The Gooben! (Geuben?)

New Year's Day main course: goose-breast reubens. Goose breasts were soaked in a heartily spiced brine for 12 hours, dried overnight, then hot-smoked for a few hours before chilling for a few days. Then shaved in the slicer, fried with black pepper, and heaped onto grilled homemade caraway rye, with melted swiss, sauerkraut, and a homemade dressing (mayo, worcestershire, hot sauce, minced red bell pepper, minced onion, dash of ketchup, sweet pickle relish, freshly grated horseradish root).

Wow were they good. Goose is beefy to start with, lovely grass-fed birds they are. The slightly cured and smoked goose breast had a lovely deep burgundy coloring and an aromatic smokiness reminiscent of pastrami. This really came out as it heated on the griddle with butter and black pepper, the edges crisping up baconly. I'm almost getting hungry again.

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!