April 15, 2008

Aren't lots of Jelly Bellys already disgusting?

Jelly Belly has just brought out their BeanBoozled product:
BeanBoozled jelly beans come in 20 flavors, 10 weird and wild flavors matched up with 10 look-alike tasty flavors. Is the black jelly bean Licorice, or is it Skunk Spray? Perhaps the blue bean is Toothpaste flavor, or maybe it's delicious Berry Blue. Think you can tell them apart? We dare you!

You might not know when you will be bamboozled by a weird flavor. A key on the back of each box gives clues to the surprises found inside, but the beans look so similar, every bite will be a surprising dare.

I actually already have this problem with Jelly Belly bulk packs. Mrs. Guesswork buys these ginormous tubs of mixed jelly beans at Costco and I already find a pretty substantial fraction of the beans (cafe latte, cappuccino, a&w cream soda, licorice, ...) revolting, and they look a lot like other flavors that I like, so I have to be on my guard anyway.

On a related topic, why when you go to Costco do they insist on selling you mixed packs of cliff bars, power bars, etc. Are there really people who like vanilla crisp power bars, or is this just some scheme to get you to throw away 1/3 of the bars so you buy more that much sooner?"

Posted by ekr at 10:16 PM | Comments (1)

April 14, 2008

Gimme more tortillas

Can someone explain to me why, whenever you go to a Mexican restaurant they short you on tortillas? I doubt it's cost because tortillas are incredibly cheap (less than $.04/ea retail for your standard corn tortilla), and these self-same places will gladly provide you with a mountain of tortilla chips whether you ask for them or And yet time after time I find myself sitting at my table waiting for some server to notice that I was out of tortillas and bring me some more so I can assemble my fajitas. I suppose it's possible that I use more tortillas than average, but really, who can assemble a whole plate of fajitas with 3 tortilla? Baffling.

Posted by ekr at 9:48 PM | Comments (2)

September 7, 2007

Gelatin filtering

Harold McGee has an interesting article about the use of gelatin filtering to prepare unusual consommes:
A blog called Ideas in Food (ideasinfood.typepad.com), written by two chefs, H. Alexander Talbot and Aki Kamozawa, is sprinkled with suggestions for an impressive variety of gelatin-clarified consommes including Parmesan and Roquefort, foie gras, olive oil, caramelized banana, ranch dressing, butter pecan, kimchi, pumpernickel and baked potato "with all the fixings." Mr. Talbot likes to keep consommes handy in the freezer, like one he brews from brown butter, soy sauce and Tabasco.

"They're great with seafood, asparagus -- anyplace you would want those flavors without all the fat," he wrote in an e-mail message. "We also use consommes as brines and braising mediums. Artichokes cooked in horseradish consomme are remarkable."

...

Mr. Iuzzini also uses the technique to make an even more surprising dish for his chocolate course. He makes separate "stocks" of dark and white chocolate by cooking them in water, then clarifies them into fat-free liquids, one brown and one colorless. He then adds sugars and xanthan gum, a thickener, to give the two liquids different densities and a slight cohesiveness. This allows him to build a two-story drink, a layer of cold white chocolate consomme riding on a base of hot dark chocolate consomme.

There seem like a lot of possibilities here. I wonder if you could make a Harold Washington consomme.

Posted by ekr at 9:18 PM

August 21, 2007

Yes, Nalgene bottles do come in multiple sizes

Slate's shopping column always struck me as a little weird, but typically I don't know anything about the products they're reviewing. However, this week, they decided to cover a product I do know: water bottles. Like Nalgene users everywhere, Laura Moser discovers that the widemouth is a bit too wide:
Even without my prompting, audience responses were overwhelmingly negative. The mouth was judged impractically wide, and the bottle itself doesn't fit in most bike cages and car cup holders. Cheaper than most options, yes, and definitely a cinch to wash either by hand or in the dishwasher. But after a day in the sun, the water tasted flat and stale.

