chez pim

my Pudlo

I turned the war off today, because I could.
So on to my other obsession...food.

NY Times Magazine's food column let my perverbial cat out of the bag. They mentioned my secret guide to navigating the Paris food scene, my purple companion, Le Pudlo Paris, which I faithfully lugged around with me every time I found myself in that city.

I don't like this one bit.

Reading le Pudlo Paris is like getting dinner recommendations from your foodie friends, sometimes quirky, always rich in details. Compare that to the stark description of the rooms and the flatwares in the Guide Rouge, or the sometimes outdated Patricia Wells's Food Lover's Guide to Paris, my Pudlo has them beaten by a mile.

I've given up the occasionally useful Ms. Wells because every self-respecting American foodie would never find herself eating anywhere in Paris without first checking with the good Ms. Wells. This often results in the mass descending of American food tourists on places she favored. Walking through the door of La Regalade these days feels like one has just been magically transported to Manhattan.

My only solace is that my Pudlo is still only available in French. When a translated version is published, then I will really scream.

Madeleines madness

I have been working on creating my ultimate madeleine recipe for a while.  I've researched as many recipes as I could get my hands on, and in as many languages as I could comprehend.  I also baked batch after batch of madeleines, testing different recipes and variations. My friends are complaining they're gaining weight, I thought them silly:  How could one gain weight on these tiny delights. :-)

I consider this recipe It!  My perfect madeleine recipe.  The base recipe was borrowed from Mariage Frères, but I've changed the proportions and the technique.  These madeleines are infused with honey and Earl Grey tea.  They are so very good.  Follow the recipe very carefully, these little yummies are quite tricky I tell you. 

Madeleines au thé façon Pim   
Tea Madeleines
(make about 24 madeleines)

Ingredients:
200 g. Pastry flour
4 eggs + 1 yolk
120 g. granulated sugar
160 g beurre noisette
10 g. soft butter, for greasing the mold
20 g. tea (preferably good quality loose leaves Earl Grey, I use Mariage Frères)
80 g. liquid honey.  If your honey has crystallized, just warm it in the microwave for 20 sec.

mise en place
1.  To make 160 g. of beurre noisette, you need to start out with about 240 g. of cold butter.  The butter will lose 20-30% of weight in the process.  Put the butter in a medium glass bowl, cover, and microwave (yes, really) for 2-3 minutes, depending on the power of your microwave.  Watch it carefully, when the butter turn dark golden brown, take it out and add the loose tea leaves.  Let the tea infuse for 3 minutes, strain and weigh the resulting beurre noisette liquid. You will need exactly 160 g.  Add more butter if you are short a few gram.  Let it cool to just above room temperature.

Now you make the batter: 
1.  beat the eggs and sugar together on top of a bain-marie, until the eggs mixture is warm to the touch and looks like yellow syrup.  (or, if you are as obsessed as I am, use your candy thermometer and measure the temp to exactly 135F, take the batter off the heat immediately, continue to beat, then follow the next steps)
2.  add the honey and mix well, beat the egg mixture (preferably using your KitchenAid) until triple in bulk.  When in doubt, beat a bit more.  You can't really over-beat at the moment.
3.  take about a cup of the mixture and put into a separate bowl, mix well with the beurre noisette that has been infused with tea.
4.  add the flour, don't use the machine, you should fold the flour in by hand.  I use a slotted spoon to do the job.  Be careful not to over mix, your madeleines will come out tough.
5.  fold in the beurre noisette mixture, very gently.
6.  cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the batter rest in the fridge for a few hour, or overnight even.

Now you bake:
1. preheat the oven to (just a tad higher than) 350F. or exactly 185C
2. butter and flour your madeleine pan--make sure you completely cover each mold with butter and flour, shake off the excess.  I use a strong shiny tin pan, not the dark non-stick type which will bake your Madeleines too dark. 
3. put the batter in a large pastry bag fitted with a medium-size round tip.  If you don't have a pastry bag, you can just spoon the batter into each mold instead.  It will take longer to fill a pan, but it will work just as well.
4. fill in each mold by squeezing a 1.5-2 inch round ball into each mold, slightly toward the wider end.  If you use a spoon, use about a scant 1tbsp of batter in each mold.  Note: Every single Madeleine recipes I have seen calls for filling the mold 3/4 full.  This of course makes no bloody sense, since the batter is usually very cold and forms a rather stiff ball instead of softly filling the mold 3/4 of the way.  I think my method makes a bit more sense.  What do you think?
5. bake for 12-15 minutes, until the edges turn a bit darker than golden brown. 
6. unmold and let cool on a rack. 
7. repeat the process with another batch of madeleine batter, until you are done. 

