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http://www.google.org/publicalerts/alert?aid=64e887f3f3677268&hl=en&gl=us&source=web

You know what that link is? A heat alert for the Montreal Region. It has been between 80 and 90F (26 and 32 C). That may not sound like much, but the humidity is high and a storm that has been supposed to break just keeps hanging out in the sky. Also, houses here don't really have air conditioning, so I am continuously covered in a sheen of sweat. I've been taking cold showers in the evening as an attempt to cool my body down to a sleeping temperature, but it doesn't last me through the night. This morning I had to take a second cold shower at 5am to get back to sleep.  I think I may start sleeping at the lab if this keeps up because the lab is cold, if not particularly comfortable.

Research is Different

This is how lab seems sometimes:

Person1: "To make your system go faster, you should use method Z, I believe person 2 has written an implementation of it"

Person2: "I am working on an implementation of X, but it isn't finished yet. Person3 found a bug in method Y that I need to use, so you should ask them"

Person3: "Yeah, method Y uses method Z, but method Z gives different answers depending on if you use CPU or GPU, and neither is correct. I don't actually know anything about how method Z works"

Person1: "Well, you could use Method X instead, person4 worked on it"

Person4: "Yeah... it doesn't work yet"

Person1: "Maybe Method W?"

Me: "It's written in a completely different language... :(((("

Life is fun though. I am enjoying the detective aspect of searching through code and  documentation filled with "TODO"s and "Writeme"s. At school, we use established programming languages for which we can easily find complete documention online and answers to questions on Stack Overflow. At my lab, part of the lab’s contribution to science is building a system to easily set up Machine Learning experiments. This system is always being added on to, and each lab member has their own private version of the system, so nobody actually knows how everything works. If someone writes a useful add-on, they try to get it merged into the official version. However, because we are all human and communication is hard,  multiple people end up trying to write similar things independently, and a number of features don’t get finished or don’t work. Life on the edge, man.

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 :)

Tomato-Jicama-Avocado Salad

It is what it sounds like! I'm back at school and I'm making my own dinners this semester, so I'm learning to cook from what I have. This evening, I looked in my fridge and saw cabbage, plums, and baby carrots. Eh. Then I saw the tomatoes I had gotten at the farmer's market last weekend, and the jicama from 2 weeks ago. Maybe I could make a salad. After all, I had been wanting to try the avocado I got last weekend.

I made a quick vinaigrette with mustard, cider vinegar, and olive oil. I chopped up three small tomatoes, and about a sixth of a jicama. I cubed half the avocado, and added some cubed cheese for good measure. With some salt and pepper, a slice of toasted bread, this was a very passable dinner. The cheese (part skim mozzarella) and the avocado did not pair very well though. A crumblier cheese like
queso fresco or feta would probably have worked better.

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.

Strawberry Cardamom Sour Cream Upside-Down Cake

Well, it certainly has been a while since I last posted here. Turns out having a job and taking a class at the same time is a lot of work. I've been taking a b&w film photography class this summer. At first I was a bit confused as to why film photo is a pre-req for digital photo, but the class is actually very interesting. Contrary to everyones expectations, I did not take pictures of food, because food in black and white is just not particularly exciting. So I have been exploring the bay area / my house in search of situations to take pictures of.

(Creepy?) Handbags in Half Moon Bay

Dragonfly

California + Bikes

Public Transit

Donner Lake

That last picture somehow became brown when I took a picture of it, probably because the white balance on my digital camera was off. I think it fits the landscape well though.

But anyways, back to food.

Mmmm strawberries

Strawberries are good, right? And sour cream is pretty good with strawberries. And cardamom is just plain delicious. (While making this cake I discovered that chewing a cardamom seed is very refreshing.)

Mmmm cardamom

Joy from Joythebaker is a genius and combined these three flavors into a cake. The super thick batter is spread on top of sliced strawberries that are sitting in some butter and brown sugar. I decreased the amount of sugar from Joy's recipe because my strawberries were sweet enough for my taste. (And of course I doubled the number of strawberries!)

Also, if you look at her post, she somehow manages to keep her strawberries bright red, while mine went to a dull purple. I'm guessing that adding some lemon juice to the strawberries before baking might help prevent discoloration. 

Ugly but delicious. I'm sure your cake will be beautiful and delicious!

Anyways, recipe time!

