Monday 9 November 2020

boy those germans have a word for everything

Having grown accustomed to the point of reliance on the term Schadenfreude, it was refreshing to learn that there is a perfectly cromulent English synonym, epicaricacy, that conveys the same sense of deriving pleasure from the misfortune of others. From the Greek From Ancient Greek แผฯ€ฮนฯ‡ฮฑฮนฯฮตฮบฮฑฮบฮฏฮฑ for “joy upon evil” (see previously), it is rarely found in print (other than in mentions of words to be adopted and rehabilitated) with one of the more recent citations being in C.S. Lewis’ 1933 Pilgrim’s Regress as a personified character, an eponymous gloating and sadistic woman.

Thursday 1 October 2020

8x8

cheese tetrahedrons and synergetic stew: a celebrity cookbook presented to author and futurist Buckminster Fuller (previously) reissued for the one hundred twenty-fifth anniversary of his birth  

lรผften: tried and true ventilation and fresh air may be the most effective way to stave off more infections  

heart of sharkness: winning images and honourable mentions from a drone photography contest  

fรถrรคldrapenning: a South Korean man living in Sweden documents his daily routine 

adobe flash: an appreciation of the platform that shaped the internet and the implications of suspending support for the multimedia plug-in and player—via Kottke  

disaster constitutionalism: EU taking the UK to court, despite only breaking international law in a “specific and limited way”  

can our government be competent: celebrating Jimmy Carter’s ninety-sixth birthday (previously) in campaign buttons

eat fresh: with tax implications for the franchise, Irish high court rules that one fast food chain’s bread cannot be called bread or a dietary staple due to its high sugar content—via Boing Boing

Saturday 1 August 2020

hlaf-masse

From the Anglo-Saxon for “loaf mass,” Lammas Day is celebrated in some parts of the northern hemisphere on the first of August, Lammastide falling halfway between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox, by bringing bread to the church made of the first fruits of the season to be used for communion. Traditionally, members of the clergy reciprocally made a procession to local bakeries to bless them as a profession (it is a good reason to bring out ye old breadmaker) and is a syncretism, substitution for the Gaelic festival to herald the beginning of harvest time called Lughnasadh (Lรบnasa, Lรนnastal, Luanistyn) readopted by practitioners of Celtic neopaganism.

Thursday 7 May 2020

corn dollies

At the crafty crossroads where creativity meets cult, Messy Nessy Chic presents a thoroughgoing history and how-to on cereal and straw art—referencing the ancient customs of the harvest (which continue into modern times) that saved the first (see also) and last sheaves of grain to fashion them into corn maidens or matrons that would winter with the family, exchanged as gifts during Yule to be ploughed into the furrows of the next season’s planting to ensure the continuity of abundance. Straw is worked, plaited, woven, spun according to centuries old tradition into some rather fantastic monuments, costumes and handicrafts—certainly worth admiring and wondering about their meaning and power, if not trying to create charms of our own.

Wednesday 29 April 2020

moment of zen

Via the always excellent Nag on the Lake, we are directed to designer Manami Sasaki who has transformed her breakfast toast into creative canvases and are seconding the nomination for favourite subject: we are really enjoying this depiction of a traditional Japanese Rock Garden (ๆžฏๅฑฑๆฐด—literally a dry landscape and meant as a heuristic tool to help the gardener contemplate the meaning of existence by representing the essence of Nature and not its physical manifestation), with cream cheese spread carefully raked with nuts and condiments artfully arranged as stones and other elements. We also admired the care and repair dedicated to another slice of torn bread.

Friday 6 September 2019

brauรฐklefinn

Sensitive to the huge problem of food waste, an enterprising bakery in Iceland has installed a superannuated telephone booth on its premises in which to deposit the leftovers from the end of the day and offer them for sale to late-comers on a trust system at a deeply discounted price. Local patrons are delighted with the idea of being able to get fresh breads afterhours and help reduce what would otherwise end up in landfills. I hope more small businesses might take a cue from this bakery and invest in the honour and integrity of shoppers and right-sizing production.

Friday 5 July 2019

essential amino acids

Developed in partnership with a state research centre and a prestigious Finnish university, the protein powder provisionally called solein, brewed by microbes fermenting the gaseous by-products of the simple electrolytic reduction of water—pliable into any form and with magnitudes less of an environmental impact than traditional agricultural, needing no extra irrigation or arable land, certainly sounds intriguing.
What do you think about that?  Considering how much territory is given over to livestock grazing and the ecological pressures that creates, it is time to re-evaluate our priorities. Fortified and chemically flavoured, the start up behind it which aims to scale-up to produce two billion meals per year after its initial debut says that the powder base can be adjusted and improvised to fit any palette.

Saturday 9 March 2019

kenyรฉr varรกzslat

Our thanks to always bewitching Art of Darkness for revealing to us a common trope through Hungarian folklore in the apotropaic magic of bread. To ward off impending evil, tradition dictates that one simply place a loaf of bread in a windowsill and allow the bread to speak for itself:

First they buried me under the ground, and I survived. When I sprouted and thrived they cruelly cut me down with by sickle, yet I survived. They threshed me with the flails and I survived. They ground me to flower with their millstone yet I survived. They kneaded me in a bowl, and then they put me in a hot over to bake me and I have survived. Have you done all these things? Until you live through all these things, you have no power here.

Though this stems from the same superstitions that cause one to fret over vampire pumpkins (which would seem to kind of cancel things out), I do like imagining some twee croissant standing up to maleficent forces demanding admission into one’s house and being roundly rebuffed.