Is it really that hard to find out that Nalgene bottles come in multiple sizes? In particular, they come in smaller sizes and narrow-mouth bottles. You can also buy an insert that fits in the mouth of the bottle and stops it from spilling. I don't have any special brief for Nalge bottles, but I do wonder what the point of doing a consumer review is if you're not going to really survey the space.

Oh, and BTW, I don't have an informed opinion on Bisphenol A. I do, however, own a number of Nalge bottles and use them on and off.

Posted by ekr at 10:44 PM

August 15, 2007

A simple question

Why are twist-off beer caps often so hard to twist-off? It doesn't help that the corners of the crimp are sharp and dig into your hands—maybe you could coat them with plastic or something. Listen up, folks: I shouldn't have to wrap the cap in my shirt in order to get it open; and if I have to resort to an opener, like I did with my otherwise quite nice Full Sail LTD we've completely missed the point of the twist-off.

Posted by ekr at 7:56 PM | Comments (7)

June 2, 2007

Warning: don't eat the yellow cheese

Seeing as I was in the mood for gourmet dining experience, Terence and I repaired to Choix Frais. Everything was quite normal until we got to the steam trays with the pasta, etc. And there I saw it: a tray full of macaroni, a tray full of tortilla chips, and there, between them, a tray of fluorescent goop labelled cheddar cheese sauce. A closer inspection revealed the awful truth: the macaroni was labelled something like "macaroni and cheese" and the tortilla chips "build your own nachos". This was dual-use cheese sauce!

Ever the connoisseur of the disgusting, I figured it was time to give it a shot. I piled up some tortilla chips, poured the sauce over top, and then headed back to my table with water glass at the ready. Terence and I steeled ourselves and each took a chip. It wasn't the most disgusting thing I've ever had, but honestly, it was pretty bad. The first taste is vaguely like cheese, or rather, cheez [Terence says salt + cheetoey acidity], even reminescent of cheddar, but then there's this weird starchy taste/texture that's presumably some thickening or other texture modifying agent (it feels a little like a fast food milkshake) [Terence says: something that melts above body temperature]. Then, after you've finished you keep getting this horrible syntho-cheese aftertaste.

We weren't brave enough to try it on the macaroni.

Posted by ekr at 10:15 PM | Comments (1)

March 3, 2007

Makin' Burritos

Bay Area burrito classic El Burrito Real just closed its doors. I must have eaten hundreds of burritos there and while I'd seen them made I thought before it went out of business, it would be interesting to see things from the other side of the counter. Cisco, the manager, was kind enough to teach me the basics and let me work a shift last Monday. Plus, I got a nifty shirt. No hair net, though.

The setup at EBR is simple: there's a long line of ingredients on a steam tray. You walk down the line and point to what you want. They pile it on the tortilla and then wrap it all up at the end. This turns out to be the tricky part of the operation, so they teach it to you first. I showed up at 4:30 and Cisco pointed me to a tortilla piled with rice and beans. He showed me how to do the wraps and set me to practicing. After about 50 wraps and more than a few ruined tortillas I was pronounced ready to try making a whole burrito.1 My first official burrito was for Mrs. Guesswork but then I stuck around and worked the counter for a while. I'm also fully qualified to make tacos and combo plates, so if the whole security thing doesn't work out...

1. The important things to know here are (1) get the fillings centered on the tortilla (2) once you get the tortilla half-rolled to collect the filling and pull it back into the roll (3) fold the edges of the tortilla back in before you give it one final roll.

Posted by ekr at 9:48 PM | Comments (6)

February 26, 2007

Burrito Construction Worker

This is Mrs. Guesswork posting on behalf of the mister, who is spending the evening (Monday only) constructing burritos at Burrito Real. The place is going to be under new ownership soon, but while it's still the crew we know from an estimated metric ton of burritos eaten over the past half-dozen years, Ekr asked if he could man the burrito counter for a shift. Do come by and order one custom-made tonight.

