Jason's Log

More teriyaki tweaks

After some more fine tuning, I'm now down to this recipe for our teriyaki:

0.3 cups safflower oil
0.3 cups + 2.0 tbsp soy sauce
0.25 cups Splenda
2.0 tbsp sesame oil
0.25 tsp guar gum

Combine into tupperware container, and shake vigorously.

This version decreases the sweetness and punches up the saltiness a bit, which both Young and I prefer.

Coffee results

So I can now say, without remorse, that I am a coffee snob.

With the flexibility offered by my new Capresso Infinity canonical burr grinder, I have come up with the perfect formula (coarseness of grind and the amount of grounds) to use for what I consider perfect coffee:

1. You can actually taste the flavor.
2. There is no bitterness or burnt flavor.
3. There is no sourness.

The sourness was eliminated by moving to a more coarse grind. The bitter/burnt flavor was eliminated by moving from a blade grinder (Braun) to a burr grinder. And the flavor is altered by the amount of grounds you brew.

Because my coffee maker (a cheapo Black&Decker model) is a slow brewer, I needed to make the grounds more coarse in order to not over-extract the coffee oils. This is what eliminated the sour flavor I was getting.

My basic formula is now:

1 tbsp of beans for each 'cup' (on my pot, a cup is actually 5 ounces) of water plus 4. So when I brew six cups, I add 10 tbsp of beans to the grinder.

Heaven!

Capresso grinder - first try

Well, Young and I ordered some interesting sounding coffees from an on-line shop called The Coffee Fool. We ordered a few 1 pound bags of their fresh roasted whole bean flavored coffees. We ground up a small batch in our old Braun blade-style gringer with the usual ten-count grind (resulting in a medium grind). As usual, there was a slight burnt smell to the resulting grounds, but we went ahead and brewed it up.

The resulting coffee had good flavor, but always with that slight hint of burnt something in the background. In addition, there was a slight sourness to the coffee that you could pick up as the coffee cooled in the mug. Hmm. We liked the beans, but that burnt thing was really ruining things for us.

So we checked amazon.com to see what people recommended, and the choice seemed fairly unamimous: A canonical burr (not blade) coffee grinder. And the highest rated model was the Capresso Infinity. I use the Capresso retail location finder, and Young and I drove down to Los Altos' Cook's Corner and picked one up.

So we just tried it out using the Decaf Highlander Grogg beans. The burr grinder definitely seems like a heavy duty piece of equipment, but is definitely less noisy than the Braun blade grinder. The resulting grounds were very uniform in size. The encouraging thing was that the was absolutely no burnt smell emanating from the grounds.

The brewed coffee was even better- There was no burnt undertones, and absolutely no sourness, even though we served the coffee iced. Wow, what a difference that made. Even though the Capresso Inficinity is pricey, it definitely made a huge difference in the quality of the output.

If you like coffee, it's money well spent IMO.

Tandoori Chicken Anyone?

Well, it did take two attempts, but thanks to my co-worker Sonu Chandra, I now have a tandoori chicken recipe that really works...even after being converted to a lower-carb version. Here is what I did:

I took one 8 oz. tub of sour cream (in place of the yogurt) and split it in half. I put each half into a separate small mixing bowl.

To each mixing bowl, which already contains 0.5 cup of sour cream, I then added:

1.0 tsp kosher salt
3.0 tbsp lemon juice
1.0 tsp onion powder
1.0 tsp minced garlic
2.0 tsp minced ginger root
2.0 tsp garam masala
1.0 tsp cayenne pepper
2.0 tsp dried cilantro

I then mixed up the ingredients thoroughly.

I then took my two chicken breasts (approximately 1 pound), and placed them into a 1 gallon ziploc bag along with one of the tandoori mixtures. I shook and tossed them for a minute or two to ensure they were well coated. I then placed them in the fridge, where they sat overnight.

For the other bowl of tandoori suace, I chopped up a whole head of cauliflower. I then added the cauliflower florets to a 1 gallon ziploc bag with the second batch of tandoori seasoning, tossed, and left in the fridge overnight.

I grilled up both the chicken and the cauliflower for dinner tonight, and it was amazing. Although some folks might prefer a little less heat (decrease the amount of cayenne pepper), Young and I loved it.

It's a keeper.

Batch Flac to Ogg converter

Updated Feb 09, 2010: For an updated version of this script, please visit: http://techpatterns.com/forums/about1491.html

Now that I've undertaken the project of archiving my CD collection into loslessly compressed Flac files, I needed a way to batch convert them into Ogg files that I could use on my iRiver.

The hard part, of course, is that I wanted this to run on Windows so that Young could run it on her laptop.

So here you go:

A Cygiwin-based recursive Flac to Ogg converter script that will run on Windows. It allows you to set the quality level (1-10), and is smart enough to not re-convert files that have already been processed.

Give it a shot, and send feedback.

Pasta Pomodoro Disappointment

After a quick stop at the local Sunnyvale Borders (where we learned they did not have any of the books we were looking for in-stock), Young and I decided to give the new-ish Pasta Pomodoro a try.

The prices were all in the $8-12, so it didn't seem too risky.

We ordered two glasses of their 'Chianta Classico' (although I cannot remember the winery details), which was fine. I bit dry with a hint of tannins on the finish, but overall very drinkable. We've had better and we've had worse.

For an appetizer, we tried their grilled asparagus with olive oil and peccorino cheese. This was quite good. I would have gone for a bit more cheese on top, but overall it was yummy.

Young ordered their Frutti de Mare, a seafood mix and pasta plate. The mussels were good, as were the shrimp and calamari pieces. As is usual with dishes of this kind, it was mostly pasta, with a small smattering of actual seafood. Overall, not bad but not exceptional either.

I ordered the Bistecca e Rucola, their steak and arugula with Tuscan-style beans. It was basically a very thin, unseasoned small steak with a huge amount of what tasted like white navy beans. Very disappointing.

So the next time we're in the mood for Italian food, we'll probably go elsewhere.

Art Fair or Craft Fair?

After reading up on the San Jose Tapestry Arts Festival, I was really excited. It is a juried art show, meaning that to participate you need to submit examples of your work. In other words, you need to be a real artist. Having learned that all of the bay area 'Art and Wine' festivals are really just 'Crappy craft and wine festivales' over the years, the prospect of the Tapestry show being a notch above that was enticing.

Unfortunately, it wsa just more of the same old stuff.

Although there were probably 2 or 3 artists that were showing some interesting or innovative works, the rest of it was very disappointing.

I had sworn off the art and wine festival circuit a few years back because of this, and it seems like I'll have to extend that decision for another couple of years. To my knowledge, only the Los Gatos Art Show carries the works of real artists, but Young and I missed it this year. Grr.

An improved Kung Pao

After a few different iterations on the trying to replace the cayenne pepper in my original low-carb kung pao sauce, Young and I have finally arrived at a mixture that we agree is teriffic:

Note that this is a doubling of the original recipe:

4.0 tbsp white wine (pinot grigio)
4.0 tbsp soy sauce (kikkoman, regular)
0.5 tbsp seasme oil
0.5 tsp guar gum (thickener)
2.0 tsp ground chili powder
2.0 tbsp asian red pepper oil (Heavenly Chef)
4.0 tsp Splenda
2.0 tbsp crushed garlic

Once again the ingredients were placed into a tupperware container and shaken until fully mixed. The result: perfection!