A quick post to record how to set up a mountain bike for a good fit.
This link is a good explanation.
When I saw the first digital camera from Canon, I thought it was the future and wanted one immediately. It was clunky, saving files on a micro floppy disk at resolutions that were sub-par, etc….but I knew it would one day become something like we have in our iPhones, always with us, amazingly powerful etc…
Today, I see the same future for the technologies from Boston Dynamics…I wish I could live in the future now but without having to get old…can’t wait.
See the video here.
In 2020 we have one extra day to do “something”….given the state of our planet I will use this extra day to try to improve my CO2 footprint.
In 2018 we got rid of the petrol car and went full electric with the Tesla. In 2019 we installed solar panels.
But when you look at the below graphic it seems that there is still a lot to do and clearly changing our diet to a more plant-based diet should be part of the master plan. (by the way I recommend watching this…)
As I was browsing the internet to better understand how we “capture” CO2, I realised that there is almost “NO” solution other than planting trees…..which seems such a low tech solution and inefficient in terms of returns.
To illustrate the lack of technology to absorb the CO2, it would take 1 cubic meter of porous basalt (ie a rock of 1m by 1m by 1m) a full year to only “absorb” 0.5KG of Co2 from the atmosphere.
We challenged our friends in our yearly “New Year Wishes” video to do something about the environment.
To fulfil my commitment, I am currently researching some sort of carbon capture device that I could build at home similar to this thing. I would love to work with these people….they seem to be having a lot of fun.
This is very easy to make ….the most difficult is to wait for a few weeks so that it is ready to be sliced and cooked to crispiness heaven.
It is just a piece of pork belly which you cover with sea salt or Kosher Salt. It is best to use the coarse chunky salt (to avoid end product being “too salty”) but both work.
Leave the pork belly on a layer of salt and cover the belly with salt as well. Leave in fridge for 24 hours.
Take the pork out of the fridge and clean thoroughly and DRY very well using kitchen paper towels.
Cover the pork with the spices you like. I used black pepper, paprika, cayenne pepper and a little bit of herbs de Provence.
Put a string through the meat and hang in the fridge so that it starts drying and preserving. After a couple of weeks, the meat should not be wet at all and can be kept in a Tupperware or even outside of the fridge to air dry. (As long as you protect the meat from getting spoiled by bugs).
I like it best once it is about one month old. Obviously you must monitor the meat for any signs of spoiling, but if you have salted properly in the first step it should be fine.
Slice very thinly and cook in a pan until crispy.
Great as an aperitif with a beer or in pasta or with waffles for breakfast!
It was Darren Hooker’s anniversary of his passing recently (22nd January 2016) and unfortunately, another one of my work colleagues (Paul Foster) has gone to join him upstairs only a couple of weeks ago.
The last time I saw Darren we met at the Crown and Treaty for a last beer and say goodbye to each other. He was tough and kind at the same time, a very special person that I am very happy to have met and called my friend. I miss him but nothing like his family does.
Paul loved the CAT as well and I had a few beers and parties with him over there. I knew Paul for something like 20 years of my 26 years at Xerox. The scary thing is that when I met Paul he had already done 26 years of Company !!!….yes 46 years in Total. He was a character that everybody loved.
I remember that when I left Xerox and walked to all the desks to say goodbye to people the only desk where I got emotional was when I saw him and he said it was the wrong way round for me to go before him…
Although it is very sad that he will not be able to enjoy a long retirement which he definitely deserved, Xerox was everything to him and many of us loved him very much like family.
I like to think that Darren is showing his old mate Paul the best places up in the heavens.
[Original Post was 18th Feb 2019]
This is how you make waffles…
If you are not using these recipes you cannot be making the true traditional recipes
The Brussels ones
The Liege ones
Latest update !! July 2020 :
After many attempts at making the best Waffles in the world, I have settled on my “Mum’s” recipe….not a surprise really as it brings so many memories in my mind. These a light and crispy, exactly as I prefer them.
