Making Bacon / Making Code

So the story goes that over a couple drinks after an NYC.js meetup, I got into a little yelling match with Chris which ended in him saying “If you make bacon on stage at JSConf, I will make you the keynote.” Later that week I submitted this proposal (in JSON):

{
  "name": "Aaron \"Fuck that, you don't know me\" Quint",
  "email": "aaron\@quirkey.com",
  "twitter": "aq",
  "location": "B-to-the-K-to-the-L-Y-N",
  "topic_title": "MAKING BACON <=> MAKING CODE",
  "topic_description": "For all the Cookbooks we have, and all we talk about bacon,  you'd think we could actually _make_ something. Its all BS. Have you ever taken a pork belly, trimmed it, salted it, let it cure and then smoked it.  Have you ever _made_ bacon? I have. I'll show you how. I'm no bacon expert and I'm no expert chef. I'm also no coding genius or javascript prodigy. I'm probably a better cook then you, and I probably have written some half-decent code. I probably can draw some sort of analogy between writing code and making bacon. Watch me try.",
  "claim_to_fame": "I'm not famous, I just do a couple things better then you do."
}

The dare turned into a reality. Somehow we were able to keep the fact that I wouldn’t be talking about Sammy.js a secret for over 3 months. I just kept telling people “its a suprise” Though I would have loved to have told everyone how awesome Sammy is, in the end, I think I managed to pack some good messages into this talk. After the rush of doing the talk, and getting a some laughs, I got the best feedback I could have asked for: A ton of people came to me afterwords and said “I’m going to make bacon now.” That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. If you are one of those people, and you do end up making bacon, send me some pictures and I’ll link to them here. I also promised I’d link up a list of resources for those ready to plunge into the world of home made charcuterie.

My Talk

• Slides
• The Making Bacon Video

Books

• Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing by Michael Ruhlman (the source of the recipe)
• On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee (the source of ultimate food science knowledge)
• Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky (awesome historical facts about salt curing)
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan (the history of industrial food)

Sources

• Butcher/Packer Pink Salt!
• The Sausage Maker.com For pink salt, meat hooks, sausage casings, etc.
• Los Paisanos My butcher in Brooklyn.

On the web

• Ruhlman’s blog
• @Ruhlman on twitter
• Dan barber at Ted

I really hope people actually do go ahead with this. It’s fun and very rewarding. For nerds of any kind, making artisanal foods from scratch provides another way for us to “take things apart”. Really, we’re just refactoring our food chain.

Kat and I have been trying to take full advantage of this week and next week being Dine in Brooklyn 2007. The basic deal is you get 3 courses for $21.12 – some places its 1 person, some places its a two-for. What an awesome thing!
So far, we’ve hit up a couple of different places.

Le Petit Marche – a very nice albeit almost standard French bistro in the Heights. Serving up standards in a nice atmosphere will get you pretty far in my book, as long as the service is good and the frites are tasty. Le Petit wins on both points. They were insanely busy when we arrived, but our waiter was on point for our almost two hour meal.

Gen – an amazingly delicious Japanese spot 8 blocks north of the Brooklyn Museum. We had gone before – its a great place for pre or post museum dinner – but the prix-fixe was an insane amount of food and a wonderful variety. Gen stands out because it provides very interesting original dishes as well as traditional Japanese with an artful yet simple take. Good Japanese should be simple – the ingredients (raw fish, the rice, etc) should be the star. At Gen, this is certainly true, deliciously simple flavors that consistently left me wanting more. Even the Sashimi is a slightly angular cut – a small detail that just made me appreciate the tuna even more.

We also took advantage of three courses of fried at the Atlantic Chip Shop (fried macaroni, fish and chips, fried twinkie). Still some of the best fish and chips and still half a heart attack.

We’re looking forward to some more new places this week! Forward me any recommendations.

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/roboppy/228947895/

Kat and I do a fair amount of cooking because we love to do it. Though I like cooking off the top of my head (grab a bunch of ingredients and make something delicious), Cooking from recipes can be an education if you know how to extract techniques and flavors. We have a decent cookbook collection, but often we use Epicurous to find something new. Since our apartment lacks a printer, Kat’s iBook usually sits on the dining room table and Firefox becomes our cookbook.

With this app, I could see the computer becoming an integral part of our cooking ritual. Not only could we store recipes from the internet and magazines, but I could actually type out some of my ‘AQ originals’. Timers, Full Screen mode, and just the slickness of the interface, could make this unbelievably useful.

I wait anxiously for any previews or releases.

