Nice. Do you have that in a monocarpic red?

I do not know why fascination with decay outweighs desire to have a tomato.  

Chicken soup

"Leftovers again!? 

"Yes, Precious, but this chicken soup is different. "

"Wuh?"

"No chickens were harmed for the production of this chicken soup."

"¿"

"This chicken soup is entirely different from the previous chicken soup because I didn't have to bake a bird this time and I didn't have to make a broth. It tastes different because I feel different and my impulses are different so the spice, herb, and salt are different, the vegetables have aged so they are cooked differently, the onion was refrigerated so it changed and tastes different. The noodles are wonton wrappers strips this time which are hardly noodles at all.

Now please, Precious, Apple of My Eye, Light of My Life, shut up and eat your chicken soup." 

Sea bass

The sea bass looks to me like it is playing cats cradle with itself and that is just plain weird. 

Had a thing like this appeared when I was, say, six or seven, it would have freaked me right out so bad I'd be put off sea bass permanently. Or else fascinated and filled with joy and awe.  

* A poaching liquid is prepared. The usual seeds. The only thing different this time is thin slices of ginger and white wine. The sea bass was poached in the liquid the previous night and removed to a plate and chilled. At that point the liquid also contains proteins sloughed from the fish. The next day the liquid is reheated to a rolling boil.

The liquid cooks the pasta.

The same liquid cools to poaching temperature, which is well below boiling, and the liquid brings the sea bass back up to temperature. Then the liquid is discarded. 

* The sea bass is poached at 160℉ / 70℃. 

* A sauce is prepared using butter and wine with ginger and lemon and honey. It also uses a divided egg. I'd go further, but honestly, this sauce is not ready for Prime Time. It's good but not delicious. This sauce has identity issues and it's not worth the trouble and the mess. Simple lemon is better. 

* Altogether this sea bass is very satisfying. It is delicious with great textures. Apart from the sauce, it has a refreshing simplicity. Very well composed besides. Combined with the red bell pepper and sugar peas it stands vertical while at the same time lies horizontal, while whimsically spherical with triangular fins.

Chocolate Han Solo in carbonite

Picture it .

You are a boy. You are handed an obviously home-wrapped chocolate, paper wrapper with 'Star Wars' summat, aluminum foil, Cellophane tape, clearly unprofessionally done. This cannot be good. It is misdirection. You open it and see that it is Han Solo in carbonite and you piss yourself.

On the machine I used the "go directly to the perfect temperature" method of tempering this time instead of the "go high, go low, go medium" method of tempering. The reason I switched is because the last time a few of the finished chocolates fell out of temper over time even though they were tempered carefully using the traditional method and they were stored at a steady cool temperature. This vexed me. Caused me to rebel and go, "Fine then, I'll just use the chincy way next time." Which is now. It also caused me to have to check everything I had already wrapped. 

This mold pictured above is intended for ice cubes but I hacked it you see and I am using it for chocolate instead. Frankly, it makes terrible ice cubes. Hardly worth it at all. Within one minute the detail is melted away in any drink no matter how cold. The success of this mold for chocolate means that if the molds are to be any use at all to me I must buy at least seven more molds. Possibly nine. 

As far as Han Solo in carbonite goes, this is the best mold I've found so far. I found another good one similar to this but presently it is unavailable. I will buy that one too. It turns out the smaller Han Solos here in this mold might end up being more useful to me than the larger Han Solo in this mold. It is a very good size for chocolates, both sizes are, actually. 

I've been interested in the Han Solo in carbonite mold in the Play Doh set, so I've been keeping an eye on them on eBay.  It's in the vintage Play Doh Jaba the Hut Playset. 

Han Solo is vintage. 

Now, you see that the whole point of this iconic vignette is the obvious terror of Han Solo at the moment of being frozen but it would not do to have the delicate developing psychologies of Play-Doh-playing children be disturbed inadvertently therefore the Play Doh version of Han Solo in carbonite is a terror-free version and so avoids the point completely.

Look, his hands are folded like an Egyptian pharaoh, not like the terror of somebody being buried alive. This would not make a good chocolate bar. Insufficient terror. 

Here's the Lego version also insufficient terror. 

The Lego version couldn't work anyway. This shows two sides of the same piece. It's used to store a lego person. The Lego man snaps inside. Although the detailed side could be used to produce a very decent chocolate mold, it too avoids the terror of extended curled fingertips which makes the original so compelling. 

Another alternative is to use an action figure to create a mold. There are Han Solo in carbonite action figures that come with both a doll which is useless for chocolate and carbonite version which is useless as an action figure. There are two sizes. They appear to be sufficiently detailed. Those carbonite versions, not the action figure, could be used as positive templates for the production of food-safe molds. 

