Quick Tomato Salad

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Since I now need to harvest all of my tomatoes before the cool nights cause them to split (not to mention the basil, tarragon and Vietnamese coriander), dinner pretty much every night in the Iron Chef household is going to consist of something tomatoish. A nice, quick and easy recipe is a tomato salad. It is cool and refreshing for those remaining few warm evenings and it is quick and simple if you don’t want to think about putting together something elaborate.

The Software
½ cucumber, seeds removed, cut into ¼ inch pieces
¼ cup onion, sliced thin or cut into ¼ inch pieces
¾ lb. tomatoes, cut into ½ inch pieces
1 tbsp. basil, minced
1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 ½ tsp. red wine vinegar
Salt
Pepper

DSCN0481 — The finished product in all its tomato happiness.

The Salad
Combine cucumbers, onion, tomatoes, olive oil and vinegar into a bowl. Toss to combine and let stand for 7 minutes on the counter. Add basil and salt and pepper to taste. Serve with a crusty piece of bread to soak up the juices.

Notes
That is it, quick and easy. You can skip the sitting for 7 minutes piece and serve right away, but that will mean your onions will be stronger in flavor and you won’t get the really tasty juice to soak up. You can really add anything you want to this, but in season tomatoes bring much more flavor to the party. If you are using out of season tomatoes, use balsamic vinegar instead of red wine to account for the lack of sweetness in the tomatoes. If you tomatoes are like mine, super sweet, don’t use balsamic – it will be too sweet. The recipe feeds two easily and can be scaled as much as you want.

Copout-gate 2012

By Blaidd Drwg

The NFL ref situation is now beyond ridiculous. Everyone knows about the botched calls at the end of the Seahawks-Packers game that resulted in a Seahawks win.

Well, the NFL decided to release a statement about the game, and, in the biggest copout ever, Roger Goodell said this:

While the ball is in the air, Tate can be seen shoving Green Bay cornerback Sam Shields to the ground. This should have been a penalty for offensive pass interference, which would have ended the game. It was not called and is not reviewable in instant replay.

I am fine with that. It was a play that was missed, although I am less likely to excuse the missed call on the interference based on the lousy calls earlier in the 4th quarter, one of which included Sidney Rice doing everything but stabbing Green Bay DB Sam Shields on a pass play and Shields getting called for pass interference.
The travesty is the NFL won’t admit that the refs and the replay officials got the call wrong on the actual interception:

Replay Official Howard Slavin stopped the game for an instant replay review. The aspects of the play that were reviewable included if the ball hit the ground and who had possession of the ball. In the end zone, a ruling of a simultaneous catch is reviewable. That is not the case in the field of play, only in the end zone.

Referee Wayne Elliott determined that no indisputable visual evidence existed to overturn the call on the field, and as a result, the on-field ruling of touchdown stood. The NFL Officiating Department reviewed the video today and supports the decision not to overturn the on-field ruling following the instant replay review.

I am not really sure which replay the officials were looking at, but there was definitely enough evidence to overturn the call in just about everyone’s opinion. What I suspect this is all really about is the league does not want to give any leverage to the officials that they locked out. By admitting that the replacement refs blew both calls, the locked out officials could use that as leverage in their negotiations.

That being said, I am tired of watching the officials constantly blow calls and get calls wrong, so I won’t be watching another minute of NFL football until the regular refs are back blowing calls weekly.

Update: It appears sometime between the time I wrote this and the time I posted it, the regular refs are going to be back at work.

Baked Potato Bread

by A.J. Coltrane

I thought it would be fun to try combining instant mashed potato into a bread, inspired by this Onion-Potato Focaccia. The catch was, I had two hours from the initial mixing until the bread needed to be out of the oven. Two hours isn’t remotely enough time to naturally develop flavors in the bread, so I loaded the dough with a couple of flavors that go great with a baked potato — sour cream and onion soup mix. The time limit wasn’t going to allow for a focaccia either, so I went with a baguette shape to reduce the process time.

The ingredients:

Ingredient	Weight in Grams
Bread Flour	320
Instant Garlic Mashed Potato	80
Water	220
Sour Cream	80
Lipton Onion Soup Mix	1 package
Active Dry Yeast	2 tsp

The sour cream is about 75% water; the total hydration works out to about 70%. After some staring at the box of onion mix and trying to figure out what a “serving” was and multiplying that by the sodium information I decided the total sodium looked close enough to skip actual “salt” and I’d just see what happened. I did a little “research”, some popular recipes online were using similar ratios of flour to onion soup mix, so I figured it wouldn’t be a total disaster.

