Apple Chutney

Last Saturday, I passed a relatively new food place in North Beach. For years, the building had housed a Italian grocery store (the only non-Safeway big grocery this side of Chinatown), but circumstances lead it to being closed. What opened in its place was a sort of cafeteria / salad bar / gourmet food upscale thing-a mabob. White on ceramic white decor with sales islands placed just so. What drew me in was a special on the chalk-board: Italian sausage patties with apple chutney. I was feeling nostalgic about farm cooking and the price was commensurate with what was in my pocket. (i.e. not much) Here is a brief overview of the dish, followed by a close look at the chutney, which is the make or break part in my opinion.

The plate is simple. Don't try to fix it, upscale it, or add kumquat studded with juniper berries. The sausage can be artesian salumi if you have some, but Jimmy Dean works just fine. If you have some pork loin from a previous service, there you go. A dollop of polenta, (if your using the Dean sausage, call them yellow grits and add a dollar) some greens, (swiss chard is great) and the chutney in a ramekin, plate, serve, done. And Good Lord, don't use that spray varak from the previous post on your Jimmy Dean, irony isn't good for sales on a lunch service.

Chutney is a sweet/sour accompaniment. You can buy it premade, and for some of the more exotic ones, this is ok. Indian groceries have a selection that will knock your socks off, and most American groceries carry at least the old standby, Major Grey's. Apple chutney, however, is quick to make and very cost effective to do in house.

• 4 tablespoons butter
• 2 cups chopped tart apple
• 3 tablespoons light brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons golden raisins
• 2 tablespoons dried cranberries
• 1/4 cup pecan pieces
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1/3 cup apple cider or juice

Heat butter in a medium saucepan; add apple, brown sugar, raisins, cranberries, pecans, spices, and juices. Cook over medium heat until apple is tender, dried fruits are softened, and cider has boiled away. If necessary, add a little more apple cider to keep the mixture from scorching.

You can see the general outline and the usual 101 ways to personalize the recipe. I don't think jalapenos work too well for heat, too vegetal. If you need something hot, go with cayenne or one of the more floral chilies. Ginger, fresh, candied, or dried, slip right in. Cardamom, black or white, is a go. You can try garlic, but I think you might need to replace some of the cider with cider vinegar to hit a good balance. Remember to use cooking apples, (Granny Smith, Golden Delicious, McIntosh, or Fuji) Red Delicious turn into a sort of watery applesauce on the stove. In general, keep it straightforward. In this dish, the chutney serves as a major component, not as a stand-alone as in Indian style dining. Consider the sausage's flavor profile, and balance with that in mind.

Varak in a can

For those of you who work with varak (edible gold leaf) when making your deli trays, a German company (Korefe) has made your life easier. Varak in a can. Now you can add bling with just the right amount of preciousness (and a few bucks to the ticket) without the fuss, muss and bother of getting the right skill-set.(comes in silver too.)

Virtual Cappella Sistina

This link provides a virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel (Cappella Sistina). It takes a while to load, and you might get a low virtual memory notice (ignore it, your operating system knows what to do), then you can cruise the Chapel via your mouse. One discordant note, the tour is overlaid with a boy's choir on a loop. You might want to put that aspect out of mind while you're inspecting some of the world's great art.

Palm Sunday

I'll start this week with the culture reviews. The general opinion is Alice was too Disney or too Burton. (there was a time when either remark would of been a good thing) Next is Jack Kirby's family, audiophile musings, and an unexpected book review.

• Lucius Shepard on Alice
• Kirby / Disney
• JA LovesYou
• Obama, Lehman and The Dragon Tattoo

Here's a short story by Gareth L Powell.

• The Redoubt

Here's a good old-fashioned screed regarding our current banking mess.

• Plutonomics

The last set of links is about Google on the surface, but the deeper question is should a corporation be allowed to dictate govornment policy. You may think that America has answered that in the negative, but click through the last link and you might suspect some players can simply write a wish list and send it in for a signature. ACTA's first paragraph seems straightfoward enough, but further in (the fine print) we get to the "without recourse of the courts" and evidentiary rules that in essence don't require evidence. (our say-so is sufficient)

• One World
• Reuters
• Google is not a virgin when it comes to values. Its cooperation and collusion with the U.S. intelligence and security agencies is well-known," a front page commentary in the overseas edition of the People's Daily said.
• Click-through for ACTA text.

Desktop Hints

Ada Lovelace Day

Ada Lovelace (1815 – 1852) is often referred to as the world’s first computer programmer. The daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron, and the admired intellect, Annabella Milbanke. Ada Lovelace’s reputation comes from her important work interpreting Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine. She saw that through the punched card input device the Analytical Engine opened up a whole new opportunity for designing machines that could manipulate symbols rather than just numbers.

