Learn to Make Borscht with Neko Case and Get a Taste of Her New Album

in Food & Drink, Music | August 30th, 2013

What’s the dif­fer­ence between borscht and alt-coun­try music?

Uh, pret­ty much every­thing, except for singer-song­writer, Neko Case, the most recent in a long list of celebri­ties to share Ukrain­ian beet soup recipes with an ador­ing pub­lic.

Filmed at the behest of Rook­ie, an online mag­a­zine by and for teenage girls, Neko’s video­taped les­son is both basic and refresh­ing­ly unex­act­ing. Her sta­tus as the child of Ukrain­ian immi­grants affords her the street cred to tell view­ers they should take it as a sign they’re on the right track should some­one of east­ern Euro­pean extrac­tion insist they’re doing it wrong. (Her on-cam­era ver­sion is gluten-free, and—prior to the addi­tion of sour cream and chick­en stock—lactose-free and veg­an, as well.)

Inter­est­ed in sam­pling her ver­sion? Put the lap­top on the counter. You won’t miss any­thing if you com­mence chop­ping right away. The demo is as casu­al as her lack of styling, clock­ing in at near­ly twen­ty min­utes, includ­ing tips for tear-free onion cut­ting, cel­ery leaf usage, and the mak­ing of mire­poix.

You’ll also get a tiny taste of “Man,” the first sin­gle from her soon-to-drop new album,The Worse Things Get, The Hard­er I Fight, The Hard­er I Fight, The More I Love You, though keep your ears peeled for the song that plays as the cred­its roll. In an age defined by such pres­sure cook­er shows as Top Chef, Hel­l’s Kitchen, and Chopped, the phrase “If I puked up some son­nets, would you call me a mir­a­cle” is odd­ly alt-appe­tiz­ing.

Neko Case’s new album is still stream­ing for free at NPR’s First Lis­ten site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Allen Ginsberg’s Per­son­al Recipe for Cold Sum­mer Borscht

Cook­pad, the Largest Recipe Site in Japan, Launch­es New Site in Eng­lish

Archive of Hand­writ­ten Recipes (1600 – 1960) Will Teach You How to Stew a Calf’s Head and More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day just dis­cov­ered kvass. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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10 Essential Tips for Making Great Coffee at Home

in Food & Drink | August 26th, 2013

Perfect-Coffee-Cover

Michael Haft and Har­ri­son Suarez went to col­lege togeth­er, served in the Marines in Afghanistan, then, after return­ing home, stum­bled upon the world of spe­cial­ty cof­fee and began “an obses­sive quest to brew the per­fect cup.” That quest result­ed in the pub­li­ca­tion of an inter­ac­tive dig­i­tal book designed for the iPad. Per­fect Cof­fee at Home ($4.99) uses illus­tra­tions, inter­ac­tive graph­ics, videos and a sound­track to make the tuto­r­i­al “an immer­sive expe­ri­ence.” But you don’t need to foot the bill or have an iPad to improve your cof­fee mak­ing skills.

Over at The Atlantic, Haft and Suarez gave some free advice last week, pub­lish­ing an arti­cle where they, among oth­er things, enu­mer­at­ed 10 essen­tial tips for mak­ing cof­fee. They boiled things down to this:

  1. Buy good cof­fee beans. Prefer­ably whole beans, sus­tain­ably farmed, and roast­ed with­in the past few weeks.
  2. Grind your cof­fee just before brew­ing. They say, “it’s the num­ber one thing you can do to improve your cof­fee at home.”
  3. Store your cof­fee prop­er­ly. Keep the cof­fee in an air­tight con­tain­er, away from sun­light. Try to avoid freez­ing the beans, unless they’re going to linger for more than two weeks.
  4. Use a good amount of cof­fee, and the right pro­por­tion of cof­fee to water. The ide­al is what they call “The Gold­en Ratio,” 17.42 units of water to 1 unit of cof­fee.
  5. Find the right grind size for your cof­fee beans and aim for a uni­form grind.
  6. Con­trol the tem­per­a­ture of your water. Keep it some­where between 195 and 202 degrees. Boil­ing water can sour the cof­fee.
  7. If you get real­ly skilled, you can agi­tate the cof­fee dur­ing the brew­ing to con­trol the taste.
  8. Focus on tech­nique. And once you learn the right tech­nique, make sure you’re pre­cise and con­sis­tent.
  9. Use qual­i­ty tools. Buy the right bean grinder and cof­fee mak­er. Make a good invest­ment in your cof­fee drink­ing future.
  10. When exper­i­ment­ing with the brew­ing process, adjust only one vari­able at a time so you can accu­rate­ly track results.