I kneaded the dough at low speed for 6 minutes, then covered it and allowed it to rest for 40 minutes. I then shaped it into a baguette and allowed a final proof of 45 minutes. Looking at the surface, I may have vaguely undermixed it.

The baguette then went into a 450F oven for 30 minutes. (In a related note, the silpat is supposed to be rated to 482F, so it was cutting it close.) I removed it from the oven when an instant read thermometer read 200 degrees.

Below is a picture of what happens when you don’t seal the seam very well. It was a fairly wet dough, and once it got on the silpat I didn’t want to degas it too much, so I decided the bit of seam that I saw running down the side of the dough was “good enough”. I shoulda coulda done a better job of tucking the seam on the underside. Oh well.

Three people besides myself ate the bread. I didn’t tell them what was in it. Two correctly guessed the onion, the other correctly guessed the garlic and potato. Nobody got the sour cream, which was hiding behind and the onion and the other stuff. Eating the bread with butter brought out some of the dairy elements of the sour cream; the bread tasted much better with butter — the butter was kind of like the rug that ties the room together.

092012 above — Note the poor expansion on the top. That’s because the side blew out instead.

That makes sense though, doesn’t it? Butter goes great on baked potatoes too. We were just missing the bacon bits.

Beer of the Week: Ommegang Seduction

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Ommegang is a Belgian style brewery nestled in the hills of Cooperstown, NY. They make some pretty fantastic beers, my favorite being Three Philosophers. On this occasion, we cracked a bottle of Seduction, which the Ommegang website describes as:

…is lovingly brewed with six dark malts. Chocolatier Callebut provides the chocolate, while Liefmans brings the cherries. This international romance is consummated with a full body, alluring aromas and flavors of Belgian chocolate, and tart cherries. Seduction is an ale to be lovingly embraced.

Beautiful, rich and smooth, roasty and malty throughout, Seduction offers balanced chocolate-cherry notes, a bit of caramel sweetness, and a long, slow finish. Seduction is welcoming and warm-hearted, gently hopped and harbors no bitterness, leaving only a lingering glow.

6.8% AB

This beer pours jet black with a cream colored head. The nose is dominated by coffee, caramel and toffee, and there is a hit of cocoa there if you look for it. The initial taste yields flavors of chicory, licorice, cloves and spices (predominately cinnamon) with overtones of dark chocolate providing a long, lingering finish (think hot cocoa) and some slight bitterness. There are supposed to be some cherries in the beer, but I didn’t really get any until half way through the glass before hints of cherries started appearing on the finish. We started this beer out at 55 degrees, so I am not sure if there would have been a big difference at 45 degrees on this one.

Seduction will definitely put you under its spell if you like heavily roasted or chocolaty beers. I really enjoyed seduction, but my one issue with it is its price – it runs about $13 for a 750 ml bottle, so it is more of a special occasion beer rather than something to enjoy regularly. I did factor that into my scoring decision. While I enjoyed the beer, I don’t know that it was significantly better than a number of other chocolate beers I enjoy to justify the added cost.

That being said, Ommegang Seduction gets 3 romantic rendezvous out of 5.

High Gluten Flour And The Autolyse Step

by A.J. Coltrane

Bread experts will often recommend an autolyse step when making breads and pizza. Typically this involves combining the flour and water, and perhaps some of the yeast, then letting the flour hydrate for about 20 minutes. Quoting thefreshloaf(dot)com:

How do you use the autolyse technique? Simply combine the flour and water from your recipe in your mixing bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic or a damp towel. Walk away for 20 minutes to half an hour. That’s it.

While you were away the flour was absorbing the water and the gluten strands have begun to develop. Now you can mix in your preferment, your salt, and the remainder of your yeast and, with very little mixing, achieve a high level of development with considerably less work. The crumb of your dough is also likely to come out much whiter since it has not been highly oxidized by all the beating and whipping.

Better bread, less work. What’s to complain about?

Check out the link, it’s an excellent reference.

Historically I’ve mostly used All Purpose (lowish gluten) flour. Recently though, I bought a bag of King Arthur Bread Flour. The KA flour is very high in gluten. I figured I’d try making a pizza using the KA flour and include an autolyse step for even more gluten development.

After the autolyse the dough wasn’t kneading very well in the Kitchenaid, so I removed it partway through for some hand-kneading.

It was like kneading a pot roast, or a big knotted muscle. I now understand why people call it “strong flour”. The dough ball could have done pushups.

I liked the end result. Sopressata and shallots with mozz:

I used the Smitten Kitchen recipe, mostly.

