Holiday Menu for the end of 2012

Growing up, we evolved a family tradition of having roast turkey etc on Christmas Eve, and going out for Chinese food on Christmas day. Now that I'm an adult with children of my own, we've evolved a tradition of having the big holiday dinner on Boxing Day. On Christmas day we eat chocolates from the stockings until we all feel sick and no one wants a big meal after that.

We've been doing goose at Christmas for quite a few years now. The first time we went crazy with a roast goose with two different kinds of stuffing (actual stuffing, one type in the body, another in the neck). In recent years the goose dinner was scaled back to just be roast breast on the bone, with the legs going into a confit, to be used many months later. This year we're changing the menu again.

Boxing Day: smoked turkey, chestnut dressing, green bean casserole, garlic cheddar mash
New Year's Day: goose breast reubens

Picked up a turkey and two geese from the butcher and spent a lot of time yesterday doing prep work. First, the turkey: removed the legs, back, and wings. The breast on the bone went into a brine. Boxing Day will see the brined breast and the unbrined legs visit the inside of the smoker for many hours. I roasted the back and wings and then made stock from them, which will go into the roasted chestnut stuffing later, topped up as needed from the strategic reserve of turkey stock in the freezer.

Next came the two geese. Geese have bone structures very differnt from chicken, and also have a thick layer of fat under the thick skin, which makes it less simple to break down than a chicken or a turkey. A sharp, flexible boning knife helps a lot. I removed the legs, cut out breast filets, and then trimmed off all the remaining fat. The fat all got rendered for use later to confit the legs. The breast filets will go into a brine on Christmas Day, then will get smoked on Boxing Day, along with the turkey. The legs have been thoroughly pasted with salt, garlic, bay leaves, and fresh thyme. They will relax under the salt rub for a couple days, then get poached in the rendered goose fat Christmas night. On Boxing Day they'll go into a jar.

A plus of all the prepwork was freeing up enough space in the fridge to get all the other supplies tucked in there. Unfortunately it's been too warm to use the outdoor porch area as an external storage for the perishables. But I did manage to get everything in. I have a paralyzing fear of running ou tof butter, so there's plenty of that. And green beans and mushrooms and milk etc. etc. etc. I wish I knew why I'd ordered 1.4 kg of cheddar cheese. I assume it seemed like a good idea at the time.

With the turkey stock on the stovetop and the rub for the confit flying about the butcher block, the house smells of bay leaf with some thyme in addition to the fir tree in the front room. Must be the holidays!

Happy Thanksgiving, Please Make Stock

The thought of eleventy jillion roast turkey carcasses getting tossed just kills me. Turkey stock is liquid gold. I don't know why turkey makes for such good stock, but it does. At a minimum, just break up the carcass and any leftover turkey you're not going to eat and simmer it in water for a while then strain out and discard the solids. What's left is better than any canned stock. Reduce if it's too watery. Don't add salt until you get it the concentration you want. Better still if you have bay leaves, onions, celery, carrots. To be on message, you can even call it "bone broth" [took me a long time to figure out wtf "bone broth" is supposed to be]. Seriously, turkey stock is easy and wonderful. Any amount is worth it.

Innumeracy & Clumsy Copy

I saw a nonsensical claim at the end of a MoneyWeek article published today, claiming,

Here’s another shocker of a stat for you -  courtesy of Ecclesiastical Investment. North America has 6% of the world’s population. But thanks to the fact that so many of its residents are fat, it has 34% of the world’s body mass.

You don't need charts or population figures or weight figures to figure out how ridiculous this claim is. How much does the average North American need to weigh relative to the average non-North-American such that the claim is true? Let's say X is the average weight of a non north american and Y is the average weight of a north american. Time to break out some pre-teen math skills:

.06Y = (.94X + .06Y)(.34)

Y = 8.07X

So, for it to be true that 6% of the population accounts for 34% of total mass, that 6% needs an average weight per person more than 8 times that of the average of the remaining 94%.

MoneyWeek must be just [mis-]repeating this. I googled and found the original source, in pubmed, freetext here. So here's the actual sentence --

North America has 6% of the world population but 34% of biomass due to obesity.

-- which is not the same as the one above. It's awkwardly worded, but what they mean is not 34% of the world's body mass, but 34% of biomass due to obesity. They calculated how much extra human biomass exists due to obesity then attributed 34% of this extra amount to North Americans. So an altogether different claim. What a relief.

The Power of Names

We're looking at a bit of genealogy as an interesting angle to a history project my youngest is working on. I don't take genealogy that seriously although it's really big business in much of the US I think. Still, it's kind of fun.

We've got one of his ancestral lines traced back to 1610 (yeah, England, and in 1635 got on a boat to what would later be the USA). This was the 12th previous generation for. Meaning that this pilgrim was one of approximately 4096 of his Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Grandparents. Yes, a direct descendent of up to 4096 ancestors of that generation. Might be less because at some point "inbreeding" is inevitable. Otherwise he would have over 68 billion ancestors even prior to rolling the family history all the way back to BC.

Even back to only 1610, there are thus (we'll assume) 4096 distinct paths my little guy can trace up to an ancestor. Each one just as big an impact on how he got here as any other. That's a lot of research. Even more importantly, it becomes impossible to explain that in any kind of cohesive narrative. It's natural to want to tease out a narrative, or a manageable set of narratives, for how you got here.

In comes the power of names. They carry more weight than they should, because they give us some context -- a defined thread to hang a narrative off of. Most people I think wander a few generations up a full tree then research single-name threads much beyond that. (Carried by the men in our cultures. An unfortunate side-effect as you get farther back in time is the bias that the women were kind of bystanders to history, that the family was propelled forward by the men, an artifact of chasing a male-based naming convention backwards up the tree.)

One of his Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Grandparents was a Fooshe. But he won't naturally think of himself as a Fooshe even though she contributed as much to his arrival as did her husband (via whom the name was transmitted) or any of the 126 other ancestors of that generation. Again, that seems perfectly natural as I can't hold thousands of narratives together in my head. I have to pick a few to follow and craft stories out of.

