Making salsa verde

My posts have been all over the place, so why not include some culinary endeavors as well?

After getting a nice Cuisinart food processor from my parents for Christmas (thanks!), I quickly headed to the grocery store to buy ingredients to make salsa and hot sauce. The Cuisinart's maiden voyage was through the seas of fresh tomatillos. I found a recipe for "Mexican salsa verde" online, and below you will find pictures and details of its preparation.

I was really sold on this type of salsa verde because the raw ingredients are roasted before any other preparation. So here we go...

Ingredients:
tomatillos
hot peppers
onion
garlic
vegetable broth
cumin
fresh rosemary
fresh thyme
salt

I used about eight medium-sized tomatillos, one medium-sized onion, and lots of garlic. The other quantities are really up to you! Choose any kind of hot pepper that seems interesting. I chose jalapeños because they looked freshest.

Preparation:
Remove the husks from the tomatillos if necessary. Do not peel the onion nor the garlic. Just cut the onion in half. Without using any oil, roast the tomatillos, hot peppers, and unpeeled onion and garlic cloves in a pan (preferably cast iron) until they start to turn golden brown.

Remove these ingredients from the pan and allow them to rest while they cool off. I cut the tomatillos in half so that they would cool faster.

Once cool, slice the tomatillos, hot peppers, onion, and garlic. Chop up some thyme and rosemary and place all the ingredients in your food processor along with the cumin, a good amount of vegetable stock, and plenty of salt. Process the ingredients very well until you obtain a puree.

The last step is to return the puree to the pan and reduce over low heat so that the flavors have time to get to know each other. This will bring out complex flavors that will go great with the bright acidity of the tomatillos.

Final thoughts....

Roasting the onion took away some of its thunder. Next time, I may only roast half the onion and use the other half raw.

The rosemary demonstrated its ability to overpower other more subtle flavors, like thyme. Perhaps one teaspoon of chopped rosemary and one tablespoon of chopped thyme would have been a better balance.

Enojy!

Rochester, New York, United States of America

i thought it would be a shame to simply stop blogging just because i'm no longer in a foreign land.

things are snowy and cold here, and i came unprepared. i neglected to bring shoes outside of tennis sneakers and dress shoes. so, i wear my sneakers. they have a pretty serious leak despite looking pretty fresh at first glance. i also didn't bring a winter jacket. that's pretty unfortunate given the blizzard-like conditions in beautiful rochester. should have read the travel guide.

we've gotten more than two feet of snow over the past week. in fact, i can't remember the last day it didn't snow. it seems plausible that it has snowed every day since i got back. but in typical fashion, rit remains undaunted. the roads here in henrietta have been pretty messy, but as soon you get on campus the roads are flawless.

rit. hah. that's a funny story. they just built a $57 million dollar "university marketplace" (i.e. shopping mall) on campus. the facility, global village, also has "414-bed student residences" that "feel more like an upper-Manhattan hotel" (RIT Celebrates Opening of $57 Million Global Village Complex). meanwhile, electrical engineering students are using six-year-old pentium 4 systems and broken oscilloscopes. in my college, departments are getting combined and consolidated. some joke that our professors are leaving faster than students these days.

ironically, i'm still thankful to rit (hopefully this will keep destler from sending his squad after me). rit's mandatory co-op program allowed me to get lots of work experience before graduating. if i had gone to an ivy league, i'd have no work experience and probably be afraid of the full-time job search. furthermore, if i had enjoyed rit, i never would have traveled and lived abroad. it's not all so bad you see.

Bayerisches Restaurant

last monday, when josh and i were in potsdam, we stumbled upon this bayer restaurant after about an hour of searching, debate, and indecision. bayern is a state in southern germany with a culture and dialect so different from berlin that it might as well be a different country. in fact, it's still sometimes referred to as "the Free State of Bavaria" (der Freistaat Bayern).

here's the front of the menu:


inside the restaurant:


we each had a liter of beer (eine Maß) which is reportedly the only way beer is served in bayern. i had Schweinshaxe, which is a ham hock (pork knuckle) which is roasted to perfection such that the the skin ends up almost exactly like chicharrón. it was served with beer sauce and the best sauerkraut i've ever had. there's a similar dish called Eisbein, which is a ham hock that is boiled rather than roasted.


Schweinshaxe:

Source: Wikipedia

Tempelhof Airport

"Berlin Tempelhof Airport (German: Flughafen Berlin-Tempelhof) was an airport in Berlin, Germany, situated in the south-central borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg. The airport ceased operating in 2008 in the process of establishing Schönefeld as the sole commercial airport for Berlin" (Wikipedia). Tempelhof Airport was also the aiport used for the Berlin Airlift (Luftbrücke, or "air bridge," in German).

Yesterday was a beautiful day in Berlin. I really can't remember the last time I saw the sun here. In the end, the weather here is not so much different from Rochester, and that's pretty depressing.



sun=happiness.


So, Nick and I made our way to Tempelhof sporting our nicest shorts and t-shirts. The Germans, however, were stilled dressed as if it were the dead of winter. When we arrived, this is what we saw:




...lots of kites and other flying objects, such as this one:






Here's the actually terminal which is now abandoned...







And the sun shined aaaall the way home...

Eleven days to go

josh arrived on friday and left this morning. i took off on friday and monday so i could show him around the city. we did the basic tourist routine including a trip to potsdam, the capital of brandenberg state which land locks berlin.

potsdam couldn't be more different than berlin. walking around the cobblestone streets, i decided it is the most different place i've ever been in terms of look and feel. everything is super european, whereas in berlin i don't get that feeling so much. being there reminded josh of paris.

check out some pictures here: http://www.lemonpage.de/Fotoseiten/potsdam-fotos.html

also, there was a coctail party at my supervisor's house on saturday. i met some interesting people, talked to my supervisor's son (who speaks with a new zealand accent...he studied there), and had lots of good food and drink. a good time was had by all.

just eleven days left now. and seven more days of work. my current project is the integration of my real-time heart impedance simulator into the heart model. the code to do this is ready, however i haven't tested it with the heart model yet.

last nite, i received a care package from mom and dad! yay! i got lots of things to eat like homemade cookies along with other assorted creature comforts. thanks! :)

Berlin Fotitos

crew painting Audi ad. very cool.


fire alarm in my apartment--at least they warned me that it doesn't work.


Berliner Dom and Fernsehturm.



St. Hedwig's Cathedral.


Brandenburg Gate.


eating my first döner. this has become a fixture of Berlin's gastronomy. my favorite one is served with mint, feta, grilled potatoes/veggies, and lemon juice, along with the typical ingredients.


Humboldt University.


Plaza of St. Hedwig's Cathedral.


somewhere in east Berlin, near Museum Island.


Berliner Dom.


outside my apartment buildilng.


apartment building.


Nick "EEing" (electrical engineering) in his room.

One more month

Yesterady, I canceled my housing (it needs to be done one month in advance). So, it's the beginning of the end.

Nick's dad is here visiting this weekend, so I'll probably be tagging along seeing some of the touristy stuff I didn't get a chance to see yet. He will be back next weekend after attending a conference in the Netherlands. The following weekend, Josh will be visiting me! There's been some talk of renting a car and traveling south, and I already have one day's worth of overtime accumulated. We'll see what happens with that...

My impedance waveform project officially has all the functionality I was asked to implement. That means next week I will get to show my boss all the code, try to break it, and finish documentation. Then, it sounds like I will get another project related to the heart simulator for my remaining time here.