Goddess of steampunk and makers, with more than a few guest appearances in science fiction, Wednesday was her day. I, however, missed it because one of the fruits of her genius, my operating system, decided to take a brief vacation. Happy belated Ada Lovelace day.

What means it, literary

Left to Right: John Shirley - Lisa Goldstein - Amelia Beamer - Terry Bisson
Last night's Politics in SF was a lot of fun and a podcast is going to be prepared through CounterPULSE. As an off topic note, I was struck by the sound. The space is cubical, parallel walls with hard reflecting surfaces, and a wooden floor (dance surface) The sound, however, was focused, with great vocal articulation. Somebody spent a lot of time alligning and placing the speakers. Still the question remains, was Heinlein influenced by Ayn Rand?

Sinkholes

Over time, water erodes the soil under the planet's surface
until in some cases, quite suddenly, the land above gives way and collapses into the earth.

If you thought the potholes in your neighborhood were big, take heart.

Caz Coffee

My friend Scott, has taken up playing in an open mike night at Caz Coffee, in his home of Buffalo, N.Y. Here is My Back Pages.

We be Agitatin'

Wednesday, March 24 (tomorrow) 7:30 PM, there will be a Panel discussion of the Politics of Science Fiction at CounterPULSE (1310 Mission @ 9th 415-626-2060) in SOMA, the Mission, or near the library. The neighborhood designation depends on your personal sales space, i.e. if your an artist, a hipster, or you live here. Be that as it may, the authors will include;

• John Shirley
• Richard Kadrey
• Lisa Goldstein
• Amelia Beamer
• and moderator Terry Bisson

Hippotherapy

Advance (link to entire magazine)

A magazine cover of my cousin Marilyn (on right, supporting the child) and her hippotherapy practice.(go to pg 15) I've seen some of the kids she works with, and after they get past the "that's one dang big animal" part, they seem to be having a grand time. Plus they get to hang with Marilyn, a cool thing in and of itself.

Edward Tufte

Made by: Mark Goetz

For those of you who havn't read Edward Tufte, here is a link. Now get thee hence and loose that clutter.

Power Indicator

This test works very well on my machine. Your welcome to try it on yours.

Sunday's Reading

It seems my list of longform articles is getting longer. I'll try to divide them up in a way that relieves you of jumping to ones you aren't that interested in. The first three are journalism / literature critiques. The copyright treaty kerfluffle seems to be heating up. Why a commercial treaty needs to be negotiated behind a national security secrecy barrier is beyond me. Is Miley Cyrus secretly a security asset or are the entertainments she stars in the only thing we still export? Beyond rumors and engineered leaks, the text of the treaty is still under wraps. Don't throw out that mimo machine, the days of samizdat might return. (for your own good, of course)

• More on the ABC studio manipulation
• Of interest to bloggers: Page Views
• Promethus Bound

Here's a nice bit on Big Bird's birthday. He's six, but the actor that plays him is getting on in years.

• An encomium for Bird

The next two are health matters. The first is about the immortal cells cultured from Henritta Lacks, used in just about every histology lab in the world, and the second is about the health of the Church. The same kind of monkey business keeps on popping up, and the men behind the curtain are finding that their say-so isn't quite as potent a tool as it used to be.

• The cells of Henrietta Lacks
• The Pope say dang

The next two are foreign policy, but unusual in that they are about policy, not a thinly disguised jeremiad.

• Thai Red Shirts
• Europe feeling snubbed

And the last two are some good old fashioned cranky political writing.

• Wall Street, not Main
• The Broken Society

Alex Chilton

Alex Chilton: 1950 - 2010

R.I.P.

Neil and Amanda

Painted by; The Astral Gypsey

This is a dream I had (the artist speaking) on hearing that my good friend Neil Gaiman was getting engaged to the amazing Amanda Palmer. It's full title is: 'Neil Gaiman reading from American Gods, for a tribe of shape changing Arapaho cats, accompanied by Amanda Palmer playing ukulele and singing a duet with a dapper cat in a wheelchair'.

Basement Fusion

Admittedly, the project is a little dangerous—not because of a few little fusion reactions but because of the the very flammable gas and voltages high enough to instantly kill you.

Link to parts list and article for a do it yourself fusion reactor. Sorry, no big boom-boom or free power forever, it's more of a maker project for the budding nuclear engineer. "Goin down the basement honey and fuse me some hydrogen."