Now if I only had a comprehensive set of information at my fingertips for every single one of the ancestors going back 12 or 20 generations, that would be a cool thing to browse, given a good navigational tool. Trying to assemble that manually would be quite an effort. This is where genealogy enthusiasts really help. Just wait, and my 10 million closest distant cousins will mostly fill out the tree for me.

Kidneys, Devilled Lazy American Style, & Goostrami

The other day my butcher was so pleased to see me he gave me a couple lamb's kidneys for free after I'd gotten done picking out a couple chickens, a few beef short ribs, and some sausage. So what do you do with a couple of small kidneys? I wanted devilled kidneys but was too lazy to get the 6-7 ingredients ready to go, even if I had all of them, which I didn't. If you don't have everything ready to go you end up overcooking the kidneys and feeling unhappy with the result. After browning the kidneys, you work quickly, adding individually and stirring and reducing a bunch of things along the lines of sherry, vinegar, redcurrant jelly, worcestershire, mustard, cayenne, double cream. Much better to get someone else to do this. So I opted for Buffalo-style. A basic Buffalo wings "sauce" is nearly equal parts butter and cayenne(ish) hot sauce -- tabasco or frank's, e.g. I cut up and fried the kidney pieces in some butter, pulled them out of the pan, put in a very healthy slug of frank's hot sauce, stirred to combine, added the kidney back in, tossed with the sauce in the pan, and plated with a small handful of sliced green onions on top. Quick, simple, and tasty. Celery or shallot would have also worked fine I think.

Another culinary discovery: I took the last smoked goose breast I'd made "ham" out of using the previously mentioned duck breast ham recipe, fired up the slicer, and turned it into a mound of ruby red, finely sliced (shaved) goose breast. I also sliced up the lasted homemade bacon. Then fried up a few pieces of the bacon. Then fried up a handful of the shaved goose breast, steaming hot with crispy edges, coating liberally with freshly cracked black pepper at the end. And... it tasted kind of like pastrami. Like good pastrami. Which is not entirely surprising given that goose is much more beef-like than duck, and it was cured then smoked. Goostrami reubens?

Third Smoke PS: The Charcuterie

I have this really cool High-Powered Italian Meat Thrower. It spins up a stainless steel disc, and uses that to launch pieces of meat at high speed the length of my kitchen. Imagine a baseball pitching machine, but with meat. Anyway, a really neat side effect is that to propel the meat, it first cuts a thin slice of it. So as long as I take the necessary precautions, I can set it up and use it [in a clearly unintended way] as a slicer. It's easily powerful enough to handle things which normal consumer-grade slicers can have trouble with, such as bacon.

So I fired it up and did some slicing today. The bacon and duck breast "ham" I had in the smoker the other day. The bacon was really nice. Fried up crispy and very tasty. The duck breast exceeded expectations, and expectations were high. Intend to make both again.

Third Smoke

Fired up the smoker and tried a few more things today:

• a couple of beef short ribs
• a slab of beef (chuck, maybe)
• a smallish piece of pork belly that I'd cured for a week using the maple bacon cure from Ruhlman & Polcyn's Charcuterie
• the 3 ribs I'd trimmed off the pork belly prior to curing it
• 2 duck breasts and 2 goose breasts, cured using the "duck breast ham" cure from Charcuterie

The beef was rubbed with salt, black pepper, cayenned. The ribs got a dusting of the sweet rub I'd made for the inaugural smoking. No rub needed for the bacon or waterfowl.

All turned out well so far. The duck breast was the surprise hit -- had some warm and it was excellent. Supposedly it's better chilled and thinly sliced, so we'll see. The bacon needs to be chilled, then sliced, then fried, so verdict on that yet to come. The beef was really good. Getting closer to tackling a whole brisket.

As heavy as it is, the smoker is easy to move. This is on initial startup as it's getting up to temp. It's smokier at this stage than the photo shows. Big smoke on startup for a couple minutes but then it really settles down. The lower the temp, the more smoke, although even at lowish cooking temps of around 100C or so, it's not that smokey. Smells nice.

duck, duck, goose [goose]

oh yeah, the beef! & a sweet potato I threw in there the last hour after pre-heating for a couple minutes in the microwave

Olympic Party's Over

The Olympics are over. Women's Modern Pentathlon, the last event, finished a while ago, and the Closing Ceremony is coming up. It's been incredible. Exceeding expectations beyond plausibility. The weather's been glorious, the performances have been spectacular, the coverage has been fantastic, the city-wide mood has ranged from cheerful to jubilant, and London put up as distinctive and supportive a show as anyone could have dreamt.

BBC v NBC
What a difference a letter makes. US coverage apparently horrific. BBC, on the other hand, broadcast every sport live in HD. Every event. Live. On the TV and on the internets. I didn't need the streaming internet because I've got a perfectly good TV but I did check it out and it worked just fine. The commentors were uniformly good. Enthusiastic homers without falling into simple-minded jingoism. Charmingly engaged. The experts they had on with them actually added to the enjoyment rather than detracted from it. American commentators who joined, such as the legendary sprinter Michael Johnson, were insightful and engaging. It's like being on the set with the British journalists adds 20 IQ points, whereas on a US sports panel everyone competes to say the dumbest and most obvious thing. This was 21st-century coverage with just the right tone. Brilliant. Live sports covered this way provided both a sense of place and a communal experience. Gold medal for the BBC.



The Weather
My current hypothesis is that LOCOG built a top-secret weather control lab and turned it over to the resurrected corpse of Nikola Tesla and the guy who came up with the idea of landing a mars probe using a rocket-powered sky crane. That is the only possible explanation for two weeks of such nice weather in England in the summer.

The Sports & The Support
Well, I loved it. I'd gone native and fully supported TeamGB. Not that I wasn't in awe of Phelps's retirement, but the UK athletes were just wonderful. Gracious and grateful to a fault, they provided more glory and thrills than anyone had a right to expect. I watched as much as I good. Track cycling is a favorite, along with swimming of course, road cycling, bmx, mountain biking, a bit of judo (incomprehensible), fencing (likewise, even though I fenced sabre for one year in college), plenty of athletics, and many, many more. Part of the delight of the olympics should be seeing lots of sports your normally wouldn't get to see, all being delivered at world-class level. Thanks, BBC, for making that happen.

