Okay, so the rant-of-the-month is out of the way and it's time to get back to food. Recently, to aid our critical faculties with regards to just how good this Indian restaurant we've been working for is in comparison with others, we've been hitting up a few.
Recently we went to Le Taj, which bills itself as the most popular Indian restaurant in Montreal. Well, indeed it was packed, but it just goes to show that Montrealers are pretty ignorant about just what constitutes good Indian food. It failed the samosa test and the naan test, and to me, the most important one: the rice test.
It also failed the spice test. These people just don't believe you when you request extra-spicy. I just can't account for it. It was extremely ho-hum.
Then it was Malhi Sweet. I realise that this is not in the same category as dévi, but its menu had literally about 6 pages of ultra-laudatory articles from virtually every news entity in Montreal (well, admittedly there wasn't one from Street Sweeper's Weekly).
Again, it failed all four tests.
Brigitte brought home some samosas from Pushap on Paré. Disgusting. I keep telling her how good my samosas-from-scratch are, but she doesn't believe me. When I end up making them, I'll definitely document it.
But this weekend is a welcome break from Indian; it's Pizza Night! Yes, I'll make eight 12" pizzas.
I think this time I'll try to be a bit more "out there" this time. Boursin, caramelised onions and three kinds of mushrooms, anyone?
But first, tomorrow is teriyaki steak with shrimp tempura, for which I bought panko breadcrumbs today at Atwater Market.
Update tomorrow!
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Japanese vs Germans Part XCCMXL
Anyone here for a laugh, go away now, please!
It's really getting difficult in my mind these days keeping score with which of the two are/were/still are the most brutish examples of human existence in recent times, what with various revelations here and there.
Five years in Japan, with an uncomfortably intimate experience of the Japanese psyche at least gave me a basis of something to see where they were coming from. Germans, not much.
And I don't know why I obsess about these things. Well, all I can say is that I simply want to be able to understand it. I want to know why people do the things they do, but above all, I want to know why particular groups of people do what they do. Is it their culture? Their education? Mass-induced psychosis?
Here, let's start with the Germans. Or rather, the Americans. Just admit that this picture is almost a cliché of how Americans behaved in WWII:
It's really getting difficult in my mind these days keeping score with which of the two are/were/still are the most brutish examples of human existence in recent times, what with various revelations here and there.
Five years in Japan, with an uncomfortably intimate experience of the Japanese psyche at least gave me a basis of something to see where they were coming from. Germans, not much.
And I don't know why I obsess about these things. Well, all I can say is that I simply want to be able to understand it. I want to know why people do the things they do, but above all, I want to know why particular groups of people do what they do. Is it their culture? Their education? Mass-induced psychosis?
Here, let's start with the Germans. Or rather, the Americans. Just admit that this picture is almost a cliché of how Americans behaved in WWII:
American soldiers handing out candy to children
Now let's look at a typical image of German soldiers:
German soldiers humiliating a Jewish man by cutting his hair off before taking him away to be shot
Look at the thuggish grins of outright glee on the face of every soldier . . . can you in your right mind ever imagine that the same scenario was ever played out among allied troops? It's downright horrifying.
The Japanese: I don't need pictures. Let's just say that through my five years of living among them, I discovered a host of repressed perversions and aberrant behaviour patterns that would fill a library of scholarly psychological research.
Between the two cultures, I'd have to say that at least the Germans have semi-owned up to their monstrous crimes, not that even doing hair-shirt penance and being flogged every day for the rest of their lives for each and every German citizen living today, for the sins of their fathers, would ever make up for it, but at least they plead guilty.
Not so the Japanese. They prefer to play the victims, the "viciously A-bombed innocents," basically not denying anything but not admitting to anything either, and their prime ministers still go every year to worship at the Yasukuni Shrine, in which are interred several of the worst war criminals ever to have existed. We're talking the Heinrich Himmlers of Japan, my flock. Truly evil individuals.
My ex-wife, who used to work in what they call "hostess clubs" used to tell me about WWII veterans sitting around and laughing and reminiscing about their experiences perpetrating mass murder in China. These old farts in their 80s joking about the "good old days."