The Atlantic arti­cle offers more detail than what we’ve high­light­ed above. So we’d encour­age you to give “How to Make Per­fect Cof­fee” a read. You can also find short video primers on the Haft & Suarez YouTube Chan­nel. If you have your own great cof­fee mak­ing tips, def­i­nite­ly share them with us in the com­ments sec­tions below. We want to know!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Short, Ani­mat­ed Look at What’s Inside Your Aver­age Cup of Cof­fee

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: An Ad for London’s First Cafe Print­ed Cir­ca 1652

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

The Physics of Cof­fee Rings Final­ly Explained

The His­to­ry of Cof­fee and How It Trans­formed Our World

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What Prisoners Ate at Alcatraz in 1946: A Vintage Prison Menu

in Food & Drink, History | August 10th, 2013

alcatraz menuWhy would you want to escape from Alca­traz when you could eat Beef Pot Pie Anglaise for lunch on Tues­day, Baked Meat Cro­quettes on Wednes­day, and Bacon Jam­bal­aya on Sat­ur­day? On sec­ond thought, why would­n’t you want to escape.

Above, we have the actu­al menu for the meals served at Alca­traz dur­ing one week in Sep­tem­ber, 1946. (View it in a slight­ly larg­er for­mat here.) Alca­traz was, of course, a high secu­ri­ty fed­er­al prison that oper­at­ed off of the coast of San Fran­cis­co from 1933 until 1963. Some of Amer­i­ca’s more noto­ri­ous crim­i­nals spent time din­ing there — good fel­lows like Al Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kel­ly, Bumpy John­son, and James “Whitey” Bul­ger.

As you may know, Bul­ger is now back on tri­al in Boston. After being released from prison dur­ing the 1960s, he alleged­ly re-immersed him­self in the world of orga­nized crime, before even­tu­al­ly spend­ing 16 years liv­ing as a fugi­tive, large­ly in Cal­i­for­nia. While on the lam, he amaz­ing­ly had the chutz­pah to vis­it Alca­traz (now a tourist site) and pose for a pic­ture where he donned a striped suit and stood behind mock prison bars. I have to won­der whether he had some Puree Mon­gole for old times’ sake?

via SF Gate and Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Odd Col­lec­tion of Books in the Guan­tanamo Prison Library

See a Peru­vian Prison Seized with Dance Fever as They Try to Break a Guin­ness World Record

Phi­los­o­phy in Prison: Weighty Con­ver­sa­tions about Right and Wrong

Two Prison Con­certs That Defined an Out­law Singer: John­ny Cash at San Quentin and Fol­som (1968–69)

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Cookpad, the Largest Recipe Site in Japan, Launches New Site in English

in Food & Drink | August 7th, 2013

cookpad3

Cook­pad bills itself as hav­ing the “Best Japan­ese recipes from the largest cook­ing com­mu­ni­ty in Japan.” And that’s not just your usu­al web site hyper­bole. Estab­lished back in 1997, Cook­pad hous­es 1.5 mil­lion recipes cre­at­ed by a base of 20 mil­lion users. And it’s now a pub­licly-trad­ed com­pa­ny on the Tokyo stock exchange. This week, Cook­pad did every­one in the Anglo­phone world a favor by releas­ing an Eng­lish-lan­guage ver­sion of its site. Right now, you can nav­i­gate your way through 1,500 recipes and find dish­es like Udon with Thick Egg Soup, Very Deli­cious Stir-fried Tofu with Shime­ji Mush­rooms, and Pan-Fried Autumn Salmon with Gin­ger Sauce. And if you’re patient, you’ll soon find anoth­er 30,000 recipes added to the site. It’s worth not­ing that all recipes are trans­lat­ed by humans, not com­put­ers, and the trans­la­tors are appar­ent­ly com­pen­sat­ed for their efforts.