The performances were often thrilling. GB got so many more golds than anyone expected. Olympic fever? US sportswriter Bill Simmons wrote about the middle weekend in with Jess Ennis won the Heptathlon in champion's style by crushing the field in the final 800m even though she didn't need to in order to win, describing the 80,000 in the stadium as "totally, completely and irrevocably losing their shit." It's like every venue was competing to see which could produce the most deafening roar. Along with Jess, Mo Farah's two golds in the stadium were ear-bleedingly loud. The velodrome, in my vote the most spectacular of the venues, produced crushing walls of noise time after time, despite the relatively small capacity. (And if you're unmoved by Chris Hoy's final lap, ending with a guard of honour from all of British Cycling's track coaches and support team, well, I can't help you.) Not to be outdone, the Excel Centre was "bonkers" for women's boxing. Seemingly the entire cycling road time trial course was lined with several hundred thousand people. There was a big crowd for open-water swimming! And the marathon loop had spectators several deep along almost the entire course.

Many athletes, from all over, graciously sited the crowd support and enthusiasm. The UK athletes in particular were often overwhelmed. It will be hard to watch professional sports after this, played by people who take that level of support for granted.


The City
London was gorgeous. Equestrian cross country through Greenwich Park. Beach Volleyball setup on Horse Guards Parade. And the Olympic park, with wildflower gardens along the canals and river. All just beautiful. The transport worked! The tube had a couple record days. But regulars seemed to spread their day out, so the big rush hour peaks got flattened and spread out. Not everything worked. The cycle hub in Victoria Park was completely unused. I don't think it ever went above maybe 5% capacity. I don't think anyone knew about it. It would have helped to have set it up weeks in advance, not a day, and to have gotten the signage for it right, rather than wrong, and to have advertised it better. Likewise the nearby Victoria Gate was nearly completely unused, even while masses were queuing in and out of the main Stratford Gate. I suspect the other 2 Gates were little used as well. Most visitors probably didn't even know that Stratford was not the only way in or out. But given the lack of catastrophe for the transport network as a whole, this is a minor complaint. A gold medalist took the DLR! Then the US men's basketball team actually took a train, an event so astonishing even the New Yorker covered it.

The live-viewing party in Victoria Park was huge and festive. The free venue had big screens, music stage, activities, and an unabashedly cheerful vibe. I loved the snatches of music floating in the window in between events. I loved hearing a roar for Mo's winning kick in the 5000m even more. Doesn't take much to get an East London crowd to enjoy themselves even with less spectacular excuses.


And Now
The big hangover. Tomorrow: work, rain, and no olympics. I've got a couple weeks to wallow in despair before going back to the Olympic Park for the Paralympics. The echos of these past two weeks will still be knocking around amongst the walkways and wildflowers, washing over the canals and the river valley. Then more stretching of the limits of human achievement. And after that, well, a park, eventually, and that's it for a lifetime.

I've Started Smoking

Got a pellet smoker (GMG DB). Did my first cooking with it today: a chicken and a smallish pork shoulder for pulled pork. Used the same rub for both, my own cayennier variation on meathead's memphis dust. It was a big success, even with explaining to the neighbour that the garden was not burning down.

My sophisticated instrumentation arrangement.

A few hours in. Only 5 or 6 more hours to go.

Lunch: hot smoked chicken pulled off the bone and wrapped in romaine leaves.

pulled pork at the end of the day

New Paint!

It's like I'm a genius. Much improved!

badly needed refreshing of a previously banksyed wall

Please Paint Over This Thing

put it out of its misery

When the Banksy first appeared on the side of a building off Victoria Park Road, it was cute. It looked like this. I liked having it in the neighborhood. But if you're going to paint on someone else's building, you need to accept they can paint back over it whenever they want.


The view that these things should be enshrined and preserved is nonsensical. Painting over them actually improves their legacy. And would also likely increase the number of people who claim to have seen it in person by an order of magnitude or so.

For this particular work of cutesy stencilling, the wall itself aged, as they do. Eventually most of it got painted black, leaving just the painter. Of course, the thing no longer made sense. It worked as a whole with the pre-existing graffiti. Just the artist figure by itself is not particularly compelling. I was fine with painting over the whole thing when it still was a whole thing. Now, preserving just what's left is kind of dumb.

Which is why I was glad to see some scaffolding and some guys with scrapers out there. I hope they scrape and paint the whole thing. The painter's hand has already been scraped off, which is encouraging. Please keep going!

Which Glass: 85mm, 50mm, 35mm

Stepping down from BurgerWeek was hard. Was tempted to extend the week with another visit to Lucky Chip but resisted. Saturday made a big salad with roast chicken, eggs, roquefort, radishes, chives, gem lettuce, spinach, beetroot, romano peppers (fresh and roasted), tomatoes. Sunday salmon in coconut milk with fresh ginger, garlic, lemon, turmeric. By Monday begin drifting a bit burgerish with a beef and chorizo chili. One of the welcome surprises from BurgerWeek was how much I like my new lens.

A while ago I bought a new Nikkor 85mm f1.4. Great lens. Especially good at taking candid-ish portrait shots. Was long enough to be unobtrusive. Super-fast. But it was kind of specialized and a bit difficult to use. Bit long for longer exposures without some jitter (no VR), and open wide the depth of field was tiny. When it worked, it was amazing. But I wasn't often reaching for it.

Fortunately, I was able to sell it for more than I paid for it. It's a mystery to me why it appreciated in value, but I'm not complaining. With the proceeds, I bought a Tokina 11-16mm, which is still great fun, and a 50mm f1.8, and had change left over. The 50mm didn't work out as I thought. It was too short to get quality candid photos as I had with the 85mm, and too long for indoor work. Seemed neither here nor there for me.

So prior to BurgerWeek I sold it and stepped up to the more expensive 35mm f1.8. Well, I love it. It's short enough and fast enough to use indoors with humans (and food), and seems generally sharper than the 50mm as well. It works fine as a walking around lens -- the first serious competition in that category to my 18-200mm VR. Really nice lens from Nikon.