Friday 17 August 2018

bran and chaff

The fact that the genetic code of rice and maize were mapped in 2002 and 2009 respectively and the wheat genome is just now being puzzled out is not a comment on the staple crop’s importance—both culturally and agriculturally, but rather testament to advances in computational power pitted against an incredibly complex blue-print that is magnitudes larger than human DNA (three billion base pairs as opposed to sixteen billion in a cell of wheat) and is composed of six copies of each chromosome (hexaploid) compared to diploid humans (XY, XX).
One wonders how much fourteen-thousand years of farming contributed to that complicated pedigree and how much was driven by natural forces.  Equipped with this more complete picture and an understanding behind the mechanism and orientation of how certain traits are expressed, after careful research and deliberation (the worst trade-offs are the ones we don’t see coming) scientists hope to be able to select for adaptable cultivars that can withstand a hotter, drier climate or varieties that don’t require pesticides or fertiliser, like this indigenous Mexican corn that can fix its own nitrogen from the air. Other applications could yield wheat-based products that are more nutritious and palatable for people with intolerance to it.

Friday 2 March 2018

it's toasted

The eponymous reaction was named for French chemist and pharmacist Louis Camille Maillard with the later collaboration of US Department of Agriculture fellow John Edward Hodge who described and established the chemical mechanism for it is the most common spell of kitchen-witchery, which we were heretofore quite in the dark about until being intrigued by TYWKIWDBI.

It endows baked, seared and roasted foods with their distinctive aromas and flavours. The process that leads to the production of hundreds of different and nuanced flavour compounds is the interaction of amino acids and sugars catalysed by reaching a target temperature—typically 140 to 180 degrees Celsius—flirting with the threshold of burning. French fries, stir-fry, malted beverages, Lucky Strikes, bagels, toast, roasted coffee and chocolate are some of the foods and drinks that owe their savour to the Maillard reaction.

Sunday 27 November 2016

far, far away

Properly that little world of one’s own, the Universe of any given fantastic saga is called a paracosm. Though first minted during a study into imaginary friends that some adults felt were lingering too long into the socially formative years when school began conducted in the mid-1970s, the word has since come to embrace all connotations—the spectrum from shy and retreating to those with the gift for engineering civilisations apart that are at the same time archetypal and immensely creative.

Monday 15 February 2016

soup-and-sandwich syndicate

For a few years, we’ve had one of those sandwich-makers to take camping with us, but having received a “panini-press” for the holidays, we’ve aspired to create some soup and sandwich combinations for indoors as well. Lately, we tried Cheese and Leek soup with egg and cheese toasts.

For the soup, ingredients for four bowls call for:

  • Salt, pepper, parsley, bay-leaves nutmeg for seasoning
  • 100 millilitre (about half a cup) of dry white wine
  • Six slices of wheat bread for toasting and for the croutons 
  • A heaping tablespoon of flour
  • Butter
  • 100 gram (4 oz) container of heavy crรจme 
  • 1 litre (4 cups) vegetable stock from bullion 
  • Around 600 grams (about a pound) of leeks, washed, peeled and cut into thin rings 

For the toast:

  • Bread and butter from above
  • 2 eggs 
  • Sliced cheese (Gouda or Gruyรจre) 
  • Spinach leaves or lamb’s lettuce (Feldsalat

There’s no cheese left out of the cheese soup, of course, but that’s where it gets a bit tricky. In German markets, there’s Schmelzkรคse that’s made for soup and I suppose it’s like the pasteurized processed cheese food that’s available in the States, but looks some much less estranged from natural cheese and is much more appetising. In any case, use about 500 grams of your local-equivalent. In the soup pot, braise the rings of leek in butter for three minutes, dusting the leek with the flour afterwards. Introduce the white wine, vegetable stock with the bay leaves and allow it to cook on low heat for another ten minutes or so. Remove the bay leaves and breaking the cheese product of choice into small cubes, add that and the heavy crรจme to the pot and allow to cook for an additional ten minutes, stirring often and making sure that the cheese is melting. In the meantime, cut two slices of the bread into little cubes and braise them in butter in a separate pan (you can save the pan for the eggs) for about three minutes until crisp and set aside on a paper-napkin to dry. Prepare two eggs sunny-side-up and in your sandwich-maker/pie-iron/panini-press, make the toasts with the egg, cheese slice and leafy green filling—sort of like a croque-monsieur. Season the soup with nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste and garnish with croutons and parsley.

Saturday 18 May 2013

brototyp or bakers’ dozen

In Germany, there are over six-hundred distinct varieties of bread and some additional twelve-hundred permutations of baking besides. Not including beer-brews, which Germany might be more renowned for and enjoy actually a legal status that classifies and protects them as a liquid bread, these hundreds of different recipes and preparations are governed, unsurprisingly and meticulously, by a system of standards that codify traditional variations on a theme.

This process is illustrated in development of Brรถtchen—buns, rolls, which go by many regional names, including Weckeln, Weggla, Stollen, Kipfle, Bรถmmeln, Semmeln, and Schrippen with further distinctions for topping, what kind of seeds or grains they are encrusted with, and how the dough is rolled out and baked, -laibchen (round, like a little loaf), -stangl (like a staff that can also be twisted in a pretzel) or -hรถrnchen, with a shape like a croissant. Each type has specific percentages of what kind of grains comprise the dough, usually a given ratio of two or more different wheats and barleys. Small bakeries keep the lesser known and uncommon varieties on offer and local interpretation and nomenclature alive. I wonder if anyone has managed to catalogue ever type of Brรถtchen in circulation and unraveled the etymology. We don’t visit the baker’s like we ought to but I am resolving to do so more often and see what sort of heritage breads—and their unusual names (I am not sure if it’s just marketing or what, but one bakery offers what’s called “Sรผndlicher Weck”—sinful rolls, as near as I can guess), that I can discover.