My goal in planning this dinner was really to try techniques.  I had no preconceived notions about what I’d make, but I started making lists of recipes about two months ago, after Nicole and I went to Napa and did Three Nights of Keller, and later when Scott, Nicole, and I made the pilgrimage to Chicago for Alinea and Aviary.  My method in planning the dinner was suitably nerdy on several fronts:  I treated it like a research project, and had a lab notebook, and being a software guy, the lab notebook was in the form of a wiki.  I kept notes on recipes, techniques, ingredients, possible menus, and so on.  It was fun to see how things evolved.

I tried a number of dishes that never saw the light of day.  I was taken with a “shrimp terrine” dish by Ideas in Food, but since several guests were allergic to shrimp, I turned it into lobster.  But I was also taken with Chang’s ramen from Momofuku, and ended up trying to make lobster meat “noodles” by tossing lobster tail chunks with Old Bay and Activa RM, vacuum sealing, and rolling it into a flat sheet.  After an overnight chill, I cooked the sheets at 55C and chilled, before cutting into fettucine.  This worked fairly well, although the noodles were definitely fragile (I didn’t want to use enough Activa to ruin the flavor or texture).  The noodles, served in an english pea dashi (kombu, shittake, english pea pods, bonito flakes), absolutely sucked.  They had the texture and feel of bad imitation crab.  The moral of the story is don’t do this!.

I won’t bore everyone with the full list of failures, partial successes, or things that “worked” in a technical sense but simply yielded nothing terribly interesting.  I will say, do not bother coring out and stuffing asparagus spears.  It’s not worth it.  Unless you have asparagus with a serious obesity problem, you can’t get enough tasty stuffing inside before they split and explode for anybody to really notice.  It’s an interesting idea, and if it had worked out would have elicited that “wow, cool” surprise noise that every chef is hoping to hear from their diners….but it didn’t.

What works:  tapioca maltodextrin.  Make dry caramel.  Now.  Make parmesan nuggets, or bacon powder, or….hell, grab a tasty dairy or fat and spin it with TM and serve it in some interesting way.  I happened to have a sheet of apple cider sea-salt caramel that had gone all brittle because I’d prepped it too far in advance, so I needed a new presentation than what I’d originally planned, and I remembered that Grant Achatz had done a “dry caramel” powder, and it worked.  Boy, did it work.  It wasn’t what I’d planned, but it was a happy accident, and something I’ll be doing again, especially early in a meal with savory and smoky elements, like the dehydrated double-smoked (house-cured) bacon I paired it with.  Get some TM and start screwing around.  Seriously.

Also:  low-acyl gellan.  After some futzing with other gelification agents, I was wary.  I clearly need more practice with methocels, for example, before I’m ready to unleash something on unsuspecting diners.  But low-acyl gellan:  brilliant.  Sherry vinegar gel cubes to serve with oysters were a breeze.  Measure carefully but then, it just works.  It exhibits a first-order phase transition when the liquid cools below the magic temperature — one second it’s a liquid, the next, it’s a semi-brittle gel, boom.  Stable and still tasty after storage in the fridge, it’s forgiving and completely within reach of cooking at home.  Highly recommended.

What I hated:  working with transglutaminase.  I did the “Checkerboard Sushi” from Myhrvold.  Twice.  The first time, I destroyed way too much nice maguro and hamachi from Mutual Fish when the “slurry” got gloopy (which it does in about ten seconds), and I ended up with blobs between the fish slabs.  You have to work fast with Activa.  What they don’t tell you, is that “fast” means “superhumanly fast.”  The second time, I dusted the slabs through a tea strainer.  It didn’t bond nearly as well and the resulting slabs were fragile, but they looked great and tasted great, and that’s what counts.  It just limited me on presentation possibilites, where a full bond would have been more robust for draping or whatever.  But I hated working with the Activa.  I have a full bag of it, and will probably do it again, but it’s certainly not something I’ll whip out for my own pleasure and use in the kitchen.  Too much hassle and fuss.

Silica gel packets and a food dehydrator — wonderful tools.  A food dehydrator that isn’t circular and takes a rectangular tray would be even better. I sense one in my future.