via The Next Web

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Make Instant Ramen Com­pli­ments of Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyza­ki

Al Jazeera Trav­el Show Explores World Cities Through Their Street Food

Wim Wen­ders Vis­its, Mar­vels at a Japan­ese Fake Food Work­shop

Learn Japan­ese Free

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How Climate Change Is Threatening Your Daily Cup of Coffee

in Environment, Food & Drink, Science | August 4th, 2013

Per­haps this will final­ly get your atten­tion. In Ethiopia, glob­al warm­ing is putting the cul­ti­va­tion of cof­fee at risk, to the point where the indige­nous Ethiopi­an cof­fee plant, Cof­fea ara­bi­ca, could go extinct with­in 70 years. That’s no laugh­ing mat­ter, espe­cial­ly if you con­sid­er that cof­fee orig­i­nat­ed in Ethiopia, and the coun­try remains an epi­cen­ter of cof­fee pro­duc­tion today. That’s the depress­ing … and per­haps moti­vat­ing … upshot of an oth­er­wise art­ful­ly-pro­duced film by The Roy­al Botan­ic Gar­dens (aka Kew Gar­dens) in Eng­land.  If you want to dig into the research show­ing the impact of cli­mate change on cof­fee, see the report pub­lished in Novem­ber, 2012 called: The Impact of Cli­mate Change on Indige­nous Ara­bi­ca Cof­fee (Cof­fea ara­bi­ca): Pre­dict­ing Future Trends and Iden­ti­fy­ing Pri­or­i­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

132 Years of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in 26 Dra­mat­i­cal­ly Ani­mat­ed Sec­onds

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

The His­to­ry of Cof­fee and How It Trans­formed Our World

This is Cof­fee!: A 1961 Trib­ute to Our Favorite Stim­u­lant

New­ly added to our list of 750 Free Online Cours­es:

Intro­duc­tion to Lit­er­a­ture and the Envi­ron­ment — YouTube — iTunes Video — Ken Hilt­ner, Prince­ton

How Cli­mate Works — YouTube — iTunes Video — Mul­ti­ple Profs, Prince­ton

 

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George Orwell Explains How to Make a Proper Cup of Tea

in Food & Drink, Literature | July 8th, 2013

george-orwells-nice-cup-of-tea1

Next to my bed lies George Orwell’s Essays, the brick­like Every­man’s Library edi­tion of the 1984 author’s thoughts on ide­ol­o­gy, colo­nial­ism, the abuse of lan­guage, crime and pun­ish­ment, and just what con­sti­tutes a nice cup of tea. The astute essay­ist keeps his mind pre­pared to go any­where, and Orwell’s rig­or­ous love of sim­ple Eng­lish plea­sures places him espe­cial­ly well to write on the sub­ject of how best to pre­pare a serv­ing of “one of the main stays of civ­i­liza­tion in this coun­try, as well as in Eire, Aus­tralia and New Zealand.” His essay “A Nice Cup of Tea,” which first ran in the Evening Stan­dard of Jan­u­ary 12, 1946, breaks the process down into eleven points, from “One should use Indi­an or Cey­lonese tea” to “One should take the teapot to the ket­tle and not the oth­er way about” to, final­ly, “Tea — unless one is drink­ing it in the Russ­ian style — should be drunk with­out sug­ar.” These guide­lines may sound to us a tad aus­tere at worst, but Orwell presents some of them as down­right “con­tro­ver­sial.” Dare he so bold­ly insist upon drink­ing only out of a “good break­fast cup,” de-cream­ing milk before pour­ing it into tea, and nev­er, ever using strain­ers nor bags?

