tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-163795502024-03-07T19:05:59.552-05:00Somethink to Chew OnIt's a Food Blog, and a Science Blog, and a New York City blog, all in one!Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.comBlogger161125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-60553193900761669842009-10-20T13:35:00.002-04:002009-10-20T13:39:34.556-04:00unhiatusOn the off chance anyone is still subscribed to this blog, just an FYI that I've started writing occasionally on a new personal/professional web site. The selection of content is still under consideration by a crack team of consultants, but will probably be somewhat similar to what I wrote about here.http://www.harlan.harris.nameHarlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-60346978463723052152007-02-01T16:01:00.000-05:002007-02-01T16:27:14.662-05:00hiatus (and how smelling food makes flies die earlier)After some thought, I've decided to put this blog on a hiatus of indefinite extent. It has been an enjoyable project, and I've learned a lot in the last year and a half, and accomplished many of the goals I set out for myself. Much of the reason I've decided not to continue this blog, at least in its current format, is that many of my goals are now being done much better by other people! Here areHarlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-68086473926876256032007-01-15T12:12:00.000-05:002007-01-15T12:23:27.782-05:00sootThere have been a couple of cool photos of sooty buildings recently bouncing around the blogosphere. Here in New York, was this photo, originally posted at trevorlittle.com (click to see it full size):That photo shows the dramatic effect of power washing a building on the Lower East Side, a building that apparently hasn't been cleaned since coal use started to decline many decades ago... And Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-19036196152427624992007-01-09T09:00:00.000-05:002007-01-09T09:21:51.304-05:00chocolate trufflesAs promised recently, I made truffles. (The suffering I go through when having to use up a pound of Callebaut baking chocolate!) They're not technically difficult, but there do seem to be some tricks, not all of which I've figured out yet. Despite that, they were delicious, even when making them vegan, with coconut cream instead of dairy cream.The main recipe I used was the techniques from Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-19066988112781884852007-01-08T09:12:00.000-05:002007-01-08T09:12:55.010-05:00pet peeve: cold butter at restaurantsOne of my culinary pet peeves is cold butter at restaurants. You sit down, are served slices of hand-made, utterly delicious French bread with a perfect crispy crust and a soft interior, and... an ice-cold bowl full of these:Argh! What are you supposed to do now? The butter is hard as a rock! It doesn't spread; it barely slices. You try to put it on your bread and the bread becomes a squished Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-2158299037639461902006-12-23T13:00:00.000-05:002006-12-23T13:00:09.754-05:00tempering chocolate... pepperoni?For the cooking club last weekend I got to try a new (to me) cooking skill -- tempering chocolate. Chocolate is an interesting beast, as far as temperature goes. Let stored chocolate get too warm, and the cocoa butter melts and recrystalizes, forming that chalky-looking bloom on the surface. Get chocolate too hot and it burns. Melt it, then let it cool rapidly, and the result is greasy, soft, andHarlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-47312667489278285822006-12-21T08:03:00.001-05:002006-12-22T16:03:16.120-05:00Movie Review: Fast Food NationEric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation was on the early side of the current boom in food books. Published in 2001, it described in sometimes gruesome detail the process by which cows, corn, soybeans, wheat and potatoes get turned into Happy Meals. The New York Times said "Not only will it make you think twice before eating your next hamburger … it will also make you think about the fallout that the Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-47305879510853036122006-12-19T11:20:00.000-05:002006-12-19T11:42:42.418-05:00NYC good news roundupThere have been several bits of news about NYC in the last couple of days that make me happy.First is another hint of actual putting-bricks-together at the trade center site. They'd started regular work on the foundation of the Freedom Tower building a couple of months ago (after laying a cornerstone, now safely off-site, about a year ago), and now as the New York Times reports, the first steel Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-29039172599631502532006-12-15T17:13:00.000-05:002006-12-15T17:23:27.089-05:00two Chinese dolphin stories, one good, one badThis week there were two science stories about dolphins in China. In one case, a freshwater river dolphin called the baiji, which has long been endangered due to industrial pollution and habitat pressure from humans, has been declared extinct by a multinational survey team. The small, nearly blind white dolphin, also known as the baiji, was nicknamed "the goddess of the Yangtze.""It's possible Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-30159185637110457762006-12-13T10:07:00.000-05:002006-12-13T10:52:48.823-05:00What's with all of those books on food?It's been pointed out that this year has been a particularly good year for food books, and this after several years of particularly good years for food books. This year, we had Omnivore's Dilemma, which was one of the New York Times' 10 best books of the year (I agree) and The United States of Arugula, which made their 100 notable books list (I'm halfway through it, and it's very enjoyable!). ButHarlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-57696225917313995112006-12-06T12:56:00.000-05:002006-12-06T13:05:33.067-05:00"saltimbocca seasoning"???OK, this is weird. This blog's page view stats have spiked in the last couple of days, and something like half of my visitors are coming from Google. And not just any random search, but for the string saltimbocca seasoning. WTF? First of all, there isn't such a thing. If you search for the same string in quotes, so that Google looks for the entire phrase, you get no hits! And second, the only Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-79730284865370568032006-12-06T09:11:00.000-05:002006-12-06T09:27:22.362-05:00The color of garlicHarold McGee has a new occasional column in the New York Times, called The Curious Cook, and dedicated to the chemical properties of food and how cooking works. McGee, of course, wrote the essential book on food chemistry, On Food and Cooking. In today's column, in addition to recounting his personal history of how he got into writing about food science, and noting some interesting new theories Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-8023719802249228422006-12-03T15:19:00.000-05:002006-12-06T12:49:04.581-05:00spaghetti sauce and Italian seasoningAnother one of those family hand-me-down recipes (like the hot dog casserole I wrote about earlier this year) is my dad's spaghetti sauce recipe. He's been tweaking it for