Hollandaise Sauce

3 egg yolks
1/2 stick of butter, cut up and ice cold
2 tablespoons of lemon juice - and if you're going to go through the trouble of making this, squeeze a fresh lemon

This recipe is all technique. And don't dream that you'll make it right the first time. It took me about 20 trys to get this right.

Whip up the egg yolks for a couple of minutes in a metal bowl. Add a teaspoon or two of lemon juice and whip some more. Once it's all mixed up, put it over a pan of simmering water. Whisk, whisk, and whisk - as the temperature of the egg yolks rises and they start to thicken. Then put in a small pat of cold butter. Whisk as it melts. Yeah, this gets tiring. If you overheat things, the egg yolks will cook - so keep throwing in cold butter - and pull the bowl off the heat if you see the eggs start to seize up. If you put the butter in too fast, it turns into an oil slick. But if you do it just right - it forms an emulsion like mayonnaise. As things get thick and fluffy, add more of the lemon juice.

You can add as much lemon juice as you like - go by taste. Also you can add fresh herbs, white wine, or really anything you like as flavor additions once you're done. I like to add white wine and dill when topping salmon. Tarragon and chives for eggs. A dash of salt is good, too.

One more thing, you'll probably notice that this is almost pure saturated fat. This stuff is evil - but sooo good. Unless you are related to a cardiologist, don't eat this stuff too often. Once you taste the real stuff, you won't want the fake stuff you get in most restaurants.

This stuff only keeps at about 130F - which is the ideal temperature for growing bacteria, and it is nutrient rich. There's no way to safely keep it around for more than about 30 minutes. That's why you can't get real Hollandaise in most restaurants - it's just too labor intensive to make a new batch for everyone who orders something.

Buttermilk Pancakes

The wet team -

2 eggs
2 cups buttermilk
3 tbsps butter melted
1 teaspoon vanilla

The dry team -

1 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons double acting baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
2 tablespoons sugar

Mix the dry ingredients in a big bowl.

Mix the wet team together. There's a couple of tricks to this, first is getting the melted butter mixed in well. If you're lazy - just mix them all together whisking in the butter as the last ingredient. It will seize up into small blobs, but when you mix it with the dry ingredients it should be OK. If you're serious about food - separate the eggs, whip the yolks in a separate bowl, and then mix in the butter - then add in the remaining wet ingredients.

Once the wet ingredients are all mixed, you need to bring everything together.

The second trick is mixing the wet and dry. Do it at the last minute. As soon as you mix the wet and the dry, the buttermilk and baking soda will create bubbles - this only lasts for 15 minutes - after that you've got flat pancakes. So, wait until your pan it hot and ready before mixing the wet and dry teams - and then, work fast. Pour the wet ingredients onto the dry stuff. Also, keep the stirring of the mix to a minimum - I mean this. You want to just get the really big lumps of dry stuff worked out. The more you mix the tougher the pancakes - and that's not a good thing.

With everything mixed, ladle out onto a hot griddle. Cook for a couple of minutes on each side until golden brown and delicious.

Another Date

“You know, she doesn’t seem that happy. Not like when you two were together.” I was sharing a plate of carpaccio with Linda. Linda was one of the secretaries at my previous employer. She’s really nice. She is a single mother of a 10 year old son and lives with her mother in south San Jose. She was pretty close to Lynn when they worked together. She was referring to Lynn.

Just to keep from being alone, I have been asking out just about every woman that I know. On evenings that I’m not working I’ll take someone of the female persuasion out to dinner. I’m a bit embarrassed to say it’s like an ego thing. Seeing how many women I can take out. But it’s just dinner, and I usually dine at pretty good establishments – so you can’t really call it a great accomplishment. I’m not leading them on, it’s just a dinner. I only take a gentlemanly and polite peck of a goodnight kiss at the end of the evening. Soon, what’s left over of my severance package will be gone and I’ll need to start watching my money a bit better. Anyway, I’ve taken out the lady from payroll, and purchasing, 3 from accounting, and 1 from support, and a secretary. Just for the record, all these women are single, available, and not from my current workplace.

Linda was telling me about the party at Liz’s. Tim was there with Lynn. “Lynn was a lot more reserved than usual, and she wasn’t smiling a lot. You two were a great couple. You both had these silly grins on your faces all the time when you were together – well, after you had sex.”

“She told you when we…”

“Oh, Rich, It was so obvious.”

“I miss her.”

“I was talking with her. You know, it’s weird. Didn’t you get upset when she started sleeping with Tim?”

I almost dropped my fork. “I’ve never been more upset in my life.”

“She seemed to think that you didn’t care that much.”

“Cause I didn’t hurt her, or break anything, or throw a tantrum?”

“I don’t know. I guess she expected more of a reaction.”

“Well, Jim certainly would have given that to her. You know, she asked me if I wanted to hit her after I had found out. Isn’t that weird?”

“Maybe she was abused at some time back. Did you react? I mean in a way that she could tell?”