And if you don’t have an iSi cream whipper, stop reading now and go to Amazon and buy one.  I used this dozens of times in the course of a couple of days, it’s perhaps the handiest tool I have for doing modernist dishes.

I’ll probably have more notes in the days to come, especially as I review my lab notes.  But get in the kitchen and play around!

Nope.  Douglas Adams does it every time.  It’s the Golgafrinchans, at the end of Restaurant At the End of the Universe.

Because, of course, they’re us.  They’re our bumbling, over-specialized, incapable of making a living for themselves, useless skills aplenty, useful skills thin on the ground, selves.

And, as an archaeologist and social scientist, the Golgafrinchans always remind me of how fragile our civilization is.  I am a social scientist, and I read a good bit of contemporary social science, of course, but in my work I analyze phenomena at a much longer time scale.  I study societies and social groups as they come and go, are born by fission from some other group of people, flourish, perhaps give rise to social “offspring,” and eventually go extinct.  And what is more emblematic of social extinction than Adams’s portrayal of the Golgafrinchan Ark “B”, carrying the non-essential members of society off to form a new world….

The Golgafrinchans occupy a place in my personal “wax museum of humanity” right next to Danny Hillis’s Long Now Foundation, and their 10,000 year clock.  Although the 24 hour news cycle and the buzz of tweets and instant information would have you believe otherwise, it is over much longer time scales that we can evaluate the success, and equitability, and sustainability of the various ways we humans have, of being human.  Our battles might be fought in days or years or lifetimes, but it is only our descendants that can truly “keep score” and decide how well we did.

The Long Now clock is designed to transcend us as a civilization, and as one of the ways we can communicate some of what we’ve learned with our far-future descendants.  It is designed not to require folks to be close enough to us in time and culture that they can read our writings, or comprehend our ideas, but to draw upon principles that are presumably deeper — not necessarily built into the laws of physics, mind you — but comprehensible to beings who are descended from our kind of minds, our kind of bodies.

Combine the perspective of an anthropologist studying the slow coming and going of societies, and the perspective of a software and systems engineer, and I think you get a sub-genre of futurism and speculation:  what it takes to “recover” the good bits of a civilization, after a collapse or other disaster.  Or simply the slow erosion of deep time.

I think of this problem in algorithmic terms.  If you wanted to maximize the chances of being able to recreate us, down the road after we’ve lost our knowledge, lost this particular set of scientific/democratic values, what is the “minimal instruction set”?

In short, what is the “boot loader” for an open, democratic society  combining expressive freedom and respect for scientific discovery?

This is the closest I can come up with, and I do not claim that it’s a deterministic algorithm.  In other words, starting here, you are not guaranteed to replicate the aspects of our civilization we value.  It’s clearly stochastic, and there’s clearly a lot of noise.  Which means only that I’m giving an “initial condition” and transition probabilities for processes which are in the “basin of attraction” of the product we’re looking for, and that if you follow such rules, “more often than not,” you’d end up with something we’d recognize as an open society.  Assuming you either replicate the experiment a lot (i.e., send LOTS of Golgafrinchans to LOTS of uninhabited worlds), or wait for the experiment to repeat itself over and over (i.e., deep time).

But here’s the algorithm (and I don’t claim full originality here):

1. Pay attention and observe patterns in the world around you, keeping an open mind.
2. Bang the rocks together, so to speak, and make things.  Especially new things.
3. Understand how competition and cooperation work, and why each is necessary.
4. Study those who are different, with an open mind.
5. Pass on what you learn, without too much prejudice.

Put this algorithm on an endless loop, and you have something approximating the progressive parts of the last several thousand years of Western Civilization.   Ignore a couple of key clauses, and you have a much wider array of outcomes.  Not all good, and some downright scary.   Do it just like this, and you might, if you’re lucky, end up with an open, tolerant, prosperous, enlightened democracy.

That’s it.  That’s what it takes.  The Golgafrinchans managed it, apparently…and so did we.  But it was a narrow victory, and the question is whether we can manage to keep it up…..

Happy Towel Day!

After reading today’s article in the San Juan Islander entitled “SW budget based on OI Facility Only,” I am compelled to comment.  I will attempt to keep my comments respectful and civil, but the ludicrousness of the options being presented here makes that somewhat difficult.