A couple of weeks ago, when I was in Rochester visiting Kat’s family, Kat’s younger brother Michael asked me if you can tell the difference between good coffee and bad coffee. We were on a after dinner trip to Spot, a cafe housed in a very art-deco former Chevrolet dealership. “Is this good coffee?” he asked. “Yeah, it’s pretty good.”

This got me thinking, what is the difference between good coffee and bad coffee. Not necessarily the taste difference, but what is the gap that lies between Deluxe Town Diner coffee and road-stop gas station coffee. I can’t possibly count the cups of coffee I’ve had in my life, or how many different places and carafes this coffee has come from. However, I came to the conclusion, which I shared with Michael, that there’s great coffee and there’s horrible coffee and then there’s the big middle of decent java in between.

The big middle ranges from pretty awful to drinkable to tasty, but it can all be grouped together, because for the most part it is critically indistinguishable. Moreover, the big middle is BIG. Good coffee and undrinkable coffee are exceptions, a small percentage of all coffee, which the majority of is just mediocre.

Thinking more about this, I realized that the big middle applies to more than just coffee. I believe that the big middle applies to anything that requires some sort of skill to create. Food and drink, (e.g. Pizza, Bagels, Mixed Drinks, etc.) can easily be compared with the big middle. I would say that the Arts (fine art, writing, etc.) also have the big middle.

The big middle also means the slim slice of excellence. How many books have you read that were outstanding? How many books are published each year? This is not an insult to the writers out there, just an observation.

Of course, at the end of my train of thought, is my particular station. What about Web applications? or software? user interface? design? The big middle is definitely applicable here. Think about the small handful of applications from this generation of the web that have been bought or IPO’d. Not that monetary success is the sign of excellence, but it is certainly a sign of some sort of recognition or separation from the pack. So where does my work fit in with this? I recently “launched my first public live big time web app,” so I’m thinking about this a lot. How do you get your work into the slim slice of excellence? It’s up to the user to put you there.

So what is my mission? Work for the user. This does not mean be a slave to the user, spending every second fulfilling user requests. It means directing the user, satiating the user, and making the user happy.

Your user should say, “Damn, thats a great cup of web application”.

Coffee Photo Credit:

http://flickr.com/photos/dmaudsley/159629513/in/set-72157594154752449/

Since I’ve returned to Brooklyn, I’ve re-established an old addiction, Italian Ices. There’s nothing like taking a short stroll to the neighborhood Pizzeria, Fiscati and walking home with your hands covered in sweet chocolate juices.

Brooklyn Ices in the Summer = The Best.

I’m pretty sure the Two in Joseph’s Two is not because its the second restaurant, but because its a family business run by Joseph Sr. and Joseph Jr.. Though I have never met either Joseph, I kind of wish I had, so I can thank them, for feeding me the immense and almost mind blowing proportions of breakfast they have for the past 5 years.

Joseph’s II is right on Main St in Waltham, and though there are very few parking spots in front, heed the sign in the front – “Extra Parking in McDonald’s parking lot”. Also, make sure you ignore the sign in the McDonald’s parking lot that reads “Parking for McDonald’s Customers Only”.

Joseph’s decor aims to be the authentic vermont ski-lodge diner. Don’t let the dark wood fool you, Joseph’s is uniquely Waltham, from its often surly waitresses to it’s old folk and college student regulars. The people don’t come for the atmosphere, or the service. They come for the food – which for a restaurant is always a good sign.

Joseph’s Two is all about the specials. Sure you could get plain old eggs and bacon, but why – When you can get the Hungry Man’s Breakfast special which includes:

• 3 Eggs
• Bacon
• Sausage
• Home Fries
• Toast
• Pancakes
• AND Cornbread!

This all comes out on an assortment of plates which takes up more than your section of any table. It also makes you feel special . . . and full.

As I said before, breakfast sandwiches are my thing and Joseph’s doesn’t disappoint. Their king of breakfast sandwiches is the Berkshire, which is a flaky croissant stuffed with ham scrambled eggs and cheddar with home fries and a side of french toast!

There is no chance you will leave Joseph’s Two without feeling way too full. Often that’s just what you need on a hung over Sunday morning.

It didn’t take me long to come up with an answer.

The one thing I’ll miss about Massachusetts is . . . the Diners. When I talk about Massachusetts, really I’m talking about Waltham and it’s vicinity, and the one good thing that I can muster about it is, “Goddamn, there are some great places to get breakfast”.

Before I make my way to the big city, I have all intentions of stopping at all of my favorite spots at least one last time and writing a little bit about each of them.

Stay tuned.

I just made that word up. Metropality – the identification of a person with a city. (eg. country:nationality::city::metropality)