BurgerWeek Day 7: Homemade

We concluded BurgerWeek by cooking at home. The prep is very simple: high quality, grass-fed, dry-aged, freshly minced beef from the butcher (Ginger Pig is my local), with a minimum of handling. I split the meat into portions, shape roughly into spheres, handling as little as possible. I use my largest cast-iron pan over highest heat on the largest burner. Bit of butter in the pan after it's hot, just before the burgers go in.

Shape them in the pan thusly: drop the meatballs into the pan and let them sizzle for a couple seconds. With spatula, squash halfway down, then flip, then squash to final thickness. That is the last time they will be squashed -- gentle handling from there on out. That's it. (This method is inspired by the technique we used when I did a stint as a cook at a diner/burger joint long ago. Those were thinner, shaped with spatulas that were more like scrapers -- sharp wide blades that were very short. The result would be a thinnish pattie that was thickest in the middle but tapered to a thin crispy lattice at the edges. Not everyone's cup of tea but really tasty if you like the diner style, and they stacked well for double cheeseburgers.)

Tonight ours were 200g each. Salt after they go in the pan, then salt again after flipping. Have the broiler fired up. When the patties are just about done, move them onto a baking sheet, cover with cheese, and pop under the broiler until melted.

We went with cheddar, our usual cheese.  No brioche rolls, though, good buns are hard to find. We had to settle for floury baps, which were ok. Buttered and toasted them under the broiler. Also cooked a heap of grilled onions. Assembled burger from bottom to top: toasted bottom bun, bit of ketchup, shredded iceberg lettuce, burger with melted cheese, fried onions, toasted top bun. Straightforward and really tasty. Quality beef is the key. It should not require a huge amount of extra flavor added in or around it, just a couple complimentary ingredients and that's it.

I wasn't about to make chips, so we rounded out the plate with some decent crisps and called it a meal.

So that's it. A relaxing and tasty end to an epic week.

BurgerWeek Day 6: Restaurant Wrap-Up

Today was the 6th and final restaurant visit of BurgerWeek 2012. Tomorrow is DIY day to conclude the week. Just like mon-wed, this would be my only meal of the day. For the restaurant finale, a feast at Hawksmoor Guildhall.

don't drink the one on the left

The dining hall at this venue is large but comfortable. Nicely done. Staff friendly and efficient. I'd been to the original Hawksmoor shortly after it opened, years ago. The starters, service, chips, and dessert were all great, but they get their beef the same place I do, and I think I do at least as good a job cooking them as they do, so not worth the markup for me. But tonight was a special treat so no worries about the price, full speed ahead.

I started with the crab and samphire salad. Samphire's a bright green coastal plant that would look good in an aquarium and added a crisp, salty crunch to the sweet shredded crab meat. Simple and savoury.

It was dark, which means I need a new camera with a full-frame sensor and a new lens.

Then the burgers. Oh my! Hawksmoor wins BurgerWeek. The youngster got his with ogleshield (the only service mistake: the waitress wrongly described this as "cheddar", it was ogleshield, which is basically raclette cheese made in Somerset instead of the Alps), and I got mine with stilton. In terms of raging beefiness, this was right up there with the Bread Street Kitchen shortrib burger. The Hawksmoor version was even more succulent. While the bun was really good and acquitted itself well, this does take skill to eat. My recommendend technique: cut it in half first. The thick patty was cooked flawlessly. A bit messy but no complaints. Spectacular.

The chips were also excellent. We tried both the "triple cooked chips" and the "beef drippings chips". The former are what I would considered standard chips and the latter are the very-thick variety. I prefer the former but execution on both sets was simply flawless. Even the oversized ones were crispy on the outside, fluffy and on the inside.

we serve both kinds of chips, country and western

I couldn't resist ordering creamed spinach, which was tender, sweet, and spiced just right. After all that, somehow the youngster managed a dessert of bitter chocolate mousse with orange compote. Kudos all around. A worthy and fitting end to the restaurant series.


So the final overall rankings, not a dud in the bunch, all recommended 

Hawksmoor
Lucky Chip
MEATmarket
Bread Street Kitchen
Byron
Rivington Grill

Our rankings were nearly identical, except the youngster puts MEATmarket ahead of Lucky Chip.

Interesting variation on cheeses, with Lucky Chip, MEATmarket, and Byron opting for american-style, Rivington surprisingly the lone cheddar, BSK monterey jack (would likely sell well in stores if people knew what to do with it, but is very hard to find here), and Hawksmoor offering ogleshield or stilton.



Accolades
beef zealots award: Hawksmoor, Bread Street Kitchen
best chips: Hawksmoor, runner up Rivington Grill
best overly thick chips: Hawksmoor, Bread Street Kitchen
best bun: Bread Street Kitchen, honourable mention Hawksmoor, Rivington Grill
best special occasion, no holds barred treat: Hawksmoor
most likely to return soon, and often: Lucky Chip, MEATmarket
most likely to return with rest of family: Byron
most comfortable chairs: Hawksmoor
best music: Rivington Grill
best way to prepare lettuce for a burger: shredded

plus a special nod to burgerapp, for providing inspiration and spot-on recommendations


Recap
Lucky Chip: yay! likely to be a regular stop on saturday market day
MEATmarket: great fun, charming place, will look for excuses to end up near covent garden
Rivington Grill: really nice, but not exactly our style of burger, likely to go back but to get something else
Bread Street Kitchen: as good as it should be, will be hard to get anything other than the burger upon return, even though the rest of the menu looked good
Byron: don't have to settle for GBK if a Byron is nearby; great stop for the whole family
Hawksmoor: living up to the highbrow standard

BurgerWeek Day 5

Byron! We visited the Cheapside location of this bustling chain, one of now 21 locations in London.

it is important to stay hydrated during BurgerWeek

I got a limited edition jubilee special -- the Chilli Queen, while the youngster got the Byron, a bacon cheeseburger. The Chilli Queen is a green chile cheeseburger: fresh chopped green chiles under melted american cheese on top of a burger which rests on shredded iceberg lettuce and chipotle mayo. A decade ago the green chile cheeseburger at [now long gone] Santa Fe on Upper Street was the only burger in London I could order without trepidation. It was fantastic. I didn't expect the Byron burger to live up to it so was not disappointed. Yes, I missed the grilled tortilla wrapper and the monterey jack (which goes better with fresh green chiles) of the Sante Fe version, but the Byron special was really enjoyable on its own merits. The beef was good, and cooked nicely to order (not overcooked!). The stack of ingredients worked really well together. Ostensibly it ends its run on June 5th, but I would be happy to see it reappear on the menu at some point.