Douglas-Adams

He does indeed. His­to­ry has remem­bered Orwell as one of author­i­tar­i­an­is­m’s most out­spo­ken ene­mies, but clear­ly he had moments, espe­cial­ly when it came to his bev­er­age of choice, where he him­self would brook no dis­sent. Decades lat­er, a much more easy­go­ing writer would make his own con­tri­bu­tion to the lit­er­a­ture of Eng­lish tea pro­ce­dure: A short piece by Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy author Dou­glas Adams sug­gests that you “go to Marks and Spencer and buy a pack­et of Earl Grey tea” (this may, depend­ing upon your loca­tion, require an over­seas trip), that “the water has to be boiling (not boiled) when it hits the tea leaves,” and that “it’s prob­a­bly best to put some milk into the bot­tom of the cup before you pour in the tea,” since “if you pour milk into a cup of hot tea you will scald the milk.” Though we here at Open Cul­ture have made no secret of our inter­est in cof­fee, how could we turn down a cup of tea made to the stan­dards of such well-respect­ed men of let­ters?

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

10 Gold­en Rules for Mak­ing the Per­fect Cup of Tea (1941)

Epic Tea Time with Alan Rick­man

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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A Short, Animated Look at What’s Inside Your Average Cup of Coffee

in Animation, Food & Drink | June 29th, 2013

What’s inside your aver­age cupe of joe? Wired breaks it down for us. Let’s start with the obvi­ous, water and caf­feine. But did you know about the traces of 2‑ethylphenol, which oth­er­wise dou­bles as a cock­roach pheromone?  Or how about dimethyl disul­fide, which has indus­tri­al uses in oil refiner­ies? And acetyl­methyl­carbinol? It gives the cof­fee its pleas­ant, but­tery odor. Want to keep con­tem­plat­ing cof­fee? Check out the relat­ed resources below:

The His­to­ry of Cof­fee and How It Trans­formed Our World

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

Every­thing You Want­ed to Know About Cof­fee in Three Min­utes

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Japanese Animation Director Hayao Miyazaki Shows Us How to Make Instant Ramen

in Animation, Film, Food & Drink | June 16th, 2013

Writer-Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki is renowned for the gor­geous­ness of his fea­ture length ani­ma­tions, and sto­ry­lines that com­bine indige­nous Japan­ese ele­ments with super­nat­ur­al whim­sy. In a world of Dis­ney princess­es, let us give thanks for fam­i­ly enter­tain­ment in which an eccen­tric cas­tle roams the coun­try­side on chick­en legs, a stink spir­it wreaks hav­oc in a bath­house, and a fur-lined cat bus trans­ports pas­sen­gers at top speed.

The first gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­can chil­dren to have grown up on Miyaz­ki films — My Neigh­bor Totoro was released in the States in 1993 — has entered their col­lege years. A por­tion of them will have eager­ly sought out his lat­est offer­ing, a semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal tale direct­ed by his son, Goro. Some will have felt them­selves too mature for such fare. Being col­lege stu­dents, both groups are like­ly to be hork­ing down a fair amount of cheap pack­aged ramen noo­dles.

As evi­denced above, Miyaza­ki has some pret­ty spe­cif­ic ideas on what to do with those. Prepar­ing a late night work­place din­ner for his Spir­it­ed Away team, the great direc­tor rivals Good Fel­las’ sliced gar­lic maven Paul Sorvi­no for culi­nary sang-froid. Stuff­ing ten blocks of the stuff into a sin­gle pot might get an ordi­nary mor­tal vot­ed off of Top Chef, but aside from that Miyaza­k­i’s staff meal is an excel­lent, instant tuto­r­i­al for those inter­est­ed in soup­ing up low bud­get, col­le­giate cui­sine.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cook­pad, the Largest Recipe Site in Japan, Launch­es New Site in Eng­lish

Kafka’s Night­mare Tale, ‘A Coun­try Doc­tor,’ Told in Award-Win­ning Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion

Japan­ese Car­toons from the 1920s and 30s Reveal the Styl­is­tic Roots of Ani­me

The New York Times Makes 17,000 Tasty Recipes Avail­able Online: Japan­ese, Ital­ian, Thai & Much More

Watch Sher­lock Hound: Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­mat­ed, Steam­punk Take on Sher­lock Holmes

French Stu­dent Sets Inter­net on Fire with Ani­ma­tion Inspired by Moe­bius, Syd Mead & Hayao Miyaza­ki

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s favorite moment is when Totoro and the chil­dren make the cam­phor tree grow. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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