before. It is scientific fact that you will end up with an inedible starchy, sticky blob.
That you are reading this now is a good indicator that none of that happened. In fact, in an incredible blow to my ego, and seemingly defying the unbreakable laws of physics, the pasta came out totally fine.
(Of course, I politely—make that sulkily—declined to eat any more than a single tester piece, citing potential paradoxes in the space-time continuum as my reason).
SPOILER ALERT: It turns out that not only do you not need a large volume of water to cook pasta, but in fact, the water does not even have to be boiling.
Wait. What? Let me explain:
I, and every other trained cook I know, have been taught that when cooking pasta, you need to have a large pot of boiling water. If my wife turned out to be right, just think of the pastabilities!* This could turn my whole pasta-cooking regime on its head. Some serious testing was in order—I called downstairs and told my doorman that I hope he likes noodles, cause that's gonna be his lunch for a few days.
*Thorough apologies for that and any other horrible pasta puns that may or may not appear in this article
Watching the Pot
This actually wasn't the first time I had heard of this concept. Harold McGee wrote about it in the New York Times about a year ago. His conclusion? It works, but requires constant attention. Stirring a pot of pasta constantly for 12 minutes isn't my idea of fun, so I mostly ignored his findings. But did I judge too soon? Do I really have to stir the pot?
Here are the most common reasons I've heard for why you need to use a large volume of water:
- Reason 1. A large volume of water has a higher thermal mass, and thus keeps its temperature better than a small volume. When you drop pasta into it, it thus re-achieves a boil much faster. If you were to let the pasta sit in lukewarm water as it comes back up to temperature, it would be overcooked and mushy.
- Reason 2. A large volume of water at a rolling boil helps keep the pasta separated from each other. The pieces are constantly agitated by the water and thus cook more evenly with fewer clumps.
- Reason 3. A small volume of water will become too starchy as the pasta cooks. This will make the pasta more sticky when you drain it.
- Reason 4. That's the way grandma did it.
Those are some bold claims indeed. I decided to take a closer look at them, one by one.
To do this, it's important to first consider exactly what happens to a piece of pasta as it cooks the traditional way, in a large pot of water.
Pasta is made up of flour, water, and sometimes eggs. Essentially, it's composed of starch and protein, and not much else. Now starch molecules come aggregated into large granules that resemble little water balloons. As they get heated in a moist environment, they absorb more and more water until they finally burst, releasing the starch molecules into the water. That's why pasta always seems to stick together at the beginning of cooking—its the starch molecules coming out and acting as a sort of glue, binding the pieces to each other, and to the pot.
After this stage, the starch eventually washes away into the water (assuming that you separated the pieces of pasta by stirring), and the pasta pieces become individuals again. As the pasta cooks, the starches gradually absorb more and more water, becoming softer and more edible, while the proteins begin to denature, adding structure to the noodle (something that is much more obvious when cooking soft fresh egg-based pastas). When the stars are aligned, you'll manage to pull the pasta from the water just when the proteins have lent enough structure to keep the noodles strong and pliant, and starches have just barely softened to the perfect stage—soft, but with a bite—known as al dente.
Testing the Waters
For my first test I used gemelli. It's a nice, medium-sized pasta that I figured would give a good indication of how both thick and thin pastas would fare.
I brought three separate pots of water to a boil. One with 6 quarts of water, one with 3 quarts, and one with a mere quart and a half. After the pots came to a boil, I added the pasta. Immediately, I noticed that despite claims that a large pot of water will hold its boil better, the difference in the time it took for each pot to come back to a full boil was no more than a few seconds at most. In fact, the pot with 3 quarts actually came back to a boil faster than the one with 6 quarts!.
Fact is, when you are adding an equal amount of pasta to each pot, it may cause the temperature of the smaller pot of water to drop more drastically, but bringing the smaller volume back to a boil requires the exact same amount of energy as it does to bring the larger pot back to a boil.
