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Barbecue

If only the subject line were anti-spam-bot google-bait...

So, I've been watching the collected Alton Bruininiana that the folks
over at digital distractions have archived, and I came across, in an
episode entitled "Q", a plan for constructing a home smoker out of two
unglazed terracotta flower pots, a hotplate, and a replacement grill.

Said contraption was constructed for the benefit of an anonymous pork
shoulder butt, and the later benefit of the consumers of said butt.

Genius.

My jaw dropped several times, first in astonishment, then to remove
rapidly pooling anticipatory saliva.

Last weekend, I built this smoker and smoked a three pound prime rib
roast to doneness in six hours.

Ingredients
^^^^^^^^^^^

One 3.5lb kosher angus prime rib roast (3.5lb@$12.99 per pound=$45.00)
-bones cut-off and tied to roast for easy removal
Rub - ground peppercorns, toasted cumin, rosemary, fresh minced garlic,
salt, olive oil. Enough to coat.
Hickory wood chunks
16 in. diameter terracotta planter pot
12 in. diameter terracotta planter bowl
1100W nichrome single burner hot-plate with adjustable control
6 in. stainless steel dish
18 in. Weber replacement grill rack (fits snugly on the inner ring of
the bottom pot)
Charbroil replacement grill temperature gauge
concrete single cell cinder block with ventilation holes chipped in it
by pickaxe

procedure
^^^^^^^^^

daydream about beef barbecue for two weeks
buy supplies
kibitz with butcher and fiancée
allow self to be argued into spending too much money on a cut of meat
rationalize purchase by thinking that steaks could be cut from it to
grill in case of utter extremity
drive two hours to the seashore through pre-rush Friday traffic
arrive late afternoon
purchase fish for shabbos essen
scramble to set up grill
grill salmon and flounder on the charcoal kettle grill
eat icecream for dessert
go to shul
sleep

wake up from dreams of bbq and regents examinations
set brick on ground
go back inside to get extension cord
run extension cord to outlet
set hotplate, switched on, in big pot, running cord through the bottom
drain hole
plug hotplate in
wonder why hotplate isn't heating
get old electric alarm clock to check status of garage outlet
use alarm clock to check shorting status of extension cord
get different extension cord
realize that the extension cords aren't rated for 15A and something in
the hotplate is detecting the voltage drop and shutting the element off
clean junk away from garage wall underneath outlet in order to
wheel grill underneath outlet
set cinderblock on grill rack
set planter on cinderblock, running powercord through holes cleverly
chipped with a mining pickaxe into cinderblock after discovery that all
of grandma's planter feet are mysteriously vanished
plug hotplate in
cheer when nichrome heats
put hickory chunks in cheap stainless bowl on top of element
oiled rack in bottom pot
place cover bowl
place thermometer blocking hole in coverbowl
allow to heat till smoke rises from charring hickory enough to warm to
210 degrees F
rub roast
recline roast on oiled rack
open periodically to check progress
taste bark forming on roast
make lunch fixings
kibitz with bbq enthusiast guest and patient fiancée
rest on beach
make dinner fixings
check inter temp of roast with instant read thermometer - 120 degrees
wait hour
check inter temp of roast still 120degrees
consult with fiancée (who is not a fan of rareish meat)
wait hour
check inter temp of roast still 120 what's happening?
fire up grill
untwine roast from rib bones
slice into steaks (fine grain structure fully medium rare in doneness,
bark divine
grill on charcoal grill till the unrendered fat renders
serve
savor
surfeit
realize there's beef ribs
grill ribs
slice ribs
fiancée picks at ribs
devours rib
eat rib
realize the rib was better than the roast
recline
take in sea air
walk to mint sorbet and video store
Willy Wonka
sleep

dream of beef ribs

Been awhile, folks. As if there's an audience now - the accumulated linkage surplus has more than been amortised by the year or so of steady disinterest on my part.

I'm getting married, buying a car, buying an apartment, and teaching algebra to one hundred and three New York teens in a Chelsea high school. A depiction of the trivium and quadrivium in magnificient stained-glass panels frames the front entranceway.

My students? More on them later. Because.

There's a poster store up the street, and the E runs door to door. Both of the Strands are an easy sub ride away.

One month. All I can think of is stock and broth.

A correspondent writes:

I've got a bunch of bones and fat in the freezer because I thought I'd try boiling them to make broth. Any tips? One thing I'm wondering about is the ratio of bones to water.