it is also important to order burgers during BurgerWeek

The chips were hand-cut, skin on. They were fine. Bit stubby and not as good as double-dipped, but good enough. They also offer thin "fries". Service was welcoming and relaxed (in a good way). Drinks included Byron Pale Ale, brewed for them by Camden Town Brewery. Generous milkshakes completed the meal.

chips love doing depth of field demonstrations at f1.8

So overall? This doesn't quite make it to the very top tier but we both really liked it. This is less a special-occasion burger and more a nice reliable place to stop by. It is the same market as GBK but a big cut above. Recommended, and will go back.

BurgerWeek Day 4

Tonight's venue: Gordon Ramsay's Bread Street Kitchen. It's a large and impressive interior. Service was welcoming and attentive. I started with salmon ceviche as I'm a sucker for the mix of citrus and coriander and fresh green chiles. Then onto the "short rib" burgers.

short rib burger @ Bread Street Kitchen

They are not lying. The depth of flavor of these was amazing. Best and fullest beef flavor so far. These burgers were very thick. Fantastic. Topped with monterey jack, some slices of pickle and a sweet homemade ketchup, all sitting on top of a crisp shredded iceberg slaw. The de rigueur brioche bun deserves special mention as it was eggier than average -- soft and sweet but substantial enough to handle a burger of this gravitas. A perfect wrapper.

large and mighty chips

The chips were of the very thick variety, which is not my preference (bad volume to surface area or something), but they were cooked perfectly. Normally chips this size are undercooked but these were dialled in just right. Absolutely worth getting.

Recommended!

BurgerWeek Day 3

What time is it? It's BURGER TIME!!

Tonight we headed to the controversial Rivington Grill. Nice place and a lovely warm sunny evening. I started with a crisp fresh spring salad of peas, cress, spinach, beets, carrot, radish, parsnip, goat cheese, asparagus, red cos (maybe? I lost track). Really, that was just to build anticipation for the burger.

WTF??!? That's not a burger....

Another winner. The Rivington does a mildly spiced/herbed burger with a generous layer of melted cheddar. The youngster added bacon as well. Very good toasted sesame bun. I'll admit that although I enjoy a well thought out herbed burger, my preference is for the beef to speak for itself. But this made for a really great change of pace. Definitely a cut above. Highly recommended for non-purists.

The chips were the best so far. Excellent execution. Friendly and attentive service. And a rich, luxurious, not too sweet chocolate tart with sour cream for dessert.

classy presentation at Rivington Grill

P.S. A Note On Eating
Saturday neither of us ate breakfast. We had a big lunch then a late meal while watching Eurovision. Sunday neither of us ate breakfast. I wasn't hungry. I went for a 5-mile run then, eventually, we got lunch. Sunday night we had a small late dinner. [Small for me: some celery, half a head of lettuce, some roquefort, and a handful of blueberries. Small for a teenage boy: half a head of lettuce, tortilla chips covered with melted cheddar, an entire can of refried beans, and a large package of fresh blueberries.] Today I didn't eat at all until dinner, so about 22 hours since my last meal. If you're not hungry, don't eat. You don't need to eat 3 meals a day. You don't need to eat 2 meals a day. Or even 1 sometimes.

BurgerWeek Day 2

Today we headed over to Covent Garden to try MEATmarket, tucked up on the loft on the south wall above the stalls inside Jubilee Market Hall. Another winner. Great burgers! We got the Dead Hippy and the Black Palace -- double-cheeseburgers that varied slightly on toppings, the latter having grilled onions, for example. The patties were smaller than at Lucky Chip, and conducive to doubling up as a result. Still thick enough on their own. They were cooked perfectly. We got them with sides of fastfoodish (mcdonald's-style) fries, which I would give a miss to next time but the youngster was more than happy to wolf down.

Dead Hippy @ MEATmarket

Staff was friendly and welcoming (must be something about good burgers). The space was fun and relaxed, overlooking the buzzing market. In the nice touches category: free cold water, and soft drinks served in small cups but with free refills. The rest of the menu looked good. As hot as it was today, unfortunately due to mechanical problems there were no milkshakes on offer.

Overall, kind of like what you'd dream a fast food burger joint would turn into when it grows up, but never does. Heartily recommended, would definitely go back.


P.S. We did do mini-burgers during Eurovision last night. I gently pressed some beef mince into a shallow nonstick pan greased lightly with some olive oil (hamburger meat should be worked as little as possible, unlike when you're making, say, breakfast sausage patties), then slicked up a round cookie cutter with a bit of olive oil and cut a bunch of small burgers. They were maybe 5cm diameter each. Relatively thick, they griddled up nicely. About 3 bites each. I ate mine each with a bit of cream cheese and wrapped in a leaf of iceberg lettuce. Really nice.

BurgerWeek Day 1: BurgerVision

Since the teenager and myself are on our own this week we've decided to launch BurgerWeek: seven straight days of cheeseburgers. Each day will include a different burger source. London is a great place to get terrible burgers, so this required careful research and planning. We made heavy use of BurgerApp for iphone, a fun little local guide of where to find edible burgers here.

Bacon Cheeseburger from Lucky Chip*

Today is a special day. Not only is it day 1 of BurgerWeek, it is also the day of the Eurovision final, which we love, because it is bonkers. As an excellent bonus, our favorite TV writer Stu Heritage will be liveblogging it in the Guardian as well. Really, it's almost too much excitement for one day.

Tonight for the Eurovision song contest marathon viewing we will be sticking with the theme and having home-made micro burgers. There's some scheme being floated to use philadelphia as the cheese and tortilla chips for buns. We'll work it all out brilliantly when the time comes I'm sure. Not long now.

