Ever wonder why coffee has such intriguingly complex flavors and aromas? Here are a few nuggets of information from Harold McGee:
"As the bean's color becomes darker than medium brown, the distinctive aromas characteristic of prized beans become overwhelmed by the more generic roasted flavors - or, conversely, the flavor of second-rate beans become less obvious."
...and...
"More than 800 aroma compounds have been identified, and they supply notes that are described as nutty, chocolate-like, cinnamon, tea, honeyed, caramel, bready, roasty, spicy, even winy and gamy.
If you're really feeling it, check out these two flavorwheels created by the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA). It's well worth noting that not all of the possible flavors are good things. Some - like, say, skunky - are hideous, hideous faults.
You can also splurge and purchase the professional coffee aroma kit, Le Nez du Cafe. It's a collection of the most typical aromas in fine coffees, as concentrated, volatile essences. You can probably imagine most of them, but it definitely helps to have a specific aroma available to jog your memory when trying to identify a specific aroma. The kit includes 36 aromas, arranged in groups that correspond to the chemical processes that produce them:
Enzymatic
Flowery
Coffee Blossom
Tea Rose
Honeyed
Fruity
Lemon
Apple
Apricot
Herbal
Garden Peas
Potato
Cucumber
Sugar Browning
Caramelly
Caramel
Fresh Butter
Roasted Peanuts
Nutty
Roasted Hazelnuts
Roasted Almonds
Walnuts
Chocolatey
Dark Chocolate
Vanilla
Toast
Dry Distillation
Spicy
Pepper
Clove-like
Coriander Seed
Resinous
Maple Syrup
Black Currant-like
Cedar
Pyrolitic
Malt
Roasted Coffee
Pipe Tobacco
Aromatic Taints1
Earthy
Earth
Leather
Straw
Fermented
Coffee Pulp
Basmati Rice
Medicinal
Phenolic
Rubber
Cooked Beef
Smoke
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1Despite the fact that they're referred to as "taints", these aren't all bad things. Some, like medicinal and cooked beef aromas, lend structure to the other aromas when present in small amounts.
I've completed watching what I believe to be the most bizarre collection of film I've ever seen: By Brakhage: An Anthology, a selection of Stan Brakhage's films released on DVD by The Criterion Collection. It contains, in total, twenty-six films running 243 minutes, but it took me nearly eight hours to make it through all. Every so often - sometimes in the middle of a film - I'd have to take a break. It's intense.
Just to give a brief overview of Brakhage and his work, as I understand things:
Brakhage's work is grounded more in poetry than cinema. Though he notes, on the DVD, that he greatly enjoys Hollywood movies, it doesn't appear that he ever made a film even remotely close to Hollywood's aesthetic. He made films, yes, but more analogous to paintings than to any sort of narrative medium.
His early films are primarily shots of actual things, though scenes are cut up, overlaid on top of each other - up to four different reels in the case of Dog Star Man - and otherwise garbled. Later, he began painting and scratching the film itself, sometimes over exposed images, sometimes on blank or fully exposed film. In essence, he began creating films without a camera.
Most of his films have no sound; he explains that he feels any sound would be a distraction from what's on screen. Sometimes, especially during his longer pieces, I found myself wishing there were something to listen to, but couldn't possibly imagine what would fit with the images I was watching. Some sort of hyper-frenetic John Zorn composition, maybe.
Brakhage's films explore, in his words, "birth, sex, death, and the search for God," and he had no qualms about showing deeply disturbing images. Dog Star Man features snippets from the birth of his daughter, overlaid with solar flares and shots of the Colorado wilderness; Window Water Baby Moving is much of the same footage, no longer obscured by other imagery. Then there's The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes, which the DVD prefaces with this warning:
PLEASE BE ADVISED: This film consists entirely of footage of actual autopsies.
