Adam Kuban: Kublog

Just putting this up out of a sense of completism. There is nothing to report today. There’s no apparent activity with the starter. Hence no photo. It does not smell like anything other than flour.

I picked up Tartine Bread over the weekend after seeing my buddy John Wozniak rave about it on Twitter. I’ve been meaning to find a great book on naturally leavened bread, and this seemed a good candidate. After reading the first chapter and coming to an understanding of the recipe, I felt I could justifiably start the “Basic Country Bread.” To make it, you’ve first got to grow a starter.

King Arthur whole wheat– and white bread flours.

The recipe advises you to mix up 5 pounds of 50-50 white and whole wheat flour. Then fill a small clear bowl halfway with lukewarm water. To that, add flour and mix by hand until you get a thick batter:

Photo: Claire Lui

I’ve read from a bunch of Slice commenters that it’s a bit of a myth that wild yeast just sort of floats from the air into your starter. Yes, some of it does, but most of the yeast that’s going to inoculate your starter is already on the wheat and in the flour. That’s what Tartine Bakery owner (and the book’s author) Chad Robertson echoes in these pages. But he also notes that some of the yeast comes from the baker’s hands. Which is why, I’m guessing, he has you mix this batter by hand. Even though it’s a bit messy and prevented me from personally shooting pics of myself going at it.

I actually used a whisk for most of the mixing — until the batter thickened enough that I wasn’t constantly having to add more flour to the bowl.

The waiting is the hardest part.

Once it was thick enough (top), I covered it with a clean kitchen towel and placed it in a cool, dark place, as advised. As a nod to Tartine Bakery’s location, I used our San Francisco–theme towel. Now it’s a matter of waiting two to three days while the starter comes to life.

The wife and I joined a CSA this year (Harvest Astoria). We’ve managed to cook through most of our haul each week (we’re in the third week right now), with the help of some good recipes. I figured since I’ve collected these anyway, I might as well share with all three of my readers.

I should note that Harvest Astoria also publishes a recipe exchange on its blog, which is quite useful.

Garlic Scapes

Garlic scapes are curlycue stalks that would otherwise sprout flowers. Farmers cut them before they do so the growth doesn't rob the bulb of nutrients and it can grow big.

I’m not sure how much longer we’ll be getting garlic scapes in our weekly share. This is the only item that has rolled over into the next week so far. Only because we weren’t too fond of it in garlic scape pesto, which seems to be the one recipe all the foodos out there wet their pants over every season.

• Garlic Scape Pesto … I made this one. First time I’ve ever made this stuff. We ate it on pasta. I found it to be a bit too spicy and aggressive, though I’ve read it mellows with time. I suppose we’ll find out when we defrost our leftover scape pesto in The Future
• Another Garlic Scape Pesto (Plus some other suggestions, though no real recipes to go along with those suggestions)
• White Bean Dip with Garlic Scapes: Meg Cotner from We Heart Astoria recommended this one to me over on Google+
• Garlic Scape Tart … This looks kind of interesting
• Pickled Garlic Scapes: Angrywayne suggested doing this. It might be our solution to our growing collection of scapes
• Other ideas: My buddy Minty suggested using them as a bed for roasting a fish on. Says it looks beautiful and tastes good, too. I’m also considering cooking them whole on pizza

Swiss Chard

• Basic Sautéed Swiss Chard: This uses just the leaves. Reserve the stalks for something else … maybe …
• Sautéed Swiss Chard Ribs with Cream and Pasta … I made this and the one just above tonight. The chard rib recipe is killer rich. Watch it! It’s good, though. Damn.
• Cream Grits and Chard: Bookmarking this one. The wife loves grits
• Lidia Bastianich’s Swiss Chard and Crostata: This one sounds good, too
• Chard with Potatoes and Tomatoes

Fava Beans

I've read that the reason you see fava beans used more as an accent in many restaurants is that they're a pain to deal with in the shucking.