To kickoff BurgerWeek proper, our first stop was lunch at the Lucky Chip food truck at Netil Market. (A little runner from the Broadway Market roots must have tunneled under the school and sprouted this some time ago.) The Lucky Chip is normally serving at the Sebright Arms but also does Netil Market on Saturdays. As with all of our planned BurgerWeek restaurants, we'd never been there before.

Lucky Chip at Netil Market

Well, it was great. Easily the best burger I've had in London that I didn't cook myself. We both got bacon cheeseburgers. There was nothing to fault about the burger at all. Good meat, cooked perfectly, topped with melty cheese and nice bacon, sitting on top of shredded lettuce with a tangy blended condiment, sandwiched in a soft but just-substantial-enough-to-handle-the-burger bun. Wow. Exceeded expectations.

The folks running the show were really friendly as well. It helped, I'm sure, to have a properly warm and sunny and breezy market day. Everyone in a good mood. Our food was cooked to order and brought to us at a little table in the courtyard of the market. The chips were tasty but too salty, even for me (I love salt in heroic doses), and a bit soft and greasy. They were similar to my own efforts to make chips in a pan. Not to say they were bad. They were actually quite good, head and shoulders above the tasteless pale starch sticks most places try to pass off as chips here. Clearly homemade and flavorful. Just needed possibly a higher temp finish and a bit less salt. Would definitely get them again, but they weren't at the same level of excellence as the burger.

Will we be back? Oh yes. If you haven't been, you should probably go immediately.


*click on photos for larger version/instant hunger

Cluizel Chocolate Bars

I've been looking for milk chocolate bars with less sugar and more cocoa. Just tried some Michel Cluizel bars and they are fantastic. They do single plantation dark chocolate varieties. These are really good, most in the 67% range, although I'd like to see some higher-cocoa versions (my usual dark chocolate bar is the 85% lindt or the surprisingly good 82% tesco own-brand). The Cluizel I'm most fond of though is the 50% cocoa milk-chocolate. Lindt milk chocolate is 30-31%, G&B 34%, crappier stuff much lower. Slitti does a 70% cocoa milk chocolate but I've not yet got my hands on one. At 50%, the Cluizel Mangaro Lait has a  smooth, caramel creaminess of a milk chocolate but lashings of deep cocoa richness. Highly recommended.

Cowboys & Aliens & Bears

Recently saw Cowboys & Aliens and it was quite surprising all around. I really liked it. It was not a comedy. It was not what I expected. It was pretty serious. It would have been a really [perhaps more] enjoyable straight-up western, except it then had aliens added to it. But really it's just a bonkers version of Wizard of Oz.

Harrison Ford needs a heart. Daniel Craig has lost his mind. Sam Rockwell finds courage. Olivia Wilde is the girl "not from around here". And there's even a plucky dog.

There are no bears. Sorry.

Not a movie still. Also not a man in a bear suit.

Lift With Your What?

The ancient wisdom of "lift with your legs" is poor advice. Poor because it doesn't tell really tell you anything about what you should or shouldn't be doing when you "lift" something. Lift with my legs? How? What are you not supposed to lift with? Your arms? Well, if you have proper form and posture, there's nothing wrong at all with lifting with your arms. Want to row a rock up off the ground to inspect it closely? Go ahead. Want to curl a conch to your ear? Knock yourself out.

So here's what it really means: don't bend at the waist.

Bend at the hips. Keep the natural arch in your back intact (don't round it or hunch over). When you lift something really heavy, you lift with your butt and your hips and your legs. Your arms will think they participated, it's ok to let them think that. Hinge those hips, that's your lever. Protect your back. Don't bend at the waist.

Buckwheat Pancakes

Made buckwheat pancakes this morning and it worked out well as a wheatless Sunday treat. Went heavy on the eggs but otherwise my usual recipe base, sans bramleys or oats this week.

1.5 C buckwheat flour
2 t baking powder
0.5 t salt
3 T sugar

5 eggs
1 t vanilla
3 T (or so) melted butter
1+ C milk, warmed

combine dry ingredients and wet ingredients separately, then mix together
cook on griddle or pan with lots of butter
server with more butter, and maple syrup or honey or cinnamon & sugar
did you use enough butter? you probably didn't

They seem to cook more quickly and burn more easily than the regular pancakes. Also they do better flipped earlier than normal.

Salon & The Unviewable Web

While some sites have put thought into clean, simple, readability, others are going over-the-top bonkers in the opposite direction. Floating banners and footers that obscure text and mess up scrolling. Ads that bounce text and layout around, shifting the content like a crappy online puzzle game while you wait for things to settle enough to start reading, right after the headache and vertigo clear.

Salon had been bad before but their recent redesign makes it even worse. Way to go, Salon design team! Here's a recent article. As if the riot of colors, animations, floating crap, accidental strikeout lines weren't bad enough, notice what's not on the page? That's right, content! An entire content-free page. I have to scroll a full page just to get to any content. And when I do, the floating nonsense screws even that up. Horrible stuff, Salon, truly stupendously awful.

Victoria Park Playgrounds

The new playground in the west half is almost completely open, with even the water features working, and the larger revamped playground in the east half is open as well. Took much longer than it should have, but really nice results.

the big slides are still there

several new climby things

this is... well, I don't know, but it tilts, has screens, and has lots of sand!

more sand, with added digging

cool new park for bmx and skateboard, with hemisphere

Little River Canyon

Alabama is home to the deepest canyon in the eastern half of the USA, Little River Canyon, most of which is a national preserve. It's a surprising and hidden gem of terrain, stretching much of the length of lookout mountain, with waterfalls, rapids, turkeys, trees, snakes, bluffs, boulders, swimming holes, the occasional very happy kayaker. (And no, despite Bear Grylls' comical claims of worry, you will not find any alligators up there). No shortage of challenging terrain but plenty that's accessible as well. Virtually no marked trails - careful with the cliffs. Recently went in search of Grace's High Falls (41m, seasonal waterfall). Found it from the top, but upon shuffling down to the canyon floor and hiking upstream, didn't quite find it again. Lovely hike, though.

iPad, iCloud, and The Multiple ID problem

Coming up on two years with my original iPad. I still love it. Use it daily. I am sorely tempted by the iPad 3, mainly for the fantastic display upgrade, but will have to wait a while.