It does. It's both disturbing1 and fascinating. Like when the coroner's thumbprint leaves a dent in flesh, where a living person's body would have sprung back. Or when slicing open the skin produces no blood, just a layer of skin and subcutaneous fat that's drawn back for... whatever they're doing, exactly. With no sound, and a constant shifting from one autopsy to the next, you're left without the sort of context that might let you linger on one, specific corpse for too long. It's eerily disengaging.
An experimental icon, Brakhage even took to taping objects to film to see what would happen. The most famous of these is Mothlight, which, like many of his hand-painted films, is as fascinating frame-by-frame as it is at 24 fps. You can see individual frames from a number of his works on Fred Camper's Brakhage website. Seeing them in this format, with frames laid out as they were during the painting process, gives another level of understanding and appreciation for the work.
Regardless of what you think of the overall craziness of Brakhage's work - and there's craziness aplenty - it's worth noting the amount of effort and craft that went into this. When working directly on (usually 16mm) film, he could only complete one quarter- to one half-second's worth of film in a day. Some of his later works were several minutes long, representing a phenomenal amount of work for something that, until the creation of this DVD,2 flitted past in a barely-recognizable instant. Some of them, particularly those in Nightmusic, are absolutely beautiful.
Suffice to say, it's a lot collected onto two DVDs. It's not the sort of thing I'd want to watch over and over again, but I'm glad to have seen it. I'm still not sure what to make of it all.
If you'd like to see an example, YouTube has a few Brakhage films. They're a little lackluster - the digital compression makes a blurry mess of the frantic eruptions of color - but it's enough to get an idea. See The Garden of Earthly Delight for a series of montane flora taped to a reel of film; The Dante Quartet is a good example of his painting technique.
And, speaking of abstract, modern art, I went to see the current exhibit at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art on Friday, Alyson Shotz: Topologies. The artist was there to discuss her work, and a group of math grad students went over to check it out. (Then we went out for drinks.)
The exhibit had good and bad. It's contemporary art, which, free from the rigorous forms and styles of traditional arts, means it's open to a wide range of interpretation. Ms. Schotz admitted this much herself, explaining that she often creates a piece, then tries to determine what it means to her. Okay. Works for me.
Except that she sometimes had extra layers of meaning that weren't apparent, which she used as the crux in understanding the work. My general thought is that if, say, you need to know that the work consists of hyperbolic paraboloids that may or may not represent the shape of the universe in order to see it as more than a pretty pile of crumpled paper, perhaps that ought to be noted beside the little plaque bearing the work's title. It's one thing to be able to seek out a deeper, multilayered, more personal appreciation of a work of art, but I'm less than thrilled by art that's intentionally obscure.
Even that I can look past, brushing it off as plain pretension, a sort of myopia imposed by focusing on one's own work all day, every day.3 But there were two specific things that dug under my skin at the exhibit.
One: Ms. Shotz admitted to having an assistant who helps put together a lot of her work; on at least one piece, she said, her assistant had done all of the work. The assistant's name was not noted anywhere.
Two: The level of craft on most of the works was shoddy, at best. Regardless of the artistic merit, several of the pieces were just... poorly made. I'd be embarrassed to have my name on a piece like Cocoon. (Detail here.) Given the delicacy and translucency of the materials used to construct it - glass beads and fresnel lenses - she chose to use staples to hold it all together. Metal staples. The sort you might use to hold together your construction paper projects in elementary school. And the Forced Bloom series, while interesting enough in concept, are examples of genuinely poor computer graphics skills.4
Allusion of Gravity was nice, though. Note: it's more impressive at a distance.
* * * * *
1Not the most disturbing film I've ever seen. I've been mulling over this, and I think the award - at least, of the films I've seen - goes to The Battle of Algiers. Not Cronenberg's most visceral work, or George Romero's zombie films, or anything that looks like a movie. The Battle of Algiers looks almost like a documentary, which is why the vicious scenes of torture - brief, not bloody, but looking entirely real - turn my stomach. Even more so is the scene, just before the torture, where FLN bombs explode in the bleachers at the horse races, a place filled with wealthy French spectators. An enraged mob converges on a small Algerian boy selling concessions, beating him unconscious until the police lift him out. You don't see any of the explicit violence, as it's hidden by the bodies of the mob, but the scene is so stark and brutal that I find it extremely difficult to watch.