But what I also noticed in Japan was a streak of ultra-perversion among Japanese males; a streak so ugly that only when I had to admit I wasn't just imagining it did I accept its true horror.
Many, many Japanese men are sadistic, woman-hating perverts; perverts so twisted and repressed that one wonders how the society as a whole manages to lurch along from day to day.
To wit: this delightful video game.
To think: there are organized gangs of men who swarm rush-hour trains in the morning to do what they call "chikan" . . . or now, with the advent of cell-phone cameras, take so-called "upskirt" videos.
To the point where the authorities have actually segregated trains with the front cars for women only. Can you imagine that happening in, say, San Francisco?
I know I've muddled a whole bunch into one pot but it just shows me that the older I get, the less I actually understand why people do what they do, or more importantly, why whole distinct cultures do what they do.
So far, with this new bit of news from Japan, Japanese 2, Germans 2. A tie!
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Sleep
What's your sleep setup? Just how do you sleep? How much does it matter to you? How did you sleep when you were a child?
I think our sleep history has a lot to do with our sleep needs now.
Since I was born, until the age of ten, I slept in a room with an air conditioner with the heavy curtains drawn. I heard nothing except for the changing hum of the air conditioner. It was exceedingly comforting.
Then I had a brief (5-year) interlude at British boarding school. We were forced out of bed at 7 for cold showers but I won't dwell on that.
In Zaire, Africa, us kids painted our windows black from inside and slept with the air conditioner going full blast.
In Dakar, Senegal, we had metal shutters on the windows and we slept with them shut every night with the air conditioner going full blast. The king waterbed helped.
Here in Montreal I have blackout blinds which can keep the bedroom as dark as a coffin at high noon. No air conditioner in winter, but ear plugs keep out the relentless traffic.
Toss in a few nice dreams of beaches, and I can sleep all day. Which I think I will. Good day.
I think our sleep history has a lot to do with our sleep needs now.
Since I was born, until the age of ten, I slept in a room with an air conditioner with the heavy curtains drawn. I heard nothing except for the changing hum of the air conditioner. It was exceedingly comforting.
Then I had a brief (5-year) interlude at British boarding school. We were forced out of bed at 7 for cold showers but I won't dwell on that.
In Zaire, Africa, us kids painted our windows black from inside and slept with the air conditioner going full blast.
In Dakar, Senegal, we had metal shutters on the windows and we slept with them shut every night with the air conditioner going full blast. The king waterbed helped.
Here in Montreal I have blackout blinds which can keep the bedroom as dark as a coffin at high noon. No air conditioner in winter, but ear plugs keep out the relentless traffic.
Toss in a few nice dreams of beaches, and I can sleep all day. Which I think I will. Good day.
Friday, March 26, 2010
In Praise of Younger Women
Apologies. I've been working on a website for an Indian restaurant and it's been taking up all my time. Go to bed at midnight. Wake up at six. Fire up a couple of beers and work in peace until nine. Go back to bed. Wake up at 4. Fire up a couple of beers and work until 9. Eat. Repeat.
So: no time to cook, although I did delve into the realm of breaded, deep-fried stuffed mushrooms the other day. I'm not a great deep-fry fanatic but these were just too damn good, if a bit finicky. I'll share next time -- I have a few ideas beyond mere Boursin stuffing.
But my real topic is that of Abigail, Brigitte's niece, who came to stay with us for a few weeks from her home in West Virginia. Abigail is a mere twenty years old.
From the start I did my usual, as did Brigitte, and made tasty stuff pretty much every day. Brigitte came up with a first: stuffed peppers.
But Abbie kept saying "While I'm here, I really should learn to cook from you guys." So I thought, fondly, "Yeah, right. A twenty-year old actually making something other than a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich."
But one morning (a rare morning in which I actually woke up) I detected the small of frying butter . . . Abbie had gone to the Metro, bought all the fixings and had made a mushroom/pepper omelette with a side of home fries. It was delicious! 20-year olds are not supposed to be able to do that. Her only mistake was that she left the burner on after doing the fries. Forgiven!
But she kept harping about her Philly cheese-steak sandwich. Yeah, right, thought I. She could barely put together Muesli and milk (I still stubbornly denied she could cook) so it was bound to be an unmitigated disaster.
And then one night, among the usual chaos of her new Montrealer-flake friends cancelling and whatnot, she suddenly decided to make the Abigail Philly cheese-steak sandwich.
Who was I to argue? I retreated to the bedroom and watched Nazis kill Russians and she went to work.
And what she came up with! Amazing. It was the first sandwich of which I've eaten the entirety in many years. And what did she do? She substituted goat cheese for the usual bland Jack or Mozzarella.
And she didn't make French fried potatoes, she made SWEET French-fried potatoes.
But the crowning glory was this morning, when we'd both stayed up all night, her packing, I sleepless, and we decided to make an omelette for Brigitte, who had to drive her to the bus station.
Abbie started making the omelette and I chopped vegetables, but then I smelled a powerful smell . . . truffle oil! She'd grabbed the truffle oil out of the cabinet to make the home fries with. "I'm sorry!" she apologized, when I told her what she'd done, but I was delighted! Home fries in truffle oil! I'm going to remember that. I love kitchen mistakes.
It's too bad she's gone, but she has a bright future in the kitchen. Our kitchen, at least.
I'll try to reverse-engineer her Philly cheese-steak but I fear it'll be a failure. We'll miss you, Abbie.
So: no time to cook, although I did delve into the realm of breaded, deep-fried stuffed mushrooms the other day. I'm not a great deep-fry fanatic but these were just too damn good, if a bit finicky. I'll share next time -- I have a few ideas beyond mere Boursin stuffing.
But my real topic is that of Abigail, Brigitte's niece, who came to stay with us for a few weeks from her home in West Virginia. Abigail is a mere twenty years old.
Dear Abbie
It was a bit weird, at first, as if if some random teenager had just crashed your pad. You know, crazy hours, hours on the phone, painted toenails, obscure alternative rock bands, tie-died shirts, split-second plan changes . . . well, you know the drill. I didn't.
From the start I did my usual, as did Brigitte, and made tasty stuff pretty much every day. Brigitte came up with a first: stuffed peppers.
Brigitte's Stuffed Peppers
I think I lamely made an old standby: stroganoff, but I tried to make strawberry daiquiris every other day, so that makes up for the lameness.
Nick's Steak Stroganoff
But Abbie kept saying "While I'm here, I really should learn to cook from you guys." So I thought, fondly, "Yeah, right. A twenty-year old actually making something other than a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich."
But one morning (a rare morning in which I actually woke up) I detected the small of frying butter . . . Abbie had gone to the Metro, bought all the fixings and had made a mushroom/pepper omelette with a side of home fries. It was delicious! 20-year olds are not supposed to be able to do that. Her only mistake was that she left the burner on after doing the fries. Forgiven!
But she kept harping about her Philly cheese-steak sandwich. Yeah, right, thought I. She could barely put together Muesli and milk (I still stubbornly denied she could cook) so it was bound to be an unmitigated disaster.
And then one night, among the usual chaos of her new Montrealer-flake friends cancelling and whatnot, she suddenly decided to make the Abigail Philly cheese-steak sandwich.
Who was I to argue? I retreated to the bedroom and watched Nazis kill Russians and she went to work.
And what she came up with! Amazing. It was the first sandwich of which I've eaten the entirety in many years. And what did she do? She substituted goat cheese for the usual bland Jack or Mozzarella.
Abigail's Philly Cheese-steak Sandwich
And she didn't make French fried potatoes, she made SWEET French-fried potatoes.
But the crowning glory was this morning, when we'd both stayed up all night, her packing, I sleepless, and we decided to make an omelette for Brigitte, who had to drive her to the bus station.
Abbie started making the omelette and I chopped vegetables, but then I smelled a powerful smell . . . truffle oil! She'd grabbed the truffle oil out of the cabinet to make the home fries with. "I'm sorry!" she apologized, when I told her what she'd done, but I was delighted! Home fries in truffle oil! I'm going to remember that. I love kitchen mistakes.
It's too bad she's gone, but she has a bright future in the kitchen. Our kitchen, at least.
I'll try to reverse-engineer her Philly cheese-steak but I fear it'll be a failure. We'll miss you, Abbie.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
To deal with the expanding case consider a scale invariant version
¯
λ(gij ) = λ(gij )V 2/n (gij ). The nontrivial expanding breathers will be ruled
out once we prove the following
Claim ¯
λ is nondecreasing along the Ricci flow whenever it is nonpositive;
moreover, the monotonicity is strict unless we are on a gradient soliton.
(Indeed, on an expanding breather we would necessarily have dV /dt > 0
for some t
∈[t1 , t2 ]. On the other hand, for every t, −
d
dt logV =
1
V
RdV
≥
λ(t), so ¯
λ can not be nonnegative everywhere on [t1 , t2 ], and the claim ap-
plies.)
Proof of the claim.
d¯
λ(t)/dt
≥ 2V
2/n
|
Rij +
∇i ∇j f |
2
e−f dV + 2
n V (2−n)/n λ
−
RdV
≥
2V 2/n [
|
Rij +
∇i ∇j f −
1
n (R +
△f )gij |
2
e−f dV +
1
n (
(R +
△f )
2
e−f dV
− ( (R + △f )e−
f
dV )2 )]
≥ 0,
where f is the minimizer for
F .
¯
λ(gij ) = λ(gij )V 2/n (gij ). The nontrivial expanding breathers will be ruled
out once we prove the following
Claim ¯
λ is nondecreasing along the Ricci flow whenever it is nonpositive;
moreover, the monotonicity is strict unless we are on a gradient soliton.
(Indeed, on an expanding breather we would necessarily have dV /dt > 0
for some t
∈[t1 , t2 ]. On the other hand, for every t, −
d
dt logV =
1
V
RdV
≥
λ(t), so ¯
λ can not be nonnegative everywhere on [t1 , t2 ], and the claim ap-
plies.)
Proof of the claim.
d¯
λ(t)/dt
≥ 2V
2/n
|
Rij +
∇i ∇j f |
2
e−f dV + 2
n V (2−n)/n λ
−
RdV
≥
2V 2/n [
|
Rij +
∇i ∇j f −
1
n (R +
△f )gij |
2
e−f dV +
1
n (
(R +
△f )
2
e−f dV
− ( (R + △f )e−
f
dV )2 )]
≥ 0,
where f is the minimizer for
F .
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Slow News Days
Aaah, why bother? Sometimes there just ain't nuthin' to write about. No new food projects. No new nothing.
Oh, I forgot work.
Well, fuck work. I'm not going to blog about work. Now that I have some, it's so tiresome that I just don't want to see it staring me in the face after it stared me in the face all fucking day.
How's about tonight's abortive attempt to go to a rock concert? I'm, like, so over that shit. The moment I got there I regretted not having bought earplugs this afternoon at Pharmaprix. And seeing the hordes of jolly ill-dressed morons milling about everywhere, downing their Molson Xes and sneaking out for a puff on their joints was beyond pathetic.
Yeah, so I might be old. But I've SO been there, done that. Watching other idiots repeat my idiotic youth is quite, shall we say, depressing.
There's only one redeeming forecast for this weekend: no car. We can't go anywhere, unless it's by bus or metro. Which means we aren't going anywhere.
Hail beer and the lord.
Oh, I forgot work.
Well, fuck work. I'm not going to blog about work. Now that I have some, it's so tiresome that I just don't want to see it staring me in the face after it stared me in the face all fucking day.
How's about tonight's abortive attempt to go to a rock concert? I'm, like, so over that shit. The moment I got there I regretted not having bought earplugs this afternoon at Pharmaprix. And seeing the hordes of jolly ill-dressed morons milling about everywhere, downing their Molson Xes and sneaking out for a puff on their joints was beyond pathetic.
Yeah, so I might be old. But I've SO been there, done that. Watching other idiots repeat my idiotic youth is quite, shall we say, depressing.
There's only one redeeming forecast for this weekend: no car. We can't go anywhere, unless it's by bus or metro. Which means we aren't going anywhere.
Hail beer and the lord.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
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