Troubleshoot:
Here are a few problems I've come across and found a way to fix.
1. Madeleines are too tough.  This is most likely because the batter was over-mixed after the addition of the flour.  This creates more gluten, toughening the madeleines.  It could also be that your batter has not rested properly, so the gluten has not had enough time to soften.  Mix the batter more lightly next time around, and perhaps let it rest a bit longer.
2.  No bump!  This could be due to a few things.  One could be that your batter is not cold enough.  Second, your oven may not be hot enough, check the temperature.  Third, you may need to fill the mold a bit more.  You need enough batter in each mold to fill it and push up as it bakes.

Enjoy!
Let me know how they turn out for you.  Feel free to share my discovery with anyone you'd like--just a little attribution will be appreciated. :-)

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If you find this recipe useful, please consider giving a few dollars to help my charity drive for Doctors without Borders by clicking on the picture below. (This fundraising is over.  Thank you.)

Lt. Gen. William Wallace, the

Lt. Gen. William Wallace, the commander of the Army forces in the Persian Gulf, was quoted today in the NY Times saying , The enemy we're fighting is a bit different than the one we war-gamed against.."

Yikes.

Robin Cook in his resignation speech said..
We cannot base our military strategy on the assumption that Saddam is weak and at the same time justify pre-emptive action on the claim that he is a threat.

..of course we can..
said the Pentagon and the Bush mis-administration.

Let the quagmire begin.

I am so annoyed by

I am so annoyed by all the news outlets spouting the virtue of their embedded reporters. Then I found this article at the National Post of Canada, via Arts & Letters Daily.

Got to be the funniest and most insightful commentary of this whole embedding thing yet.

"...But the true test of the "embed" program won't come until one of the units encounters genuine military resistance and suffers significant casualties, at which point we'll finally be able to determine from the nature of the reports just how far up the Pentagon's ass the correspondents are embedded."

Hey and did I say "I love Canada!"?

Chris and I went to

Chris and I went to another protest on Saturday. There were a lot of people, and it was decidedly livlier than the other ones. I was again annoyed by a guy near us with an anti-Israel sign. I thought it ironic, for someone who was obviously in dissent of his government to assume that *all* Israelis were behind the appalling acts of theirs. It's a free country. It's a free protest. I guess.

We saw the San Francisco Police in riot gears out in full force. Then I remembered how a couple of those menacing looking guys just beat some guys almost to a pulp for no apparent reason. I have to say walking by them, even in the throng of other protestors, was quite unnerving.

....

The next morning I heard Donald Rumsfeld on CNN. Responding to Wolf Blitzer's question on civilian casualties, Rumsfeld replied "...the care that the Coalition planners have taken in limiting potential civilian casualties is breathtaking."

err...Mr.Secretary, the bombs are *literally* breath-taking too.

What an ill-chosen choice of word. I suppose with all this money he's spent on the war, we couldn't expect him to afford a thesaurus now, could we?

Listening to all this talk

Listening to all this talk about getting Saddam, I am reminded of an old Thai saying:

"Riding an elephant to catch a grass hopper."

Quite an apt description of what's going on in the gulf today, no?

A headline this morning on

A headline this morning on My Yahoo! reads Bush Meets War Council, Says War May Be Difficult.

In the story, Bush warned Americans that the war could be "longer and more difficult than some thought".

Than S-O-M-E thought?
Some?

Who the sod is *some*, El Presidente?

It was *you* who said it would be a quick war. Remember the operation Shock and Awe? How about the MOAB bombs? Weren't those Mother of All Bombs supposed to scare the living daylight out of the Iraqis so they would just give up without fighting?

God, this is fucked up!!

I have been thinking about

I have been thinking about what to do in the face of this senseless war. I am torn. I feel guilty that my life is going on as usual. I worked at home yesterday, called in to a conference, made dinner plans with friends, read a bit, all the while with CNN in the background showing the bombing of Iraq as if it were a video game. Life went on as usual, and that drove me nuts!

On the other hand, I saw the demonstrators wreaked havoc on the streets of San Francisco and I wondered. What is it all for? A while back I listened to someone on NPR making an argument that all the anti-war protests of the Vietnam era played right into Nixon's hands, assuring him a second term by scaring middle-America into voting for law and order and, by extension, Nixon.

