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27 January 2011

What are Mark Bittman's 25 Favorite recipes from his Minimalist column at The New York Times?

 No Knead Bread

The Minimalist Chooses 25 of His Favorites

A well-seasoned paste flavors pork, which is then cooked slowly.Evan Sung for The New York Times
Pernil, garlicky slow-cooked pork.
Picking 25 favorites out of more than 1,000  recipes from The Minimalist — the last weekly column appears this week — is an awesome task. But each of these, listed in order of appearance, represents something special either to me or to regular readers of The Minimalist, or in a couple of cases — most notably Jim Lahey’s bread — to a wider audience. It’s a list that will make you want to cook, I think. What are your favorites?

RED PEPPER PURÉE The first Minimalist. Check out the roasting technique; it works. (Published Sept. 17, 1997)

CHICKEN UNDER A BRICK So popular that a group in Santa Cruz, Calif., made a T-shirt that reads, “We love chicken under a brick.” (Oct. 22, 1997)

PEAR, GORGONZOLA AND MESCLUN SALAD Not my invention, but truly a ’90s classic. (Nov. 19, 1997)

SPAGHETTI WITH FRIED EGGS Made this the other night; insanely easy and soothing. (March 10, 1999)

BRAISED SQUID WITH ARTICHOKES Braised fish, artichokes, sometimes potatoes, always garlic and powerful olive oil; that’s Liguria. (April 28, 1999)

PASTA ALLA GRICIA The basis for some of the simplest and best pasta dishes I know. (Nov. 8, 2000)

PUMPKIN PANNA COTTA The headline on this Thanksgiving column said it all: “No Time for Crust? Who Needs It, Anyway?” (Nov. 22, 2000)

WATERMELON AND TOMATO SALAD A Jean-Georges Vongerichten special; especially good with feta. (July 24, 2002)
45-MINUTE ROAST TURKEY Many readers swear by this one. (Nov. 20, 2002)

CRISP-BRAISED DUCK LEGS WITH AROMATIC VEGETABLES
This has many of the qualities of duck confit — but no fussiness. (Dec. 25, 2002)

SICHUAN CHICKEN WITH CHILIES Overcook the chicken, overdo the chilies, you’ll be happy. (Sept. 3, 2003)

BLACK COD BROILED WITH MISO Yes, you can do this at home. (April 14, 2004)

STIR-FRIED CHICKEN WITH KETCHUP Perhaps the highest and best use of ketchup. (May 12, 2004)

CORN SALAD WITH SOY AND TOMATO Soy and tomato is a marriage made in heaven; the corn adds crunch. (Aug. 17, 2005)

PARSLEY-HERB SALAD Think of parsley as a green, not an herb, and you get the idea. (Sept. 7, 2005)

SOCCA (FARINATA) From my first taste of this, I’ve been an addict. Best made at home. (Oct. 19, 2005)

STIR-FRIED LAMB WITH CHILI, CUMIN AND GARLIC
As soon as I tasted this, in Flushing, Queens, I knew I had to make it. (Sept. 20, 2006)

NO-KNEAD BREAD
My most popular recipe, and it isn’t even mine. Credit Jim Lahey. (Nov. 8, 2006)

SCRAMBLED EGGS WITH SHRIMP I know of no dish that exploits the texture of shrimp better. (Jan. 17, 2007)

PERNIL
Just the other day, a guy stopped me on the subway and said, “Your pernil is terrific.” It’s not really mine, but I made it that weekend, and it is terrific. (Jan. 2, 2008)

SOUTH INDIAN EGGPLANT CURRY If you are an eggplant fan, this will really turn you on. If you’re not, this will make you one. (April 2, 2008)

BRAISED TURKEY Cooked this way, turkey will remind you of pork. (Nov. 12, 2008)

FENNEL AND CELERY SALAD
My wife’s staple. Try it with toasted hazelnuts or pine nuts. (Nov. 26, 2008)

MEXICAN CHOCOLATE TOFU PUDDING
What? Yes. (May 20, 2009)

MORE-VEGETABLE-LESS-EGG FRITTATA Just enough eggs to hold it together. One of those transformative recipes. (July 15, 2009)

24 January 2011

How to Meditate


From issue 2794 of New Scientist magazine, page 32-35.

How to meditate

There are numerous meditation styles, but the two most commonly studied by researchers are focused attention meditation, in which the aim is to stay focused on a chosen thing such as an icon, a mantra or the breath, and mindfulness or open monitoring meditation, where practitioners try to become aware of everything that comes into their moment-by-moment experience without reacting to it.

For focused attention meditation, start by sitting on a cushion or chair with your back straight and your hands in your lap and eyes closed. Then concentrate your mind on your chosen object - say your breathing, or more particularly the sensation of your breath leaving your mouth or nostrils. Try to keep it there. Probably your mind will quickly wander away, to an itch on your leg, perhaps, or to thoughts of what you will be doing later. Keep bringing it back to the breath. In time this will train the mind in three essential skills: to watch out for distractions, to "let go" of them once the mind has wandered, and to re-engage with the object of meditation. With practice, you should find it becomes increasingly easy to stay focused.

In mindfulness meditation the aim is to monitor all the various experiences of your mind - thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations - and simply observe them, rather than trying to focus on any one of them. Instead of grasping at whatever comes to mind, which is what most of us do most of the time, the idea is to maintain a detached awareness. Those who develop this skill find it easier to manage emotions in day-to-day life.
The more you practise, the deeper the changes will be. As Buddhist teacher Alan Wallace puts it: "You have now set out on one of the greatest expeditions as you explore the hidden recesses of your mind."

Michael Bond is a consultant for New Scientist

How many millionaires are there in the world?

Bobby. Mel, Ramon Birthday Party, Pasadena, July 17 2010

From the Jan 20th 2011 issue of The Economist.

Capgemini, a consultancy, defines anyone with investable assets of $1m or more (excluding their home) as a “high-net-worth individual”, consultant-speak for rich. By this conservative measure the planet has about 10m millionaires, according to Capgemini and Merrill Lynch, a bank.


Credit Suisse, another bank, uses a less stringent (and more obvious) definition: a millionaire is anyone whose net assets exceed $1m. That includes everything: a home, an art collection, even the value of an as-yet-inaccessible pension scheme. The Credit Suisse “Global Wealth Report” estimates that there were 24.2m such people in mid-2010, about 0.5% of the world’s adult population. By this measure, there are more millionaires than there are Australians. They control $69.2 trillion in assets, more than a third of the global total. Some 41% of them live in the United States, 10% in Japan and 3% in China.

How Old is the Universe?




David A. Weintraub's new book How Old Is the Universe? explains how four independent lines of evidence converged on the answer:  13.7 billion years.

Who makes excellent protective cases for mobile devices like the iPod Touch and Nokia phones?



Otterbox makes excellent cases for all sorts of mobile devices.  Two that I recently bought:  Otterbox Defender Case for iPod Touch 4G and OtterBox Nokia N97 Mini Commuter Case (Black).

23 January 2011

How to Create Huge Rasterized Images from Any Picture



The Rasterbator creates huge, rasterized images from any picture. Upload an image, print the resulting multi-page pdf file and assemble the pages into extremely cool looking poster up to 20 meters in size.