And some coffee

The Greenwood Sidhe

As some of you might know, Saint Patrick's day isn't all green beer and temporary ethnicity. The Tuatha Dé Danann (the fair folk) should get their due, and some can be quite peeved if snubbed. Before you stumble off to bed, leave a bowl of milk, or at least dust off your copy of Lebor na hUidre. (you do have a copy, don't you?)

Pearl Balls

Dim sum is usually translated as heart's delight, albeit a verrry rough translation. Traditionally a breakfast or brunch meal, it has expanded in America to be an all day hors d'oeuvres or tapas sort of arrangement. Traditional dim sum houses still exist, ranging from one cook, one burner, down the stairs to your left (Washington Street by the playground) to multi-story, trolleys every fifteen seconds, extravaganzas. (thanks Geri, thanks Kathi) Making dim sum is relatively simple on the surface, and paradoxically that's the tough part. You're making a dish, honed by tradition, to a ur-templet, in a size that leaves no room for almost. You can use the techniques on other dishes, substitute local ingredients, or make things in the style of, but try to master one or two in the tradition first. In both the long and short run, it's time well spent.

Pearl Balls (珍 珠 球, zhēnzhū qiú)

The night before: Take 1 cup short grain sticky rice (glutinous rice), wash, and soak.

Day of show: Drain rice, spread out, dry.
Combine 1 lb ground pork, 4 minced shallots (or green onions), 4 chopped water chestnuts (from can), 1t sugar, 1t salt, 2 cloves crushed garlic, 2t grated ginger, 1t sesame oil, 1t soy, 1t rice wine. Mix

You might be tempted to use a robocoupe here. Resist. The idea is to size your cuts with the final texture in mind, and a machine just chops too fine and the results are too homogenous. As noted earlier, all the steps count. If you can let the mixture stand at this point, all the better. Divide the mixture into 20 balls.

Set up your steamer. Line your tray with parchment or banana leaves. A bamboo tray (wok style) with leaves makes a killer table presentation, but we all know the rule: work with what you have. Roll each meatball in the rice until coated. ( dry rice, wet hands) Put in tray, leaving room for the rice to expand. Steam for 30 min.

The pearl balls will hold for quite some time, but they really are the best if you let them set for a minute or two, then straight to the table. Serve with soy or ginger soy.

Visions of Frisco

Wilfried Satty

As I posted Sunday, I found a book of Satty's S.F. collages. Above is a picture from Cosmic Bicycle, a book I bought years ago. He lived essentially just up the street from here, and you can still run across people who knew him. The stories they tell have a fairly common theme; hard work, a moment in the spotlight, then the muse turned on him.

Bowery (c. 1943)

NY Times

Elizabeth Hand, in her livejournal entry posted this WeeGee picture of the Bowery. (NYC) Even the bums had style.

Terry Bisson

Sunday, I attended the Anarchist Bookfair in the park. (by the Ninth av. enterance) I go every year, lately out of habit or vague hope, and at first this year looked the same. The usual suspects were gathered outside the building, serious flameouts sneaking a toke, earnest highschoolers clutching the manfesto du jour, dogs of all stripes, steely-eyed granny ladies, and a cultural voyeur (myself). We were urged to raise our awareness and celebrate this, that, and the other, (usually far away and exotically hip) It was suggested that, for instance, Chilian yam farmers would welcome our interference in their lives with open arms. It's well known that yam farmers, busy trying to bring in a crop, are notoriously concerned about the minutiae of text deconstruction.

Inside, with the books, things were looking up. Two years ago social hacking was all the rage, but thankfully that didn't pan out. Perhaps the instigators realized that their screens would be a prime target or that their personal property might get liberated too. (those darn kids) I found a new collection of Satty prints in book form, (another post) and the seller let me buy them for a song and threw in some good personal stories about the artist. Then the P.A. said Terry Bisson was speaking. Hot damn, I read Talking Man, where's the auditorium. (well hidden, as it turns out)

Mr. Bisson was reading from his new book, The Left Left Behind ( on PM Press) a satire of the Left Behind series. Poking gentle fun at the man, at the Anarchist Fair, why I never... A great half-hour that made the rest of the posturing bearable.

Cloudbursting

Sorry boys, but Kate Bush was a steampunk way, way before the rest.

Pi Day

Today is Pi Day. Pi Day is held to celebrate the mathematical constant pi in the mm/dd date notation: 3/14, since 3, 1 and 4 are the first three digits of pi.

According to; The Presurfer

Links-o-rama

Been busy for the past two days, so my personal projects are sort of on the backburner. (loosing another hour of sleep wasn't any help, either) I keep an eye on my facebook page, but my neices, cousin's kids, and several friends are very active, and everyone and their Aunt Sally seem to be playing Farmville. So as an official curmudgeon, I felt obligated to include a cautionary link (first) and the next two reflect on China's hackers.

