Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

The Mom Song – Motherly Wisdom & Nagging Just Got Lyrical

All the moms out there can probably relate very, very well to this little song!  Certainly the energy and vibe seems right, and the words seem to be the ones all moms must be saying every day.

Have fun with this one!

Are There Any Legitimate Online Movie Services for Canadian Consumers?

Movie piracy is rampant.  Until local police agencies cracked down on pirated movie DVDs, the situation in asian malls was decidedly ridiculous.  Many of my friends download movies illegally and view them on their big-screen TVs via networked hard drives and media centres.  I’ve been told repeatedly that the popular asian YouTube equivalents offer movies for free because clearly something used by millions of people can’t be illegal.  Even my mother tells me her friends are downloading movies for free (and illegally), and has asked me how she can do it too.

I’ll admit that I haven’t always had clean hands in this regard, but for the last two years, I’ve been renting my movies or buying them.  I’m staying legit, because I know how much work goes into creating new content and can feel very viscerally how infuriating it feels to have others steal your work.

Unfortunately, I’m finding it incredibly difficult to use the Internet and stay legit.  Honestly, I’m sick and tired of going to the video store to rent a DVD and really want to be able to rent the movies online.  Pay a few bucks, then have it stream in for me to watch the movie.  I check the websites of services that allow American consumers to do this, and it costs less than what it costs me to trudge down to the local Blockbuster to borrow a physical copy that I have to return.

Convenience at lower cost: that’s what the Internet is supposed to enable.  Yet, here in Canada, it’s incredibly difficult and frustrating to take do that.  I’m literally on the verge of being laughed at by everyone else because I so adamantly want to stay legit and am having to be so inconvenienced and frustrated by it.

The we’ll-deliver-it-by-mail rental services are, by all accounts, unreliable and unsatisfactory.  The legitimate web-streaming rental services are for American consumers only, and based on my IP address, I am excluded from their services.  Blockbuster is a pain in the ass to use, and costs me more each year.

Something is very wrong with a movie industry that cries foul at all the piracy out there, and then makes it incredibly frustrating and difficult for people who want to pay them properly, and pay them money, to do the right thing.

Content is worth paying for.  I truly believe that.  If anyone knows of a good, legitimate source for movies online and that is available for Canadian consumers, please let me know.

Nurture Your First-Followers, or You’re Just a Lone Nut!

Here is a fantastic little video that I came across, demonstrating how vital it is for would-be leaders to nurture their first followers.  The video’s narration says everything that I could say about this video.

I’ll warn you that it’s got the same smooth tracking and motion that Blair Witch Project did – that means, put down your drink and I hope you’re not prone to motion-sickness.

It’s worth it, though.  This is a real-life example of how a lone-nut nurtures first followers.  This is also a real-life example of what happens when a movement finally passes the tipping point and people join en masse.

A brief, but instructive example of what happens with movements of all kinds, in any field of endeavour.

I now present to you… shirtless silly dancing guy!

Get Multiple Viewpoints from Multiple Cookbooks

It has always been obvious to me, but every once in a while I get the question, “Why have so many Japanese/Italian/French/Chinese/Indian/Caribbean/whatever cookbooks?  You just need one of each type, right?” Maybe you would ask me the same thing. My answer is simple. You get better advice and better food when you can consult different cookbooks.

1. No one cookbook is totally comprehensive.
2. Each author has their own take on things, and their own strengths.

No one cookbook will cover everything. It can’t, because it’s made for a different audience, and has a different purpose and intent.  One cookbook might focus more on casual, family cooking. Another might be fancier and focus on restaurant-grade cooking. Yet another may focus on traditional dishes and recipes, and a final one might be take a fusion perspective on the cuisine.

Each author has their own perspectives on food in general and on the cuisine in particular. Food is an expression of the person who prepares it. Each chef who writes a cookbook brings his or her own biases, preferences, and style to the book and its recipes. That, really, is why you buy cookbooks from one author and not another!

By having multiple cookbooks that, at first glance, seem to all cover the same ground, you get advice and guidance from different advisors. Having a cookbook and referring to a cookbook is like having the chef or author in your kitchen giving you guidance. Like every other field in life, the decisions you make for yourself are likely to be better when you can hear different experts give you their advice.

Take dashi, for instance. That’s the basic stock fundamental to so much of Japanese cooking.  It’s simple as hell with 3 ingredients: water, kombu (sea kelp) and bonito. That’s it. Yet when I consult different cookbooks by different authors, there are slight differences in how they approach it.

• A book focused on soup noodles emphasizes the convenience factor. Close enough is good enough. Soak the kombu in room temperature water for 20 minutes and bring it to a boil, then remove. Keep at a simmer, add bonito for 10 minutes and remove.
• A book focused on art, presentation, and restaurant-grade preparation, emphasizes quality. You get the best damn kombu you can, and let it soak overnight in room-temperature water, and you take the kombu out before you boil the stock. Take off heat, put in the bonito, when it sinks to the bottom, remove.
• A book focused on traditional preparation emphasizes soulful, attentive cooking with an eye to economy and getting the most use out of your ingredients. It notes the difference between primary dashi, which takes centre stage (as in soup noodles), and secondary dashi, which is used for making sauces. Soak the kombu, bring *almost* to a boil but don’t let the water reach a boil, and remove, saving it to make secondary dashi. Bring to boil, add bonito, add some cool water to bring it down from boil, when it boils again, remove bonito and save for secondary dashi.