While I understand that we face difficult budget choices, and apparently are going to pay dearly for our past choices in this policy area, the idea that an island county should live with zero or just one point for solid waste removal is alarming.

Curbside pickup can and should be more widely used.  Currently, San Juan Sanitation is not able to provide *weekly* pickup to many of the outlying island areas because many streets lack enough subscribers to warrant it.  Obviously, if curbside pickup were mandated, the density of customers would rise and hopefully San Juan Sanitation would respond by instituting county-wide weekly pickup of domestic garbage (and recycling!).  Any policy change here should involve discussions with SJS prior to enactment to ensure that they are ready and willing to move to a much more regular schedule of pickup for all subscribers.

Without this level of service, you as Council members are essentially telling the majority of the County’s population that we should accept that it might take half a day, or a full day, to dispose of a single load of refuse.  Under the “One Station” option, the minimum investment of time for disposing of household waste to Orcas from Friday Harbor would be three-plus hours, and often considerably longer, with a 20-plus dollar ferry fee in addition to whatever fees are assessed at the transfer station.

Under a “Zero Station” plan, that minimum investment of time is more like half a day to a full day.  As you all know, being County residents.  With a monetary cost of 50-plus dollars in addition to transfer station fees.

The fact that such an option is considered possible by the Council causes me to seriously question your judgment.

Mr. Shannon can hide behind his statement that he is merely presenting a plan which meets the requests he’s been given.

You, as Council members, cannot duck this responsibility.

I would ask that you stop presenting options that are clearly injurious to the vast bulk of your constituents, and do the politically hard but necessary thing, and give the voters of the county a plan to vote on, with options for taxes necessary to support it, that provides us with a reasonable minimum of solid waste infrastructure on each island where it is deemed necessary by that island’s inhabitants. This plan may include mandatory curbside pickup (on a frequent basis!) to minimize usage and costs at transfer stations, but the option of no transfer stations in the county is unrealistic.  If you proceed in this direction, I will make common cause with other county residents and fight this ludicrous and injurious plan.

Four years ago today, I loaded up the used Land Rover (bought off Craigslist), and headed to the Anacortes ferry dock, and sailed for San Juan Island.  I’d worked here the summer of 1987, part of the summer of 1988, and intermittently visited my colleagues in 1990 and 1991.  My mother and her twin sister (my aunt), had graduated from high school on Orcas Island (having moved up for their senior year to board with relatives while my grandmother ran off to Vegas for one of her marriages).  So I had history.  Of the places one could flee and reinvent oneself after a decade or more of hard work — six companies and four more as board/investor advisor — this called to me.

And so here I am.

That first day, I rolled off the ferry, familiar from past trips, into a town coated with nostalgia and memories, and stopped at Thane Bolger’s office and picked up the keys to my house.  The packing in Seattle wasn’t completely done, and the moving truck wasn’t arriving up here for another 3 weeks, but today was the day, because the house closed the day before.  I wasn’t willing to wait any longer to draw a line under the previous daily life I’d led, and start a new one.  By the end of the day, I’d set up a temporary futon bed in the room that is now my office, a card table in the dining room, Rockisland had installed my internet connection, and I had some minimal patio furniture.  It would turn out to be all I needed for the best three weeks I can remember.

Once set up, I headed to Friday Harbor for dinner at Steps Wine Bar and Cafe, run by my friend Madden Surbaugh.  I’d met Madden the day I found my house, while sitting at the former Pelindaba cafe across from his (then) front door.  I popped my head in, saw Madden wilting an utterly massive pan of greens, and much of my island life since then has been shaped and determined by that moment.  I sat at the window table, and had a terrific meal (documented, along with my impressions of that day, here).  I had a bottle of 1988 Vieux Telegraphe that I’d brought up for the occasion.  Later, sitting on the deck, I finished the Chateauneuf-du-Pape and enjoyed the sunset.

Today, four years later, after 1460 days on the island, I still love it here.

As I reread each of my yearly anniversary dispatches, I am struck by how I lived a relatively charmed life for most of the first two years.  I read, I studied, I enjoyed a bit of socializing and a lot of meals at Madden’s, but I had relatively little impact or influence, or was influenced by, the local community.