A picture of the recipe is below but I tend to make a smaller batch at week-ends and for reference wanted to provide the quantities of the ingredients on my blog.
Ingredients:
Mix all ingredients until smooth mixture, add the milk slowly so that you do not make lumps in the dough, leave the mixture to rise for at least one hour.
Voila, the best Waffles ever!
Below is the quick version which does not require a rise period.
However, there is salvation for a quick substitute version for when you simply do not care of having the true recipe and simply want Waffles quickly!
Ingredients (probably 12 waffles):
How to Make :
Melt all the butter in a pan and let boil for a few minutes. (Get a blonde butter but not brown)
Put all the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Make a well in the middle.
Incorporate the milk and water into the dry ingredients by mixing with a fork.
Beat all the eggs in a separate bowl. Then incorporate into the above mixture.
Finally, add the melted butter into the mixture. Make sure the butter is not too hot so that it does not cook the eggs.
Voila! The mixture is ready to be used with your waffle maker.
Have been experimenting with this recipe and more water makes the waffles more crispy and light. I want to try with fewer eggs and also try with more sugar or cassonade sugar. I also want to try with splitting the yoke and whites and bringing the whites to soft peaks, etc…
Here is the perfect waffle maker…reassuringly expensive. Got this one for a few weeks now, and definitely the best I have ever used.
[Update 1: Just been to my mum’s….and got the secret recipe from Grandma…]
Update 2, following a visit to family in Belgium, got this recipe for the Liege Waffles. Need to try this one urgently in 2020!
Ingredients updated after a few tries :
How to make :
Original Recipe from Emmaelle below :
UPDATE 3 !!!! – Below is the recipe used by my cousins in Canada directly from “Colette Ansseau”, one of the daughters of the sister of my grandmother !….This is the grandmother that married the brother of her sister’s husband…;) All true!
Just a quick post for savings my latest tips on how to make a piece of good bread at home.
1- Flour is critical.
I find the naming conventions extremely confusing, so I now use the PROTEIN content as the base for selecting which flour I want to use for the bread. For a very crusty bread use flour with high protein content. For a chewier pizza style bread use a lower protein content flour. Thanks to European rules, all flours have to display on the packaging the protein content.
2- Autolyse is not discussed in general (video) as a technique to make bread but my best loaves of bread have been achieved using the Autolyse method. Essentially it is mixing the ingredients without kneading. Some also delay the introduction of the salt into the dough. Using a large Tupperware container has delivered the best loaves of bread for me. You then fold the dough on itself like a portfolio and rotate 90 degrees. For high hydration loaves, make sure you wet your hands before so that they do not stick to the dough as you manipulate it. You should do this multiple (3 ideally) rises of 30 minutes before the final shaping rise. The dough should be stretchy and make a “window” when pulled apart. The dough is ready when if you push your finger on the dough and remove it, then it recovers only halfway through the push. Less it is not fermented enough, more it will collapse in handling/cooking.
3- Quantities of Flour/Water/Salt etc…are all percentages of the flour.
A 75% hydration bread means that the water is 75% of the weight of the flour. The higher the percentage of water the larger the holes in the final bread. The higher the water content the more difficult the dough is to manage for the final rise. (it might stick to everything). For flours with seeds or less refined flour or spelt flour, the % of water is usually higher. For general bread production, 70% to 80% of hydration is the range. Salt is nice at 2%. The picture of this blog is 75% water.
4- Quantities of yeast (as a percentage) only affect the speed of the rise, not final quality. More yeast is not better bread or better holes in the bread. 1% of Yeast is a good number. fresh yeast is usually 3X the quantities or dry yeast. Fresh yeast produces more active and faster rise. the more yeast the quicker the bread will be ready to cook but the quicker it will “over” ferment and collapse and therefore making it harder to spot the correct time to wait until cooking. A lower yeast content gives makes it easier to achieve the best bread because it is slower to develop.