2As near as I can tell, the Criterion DVD is the first time Brakhage's work has been made available digitally. The greatest benefit of this is that you can step through it, frame by frame, examining each as you would a painting in a gallery. Indeed, it's very much like a collection of thousands upon thousands of unique works of abstract art.
3This is a special talent that many architects (and related designers) have, in my experience. It most often occurs when they begin to think they're designing spaces for aesthetics first, and practicality second.
4I refuse to send out any graphics work that looks as choppy about the edges as those pieces do. She's a professional, in a field that should have a finer attention to detail than mine.
I've been on a serious Mogwai kick of late. Just about any day, at any time, I'd be happy putting some Mogwai on in the background, but it's been really ramped up for the past several weeks. I think a good bit of it had to do with NaNoWriMo. Their dynamic soundscapes and general atmosphere of desolation fit right in with the Western/horror mix,1 especially without the distraction of comprehensible lyrics. Plus, I've been obsessed with their music since... '98? Before Come On Die Young, but after the Kicking A Dead Pig + Mogwai Fear Satan Remixes double-disc release.
Recently, I've particularly been enjoying listening to "My Father My King", their interpretation of a traditional Rosh Hashanah hymn, while hunting out John Zorn's Masada2 stuff on YouTube. Seth's really gotten me turned on to Zorn's stuff, and though I can't pretend to like all of it - if you're making experimental music,3 some of it's going to fall flat, or just not work for some folks - I'm enjoying much more of it than I'd expected. Mogwai don't have the lively unpredictability of Zorn's free jazz-inspired work - or the maddening blur of complexity-bleeding-into-confusion that entails - but they benefit greatly from the more rigorous form and composition of their songs. Each song has an overarching wholeness, a uniting theme under which they operate. It lets them do what they do best, better than anyone else I've ever heard: explore a massive dynamic range.
You can get a good sense of this from their albums, particularly Young Team. Though, for perhaps their finest recording, try "Like Herod" from Government Commissions: BBC Sessions 1996 - 2003, which is darker and more intense than the Young Team version. "Like Herod", simply put, is their finest work.
Should you really wish to experience Mogwai's music, you need to see them live. Or get a stereo system that you can get so loud - without losing the music quality, of course - that you can feel your insides twisting and shaking.4 Seth and I were discussing loud music, and he commented that there were certain sensations he'd only ever heard described, never felt, until he caught a Mogwai show. There may be other bands as loud, but not many. You can't watch Mogwai play without earplugs, but part of the necessary experience is the near-painful whole-body vibrations that accompany a sudden explosion of sound.5 At the first show of theirs I caught,6 they were extraordinarily loud, to a level I've not again experienced. They were playing the TLA in Philadelphia, and hadn't yet started selling earplugs at their shows, though my friends and I had the good sense to pick some up on the way.
I clearly remember the loudest moment of the show. At one point, late into "Like Herod", the music gets about as quiet as can be, with just Stuart delicately plinking on one or two very high-pitched guitar strings. Then, without warning, both guitarists and the bassist leap into the air, landing on their effects pedals and hitting the strings at the same instant. The girl standing directly in front of me - we were maybe four or five back from the stage - clapped her hands over her ears and dropped to the ground.
Brilliant.