That all changed about a year and a half ago, when I ended up replacing my friend Cloud on the board of the San Juan Islands Agricultural Guild.  Our current project, the Permanent Farmer’s Market in Friday Harbor, quickly became difficult and contentious.  Increasingly I found myself puzzling about the community to which I’d moved.  I clearly didn’t quite understand the demographics, the political makeup, the needs and wants of this community.  I entered a period where my impressions of the island, quite frankly, were mixed at best.  I loved the physical setting but I was clearly rebelling and coming to terms with the community itself.  Tellingly, I didn’t even write a 2009 dispatch on my anniversary, a fact I didn’t actually know until I just went looking for it to link in the previous paragraph.

I’m not going to go into the FM project or other projects I’ve become involved with in depth.  Each deserves better than random reminiscences.

But suffice it to say that I’m starting to come out of the valley….which I now recognize as the “holy shit” reality check about the enormity of how I’ve changed my life…and am starting to be at peace again with my decision.  I’ll say it again, I love it here.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t grind my teeth about the difficulties of establishing a permanent downtown Farmer’s Market, or at the difficulties of simply disposing of one can of trash given the Solid Waste debacle, or at the regular delays and irritations of island life.  Those things aren’t temporary parts of adjusting.  They’re the grievances of an island resident.

But it does mean that I sit on my deck tonight, four years from the day I arrived, contemplating what the fifth year will bring, with something approaching optimism.  Much has changed — Madden is on Orcas at Rosario, I’m on the Library board and we’re selecting a new Director to replace Laura, and I split my time between here and Seattle in order to spend as much time with Nicole as I can — but much also remains the same.  I sit here outside with a laptop and a glass of wine, music playing, writing and watching the sunset build, and recall Lawrence Durrell’s words, that spell out my own affliction with such poetry:

Somewhere among the notebooks of Gideon I once found a list of diseases as yet unclassified by medical science, and among these there occurred the word Islomania, which was described as a rare but by no means unknown affliction of spirit. There are people, as Gideon used to say, by way of explanation, who find islands somehow irresistible. The mere knowledge that they are on an island, a little world surrounded by the sea, fills them with an indescribable intoxication….But like all Gideon’s theories it was an ingenious one. I recall how it was debated by candlelight in the Villa Cleobolus until the moon went down on the debate, and Gideon’s contentions were muffed in his yawns; until Hoyle began to tap his spectacles upon his thumbnail of his left hand, which was his way of starting to say goodnight….Yet the word stuck; and though Hoyle refused its application to any but Aegean islands….we all of us, by tacit admission, knew ourselves to be ‘islomanes.’

I can’t wait to see what Year Five in my very own Paradise Terrestre brings.

But one exchange is worth analysis and our attention, whatever the details of the device and our first impressions. Cory Doctorow, open-source freedom fighter extraordinaire and speculative fiction author, published a widely discussed, negative essay concerning the very idea of the iPad. By now, you’ve probably read it, or seen the link. If you haven’t, you should.

Cory’s essential points are two (with apologies if I’m missing something serious). First, that open platforms (think Linux, Android, FreeBSD, etc) are structurally designed to foster innovation at minimal entry cost, and with minimum friction to the innovator, and minimal interference between the innovator and the eventual consumer of those innovations. Second, Doctorow argues that the justification everyone is citing for the closed system — “making computers easy for mainstream users” — is insulting to mainstream users.

Joel Johnson responds that Doctorow’s principal arguments miss the point. In particular, that openness and innovation are not causally linked to the extent that open-source and Linux advocates claim. That innovation will thrive on the “nearly closed” platforms like the iPad and iPhone.

The argument is one that technologists and designers ought to think about pretty deeply. In fact, whichever side of the debate you tend to come down on, I believe you ought to sit and think hard about reasons why the other side might be right. Because I believe something like the sum of Doctorow and Johnson’s arguments represent the future of computing.

It’s undeniable that truly open systems (as opposed to the controlled openness of late 1980′s “open systems”) like Linux have fostered a Cambrian explosion of innovation and tinkering. Many of us, including myself, got their start in the computing world just as the Internet took off as a public phenomenon, with Linux, Apache, and Netscape as the principal “rocket boosters” for its success. But there are signs that the Cambrian explosion has begun to slow from a proliferative to a winnowing phase, at least in some areas.