Roast dem bones till they are brown, with the fat rendered out and any remaining adhering tissue is thoroughly roasted (***not*** blackened). We want crusty steak outside texture. Parboil and peel a few plum tomatoes. Save the peels, discard the tomato-seed caviare, chop the nekkid 'maters up. Don't use brainy, mealy 'maters. Roast a mirepoix (chop some onions, carrots, celery, chopped nekkid 'maters, spray on a little spray-fat) till the vegetables are browned and limp. Keep in mind that the vegetables and bones will roast at different rates.

Put dem bones in a deep stock pot with twice as much water as is needed to cover, and raise the temperature slowly until the water is at a slight simmer. Put the tomato peels in the water with the bones. Have a skimmer handy, and a kitchen towel. Over the next hour or so, skim the water constantly - we want to pick up and remove the light floaty proteinaceous particulate, and the tomato peels help us do that. Clean the skimmer between skims. With the towel, wipe down the sides of the pot where light floaty proteinaceous particulate adheres. When skimming seems pointless, add the roasted mirepoix and keep the stock at a mild simmer for six or seven hours. Add a few peppercorns and a couple bay leaves (laurel) if you like.

When everything is bien consommé (you will smell it. boy will you smell it), turn the heat off and degrease with paper towels. Wipe down the sides of the pot where the grease adheres.

Then, slowly, ladle out the stock into containers or ice cube trays (to have real stock cubes handy for cooking, not Herb-Ox atrocities) or serving bowls or whatever, leaving the bones'n'veggies as undisturbed as possible so that bone bits and veggie chunks don't break loose. Discard spent bones and veggies.

Voila. The best broth/stock you'll have had outside a good restaurant.

BTW, if you can get fresh turkey necks and chicken necks (ask your butcher), roasting them for the soup is very nearly ideal. You'll get a deeply flavored, rich broth that is the essence of turkeyness, or of chickendom. If you can't or won't buy necks, use chicken thighs and turkey wings. Beef short-ribs or shanks are perfect for beef-tea, while veal necks and shanks are what for veal stock.

And yes, I've got two pounds of turkey necks, a pound of chicken necks, and a pound of turkey wings in my frigidaire, for when I feel the need for brothy refreshment. (Also, stock cubes.)

And, yes, I'm transiting the old "Plastic Words" postings off the page.

They're from a time gone by.
When intemperate oral froth began a warm, tight feeling 'twixt beater and breast,
An age
When monkeys and pigs by force of anger did fly
And rest
In roosts of plush velour, and seat-back trays bore the burden of free booze
On domestic flights. Orange was a drink,
and Homeland was Heimat rendered.
Now ill-considered outrage makes a mucky sewer ooze,
Into which felonious bombast and civil peace together sink,
Our treasury of wealth and words is plundered.
We use curtains to hide marble tits,
Grecian Formula to camouflage true boobs.
Legalities proliferate, they merely throttle
The confidence of people, to give them fits,
Inspiring courtiers to defend the rule of rubes,
Practised at pouring patent medicine from an amber bottle.
I took refuge in a Gotham classroom
To hammer my anger into temperence

The question of curriculum: as I see it, I am a cook, and my job is to prepare a feast from which none go home hungry out of either revulsion, boredom, or want.

So, I punch things up. I''m turning my classroom into a college seminar. Writing and reading and etymology, oh my.

Ersatz epithets - suitably censored and diligently prepared for use in the classroom:
holy bajoly
munking dunkits
crazy as a Bactrian Camel
"Stiff knees, slack jaw. Please reverse."
"Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote"
"You Posadist left-deviationist!"
"Two mountains shall never meet, Miss Pena."
"Thank you, Leo!"
"Cheerily Hittite!"

"Well, Mr. Greenbaum, your difficulties are primarily in the realm of curriculum - you must realize that students today simply are not on the same level as you were when you attended school."

L'Shanah Tovah!

Actually, over the last couple of months, I've realized how forced and inane my intermittent contributions to this web-log have been. Time for an indefinite hiatus. This link will remain active, but I can't predict when I will start posting to this log again. Spending more time thinking up witty graphic design for the banner than on the posting should have clued me in months ago. Time to go back to my roots - language is powerful, and I abused it to no small degree with uncalibrated hyperbole.

Pithy, like lab-slaughtered rats' skulls

I am horribly dismayed.

Let me restate that. That disgusts me. That the bureaucratic application of a label to a human being and legal citizen of the United States of America - an arbitrary marker of "enemy combatant" - is sufficient to convert a legal person into rightless chattel for processing in an administrative-bureaucratic machine, is an outrage and a desecration. It is the blithe smearing of excrement on lawbooks. It is the wink and the nod, and the outstretched palm, and the ranks of clients in the antechambers.

