A philosophy of cooking

When I construct a dish, any dish, I rarely use less than 9 ingredients. Why? because three points define a plane, and three planes define a three dimensional space. When you take an ingredient and pair it with two similar ingredients you are creating a space your dish exists in. Do it at least two more times with orthogonal ingredients in the same dish, balance magnitude of the results, and the dish will almost always succeed. I call this structure a trinity of trinities.

Consider one possible version of chili. Take ground meat, beans*, and an ingredient to be named later as a base trinity. Add a trinity of chilis. Poblanos, some roasted Hatch chilis, some pickled jalapeno. Add a trinity of alliums. White onion, garlic, shallot. Add a trinity of seed spices: cumin, coriander, carroway. Add a trinity of herb spices: oregano, chervil, bay leaf. A trinity of pepper: black, green, hot spanish pimenton. Crushed tomato, shredded carrot and caramelized white onion (reusing one part of one trinity for another trinity is a bonus) are a trinity of sweeteners. When I serve it on a Romaine leaf it completes the base trinity.

That chili can easily be unbalanced if you don't grasp the shape of the structure you are building. it can be confusing. but it will never, ever be one dimensional.

This philosophy is why I completely disagree with two things I hear over and over again from many cooks and chefs. The first is simplicity. OK, if you're an hopeless amateur or an Italian chef**, be simple. The second is 'Cut everything the same size so it cooks exactly the same'. OK, why do we want it to cook the same? Answer: we usually don't. Usually, we want it to be cut THREE different sizes; or added to the dish at THREE different times! Or BOTH.... stretching one ingredient into NINE different textures: a trinity of trinities by itself. Or cook it three different ways.


*Fuck Texas. My chili always has beans. I like it that way.

**Fuck Italian food. It's not a real cuisine. It's a collection of stupid wrongheaded rules about cooking that get followed like a paint by numbers coloring book by boys who want to fuck their mothers. 'No cheese with seafood'. Complete Utter Bullshit.

A useful poem for a ME setting up a low volume manufacturing cell

Hiawatha Designs an Experiment

by W. E. Mientka

Hiawatha, mighty hunter,
He could shoot ten arrows upward,
Shoot them with such strength and swiftness
That the last had left the bow-string
Ere the first to earth descended.

This was commonly regarded
As a feat of skill and cunning.
Several sarcastic spirits
Pointed out to him, however,
That it might be much more useful
If he sometimes hit the target.
“Why not shoot a little straighter
And employ a smaller sample?”

Hiawatha, who at college
Majored in applied statistics,
Consequently felt entitled
To instruct his fellow man in
Any subject whatsoever,
Waxed exceedingly indignant,

Talked about the law of errors,
Talked about truncated normals,
Talked of loss of information,
Talked about his lack of bias,
Pointed out that (in the long run)
Independent observations,
Even though they missed the target,
Had an average point of impact
Very near the spot he aimed at,
With the possible exception
of a set of measure zero.

“This,” they said, “was rather doubtful;
Anyway it didn’t matter.
What resulted in the long run:
Either he must hit the target
Much more often than at present,
Or himself would have to pay for
All the arrows he had wasted.”

Hiawatha, in a temper,
Quoted parts of R. A. Fisher,
Quoted Yates and quoted Finney,
Quoted reams of Oscar Kempthorne,
Quoted Anderson and Bancroft
(practically in extenso)
Trying to impress upon them
That what actually mattered
Was to estimate the error.
Several of them admitted:
“Such a thing might have its uses;
Still,” they said, “he would do better
If he shot a little straighter.”

Hiawatha, to convince them,
Organized a shooting contest.
Laid out in the proper manner
Of designs experimental
Recommended in the textbooks,
Mainly used for tasting tea
(but sometimes used in other cases)
Used factorial arrangements
And the theory of Galois,
Got a nicely balanced layout
And successfully confounded
Second order interactions.

