Make Tofu

1. Soak 300g soybeans overnite and soaked up about 400g of water need 2400 water in total
2. Add about 2000 g water
3. Blend in blender, it is called namago
4. Put in pot, heat till bubbles come up and keep stirring
5. Bubble for 15 minutes, then heats to low for 10 minutes, stirring all the time
6. stain 
7. Squeezed between two bowls and pour off liquid and its called okara, liquid is fresh soy milk
8. Use nagari as the coagulant.  It is magnesium chloride. Use 12.5 ml and 50 ml hot water
9. Heat soy milk to 163F/73C
10. Add Nagari but don't stir a lot
11. Let sit for 10 mins
12. Prepare tofu mold with lined cheesecloth and in pan to get the runoff
13. add curds, cover with cheesecloth
14. add weight like a can for firmer tofu
15. soak tofu in water for 30 mins to get rid of bitterness

The Elements of Taste

Recently I bought "The Art of Blending" by Lior Lev Sercarz based upon a mention in a New York Times article.  I thought I might learn something about pairing specific spices with different foods.  But not.  It's a book about Lior's blends and using those blends on specific recipes.  I complained.  Lior offered a refund. I said no since one day I will put together a database showing what goes with what based on the book.

I also bought his $150 global spice collection and Bloody Mary master collection and have been happily using since.

Having been born in Detroit from a father that burned boiling water learning about taste has been a challenge.  Not enough info is in cookbooks about this until I discovered "The Elements of Taste" and am now reading it.

When I got Grant Ashatz's Alinea cookbook I was first introduced to the elements of taste.  Someplace in the front pages he mentioned salty, sweet, savory, bitter, something else and later I learned of umami.   I can find the 5th thing in Grant's book anymore, but that doesn't matter.

"The Elements of Taste" goes much further.  It classifies different taste as:

Tastes that Push

• Salty
• Sweet
• Picante: Like pepper

Tastes that Pull

• Tangy
• Vinted: Wine/Complex
• Bulby: Fried onions
• Floral Herbal
• Spiced Aromatic: Cinnamon, cloves, allspice, mace, coriander, cumin, saffron, star anise
• Funky: cabbage, truffles, aged meat/cheese

Taste Platforms

• Garden
• Meaty
• Oceanic
• Starchy

Tastes that Punctuate

• Sharp bitter
• Texture

David Kinch of fire burned Manressa in Los Gatoes rattled off the 5 to me once when I was chatting with him.

Still can't remember.

Then  a few weeks ago I was talking with Chef Ryan of Nick's Next Door about new items that might show up on their several years old, but very delicious menu. He he said a chef starts with the tastes he/she wants for the eater.  That was a remarkable thing for me.  And I told him so.

He asked how I started.  I said, I opened the refrigerator.

I'll make my notes here as I work (read and cook) thru the book and understand taste.

Nearly Free Teeth Whitening Tip

Want to have whiter teeth.  Drink coffee?

It's easy.  Just swish some hydrogen peroxide around your front teeth for about 30 seconds each day.  You can get hydrogen peroxide at the grocery or drug store. 

Mac Numbers Problems with IOS Numbers iPhone

Wanted to use Numbers with iCloud.  Clicked on Numbers on my Mac in the Dock and it openned.  Created spreadsheet and populated.  Opened same spreadsheet on iPhone and made changes and notice it was not working properly.

Called Apple and we figured out that the alias in the Dock was pointing at Numbers '09 located in the iWork 09 Applications directory. I need to use Numbers version 3 or higher which was sitting at the root of the Applications directory.  Once the spreadsheet is openned in Numbers 3.02 everything was fine.

Lastly, had a problem entering data into spreadsheet on iPhone Numbers.  One tap was not enough. Had to double tap to bring up the keyboard.

Steps to take in creating a social media presence

Steps to take in creating a social media presence:

Last Updated May 19, 2014 

This page will help save you some time trying to figure things out.  But in any case, plan on spending three to five days doing everything.