• Grilled Fava Beans: Fava beans are apparently a pain in the ass to cook. I wouldn’t know. The first and only time I’ve cooked them (so far) was after reading this recipe. You eat them like edamame, first popping them out of their pods and then slipping them out of their whitish skins. Makes for messy fingers. Lick them clean, if you’re among people who don’t care about your heathen ways
• Fava Bean and Brown Rice Salad: This is probably good if you want to poop. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t made it yet
• Mushroom Risotto with Asparagus and Fava Beans: Michael Natkin used to write a vegetarian column for SE, which I thought was spectacular. I miss that guy. This recipe looks promising

Pole Beans (Romano Beans)

Our CSA labeled the beans we got as “pole beans,” but I could not find that many recipes for “pole beans.” It wasn’t until I saw them called Romano beans that a world of recipes opened up to me…

• Grilled Pole Beans: Heck, the grilled fava beans were such a hit (with me anyway), that these seem like they’d be a good variation on the theme
• Garlicky Romano Beans: Looks simple yet flavorful, with its rosemary-infused olive oil and breadcrumbs
• Braised Romano Beans
• Zuni Romano Beans: I’ve never eaten at the SF restaurant Zuni. But I have heard GREAT things. I’m clipping this recipe to try against that hype. Warning: This takes a while

The taps for soda water at the Queens Kickshaw.

Claire and I had dinner at the Queens Kickshaw for the first time last night. Preliminary report: great stuff. But what I want to draw your attention to is the fact that they have sparkling water on tap there — and it’s free.

Yes! We hadn’t yet tasted the food and already I loved this place.

Complimentary soda water. On tap. How often have you had that at a restaurant? It’s a small luxury that probably costs the Queens Kickshaw pennies.* Very classy — and smart. That cost is probably recouped a thousand times over from a customer loyalty standpoint. Read the rest of this entry »

Stellar is a nifty social-web thingamajig built by uberblogger Jason Kottke. It aggregates “favorites” from a number of familiar social-media sources — so far Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Vimeo. When one of the folks you follow on Stellar favorites something, it appears in your “flow.” What you end up with is a Twitter-like stream of images, videos, and tweets — all collected in one single place.

You may be asking how it’s different from, say, Twitter. The truth is that it’s very similar on the surface but different enough in a very fundamental and interesting way — at least so far. It’s essentially filtering and surfacing the best of the best stuff that your friends and followed are looking at or producing.

I’ve been using it for 3 weeks now and am kind of addicted to it. It reminds me a lot of Twitter circa 2006–2007, when it was more personal and had a higher signal-to-noise ratio — back before it became the brand-pimping behemoth it is today. (To be fair, if you’re careful about who you follow on Twitter and keep that list small, you’re probably still getting a more personal experience.)

It’s also similar to Twitter 1.0 in the fact that it’s very simple. There aren’t a lot of bells and whistles to it — but the fact that it can back-favorite things across all the services it pulls from is pretty slick.

Small network of interesting people

I oversee six different Twitter accounts at Serious Eats — and then there’s my personal account. Between all those, I follow a lot of bloggers, writers, websites, chefs, etc., all of whom are trying to get attention for their posts, products, restaurants, what have you. Are all those links going to be worth clicking on? Of course not. But the majority of the items that come through my Stellar flow truly are clickworthy.

Granted, there doesn’t seem to be a huge number of people yet to follow on Stellar, and I’m only following 39, so things are naturally bound to be quieter there. Unlike Twitter, though, where I often feel compelled to follow people back across all accounts (even my personal) for “political” reasons (fostering/maintaining goodwill with the foodie community), on Stellar, I think I’m going to focus more on following people I find truly interesting and hope in turn that their favorites are clicked with sincerity.