I only just updated the iPad to iOS5.x. Good upgrade. Nice improvements in mail client, for one. I'd gone to iOS5 on the iPhone a while ago, a big win if for nothing else than the revamped notifications system.

The new iPhoto for iPad looks great. I probably won't get around to trying it, since I'm firmly entrenched in the Lightroom camp. Looking forward to the day Adobe doesn't an integrated iPad Lightroom for me. New iMovie also very interesting. As are the new features with GarageBand, especially collaboration.

iTunes U, though, takes the cake. This predates the new iPad by a while, but I hadn't paid much attention. Phenomenal idea, well executed. This would be incredible even if the MIT OpenCourseware was the only offering. Astonishing to see so much free content. Want to sit in on MIT physics lecture series? Lots to add to my aspirational list of activities for retirement I think.

iCloud? Well, it's great that if I take a photo on my iPhone it automagically ends up on my desktop mac (and will now also do so on my iPad). Other features seem perfectly fine and cloudy. App purchases, music, etc., all syncing across devices quietly and effectively. Great.

What Apple has completely botched, for me, is the ID-handling. I have apple store IDs that predate the iTunes music store and predate the mac.com addresses. Initially I used my yahoo emaill address for the apple store in the US. After that, two things happened, I got a mac.com address and moved abroad. So my non-US apple account is based on my mac.com (or me.com) address, while my US apple account is based on my yahoo address still. I would prefer to use my mac/me address for my iCloud account, but most of my content is from the US account. Apple ID can be changed, unless it's a mac/me account.

So I'm stuck: I can't change my UK Apple account to something other than my mac/me account, apparently using the mac/me address now makes that immutable (I can only add additional addresses). I can't change my US Apple account to use my mac/me account, because that's already being used by my UK account. So I can't merge accounts or even keep two but swap the email addresses, which is pants.

Legalize It

Despite the US Government's war on food, the madness has not yet spread to the UK, were you can still buy raw milk. Good stuff. Got some from Broadway market today (along with some Polish cured pork products, apples, olive oil, garlic stuffed olives, a few slices of cheesecake, ...)

The Muppets

Cute movie. Very sweet. Enjoyed even by the kids.

I'd like to see The Muppet Show back on, but in limited runs. This is an idea taking hold more recently on US cable shows, but too many US shows are locked into old the idea of 20+ shows per year. In the UK no one seems to have any problem with the notion that you do a run of shows that is as long or short as required, then wait a while and maybe put together another.

So my idea for the Muppet Show would be a seasonal run, about 5 episodes year, running from Thanksgiving to New Year's. It would the old format, in the theatre. The show-within-a-show format is pretty adaptable, and fewer episodes would make it more likely to be something to look forward to, would make it easier to book multiple guests per each show, and so on. There's clearly a lot of affection for the muppets out there. Television would be the best vehicle to tap into that. It would likely take until Easter each year to get the theme song out of my head.

Mean Reversion

Neil Steinberg, my favorite columnist, writes a spot-on dismissal of the Oscar "curse", pointing out that for some, the oscar-worthy performance is the abberation, not the norm, but makes a common mistake on the subject of reversion to mean.

"So if you flip a coin and it come up heads five times in a row, while the odds are always 50-50 on your next flip, at some point you’ll likely have a run of tails, since the odds of heads will gravitate toward 50 percent."

Intuitively, and what I think he's implying, we expect that a run of heads now makes it more likely that a run of tails will later occur, as if there's some sort of mandatory balancing act and if we've just used up an allotment of heads there's a vein of tails waiting patiently for us to tap into, keeping our sums tidy as we tunnel into the future. That's not how it works.

If you get five heads in a row, you're no more likely to get a run of five tails than you were before [and that is actually fairly likely to begin with, but that's the subject of randomness]. You are, however, still looking at 50-50 odds. Mean reversion doesn't work by evening things out, it works because the odds don't change, and given a large enough sample, the mean will be as expected. In the example, suppose we start off flipping heads 5 times, then flip 10,000 times more. Suppose we get 5000 heads and 5000 tails, without a single "run" of tails. After 5 flips, we were at 100% heads. After 10,005 flips, we are at just over 50.02% heads. Continue like this for 10 million flips and we are at 50.00005%. Looks like mean reversion, without requiring any special "catching up" on the part of team tails.

In other words, the "reversion" is just averages acting like averages, rather than any cosmic compensation at work. Just like how it's possible for player A to have a better batting average than player B for the first half of the season AND for the second half of the season but have a worse batting average than player B over the whole season.

Velodrome!

The London Olympic Velodrome just finished hosting the final round of the Track Cycling World Cup. This was one of many test events for the London Olympics, held in the run-up to this summer that tests venues as they come online.

Although we live within walking distance of the western edge of the Olympic complex, the site is still very much under construction, so to get to the Velodrome we had to take a bus to the opposite side of the site, in Stratford, walk through the new Westfield shopping centre [yeah, it's tacky that the transit hub and the Olympic site are linked via a shopping mall], enter the site near the aquatics centre, then take a shuttle bus to the velodrome.

The velodrome itself is fantastic. Seats around 6000. It's a 250m track that's getting good reviews from the cyclists, and seems to be very fast. I hadn't thought about it, but the track is kept warm and airflow is well managed, to the point of people manning double doorways for ingress and egress to avoid any errant airflow especially during timed events. It looks great on the outside and in.

Fun crowd and exciting racing. I'd never seen track cycling in person. The quality of competition was outstanding. Everyone wanted track time before the olympics. We didn't manage to get cycling tickets for the olympics, but anyone who did will not be disappointed.

Sir Chris easing around the track in the Individual Sprint quarterfinal. He went on to win gold.

Noises Off

Saw Noises Off in the Old Vic last night. It was brilliant. Pure, undiluted, trousers-dropping silliness executed with awe-inspiring craftmanship and energy. This by the same guy who wrote Copenhagen, a play we saw quite a few years ago and loved, but a different thing altogether. In any case, I didn't expect to laugh as hard as I did, at things such as a bag and box being on stage when they shouldn't have been. "They've *both* not gone!"

It's moving to the west end from March 24th. Heartily recommended.

