geek + red sox + cooking = peter ryan

I completed the upgrade from feisty fawn (4.10) to gutsy gibbon (7.10) over the weekend. There were a few issues - the upgrade hung during the installation of a package and I had to resume it manually using dpkg. This was not really much of a big deal - the same thing happened when I upgraded from edgy.

However today I was sliding my mouse over the KDE Power Manager and I noticed that the CPU Frequency only displayed one processor. Given my Dell D620 came equipped with a duo core processor I took immediate notice. Inspecting /proc/cpuinfo revealed the issue wasn’t with the PowerManager but rather in the CPU detection being performed by the kernel.

It turned out that during the upgrade a 386 kernel was installed and made the default. The 386 kernel lacks duo support (I believe) based on a few things I read on the topic. I rebooted into the generic kernel and the Power Manager displayed the two processors.

After determining that was the problem I removed the 386 kernel from my system which fixed my system to use the correct generic kernel as that was the next one on the list.

I am not sure why the upgrade process nixed the cpu detection but given the ease of the fix not something I will dwell on much. It could have been caused by my interrupted upgrade, the fact my kernel had been patched for vmware, or something wrong with the upgrade process itself.

This past Tuesday I took my first cooking class. The class was at The Wooden Spoon, a purveyor of cooking supplies and classes. I have been interested in taking cooking classes for awhile now - mostly to learn new things as well as improve on things I already thought I knew! I attended the class with Beth - she was a bit nervous about taking the class but we both had an awesome time and the results were fantastic.

The class was titled Healthy Weeknights with the following four items which I will talk about.

Pan Seared Chicken Breast with Garlic Cascade Sauce

It was nice to get education on pan searing - it is a technique I have been using for some time with some success. I learned the following useful things:

• Pound the chicken so it is the same width. By doing this the cooking times for all the chicken breasts will be the same and it makes results more predictable.
• Lightly coating the chicken with flour contributes to a better browning finish.
• Lay the chicken skin side first and then finish on the flesh side when searing
• When searing use vegetable oil instead of extra virgin olive oil. At medium high the olive oil cannot withstand the high temperature.
• When searing the chicken will “stick’ to the pan while cooking. Avoid moving the chicken as it will disrupt the browning. The chicken will release from the pan when it is ready to be flipped / complete.
• Heat the pan before adding the oil. If using butter then add before heating the pan otherwise the butter will burn.

Vegetable Tian

The vegetable tian was tasty. However the Wooden Spoon is a bit of a copycat. This recipe they presented was a direct copy of an episode from the Barefoot Contessa which I found on the food network! The concept of a tian (it’s a dish, mainly of vegetables, created in layers and baked to a glorious, crusty goodness) was new to me but I found it to be absolutely delicious. I could see a lot of varieties from its basic principles. It’s very easy thing to make and as it takes over an hour in the oven it gives plenty of time for preparing the main dish.

Arugula Salad with Shallot Vinaigrette

The salad was delicious (particularly the croutons which while I did not make as other students made them seemed easy enough to prepare). One of the things I was uncertain about was the specific goat cheese used to cover them. I really like some of the soft goat cheese varieties I have in restaurants and also in this class but I am never able to find it when I head to the cheese shop in my local markets.

Shallots

Beth and I had never cooked before with shallots. I found them easy enough to work with. I found the gas they release to be even more irritating to my eyes than a white onion. The Wooden Spoon (which sold everything we worked with of course) suggested onion goggles which might be a good idea since I do tend to cook with a lot of onions.

We also used shallots with the pan seared chicken although we were not involved in that portion of the class.

Poached Pear with Winter Fruit Compote

The poached pear dessert was great. Beth and I were responsible for peeling and coring the pears which we did with a peeler and a melon baller. After that I observed our instructor whip some cream (which is something I would like to learn how!). The pears were poached for awhile (20-30 minutes) in a pot of cheap red wine, water, and a few other things in the recipe. While that was taking place the fresh fruit compote was constructed although I was busy working on other dishes at the time and did not see much of what took place.

I was reading a blog post on recipe development and thought I’d present my own.

My recipe development is a fairly straightforward process and kind of follows the Iron Chef mentality. It’s not so much as a race against a 60 minute clock but I rarely cook for more than an hour. I like everything from when I begin to am eating to be 30-45 minutes.

For half a year now I have been working a bit off of recipes I have picked up from various spots (magazines, internet, cookbooks, etc) and using those as inspiration onto my own creation. Sometimes I cook a recipe following all of the directions but that is rare - I am much more apt to do my own thing.

Another habit picked up from Iron Chef is a theme. It is sometimes an ingredient but sometimes a cooking technique. Lately I’ve been working with saute style recipes due to their speed and excellent taste and so I might focus on a cooking technique along with an ingredient (such as my mango lemon chicken recipe).

I have been trying a lot of new things so I will read a few recipes until I find some that I like and then create my own recipe script that I bring into the kitchen. I am usually combining a few recipes so it doesn’t make sense to print anything. Instead I blueprint what I want to do.

Following that I head into the kitchen and follow my recipe - making adjustments as necessary.

The last recipe I tried was different in that I didn’t go into it with a plan but instead wrote what i was doing while I did it. I didn’t really like this - I was trying to capture all of the steps I made while also cooking a meal and I was time crunched.

My end results can be excellent (an example was a red snapper recipe i created before I began blogging) and also not so much. I think that is the most important part of recipe development - take risks on something original and enjoy the rewards and not be disappointed by the tribulations along the way.