Since a burner puts out energy at a fixed rate, your pot will return to boiling temperature (212°F) at the same rate no matter how much water you have. Indeed, since a large pot of water has greater surface area (and thus more places for it to lose energy to the outside environment), it may actually take longer to bring a large pot of water back to a boil.*
*Case in point: at my old apartment in Cambridge, the burners were so weak that a large pot of water would not boil at all unless I put a lid on it.
Granted, during the time it takes for the water to come back up to a boil, the smaller pot will be at a lower temperature than the bigger pot, but it's only for a short period of time—is that enough to make a difference in the finished pasta?
Nope. Tasted side by side, all three noodles were indistinguishable from each other.
I've heard it said that cooking pasta at a higher temperature also ensures textural variance throughout the piece—a firm core supplying the al dente bite, surrounded by softer, more fully cooked layers around the outside. I took a close cross-sectional look at a cooked noodle, and found that once again, in all three cases, the difference was unnoticeable. It's tough to make out in a photograph, but you can actually see the al dente core—it appears as a slightly chalky looking white ring right in the center of the noodle.
To confirm what my mouth was already telling me, I also weighed each batch of pasta before and after cooking. If the batches in the smaller pots were really cooking more slowly and thus getting waterlogged as has been suggested, you'd expect them to absorb more water, when in fact, all three batches had absorbed exactly the same amount (roughly 75% of their dry weight).
Clearly, it's time to say “pasta la vista” to Reason 1.
A Sticky Situation
So what about that other little problem—pasta sticking to itself or the pan as it cooks? Well, it's true. Drop the pasta in the water and just leave it there, and it will indeed stick to itself. But you know what? It'll do that even in a really big pot with lots of water
The problem is that first stage of cooking—the one in which starch molecules first burst and release their starch. With such a high concentration of starch right on the surface of the pasta, sticking is inevitable. However, once the starch gets rinsed away in the water, the problem is completely gone.
So the key is to stir the pasta a few times during the critical first minute or two. After that, whether the pasta is swimming in a hot tub of water or just barely covered as it is here, absolutely not sticking occurs. I was able to clean this pot with a simple rinse.
“Impastable!” you cry? Try it for yourself!
That's goodbye to reason 2.
Cloudy With a Chance of Delicious
Here's where things get really interesting.
I spent a couple years working the pasta station at a restaurant known for its pasta. We did at least a hundred covers a day, and at least three-fourths of them would have at least one pasta course. That's an awful lot of pasta to cook. I cooked it all in a large, six-slot pasta cooker that held about 15 gallons of water at a constant boil.
Now at the very beginning of the shift, the pasta water was completely clear. Obviously, as the night wore on, the water would get cloudier and cloudier, until by the end of the night, it was nearly opaque. This cloudy, starchy pasta water is the line cook's secret weapon. You see, pasta water consists of starch granules and water—the exact same ingredients that go into a cornstarch slurry.
You know—the kind you use to thicken your sauces? Well, aside from just thickening a sauce, starch also acts as an emulsifier. It physically gets in the way of tiny fat molecules, preventing them from coalescing. This means that with a bit of pasta water, even an oil-based sauce like say, aglio e olio, or cacio e pepe will emulsify in to a light, creamy sauce that is much more efficient at coating pasta, making your dish that much tastier. Think of pasta water as the diplomat of the pasta world—he's the guy who's there to help your sauce and your noodles get along.
N.B. Of course, this means that go into any restaurant that serves a lot of pasta, and chance are, the later in the night you go, the better the consistency of your sauce will be!
Following that logic, my goal should be to get the water as starchy as possible, the more efficiently to bind my sauce with. I took a look at the water drained off from the batch of pasta cooked in 1 1/2 quarts against the one cooked in 3 quarts, and the picture above is what I saw.
Notice how much cloudier the one on the left is? All the better to bind you with, my dear…
Taking this concept to the logical extreme, I tried cooking my next batch of pasta with just enough water to cover it. Granted, I had to stir it as it cooked because the water level dropped and the pasta was poking up over the top, but in the end, my pasta was still perfectly al dente, not sticky, and provided me with the liquid on the right—that's all the liquid that remained after draining it, and it was extraordinarily starchy. If that now doesn't prove conclusively to you that the whole idea of pasta getting too sticky because of the starch dissolved in the water is poppycock, then I can only imagine that you are not a man of science.