I agree that it costs more money to stock multiple books that cover some of the same ground. Unfortunately, the only way to become excellent at what you do is to get the best instruction you can and then learn for yourself which way to go. For those of us who don’t cook professionally, instruction from authors and chefs we trust is the best way to build that foundation of knowledge upon which real skill is built.

Even for something so simple as dashi soup stock, there are differences in the details. Even with only 3 ingredients, you can see there are differences in the approach each chef takes and advises.

Add up enough details and you end up with noticeably different results in your food. This applies to every kind of cuisine you want to prepare.

If you want to be excellent, or even just very good, I would suggest that you need to have, ready at hand, multiple viewpoints from multiple authors and cookbooks.

Gyuto Sizes: Gotta Have ‘Em All!

Some things don’t change much with age.

I remember once when I was a child, and my parents had just bought me a new Transformer, there was a brochure that showed all the other models that then existed in the world of Transformers.  It was a pretty paltry list.  There were maybe a dozen different characters.  3 of them were, in fact, the exact same toy but in different colors: Starscream and his two other F-15 fighter jet buddies.

My father saw that I was all excited, and he asked me, “You want all 3 of them, don’t you?” “Yes!” “But they’re all the same thing.” “No, they’re not.  They’re different!”

I never did end up getting any of them.

It’s a little different now with my cooking toys.  I decide now which new gadgets and knives I get.  Yet, a similar dynamic still exists, whether it’s between myself and most people I talk to about my interest in cooking knives, or even with myself as I debate each time over my latest intended purchase.

I now have 15 different knives in my kitchen, not including little oddballs like the oyster knife or the cheese knives.  Plus another 2 exclusively for use at the office, but that’s getting off-topic.  4 of these knives are the same fundamental design: they’re chef knives.  Or, in the Japanese knife world, they’re gyutos.

I already have a Henckels 210mm (8″) chef knife.  This was the baby I started learning to cook with. It’s no longer my star performer, but it’s still so comfortable in my hand because I’m used to it. Sometimes I need something shorter or sturdier and this is the knife I reach for.

I have a Henckels 240mm (closer to 250mm, 9.5″) chef knife.  I rescued this bad boy. It had been abused in a former home, but I knew the steel was good.  It took some effort, and repeated sharpening sessions, but I eventually got the edge nice and sharp.  It’s my go-to knife for taking apart items like melons or large cabbages.  With its rescued edge, it’s actually pretty good at fine work like making the cabbage into a chiffonade, too!

I have a 240mm Tanaka gyuto with VG-10 stainless steel core, wa-handled.  This is currently my main go-to gyuto.  At first the length felt a little unwieldy, but I stuck with it because I loved the edge on the thing.  It’s got a keener edge than either of my Henckels, and it really is a much tighter, much more finely tuned kitchen cutting machine.

I have a 300mm (12″) Fujitake gyuto in solid VG-10 stainless steel, western-handled.  I’ve only used this bad boy a handful of times because I’m not quite used to it yet.  It feels very large, even though it’s actually my lightest gyuto.  But it is wonderful when I need to make clean slices in a yanagiba (“sushi knife”) fashion but also have other prep work to do.  The extra length is also a godsend when I have to plow through and mince a huge pile of herbs or leafy vegetables.

Each knife has its purpose.  Each knife has its strengths and weaknesses.

Yet, there is something missing in the stable.  I don’t mean having one from every make – I don’t think I want to spend the money doing that.  What I mean is, there’s still an entire category missing from my gyutos.  Two, actually: 270mm, carbon steel.  There is a size and a material missing.  I have carbon steel traditional Japanese blades, but not for any of my gyutos.  Why carbon steel, which can rust, which develops patina, and which needs more care and attention than stainless steel?  Because it gets sharper and cuts even more cleanly.

So, like the 3 F-15 fighter jet Transformers, I find myself needing to get another toy to complete the collection.  I have made a deal to buy a second-hand Takeda 270mm gyuto with aogami super (“blue super”) steel core.  It is in a length that I do not have, and uses what every knife knut acknowledges to be an excellent carbon steel.  This thing should be an absolute cutting monster.  Only when I get my hands on it, take it to the sharpening stones, and then use it to prep a meal will I know for sure, but that is the promise and the hope.

Some things don’t change much with age.  I still want to complete my collections.  But something is different now.  The gyutos aren’t exactly the same as one another but in different colors.  They are different lengths and they have different steels, thus they have different cutting properties.  Do I need to have so many gyutos?  No.  I can prep a meal with my original baby, the 210mm Henckels.  But I have more fun, and arguably my food is higher quality when I use the right knife for the right job, at the right time.

Don’t believe me?  I can tell you my beloved Fuji apples – I’ve been slicing up and eating about 4 of them every day for the past month while they’ve been in season – have better texture and are more enjoyable when I cut them with a good knife, and the right knife.  I also enjoy the experience of preparing my apples nicely.

It’s no longer about the exact same thing in different colors.  It’s about slightly different things for slightly different uses.  Kind of like getting different sports cars for different purposes: a Ferrari for on-track racing, a BMW M-Series for road driving, and a rally-modded Subaru Impreza for off-road racing. Does anyone need to have 3 sports cars? No. But it sure as hell is a lot more enjoyable to have them all, and you’ll do better in each environment when you have them all and can choose the right one to suit your mood or your activity.

Gyuto sizes: I just gotta have ‘em all!  210mm, 240mm, 300mm… and I’ll soon have a 270mm!