There is still huge innovation on the server side, with new server-side frameworks and web toolkits, even new languages (i.e., the close coupling between the origins of Lift and Scala) and computing paradigms (clouds, Hadoop distributed computation) appearing monthly. When one examines the server and deep application side, it’s hard to imagine that Doctorow isn’t exactly right. Preservation of the openness of systems, the malleability of interfaces and even programming paradigms, is crucial to keeping the recombination going in this server-side cauldron of computing DNA.

Winnowing is occurring on the user experience front, however. The winnowing-out process really began when we all decided that the web browser was the main arbiter of client-side experience. In fact, that seems so obvious today that we forget that the browser used to simply be an HTML display engine, not a general-purpose UI framework for multi-language code execution. We forget things like Pointcast, and other “rich internet client” examples, since for years they largely went away in favor of browser-based apps. Even in “thick” applications like Microsoft Office, when internet interaction was required — say, for Help or looking up a template, the thick app would spawn a little unmarked IE window to do the “internet stuff.”

Johnson’s point, as I take it, is that this winnowing process on the user experience front has been a good thing, and should continue. And I agree. And Doctorow is wrong to focus on the “making a computer my mother can use” trope. The intuition behind the trope is fine, as far as it goes, but the metaphor fails to dig down to the core of the issue. Certainly, we nerds have done an insufficient job of hiding the underlying execution model of our software, and a poor job of interface and experience design, by and large. Despite the efforts of Don Norman, Alan Cooper, and others, we in the open systems community continue to focus on the computational underbelly and not enough on the user’s experience.

Which is where Apple comes in. We all know that the reason their devices continue to delight and appeal is that they are designed in every detail, by teams of design fanatics, led by our industry’s chief design obsessive. And we all tell ourselves that the degree of design fanaticism that continues to suck us in is only possible with closed or semi-closed systems.

And this is where we find ourselves today. Those, like Doctorow, who value open systems for their innovation- and freedom-enhancing qualities, steer clear of Apple devices. Those, like Johnson, who value the progress we’ve made toward highly usable, well-designed systems, eagerly await new Apple designs.

I’d like to suggest that the distinction isn’t as sharp as we think, however. The design fanaticism displayed by Apple is not inherently a feature of their approach to closed systems; closed systems simply make it easier. The closed system is really just a choice, not a necessity, if one wants design excellence. Similarly, the lack of design excellence displayed in most open-source software (I’m thinking about Linux desktop apps in particular here), is not inherently a feature of an open-source community. Open-source projects simply make it harder to create and enforce design excellence.

One of Johnson’s points, as I read him, is that if we want innovation in applications, coupled with performance and design excellence, we need to stop reinventing the wheel on everything else constantly, and innovate at higher levels. And that’s easiest when all you have to worry about is the application you’re designing, not the platform as well.

Personally, I would love to see a world where we continue to see huge innovation on computing models in general, and free access to the fundamental tools for development, and options for retaining control over security and privacy. But in that world I’d also love reliable, gorgeous, high performance platforms like the iPad, as the mechanism by which the innovation that openness engenders is available to everyone. That’s likely possible, in practical terms, only with a mixture of openness and closed systems.

But for now, the coffee is hot and strong, and the mountains of the Canadian coast range are visible to the north, with hints of blue sky to the west past Speiden Island.  It's a perfect autumn morning in the Northwest, at least from my perspective, and I'm thrilled to be home to enjoy it.  It's been a whirlwind few weeks since the election and it's not going to get any less busy between now and Christmas. 

I bought a cider press this fall and have plenty of apples from C's orchard here on the island, and many more from Rebecca Moore's terrific farm (Blue Moon Farm) on Waldron Island. I still have plenty left to press, but the cider thus far is sweet, deeply flavored, but with great tartness and acidity.  I've frozen a gallon already and hope to press-gang my friends into helping me squeeze more this weekend. 

I'll write more soon, but I just wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving to everyone reading out there.  Enjoy the day with friends and family!

Saturday began at home with several of us doing another batch of black beans and getting the boar into my makeshift Alton Brown-style smoker (see pics, I’ll try to post a few more of the smoker itself).  After 48 hours in the brine, I cold smoked the 33 pound boar for 8 hours with apple wood.  I took advantage of the warm smoker box to also smoke 16 whole quail, which I then grilled to medium. 