5- Warm water and temperature of flour are important. Water can be warm (up to 35 degrees) and flour should be room temp. 25-26 degrees is the right average for all combined parts. Note that this is warm versus most people home’s room temperature of 19-20 degrees. Yeast is resilient and will live in low temperatures like the fridge but the rise is then slower, which might be what you need to fit within your schedule.
6- Shaping needs to be done by creating surface tension on the outside of the bread so that it rises and keeps its shape without going flat. I prefer to tuck the dough on itself until I get the surface tension. Do not use flour on the bread during shaping. If the dough is very wet and sticky use a metallic scraper to gather the dough off the tabletop or wet your hands rather than adding flour. Put your hands behind the dough and pull the dough towards you (the front part of the dough will get rolled under and create a tuck-in) keep rotating continuously the dough as you pull it towards you. This is a good way to create surface tension to hold the bread shape during the final rise. If rising in a banneton, then flour the banneton generously with “RICE” flour. This is because RICE flour will not combine with the wheat flour and will prevent sticking to the cloth in the banneton. Put the bread upside down in the banneton. (ie the top of the bread will have the banneton circles).
7- After the final rise, generously cover the dough with flour and then make the opening cut with a razor blade / grignette. You can cut deep; It will help the bread to open up. Note that the “Angle” of the cut will make a “HUGE” difference in the way the bread will look after cooking. A very straight and square cut will simply open the bread, whereas an angled cut will create a “flap” or “ear” which is characteristic of French loaves of bread like a baguette.
8- Levain or Sourdough starter can be done on the same day and delivers the best-tasting loaves of bread but not necessarily the best-shaped loaves of bread. Multi-day sourdough starter is great but not necessary for texture. I use 50% water / 50% flour for my starters. Use an elastic band to measure the progress of the rise around the jar. If the sourdough starter has risen more than 2 times its original space, it should be ready for the bread rising. Sourdough starter will float in water if ready to be used. When a starter collapse after its rise, it is time for a feed of fresh flour and water. Again, I use 50% flour and 50% water to keep things easy and avoid weighing the starter every time.
9- A large Dutch Oven is the best cooking method to deliver crispy crust and oven puff without having to worry about steam in the oven and other complicated methods of cooking in the oven. I put a little bit of flour in the bottom of the Dutch oven to prevent the bread from sticking to the bottom. However, it never happened to me for the bread to stick to the pot. I put the Dutch oven at least 30 minutes before cooking in the oven so that it is very warm when I put the dough in the pot. If you do the final rise of your loaf on a sheet of silicone, then you can simply move the whole thing into the dutch oven, reducing the risk of collapse of the risen loaf.
10- The oven needs to be very warm. 230 degrees or 250 degrees. My loaves of bread are usually cooked within 35 minutes (20 Minutes in the Dutch oven at 240 degrees followed by 15 minutes in the oven at 200 degrees). It is possible to make them go darker by taking the lid off the dutch and leave in the oven for a few more minutes. The final trick is to leave bread out of the pot but in the oven and let it cool down in the oven slowly. (for 20 minutes but not more as it would dry the bread too much). This makes an extra crispy crust but will make the bread dry quicker over the coming days.
This is quite an undertaking but it is worth the effort. It is originally south of France dish made out of a whole bunch of “extra” fish from the day’s catch. However, it has evolved over the years as a very sophisticated dish and many recipes can be found on the internet with everyone claiming to be the original.
Mine is not the original…it is my version or more accurately a patchwork of things I found on the internet…
It is a fish stew but it is “assembled” at the end so that all the fish and shellfish are cooked just right.
You will cook most of the fish in one pot but keep the cooked fish separate until the assembly of the dish at the end.
Ingredients :
How to make :
A true effort but all worth it at the end…..make large quantities so you can have leftovers because you will want to eat some again tomorrow…
This is a nice bread from China or Hong Kong. It is the equivalent of a burger bun. It is steam cooked. Bao means bun.
Very soft and can be flavoured with a bit of mirin to give it an Asian style.
I followed this recipe: Here.