The Curious Case of Aaron Cook

By Bliadd Drwg

Earlier in September, the Red Sox came limping into Seattle, for a pillow fight series against the Mariners. Things have been so bad for the Red Sox this season; they actually had a worse record than the Mariners on September 3^rd, the first game of the season. Normally the Red Sox are a big draw – historically pulling 30,000+ for a weekday series. This year, not so much. The beautiful Labor Day afternoon game drew a whopping 21,000 and the Tuesday and Wednesday games drew 12,700 and 13,000 respectively (although it seemed like there were less people at the Wednesday game).

That Wednesday game, the Red Sox brought out starter Aaron Cook, sporting a stellar 5.35 ERA before that start. What made it more interesting for me were his strikeout and walk stats – entering the game, Cook had struck out 11, walked 12 and given up 10 home runs…in 70.2 innings. That translates into less than 2 strikeouts per 9 innings pitched. That, my friends, is a truly pathetic total. Cook has always been an extreme ground ball pitcher, which probably explains his success when he pitched for Colorado, despite striking out only 3.7 batters per nine. To put that into perspective, my favorite soft tosser, Jamie Moyer averaged 5.4 strikeouts per nine innings over his career. It is hard to survive as a MLB pitcher with a number as low as Cook has posted, but he has somehow managed to do it.

I bring this up for a couple of reasons. First, I wondered if there had been any pitcher who made it through 100 innings and gave up more home runs than strikeouts. I haven’t bothered to look that up yet, so that is for another post. Second, those extremely low numbers set up one of the more bizarre pitching outings I have seen from a truly statistical standpoint.

Coming into the Mariners game, Cook had made 13 starts. Here is the aggregate on the number of strikeouts and walks he has registered per game:

# of Strikeouts	Times	# of Walks	Times
0	7	0	5
1	3	1	6
2	2	3	2
4	1

So Cook managed to strike out 2 or less in 12 out of his first 13 starts. Enter the Seattle game. He gets on a roll early, striking out Trayvon Robinson in the first, meaning his K total exceeds half his previous starts, one inning into the game. In the second, he gets Eric Thames looking, and I am waiting for the plague of locusts to descend on the stadium; two strike outs in two innings? Someone obviously took Aaron Cook’s place on the mound.

The third inning is where it gets really strange. Dustin Ackley leads off and strikes out swinging. At this point I am ready to head for cover as it was due to start raining blood any minute. Trayvon Robinson again strikes out and I am fully expecting the second coming at this point. What are the chances that Aaron Cook, who has struck out 11 batters all season, will actually strike out the side? Pretty good actually. After a couple of walks (more on those in a minute), Jesus Montero struck out swinging to end the inning. The 5K’s in the first 3 innings would be all Cook would get – he would pitch 3 more innings without recording another strikeout.

What’s so interesting about the walks? Well, it means that a guy who has batters put the ball in play 91% of the time, managed to face 5 batters, record 3 outs and not a single one of them managed to put a ball in play.

You never know what you are going to have happen when you come to the ballpark on any given day.

Pinch hitting for Pedro Borbón… Manny Mota…

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Ok, so this post is not really about baseball; I tend to leave that to my friends AJ Coltrane and Blaidd Drwg.

It must be nice to be Harvard. The school has no culinary program, but it does sponsor a lecture series on Science and Cooking. For those of us not fortunate enough to be in Boston, we can still see these lectures streaming (and they eventually get posted to youtube and itunes). Since this series is really as much about science as it is about cooking, the lineup contains some of the heavy hitters in the molecular gastronomy world. Being a fan of the processes involved, I have a ton of interest in the series.

If you are interested, here is the batting order:
• Tuesday, September 4, 2012 — Dave Arnold (Food Arts), Harold McGee (New York Times)
• Monday, September 10, 2012 — Joan Roca and Jordi Roca (El Celler de Can Roca), Salvador Brugués (Sous-Vide Cuisine)
• Monday, September 17, 2012 — Bill Yosses (White House Pastry Chef)
• Monday, September 24, 2012 — Enric Rovira (Master Chocolatier)
• Monday, October 1, 2012 — Fina Puigdevall (Les Cols), Pere Planagumà (Les Cols), Paco Perez (Miramar)
• Monday, October 8, 2012 — Raül Balam Ruscalleda (Moments)
• Monday, October 15, 2012 — José Andrés (Think Food Group, minibar, Jaleo)
• Monday, October 22, 2012 — Wylie Dufresne (wd~50)
• Monday, October 29, 2012 — Dan Barber (Blue Hill Farm)
• Monday, November 5, 2012 — Joanne Chang (Flour Bakery)
• Monday, November 12, 2012 — Jack Bishop (Editorial Director at Cook’s Illustrated and an Editor on The Science of Good Cooking), Dan Souza (Associate Editor of Cook’s Illustrated)
• Monday, November 19, 2012 — Nathan Myhrvold (former Microsoft CTO; co-founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures; and author of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking)
• Monday, November 26, 2012 — David Chang (momofuku), Carles Tejedor (Via Veneto)
• Monday, December 3, 2012 — Ferran Adrià (elBulli Foundation)

Not bad, not bad at all.