Create:

1. Web site: You could use blogger or set up a special Word Press website
2. Twitter Account
3. Linkedin Account
1. Linkedin Group
4. Facebook Account
1. Group
5. Google + 
1. Profile
2. Community
3. Page
6. Slideshare: 
1. General: Picture, personal and contact information
2. Set Sharing: Linkedin, Facebook, Google +
3. Set email preferences
4. Privacy
5. Content: Language and license
7. Hootsuite
8. feedly
9. Cloudscore: klout

Notes for Each Social Media

1. Web site: You could use blogger or set up a special Word Press website

Blogger.com and Wordpress.com are free.  Most ISPs can host a Wordpress web site.  Wordpress is a combination of PHP programming language and a MySqL database.  Once installed and be sure to run PHP for it NOT PHP within CGI then you might want to buy a customer theme. Install plugins depending what you are planning to do.  Ask in comments on this blog if you would like to know which plugins I use.  Frequently Word Press plugins conflict with each other and takes hours to figure out.  The start blogging

1. Twitter Account
2. Linkedin Account
1. Linkedin Group
3. Facebook Account
1. Group
4. Google + 
1. Profile
2. Community
3. Page

You will want a custom page URL but you can't get it until several conditions are met like the page is 30 days old, has 10 or more followers and a pretty picture of you. OK, just kidding.  Any picture of you.  See:  https://support.google.com/plus/answer/2676340?hl=en

1. Slideshare: 
1. Upload presentations and maybe a video
2. Hootsuite
1. Connect to your Social networks.  It free for up to 5.  Multiple Linkedin Groups each seem to count as one.  It works with Twitter, Facebook, Google +, Linkedin, foursquare, wordpress.com, and mixi (Japan).
2. If you wish to manage a Google + network that is owned by someone else, you will need to become a member of that someone else's Hootsuite team member.
3. If you have some social networks you need to manage and some shared networks you wish to access, then you can transfer that social network from your own Hootsuite account to your "team" account in which is used to manage multiple networks.
4. Configure Settings
1. Account Security
5. Create Tabs, streams for each tab
6. Add "apps" to do more things
7. feedly

1. Cloudscore: klout

Buffer to pushes to social media properties 

Capture on evernote, create preamble and go to hoot suite

Reverse spherification ratios

Water Bath:  .005 sodium alginate to water
Calcium lactate gluconate: .02 to juice Xanthan Gum:  .005 to juice

Asparagus and Egg

Interpreted from Joan Roca of El Cellar Del Con Roca the best restaurant in the world and as taught at the Harvard Science and Cooking on-line class.  Comments in italics.

Ingredients:

1. Asparagus cut into ends and stalk 
2. Olive Oil
3. Salt
4. Champaign or probably Xantham Gum
5. Truffels 
6. oxalis (sorrel)
7. freshly ground white pepper

We're going to see an asparagus and egg dish. And we'll see through this plate two different techniques of cooking. We cook the asparagus under a vacuum looking to protect the product from the water in which we cook it in and to preserve the flavor. In this case, we cooked the 

ends of the asparagus at 85 degrees C for 35 minutes. 

We have interesting texture and interesting flavor since we have not lost its flavor or its juice. It has not been dissolved in the cooking water. This is on one side. With the 

other end of the asparagus, we blended it, we triturated it (juicing, a triturating juicer is a style of juicer used to break down fresh produce into juice and fiber.), and we made an ice cream. An asparagus ice cream. 

Ok, asparagus on one side, the ends with the stalk, and the asparagus.

And now we're going to see another part of the dish. That is the egg. What interests us is to see at which temperature we have stopped cooking the egg, and especially at what time to apply the concoction, especially since we are only using the yolk in this case. We've 

cooked the three eggs at 63 degrees. 

What we are going to see is how time influences the degree of cooking. This one has only been cooked for 15 minutes. We have a fluid texture of the yolk. This is the one we're going to use. I am not going to cut it yet because I need the yolk. But this one has been cooking for 45 minutes. Notice that it is much more dense. This intermediate one is the one we're going to use now. We're going to separate the whites since we don't need it. Only the yolk.  

Notice the sauce-like texture. It's like the sauce of egg yolk. It's what we want to use now, eh? We wanted an egg yolk sauce. We're going to add some olive oil-only a little bit, a little bit of salt. 

And now we're going to put together the dish. We have the texture of the egg yolk. It's like truffle juice that we have texturized with champagne. (the discussion suggests he might have said Xantham Gum which is suggested makes more sense.

First, we'll pour a little of this juice over the base of the plate. Then we'll dribble some of the egg yolk. Then we're going to construct the plate. We're going to sprinkle some summer truffle, Tuber aestivum. We are at the gates of summer. These are summer truffles that have come early in our spring but are very, very tasty.

This asparagus ice cream is really important in that the formula is well stabilized so that it has a very good texture. And we like to place the asparagus hot, straight out of the water bath,
to create a contrast between hot and cold, egg yolk, and truffle flavor. We'll give it a bit of acidity with a few leaves of oxalis. And then a bit of strength with a little bit of freshly ground white pepper.