No Coffee!

We moved into the new Media Lab building a little more than a month ago. There were a lot of things that were not quite finished when we moved in, and there was a big event planned for the dedication of the new building last week, so folks were working on getting ready for that. As a result, some normal problems have slipped through the cracks. But the biggest problem is the coffee machine - this machine has been broken for a few weeks, and the back up machine is having problems too. Can you imagine a research group with out coffee - how about a whole building! Now that the dedication is past, I hope they get around to fixing the coffee machine.

Tarragon Chicken Crêpes

I think I copied this recipe down from a magazine or newspaper back when I was in college. [Ok, this is just a little too weird - I just went searching for the original name I have in my notebook Crêpes de volaille a l'estragon and I appear to have found the actual recipe in the NY Times from 1982. I know it's the same one because I have the other recipes mentioned copied down in my notebook even though I never made them.] Over time things have changed a little - here's my version now.

Tarragon Chicken Sauce
1 lb boneless chicken breasts
1 Tbsp oil or butter
1-2 Tbsp butter
2-3 Tbsp flour
1 cup chicken stock
1 cup light cream
1 Tbsp dried tarragon (more if fresh)
dash nutmeg
dash cayenne
freshly ground pepper
salt to taste

Cook the chicken breasts. I like to saute them in the pan so they get a little brown and crispy on the outside. Technically I think you're supposed to poach them so they're all nice and pale in the sauce, but I like the caramelization. Remove the chicken, and cut it up or shred it into small pieces. Melt the tablespoon of butter in the pan and mix in the flour to make a roux. Whisk in the stock and bring to a simmer. Stir until thickened. Add the tarragon, nutmeg and cayenne. Cook for a minute or two, then add the cream. Add salt and pepper to taste.

If you're going to use it as a filling for crêpes, mix about half the sauce with the chicken, and reserve the rest of the sauce for spooning over the top. If you don't have crêpes handy, it also goes really well over rice - in that case just mix all the sauce and chicken together.

The recipe for crêpes is really quite basic: eggs, flour and milk. I like this crêpe recipe from Alton Brown because you just mix it all up in a blender.

For a very fancy meal, finish off with Crêpes Suzette. These sound difficult, but really aren't all that hard to make if you have some crepes already made.

Crêpes Suzette
(for 4)
8 crêpes, folded in half
6-8 Tbsp butter
2-3 Tbsp sugar
zest of 1 orange
juice of 1/2 orange
4 Tbsp Grand Marnier (plus an extra spoonful)

In a large skillet melt the butter. When it's foamy add the sugar and stir for a minute or two. Add the orange zest and the orange juice. Lay each crêpe in the sauce, flip it over to coat, and fold into quarters. Once all the crêpes are in the pan all coated in sauce, add the Grand Marnier. For the full flambé effect, warm an extra spoonful of Grand Marnier, light it and pour over the crêpes to ignite the whole pan. Serve two per person with extra sauce.

Heiliger Dankgesang

Last night we went to Jordan Hall (one of my favorite places) to see the Artemis quartet.

They played 3 Beethoven quartets. They started with one of the early ones (Opus 18 no. 2) which I don’t know well. They sounded really great on that one. They’ve got a nice, balanced sound and they play off each other very well. They have a really nice stage presence too. Three of them play standing, and the cellist sits on a raised platform so that he’s the same height.

 

Next they played the Serioso (Opus 95). I didn’t think that this one really played to their strengths. They had a really nice sound in the second movement, but they got a little loose in some of the fiery bits. And the Serioso is all about the fiery bits.

They finished with number 15 (Opus 132). I think that this is probably the greatest thing that anyone has ever written, and they did a fabulous job on it. Those last couple of Beethoven quartets (op. 127 – 135) are simply amazing. They really don’t sound much like his earlier work. They’re often compared to Brahms, but I’m not sure that’s really accurate. It seems like most of Beethoven’s work has the feeling that he’s trying to impress someone. These don’t have that feeling at all. They simply sound like he has something important he wants to say.

I don’t know why the A minor has always affected me so much. It’s built from themes he used in other pieces. The development has some interesting quirks, but it is a relatively classical form. But there’s something about it that makes it seem endlessly fascinating. T. S. Eliot said of it:

I find it quite inexhaustible to study. There is a sort of heavenly or at least more than human gaiety about some of his later things which one imagines might come to oneself as the fruit of reconciliation and relief after immense suffering; I should like to get something of that into verse before I die.