But first some sliced strawberries

Ingredients:

     For the strawberries:

• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 2 cups sliced strawberries
• 1 tbsp lemon juice (opt, may preserve color) 

     For the cake:

• 6 tbsp butter, soft
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp ground cardamom
• 2/3 cup sour cream

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Mix strawberries with lemon juice (if using.)
3. Put the 2 tbsp of butter in a 9" round cake pan and place in the oven until melted.
4. Rotate pan to coat all sides with butter, sprinkle the 2 tbsp brown sugar into the bottom of the pan.
5. In a medium bowl, stir together flour, baking powder + soda, salt.
6. In a large bowl cream together the butter and 1/2 cup brown sugar.
7. When butter is fluffy, add egg and vanilla, and beat until well combined.
8. Beat in dry ingredients and sour cream, batter will be very thick. 
9. Spread strawberries on bottom of pan.
10. Spoon batter over strawberries and spread evenly.



Spread it out more evenly than this

11. Bake for about 35 minutes.
12. When cake is cooked, run a knife along the edge of the cake and then invert over a plate. If the cake sticks to the pan, leave the pan upside-down over the plate and go read a book or check your email. After ~5 minutes, the cake will have unstuck from the pan (Yay gravity!)
13. Serve with a spoonful of sour cream

I brought this cake to a friend's house and it was gone in 5 minutes. Granted, there were three tall and skinny runner guys participating, so it wasn't particularly surprising. 

Garlic Bread

... is basically at the top of the list for foods both delicious and quick to make. I mean, who doesn't like garlic bread? (Many people, I am sure, especially those who dislike garlic.) But I cannot resist the warm combination of fresh crusty bread, melted butter, and garlic.
Of course, like all inherently simple things, there are many different recipes, each claiming to "be the very best" (that no one ever was??) My suitemate, for example, simply kept a bowl of garlic-butter on the counter (for some reason unrefrigerated) and whenever he wanted garlic bread, he would spread a thick layer of butter on a slice of sandwich bread and microwaved it until the butter was melted. I must say, it was delicious. Some people put cheese or zest or their garlic bread, which is delicious too. The main debate I have seen is olive oil vs butter. But hey, this recipe uses both, so anything is possible.I am personally a fan of butter garlic bread, probably because I am a fan of butter.

But why am I talking about garlic bread anyways? Well, the other night we had family friends come over for dinner, and my parents (Hi parents!) basically assigned me to make the dinner they had planned: clams and fish cooked in a tomato-chorizo-roasted red pepper-garlic-onion sauce and garlic bread.
So how did I make this garlic bread? Well, I opted for the "melt butter with garlic and brush/pour on top of the bread" method.

Garlic Bread (serves 6-8)

Ingredients

• 1 baguette
• 3 tbsp of salted butter
• 4 medium garlic cloves
• Parsley (opt)

Tasting the melted garlic butter :)

Method:

1. Cut the baguette in half to make 2 short baguettes
2. Cut each of those in half like you are splitting them for a sub sandwich. The goal here is to have have access to the crumb of the bread.
3. Use a garlic press or knife to mince the garlic and place it in a small microwaveable bowl.
4. Add the butter to the bowl and microwave the contents until the butter is melted and bubbly.
5. Use your communism skills to distribute the melted garlic butter evenly among the pieces of bread (on the not crusty side). 
6. Sprinkle on a bit of chopped parsley if you want to.
7. Slice the bread into the number/size of pieces you desire.
8. But the bread pieces crust down on a baking sheet and stick under the broiler until the edges of the bread brown.
9. Serve warm!

Bento #1: Hoisin salmon, spinach, carrot kinpira, and sushi rice

Sooo I started my job this week, but my job does not have a physical location, so I work whereever I want to. Today I decided to work at the library, so I made myself a bento lunch. I had been wanting to try making bento for a while (I was especially inspired by justbento.com; I even bought her cookbook!)
In today's bento I put some leftover hoisin glazed salmon and vietnamese spinach that I had frozen last week. I also had about 3/4 cup of "sushi rice" (read more to learn why I put quotations there) and some carrot kinpira, blanched bean sprouts, and "pickled" cucumber from the Just Bento cookbook. I had prepared the carrots and bean sprouts last friday, and they were fine today, although not as delicious as they were fresh on Friday. Especially the carrots, those were really darn good. The salmon was a tad dry, but the spinach was good.

