Conor’s Bandon Blog

I’ve made a few half-hearted attempts at doing chicken wings over the years. Usually in the oven and usually burnt beyond all recognition. I now realise that you add the sauce afterwards as anything with sugar will burn.

Recently I spotted a bunch of blog postings about buffalo wings (mainly related to the Superbowl I think) and decided I wanted to try and do them properly. I’ve always found people raving about Elephant & Castle chicken wings to be a bit weird. I’ve had them, they’re fine but they are chicken offcuts in hot sauce, get a grip.

The simple recipe given on Slashfood seemed to fit the bill. I found a great site in the UK called Chilli World who stock Frank’s Red Hot Sauce. This is the “original” hot sauce used for Buffalo wings. I ordered a few bottles of that plus some other Caribbean hot sauces and some spices. They arrived within the week.

So on Monday, after buying 30 chicken wings in the English market for €2.10 (no, I don’t want to know where they came from), I made my first real batch of buffalo wings. I fried them in about an inch of oil in a pan (rather than going the full deep-fat frying route) and then coated them thoroughly in the mix of butter, Frank’s Red Hot Sauce and cider vinegar as quoted by Slashfood.

Well Frank’s sauce may be tasty and red but it ain’t hot. I ended up dousing each wing in the sauce from the bottle to get any sort of kick. Hell, I could put the sauce straight on to my tongue and it did not burn. I also question the butter. is it just to make the sauce adhere more? I dunno. What I do know is that they were damned tasty and I had 10 for lunch.

Next time I’ll try one of those Caribbean scotch bonnet pepper sauces and see if that works better/hotter.

Can someone do a margin analysis on buffalo wings for me? What are we talking? 1000%? Whoever came up with them has one sharp business mind.

For fans of “My Name is Earl”, the exchange between the main characters on chicken wings this week was comedy perfection. Dammit these guys can write:

Randy: You takin’ Pops’ hot dogs outta Camden County is like taking chicken out of Syracuse.
Earl: It’s Buffalo, Randy.
Randy: No, I’m pretty sure it’s chicken, Earl.
Joy: Yeah, it’s chicken. Hot chicken!

[tags]Buffalo Wings, My Name is Earl, Franks Red Hot Sauce, Chilli World[/tags]

I have written some very complimentary things about Murphy’s Ice Cream recently. In addition, Kieran’s blog has become, in a few short weeks, one of the best in the country, IMHO. I gave Kieran a few tips on blogging software recently and was gob-smacked when he sent me a fabulous gift of some ice-cream and chocolate sauce (via the very facilitative Urru).

Now that I have made that disclosure, I feel comfortable in continuing to rave about their products. The ones we got today were Irish Cream Liquer and Mint & Chocolate. Holy god, they would be banned in any communinst country for their utter gorgeousness. I had to wrestle the spoon off Catherine so we could put them aside for later when the sauce would be de-frosted.

Listening to Kieran and Seán on Winter Food, I realise that they have far too much in common with Catherine for them to ever meet. She is toying with the idea of offering to be an unpaid tester for them. She is eating for two you know.

It is usually a long process for us to come up with the final name for each of our children. Fionn was named as the epi went in. This next baby has already been named: Uachtar Reoite Ó Néill.

Whilst I am here, any ideas why the ice-cream from our cheapy ice-cream maker is really solid and dense in comparison to the lightness of Murphy’s?

p.s. Interesting factoid: If you Google “Uachtar Reoite”. the first hit is the Murphy’s Web-site.

UPDATE 1: In the interest of full and unambiguous disclosure, I should point out that my wife is a svelte and gorgeous size 10. But not for long. Ow, ow, joke, joke.

[tags]Murphys IceCream, Urru[/tags]

Months after I signed up, I finally got access to the new Yahoo Mail Beta programme. I’ve been using Yahoo mail as my “we are a web-site, give us an email address” address for over ten years now. In that time, I don’t think it has really improved one iota in usability apart from the addition of spam catching. It has always been slow, clunky and riddled with obnoxious massive ads.

The new one is a major improvement on the usability front. Full ajaxian interface with drag n drop and reasonably speedy 3-pane display. So far I like it a hell of a lot but there is no way it is ousting GMail as my favourite email system. There are far too many “please wait” messages for my liking. And the screen real estate just does not seem to be used efficiently.

But the number one problem is the continued presence of those horrible huge flashy animated ads. Let me make this clear Mr Yahoo: In ten years of using Yahoo mail, I have never, ever, clicked on one of those ads. If I suffered from epilepsy, I am pretty sure they would trigger an attack, they are so visually offensive. In a much shorter period of time, I have clicked on many Google Adsense ads. The are unobtrusive, relevant and don’t take up half the screen. If you want to beat Google, do some simple end-user surveys and see if anyone on the planet likes your current ads.

But if Yahoo mail is your primary web-mail system, you are going to love the new one.

[tags]Yahoo, Mail, Beta[/tags]

Tonight 9.00, Channel 4.

From the last series:

MAC to his surgical team: What can I tell you? A few ground rules. No bombing, no running, no petting, no diving and no inflatables. In fact, probably best to leave all swimming related activities until later ; this is after all, an operating theatre.