Before the concert, we went to dinner at Petit Robert. This is a small restaurant that’s run by the daughter of the guy who used to run Maison Robert. The food was wonderful. The only problem was that we didn’t have time (or room) to have dessert.

Popular Science

When I was young, I had a vast collection of old Popular Science magazines. I used to spend hours poring over them. I memorized vast numbers of strange machines, weird inventions, and odd facts as a result. Those magazines are gone now. Lost in some move.

But they’re back! Google books now has them all online.

Whee!

John McPhee

John McPhee has always been one of my favorite writers. I remember when I was young and would go over to my grandmother’s house. I would sit on the couch and flip through her copies of The New Yorker for the cartoons. But I quickly figured out that whenever I found an essay by McPhee, that I should read it. It really didn’t matter what he was writing about, it was going to be interesting.

A lot of those essays have been collected into books. I would recommend all of them. You might not realize that you want to know about Arthur Ashe, the Swiss army, train engineers, shad, Deerfield Academy, birch bark canoes, or nuclear terrorism; but you do. He’ll make it interesting.

But even after reading dozens and dozens of essays by him, it has been hard to get much of a sense of who he really is. But apparently, his latest book is much more personal than most of his writing. In addition, the LA Times has an interesting interview with him this week.

 

You might also be interested to know that one of his daughters (Laura) is a photographer. I caught an exhibit of her work at the MFA a while back. They were really good.

Spring coming!

This has been a weird winter. We've had very cold stretches, and some warmer days. According to the monthly summary in the Globe today, February was warmer than normal. I wish we still had the paper for January, because it certainly seemed colder than usual, but using the year-to-date figure in addition to the February number it seems that even January was warmer than average.

Here's my measure of where we are. Usually when we get back from our February vacation in Florida I notice that the snowdrops on the north side of the house are blooming. And I have to admit that usually I forget to check before we go on vacation, but this year I remembered. Just before we left I went and looked to see if there was any sign of snow drops - nope, nothing at that time. The day after we got back I checked, and sure enough there are snowdrops.

If you had asked me about this winter, I would probably have said it's been colder than usual, so cold we've had little snow (it's all gone south of us!). My snowdrops are telling me that it's certainly no colder than usual. I'm just glad to see them because it means spring is on its way.

Dye Transfer Print

My favorite photography blog (The Online Photographer) recently had a fundraiser. They were selling dye transfer prints by Ctein, a photographer whose work (and writing) I really enjoy. I ordered one. It came the other day, and it looks wonderful.

I did some dye transfer printing many years ago at the VLW. It’s a fascinating process and the results are amazing. You start by creating 3 or 4 color separations. These are full size negatives which have each been created with a color filter. They’re kind of like the channels of an image in Photoshop. You then process these so that the light areas are soft and porous while the dark areas are hard and shiny. Each negative has a couple of pin holes on one side so that you can get them lined up perfectly.

Next you take a piece of paper with a soft gelatin surface, get it damp, and fasten it down with a clamp with pins in it. You take the first of your negatives and soak it in a dye solution. Then you place it on to the paper, clamp it down, and roll it. The dye gets transferred from the porous parts of the negative into the paper. You do this for each of the negatives in turn.

In many ways, this process is more like printmaking than photography. You work with the lights on for everything except creating the separations. You can reapply a separation to the paper to add more of that color. You can paint areas with solutions which make the negative transfer more or less color. You even have choices about what color dyes and what separations you use. On the other hand, it is very labor intensive. You can see some pictures of the process here.

And the resulting prints are amazing. The dyes are very pure, and there aren’t any unstable silver compounds in the process, so the prints are very stable. And they have kind of a magical depth to the color.

Kodak stopped making the materials for this process in 1994. Ctein bought up all that he could get his hands on. He also bought a big freezer to store it in. Here’s his description of the process.

The actual print I ordered (the bottom one on this page) is of some ferns growing in a lava field in Hawai’i'. It reminds me of our trip there. Dye transfer is a perfect process for this image because most of the detail is in the darkest range showing the texture of the black lava. But there are also iridescent details which have subtle colors way up in the highlights.

 

Since I’m mentioning Ctein, I should point out that many readers of this blog would probably enjoy his photos of the space program (link1, link2, link3). This image of Columbia is a perfect example of the sort of thing that dye transfer is really good at, if you’d like to order one of your own.

 

You might also enjoy his book on restoring old photos. I have a copy of the 1st edition, and I’ve gotten a lot of good use out of it.