The rice, however, kinda failed. It was mushy and the flavor ratio was off. I think one issue is that I put too much water in the rice cooker because I was trying to cook only half a cup of rice but the rice cooker does not have half cup markings. I also was not sure how much vinegar mixture to put into the rice. Well, with practice I'll get the hang of it.

As a sidenote: this recipe looks delicious.

Spring Break 2: Bread-y stuff

So on Thursday I pulled out my beloved The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart and made some bread. I made a caprese-inspired loaf by putting fresh mozzarella, sundried tomatoes, and basil in Challah dough (I'm sure this is terribly sacrilegious) and pizza.

For the Caprese Bread I made the challah dough per the instructions of Peter Reinhart. To incorporate the filling into the dough, I stretched out the dough like pizza, placed the filling on top, and rolled it up like a log. 

And then I split it into 3 and braided it!

I also made pizza dough (also from Reinhart's book) that I rested in the refrigerator overnight. As toppings for the pizza, I roasted some brussels sprouts and broccolini in a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes, then I turned the oven down to 330 for another 10-20 minutes. For sauce, I blended some canned diced tomatoes and cooked them with onions, garlic, and oregano.

I made 3 pizzas, one with brussels sprouts, broccolini and caramelized onions (not pictured), one with broccolini, copa, and caramelized onions (first), and, at my dad's suggestion, one with chorizo, brussels sprouts, roasted garlic, and an egg in the center (second). The chorizo one was the family favorite!

 

 And on Pi day (3/14) I visited my friend and we made pie!!! (We did not have enough crust dough to make a complete top crust, so we put a circle on top instead! It is off center on purpose.)

Spring Break 1: Roasted Cauliflower with Indian Style BBQ sauce

Today is the last day of Spring Break. And apparently to me, spring break means time to make delicious foods! (And read A Dance with Dragons)

I started out the break relatively simple: Roasted Cauliflower with Indian style BBQ sauce (based off of this recipe.)

  

Cauliflower is really pretty.

  

Roasted cauliflower is really tasty.

I thought the recipe's ingredients for the bbq sauce had way too much ketchup, so I just made something up:
I heated together

• 1 crushed garlic clove
• 1 tsp thai red curry paste
• 1 tsp tamarind paste
• 2 tsp tomato paste
• 1 tbsp ground cumin

in some oil to bring out their flavors. Then I added

• 1/4 ketchup
• 3 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp bbq sauce.

 If I had ginger, I would have added it.

 

Roasted cauliflower with this sauce is even tastier.

According to Epicurious, someone called roasted cauliflower "veggie candy." I wholeheartedly agree, I could eat this stuff all day.

Backpacking food

I am now officially in College (with a capital C). Classes started a couple weeks ago and I am already quite whelmed by homework (but not yet overwhelmed). But before classes started and before orientation started, I went on a Pre-Orientation Hike offered by my school that consisted of a 40mile / 5 day backpacking trip in Yosemite.

Of course, what else would I do on a five day trip but take pictures of all the food! But this ain't no five star restaurant, ok? Be prepared; all this food must be able to be cooked with just a titatium pot, water, and a burner. But after hiking 6-9 miles with a pack, it sure tasted like a 5 star meal.

For breakfast we would generally boil water in our pot and pour it in a bag of instant oatmeal, but on the last day we had granola with dried milk powder and water so we could start hiking earlier.

Doesn't that look delicious?

For lunch we would alternate between cheese, sausage, and crackers or nutella, jelly, tortillas, and flatbread. 

That kraft yellow cheddar and this white rustic cheddar were the best tasting cheeses I had ever had. I can't even imagine how delicious actually good cheese would have been.

As for the nutella and tortillas, well, nutella makes everything delicious! 

(and yes, I am using my knee as a plate. I was too lazy to get my bowl out for lunch)

Dinner was where we had the more interesting meals because we could actually cook stuff. Unfortunately, titanium does not conduct heat well, so attempts at cooking generally turned out somehow both burnt and undercooked. The night after the first full day we used the leftover orange cheese from lunch to make burnt and undercooked cheesy rice. Yum!

We also had Chicken and Orzo  made with weird packaged chicken

But the best meal was the one that required the least cooking: Couscous! Our last dinner was a box of coucous with a curry spice packet, and it was actually legitly delicious. Especially with Sundried tomatoes and pine nuts in it.