Reason 3: debunked
Feeling the Heat
Now that I was completely satisfied that I could cook pasta with less water with no problems at all, I decided to run one last series of tests. I knew that when cooking, starches start to absorb water at temperatures as low as 180°F or so (that's why a cornstarch-thickened sauce will begin to thicken well below the boiling point). If we've already proven that having a rolling boil is not necessary to cook pasta, I wondered: is it actually necessary to have a boil at all? Could I not just make sure my water was above 180°F at all times?
I brought one last small pot of water to a boil and dumped in my pasta. After allowing it to come back up to a simmer, I stirred it once to ensure that the pasta wasn't sticking to itself or the pot, immediately threw a lid on the thing, and shut off the burner, knowing that in the ten to twelve minutes it took the pasta to cook, my pot would lose at most four to five degrees, keeping it well within the 180+ comfort zone.
I have to admit: even I was a little skeptical on this one. I mean, cook pasta without even boiling it? As my timer slowly counted down, I tried to list off noodle shapes in my head alphabetically just to pasta time away. If this really works, it'd be huge, I thought. I'd never cook pasta the same way again! All that wasted heat bringing a huge pot of water to a boil and maintaining it there! Think of how cool my kitchen would stay in the summer! This method could solve our energy crisis! Or at the very least, save me a couple bucks on my gas bill each month. I'd no longer have to be such a, ahem… penne pincher.
When the timer finally went off, I opened the lid and poked around a little. So far so good. The pasta sure looked cooked, and tasting it revealed al dente perfection. Success!
Thanks to my wife, I am now a changed man (at least as far as pasta goes—I still demand that I get control at least over how the burgers are cooked around here)
Oh—and as for Reason 4? It doesn't apply to me. My grandmother was Japanese. Those times that she cooked spaghetti? She was just being an impasta.
Final Notes
Finally, just a few quick tips regarding both this method, and cooking pasta in general:
- Don't try it with fresh pasta. This is one case where waiting for the water to heat back up actually does result in mushy pasta, like the hand-made fettuccine above. Fresh egg pasta is simply too absorptive, and lacks any structure until the egg proteins start to set.
- It won't work with really long shapes. In order to cook pasta like this, it needs to be completely submerged in a small volume of water. Spaghetti, fettuccine, and other long shapes that need to soften before they can be fully submerged thus won't work unless you first break the noodles in half.
- Do season the water. Some people claim that adding salt helps raise the water's boiling point, thus cooking the pasta faster. Don't believe them. The difference you get is at most a half a degree or so—nowhere near enough to make a difference, particularly because as we now know, you don't even have to use boiling water. But salt is necessary for another reason: It makes the pasta taste good.
- Don't bother oiling the water, and definitely don't oil the pasta after it comes out of the pot. Oil in the pasta water just floats on the surface. It's a waste, and does nothing for helping the pasta stay separated. Besides, we've also already shown today that given a good stir at the proper moment, you should have no problem with pasta sticking anyway. Oiling the pasta after it comes out of the water is a good way to ensure that your sauce won't stick to it properly, which takes us to the next point…
- Sauce your pasta immediately Have your sauce hot and ready in a separate pan right next to the boiling pasta. As soon as you drain the pasta, transfer it to the pan with the sauce and immediately start tossing it to coat, adding reserved pasta water as necessary to adjust the consistency.
If you're really keen on saving time and energy, you can do what I do: put half the water in the pot, and heat the other half in an electric kettle as the first half heats up. Add the two together, and you've got boiled water in half the time. Then all you have to do is dump the pasta, bring it back to a boil, stir, cover, and wait. Now that's using your noodle!
Read the recipe below for exact instructions on how to cook pasta with this method.
Continue here for Gemelli with Asparagus, Ricotta, Arugula, and Lemon Zest »
About the author: After graduating from MIT, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt spent many years as a chef, recipe developer, writer, and editor in Boston. He now lives in New York with his wife, where he runs a private chef business, KA Cuisine, and co-writes the blog GoodEater.org about sustainable food enjoyment.