Posted by ekr at 4:50 PM

January 2, 2007

So it would be OK if it really were special chocolate?

DallasFood.org's 10-part expose of NoKA Chocolate is making the rounds. For those of you not familiar with this story, NoKA is a hyperexpensive luxury chocolate, coming in at between $309/lb and $2,080/lb (other high-end chocolates come in under $100/lb). Aside from a flashy box, the NoKA branding comes with a number of claims about the high quality of their chocolate. Here's the relevant FAQ section:
What is Single-Origin Chocolate?
Each NOKA truffle or chocolate contains dark chocolate made of the finest cacao from select plantations in a specific origin. For example, our Vivienté truffle is made from the finest Venezuelan dark chocolate (min. 75% cacao): from the luxurious ganache (center of the truffle) to the thinly enrobed shell and delicate shavings that decorate its exterior - only pure Venezuelan dark chocolate is used. By using only a single- origin chocolate it enables the tasting of the terroir or "true essence of the origin". A fitting analogy to our single-origin chocolate is to that of tasting fine wine - for example, a bottle of Californian Merlot will have a different flavor profile than a French Merlot - the resulting differences are due to a number of factors including soil and climate. The same is true with the finest single-origin chocolate.

How is your chocolate different than other dark chocolate?
Regular dark chocolate contains a blend of cacao from a variety of different origins. Most regular chocolate also contains vanilla, added to round out quality imperfections and create a consistent flavor. We focus solely on the highest quality single-origin dark chocolate and as such there is no vanilla in any of our chocolate. Our passion is tasting real chocolate, in its rarest and purest form, unadulterated by vanilla and any other flavorings.

Anyway, Scott at DallasFood.org did a bunch of background research on NoKA. First, NoKA doesn't actually make the chocolate. Rather, they buy pre-made chocolate (called couverture), temper it and pour it into molds. They don't hide this fact, but Scott makes the case that they imply that they have a larger part in the production process than they do (in particular referring to couverture as "semi-refined" when it's the finished product). Second, the claims that NoKA makes about their chocolate aren't that unusual (and not necessarily benefits). A number of chocolatiers can make similar claims. Finally, Scott uses the descriptions of each of the offerings plus taste testing to make a very persuasive argument that Noka's chocolate is simply couverture bought from Bonnat—which chocolate can be bought far cheaper directly from Bonnat (though without the shiny box).

Naturally, this revelation has provoked a fair amount of anger and feeling that NoKA misrepresented their product. I suppose that's true, but say they hadn't. Say they were actually manufacturing the product themselves or had outsourced production to Bonnat with some custom recipe of their own design. You'd still be paying an outrageous price for the product, but you wouldn't have the option of buying it cheaper under a different name. Presumably that's what NoKA customers thought they were getting, right? So, what's the problem?

Here's another way to look at things. Say you're in the market to buy some high-end chocolate. Presumably you buy some small quantities and taste it and then buy whatever you like the best. If after you've followed this procedure you still end up buying NoKA, then either your background research failed (you didn't try Bonnat) or your taste isn't very good.

Posted by ekr at 10:02 PM | Comments (8)

January 1, 2007

"Open Source" Beer?

The other day I caught PRI's "The World" segment on "Open Source" Beer. The web site is here or maybe here. The uh, developers have a good line of patter going on about how they have the "the world's first open source beer!", but it's hard to see what's going on here that's special.

First, you can't copyright recipes (at least in the US), so the whole notion of their being an Open Source beer recipe is kind of silly. At that level, all recipes—at least those published in the US—are Open Source. Unless the European laws are substantially different, which I doubt, then the restrictions that the designers are trying to levy "you are free to earn money from Our Beer, but you have to publish the recipe under the same license (e.g. on your website or on our forum) and credit our work" are unenforceable. Note that they could potentially copyright a particular expression of their recipe, but if you look at their page, it's just the ingredient list along with relatively standard brewing directions.

