Justin Dunham

's journal about making things

Leftover magic

Filed under: Cooking Journal — Tags: , , — Justin Dunham on June 28, 2011

Eggs benedict with the soup in place of hollandaise.

The soup.

I’ve blogged before about this thick, almost unsettingly rich avocado soup. It’s delicious, and not that hard to make, but it’s difficult to consume it all within a reasonable time since the flavor is not very complex – I guess what I’m saying is that it gets a little boring.

Repurposing is helpful. As you might know, hollandaise sauce is made with egg yolks, butter and lemon. It turns out that the avocado soup (the main constituents of which are avocadoes, chicken stock and lime juice) substitutes for it pretty well, so you can make a version of eggs benedict with it that tastes awesome. The lime juice takes the place of the lemon juice, and the chicken stock and avocadoes both provide the savoryness that you associate with butter, while the avocado also gives thickness.

I’ve found that avocadoes are strangely similar to eggs in general – overcooked avocadoes go rubbery when overcooked in a similar way, and avocadoes can sometimes be used in place of eggs; see for example this avocado buttercream recipe.

Guinness-flavored marshmallows

Filed under: Cooking Journal — Tags: , — Justin Dunham on June 27, 2011

The label, designed by yours truly.

Boiling the marshmallow mixture with Guinness syrup.

Ready for distribution. Each label is attached to a bag with 3 or 4 small marshmallows in it.

Back when I wrote about participating in the homebrew competition with my friend David, I briefly mentioned some Guinness-flavored marshmallows that I made. I wanted to talk a little more about them, and the process of designing and producing them.

To make the marshmallows, I took Alton Brown’s recipe, but instead of using water, I just used Guinness syrup.

What do I mean by Guinness syrup? I mean I took 2 cups of Guinness, boiled it down to 1 cup, then used that whereever the recipe called for water. I could have actually made less of the syrup – since making a syrup is part of the process of making marshmallows anyway, but it seemed easier this way.

Other than that, I treated them as normal marshmallows – boiled the Guinness, sugar and corn syrup combination, poured it over a bowl containing gelatin and Guinness syrup, and then beat for about 10 minutes. The marshmallows did come out a lot less fluffy than usual. This was actually fine (though as a result I had to make very small ones), but I am working on improving the recipe.

After the marshmallows were done, I decided to play on the theme of our beer, which was called Occam’s Razor after the philosophical maxim – and our desire to take direct responsibility for any faults in our beer (“if the beer’s no good, the simplest explanation is that we’re no good”).

So I called them Pascal’s Wager. Pascal’s Wager says that you should choose to believe in God, because if there is a God and you are right, you gain eternal life in Heaven, whereas if there is no God, you lose nothing. The alternative, choosing not to believe in God, has no upside – if you are right you gain nothing – but huge downside if you are wrong.

I thought that this might be amusing to apply to our marshmallows (and it is true if you think about it – what do you have to lose by trying Guinness-flavored marshmallows?) “Nothing but obscurity” is from Pascal’s description of the uncertainness of the world around him, and also applies to marshmallows, which are air and sugar. I used my best Powerpoint skills (yes, really) to design a kickin’ label.

How did they taste? Pretty good, actually. You get a nice punch of Guinness about five seconds after biting into them. We gave them out to dozens of people, and didn’t get any complaints. The next step will be to try to apply this knowledge to make some marshmallows with other interesting flavors.

 

Mussels Steamed in White Wine… Adventures in Saffron!

Filed under: Cooking Journal — Tags: , , , , — Justin Dunham on June 26, 2011

Keeping the mussels alive overnight: damp cloth, bags of ice

Saffron threads.

Steamed mussels!

Served in broth.

This bread needs no explanation.

Who hasn’t had a deeply satisfying dish of moules frites? Or mussels in some other context? If you haven’t, go do that now and come back and read this posting later. It will still be here.

Since I’ve enjoyed mussels so much when I’ve had them – and since they’re really, really cheap and easy to make! – I decided to make a pot for dinner last week. As I often do when I haven’t made something before, I used Ina Garten’s recipe. A quick steam in some white wine, tomatoes, parsley, and saffron, and you’re done! It takes, I dunno, 15 minutes just about? And uh… I’m pretty sure they’re good for you. Probably. I served ‘em with some cornbread for some reason.

Here are a couple of interesting things that come up while making this dish, however:

Using saffron.
My fiancee’s mother very kindly bought me a bunch of incredible herbs and spices last year – whole nutmeg, vanilla beans, even juniper berries, awesome! (I have not figured out what to make with these yet, other than possibly gin, which I suppose could work). Anyway, I am ashamed to admit that I have been hoarding them since I’m a little afraid to use them. Well, no more; I figured this was as good a time as any to actually use the saffron called for in the dish rather than just leaving it out.

You may or may not know that saffron is well-known among amateurs for two things: (a) its beautiful color, and (b) its price – it’s the most expensive spice by weight, and even if you pay $20 for a little bottle, within the bottle you’ll only get a very tiny bag of the strands. Spice cartel.

It was a little intimidating, and exciting, to actually use this in a dish. I know connoisseurs will think less of me for saying so but… I wasn’t sure what you get for your money. It’s beautiful, don’t get me wrong! The color it imparts is rich and appetizing, especially in a dish like this where the mussels take the color up readily. I’m told it also has the taste of sweet hay. I think the solution is for me to make another batch of mussels without the saffron and see whether I can tell the difference.