Okay, not the doll, the blockish thing behind the doll. The thing advertised in black and white next to the doll. I think the flat thing behind the doll is Han Solo in carbonite that could be used as a positive template for a negative mold. This version appears to depict a sufficiently terrified expression, in black and white, not the doll. Maybe I had just buy one and see. This is the sort of thing boys of all ages find cool. Why? Because it just is.

Two pages have been written since this page.

* large chocolate Han Solo in carbonite, wrapped
* chocolate Han Solo in carbonite production

Chicken noodle soup

I would like there to be beans in this soup.

Anasazi beans. 

 The broth comes from the chicken roasted earlier and the chunks of chicken in the chicken soup came from the same roasted chicken. 

Did I ever show you how to deal with the dead bird carcass to produce a chicken broth so delicious that it is termed Liquid Gold and traded on the EPLCM, that is the Escoffier Precious Liquid Commodities Market? I haven't? Very well. 

You have a roasted chicken as the one pictured in the link above and you picked off all of the good bits and they have gone their separate ways, sandwiches, soup like this one, nibbling and so forth. 

So there is that, and that would be enough, a bargain right there, but now on to the carcass and the broth. 

By acknowledging the anathema that wasting a carcass is to culinary catechism one attempts to extract the most from the sacrificed bird, and that shows consideration, but then to go on and intensify everything by roasting before all the flavors, nutrition, colors, are extracted shows deliberation even though it only takes a few minutes to broil the bones. 

The re-roasted bones are brought to the stove top, water added to the pot, and the whole lot simmered until the last flavor molecule is drawn from the carcass, the skin, the neck, gizzard, livers, heart, everything that came with it. Onion, carrot, celery, now added if you like them. Bay leaf, whatever, anything at all you like, except salt. 

Save salt for the very end or when the broth is portioned out and used. The liquid concentrates as it boils, so it wouldn't do to over salt early on. That is one major problem with commercial broths. They are already heavily salted and concentrating them makes it worse. Why do you pay more for low-salt broth then if they are using less salt shouldn't they charge less? They have to make up the flavor another way when they use less salt, more expensive ingredients, like chicken. 

Straining takes two large pots. There is some back and forth. 

Strained back into the original pot. 

Strained into the storage container using an even smaller strainer. 

These broth photos were taken days ago when the chicken was roasted ↑.

These photos were taken tonight ↓.  

The broth sat in its tall container sealed up beneath its chicken schmaltz lid. Underneath the layer of fat is another layer of aspic. The depth of this aspic and its completeness as gelatin will indicate how much nutrition is extracted from the carcass. If there is a watery layer of gelatin, or none at all, then that will indicate little nutritional value. What you are looking for is gelatin all the way through straight to the bottom, good solid gelatin too, not loosey-goosey watery gelatin. 

This is loosey-goosey watery gelatin, but it is gelatin all the way through, so neither the worst nor the best. I was pleased with it actually when I consider it is a single ordinary battery chicken of no great mass. Usually people freeze them until they have more than one carcass to make the process worth while. 

So what is Anasazi?

The Ancient Ones, although the modern Pueblos do not much care for the designation because the word also means ancient enemy. There were four main tribes inhabiting the area, the Anasazi concentrated in the northern portion of the range covered by the four early tribes. This is in modern day Colorado, shaped like a square, in the far lower left corner. Looking at a map of the  U.S. state borders one's eye is drawn to the geometric oddity near the center termed The Four Corners. That is the area inhabited by the four early tribes although its Four Corners designation would be 3,200 years later. 

The Anasazi were cliff dwellers. Their site is known today as Mesa Verde, green table, Spanish words, not Amerind. The cubicles built into the cliffs are part of a larger system of roads and ritual sites. Their fate is debated. There is the pattern of drought and flood, there is evidence of resource depletion, evidence of conflict. 

You can go there and explore the place. Walk around. Crawl around up and down, up down, up down narrow walkways, short pass throughs, irregularities with every step. Bring up water, bring up wood, bring up supplies, carrying out refuse, litter, compost, waste. One sees rather quickly that life on the cliffs couldn't have been all that splendid. Life in the shadow of the cliff. Protected. Yes. Yes. Yes. But it's the sort of thing that cannot last. Eventually you gotta break out. It leads to greater things -- facing the challenges of nature and conflict uncowed out in the open.

Did they starve? Were they wiped out? Buried by flood? Murdered by enemies? Enslaved? Calm down! They changed. They moved on. They intermingled with neighboring tribes. They evolved. They became the modern Pueblo peoples.  

Here's to getting off the cliffs.