Since then, I've been collecting almost all of their stuff, excepting a few releases that are too difficult to find without resorting to eBay.7 Even their cover of Link's "Arcadian" on the Warp Records 10th Annniversary remix compilation. Technically, it's a cover, since their "remix" doesn't include a single bit of the original Link track, but it's excellent. It's a lot like Juno's cover of DJ Shadow's "High Noon", the translation of an electronic/sample track to electric guitars and drums. Best song on the Warp compilation, though? Labradford's remix of LFO's8 "Freeze", overlaid with a constant, piercing tone that I adore but drives everyone else I know completely batty, like fingernails on a chalkboard.
So, yes, they're good loud. But Mogwai also have a delicate and lovely side, as seen in tunes like "Christmas Song".9 It's from one of those songs - "O I Sleep", one with lyrics, even - that I took the name of this blog. Actually, I used it as the name of last year's NaNoWriMo effort first, and liked it enough to use it again. The song is less than a minute long, highly unusual for a band that likes to use time to build layers of music.10 The lyrics go like this:
I wanted to see if fire would burn me you'd think I would know if four walls could hold me I wanted to see if fire would burn me
There's even a video for it on YouTube:
I'm electing not to embed them here, but also worth watching are the two videos - each beautifully animated - for "Hunted By A Freak" and "Travel Is Dangerous". The first is disturbing. The latter, animated by Monkmus, is especially gorgeous.
* * * * *
1Think "Ex-cowboy" from Come On Die Young, for example.
2Masada's various forms include the Masada String Trio, Electric Masada, Bar Kokhba, and probably some others, but they're all variations on Zorn's explorations of what he calls "Radical Jewish Culture". It's essentially incorporating some of the forms and rules of traditional Jewish music into the avant-garde scene, and most of what I've heard is genuinely fantastic. Check Zorn's label, Tzadik, for the massive catalog of his Masada (and other) recordings.
3And John Zorn is nothing if not truly experimental. Unfortunately, sometimes it feels like a great idea... conceptually, but fails to resonate with me on the level of actually listening to the music. Like when Yamataka Eye starts shrieking. Just... not working for me. Which is a shame, because sometimes I'm really digging the rest of the music beneath it. (Like some of the Naked City craziness.)
4I'm entirely serious about this. The back of the Flaming Lips album Transmissions From The Satellite Heart states: "Please play all tracks at maximum volume." For them, it's a recommendation, and a funny, sort of tongue in cheek one at that; the Flaming Lips don't need loud. Mogwai's music suffers without its dynamic intensity.
5There is no point to watching a Mogwai concert video. As a general rule, videos of live performances are lacking. I guess it's not as ill-advised as trying to get the feeling of a Flaming Lips Boom Box Experiment from a recording, but it's close.
6With godspeed you black emperor!, nonetheless, who were in spectacular form. This was before they changed their name to godspeed you! black emperor, for whatever oblique reason.
7Like the Travels in Constants series, which you could only get by purchasing the whole series for some too-large sum. (Since I wasn't jumping for the rest of them.)
8Low Frequency Oscillator, the British electronica guys, not Lyte Funky Ones, the American boy band. Though a Labradford remix of boy band cheese-pop would be well worth listening to.
9Not to be confused with "Christmas Steps" from Come On Die Young. (Or, as it's referred to on the No Education = No Future (Fuck The Curfew) EP,a "Xmas Steps".) "Christmas Song": Soft, pretty, delicate. "Christmas Steps": Best played so loud that the walls shake.
aThe EP takes its name from a youth curfew that was imposed in Glasgow to address kids getting into trouble. The band, with a number of others, protested the action, arguing that providing education opportunities for kids was a more appropriate solution, whereas a curfew would do little but punish (and upset) the vast majority of innocent kids. I have the non-recalled version, which features "Xmas Steps", "Rollerball", and "Small Children In The Background". "Small Children..." replaces the original version of "Helps Both Ways", which later appeared, modified, on Come On Die Young.
The original version - which is superior to the one eventually released - featured the music overlaid with an excerpt of John Madden's football commentary, which it matched eerily well. Madden, however, refused to give permission to release it, so the EP had to be recalled, and the track replaced with the intense, static-filled soundscape that is "Small Children...". They kept the title, though, which comes from Madden's last words on the track: "...you know, it really helps both ways."