I leave you with the clip that the title of this article comes from.

Too Short II

by A.J. Coltrane

Ok, I know I’m hung up on this “Russell Wilson Is Too Short Thing”, but:

Wilson has been called a test study in a league that hinges on centimeters and is steadfast on black-and-white metrics. A wide receiver is supposed to run the 40-yard dash in 4.5 seconds, an offensive lineman is supposed to weigh 300 pounds and a quarterback is supposed to stand at least 6-foot-2.

“He’s what you call an outlier,” said former Dallas Cowboys executive Gil Brandt, whose grading system would’ve subtracted 15 points for Wilson’s height. “You go broke looking for those guys. For every guy that you draft that’s three inches and four inches below the accepted minimum, 99 of 100 are going to fail. He’s a real exception.

“Have you ever talked to him personally? He’s the most dynamic guy you’ll ever be around. He has such an unusual flair. I mean, this guy wins you over with two minutes’ talk. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a quarterback that’s undersized like he is that has been so dynamic.”

Emphasis mine. Overall the piece gushes about Wilson. Including this:

…In the middle of the [locker-room] noise, Wilson is sitting on the floor in front of his locker, his face buried in a binder. He’s highlighting pages with a fluorescent marker. It’s as if he’s in a library. Oh, Wilson will engage with his teammates soon. In a couple of days, he’ll take the field against the Dallas Cowboys. He’ll struggle a bit in the first half, but will slap nearly every hand on special teams and make every man feel amped and important.

Then Wilson will scramble and throw lasers in the second half of a 27-7 victory. He completes 13 of his final 15 passes and throws for 151 yards and a touchdown. His 75 percent completion rate is the highest for a rookie in Seahawks history.

That’s fine, they can select their statistics to make him look good, but through the first two games Seattle is last in the league in passage yardage at 136 yards/game. (also 7th in Rushing, and 28th overall) They’re scoring 21.5 points per game, tied with Cleveland for 24th in the league.

The Seahawks play Green Bay on Monday night. Green Bay is 5th in total defense (7th pass, 28th rush). I’ll be interested to see what happens when Green Bay stacks the box to stop the run — they’re going to have to do it to win. My feeling is that it’s going to be a long day to be Russell Wilson.

Beer of the Week: Flying Dog Brewery Snake Dog IPA

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Flying Dog Brewery is a brewery out of Frederick, MD, known for their Hunter S. Thompson inspired labels and solid beer lineup. Flying Dog used to be available in Washington, but for some reason, no longer distributes here (or Oregon, or Idaho). I was lucky to see that Chuck’s Hop Shop had a keg of Snake Dog, probably forgotten somewhere, and put it out on tap.

Snake Dog clocks in at 7.1% ABV and 60 IBU and uses a combination of Warrior and Colombus hops.

Snake Dog pours almost orange with a frothy cream colored head. This beer is aromatic with hops – I can smell them while I am sitting 2 feet from the beer. Lots of citrus on the nose with a slight hint of grain. The beer is initially crisp, followed by a sweet maltiness giving way to a building bitterness from the hops. The beer finishes long and tannic with overtones of hops and resin. This 60 IBU beer is a hop bomb without actually being one – it has good balance and enough hop flavor to satisfy any hophead, but is restrained enough to be enjoyed by those who like a milder IPA. My only complaint is that the sweetness becomes more pronounced as the beer warms and lingers too long for my liking. The beer also becomes much more restrained when it warms, with fewer hops and more citrus on the palate.

Outside of the sweetness, this was a fine example of a hoppy IPA from a non-west coast brewer. Unfortunately you won’t find it in Cascadia anymore and I am not sure if it is worthy of a road trip somewhere to find it. If it happens to show up again in Seattle, I would recommend drinking one for yourself.

Snake Dog gets itself 3 Serpentes Lupis out of 5.

Top Chef: Seattle

By Iron Chef Leftovers

The new season premier has officially been announced for November 7th. Bravo also announced the contestants. It is a somewhat underwhelming lineup, especially after the firepower they brought out last season, but the real kick in the groin; not a single Seattle chef in the lineup. I know that the 3 they had last season were complete busts, but really, not one home town (or even Portland or Vancouver) chef? Makes me want to not watch the show just on that principle.