All the other tribal marksmen,
Ignorant benighted creatures
Of experimental setups,
Used their time of preparation
Putting in a lot of practice
Merely shooting at the target.

Thus it happened in the contest
That their scores were most impressive
With one solitary exception.
This, I hate to have to say it,
Was the score of Hiawatha,
Who as usual shot his arrows,
Shot them with great strength and swiftness,
Managing to be unbiased,
Not however with a salvo
Managing to hit the target.

“There!” they said to Hiawatha,
“That is what we all expected.”
Hiawatha, nothing daunted,
Called for pen and called for paper.
But analysis of variance
Finally produced the figures
Showing beyond all peradventure,
Everybody else was biased.
And the variance components
Did not differ from each other’s
As they did from Hiawatha’s.

(This last point, it might be mentioned,
Would have been much more convincing
If he hadn’t been compelled to
Estimate his own components
From experimental plots on
Which the values all were missing.)

Still they couldn’t understand it,
So they couldn’t raise objections.
(Which is what so often happens
with analysis of variance.)
All the same his fellow tribesmen,
Ignorant benighted heathens,
Took away his bow and arrows,
Said that though my Hiawatha
Was a brilliant statistician,
He was useless as a bowman.
As for variance components
Several of the more outspoken
Made primeval observations
Hurtful of the finer feelings
Even of the statistician.

In a corner of the forest
Sits alone my Hiawatha
Permanently cogitating
On the normal law of errors.
Wondering in idle moments
If perhaps increased precision
Might perhaps be sometimes better
Even at the cost of bias,
If one could thereby now and then
Register upon a target.

Sombody's List of 100 things to eat.

84/100. A few surprised me. Have I really never eaten hare? Abalone? Poutine? Black Pudding?

A few I wasn't sure. Is rose harissa different from regular harissa? What's Criollo chocolate?

The only two I hesitate to eat are Kaolin, which I think is an edible clay; and roadkill, because even if I killed it myself (and that's the only reason I would consider doing it.) the idea of tires and asphalt rubbing on my dinner makes me queasy. But I'd try both if offered, so, meh.

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

It's Calld Chowdah

"After having said so much about Fishing it will not be improper to say a little about the Fish that they catch & of the Dish they make of it Calld Chowder which I believe is Peculiar to this Country tho here it is the Chief food of the Poorer & when well made a Luxury that the rich Even in England at Least in my opinion might be fond of. It is a Soup made with a small quantity of salt Pork cut into Small Slices a good deal of fish and Biscuit Boyled for about an hour unlikely as this mixture appears to be Palatable. I have scare met with any Body in this County Who is not fond of it whatever it might be in England Here it is certainly the Best method of Dressing the Cod which is not near so firm here as in London whether or not that is owning to the art of the fishmongers I cannot pretend to say."
-Joseph Banks (1743-1820)

Rabbit and Bacon Naruto

Food idea inspired by momufuku: rabbit and bacon naruto. Naruto is that little white fish cake with the pink spiral. Take the rabbit loin, slice it out flat and pound like a paillard. Sprinkle with transglutaminase. Layer with bacon. roll on the back of a sushi mat for texture. Vacuum bag and cook sous-vide, leaving the mat in place. Freeze and slice. Related idea: Wild boar bacon dashi. Like D. Chang's bacon dashi, but I want to actually dry out the bacon like it was Bonito and shave it with a plane. I spread salt and sugar on the bacon and wrap it in a kitchen towel and stick it in the fridge for two weeks. When rock hard, break out the woodworking tools and make razor thin slices that dissolve in hot water with kombu. Add tare, ramen, poached egg, wild mushrooms, scallion, and naruto. eat.

That's the plan. so far I have the wild boar bacon rock hard and it shaves nicely. testing the dashi tonight with fiddlehead ferns. fiddlehead ferns are awesome in asian foods like noodle dishes- pad thai with shrimp, thai sausage and fiddlehead ferns rocked the house the other day. I expect ferns to be awesome in ramen as well.