One could imagine that they've filed for a patent, but that would require that there be something inventive. Let's take a look at the recipe:

And here's the boiling instructions:
The malt extact is brought to a boil in a large pot with the hops and approx. 70 ltr. of water.

After half an hour, the Guarana beans and sugar is added.

The mixture simmers for about an hour, and is then filtered and cooled in a sealed container.

This is a pretty typical beer recipe, with fairly standard ingredients. If anything it's underspecified. For instance, the Beer Recipator lists three different varieties of Hallertauer hops, but we're not told which one to use. This kind of stuff matters. There are only two unusual (and I use the term loosely) features of this recipe. The first is the addition of the mild stimulant Guarana. It's not clear why anyone would want this in their beer, but Guarana is a standard ingredient of energy drinks, so there's not much use here. The second is the use of 5 kg of sugar (by the way, it would be nice if the authors told us whether they meant sucrose or corn sugar; again, details matter). This is a not uncommon element but there's some controversy over whether it leads to off flavors. Oh, yeah, one more unusual element: there are two uses of hops in beer. The first is for "bittering" and bittering hops are bolled with the wort (the malt extract and water). The second is for aroma and aroma hops are only added towards the end. The recipe here only seems to use bittering hops, which is a bit unusual in my experience, though might be appropriate depending on the style of beer this is supposed to be (they don't say).

So, as we've seen there's nothing unusual about this recipe. But maybe it's hard to find recipes? Actually, not so much. The Beer Recipator has something like 5,000 recipes listed. There's also the Cat's Meow, which has a zillion recipes. So, there's no shortage of perfectly good, much clearer, beer recipes. Absent some Cooks Illustrated style research, there's no reason to believe that this recipe is any better than any other (and given the broad variety of beer styles, it's not like there's one best recipe anyway).

Most importantly, beer isn't at all like software in that the informational component of production is very small. Given that you have the source code for a piece of software and a platform reasonably similar to that where the software was developed you'll get pretty much the same binary as the authors did. By contrast, with beer, even if you have a good recipe and reliable ingredients, you still need quite good technique to get solid results. Back when I was homebrewing, I lost several batches because they were infected due to improper technique. The problem is even worse if you're a commercial brewer because you not only need to turn out decent beer but you need to turn out beer that tastes the same batch after batch (as an aside, I've heard it said that this the real proof of the skill of Budweiser's brewmasters that their consistency and quality control is so good. You may not like their product but it's the one they intend to make and every can is near-identical) even in the face of inconsistency in the ingredients. Having a good recipe is only the very first step and one that's not at all hard to take without help from a bunch of Scandinavian students.

Posted by ekr at 10:42 PM | Comments (2)

December 27, 2006

Good eating: Simba

Last night, Mrs. Guesswork, Natasha, and I went looking for dinner in Vancouver. After an abortive attempt to get into Guu with Garlic (90 minute wait) we ended up at Simba's Grill. Pretty solid food with a sort of exotic taste. Highlights were Prawns Pili-Pili (barbecued (on a stick)) and Kuku Paka (chicken in a green coconut curry with a really unusual, subtle taste). Both came on rice, which was extremely well executed, fluffy and with a strong saffron taste. Fast, friendly service. Worth a shot.

Posted by ekr at 11:14 AM | Comments (5)

December 10, 2006

Where to get a decent cheesesteak

If you're a Chicago expat you complain about how you can't get decent pizza and if you're from Philadelphia you complain about how you can't get a decent cheesesteak. It's pretty hard to understand what the problem is here: you're frying thinly sliced meat, slapping on some American cheese and then putting it on a bun. Yet, for some reason whenever I've tried cheesesteaks at local places they've fallen rather short of Philly standards (this isn't just that things taste better in memory—I've been back to Philadelphia recently enough to have a reference point).

Anyway, some research turns up Jersey Joe's in San Carlos, which makes a pretty solid steak. Not the best I've ever had, but easily good enough to save a 5 hour flight to Philadelphia.

Posted by ekr at 9:08 PM | Comments (1)