Ingredients :
How to make:
Once cooked :
Found this recipe and method on the internet and had to try it…really a cool and easy way to make a superb Ciabatta from scratch.
Check out my Bread making top 10 tips as well. (note half of yeast and olive oil are core difference to “standard” bread)
Ingredients :
The how to make it easy to follow video.
How to make :
Summary for rising :
Trying to do a bit of coding to optimise the use of electric prices changing every 30 minutes. Red line in the graphic is “average price” and clearly you could charge the battery at cheap rates overnight or during non-peak hours and use the Powerwall to provide electrics for the expensive time of day.
Using jupyter Lab notebook to code this in python.
Too easy to make ….to not make it from scratch…
Ingredients :
How to make Pastry :
How to make the Quiche Lorraine :
Been a long time coming, bought the kit to make cheese probably 18 months ago….found the time and patience to try my first Mozzarella.
I am very pleased with my first go, however, it is quite fiddly and definitely needs a good thermometer to get the cheese to behave as expected.
I was inspired to make some for myself by Alex.
Ingredients :
How to make :
Put the cold milk in a large casserole and put on medium heat to avoid burning the bottom of the milk. (use Fresh whole milk (pasteurized))
I use 2 UK size jugs of milk of 4 pints each for a total of 8pints or 5.5Liters
As the milk is heating up put the citric acid into the casserole. The dosage is 2g citric acid for each litre of milk. Dilute the citric acid into / 1/4 cup water.
Warm the milk on a soft flame to 32 degrees celsius mixing gently to avoid hot spots
Once you reached the target temperature, a quarter of a tablet of rennet diluted in water. Stir the liquid into the milk gently for 30 seconds.
Time to wait. Let the milk/curd rest for 30 minutes until you can create a clean break with your finger in the curd that has started in the casserole. You can wait 45 minutes if a “clean break” does not happen immediately. Ideally, we want the milk to stay warm at 32 degrees so do not leave the casserole in a cold place.
Cut some criss-cross through the curd, approximately 3 cm apart from each other. Then put back on the medium heat and bring the curd up to 43 celsius. Stay at 43 degrees for 5 minutes. All the curd should separate nicely. Spin the curd gently for an even heat distribution but do not break the curd pieces to avoid a big mess.
Using a slotted spoon transfer the curd to a colander to drain the “petit lait” (weigh). Be gentle try to work the colander in circles to remove the “weigh” from the curd.
This technique will be used again later when the curd is super hot (82 degrees) from the microwave.
Slide the “dry” curd and transfer into a wide container which can go in the microwave.
Put curd in the microwave oven on full heat and heat up until the curd is at 82 degrees. This is the temperature were the curd will be warm enough to make elastic strands and will accept to be shaped like kneading bread dough. I tend to split the main curd into smaller batches (4) to make it easier to heat-up and handle.
This is very hot to handle so have running cold water for your fingers. Knead the cheese as you would do with bread dough. Gently. Try to roll into a ball with a tuck-in technique. Some people use gloves for this part to avoid getting burns on their fingers. I find the cold running water method simple. If the curd is at the right temperature it will go stringy and make a shiny ball. This is the point you add the salt or other spices to give a taste to the mozzarella. I prefer just salt.
If you do not get to a shiny ball, it is because you did not heat-up enough the curd in the microwave. Try again. All is not lost yet…
Once you have the balls shaped, put into the fridge. BUT !…make sure you wrap each one in cling film to avoid them going to dry….made that mistake….
Enjoy!
Update :
Although the first Mozzarella was nice and tasty, I think I should have stretched it a lot more. I should have brought the temperature of the cheese higher (a proper 82 degrees) so that it would “really” stretch and create those stringy lines within the Mozzarella. Also, putting the balls into cling film is a must to avoid the drying off.
A few years ago, I started playing with Processing as a language. Recently discovered that the language has evolved and more importantly you can now run sketches from anywhere on the Cloud/web. Magic…
I use this recipe but I do not use cinnamon and I used red port instead of the white one recommended in the recipe.
