Monthly Archive for December, 2005

A few months ago, I tried making Rosemary Potato Chips. I believe you can read about that adventure here. Anyway, a friend of mine suggested that I get a good Mandoline cutter thingy from Ross – Dress For Less (which suprisingly has cookware). We first looked at the Chefworks store. They were selling mandolines starting at $50 and going up to over $100. Of course, Chefworks sells high quality resturaunt-quality cookware which can be very pricey. So, we went to Ross and got a $5 mandoline. I haven’t got a chance to try it for almost two-three weeks but today finally tried it out.

The blade was razor sharp and cut through the potatoes like soap cuts through grease. The only problem I noticed was that the mandoline cut the potatoes rather thick ’cause the platform where you put the potato on was quite a bit below the blade and therefor cut 1/6″ slices. Way too thick. Anyway, the slices were cut evenly which was promising. So, I tossed the potatoes in oil and stuck ‘em in the hot 400 degree oven (when I made chips last time, the oven was set to 325 when it should be set to something more like 380-400). After 20 minutes, they still looked pretty raw and the only parts that were brown were the edges. So that didn’t really work. I tried it again and set the temp to 500 degrees. That was a bit better. Some parts got crunchy but it still just wasn’t right. It was crunchy, not crispy. I realized that the mandoline sliced ‘em too thick and the platform couldn’t be adjusted (meaning I couldn’t raise it). However, I found out that it could be taken off.

What I thought I could do was to put something on the grooves where the platform rests on to raise it. Since I didn’t want to go downstairs to look for wood to use as the lift, I looked in the garbage. I saw the “spine” of a check book (the part where all the checks are glued together) which was just the right thickness. I cut it up into squares. After fitting the squares under the plateform, I sliced a potato on it. It sliced the potato so fine and paper thin, if I didn’t see the potato slice drop into the bowl, I wouldn’t even be able to tell that it even sliced the potato. I mean I could see through the potato slice. After looking at the slices, I knew that this next batch would be the one. I briskly dipped the slices in canola oil, sprinkled a fair amount of rosemary on ‘em and stuck ‘em in the oven. 10 minutes later, they were done! Not only that, they were cooked rather evenly. The the texture was so delicate they melted in the mouth! They also even tasted like kettle chips. They didn’t taste like oven baked chips which was interesting.

This Shamisen is gonna be a piece of work to build. Fortunetly, it’s gonna be a whole lot easier (and I mean a lot) since I watched this video of a guy making a Shamisen. After watching it, I found that a lot of it’s done by joinery. Not a nail involved. We took apart our shamisen and found out that it’s neck had been “joined.” It was amazing how tight and close it was. I knew this was gonna be interesting. I got a book of Japanese joinery (and American joinery for that matter) which was very helpful.

So anyway, I’ve been practicing a bit on that with a lot of scrap maple wood I got from this hardwood flooring store. He gave me enough to make a hardwood dancefloor for one person dancing “The Jerk.” I’m slowly but surely getting this joinery good enough where I can be semi confindent in making square holes.

Since Grandma was gonna be doing some Salvation Army work on Kwizmas (Kwanzza, Christmas. Get it?) day and we were gonna go to a jam that day too, we had Kwizmas Day on Kwizmas Eve. Years ago, we were into the whole Christmas/Kwizmas thing but the novelty of it kinda wore off. I mean it’s a great holiday for uniting family’s for a day or two but since we’re all pretty close, Kwizmas is just good for the food. So, what’s my point? Oh yeah, we had Kwizmas Day a day early. We had the usual stuffing (this time, we didn’t get that Lower Sodium sawdust [I figure, if we have this twice a year, might as well enjoy it]), apple cider, biscuits and a delicious ham from Trader Joes. It was even pre-sliced which was nice. I once again over-ate and rolled over onto the kitchen floor. (since we sit on the floor and I had some long mats out, it wasn’t a hard fall) I had just one plate and thought I’d have a small plateful just to top it off but just when I started munching down on the second (small) helping, out came the pecan pie (homemade mind you). Wonderful timing on my part. Well, once I finished eating the main course, I was stuffed and then I hit the floor and took a little siesta for a few minutes. After I digested a bit, I went in for the pie. It was delicious. After that, I knew when to stop and I knew I shoulda stopped myself from topping it off with a small plate of stuffing and ham.

About an hour later, I was semi-comfortably full but Gema brought some egg nog so I had a glass while we all watched The Bounder (a funny Bri’ish comedy that’s similar to Fawlty Tower’s except the main character in The Bounder always comes out ahead where as the guy in Fawtly Towers always loses). Egg nog is good ’cause it’s something that’s more enjoyable when you sip it and savor it rather than gulp it like water or a carbonated beverage. Maybe ’cause egg nog is thick. I dunno. The taste and texture of Egg nog reminds me of a pureed cake which doesn’t taste bad mind you.