The Social Network

Finally watched The Social Network the other night. Heartily recommended! Snappy dialogue that's not dumb, fantastic acting all around, and nicely filmed. Just a well-crafted exercise all around. It's fictionalized, stylized, alphabetized. Just enjoy it like a high-budget techie edition of Sports Night or something, rather than expecting it to be a documentary. There are enough facts to hang the structure off of and give it a little extra weight, but veracity is not crucial to its success. It's just a good movie.

I've read some comments along the lines of "I hate facebook so I won't see it". I'm not sure what the relevance of that is to the movie. I hate getting eaten by wolves but I still enjoyed The Grey [it's still not about the wolves].

Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield and Armie Hammer were all outstanding. And Justin Timberlake! His performance was astonishingly good, what a pleasure.

The Liver Test, or, Best Rabbit Ever

A measure of a restaurant for me is if I trust them enough to order the liver. I really like liver, but I'm particular, and it's one of those things I don't bother with cooking at home. As much as I loved Frock's before it closed shop, they overcooked their liver to my chagrin, and that by itself always made me cast a critical eye down the menu, ruling out the dishes that required too much finesse and attention to detail to get right enough to enjoy. Liver is why I'll not return to Bistrotheque. Veal sweetbreads were good, liver was bad. They just whacked a big chunk off a liver and fried it up, skipping the part about carefully trimming and removing any gristle. Which is why I don't bother at home, except on occassion. Which is why I do bother to order at a restaurant. Bistrotheque came through on the veal sweetbreads, but failed so disappointingly on the liver they lost my business, and that was a couple years ago.

Boundary, on the other hand, has never let me down. Went there (Shoreditch) tonight for the first time in nearly a year. Excellent. Native oysters followed by foie gras followed by duck leg confit and the Best Rabbit Ever. Confit is easy to make well at home but I still will order it in restaurants just because I love it. The rabbit, though, exceeded all expectations. Luxuriously tender, with a wasabi crust and served with a mustard sauce. I'm not sure how they did it. The only method I could think of as working that well would be to cook the rabbit sous vide, then finish it with the wasabi crust and a very quick roast. If they did it some other way, I have no idea how. Very impressive in any case. And worked really well with the aligot. Aligot is like a cross between fondue and mashed potatoes. Like an upmarket version of tartiflette, it's roughly on the order of 1/3 cheese and 2/3 potato, with butter and other top-shelf dairy contributors in there somewhere, pureed and blended to a decadent satiny creaminess.

Well, that was nearly it. Of course the St. Emilion au Chocolat was good, but then, of course it would be.

It's Not About The Wolves

I haven't even seen it yet [of course I will, and I will like it, because I'm a guy], but I can tell you The Grey is not about wolves. Predictably, tizzies, frenzies, and lathers are being worked up into. Typical headline about wolf experts unhappy, inaccurate portrayal, etc etc etc. Thank god for midwesterners: "It was a movie." And, from the first article as well, "Rasmussen said she doesn’t worry about wolves, even though she lives in the country where packs run through the yard — but she does keep a close eye on their little dogs."

Jaws is not about sharks
Blues Brothers is not about cop cars
Moon is not about cloning
Total Recall is not about getting your ass to Mars (ok, yes it is)

Pre-CGI Effects

Been introducing the young teenager of the house to some old favorites. I've been (possibly tediously) prefacing each viewing with a spiel about how the effects were not computer-generated. The movies are going over well. Blade Runner still looks incredible, to both of us. Road Warrior? Actual cars smashing into each other. After seeing a CGI Dodge chasing deer through Manhattan at approximately 100 mph [I'm pretty sure deer can't actually run that fast] in I Am Legend, the occasional botch in Road Warrior in which they try to make the cars go faster by speeding up the film ends up being charming.

(Want more cars getting wrecked? Try Blues Brothers. Astonishing and gleeful excess in that movie. I was giggling at the sheer volume of wreckage. Poetic, like the midwestern embodiment of a Hong Kong gun flick.)

Requirements Analysis At The Butcher

The impulse of many good butchers is to provide a solution for you. I did not realize this my first trip to a proper butcher nearly a dozen years ago. My mistake was thinking that you go and tell the butcher exactly what you want and they simply provide it. In other words, I not only know all about my problem, but I have already decided on the exact solution. The butcher, who didn't know me, didn't yet trust me enough to let me dictate the solution. Maybe I'm asking for completely the wrong thing, it won't work out, I'll blame the butcher, and he'll lose a customer. Am I planning on using rolled brisket for steaks on the grill? Making a stew with onglet? (Providing exactly and specifically what the customer asked for and yet the problem fails to be adequately solved? Hm....)

So I got a bit of a quiz -- how many people? how are you going to cook it? -- before a specific type and amount of meat was suggested to me. Of course, I could have shortcut the process and just demanded this or that, but it was more interesting to figure out the protocol. At my current butcher, I just ask for very specific things. They operate fine in either mode, as many of their customers know exactly what they want, whereas plenty of others come in with a general statement of the problem -- lamb for the bbq for 8 people -- and the butchers are delighted to come up with solutions.

So: problem domain, solution domain. Where is everyone standing?

I thought of this while witnessing a suboptimal transaction at the butcher's. In retrospect it's clear the customer's problem was needing a kilo of cubed beef for a stew. The butcher could have provided this via a couple different alternatives. What actually happened was that the customer specifically asked for a kilo of a designated, sale price, cubed "beef for stew", pointing at the tray. Which would have worked out just fine if the tray hadn't had about 500g of beef left, max. An ask of "I need a kilo of beef for a stew, cubed" would have resulted in the butcher surveying the alternatives and making suggestions. Or asking for a specific cut, in stock, and having the butcher cube it would have worked. Instead a dialogue ensued in which it took a while to establish that the customer just needed a kilo of cubed beef suitable for stewing and was perfectly content to pay more, if required, than the price on the insufficient amount of "beef for stew".

All was well, I think, eventually. But the customer was a little bit frustrated in the middle. As grateful as they no doubt would have been, I did not afterwards lecture the butchers on how they could have handled that better. A teaching moment wasted. Bitter tears at the missed opportunity to bask in the warming glow of my wisdom. Right, off to whip up some oxtail tartar.