[tags]Green Wing, Channel 4[/tags]

The traditional Mother’s Day treat in our house is to get a nice simple poached eggs on toast breakfast in bed which the kids can easily help with. This year, as wifey is up the pole, soft eggs were a no-no and hard poached eggs are pooh, so we needed an alternative.

On Saturday, in a flash of inspiration I checked out “Easy Entertaining” by Darina Allen. My lovely parents got this for me at Christmas. The “Darina” bit would make it instantly interesting to me, but the “Entertaining” bit would put me off. The only entertaining we do is giving people a laugh with our uncontrollable demon children in SuperValu when we go shopping. But this is a great book. Tons of very manageable recipes ranging from 5-minuters to multi-hour slow-cookingers. What I had remembered was her particularly good brunch chapter.

I found “Buttermilk pancakes with crispy bacon and maple syrup”. Wife looked very happy when I suggested it.

I did a bit of shopping with the two eldest for basics in SuperValu. I got the special bits in Urru (sadly lacking in Mother’s day specific treats for some reason) and we were all set.

The pancakes were a doddle to make and I’m completely incompetent at baking (yes, pancakes are baking in my world). These were paired with Gubbeen streaky bacon which has a very distinctive and enticing aroma (is it the juniper?). Canadian Maple Syrup finished it off. Wife rated it as the best Mother’s Day breakfast ever. Result.

Dinner was our old reliable spaghetti n meatballs as we wanted us all eating at the same time. All plates were demolished. I then rolled out my secret weapon – Murphy’s Chocolate Ice Cream with Glenilen Raspberry Mousse. Catherine argued with me that they did not go together. As far as she was concerned I was ruining a perfect chocolate moment with fruit. I disagreed and insisted she try the combo. Success, she loved it! They are effing fabulous together. I’m not even that big a fan of chocolate ice-cream but with the fluffy mousse it was awesome.

One downside was that both Oisín and Oscar tried some of the ice-cream. They both adored it – Ois licked his bowl, Osc licked the carton clean. There goes our cost base – they won’t accept HB Neapolitan from us any more.

I know what I want for Father’s Day.

[tags]Mothers Day, Fathers Day, Murphys Icecream, Glenilen, Urru, Gubbeen, Darina Allen[/tags]

We were in The English Market on Friday getting a few bits. I was buying the membrillo in Iago which is the bigger of the two cheese places. In passing, as Catherine is preggers, I asked if they had any pasteurised goat’s cheese. The person I asked didn’t know but one of the other ladies came over and said that no goat’s cheese or sheep’s cheese is safe to eat during pregnancy because listeria is not killed by pasteurisation. We were a bit stunned as we are pretty sure Catherine has eaten some of the harder goat’s cheeses on the other pregnancies.

When we went home, she checked her library of pregnancy books and they all said that listeria is killed by pasteurisation. So what is the reality? Is listeria a red herring?  Are there any safe non-cow cheeses during pregnancy? In any case, what are the stats on problems occuring? Ignoring goats for a moment, what is the problem with soft cheeses like brie if they are pasteurised?

Let’s use that collective swarm intelligence out there to create a bizarre answer to this conundrum and post it to Wikipedia.

[tags]Listeria, Goat’s Cheese, Chevre, Brie, Pasteurisation, Pasteurization, Iago, English Market[/tags]

UPDATE 1: I am re-publishing this post as I did a great dis-service to Adam over at Men In Aprons by confusing his Podcast with another one. MIA is a lighthearted foodie podcast where Adam is the main presenter and he riffs with his wife and friends in the room about food related topics. Adam sent me a great e-mail describing some of the background to MIA and I have to say I really like his attitude and approach. So, not only do I recommend that you check out MIA and see if it is to your liking but I have re-subscribed too.

Whilst I am at it, anyone else out there using Juice for Podcast downloads?

Original Post:

Since about November, I’ve been listening to some (mainly foodie) podcasts. As someone who thinks Steve Jobs’ real name is Damien and is the spawn of a wolf, it is a case of ipod schmipod for me.

My first set-up was my Nokia 6230 with a 512MB MMC Card and the standard Nokia headphones. The biggest drawback of it is that the transfer of music or podcasts via Bluetooth takes forever and USB isn’t great either. So I end up removing the MMC from the phone, popping it into my laptop, copying what I want and then re-assembling the phone. For cycling this setup worked fine.

The music player on the phone is a bit crap with FF and REW being particularly useless. For the car, I got a standard “taxi-driver” phone holder and an adapter to connect the phone to a normal set of head-phones or line-out. This is then connected to a VRFM8 FM transmitter thingy which takes the sound and broadcasts it illegally to my radio and I listen via the radio. Sound quality on those FM transmitters is pretty rubbish and they really don’t work for music, but for podcasts they are fine.