Favoriting behavior affected

That brings me to an interesting point. I’ve seen a number of my friends & followeds mention in tweets that using Stellar has changed how they favorite things. It’s affected my favoriting behavior as well:

• I’ve favorited more things on Twitter and Flickr in the last 3 weeks than I have in the last 3 years*: Prior to using Stellar, I think I had starred a total of 3 tweets — and most of my Flickr faves were just “bookmarks” of pizza crap I wanted to come back to later. Now that faving these items shares them with my friends, I’m using that feature several times a day. But I’ve also noticed that…
• I do most of my favoriting from Stellar: Because I find much more faveworthy stuff on Stellar than in my Twitter feeds, I often end up starring stuff on Stellar visits. This essentially is a snowball effect — and it means one of my friends has to have found the thing first
• I am more conscious about what I fave now, too, knowing that there’s now a page that aggregates all the stuff I’ve liked across various networks
• Sometimes, when I’m really bored, I look for great stuff to fave in the hopes that my Stellar friends will pile on a snowball that I’ve started. (This rarely happens, though)
• Favoriting as a form of retweeting: Sometimes I just favorite things knowing my core of Stellar friends are going to see them. Sometimes that’s enough

* FWIW, I actually joined Flickr in August 2004 and Twitter (as @Slice, before opening my own account as @akuban) in November 2006,** so I’ve been using both more than 3 years. I just liked the parallelism of 3 weeks vs. 3 years — and the comparison still holds up.

** Officially the @Slice account registers as having been opened in March 2007, but that’s because I quit Twitter after a couple months and then rejoined a couple months later. Thank goodness @Slice was still available.

Stellar as a measure of wit

Like most people on Stellar, I suspect, I visit my Best Of page compulsively, secretly hoping people favorite a tweet of mine I think is especially witty or a photo I think is really strong. (This rarely happens, though.)

Trends are emerging

It’s not like I’m using any sort of analytics to measure Stellar trends (I’m sure Kottke is, though), but what I’ve noticed just from browsing day to day is that I can pretty accurately predict who among my friends & followeds has favorited an item before I even scroll down to the “Liked by” line.

• Baby-related: Jake Dobkin and David Jacobs
• Cycling: Matt Haughey
• Cocktails and concerts: Kathryn Yu
• Entrepreneurship: David Jacobs, Anil Dash, Wayne Surber
• Apps: Anil Dash, Marco Arment
• Prince: Anil Dash

I’m also surprised when I look at the faves of some people and see they’re relatively free of the things I most associate with them. Software developer Cabel Sasser*, for instance, doesn’t really favorite a lot of stuff that has to do with software dev. Mule design director Mike Monteiro doesn’t fave a lot of design things — but his flow is expectedly acerbic.

I would also point out that my own Faves have very little to do with pizza, despite what you might otherwise expect.

I should note that folks like Cabel Sasser or Marco Arment, who have an alphanumeric string in their Stellar profile URLs, seem to be people who are not members of Stellar but who have been placed on the network as follow candidates anyway — presumably by Jason or some sort of algorithm and presumably to give a larger pool of interesting people to follow. Trying to root out trends in their favoriting behavior is more problematic than usual as they are likely favoriting without mind toward how the Stellar community will receive them. They are, essentially, the observed, unaware of the observer.

Stellar is a Kottke.org preview

I’ve seen a lot of great stuff on Stellar eventually wind up on Kottke.org a few hours later or the next day. I can see why Jason built this thingamajigie. And if that’s not the reason why he built it, it’s interesting to see how closely the creation mirrors its creator — for now, that is. Stellar is still a closed community while it’s in beta — so the folks on there are only a degree or three away from Jason. Makes sense that the material surfacing there reflects his taste.

Jason better watch out! He might be building an auto-generating Kottkebot.

My Stellar.io Wishlist

I like the simplicity of Stellar, but there are at least two wishlist items I keep wanting to see …

• Filter: Would have been nice during SXSWi and surrounding the launch of that Color app thingy. I realize it would be difficult to filter things and maybe the filter is “STOP FOLLOWING XYZ-PERSON.” But whatever. A guy can dream
• Retweet option from Stellar page: Sometimes favoriting something for my friends to see is enough. But sometimes I’d like to RT something straight from Stellar. Yeah, I know I can click the “#” to go to the original item and RT it from there. But, hey, I’m lazy, too, and I like instant gratification

Anyway. Those are just a few of my thoughts on Stellar.