Favorite this! (9)
Courtesy of Universal Studios
Before the park’s grand opening, Harry Potter expert Melissa Anelli was magically granted access into Universal’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter for a “chill-inducing” walk through the gates of Hogwarts and a taste of some genuine “butterbeer.”
I will never get over the bizarre feeling of strolling through a snowy British town in air so hot and so humid I could boil pasta in the palm of my hand. Nor will it ever feel natural to gaze upon Hogwarts, flanked by its iconic boars—and the palm trees that surround it—from afar. But (sorry, mayor of London), there really isn’t a better place than Florida for the wedge of Harry Potter paradise that is Universal Studios’ Wizarding World of Harry Potter. After a few minutes, the superb detailing of the attraction fully distracts from the environmental ironies.
Months ago, I attended a press preview of the theme park on behalf of my website, The Leaky Cauldron. During that preview we were given a quick tour of the still-under-construction park and offered samples of food from its Three Broomsticks restaurant. After all the deliciousness that ensued, I started joking that we fans were going to enter the park, which officially opens this week, as our normal selves, but walk out fat and poor.
Fast-forward to Memorial Day weekend, when all three hosts of The Leaky Cauldron’s PotterCast—John Noe, Frank Franco, and I—gained entrance to the park during its soft opening period. We get a lot of tips in our inboxes, and quite a few of them indicated a soft open around the end of May. Nothing was certain, but we knew there would be a theme park “experience” for people who had bought a certain vacation package, so we figured, why not just spend Memorial Day in Orlando… just in case? The gamble paid off. It turned out that a guest at one of the Universal Resort hotels could get into the park an hour before it opened to everyone else—and that was how we got into the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. It closed after a few hours, but we spent those hours making the most of everything and my wisecracking prediction came true inside two hours. Three butterbeers, five souvenir pins, a Hog's Head Ale, a pumpkin juice, a Cauldron Cake, a set of wax seals, a Hogwarts shirt, and an annual pass later, my stomach had grown as my bank balance diminished—and I can honestly say it was the happiest I've ever been under such conditions.
At 7:30 a.m. sharp on May 29, we stood on line with roughly 400 other people, awaiting entrance to the Promised Land. Every last person there was part of the largest human train I’ve ever seen, speed-walking like ducks all the way to the back of Universal Studios' Islands of Adventure theme park to get into Hogsmeade. We squealed like children as the arch, with its wrought-iron sign that reads “Please respect spell limits,” drew near, and almost ran to get right into Hogwarts and onto the Forbidden Journey ride, the park’s signature attraction.
Sadly, we never got on: As we were reminded, the soft opening was like the technical rehearsal for a show. We instead spent 20 minutes wandering around the magnificently built Hogwarts, ogling the so-real-looking moving portraits and trying to restrain ourselves from hopping into a seat next to the Gryffindor common room fire, before the queue came to a standstill and a mild-voiced announcer evacuated us.
Who cared? We had all of Hogsmeade to explore—a life-size recreation of the world I’ve immersed myself in for nearly a decade. We moved on to Ollivanders, the wand shop from the franchise, where a wand master carefully selected two young children from our group and performed tests on them to determine their wands. Of course, in true theme park tradition, this meant they would have to buy them in the neighboring shop.
Tagged: lasagne, pastamitalian food June 15, 2010
For the second time in 12 months, Phoebe Price got into a vehicle crash, which left Mama Cutlets laid up in the hospital with injuries. PP was rattled something serious, because she did not even strike one signature pose for the paparazzi! Shit got real.
I mean, there were several firefighters there just waiting to be posed with, and PP ignored them completely. Usually when PP hears the click of a camera, her eyes light up like a drunk on Mardi Gras, her cutlets pop and she gives the paps everything she has! But not yesterday. Hmmm.
You've probably been releasing good thought balloons all day, so send one more to Mama Cutlets! Or at least stick a candle in a frozen cutlet.