I wrote the following, in response to the White House plan for using military tribunals (not under the regulation of the UCMJ, but under the direct supervision of the Secretary of Defense and the President) to try foreign citizens in secret:

From: djg7@cornell.edu (David Joseph Greenbaum)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.fandom
Subject: Re: This is some nightmare and I will wake up soon.
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 04:25:46 GMT
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In a fit of divine composition, Mark Atwood inscribed in fleeting electrons:

That's it. That's exactly it. It is so infuriating, I lack the words to express the depths of my scorn and contempt for Ashcroftian chazerei. They recognize no law but privilege and convenience.

And this is different from what? When? It has been just as true from all the other political types in history,and more so, in fact.

More so of what, Mark? Fact is, this is posse comitatus Feme for furriners. It's about expediting vengeance on easy targets - more easily targeted for not having access to the civilian court system or the civilian protections of the law - and having *that* victory labeled as progress in victory over terrorism.

Let me tell you, it isn't. Ramming civilians through the military courts to achieve a swift, outrage-lubricated victory is a f***ing profanation. It is ghastly. It is a staggering violation of the explicit norms of legal procedure and philosophy in our country. Do you not understand what this is?

This is not about taking Bin Laden (who may be shot while resisting arrest, for all I care) and making sure that no pansy muddle-headed jury lets his sorry ass out on technicalities.

This is about being able to detain foreign nationals indefinitely and exercising coercion over them through an executive bureaucratic-administrative apparatus that is restricted by no outside independent oversight. Secret evidence in front of military tribunals, in secret. The time-unbounded detention of aliens that the INS is justly condemned for at present occurs *after* a open civilian criminal trial and term of service. This is arbitrary judicial terror. War criminals have more safeguards on their persons.

If they did it for foreigners for convenience, they will try to justify it for Americans. It is a profanation.

The present proceedings on Yasir Esam Hamdi confirm my prediction.

I originally wrote a nice little self-deprecatory note about texts exuding tinfoil hats and slobber-soaked paranoia; I self-referenced a putative unwillingness to Cassandrically expand a deleted phatic condemnation of current political, social, and intellectual trends towards uncritical subordination to the law-unbounded operation of an organic, instrumental State.

Giggle.

Haha.

pat, pat.

Retch.

To cringe by couching language in gentle shame -- shame that is no more that a fear of social reproof -- that would be lying. The organs of executive government are controlled now by liars, gangsters, thieves, and self-annointed aristocrats. That a lawyer for the Justice Department can barefacedly and unshamefacedly put forward the legal theory of the "enemy combatant" before a court of justice -- that is an assault and an affront to the world.

It is Staatstreich.

And eighteen days again

Little ol' Dovidl, looking for thing to make him go and post to his weblog, yep, dot's me. Yessirree. I say nothing about the situation in Israel, nor will I say anything about the current meltdown in the world's financial markets (except to say that the dollar bet that I had with my friend Howard from way back in the spring of '99 - looks I will be winning that bet - and the luscious dollar riding on it).

I'll talk about Chaim Potok's passing.

I never read any of his fiction, though The Chosen and My Name Is Asher Lev both sat on my parents' bookshelves. I've only read Wanderings, his literary history of the Jewish people. I read it so much when I was nine that my dad's paperback copy fell apart in the spine along three seams. Chaim Potok became a foil for my genial goyische friend Andy to prove his benevolent judeophilia and tweak me when I got tired of his relentless Puritan moralizing in our late-night coffee fueled bull sessions.

Chaim Potok is one of the writers whom I have wanted to draw into myself. He was on my list of people with whom I wanted to have lunch and dinner - a list that every year grows longer through discovery, and then shorter again through mortality.

Now I read the rest of Potok.

Yeah, it's been a month

let me tide you over with a little story...

Dodgeball

Imagine an two-story octogonal school, laid out around a gymnasium/auditorium. Around the wall-height rim of octogonal gym, a balconied walkway rings the inside of the second story. Off this walkway are the doors to twelve classrooms and two bathrooms. At ground level, the asbestos-tiled concrete pavement is bounded by khaki-painted cinderblock walls intermittently cut by doors to storage room, computer lab, the niche with the milk-fridge and the hamotzie hand-washing sinks, curtained stage, the portico to the front lobby, the door to the dairy kitchen.

