Though saying “handmade pasta” brings to mind exclusivity and perfection I personally find dried pasta to be more than good enough. The only 2 considerations are that handmade pasta taste like “Angle hair” and is much softer (and therefore lacks the Al-Dente feel) which can be a plus or negative depending on the dish and the other consideration being you can add additional ingredients such as spinach or ink to color the pasta.
It is relatively easy to make just takes time and effort which may be hard to justify when dried pasta is just a couple dollars.
Below is my squid ink pasta used in a separate dish where I use cuttlefish ink to dye to pasta black.
Simple recipe, egg, EVOO, flour and salt.Finished black pasta ballRolled out and cut black pasta
A Valentines classic, my avocado salad followed by salmon risotto never fail to impress.
Not much to note but rolling up avocado slices and making tomato roses give a wow factor. I also add a garlic dill sauce that amps it up. Seared salmon on a seafood risotto is classic.
A birthday classic, I started 2023 with my classic bacon wrapped Filet mignon with a foie gras toast starter and a espresso chocolate mouse desert.
Foie gras “BLT” with lettuce and tomato over a mustard toast.Bacon wrapped filet mignon with mashed potatoes and roasted carrots.Espresso chocolate mouse with raspberry sauce an whipped cream
Amarone wine to match. Definitely the perfect choice to such a meal.
I have noticed that my water appears to run hotter in the morning when I get up vs later on in the day. In truth this is probably due to relative temperature where in the morning I am colder and so things appear warmed but I still wanted to find out how much my water temperature changed throughout the day if at all.
Looking at the temperature profile throughout the day I saw some interesting spikes that occurred like clockwork at 5am. Breaking this into minitab and looking at the temperature intervals vs hour we find that there is indeed a statistically significant difference in the morning at 5-6am vs later on.
The cause is most likely that I have my heating turn on at this time and this is likely heating up the water in the pipes leading to this rise in temperature and thus leading some credence to my theory that the water is warmer in the morning. Of note the temperature sensor is on the outside of the pipe so potentially I am seeing the warm air heat up the sensor rather than the actual water but I used thermal compound to make good contact with the pipe and it is copper after all so thermal conductivity should be good.
6 months ago I came along the desire to understand what my incoming water temperature is and how it varies over the day. As a part of this I have mounted a temperature sensor to the outside of my incoming mains water pipe and found some interesting results. Now though I understand that I am not measuring the actual internal water temperature being that this is a copper pipe I am getting a fairly close approximation.
A big result of this was my post https://adam-s.ca/data-analytics-and-finding-out-when-you-shower/ in which I investigated my ability to find when I shower based on water temperature. This is a quintessential process engineering/controls engineering problem where my desired measurable is unable to be measure and so I have to measure a separate variable that is “joined” to my required measurable and go based off that. Granted, in a big company you can buy a sensor for anything given you have the money but this is a good example for the process control on a budget.
I had an interesting theory mid year in 2022. The though being that you should be able to theoretically find out when you shower based on measuring the temperature of the water mains line (talk about shower thought).
The theory is simple, if the incoming water temperature is not at the ambient temperature (ambient being not real ambient but rather the temperature between the wall and concrete of the house), then you can tell if there is a change in flow rate by a change in temperature. This is based on the fact that if there is no flow, the water pipe temperature will reach equilibrium with the environmental temperature and any flow from this point will lead to a change in temperature.
I strapped a temperature probe to the outside of my water mains over the last 6 months to better understand this and have found very compelling results. In fact the latest trails today proved out my exact theory.
In the chart below you can see a few different stages over the morning. The first is when my heating comes on in the morning to heat up the house when I wake up (temperature set point is set to 21.5C in the morning so I wake up to a warmer house). I then started to shower at about 6:50am which resulted in an almost immediate drop in incoming water temperature leading credence to my theory. Once I finished my shower the water temperature began to stabilize again and I notice another suspected shower event where the water temperature shot down again once again leading to my theory of being able to identify showers based on water temperature.
The big learning lesson from this is that you may not always be able to measure your desired measurable but in any process there are always a lot of intertwined variables. Here we may not be able to measure direct water usage but we can measure changes in water temperature with the assumption that these are coming from large volumetric flow rates.
As part of my recent Raspberry Panna Cotta recipe I finally took a good photo of my food only took like ~7 years. Finally getting better at food presentation as well.
I have recently had a big pull toward heterogeneous foods where instead of having a homogeneous blob of taste, each bite is unique and food blends together in your mouth. No recipes exemplify this more than my Tri-Layer Raspberry Panna Cotta.
A fantastic recipe that just pops in your mouth but requires a bit of prep. The initial layer is a mix of raspberry puree mixed with coconut cream. This is set at an angle allowing for a visually pleasing cross section ( I set them in muffin tins). The second layer is a vanilla and heavy cream layer and then this is finally topped with a sweetened and acidified raspberry puree. Each layer on their own is great but put together this make an amazing blend. This is all topped with the obviously appropriate raspberry and mint garnish.
I had a chance to breakout my vacuum filtration setup again for a raspberry sauce I plan on using in a separate recipe. Took some time but created a very clean sauce. I taste tested and adjusting the acidity with citric acid and sugar to make a sauce that just pops.
Taking inspiration from one of the greatest TV shows and a sale at Costco I decided to try my hand a my own cactus juice.
A bit of a difficult task in retrospect, cactus fruit has very tough seeds and creates a very viscous pulp when blended. The process was fairly simple. the cactus pears were peeled and pureed. I then sent these through my vacuum filter to remove all of the pulp and to thin the liquid. This then allowed for a nice sipping juice that is great on ice.