10"Like Herod": 11:44. "Mogwai Fear Satan": 16:18. "Ex-cowboy": 9:09. "Christmas Steps": 10:39. "My Father My King": 20:12.
I ran into a minor snag in this year's novel, the sort of thing I'd never had trouble with before: the novel ended early.1 Previous efforts, with the exception of 2004,2 were sprawling, endless messes that were even less resolved at the end of the month than they were when I'd started. It may sound interesting, but there's a deadening quality to it, an inertia to the whole story that's maddeningly difficult to overcome after the inevitable December writing rest. I haven't bothered to re-read the earlier semi-novels, let alone make any real effort at continuing from where I left off. I should, just to clip out the good bits, but...
Finding the worthwhile parts requires slogging, hip-deep or worse, through the rest of it. And there's a lot of the rest of it. Since I do it all on the typewriter, it's rife with spelling errors. As a stickler for spelling, it's tough to read, but when my fingers hit two keys in the wrong order,3 I just decide to live with it. Only the most gut-wrenching mistakes end up covered in a series of quickly-tapped xs.
Last year's novel took until midway through the fourth line before I hit a typo. This year, it's the eighth word.
That same spelling-error-retaining quality also prevents me from making use of a popular NaNoWriMo padding technique: going back to a part you've previously written and expanding upon it. Add some extra description or dialogue, or even an entirely new chapter. I can't do that. What's written is written, nearly set in stone, if you will. So, when the novel ended, and I counted up the last of the words, I needed to do something new.
I wrote a short story. It has nothing to do with the novel. It's its own, entirely self-contained entity, eight pages of refreshing change.
This year's novel is titled "Red Hawk Cemetery", changed from the original working title of "Ghost Town". It's a Western horror story, about a group of train robbers on the run from bounty hunters who end up in an isolated village in the Rockies. They all end up trapped in this halfway-abandoned village, hunted by grave-robbing monsters that lurk in the shadows. You know, pretty regular stuff. Guys try resolving violence with more violence, and end up done in by it. Pretty brutally, at that, but, hey, it's horror.
The short story, the extra words, is titled "Tin Robot". It's just a little story, not much more than a nugget of an idea, about a robot who moves in next door to a young couple. A big, boxy robot named, appropriately enough, Tin Robot.
Sharon commented that I must really like robots.4 I don't know that I do. I'm really more fascinated by them, as a handy symbol of technological dependence and omnipresence. Think Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick or Blade Runner, Ridley Scott's film adaptation. Or even better, find a copy of Dick's "The Electric Ant". It's a bizarre and wonderful short story about a man who discovers he's a robot and starts experimenting with himself. By monkeying with the input tape that controls his senses - this was back during computer punch-card days - he ends up warping (and destroying) reality.
I do know that I really like typewriters. One downside of using mine all month long is that I end up really confused about the locations of certain keys.5 Curious how mine stacks up against your regular keyboard layout? Here it is:
* * * * *
148,246 words, to be precise.
2I only made it about halfway that year, to somewhere just over 25,000 words.
3But not too close together, so that they get stuck. Sometimes, usually when I'm trying to type by, the force of the y key colliding with the returning b creates a ghost of a b beside the original. It's happened so many times that I'm starting to like it.
4The previous two novels both featured robots. 2004 had little robots as the gimmicky, halfway-pointless technology that consumer culture surrounds itself with, the equivalent of mobile phones and iPods; the main character's job was repairing them when they broke down. 2005's main character was a robot himself, but only realized this after a messy motorcycle crash. With no known precedent for it - no more robots around than we're used to today - he becomes obsessed, to the point of cutting himself open to study his robot-ness further.
5The same thing happens with foreign computer keyboards, when you're traveling. If you're gone for a long enough stint, you get the fun of being confused again when you travel home.