Mussels.
Cheap and delicious. But boy, it is difficult to keep these guys alive for long enough to actually consume them. Opinions vary as to the best way to accomplish this, but realize that when you buy a mussel from the store, you are buying something that will – no, must – survive right up until the moment you’re ready to cook it. Mussels don’t like fresh water, warmth, or too little air. But should you keep them on ice in your fridge? Should you put them in bucket of salted water? Something else?

I went for the approach of putting them in a bowl covered by a wet tea towel and some bags of ice (sealed so the water couldn’t get out). I would estimate that about 1/4 of the mussels died overnight, and they seemed to be the ones that had too much access to fresh air – I left some gaps in the tea towel so they could “breathe”. Shows what I know; the best thing would probably have been to cover their bowl completely. Really, the best best thing would have been to buy the day of.

A stock market for cocktails

Filed under: Cooking Journal — Tags: , — Justin Dunham on June 23, 2011

Whole Foods, 2017

Sometimes the most interesting things are right in front of you. Earlier today, I was walking past a local bar and I noticed a sign for the “drink exchange” over the door. I’ve walked by this bar many times before and I’d never seen that sign.

What was really interesting was the logo, which is a ticker tape coming out of a martini glass. It turns out that the Drink Exchange is actually a system that bars can buy that allows stock-market-like pricing of drinks (and other things, if requested).

What does this mean? For example, let’s say the price of a gin and tonic is $5 (I obviously do not live in New York anymore). The price can fluctuate over the course of the evening, and the system displays the price history and current price on a screen in the bar. Bartenders can also simulate a “stock market crash” in which all drinks become extremely cheap, to get patrons to buy.

There are a few interesting things about this idea.

First, the ways in which it does not work like a stock exchange. As far as I can tell, the demand for particular drinks has very little to do with the price; it’s just a random change or one that’s promotionally motivated. It would arguably be much more interesting if the prices fluctuated with demand, although of course this makes very little sense when resources are not constrained (a bar shouldn’t have a limited supply of vodka, for example).

Amusingly, one of the commenters posted that “You literally have a ‘stock market’ on certain nights, where if people drink more of a particular beer, it becomes cheaper!” No. That is not how a stock market works. I worry about this one.

Second, what effect this has on sales and margins. By getting people to focus on price, does the bar do well on volume or does it lose out on margin? The site notes that the drink exchange increases sales by 3000%… that tells you very little about the effect on profitability. If you click through to their chart, it’s not clear that the scale is meaningful; on an average night patrons purchase half a Bud Light? Very small N (statistical sample) here.

Third, the applicability of this idea to other sales contexts. What if you were in a supermarket and you could bid on tomatoes? Or books at a bookstore? Wharton uses auctions to allocate seats in popular classes, but the system is being used appropriately (if perhaps not always fairly) to allocate scarce resources; tomatoes shouldn’t be scarce at a grocery store. Would this be an effective promotional strategy? Would it be an effective allocative strategy for items that sell out? What if Apple just auctioned off all of its new iPhones on the day they came out, rather than having people wait in line?

Thinking more about subconscious info processing

Filed under: Everything Else — Tags: , — Justin Dunham on June 19, 2011

I was just reading this (actually rather touching) post by Fred Wilson on subconscious problem-solving. Basically, Fred talks about an experience that many have had: working on a problem slowly over time seems to allow your brain to work more efficiently, and come up with better solutions, than if you try to cram in all the work at the end.

Fred attributes this to “subconscious information processing”; your brain keeps working on a problem even when you’re not thinking about it.

It reminded me of the very first time I ever did work in advance (yes, really). It was early in high school, and up to that point I had almost always been able to do work the night before and get an excellent grade. That included studying for tests, writing essays, you name it. This ability was starting to flag, though, and so were my grades. I had just learned about an essay assignment, and my father suggested to me that I try writing a draft of the essay two nights in advance.

This strategy worked – I almost immediately went back to getting As instead of Bs. And in fact, the further in advance I did work for my various classes, the easier it seemed to be to do well. In college, it got to the point that I’d pull late nights for Greek Composition exams a week in advance, and then sleep regularly, and study moderately, in the nights immediately preceding the exam.

I can think of a couple of explanations for this phenomenon in addition to Fred’s (correct) analysis. I think preparing further in advance also:

  • Reduces anxiety. Too much anxiety has a negative effect on learning and eventual performance. Preparing earlier allows you to (1) learn earlier in your preparation process how much work you need to do, so you can more easily budget your time, (2) return later to any overwhelming aspect of your preparation, (3) wait out low energy levels and bad moods.
  • Gives you time to ask questions. This is related to the idea of “subconscious information processing”, but not only do you build more interconnects between the data, you also are able to look more critically at where the gaps are in your knowledge so you can fill them in. (This is related to the anxiety point as well; if you know you have the time to solve a problem, you’re more willing to acknowledge it).

Ironically, as I get older I am learning that I need to unlearn this lesson a little bit. If you start working on every problem right away, it’s easy to spend time on unimportant ones. It’s a useful skill to be able to put together a last-minute job where appropriate.

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