Do you like shrimp chips? I love them, wonderfully crispy if not much of a shrimp flavor.
They start out looking like something you might use in a poker game:
But after a few seconds (that’s all it takes!) in 350 degree oil, they puff up and rise to the surface:
Yum!
I had one lone cha gio (Vietnamese spring roll with pork and shrimp) and a few pork dumplings left in my freezer. Normally the dumplings would be boiled, but I decided to deep fry them along with the cha gio.
But, you ask, how did the dumplings taste?
Delicious. I love the texture of boiled dumplings, but this was a nice alternative.
The hotel I grew up in had a drugstore next door, and it had a rack of magazines, plus one of those revolving metal displays with paperbacks.
When the items didn’t sell, the druggist had only to tear off their covers and send them back to the distributor to get credit. The de-covered remains went into his garbage . . .
. . . which my sister and I raided regularly. I saved the fairly salacious “true crime ‘n’ sex” tabloids for the occasional visit from my mom, and Sis took the romances, but all the science fiction was mine.
So I ended up with a bunch of paperbacks with their front covers torn off. What to do? Rebind them with a bit of cloth, cardboard, paper, flour paste, and elbow grease. A particular favorite, cleverly rebound in orange cloth:
Notice my attention to detail:
What IS very surprising is that even with flour paste, most of the bindings are absolutely fine after 40+years.
On first reading the book, I was extremely annoyed by the Nadsat (mostly Russian-derived slang) and not knowing the exact meaning of each word, but this copy had a handy glossary, so I started to annotate it:
That quickly became tiresome, so I just went with the flow . . . you can get enough of the sense from the context, and the exact meaning is pretty much irrelevant. Although this is sort of an artificial example, it was my first inkling that authors can deliberately use ambiguity as part of their style.
The second one is from a trip to Spain in 1982.
I never got through it, my poor Spanish plus Nadsat, although in retrospect the translations are pretty obvious (droogs -> drugos, rassoodocks -> rasodoques).
The third I bought before seeing the movie.
It’s the script of the film, heavily illustrated with stills. 13 y.o. old me was madly in lust with bad boy Alex, especially when he got naked:
The only thing in my fridge that was evenly remotely fresh was some cabbage, some carrots, and a bit of broccoli that for not-a-root-vegetable, was surprisingly resilient.
The rest from the freezer:
Make some sauce. I over-sauteed some garlic, then added the flour, some cumin and chili powder (4 Tbsp. fat to 4 Tbsp. flour to 2 C. liquid).
Make some tomato sauce:
I made two fillings. One, vaguely Mexican, which I liked the last time I made it, was chicken, corn, beans, and a bit more cumin:
With sauce:
The other was the parboiled veggies & chicken, plus sauce after this pic:
Hélas! I hadn’t been careful with the flour tortillas in the freezer, and they got a bit broken:
So ended up with mini-enchiladas (and ran out of tortillas and had to use some injera):
But . . .
Pandemic Enchiladas and Sauerkraut on a Broken Plate:
I easily fell in love with Frank Kozik’s “Smorkin’ Labbit” series. Since then, he’s turned it into an industry, with (probably) hundreds of variations.
These are from the early days:
W/ his buddies:
The 10″ boy glows in the dark, not any easy pic to take:
I bought a second of the biggun, meant as a gift that didn’t work out. They are now going for about $1,500. Anyone want it? Free but you pay shipping costs!
As always, I’m a bit excited to get a new bit of audio kit.
I don’t like headphones. The kinds on soft cords that you stick in your ears never worked for me. Possibly I have an oddly shaped right ear canal, because that one always fell out.
I don’t like “over the ear models” because they make my ears sweat.
The absolute ideal was a Sony model that had a strap that went over your head, and two small (3/4″ ?) disks that it held to your ears. But they stopped making it, and I’ve never been able to find a substitute. So I’ve resigned myself to the over-the-ear type.
And I don’t particularly like how headphones make music sound. For me, the gold standard is speakers and a decent sound system:
But often I’m lazy and want to listen on my tablet, so for a long time I had these cheap ($22) Chinese headphones:
The ear cushions kept falling off, and eventually the left channel died completely. Time for a replacement!
A Google search on “best cheap headphones” led me to these ($30):
Potential pad problem averted via adapter:
For an additional $8, these seem pretty sturdy, well built, and there’s no way the pads can fall off.
But, you ask, how did they sound?
Honestly, it was kind of like night and day. The treble in the previous ones was fairly harsh. Here it’s much clearer and more pleasant. The bass, instead of being restricted to a limited range, seems to cross octaves. So all in all, this is much better balanced, and I’m giving it a big thumbs up.
PiL’s second best single, which went screaming straight to the top of the UK charts, sort of.
When Keith Levene left the band in 1983, John Lydon scrapped all the original sessions and had everything re-recorded for what would eventually become This Is What You Want . . . This Is What You Get. Meanwhile, Levene paid out of his own pocket for 10,000 copies of the U.S.-only semi-bootleg Commercial Zone, featuring the original recordings.
There was a later re-pressing in a black sleeve, differently sequenced, with re-named and sometimes slightly different versions of the songs, which Virgin tried to quash.
The original recording of Love Song oddly ended up on the B-side of the official 12″ single, noted as a remix, although it wasn’t one.
The 7″ version is different.
Then it all gets a bit complicated . . .
The songs on CZ are understandably more spare and stripped-down than those on TIWYW. Of the five songs that overlap, the versions on CZ are IMO better, and the remaining four songs better than the extraneous songs on TIWYW. I have a particular fondness for “Lou Reed pt. 1,” which seems like a gentle parody of the VU: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGlvq16ry34
Once again I haven’t been to the grocery store for almost six weeks, down to stems ‘n’ seeds, but still managed to come up with a pretty good pizza.