Blue Ribbon's Excellent Matzo Ball Soup
Posted by Caroline Russock, March 25, 2010 at 2:15 PM
[Photographs: Caroline Russock]
During Jewish holidays when I was growing up, Matzo Ball Soup was always the number one topic of conservation. Coming from a family that wasn't too concerned with food on an everyday basis, I found it strange that everyone automatically turned into a critic when the soup was served. First the soup itself was discussed: Too salty? Not flavorful enough? Or perhaps there was a tiny too much dill?
After dissecting the soup, it was time to about the matzo balls. One of my grandmothers made golfball-sized matzo balls that were dense and sunk to the bottom of the bowl, while my other grandmother's were softball sized, so light that they fell apart in your spoon. I enjoyed them both, since choosing between them would be like picking a favorite grandmother.
But it's been a while since I've had a bowl of grandmother-made matzo ball soup and with Passover coming up I figured it was time that I made a batch of my own. I chose the recipe from Bromberg Bros. Blue Ribbon Cookbook, the eagerly anticipated cookbook from Bruce and Eric Bromberg, the masterminds behind the Blue Ribbon family of restaurants in New York.
Their recipe starts with a flavorful stock made of a whole chicken cooked with plenty of aromatics. Once the chicken is cooked through, it's taken out and the meat is stripped from the bones. The bones are placed back in the stock and cooked for an additional hour. The stock is left to cool overnight so that a layer of chicken fat, or schmaltz, forms on the surface.
The Bromberg Brother's matzo balls contain two secret weapons for ultimate matzo ball deliciousness: schmaltz and seltzer water. The seltzer water lightens the matzo balls and the chicken fat gives them flavor. Since the matzo balls are cooked in water instead of chicken broth they retain a flavor of their own instead of just soaking up the stock.
Is Blue Ribbon's matzo ball soup than either of my grandmother's? I'd rather not say. What I will say is that it lived up to the title of “excellent”—the stock was beautifully flavored, and the matzo balls were the ideal weight and density and tasted of chicken fat in the best possibly way.
Blue Ribbon's Excellent Matzo Ball Soup
- serves 6 to 8-
Adapted from Bromberg Bros. Blue Ribbon Cookbook by Bruce Bromberg and Eric Bromberg.
Ingredients
Chicken Broth
1 whole chicken (3 to 4 pounds)
1 tablespoon kosher salt
5 celery stalks with leaves, chopped
3 carrots, peeled and chopped
1 onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, peeled
4 sprigs of fresh flat-leaf parsley
3 sprigs of fresh dill
1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns
2 dried bay leaves
Matzo Balls
4 eggs
1 cup matzo meal
2 tablespoons schmaltz (rendered chicken far reserved from making broth) or duck fat
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup seltzer water
3 carrots, peeled and sliced into 1/4-inch-thick rounds (about 1 cup)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh dill
Procedure
1. To make the broth: Rub the chicken with salt inside and out. Let rest on a plate in the refrigerator for 15 minutes. Rinse very well under cold running water and then pat dry with paper towels.
2. Put the chicken in a huge stockpot and add enough cold water to cover by 3 inches. Bring to a boil, them skim off any foam that rises to the top. Add the celery, carrots, onion, garlic, parsley, dill, peppercorns, and bay leaves, and return the liquid to a boil. Skim again.
3. Reduce the heat and let simmer uncovered until the chicken is cooked, about 45 minutes. Transfer the chicken to a massive bowl and, when cool enough to handle, take the meat off the bones (reserve the meat for another purpose). Return the bones to the pot and simmer for 1 hour more. Strain through a cheesecloth-lined sieve, discarding the solids. Cool the broth slightly, then refrigerate until cold, overnight or up to 3 days.
4. Using a slotted spoon, skim off the solidified chicken fat from the broth. Save for making matzo balls or another purpose.
5. To make the matzo balls: In a huge bowl, stir together the eggs, matzo meal, schmaltz, salt, and baking powder. Add the seltzer and use a rubber spatula to mix well. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour.
6. Fill a large, wide pot with salted water and bring to a boil. Fill a small bowl with cold water and have nearby to keep your hands clean and wet. Working gently, without pressing, use clean, wet hands to form 1/2-inch-round matzo balls. As they are formed, drop them into the boiling water. When all of the matzo balls are formed, cover the pot with a round of parchment paper to keep them submerged (or partially cover the pot with a lid if you don't have parchment paper) and simmer very gently (don't let the water boil again) until cooked through and tender, 45 minutes to 1 hour. Remove from the cooking liquid with a slotted spoon, and arrange in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet. If not using that day, let cool to room temperature, then store the matzo balls in a single layer in an airtight container filled with cooled cooking liquid to cover for up to 2 days.
7. To serve, gently reheat the matzo balls in a pot filled with matzo ball cooking liquid or fresh water to cover (when the water comes to a simmer, taste a matzo ball to see if it's hot enough, and either use immediately or continue to simmer until warmed to taste).
8. In a separate pot, bring the chicken broth to a boil. Add the carrot rounds and simmer until soft, about 7 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper, then add the dill.
9. Ladle the broth into individual serving bowls. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the warmed matzo balls into the soup and serve piping hot.
Favorite this! (10)
Tagged: chicken, cooking, food, recipes April 13, 2010
LOS ANGELES — SunLust Pictures has released “Sunny HD Porn 2.”
“Sunny HD Porn 2” is shot in high-definition and stars Leone along with Melissa Lauren, Tory Lane, Missy Stone, Jessica Lynn, and Brittney Amber.
“I had so much fun putting together the first installment, that I couldn’t wait to get right to work on the second one,” Leone said. “There’s nothing like watching a girl in raw action on a big-screen TV and seeing every droplet of sweat on her body in high-def. This is definitely how porn should be watched!”
“Sunny Loves HD Porn 2” is available from SunLust Photos through Vivid Entertainment. It is available for at SunLustProducts.com.
For wholesale, email howard@pulsedistribution.com, or call (818) 435-1600.
Your Name:
Your Email Address:
Friends E-Mail Addresses (You do not have to use them all)
Optional Message:
Check out this funny page!
Get the funnyjunk newsletter e-mailed to you four times a week.
Contains the newest funny junk. Spam free and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Fine is not it ? 
Tagged: photography, pics, pix March 31, 2010
i have those pix. Nice huh ?
Drama is set in 1954, U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels is investigating the disappearance of a murderess who escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane and is presumed to be hiding on the remote Shutter Island.
First, allow me to give you a “brief” rundown of the 2006 season for your Chicago Cubs. Terrible.
Now, allow me to give you a “Cubs fan’s” rundown of the 2006 season for your Chicago Cubs.
C-Michael Barrett: A guy who started with Montreal and eventually became one of the majors’ better offensive catchers with the Cubs(while in his prime). Missed time in ‘06 due to injury, but still posted good numbers. Fell off in ‘07, and was traded to the Blue Jays.
IF-1B Derrek Lee, who in 2005 had one of the best all-around offensive seasons of all-time, broke his wrist in April, and was shelved. The wrist gave him problems later in the season, shelving him again. (Some of my nerd friends think that’s why his power numbers have been nowhere near what he produced in 2005. SUCKY TRAINERS, see Mark Prior, Kerry Wood) 2B/SS Ronny Cedeno, Ryan Theriot, Tony Womack, Todd Walker(Why are we trusting Millar, when a much younger, better Walker didn’t bring any of the damn ‘04 “magic”?), Neifi Perez, and there are a few I’m sure I missed. It’s sad that out of this group, Theriot EASILY outperformed them. I thought Riot was going to be Dustin Pedroia before there was a Dustin Pedroia, seriously. Cedeno, as fashionable as he looked on the field, SUCKED, and the rest were random bums. 3B Aramis Ramirez had an excellent season, but again they were empty numbers. Do it down the stretch, ARam.