Is that what we are doing by protesting? Playing into the hands of Bush, Ashcroft, and co. by enabling the passage of the Draconian "Homeland Security Act" or perhaps far worse things to come?

I went to the first large scale protest in San Francisco in Jaunary, having returned recently from the frightfully anti-American Europe. I did it mainly to show the world that not all of us in America supported Bush. I was a bit unnerved by the multiplicity of "causes" displayed there. Some had signs demanding "Free Mumia", others had more menacing anti-Semitic tones. I was there to show my opposition to this senseless war, not in support of these other "causes".

I was ambivalent about the second protest in February, especially after Rabbi Michael Lerner had been banned from speaking at the rally by the pro-Palestinian A.N.S.W.E.R., one of the main organizers of the event. In this case fate made the decision for me, by conveniently spraining my ankle the day before, thereby saving me from some serious soul searching.

The question still plaques me today, however. What am I to do?

Then I read Justin Raimondo's This Isn't About You, and Timothy Burke's blog Put Away Your Puppets.

They both made an argument that protesting, particularly the one calling for us to Shut down the war machine is but a misguided attempt by self-righteous individuals to assure themselves that they are right and good.

Justin argues "...all the plans for direct action that involve "no business as usual" gimmicks like blocking traffic, chaining oneself to fences and the like are pure, unadulterated narcissism. They're about anointing yourself a virtuous, righteous person and performing your virtue on the public stage. You want that, come by my office and I'll give you a little "I'm a Good Person Because I'm Against the War" badge to pin on your shirt and I'll applaud you every time I see you walk by..."

I can't be completely honest with myself and still say that what Justin said is completely untrue. I am a free-thinking liberal. I believe myself to be, mostly, good. I oppose this needless atrocity being waged in our name. I need to do something about it.

Then I heard my self thinking. Damn. He's got a point. There were so many I this, I that in all my thoughts. And I call myself a Buddhist. Dammit! This was just like reading Nick Hornby's How to be Good and facing what it was like if someone actually called the bluff on all your ideals.

Timothy Burke's blog Put Away Your Puppets offered up circumspect suggestions about what to do now.

He argued that we could not prevent this war "..You can only prepare to exact a political price from the people who led us so poorly to this point, and to do that, you need to make the war a bigger issue than the antiwar...."

"...If you really care about opposing the war, you need to put your own selfish needs to proclaim your virtuousness aside and keep your eyes on the prize. Large public gatherings that are respectful, quiet and rhetorically modest would be a good thing, sure, but for the moment, little more than that...."

"...more importantly, if something dire happens involving chemical weapons or terrorism it means that an antiwar movement is going to have to be generous in conceding some of its own faults and errors, because it's going to mean that Bush had some legitimate reasons to go to war. At that point, we would need to make it clear that the issue is not war itself, but the incompetence of the way the run-up to war was handled, and the lack of vision about how to handle its aftermath. If antiwar activists spend that first week chaining themselves to fences and burning American flags, they will have already lost the antiwar struggle should at least some of Bush's reasoning be vindicated by the course of events...."

He's got some really good points, hasn't he? Since this was the best argument I'd seen so far, I settle for now here.

As for my own self-righteousness, no worries, I found a simple way of maintaining it by donating some money to UNHCR. There, *I* did something.

Megnut called my attention this

Megnut called my attention this morning to an eloquent speech by Senator Byrd from W.Virginia on the arrogance of the American power.

We flaunt our superpower status with arrogance. We treat UN Security Council members like ingrates who offend our princely dignity by lifting their heads from the carpet. Valuable alliances are split. After war has ended, the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America's image around the globe.

and my favorite part..
The case this Administration tries to make to justify its fixation with war is tainted by charges of falsified documents and circumstantial evidence. We cannot convince the world of the necessity of this war for one simple reason. This is a war of choice.

You can go and read it all.

Salon this morning has an

Salon this morning has an article on the looming humanitarian crisis in Iraq. Most aid agencies interviewed in the article insisted that they were not adequately prepared for a crisis, which could be on the scale yet seen.

There is also a scathing paragraph about "how the U.S. has not acknowledged that hundreds of millions of dollars of food aid might be required in Iraq, especially since USAID has invited a handful of corporations with close ties to the White House to bid on a billion-dollar infrastructure reconstruction contract in postwar Iraq."

Our priority is in the right place, I see.

UNHCR has put forth a call for emergency donation to assist the Iraqi people. I will send them some money. I hope you can help too.