The long minute hand of the clock nears the quarter-hour. In class, sugar anticipation inspires fidgets and salivation in the spoiled children with Ding-Dongs in their lunchbags. The rest of us had celery, or pretzels (bleah).

Rabbi Preil is vainly explaining to Jason Gardner that the summary of the mishneh reading was due... yes, now! and why didn't he have it?

Amir raises his hand and asks if it's time for gym yet.

It is time. The combined class of fifth and sixth grade boys bolt for the door, the walkway, the stairs, for... the gym. Well, depends on how bolting is defined:

"David, put down the book and come downstairs!"

I slink past Rabbi Preil sullenly. Gym time is fear time.

Why?

Dodgeball.

Why?

For the purposes of this recollection, we will call him Mungo, or Shit Head, or.... because I have forgotten his given name. I remember drawing a caracature of him as a donkey pissing on a buried head, on a page in my ruled mishneh notebook. I remember that I labeled this caracature, for future references' sake, presumably. I remember that I wrote some epithet that contained the word "fuck". I remember all these things, because I saw the lovingly preserved notebook some months ago in my parents' house. But I do not remember Giant Retardo-Neanderthal's name.

He was near six feet tall. He had a mustache. He shot spit-balls. He was a merciless storm-trooper fascist bully, and he could fling a vinyl, textured-surface dodgeball very, very fast.

The game is not yet started. There are no teams. It is the war of all against all, strong against weak, hormone-supercharged super-annuated sixth grader against sylph-like petal-delicate fifth grader. Shimmie Weiner and Mungo Death-chucker are the tallest boys in the combined class: they jump for the ball in the center of the gym, in the center of the school, the geometrical minimal-energy point where all culture, all mercy, melt away like hot wax in a blowtorch's flame.

Kill-bot's mutant long arms grab the ball a full foot above Shimmie's reach - the hope of light and truth and justice is swiftly snuffed out. Mungo pegs Shimmie on the shoulder with the down-swing. Shimmie is out. The ball rolls away, to Jacob Kleinberger, who hucks it at Steve Fernandez, who catches it. Jacob is out. Steve throws the ball at David Marcovici. The ball catches Marcovici, hits him on his calf while he is extended in full stride, and Mungo scoops up the ricochet. He stands in the center of the gym. He is Hitler, holding his Wehrmacht, and we are little feeble Polands. The first victim is chosen.

"I'm gonna get you, Jackie!"

Yaakov Azoulay begins running along the outer rim of the gym. Mungo starts throwing the ball - hard! He misses, catches the rebound off the wall, lopes into another throw, misses, catches the rebound. Jackie is a fast runner, but Mungo likes to play with his food. He throws again and misses. The rebounds are too fast for anyone to catch except Mungo. He throws, misses, and abruptly bores of the cat-and-mouse. Splat! Jackie is hit in the face with the ball. He stops running, trips, falls. There is a little blood. The game goes on.

Amir Roth gets the face-bounced ball, tries to get Mungo. Mungo catches Amir's girly throw. Amir is out. I get hit in the back by somebody. I stand behind the curtain. Mungo hits Jason in the back of the head. Ross Jacobs is brought down by a gut-shot. Fat little Ari is hit in the ass. Uri Leibowitz catches the ball. And drops it, because Mungo tackles him on the gym floor, seizes the ball, and aims it at Uri's head. Steve Fernandes gets the bounce. He is the last. Mungo slaps the ball out of Steve's throwing hand, chuckles, and goes in for the kill.

Rabbi Preil is standing outside the front entrance of the school, smoking. Shit Head wins again, news at seven, eleven, and wedgie on the stairs back to class. And people wonder why I hate dodgeball.

Top hats and tin badges

If this evening's news reports are right, the President is about to call for a very large reorganization of government. In the newest scheme, disparate agencies - Lawrence Livermore Labs, the Coast Guard, FEMA, the Secret Service, INF, Border Service, et cetera - are going to ripped from their cabinet departments of origin, and placed under the direction of a new Cabinet-level officer, the Secretary for Homeland Security.

I can't sufficiently express my scorn for the idea - a sick monoculturing of bureaucratic ecologies. Previous examples of same sort of mega-Organization? Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) in Stalin's Soviet Union - a dysfunctional octopus of incompetence, empire building, and autistic malignancy.

Spiderman!

The operative phrase would be a flabbergasted "Wow!"

I've been really busy. I hope the Indian subcontinent doesn't go up in a gout of nuclear flame. More tonight.