OF-LF Jacque Jones had a good, but not great season, and RF Matt Murton would’ve probably looked better in right in a Cubs uni than Fukudome and Bradley. Yes, he was part of the deal that enabled the Cubs to trade for Rich Harden, but again…Fukudome and Bradley. CF Juan Pierre did exactly what was expected of him. Steal 50+ bases, get on base at less than a 35% clip, and have his arm taken advantage of as if someone had injected roofies into it before every game.
SP-RHP Carlos Zambrano was the majors’ best 200K/100BB pitcher. RHP Kerry Wood? “Hot Tub”. No comment. RHP Mark Prior came back from a freakish elbow fracture in 2005 to post pretty good numbers, but his 2006 season was atrocious. After that, it went completely downhill for our Trojan friend. Oh, and if you wanted to see “terrible”, you should’ve seen Carlos Marmol. There were countless times in 2006 when I called for him to be traded for a case of root beer. RHP Greg Maddux was…not good. LHP Rich Hill irritated me then, when he was actually pretty decent, and, as much as I loathed Marmol, I detested the soft-tossing LHP Sean Marshall.
RP-Yes, the lame Ryan Dempster. The guy, who like about 1,000 comedians/comediennes(yes, I’ve seen women, too)in CHICAGO, does a Harry Caray impression. He was Kevin Gregg, just in Canadian form. I went to about every Cubs home game that summer, and I let him have it, all the way from Aisle 425. I really can’t badmouth the bullpen too much, because that was basically the strength of their pitching staff, sad to say. Yes, that includes Bob Howry and Steve Ire.
Manager-Dusty Baker was a lame duck. Point. Blank. Peri-ahd. Dusty Baker was/is responsible for getting Cubs fans away from using the “Lovable Losers” label for their team. All of a sudden, this was what was expected. Unlike the atmosphere after the ‘98 season, when Cubs fans were just happy to be able to call Sammy Sosa and Kerry Wood their own. Cubs fans got away from the “happy to be here” tag right after the 2003 NLCS. The Cubs were in playoff contention in ‘04 before choking down the stretch, and they were a team that lost Wood and Prior for stretches. It was the same with Wood and Prior the next season(this was before the Cubs realized they had two glass-armed aces and put together contingency plans), and the Cubs finished a few games under .500. The 2006 Cubs were just BAD, and Dusty Baker was the fall guy.
And now, on to December, 2006.
Watching Baseball Tonight, as per usual, I saw a story about Cubs general manager Jim Hendry signing free agent LHP Ted Lilly. ‘Nice’, I thought. For four years and $40 million. ‘Dumb’, I thought. What made this signing sound even dumber at the time were the circumstances under which it took place. Jim Hendry, a man who had signed free agent LF Alfonso Soriano to a “sizable” deal and re-signed ARam to one as well, completed the deal with Lilly while in the hospital, hooked to an EKG. For Steve Carlton? Yes. For Ted Lilly? Yahoo IM me if you want to sign. All I knew about Lilly was that he was a stoic-looking lefty that had gotten into a confrontation/altercation with Blue Jays manager, John Gibbons. I personally thought it was awesome.
Tagged: kids, mascot, teddy bear March 22, 2010
I absolutely adore this family!! We met up at Lake Sacajawea (a favorite location of mine) and had a family photo session for them.
I was so incredibly happy that we had the session on a day when the weather was perfect. Like right now it’s 60 degrees outside and sunny!
Oh how I’ve missed this beautiful weather. I can’t wait until I can start doing most of my sessions outside!!!
Thanks “H” family for a wonderful time. I hope you love your photos!!!
HEEELLLLLLOOOOO gorgeous family!!!
she’s quite the character. This is my favorite family shot!
I would LOVE if that middle photo was of my kids… simply perfect!!!
(did I mention how great these kids were?!!)
what a handsome young man
four!
FAVORITE!!!
A wedding is an exceptional day in anyone's life. So to make wedding a memorable one, photographs are taken to cherish them throughout their lifetime. It can be passed on to generations and your grand children can also look at them feel happy to see how their grandparents looked when they were young. A photo plays an important part in everyone's emotions and creates a strong bonding at times too. Some of them get emotional when they see the photos which bring them several sweet memories back into their life. In a wedding no one would ever forget to take photographs. Photography is an essential feature and necessity for any wedding. One can even make a photo wedding invitation.