“Yeah, I did.” I nodded slowly “She knows I was devastated.”

“Jim really treated her badly. I don’t know why she was with him for so long. Once we were out at a concert and he reached down her dress and grabbed her breast – right there in public. It was disgusting. She should have slapped him.”

“Well, he treated her badly in public. You never know what went on in private. I certainly can’t understand it. She told me that she didn’t cheat on him – well until we got together. But by that time she had already decided to leave him.” I took a long sip of wine. “She couldn’t bring herself to cheat on him. But she could so easily cheat on me. I don’t get it. Anyway, a bunch of guys gave her plenty of opportunities to stray while she was with Jim, and she turned them all down.” (including me, although I didn’t say that out loud). I sat silent for a while. “Did you know that he hit her?”

“Who, Jim?”

“Yeah. That’s when he decided to leave him.”

“At least she had the sense to get out once it got physical.” She though about this, I don’t think she hadn’t learned that Jim had hit Lynn. “But there’s a lot more to abuse than a fist, you know.” She added.

We moved on the nicer topics. It was easy to have a good conversation with Linda. This actually turned out to be one of the better dates I had been on in a while.

Driving back to Linda’s house the conversation had turned back to Lynn. “She wanted me to share her. You know, I get her half the time and Tim gets her the other half. I was almost ready to do it. But in the end I just couldn’t.”

“Wow, I’d like to have two men.”

“Yeah I know,” I said dismissively. “But what if you loved one of them?”

She thought about this. “Nah, probably not. But if it was just sex, now that’s another story.” She grinned widely. I explained how I tried to get back at Tim, and how Lynn wouldn’t let me.

We were parked in front of her house. “Rich, you’re a really sweet guy. You know, it’s her loss – not yours.” That comment is really starting to piss me off. I’ve lost and I hurt. As best I can tell, she doesn’t. It’s like I should just stop hurting because she’s done something dumb. She has done something dumb – I am better than Tim (at least I think so). But it still hurts - a lot.

“Thanks.” I said swallowing my anger and smiling at her.

“So, Rich, did you ask me out tonight so that you could have sex with me?”

This was a question that I really didn’t want to answer. What’s the right answer? I know that a sincere and non threatening advance is always flattering. But having her think that I was after her could change our relationship. On the other hand, “no” is only good if she doesn’t want it. “Hell hath no fury,” after all. I searched her eyes for the answer and came up blank. I couldn’t read her. How bad would “maybe” sound? Pretty bad, huh?

“Linda, you are wonderful. I don’t want to say anything that might possibly offend you. Can I take the 5^th on that?”

The truth is that I did not want to have sex with her (I hope to god she never reads this.) Not that I don’t find her attractive – I do. It’s just not what I want now. I really want Lynn. While it would be fun and distracting to have a roll in the hay with Linda, it seems like the resulting complications would be more trouble than it’s worth. It would end with one of us hurt – and I can’t handle that now.

Anyway, Linda beamed at my reply. Whatever she wanted to hear, it seems like this was the right answer. “Thanks, Rich” and she kissed me on the cheek.

I walked her to her door and gave her a kiss goodnight. For the first time since high school I worried about her mother peeking through the front curtains.

Driving home I was feeling even more alone than usual.

Blueberry Season

Yes, here in California it's blueberry season. Well, it must be in the midwest, or Argentina, or somewhere, 'cause there's blueberries in town. Anyway, I love blueberry pancakes for breakfast. Yesterday I bought a tray of blueberries from the fruit stand that the farmers set up off El Camino (a big street running through the center of Mountain View).

I woke up early, and decided to skip the paddling and have a lazy breakfast before going into work. After starting to get ingredients together Amanda came out of Jason’s room. She seems to rise fairly early as well. She has been staying here almost every night lately – lucky Jason.

I chatted with her while I put together the pancake batter and made some orange juice.

“You don’t really grind coffee beans every morning, do you?” she asked.

“Yeah, I do.” I put the grounds into the French press, and poured boiling water (yes, bottled spring water - and she gave me grief about that, too) over them. I handed her a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice.

“Are you doing this just to impress me?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, guys do that a lot around me.”

“Umm, I can see why.” She is a cute girl with a good personality. I can imagine that guys try to show off in front of her all the time. “But, no. I really like good food, and I think it’s worth the effort to make it well. You can ask Jason. Actually, the breakfast that I use to impress women is eggs benedict. Even in good restaurants it’s unusual to get real hollandaise sauce. And when it’s made well, it’s really really good.”

“So blueberry pancakes from scratch are just an ordinary workday breakfast?”

“Well. Not an everyday breakfast, but not that unusual.” The pancakes came out wonderful, if I don’t say so myself. I gave a stack to Amanda. It’s just as easy to cook for two as it is for one.

“So do you have a lot of chances to make your eggs benedict for your women friends?” she asked after finishing the pancakes.

“No, not really.”

“You know, you can make it for me any time.”

