Grilled Sourdough Munchkins

There is something very comforting about bread and sandwiches. The first loaf I made with starters was a sourdough batard which turned out extremely well. But I realized the batard or baguette of sourdough is not ideal. I prefer my hogie bread to be soft spongy and this bread was tasty but tougher then a hogie roll.

So the day after I made my batard, I was bumming around my house with about 15mins before I needed to go out and start my day and I was feeling peckish. I decided I wanted a sandwich, but not a hogie. Digging through my refrigerator I found some ingredients and this recipe was born. It immediately became one of my favorites.

Ingredients:

Sourdough baguette or batard
Roma Tomato
Extra Sharp Cheddar
Chipolte Mayo
Butter

For the mayo:

If you are in a rush you can use store bought mayo, but if you can spare 5 - 10 mins, I'd suggest making your own.
I mix about 4 to 5 TSP of chipolte sauce into the mayo to give it a little smoked spice. If you want it hotter you can blend the mayo and peppers in a food processor.

For the Munchkins:

Slice the bread into slices ~1/2" thick. Give the insides of both slices a smear of the mayo. Stack one slice of tomato and one or two slices of cheese in between the bread. Throw some butter in a frying pan on medium heat and let it melt. Dab both sides of each munchkin in the melted butter then cook on both sides for 3~4 mins.

These little sandwiches are so simple and addictive. Make sure you make plenty, because as soon as you finish one, you'll wish you had another.

Chicken and Vegetable Soup

Last week we had some unseasonably cool weather which made it feel like fall, my favorite season, was here. The nights were cool enough for me to open my windows breath the crisp air. But the weather was short lived and we're back in the 90 degree heat.

But I'm not ready to give up the fall feeling. I've already started planning some apple and nut based dishes, but those will have to wait a few weeks. Instead today I made my fall and winter time staple, a large pot of Chicken and vegetable soup.

*note* These are just estimates. I really never measure the ingredients, just season to taste.

Ingedients:

6 cups chicken broth
2 ~ 3 cloves garlic (chopped)
2 bay leaves
1 tsp chervil leaves (chopped)
1 tsp tarragon leaves (chopped)
1 tsp turmeric
dash of cayenne pepper
dash of mace
dash of ground cloves
salt and pepper
juice of 2 limes
1 tbs olive oil
1 small can tomato paste
2 cups chopped tomatoes
1 cup yellow corn
1 medium yellow squash (julienned)
1 medium zucchini (julienned)
1 white onion (chopped)
1 cup black eye peas
1 cup kidney beans
2 chicken breasts (diced into cubes)

Put oil in large pot on medium heat and add garlic. When it starts to brown, add onions, squash, zucchini, and dry spices. When the onions soften add the stock, lime juice, beans, corn, tomatoes, and tomato paste and bring to a soft boil. As the soup is heating, and before I add the chicken, I taste and adjust seasoning as necessary. When you are pleased with the soups taste, add the chicken meat, lower heat, cover and let it cook for 30~45 mins.

This is not a fancy dish, but a good staple food. And for a grad student like me, it's very affordable. One pot complemented with cheese and crackers will feed me for a week, costs ~ $25, and keeps me warm on those cold nights.

Cheese Topped Baguette

I used to get this bread from the supermarket bakery which made some of the best sandwiches ever. A soft sandwich loaf with cheddar baked into the top crust. I stopped buying bread a few months ago with the intent to make my own loafs and i felt a need to remake these loafs. This is by far the best loaf I've made so far and the only one which I don't think requires any tweaking of the recipe (although readers comments or changed to the recipe are welcome).

Recipe:

3 1/2 Cups Bread Flour
1 1/2 Cups Warm Water
1 Tsp Yeast
1 Tsp Salt
4 Tbs Unsalted Butter (Softened)
2 Eggs

Dissolve salt and yeast in warm water. Slowly add flower and butter and mix until smooth. Let rest for 20 mins then knead the dough until smooth ball in formed.

Proof the dough for 3 hours, folding every 1 ~ 1 1/2 hours. Then cut dough in half and form into loafs. Sprinkle the loads with a cheese of your choice (I used a mix) and let rise in oiled pan for 45mins to 1 hour. In the last 15 mins preheat your oven to 450F with a small metal dish of salted water on the lowest rack. Whet at temperature place the loaf in the oven (! MIND THE STEAM !) and reduce heat to 350F. Bake until cheese on top turns a golden brown (about 25~30 mins) then allow to cool.

The loaf came out very soft and pillowy with a nice crumb. This makes an excellent loaf for sandwiches.

Metal Evaporator

Every time I tell my friends about this tool, they are amazed. "What do you mean by 'metal evaporator' " they say. Well, it's as simple as it sounds... a tool that evaporates metal. The next question is "Why?". Well many jeweler or artists evaporate metals to give a nice looking coating to they're work. Me and my colleagues, however, use the tool to deposit thin metal films for electronics and research purposes. I won't go into the details though....

How the tool works is fairly simple. It's basically a giant metal incandescent light bulb (and if you are wondering, we do have a metal deposition tool that is like a giant florescent light bulb, but I won't go into that here). The metal chamber is evacuated to very high vacuum by a high speed vacuum pump. Inside the chamber is a tungsten filament on which we place chunks of the metal we want to evaporate. We then send a high electrical current through the coil heating it up and in turn heating up the metal on it. When it's hot enough, the metal melts and evaporates. In fact the metal doesn't have to melt to evaporate, but I don't have a good way to measure when this happens, so I just look for it to melt.

There are some more technical considerations with the tool, like valves, purging to open, cooling the pumps. These are solved in typical fashion for vacuum tools of this nature.

Now there is a window on the bottom, but as the metal evaporates, it would cover the glass. So I put an extension piece on the window and a small mirror in the chamber so I can see inside during the evaporation runs. Luckily, most of the metals simple make the mirror more reflective, so I rarely have to change or clean it.

So far the main metal I've evaporated is aluminum, since it is cheap, soft, and has a low melting point. I've evaporated gold, silver, and pentacene with success. Evaporating cobalt has been done, but it forms an alloy with the tungsten that melts at a lower temperature then cobalt itself. So everytime I do cobalt, I endup bring a hole in the filiment which I don't like. I was able to deposit nickel as well, but the temperatures needed pushed the limits of the tool. I tried titanium evapoaration, but couln't get it to go.

1000 Mile

I just broke 1000 miles on my bikes odometer. I've done much more then that, but I don't always have my odometer on the bike. So I got the odometer back in Jan 2007. It's taken me a bit longer then I expected tog et to 1000, but I've done it. Most of the holdup is due to the fact that last summer I pretty much stopped biking.

Now how long will it take me to get to 2000.....