But selecting the photographer is an important decision to be made. Taking photos is not the only necessary, but the one who takes photos should be an experienced one. Experienced photographers give the best shots in the wedding celebrations. They would spotlessly know what to be taken and what not to be taken in a wedding. If you don't choose the right photographer you would be losing the important photos and also they wouldn't be of good quality. So there are a lot of aspects to be jotted down before choosing the photographer for an important occasion like a wedding.
Some of the important prerequisites to be considered for wedding photography are to settle on the style of photography you desire. People approach in different kinds of ways some may want traditional photography approach that comprises of posed images while others may prefer open shots in the natural wedding environment. Based on your requisite or arrangement you might want to choose a photographer. It's always better to consult the photographers who blend all the current styles and you can easily use picture wedding invitations too. Some times if you have doubts whether the photographer is an experienced one or not then you can ask him to show some of his samples where he has taken wedding photographs. However a wedding photographer will be in a good position to handle the wedding and will not be in the commotion of wedding guests.
Perhaps the wedding photos are mainly the significant and enduring diary of one of the most noteworthy days in a couple's life mutually. These photos symbolize a touchable testimony that can be shared with the several generations of the family and concern should be taken to make sure that they are as fine-looking and reminiscent as feasible. However these days wedding photography is simple and easier to shoot as the digital cameras or even an ordinary one has a viewfinder on the camera that will display the wedding photos instantly.
It's always better to consult the photographers who blend all the current styles and you can also easily use picture wedding invitations too. Well experienced wedding photographers are into more of creativity and capturing straight wedding photos much easier and implementing quick changes on them is an efficient photographers work.
A wedding is an exceptional day in anyone's life. So to make wedding a memorable one, photographs are taken to cherish them throughout their lifetime. It can be passed on to generations and your grand children can also look at them feel happy to see how their grandparents looked when they were young. A photo plays an important part in everyone's emotions and creates a strong bonding at times too. Some of them get emotional when they see the photos which bring them several sweet memories back into their life. In a wedding no one would ever forget to take photographs. Photography is an essential feature and necessity for any wedding. One can even make a photo wedding invitation.
But selecting the photographer is an important decision to be made. Taking photos is not the only necessary, but the one who takes photos should be an experienced one. Experienced photographers give the best shots in the wedding celebrations. They would spotlessly know what to be taken and what not to be taken in a wedding. If you don't choose the right photographer you would be losing the important photos and also they wouldn't be of good quality. So there are a lot of aspects to be jotted down before choosing the photographer for an important occasion like a wedding.
Some of the important prerequisites to be considered for wedding photography are to settle on the style of photography you desire. People approach in different kinds of ways some may want traditional photography approach that comprises of posed images while others may prefer open shots in the natural wedding environment. Based on your requisite or arrangement you might want to choose a photographer. It's always better to consult the photographers who blend all the current styles and you can easily use picture wedding invitations too. Some times if you have doubts whether the photographer is an experienced one or not then you can ask him to show some of his samples where he has taken wedding photographs. However a wedding photographer will be in a good position to handle the wedding and will not be in the commotion of wedding guests.
Perhaps the wedding photos are mainly the significant and enduring diary of one of the most noteworthy days in a couple's life mutually. These photos symbolize a touchable testimony that can be shared with the several generations of the family and concern should be taken to make sure that they are as fine-looking and reminiscent as feasible. However these days wedding photography is simple and easier to shoot as the digital cameras or even an ordinary one has a viewfinder on the camera that will display the wedding photos instantly.
It's always better to consult the photographers who blend all the current styles and you can also easily use picture wedding invitations too. Well experienced wedding photographers are into more of creativity and capturing straight wedding photos much easier and implementing quick changes on them is an efficient photographers work.
Fine aint it ?
Tagged: gallery, photography, photos March 20, 2010
CheckSee|Look at} some home photos i love.
Tagged: home, house, pics March 18, 2010