After a quick trip to the farmer’s market to pick up sugar snap peas, pay my bill on the previous week’s English peas, and pick up salad mix, we headed out to South Beach for a glorious early afternoon hike, swim, and a lunch on the beach.  I served the quail quartered on a bed of Waldron Island salad greens, with local Quail Croft goat cheese, local strawberries, and a simple shallot vinaigrette.  Tasty stuff. 

By the time we got back to the house, it was time to fire up the pit with charcoal and dry hardwood, and as guests began arriving in the early evening we sandwiched the boar between diamond wire mesh and grilled it fast and hot (about an hour, maybe less).  Served shredded and sliced, the boar was tender, smoky, and juicy — a big hit according to the diners.  This was accompanied by rice, cuban black beans, fried plantains (done simply and as twice-fried tostones), and an ocean of Tavel rose, mojitos, and Hemingways (gin & tonic with coconut water and angostura bitters). 

As the visiting guests filtered home by around midnight, those of us staying at the house (Kim, Kris, Fran, Tina, and myself) collapsed with a cup of tea and some cookies and slept in Sunday morning, which was well earned on all our parts.  In all, a perfect weekend and celebration of two terrific years on the island.  I can’t wait to plan next year’s party, in fact.

Each spring, as I have for years now, I re-read Lawrence Durrell’s Reflections of a Marine Venus, whose opening page speaks so directly to me:

Somewhere among the notebooks of Gideon I once found a list of diseases as yet unclassified by medical science, and among these there occurred the word Islomania, which was described as a rare but by no means unknown affliction of spirit. There are people, as Gideon used to say, by way of explanation, who find islands somehow irrestistable. The mere knowledge that the are on an island, a little world surrounded by the sea, fills them with an indescribable intoxication….But like all Gideon’s theories it was an ingenious one. I recall how it was debated by candlelight in the Villa Cleobolus until the moon went down on the debate, and Gideon’s contentions were muffed in his yawns; until Hoyle began to tap his spectacles upon his thumbnail of his left hand, which was his way of starting to say goodnight….Yet the word stuck; and though Hoyle refused its application to any but Aegean islands….we all of us, by tacit admission, knew ourselves to be ‘islomanes.’

Lawrence Durrell, Reflections on a Marine Venus

As I said, though the island provides constancy, friendship, and an abiding sense of peace and belonging, much has changed. I now travel down to Seattle on a weekly basis, to work at Gridnetworks and the UW campus. I gladly spend time in Seattle when it means I can see friends, family, and most especially T.

This weekend, in celebration of this anniversary in my life, I’ve invited friends and family to come up to the island, mingle with new Island friends, and eat terrific food and drink good wine. July in the islands seems to call for outdoor living and dining on the deck, as well as greater-than-ordinary culinary efforts. So I’m smoking and grilling a whole wild boar, from Broken Arrow Ranch in Texas, Cuban-style, and serving it with cuban black beans, rice, and fried plantains, accompanied by good rose, Chablis, and various red wines. I finished the fire pit for the boar roast today, and I’ll post pictures later this weekend. More soon.

But I also went to the first farmer’s market of the season, and bought some great stuff. Tonight I’m going to make a roast chicken (currently brining its little juices out in the garage fridge), served with sauteed baby chard from Nootka Rose farm on Waldron Island, and I’m chilling out and reading some Rorty with Rebecca’s radishes from Blue Moon Farm on Waldron as well, along with several olive mixes, my homemade pickled vegetables, and the Perfect Manhattan.  And by the way, Rebecca’s radishes are some of the best I’ve ever had — I’ve never described a radish as sweet and juicy, but these are just dripping with internal juice but still with a good bite.  Dipped into sea salt they’re incredible.

I’ll get to the Manhattan later. First, I have to remember to recommend Vessel in Seattle. I’d hemmed and hawed about going in since it always seemed to be packed, but Madden and I hit the joint on a Monday night last week and immediately went nutty about the selection of rare, interesting, hard-to-find, and homemade items. They make their own bitters! The bartender responded to our boyish enthusiasm by immediately making us taste all the homemade bitters and herbal tinctures, and furthered the process of getting us thoroughly drunk which I’d begun by making Manhattans at the apartment and then having rose champagne and Charmes-Chambertin at Campagne. I recommend proceeding to Vessel at once and asking for anything made with their house-made bitters. Oh, and try the two vodkas from Sub Rosa in Oregon: saffron and tarragon. Madden preferred the saffron and I preferred the tarragon but both were stellar. Not sure they’re available up here commercially yet but I’ll find some.