Pandemic considerations aside, I decided to keep the flavors simple, a basic sauce with just garlic and a bit of dried basil, ricotta, and three seasons of goodness.
Step 1: Make the Dough
Stir together 1-1/2 C. sourdough starter, 1-1/2 C. flour, one Tbsp. olive oil and 1 tsp. salt. Add water or flour as needed to make a pliable but not sticky dough.
IMPORTANT!: Chill the dough in the fridge for an hour.
My ginormous 16″ non-stick pizza pan has now become sticky, so I used a piece of parchment paper, lightly oiled.
(Not in the pan, on a flat surface) place the dough on the parchment paper, then roll it out to the size of the pan. Put the paper/dough back into the pan, and roll back any extra edging:
Bake at 525 for ten minutes or until lightly browned.
Step 2: Make the Sauce
While the dough is chilling, make the sauce. Very simple, just some sautéed garlic, tomatoes, and dried basil.
I like my tomato sauce a little bit chunky, so this is perfect:
It’s “Signature,” which is Safeway’s generic brand. Usually very reliable, but this time it was pretty bland, so I added in some of their Crushed Tomatoes, which has a much more tomato-y flavor.
Simmer for at least 20 minutes.
Step 3: Make the Rigot‘ (Ricotta)
(Note: I made a double batch) Heat 2 quarts of milk to 200 degrees (if you don’t have a thermometer, heat it until it’s steamy and just starts to bubble up). Remove from the heat, then add 1/2 tsp. citric acid dissolved in 1 Tbsp. water, or 1/3 C. lemon juice or 1/3 C. white vinegar. Stir, then leave undisturbed for 10 minutes. You should get a curd like this:
If you don’t, add some more of the coagulating agent, and wait again.
Strain it through cheesecloth for a couple of minutes, then tie the corners of the cheesecloth and allow it to drain for 30 minutes or so:
Now you’re ready! Spread the sauce and ricotta on the crust.
Now add the toppings. I did three sections, mixed cheeses; chicken, sautéed onion and corn; and breakfast (bacon and an egg). Eggs on pizza are so good!
Bake for 20 minutes, then rotate the pan and bake for an additional 10 minutes, or until done to your liking.
But . . .
The crust was done and crispy, but the top wasn’t done, so I put on the broiler for 4 minutes.
Disaster, it was burnt. I did manage to salvage some of it by picking off the burnt bits, but it wasn’t great.
So, determined, I made basically the same pizza the next day. I had leftover sauce and the ricotta, so that saved a lot of time.
What could possibly go wrong?!?
It’s always something. 🙁
It was fine yesterday, but my oven died. Even after two hours, it never got above 200 degrees or so.
It’s on its three-hour “clean,” cycle, which I’m hoping will fix it.
So my only choice was to use this:
. . . which is significantly smaller, so I had to divide the pizza into four:
That meant, of course, that I had to pre-bake each section separately, and again bake each section separately after the toppings were added, which took forever. I did make some upgrades, more sauce, tossed the chicken in some hoisin and added some scallions, added blue to the cheese, and since I had a new section, devoted that to broccoli.
The counter oven doesn’t get above 450, so the edges didn’t get properly brown, but even so, the crust was both crispy and a bit chewy, and this turned out very good, one of my best pizza attempts so far.
The eternal dilemma: What to do with the discards when you feed your sourdough starter? A: Make sourdough crackers.
This recipe is a doddle, if a bit labor intensive. Simple ingredients, but you need a pastry blender, a rolling pin, and a pastry brush and a rolling pizza cutter are very helpful.
Ingredients:
4 Tbps. butter, at room temperature (IMPORTANT!)
1/2 tsp. sea/kosher salt, or scant 1/2 tsp. regular salt
1 C. flour (Any kind. I used atta, which is Indian buckwheat flour, but unlike many Western whole wheat flours, is ground very finely)
1 C. sourdough starter discards
(Optional) 2 Tbsp. of dried herbs or grated cheese of your choice. I’m using these crackers for cheese, so wanted to keep the taste fairly neutral, and didn’t add either.
Oil (any kind, for brushing)
More salt (for sprinkling)
Method:
Using the pastry blender, combine the flour, salt and butter until you have a fairly homogeneous mix. This will take about 3-4 minutes.
Stir in the sourdough discard. Add water or flour as needed. You want a dough that is pliable but not sticky.
On a floured surface, pat the dough into two rectangles (try to get them more equal than I did), then wrap them in plastic wrap and refrigerate them for an hour. DO NOT skip the refrigeration, it’s your key to success!
Preheat the oven to 350F.
Flour a piece of parchment paper, your rolling pin, and the dough.
And roll it out. Thinness (1/16″) is your friend here, but it’s okay if it’s thicker. The thinner the dough, the crispier the cracker.
Brush lightly with oil.
Sprinkle with salt. Using a knife (but much easier with a pizza cutter) cut the dough into squares of your preferred size. Or go nutz and make some diamonds!
IMPORTANT! Prick the crackers with the tines of a fork. If you don’t, they will puff up in the oven, and it will hard to balance the cheese on them.
Bake for 12 minutes, then rotate the pan front-to-back and bake for a further 12 minutes, or until they are golden brown (these are a bit over-done, could have done with a minute less). Allow to cool.
They will keep just fine in a sealed container at room temperature for a week or so.
From top, clockwise: My First Blue, Jarlsberg, Gorgonzola Piccante, Shropshire Blue, Ricotta Salata, Appenzeller:
