I'm in Canada!

After many months of stressing about whether I was going to be allowed to work in Canada, I successfully got my work permit and started my internship at the beginning of this week. Yay! I'm doing computer science research in Montreal, which is pretty darn awesome. My coworkers are a fun bunch: to celebrate someone's Doctorate, one student got him a machete, and we hiked up the mountain to play real life fruit ninja! Turns out coconuts are really hard to slice, but melons work surprisingly well.

Montreal is an interesting city. In the US, I generally know what language to use when talking to people: if they are my parent's French friends, I use French, otherwise I use English. In Montreal, most people speak both, but would be more comfortable using one language over the other. It's a confusing guessing game.

Nonetheless, I have definitely been enjoying life here. I love walking around my neighborhood and checking out the little grocery stores and cafes. I seem to be living at the intersection of a Greek neighborhood and a Hasidic neighborhood, so there are a lot of Greek restaurants and kosher grocery stores. Even the generic grocery store has interesting greek cheeses that I had never tried before (including Mizithra, which my Greek friend keeps talking about). This morning I also saw freshly grilled Souvlaki being sold outside one of the Greek restaurants! I'll have to try that next week (or perhaps tomorrow if it is still there).

I've been lazy about bringing my camera places, but I promise I'll be better next week. In the meantime, here are some things I've found with my phone camera:

There is a fruit store near my lab that has some nice looking and rather inexpensive fruit. It's "La Sucrerie" and it sells fruit, pastries, and maple syrup. It also does not seem to exist on the internet (...?) Unfortunately, it is really far from my apartment, so I won't be going shopping there very often.

There is a used bookstore about 5m from my apartment building! It does not seem to have much Sci-Fi/Fantasy, but as I only brought 2 books with me, I'll probably end up getting some books from there :)

As a final treat, here is a video of the post-doc I'm working with slicing through a cantaloupe :)

New York

Duuude it's been forever. I'm in New York now. Like, New York, New York. Manhattan. In the middle. For three months. This is pretty exciting.

Living in New York City is very different from the California suburbs I'm always lived in. Cars are honking all over the place. There are regular wafts of rotting food and sewers. It rains in summer. It's hot even if the sun is gone.

What surprised me the most was the cost of food. The cheap restaurants have $7 sandwiches and $12 entrées. Most restaurants have entrées at $15-20. The food in grocery stores is also more expensive, especially the produce, all of which is imported from California.

However, I am not doomed! By the wonders of Yelp, I found a very cheap produce market: http://www.yelp.com/biz/stiles-farmers-market-new-york. Three dollars for four tomatoes and 2 bell peppers? Sounds good to me!

I was curious as to what I would end up cooking when I need to cook for myself regularly. As the kitchen obviously did not come stocked with spices, it is difficult to make anything fancy because I only have the basics in my pantry: The flavorings I have so far are salt, pepper, cinnamon, and hot sauce.

When I first got here, I made a lot of eggs. Specifically, fried eggs on toast with goat cheese and marinara sauce. Then I switched to cabbage and leek pancakes (like this, but I've actually figured a much better way of doing it). I've also made pasta with tomato/bell pepper sauce, and well as tomato/bell pepper salad.

What about New York? Well, I took some pictures!

Fountain Pens!

A couple weeks ago in chem lab, I noticed that my lab partner was writing in her lab notebook with a fountain pen. A fountain pen?? I thought those had died out decades ago! But no, she was writing with a bona fide fountain pen. It was beautiful.

For a week starting that afternoon, I spent all my free time researching fountain pens on the internet. My lab partner had recommended gouletpens.com as a good source of pens, ink samples, and information. From there I found a whole fountain pen community on the internet. There are forums, blogs, stores... All the things I had come to expect from the internet foodie community, I found for fountain pens. I learned about proprietary cartridges, cartridge converters, and converting cartridge pens to eyedropper pens. I saw a range of 3 dollar disposable fountain pens to pens worth hundreds of dollars and inlaid with Japanese lacquer. 
From pens I went to paper, and I read about super smooth French Clairefontaine paper that weighs 90g per square meter. I read at least 30 various notebook reviews. I found writing samples of different pens and inks on different papers. It was an obsession.

Finally, I deposited my paychecks and bought everything I needed to start my fountain pen experience: a $4 Fine Platinum Preppy, three ink samples (Noodler's Blue-Black, Private Reserve Purple Ebony, and Rohrer & Klingner Alt-Goldgrun) and a Clairefontaine notebook. 

The Platinum Preppy

The Preppy's nib

The Preppy came with a cartridge of purple ink.

After reading about the ink that comes with the Preppy and being disappointed by its quality, I decided to not use the cartridge right away.  Instead, I did an "eyedropper conversion" so that I could use better inks. I got some silica grease from my lab partner and now I use the barrel of the pen to store ink! I used a syring to fill the pen with Noodler's blue-black ink.

2mL ink samples from Goulet Pens

10mL blunt tipped syring for dispensing ink

Now I had a working pen! Writing with a fountain pen is cool because I barely need to put any pressure on the paper to write. The ink just flows. Naturally, I then needed to test this pen everywhere. I first tried out the fancy French paper.

Clairefontaine's A5 "Basic Life. Unplugged" Notebook

It is clothbound!

Clairefontaine paper is well known in fountain pen circles for its smooth surface and absorbance. It is supposed to have minimized feathering (little spikes around lines) and minimized bleed through. I was not disappointed. I tested the paper with all the pens I could find in my room:

Various pens

No see-through!

A cool part of using fountain pens is shading. Shading is the effect of having different parts of letters have different amounts of ink. On the picture below, some strokes are lighter and more blue/green, and others are closer to black.

Close ups of the various pens are here. 

I also used my fountain pen on more standard papers. My "Evidence Ampad" recycled paper notebook actually fared very well. It had little bleed through although it did have some feathering.

Thin printer paper did not have as smooth strokes. Notice the feathering on the f. 

In conclusion, the platinum preppy is a fun pen to use, the ink I got has pretty shading, and fancy paper is nice but not necessary. However, I do find the lines a bit thick. After a bit of research, the most thin but reasonably priced fountain pen I could find is the Pilot Penmanship with an Extra-Fine nib, it is the next pen I will get. It has a nice looking clear barrel that could be converted to an eye-dropper pen, although I might get a cartridge converter to keep it cleaner. Cartridge converters are basically refillable cartridges that can be used with any ink.  

Now I want to go back to writing on random different types of papers with my Preppy pen :)

(Actually, I'm going to work on chem homework...)

Orange Peels and Liquid CO2

This post is not about food. Well, it not about eating food. Although eating did happen. This post is about Science. With a capital S.

This post is about a molecule called limonene. As you may be able to guess from the name, limonene is what makes citrus fruit smell cirtusy. It looks like this:

limonene

For my carbon compounds lab, we extracted limonene from orange peels. If you know anything about organic chemistry, you can see that limonene is made only of carbons and hydrogens. So, it is rather non-polar*. The traditional way to extract limonene is to mix watered orange peel mush with diethyl ether. The diethyl ether is less polar than water, so the limonene goes hangout with its bat-shaped buddy. Then you let the layers separate, like oil and water, and keep just the diethyl ether layer. Yay! But now your limonene is floating around in anesthetic diethyl ether, so you pour your solution into this cool spinning vacuum pump that vaporizes the solvent to purify your limonene.

diethyl ether (see, it looks like a bat!)

* A "polar" molecule is one with an uneven distribution of electrons such that one side of the molecule is more negative than the other. This happens because the elements to right side of the periodic table (O, Cl, etc) tend to be more attractive to electrons than elements to the left, like C and H.

Getting limonene is all very great, but you used a fair amount of solvent that must now be disposed of as hazardous waste. This is expensive and not very green. What to do?

Enter carbon dioxide:

carbon dioxide

As you can see, carbon dioxide is a linear molecule, so even though the oxygens pull on the electrons, they cancel each other out and neither side of the molecule has a higher electron density than the other. Therefore, CO2 is non-polar. CO2 is also a gas, which makes it not very convenient for dissolving things. However, if you look at the phase diagram below, you can see that we can get liquid CO2 by raising the pressure. 

CO2 phase diagram (from wikipedia)

To recap: carbon dioxide + pressure = liquid carbon dioxide. liquid carbon dioxide + orange peel = extracted limonene.

Here is the set up for the extraction:

I zested an orange.

With a copper wire and some filter paper, I set up a little stage for the orange peel to be elevated above the bottom of the centrifuge tube.

I packed dry ice (solid CO2) above the orange peel, capped the tube and dropped it into hot water. 

Here pressure builds up in the tube and the carbon dioxide melts, dribbles through the orange peel, taking limonene with it. Since the cap's seal is not completely gas-tight, the carbon dioxide finds ways out and vaporizes, leaving limonene at the bottom of the tube. 

I repeated steps 3 and 4 four times to build up limonene at the bottom.

Now I have limonene without generating any hazardous waste! Yes, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, but the dry ice was made from CO2 that was already in the atmosphere, so there is no net harm. 

Here is a video of the dry ice melting:

Of course, at the end of the lab period, we all ate our oranges!

Sriracha Ice Cream

For the past year or so, I have had the idea of savory or savory-inspired ice cream churning in the back of my mind. Pun Intended. Although I don't think I'll go as far as "clam raisin," mentioned in David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop, I do have a list of flavors building up:

• Curry, perhaps mixed with rice like a rice pudding ice cream
• Guacamole
• Avocado-Bacon
• Corn/Corn-Bacon
• Pepper
• Goat Cheese (perhaps with honey)
• Pho sorbet
• Lemongrass
• Tomato-Basil soup
• Butternut squash
• Sriracha

As you can probably tell from the title of this post, I started with the bottom of the list. This sriracha ice cream is more "savory-inspired" than actually savory; it contains sugar and vanilla.

The ice cream is sweet, hot, and salty. The first bite is very weird, but I found that I liked it more as I continued to eat it. The spiciness doesn't build up until the third or fourth spoonful, and it never gets unbearable because of the sugar and cream. This flavor is definitely worth trying if your are a Sriracha fan.

When I brought this to the dorm lounge, I got mixed reactions. My roommates actually liked it, but one of my friends literally spat out the ice cream, drank some soda, spat that out too, and then had a cookie to make sure all traces of the ice cream were gone. It was quite a show. I recommend offering this ice cream to people under the name "Mango Ice cream" and taking pictures of their faces as they dig in enthusiastically.

You may be wondering, how does one make this strange ice cream? Since I don't have a kitchen this year, I opted for a "philadelphia-style" cream. That means that instead of making a custard by cooking egg yolks in milk, I just added some flavor to cream and froze it. I went off of the recipe I found here.

Sriracha Ice Cream

• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1 cup milk (fat percentage is not very important)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2tbsp to 1/4 cup sriracha (rooster sauce), to taste
• 1 tsp vanilla

1. Make sure the frozen part of your ice cream maker is frozen.
2. In a medium bowl, combine the sugar, sriracha, and vanilla. 



It looks like blood-spattered snow...

3. Stir well.






4. Add the cream and milk, stir until the sugar is dissolved






5. Add more hot sauce or sugar to taste.
6. Put in the ice cream machine and churn for 20 minutes.
7. Transfer soft serve ice cream to a container and freeze for at least 3 hours.

The freshly churned cream is much lighter in color than the frozen ice cream (top)

The churned ice cream will have a strange sticky texture, but it will feel fine when eaten. Enjoy! (Or psych out your friends.)

A study on Ginger and Saffron

My family recently went to the "molecular" restaurant Beaumé, and one dish there that particularly interested me was the turbot with turmeric cream, chanterelles, and pickled kohlrabi. Beaumé cooked the turbot "sous-vide" and placed it in the bright yellow sauce. The pickled kohlrabi added a nice bright touch to the soft dish.

Beaumé's turbot

Inspired by this dish and by the saffron my family received as a gift, I decided to make a variation on this recipe. I was curious about the combination of ginger and saffron, so I put together a menu using both spices.

The Menu:

• Cod poached in ginger, kefir lime leaves, and lemongrass
• Colorful vegetables in dashi and ginger broth
• Saffron rice pilaf
• Saffron and Ginger bechamel

The cod and vegetables turned out well. For the vegetables, I found a bundle of heirloom carrots (purple, red, and yellow) to which I added leeks and celery. I boiled some water with dashi granules, ginger, lemon grass, and kefir limes leaves to make a flavored broth for both the vegetables and fish, and I added more ginger to the vegetables as they cooked. 

The carrots

The vegetables

The rice did not go as smoothly. I bloomed the saffron in boiling water to try to get the flavor and color out of it, but the rice did not end up becoming yellow. My mother says that I should have have ground up the saffron with a mortar before blooming it. Well, now I know! And even though the rice was not yellow, it still tasted of saffron.
To make the pilaf, I sautéed some leeks in a tbsp of butter, then added the riced and sautéed it for a couple minutes as well. I made a broth of saffron juice (saffron + boiling water + kefir lime leaf + time) and a cube of vegetable bouillon. Per traditional pilaf method, I added enough broth to cover the rice, brought it to a simmer, and then stirred/added more broth as needed until the rice cooked through.

The Bechamel was tricky. I heated some milk with saffron and ginger to get flavor. In a saucepan I cooked 1 tbsp flour in 1 tbsp melted butter for a couple minutes and then added the milk a little bit at a time, stirring well after each addition, until the sauce was the desired thickness. Because I don't have much experience, my sauce ended up a bit curdled, so I strained it to remove the bits. Like for the rice, the sauce was not yellow because I had not ground the saffron before infusing the milk.

To replace the kohlrabi, I made some pickled ginger (this recipe, it was a bit too salty)

And here is the final plate.

Crêpes!

Crêpe with onions, mushrooms, ham, and cheese

On Tuesday we celebrated my brother's birthday again (his actual birthday has not yet happened) with a crêpe party! In my family, "crêpe party" means that we pull out the gridle that has six holes for small crêpes so that each person can customize his or her crêpes and the meal goes on.

For our crêpe batter we use half wheat (not whole wheat) flour and half buckwheat flour. Traditionally, savory crêpes (called galettes) are made with 100% buckwheat flour, but the lack of gluten makes the batter hard to work with, and my family's hybrid crêpe batter lets us use the same batter for savory and sweet crêpes!

To make crêpe batter for 4 people (+ leftovers for breakfast the next morning):

Ingredients:

• 100g all-purpose flour
• 100g buckwheat flour
• 3 eggs
• 2 tsp salt
• about 360g milk
• water

Method:

1. Mix the flours with the salt in a large bowl. (For some reason my family has a designated crêpe bowl)                                                           
2. Add the eggs and mix with a spoon            
3. Add the milk slowly, stirring between each addition to avoid making lumps (if you do get lumps, give the dough a whirr with an electric mixer)
4. Let the dough rest in the refrigerator for at least an hour.
5. Add water to the dough until it is liquid enough to run off the spoon quickly (if the dough is too thick to spread when you start cooking crêpes, you can always add more water)

To cook crêpes:

1. Heat your pan with some oil. 
2. Add a small ladle of batter to the pan and either use the bottom of the ladle to spread out the batter or rotate the pan so that the batter is very thin but not broken.
3. Cook one side until the bottom is browned, then flip.
4. Add desired topping if toppings need to melt.
5. Cook until bottom is also browned.
6. Adjust the temperature for the next crêpes if they are cooking too fast or too slowly.
7. Serve.

Remember: the first crêpe you make in the pan is always a failed crêpe. Don't sweat it.

For our savory crêpe toppings we had caramelized onions, sautéed mushrooms, ham, cheese, and eggs. For dessert toppings we had nutella, honey, sugar, butter, bananas, and canned pears.

 

The classic "crêpe complète"  is ham, cheese, and a fried egg. I add onions and mushrooms because onions and mushrooms make everything even more delicious.

 

And of course, as crêpes (galettes) are from Bretagne, they must be eaten with apple cider. My dad found some legit unfiltered and unpasteurized cider at Piazza's that supposedly went very well with the crêpes. (As I am under 21 I obviously did not have any ;)

 And the great thing about making crêpes for dinner is that you get to eat the leftovers with nutella the next morning!

Holiday Baking!

Finals are over! And it turns that finals week was the week where I had the most free time. What did I do with this frightening abundance of free time? I baked cookies! I think I baked 8 times in 8 days. Not only cookies though.
Saturday afternoon, my friend Nicole wanted to make shortbread cookies for her professors, so I volunteered to help out. We used this joy of baking recipe and shaped some of the cookies as stars and hearts and other cookies shaped as hippos and elephants. The fizzix professors have a slight obsession with rhinos, so we figured hippos would be close enough. Unfortunately the hippos ran away before I could photograph them.

 

I tried filling shortbread cookie dough with nuts and brown sugar! Pecans, almonds, and cashews all worked well.

That same day, my dorm was having a potluck, so my roommate, Sophia, and I made Sophia's favorite apple crumble recipe. The apples were simply sprinkled with sugar and lemon juice. The topping was a combination of butter, oatmeal, brown sugar, and flour. Usually she uses pecans, but almonds were cheaper.

 

We brought the crumble to the potluck, but it turned out that only 2 people had brought savory foods, so we had a lot of desserts: crumble, apple pie, sesame balls, cookies...

The next day I helped Sophia make the biscotti she makes every year for Christmas. These are delicious almond-anis-raisin biscotti (I liked them even though I usually don't really like anis or raisins.)

 

 The last batch of cookies we made was Tobe's (our suitemate) Candy Cane cookies. Sophia and I agree that these are the best cookies we have ever had. The dough is flavored with almond extract and the cookies are sprinkled with crushed candy canes and sugar. Tobe's instructions said to color some of the dough red and twirl the different colors together to make candy canes, but neither of s was able to do it. Instead, we made trees and mushrooms and flowers, but we discovered that the simple thumbprint cookie was the best at holding large quantities of the candy cane sugar.