Yesterday I ran across a bag of key limes at the store, just normal supermarket stuff, and thought, "I should do preserved key limes, like preserved lemons." Madden is making preserved lemon marmalade on the new menu at Steps, and all three of my favorite olive mixes at PFI involve preserved lemons, so the idea of soaking citrus in salt for three weeks is pretty much in my wheelhouse. So I have a big jar of cross-cut key limes soaking in strong brine with bay leaves and black peppercorns. Sometime in early May I’ll figure out a use for these guys….

But the original point of the post was to say that I’d finally perfected the Manhattan, at least from my standpoint. Long, long ago I worked hard on Martini making; in fact, that’s pretty much all I remember about my master’s degree. To this day, I keep a shaker and two glasses in the freezer, since thorough chilling of everything involved keeps the gin (yes, Martinis are made of GIN) from watering down when it hits the ice in the shaker (and a strict 5:1 ratio with good Noilly Prat vermouth or better should be observed).

But I digress. The perfect Manhattan turns out to involve replacing 1/3 or 1/4 of the sweet vermouth (again, Noilly Prat is my favorite, the Italians don’t make good vermouth, at least that we see over here) with a good dark Amaro. Amaros are Italian herbal bitters, the most common of which is Fernet Branca in the States. Fernet is a bit too dark and medicinal for this application, but you can do 1/5th Fernet for the same effect and keep more of the vermouth.

The absolute best Amaro for this job (and for drinking straight) is the Amaro Santa Maria al Monte, which comes into the Seattle area in miniscule quantities that you have to fight restaurants for. It’s gorgeous, herbal, complexly flavored stuff, and it gives the Manhattan a bit of an edge but nothing medicinal. In bars in Seattle, the lighter Amaro Nonino is more popular as a Manhattan addition but I think it’s too sweetly similar to the vermouth to be much use.

Well, it’s almost time to roast a chicken. More later.

Yesterday was "Great 1980′s Wines" as a theme, and the group dug reasonably deep and came up with some good stuff.  My 1988 Raveneau Vaillons Chablis to start was slightly oxidized and we’ve all had better bottles; you win some and lose some.  Highlights were the 1980 Jaboulet La Chapelle, which was mellow, pretty, but with some spice and weight left, the 1988 La Chapelle (superb), and a slightly advanced bottle of the 1989 Aldo Conterno Barolo Cicala (absolutely superb, despite being a little mature for its age). 

Probably the wines of the day for me were the 1982 Montrose Bordeaux, of which I still had a bit left and am sipping on while I write this a day later.  Incredible — beautiful Bordeaux nose, but lacking the brutality and tannins of the 1970 and 1990 Montrose, the latter of which probably won’t be ready to drink in my lifetime. 

Tonight I’m having dinner (paella!) with another group of friends, and I’m bringing some old Spanish wines to go with the dinner, and a special appetizer.  I don’t have the bottles in front of me here, but there are two 1976 Riojas, and a 1970 Marques de Riscal Rioja.  I’m planning to finish things off with a 1910 Solera Pedro Ximinez sherry — a bunch of it hit the market some years back at very reasonable prices.

But the exciting thing for me will be an appetizer — a small slab of thinly sliced Jamon Iberico "reserva" — the fabled pinnacle of serrano hams, aged 24 months and only recently imported into the United States.  I’ll let you google for the going rate on a whole leg of Jamon Iberico, but let’s just say that you can fly to Europe and eat it cheaper, probably.  I have 4 precious ounces of the stuff, and I’m looking forward to sharing it with folks (and saving a little slice for Madden at Steps) tonight.

Then it’s back up the island to hunker down for a few days and bang out some simulation results.  I’m doing most of my numerical work on Amazon EC2 clusters these days, so I don’t have to worry about where I am or whether I have computers available, which is sweet.  I’ll post more after the old Riojas and the Jamon Iberico…