At Christmas, I asked my very kind father if I could borrow the Palm Tungsten T that he had never used and he said sure. I thought it only took SD cards but for the laugh I stuck the MMC card from the Nokia into it and the beauty worked. I then grabbed Real Player for Palm and loaded it up. This is a very nice piece of music playing software which integrates very smoothly with Real Player on the Desktop. I can now just drop MP3′s from my desktop onto Real Player and it transfers them (at quite high speed) to the MMC in the Palm. The Tungsten T has a headphone socket, so I just connect that to the FM transmitter and I’m in business. The main advantages over the Nokia are the speed of music transfer, the far superior music player and the big buttons for controlling it whilst driving. The other advantage is that the card slot is open at the top of the Palm so I can easily swap cards if I have more stuff on another one.

Of course, we can’t forget the other advantages of the Tungsten T: ZX Spectrum Emulator, tons of great games, currency convertor, web-browser which works using bluetooth to the phone, eWallet, Avantgo, Vindigo. Whilst it is a little long in the tooth and under-powered compared to current models, I think it is a far more impressive piece of industrial design. Most current PDAs just look cheap, nasty and flimsy. The only thing it is really missing is wi-fi.

That is the tech sorted. What the hell is podcasting and which ones do I listen to? For non-techies, the explanation is really simple. Podcasts are recordings made by anyone from a guy in a shed talking about potting compost to a journalist with Business Week talking about Google to a normal radio show. Those recording are saved onto computer in a format called MP3 (just a sound compression system so the files don’t take up too much space) and they then upload those files onto web-servers and let people know by various means that they can download them. If you want to listen to a podcast, you can grab the file off the web-site, save it on your computer and listen to it there (Windows comes with a sound player for them) or copy it to an MP3 player like an iPod and listen to it whilst walking or cycling. Nothing to it really.

The variation in quality of content and sound in podcasts is very interesting. The pro ones are often less impressive in what they are saying than the guy with the cheap handheld recorder. Here is a selection of ones I have checked out -

Gastrocast: Neal the Podchef is based on an island off Washington state. He is very informed and has a wide range of food interests which are similar to my own. He spent time in Ireland and has been to Ballymaloe so Darina gets a mention. He often does bits on Irish food products like cheese. He has a very distinctive voice which is highly enunciated and this is exactly what is needed in a podcast. I can actually hear him whilst cycling unlike a lot of people (like Om Malik for example) who mumble into their chests and are often indecipherable. There are only two small negatives to my mind. The first is that an hour per episode is heading towards too long. My attention span isn’t that long Also, I have found that podcasts work best when there is more than one person involved. The interaction makes it more interesting. But considering where Neal lives, I don’t think that is solvable. The other approach (as taken by Men In Aprons) is far far worse where the main talker shouts to his wife in the background and she shouts back.

The Restaurant Guys: Informed, professional, funny. It is just a recording of their daily food show on a New Jersey Radio station. Francis and Mark together own two big restaurants in New Brunswick and each day they usually cover one main topic in great depth and with tons of humour and have an interview with someone. Check out the episode where they discuss the bison cull in Montana and what sort of loser you’d have to be to mount the head of one of those animals. The bison are so used to human contact they think their photo is about to be taken! I listen to every episode these guys make.

The Remarkable Palate: Mark Tafoya is a personal chef in New York. He covers lots of local NY things but also does recipes and lots of interviews. I just like his attitude to food in general. He should lose the recent music interludes tho.

Eat Feed: Anne Bramley seems extremely knowledgeable and interviews a wide range of people in the food business. But it just doesn’t work for me. Her focus is on things I just do not find interesting (like baking) and I find a lot of the interviewees just plain annoying. I’m sure that it would be interesting to lots of people, just not to me. Actually, I did find her recent podcast on food interests and personality types to be worth a listen.

On Food with Hsiao-Ching Chou: Food Editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper. Very professionaly produced. Good meaty interviews mainly with chefs. Well worth a listen.

Men in Aprons: Seems to be recorded in a toilet by a husband and wife. The first episode I tried to listen to had recipes for your cat. I’ve tried several episodes since and I never last past their incessant giggling which usually starts after less than a minute.

Girl on Girl Cooking: Or as they should be known “Cooking by the hard of thinking”. Car crash podcasting. Their episode on genetically modified foods was one of the funniest things I have ever heard and they were being deadly serious. “They kinda like, ye know, f**k with the molecules of the food”.

All You Can Eat: Don Genova is based in Vancouver and mainly does walkabout interviews with local people. Very down to earth and relaxed. Worth a listen.

BBQ Forum: If you are interested in BBQ or you’re trying to learn about it (as I am), this is a must-listen. Ray Basso runs the biggest BBQ forum site on the web and is deeply knowledgeable. The guys he interviews (and in the world of BBQ it seems to be mainly guys) range from the very funny to the very strange, but all of them know what they are talking about. Very enjoyable.

And for a few non-foodie ones, you should try:

Tom Raftery’s Podleaders: Great interviews with tech visionaries by a Cork-based IT person

Ricky Gervais: Awesome. Snot out the nose funny. Karl Pilkington for King! Nearly finished so hurry and grab em.

Diggnation: Should be annoying; Two young guys talking tech in valley speak. Actually hilarious and very interesting.

[tags]food podcasts, diggnation, ricky gervais[/tags]