I wasn’t sure if she was propositioning me or not. I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she was expressing hunger – the food kind.

I started to do the dishes. “No way, let me do those.” Amanda protested.

“Really? Are you sure?”

“Yeah. You cooked, I’ll clean.“

What a sweet girl. I’m not really comfortable letting someone else muck around in my kitchen – neither of my housemates ever ventures in there - but it seemed polite to let her do some of the cleanup.

One Day...

Sigh

http://www.winemakersdinners.com/

Why do I always want what I can't have?

Paddling

On Sunday Paul and I went paddling in Capitola – a small town south of Santa Cruz. Paul took some training classes a couple of weeks ago in Seattle and has a new boat. His form is still pretty bad – he paddles with his arm muscles. Good paddling form uses the torso muscles for propulsion, and the arms to place the paddles in the water. It’s a pretty common mistake for a beginner to make. I decided to try to cure him of it using the same method that worked for me. I raced him 1 kilometer up the shoreline. He kept up with me pretty well. Then we raced back. His arms were dead so he had to use his torso. He went a lot slower, but he’s getting the hang of it.

Paul has to go kayaking with me. His car can’t carry his boat. He has one of those Nissan Z cars. I think you can get a roof rack for those, but I wouldn’t put more than a pair of skis on it. His boat is 17 feet long, I think his car is about 13. I'm sure Kristen will buy him a suitable ride soon, but for now I'm hauling his boat around on my truck

It was overcast, and cool on the water. We paddled about 13 K (8 miles) which is a pretty healthy workout. When working that hard for that long it’s nice to have the cool weather, especially since we are wearing dry tops – which are really good at trapping the heat in. After 2 hours on the water, we packed up and headed back to my place. We cleaned up the equipment and I showered and changed. I grabbed a jar of basil pesto that I made and bottle of Chianti and drove Paul back to Kristen’s house.

I’d throw in a few conversations that Paul and I had, but we seem to only talk about inconsequential things, the weather, paddling, travel. He doesn’t even talk about Kristen much, which is somewhat incongruent with his behavior around her. I would have expected him to gab incessantly about her. I’ve talked to him about Lynn a bit (just because she is always in my thoughts) but I never get more than a “hmm” or a “huh” in response. But most guys don’t talk to guys about relationships much – we are much more apt to discuss sex. But it would be weird to talk about sex with the boyfriend of a VP that I work with.

Once we got back to Kristen’s Paul put his gear in the garage and went to take a shower. I opened the Chianti and chatted with Kristen in the living room. Once Paul was cleaned up he got to work in the kitchen – he made a Caesar, a big pot of linguine, and reheated a good loaf of French bread.

He called out from the kitchen, “man, this pesto is awesome.” He came (almost running) into the living room “Rich, how did you make this?”

“Oh, the usual way.” I said coyly.

He squinted at me. “No, come on. There’s something else in here. This is really good.”

“Quick, serve it while it’s hot. I’ll give you the secret.”

Kristen oh-ed and ah-ed over it as well. Paul became adamant about getting the recipe for it. I eventually gave in and told him how to make it.

After dinner, we sat in the living room. Paul was lying down on the couch and quickly fell asleep. He put in a lot of effort today. Kristen and I finished a bottle of wine. I rehashed the story of Lynn and she told me stories about some of her former lovers, and a few tidbits about Paul.

I went easy on the wine, and switched to club soda long before the end of the evening – it just didn’t feel right to spend the night there.

Rich's Basil Pesto

a few tablespoons of Pine nuts
4 ounces of Basil
1/4 cup grated Parmesan Cheese
a few cloves of Garlic
1 tablespoon Lemon Juice
1 teaspoon Salt

I never measure when I make this, I go by look and taste along the way. I start with a few tablespoons of pine nuts. Toast them in a dry frying pan. They should start to give off a nutty smell and turn golden brown – be careful not to burn. Next take about 4 ounces of good basil. I always use northern California grown basil – southern cal just doesn’t taste the same, but it could be the shipping that ruins it. Go local. I also grow my own, which is best. But we are too early in the season for that, and my garden has been sorely neglected. Grind the basil up with 1 tsp of salt, a couple of cloves of garlic, and the pine nuts with enough olive oil to lube things up. Add in a mess of grated parmesan cheese – about a ¼ cup. Add in enough olive oil to get it to the right consistency – about ½ cup total. Finally – and I never see this in cookbooks – add in some lemon juice. If you don’t the basil turns black after you add it to the pasta (or whatever you are serving it on). The lemon juice keeps it a bright green. You only need about a tablespoon.

The secret to making this great is pretty simple. You need to use a really good basil infused olive oil – which is hard to find here in the U.S. I know of two sources: http://www.olivier-on-line.com from paris (this is the best) and http://www.oliviersandco.com available at few locations in the U.S. (it's OK). You can't go down to your local mega-mart and pick up a bottle of basil oil - it will probably taste like crap.

Serve over pasta, meat, fish or bread - really anything. Keeps for about a day.