• Farmville
• China's Hacker Army
• Chairman Bruce on renrou sousou yinqing

The next two are the food subsection.

• Pho
• Monsanto Seeds

A quick culture fix.

• Hi-speed trains
• George Carlin

The remainder are politics from pretty much all sides, with some old business essays mixed in.

• Larison on Iraq
• Rushkoff on the Supreme Court
• Enron
• The Front Porch Republic

Here is my favorite journalism story of thee week. I'll give it to you by hand because I don't have any links yet. ABC was caught faking a newscast about Toyota. To illustrate a story about the deadly danger the car's accelerator posed to all human life on Earth, they pulled a Toyota into the studio, shorted the speedometer by hand, filmed the dashboard while the numbers were just spinning and blinking, pro-tools and a effects library provided the soundtrack and some file footage of a car wreck provided the blood. Asked to comment, "we did it to make our point clearer". I'm sure we'll see several stories about the need for freedom of the press in the coming weeks while the billable hours folk do their thing.

Art Cake

Photo: Todd Lappin

I just ran across this on Laughing Squid. It's one of a number of desserts you can get in the rooftop cafe at SFMOMA. Since I used a Jeff Koons piece (Michael Jackson and Bubbles ) for a recent Sunday round-up, I thought I'd toss this into the mix.

Broadband Test

broadband.gov

The FCC launched a consumer broadband test on their blog broadband.gov yesterday. Internet speeds in the US are often 50% to 80% lower than advertised and its vital consumers have reliable information on the actual performance of their connections. One of the two tools the FCC is using is the Network Diagnostic Tool (NDT), an open source tool hosted on MeasurementLab.net (M-Lab). The validity of NDT can be independently verified, and all data is publicly released. M-Lab hosts other test as wells, such as a test to see if bit torrent is being throttled, or how much bandwidth is available.

Via: Boing Boing

Euler Diagram of Washington

The Explanatory text

I just knew it had to be something along these lines. (click picture to enlarge)

Take it both ways

Jaron Lanier

Flurb

New issue of Flurb out. Thanks Mr. Rucker

How High the Moon

Some of the strangest combinations seem to work out great.

The Final Now

Picture: Rick Berry

Tor.com has published a short story by Gregory Benford called The Final Now. If for some reason you haven't read him yet, this story is a quick way to find out what you've been missing.

S.F. 1905 - 1906

An old film , shot on Market St. The clothes have changed, traffic lights have been added, and fewer horses share the street. However the traffic; in-out, round and round, I think I'll stop here, look out for me, it's OK 'cuz I'm a (fill in the blank) is still in full force.

Sunday the seventh

Last Tuesday was free admission to SFMOMA day. (see picture) As usual, I ran across a whole raft of experts creating a dense map of meaning on objects that were much more enjoyable as material things.(Dinge an sich) Looking for the alpha critic, I guess, some of the students were pretty cute. The first four links this Sunday involve my usual crabbing about the current state of the media. The last one, primary sources, is a suggestion for reporters. Try checking things out instead of simply reporting on what the other newspaper said.(or owner, i.e. The Bay Guardian's unnamed sources all use the same language and talking points as leader Bruce's e-dispatches. Sort of a Fox infotainment of the left style business.)

• Press Savvy
• Sophistry-cation
• The journalist as a protected class
• Primary Source Documents

Next are some political links that seem to suggest that the differences between our two ruling parties are too minor to be taken seriously.

• American Exceptionalism
• China / India

And the last four are tho odd general interest that I like so much. A quick note: If you take the first link's suggestions about working on your registry, learn to do a safe boot, copy the original, and have a specific goal or reason. Don't just fiddle with it for the sake of doing something. (unless, of course, you want to experence the joys of hunting down a syntax error in a huge file)

• Registry Cleaning
• CERN LHC
• Werner Herzog reads Madeline
• Ronald Searle

Job Sites

If you're currently looking for a job, or need to spiff up your position at the one you have, this link lists 100 job related sites, i.e. resume, networking, listings, and so on.

Don't Come Around here No More

click image to enlarge

As long as we're on an Adventures of Alice in Wonderland kick, what the heck.

Pluto

A little astronomy humor.

Ummm..

And as a corollary, dont't drink and post signs.

Year of the Tiger

This is another picture from Saturday's parade. Salon published several more pictures, taken further downtown, by a somewhat more professional photographer. One note on this year, the rolling commercial extravaganzas, house of clown, Verizon, et al., were downgraded, leaving local societies, high school marching bands (playing Eye of the Tiger) and dragon dancers, as the stars of the show. Perhaps not as eye catching on national television, but a lot more satisfying if you were here watching.