It's been some months since I first cobbled together my homemade cold-smoker, and I'm realizing that, despite putting it to good use on several occasions, I've never taken the time to explain it in detail. First, the distinction between the two primary forms of smoking food:
Hot-smoking This means simultaneously cooking and smoking food. In their book, Charcuterie, Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn make an addition distinction of "smoke-roasting", by which they mean smoking at moderate temperatures, around 350°F; when their recipes note "hot-smoking", they mean to use a temperature of approximately 200°F. In essence, the result is the same, with the cooking temperature determining the length of time that the the food stays in contact with the smoke.
The options for hot-smokers are pretty wide-open. I tend to rely on my charcoal grill, which is about as simple and straightforward as it can be. A large roasting pan or wok, with a tight-fitting lid - and a pretty serious exhaust system - could do the trick inside the kitchen. For gadget-lovers, there's always the Bradley Smoker, which has temperature controls, several racks to handle large quantities at one time, and several different sizes and options to choose from. Then again, the standard model's $350, plus shipping, and you need the space to put a refrigerator-sized smokebox.
Oh, and it requires the manufacturer's hockey-puck-looking1 "bisquettes" as smoking material. Sure, they're available in a variety of hardwoods, but that's still awkward and limiting.
Cold-smoking This means smoking food without cooking it, which requires temperatures below 100°F - preferably in the 60° to 80°F range. It's not easy to do. Creating smoke takes a lot of heat, and you need to dissipate that while still getting the smoke where you want it.
The Bradley folks claim that their machines can do this2, but Ruhlman and Polcyn found it difficult to do. They had to place a pan full of ice between the smokebox and the food, and that takes a fair bit of maintenance effort over time. Still, they note that "professional smokehouses that include some sort of refrigeration device and do all the work for you cost as much as a car."
What other options does the home cook have? The authors note that Bruce Aidells, a San Francisco sausage maker, has a method of placing a few burning coals into a pie pan full of sawdust, then setting it in a covered grill. It's really labor-intensive, requiring regular replacement of the coals as they burn out, but sounds like it works well.
Or you can just build your own setup.
Which is what I did.
The biggest part of my decision to do this was to save money, but there are a few other aspects of the homemade system that have been bonuses. Ease of modification is one; the ability to use a full range of smokable materials is another. When I have the time for a more permanent setup, there are some modifications I plan to make to this design, but I'm quite happy with it for now.
In essence, the smoker is a two-box setup. Smoke is produced in one box, and fed to another, unheated box containing the food. Below is a schematic diagram, as it currently exists. (Click on the picture for a larger version.)
Key:
This is the connector between the two smoker boxes. I've used some 4-inch, flexible, aluminum dryer vent ducting, which is good for two things: I can set up the two smoker boxes wherever I want3; and I can compress or extend the duct to adjust the amount of exposed surface area - and hence heat loss - the smoke has before it reaches the food. It hooks to the smoker boxes via some 4-inch duct adapters, so the duct can be removed and collapsed inside its box when it's not in use.
The tops of the boxes open. (There's nothing on the bottom, and hence nothing to contact the heating element or to be dripped on.) I'd toyed with the idea of side doors, to limit the amount of smoke lost while checking on things, but they required laying on the ground to use, and smoke pours out of every possible crack, anyhow. As long as you remember to keep your face back while the first puff of smoke pours out, the operable lid's the way to go.
Wood. I've used hardwood chips, hardwood sawdust, and hickory nut shells. I've heard of people using fist-sized chunks of fruitwood. Other possibilities include coffee beans, herb branches (such as rosemary), hops and tea leaves. If it smells good, and you think it'll make food taste good, it'll probably work. A major exception are softwoods, such as pine. The resins in softwoods produce a foul smoke that'll make the food taste like tar.