decades, and it's reached a level of flavor that far surpasses any of the marinara sauces you get in a jar, and a level of richness that, in my opinion, far surpasses the simple-and-elegant fresh tomato sauces you make in Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-82053556647594412592006-11-27T22:45:00.000-05:002006-11-27T23:20:29.705-05:00Rewilding rural North AmericaI've written a couple of times in the past about development in New York City, and the issues involved with trying to figure out how to increase the density of a city that already has 8 million people. But Science News this week has a feature article (subscribers only, unfortunately) that relates to an almost directly opposite problem, what to do with the empty parts of the country.If one group Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-35474765557331627312006-11-21T20:57:00.000-05:002006-11-21T22:54:37.161-05:00Italian-Japanese Fusion: Saltimbocca KatsuI think that oftentimes creativity is easiest in the context of some sort of constraints. This isn't exactly a new idea, as poets have thrived with strict meter, and celebrity chefs on Iron Chef have thrived having to make five complex dishes based on clams. There's even a recent book on the topic (warning, I know nothing about the book).My cooking club, I think, also works best under constraintsHarlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-69115876459375450872006-11-20T22:04:00.000-05:002006-11-20T22:27:53.697-05:00pocheroFall being the beginning of stew season (remember this one from last winter?), and R wanting a dish with a little (but not too much) beef in it, I made a very tasty Philippine stew the other day. Called pochero, it's a Philippine adaptation of a traditional Spanish dish called cocido, which is one of those stews with eight types of meat and a smattering of vegetables and chickpeas. The variant I Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-43974184399762097982006-11-08T09:32:00.000-05:002006-11-08T09:50:16.130-05:00small-scale and large-scale developmentTwo very interesting essays in Gotham Gazette today (thanks to Curbed for the links). In one, Amanda Burden, the chair of the New York City Planning Commission and director of the Department of City Planning, talks about the competing influences of Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses on city development. Jacobs was an advocate of streets and neighborhoods. Moses was a central planner and an advocate of Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-76200280275793954842006-11-06T19:36:00.000-05:002006-11-06T20:35:49.383-05:00political views and geneticsTomorrow is of course the US elections, so a few thoughts about politics from a scientific point of view... A few days ago the AP ran a story about a possible genetic basis for political views. Coincidentally, the same day I learned about the research done by a social psychologist in my department on a possible psychological basis for political (and related) views. Let me fill you in on both of Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-91221075608125539992006-10-26T22:02:00.000-04:002006-10-27T08:00:49.360-04:00Science of Cooking talk reportWell that was rather a treat. The New York Academy of Sciences has a new series(*) of public lectures on the Science of Food, and I went to see the first event tonight. Shirley Corriher was the guest this evening. She's a chef with a chemistry background, she's written a couple of books on the science of cooking (CookWise from 1997 won a Beard award; BakeWise is not yet available), she's been a Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-50863969877094169572006-10-25T11:52:00.000-04:002006-10-25T12:13:19.770-04:00Streetsblog: a great NYC urban planning blogI've been really impressed by a newish blog about the streets of NYC, Streetsblog. It's a project of the New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign, and it covers the (slow) improvement of NYC streets as modern urban planning takes over from the (in my opinion) mostly misguided highway-centered development of the mid-20th century. Unlike my other favorite NYC blog, Curbed, it focuses on Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1161313882158909172006-10-19T22:34:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:50.305-04:00Freeman Dyson reviews matho-Francophile historyIn last week's New York Review of Books the great physicist and thinker Freeman Dyson reviews a book called The Best of All Possible Worlds: Mathematics and Destiny by Ivar Ekeland. (link) The book doesn't seem particularly worth reading; Dyson says it "gives a slanted and partial view of history." But the review is worth reading. Here's the first couple of paragraphs.Ivar Ekeland has a NorwegianHarlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1160709210993380652006-10-12T22:43:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:50.241-04:00Restaurant recommendationsThe new Zagat's guide to New York Restaurants was released yesterday. Despite the fact that they sent me a free copy in the mail Tuesday (my first blog perk!), I'm not all that thrilled, and it's got me thinking a bit about restaurant recommendations.There are lots of ways that people hear about restaurants. Sometimes you're just walk or drive past something and go in based on the name. In some Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1159912373867502972006-10-03T17:39:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:50.102-04:00hops burn, lentil export banned; beer and Indian food in peril!Two more cases of imminent food shortages in the last couple days! On Monday, about 4% of this year's US crop of hops burned in a fire. And last week, the Indian government banned export of lentils to "ease inflation in the Indian domestic market." Relevant quotes:The United States produces 24 percent of the world's hops, and about three-fourths of the U.S. crop comes from the Yakima Valley. HopsHarlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1159558302793781612006-09-29T15:17:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:50.033-04:00anchovies suicide; Caesar salads in peril!The AP is reporting on a tragic story. Millions of young anchovies have washed up on the shore in Northern Spain and died. The speculation is that they were fleeing from predators (chefs in submarines?) and beached themselves. The fish are actually endangered in the region, and fishing of anchovies has actually become restricted to allow the species to bounce back.If the beached specimens had Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16379550.post-1159200050444507642006-09-25T11:36:00.000-04:002006-10-23T11:52:49.964-04:00urban renewal and Union SquareOne of the topics I find really interesting is New York City's processes of urban renewal, as it comes back from the blight of the 70s and 80s (click on the famous image to the right for background), and expansion, as its population rises rapidly to record levels. The New York Sun has an article today about the history and development of Union Square.In 1979, architecture critic Paul Goldberger Harlanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10090536998999734716noreply@blogger.com1