Great advice here from food writer Monica Bhide:

I had a student, a few years ago, who told he wanted to focus on being vegan as his platform. Great. But then I noticed that all the assignments he turned in, and all the time that he and I spoke, his real interest was in cooking with eggs. He was a great proponent of humanely grown eggs and how to use them in different dishes. Hmmm. So, I asked. “But that is not a hot topic right now,” was the sad reply. I had to ask him if he was truly ready to go without his fave ingredient and talk on a topic that he did not care about. It sounds silly, but think about it: if he wrote great articles and vegan became his platform, guess what? People would want him to talk to them about this topic all the time. ALL THE TIME. Was that something he really, really wanted to spend his life talking about? The answer, which came a few months later, was a no.

My passion is telling stories. I tell stories through food. My food writing is rarely about food. If you have read any of my work, I am sure you are smiling. Sure, I write service stories and I am appreciative of those as they help pay my bills. But my true passion, my true calling (at least in my eyes) is telling stories. If I don’t stay true to that and start talking from tomorrow about the issues of sustainability (just because it is a hot topic), I am staying true neither to my craft nor to my readers.

[via IndyGal on Serious Eats]

From left: Crust not stretched thin enough, and one stretched just about right.

Having finally found a couple dough recipes that yield great at-home pizza with no “hacks,” I kinda don’t need to experiment anymore. But what fun would life be without futzing with something that works?

Read the rest of this entry »

[This photo is part of my 2011 Picture a Day project »]

I’m trying to perfect my recipe for chile-infused honey before posting it on Slice. Credit where due: It is 100% inspired by Mike’s Hot Honey, which is available online or from the bar at Paulie Gee’s.

I’m playing with the spice levels. The honey on its own is pretty damn hot. But on a recent pizza I drizzled it on, it wasn’t overpowering. The wife, though, said that the honey (again, on its own) was all heat — that it lost any other flavor components. On the pizza, though, I was able to discern the sweetness it added, and the spiciness was a slow burn. So I might be at the right power level. Still, I want to tweak before posting the definitive recipe.

I’m also a bit concerned about food safety issues. My original source for the technique was actually Serious Eats (imagine that!). But the commenters there brought up the possibility of botulism spores growing in the anaerobic environment of the honey.

Mike’s Hot Honey, I suspect, gets around this by using vinegar (you’ll see it listed on the label). From what I’ve read, heating the honey to 185°F for five minutes should be enough to kill any botulism microbes that could later produce botulism spores. To play it safe, I’d say that you should probably consume this honey within a few days of making it and trash any remaining at the end of a week.

From left: Instant dry yeast, flour, salt, sourdough starter, (water not pictured).

My shipment of King Arthur Sir Lancelot flour came in yesterday, so I made pizza dough last night. I’m probably the worst at using the scientific method to find out what’s wrong with my pizza. I don’t really “control” for anything and end up changing the dough recipe, flour, kneading technique, and/or cooking method (any or all of those) from one pizza night to the next. With these ingredients I ended up using the Jeff Varasano dough recipe with KASL flour. I’ll probably do the skillet-broiler method for cooking when the dough is ready (it’s undergoing a 72-hour cold rise in the refrigerator as I type this.

Note, in case the wife is reading this: I did not use our Epices Roellinger sea salt in this dough. The recipe calls for 18 grams (about 1.5 tablespoons) — that’s too much to use such a precious commodity on. (We got it in Cancale, France, on our honeymoon, so it’s got sentimental as well as flavor value.)

* If you’ve noticed that I skipped 1/10/2010, it’s because the photo was pretty lame. I don’t think I’m going to blog every “Year in Photos” photo here on Kublog. My 365 Photos 2011 set on Flickr will serve as the official repository of year-in-photos images.

** Water not pictured.

These types of stations in Brooklyn are always interesting. I like how you can see the cutaway — how there’s subway life going on below a building or houses. The people in the windows above are probably quite oblivious to the comings and goings of the riders below them.