To minimize the need for significant cleanup, I wrap the stuff-to-be-burned in a layer of aluminum foil, seal it tightly and puncture the top about a dozen times with a pencil tip. I find that 1-½ cups of stuff will give me about half an hour of smoke, and that two of those packets will fit side by side an 8-inch cast iron skillet, so that one can finish up as the next one warms up.
A cast iron skillet. The indispensable, indestructible kitchen tool. Also: cheap at your neighborhood hardware store. Here, it functions as a barrier between the heating element and the wood to be smoked.
The intake fan. I've built a cardboard funnel that attaches to the front of a cheap, square 120V fan to push air into the smoker box. By keeping the intake and exit openings from aligning, the low-volume displacement pushes smoky air from the smoking chamber to the food chamber.
A hot plate. Though this has an adjustable temperature control, it remains at full for the length of the smoking process. It's just a simple electric cooking element that plugs into the same power source as the intake fan. Note that the box is significantly larger than the fan to keep things from unexpectedly igniting.4
The smoker box. Hot smoke is produced in here, far away from the food. It's a cardboard box, roughly 18"x18"x24", assembled with duct tape.5 In order to keep it from being blown about by any sudden gusts of wind, I place a concrete block tight up against it on two opposite sides. My current design is not collapsible, which is a worthwhile consideration for future versions.
A cooling rack. In order to get the most smoke on the food, it needs to have as much airflow around it as possible. To keep it simple, I use an old cooling rack propped up on some ramekins.
The food. Whatever it is, it just sits there. As long as it's safe to leave in a warm, low-oxygen environment for several hours, you could use pretty much anything you like.
The food box. It's a lot like the smoker box, except with only the smoke intake opening. Technically, I suppose you need to provide some ventilation to allow some smoke to escape, but there are enough open seams to accomplish that. When the duct is fully extended, the interior of this box lingers at just about ambient temperature.
Successes thus far include tomatoes, which make for excellent soups and salsas, among other possibilities. They add a smoky dimension that can range from subtle to intense, depending on how long they've been smoked and how prominently they feature in the final dish. Thus far, I've been happy with two hours in the smoker, then adding just enough smoky tomato to get beyond the "subtle hint" stage.
The most recent use of the smoker was to create my own bacon6, flavored with maple syrup, brown sugar, and lots of smoke. I used hickory nut shells for four hours, which gives it a very intense woodsmoke flavor that softens as it cooks. There's a definite difference between this and, say, an applewood bacon, and I'm more inclined to use less to keep the flavors in a dish balanced. That said, a few slices are great with eggs and toast.
I still haven't smoked fish, salmon or otherwise, which I'd thought would be one of the first things in the box. Also on the to-smoke list: scallops or shrimp; fresh ricotta or another fresh cheese; pork and other fresh sausages; cured duck or chicken breast; and whatever else seems like it'd taste good. Someday, maybe I'll even try cold-smoking some pale malt for a homemade rauchbier.
* * * * *
1They're Canadian.
2Subject to ambient temperature, but you can't hold that against them.
3Such as out of the direct sun, which is a necessity in the summer.
4As with grilling, a handy fire extinguisher is always a sensible idea, as are a pair of large, heat-resistant gloves.
5Duct tape is unreliable, from an adhesive standpoint, so I'd caution against using this unless no other options are available. Know what duct tape is good for? Removing warts. I'm completely serious.
6Nearly five pounds of it, which is in addition to an equal amount of pancetta. That's a lot of cured pork belly, no matter how you look at it.
Ah, NaNoWriMo. That marginally sane November writing extravaganza that's going to keep me from posting much to this blog. For those who're interested, you can watch my progress on this little wordcounting widget:
Keep in mind that I'm writing this year's novel - as I did for the last two years - on my traveling typewriter. (Yes, that's a picture of my typewriter to the right.) That means that I count my words one by one, by hand with a red pen. I'm not always able to update the wordcount on the website on a regular basis, so the wordcount may jump forward in big chunks.
