Joshua Napoli

I thought, “hmm… That seems a little eccentric”. Charlie mentioned ambition to take a career in commercial manned space flight. I figured that the whole X Prize thing was cooling off, but here it is again in Technology Review. Branson is not the only crazy one with Virgin Galactic, but there is also Rocketplane Kistler, Bezos’ Blue Origin, among others. I guess that I have more terrestrial dreams. Personally, I would rather that they bring back supersonic airliners. I’d just like to be able to live in Boston and vacation in Hawaii without such a painful flight.

Well, we have a bit of a dry spell in terms of culinary exploits. For the past couple of weeks, we have been trying to match a recipe from Spanish River Grille in New Smyrna Beach, Florida: yucca encrusted sea bass, with cilantro-lime butter and black beans. The first try was not worth writing about, except that I discovered that cilantro leaves look quite nice when wilted in butter. Today, the second try was closer, but still somewhat disappointing. Here is what we did and what would probably result in a successful dinner:

First, we started with a one pound piece of schrod fillet. We settled on schrod because our fish monger was all sold out of bass.

I cooked one side of the fish in a buttered frying pan for five minutes. The fish had quite a bit of oil in it, and I let it make a fried, spattery mess all over the stove. Meanwhile, Julie grated half of a russet potato and poured warm butter on it.

Next, I transferred the fish from the frying pan onto a broiler pan using two spatulas. I painted the top of the fish with egg. Julie squeezed some of the moisture out of the grated potato, and then we put it on top of the egg-coated fish.

Finally, I cooked the fish under the broiler for five minutes. When I removed the fish, the potato coating was starting to become crispy-brown.

I wilted some cilantro leaves in a frying pan with a layer of butter. The leaves flatten out nicely, and appear that they would make a very nice and tasty garnish. However, I have yet to figure out how to transfer them onto the food. This time, I picked up the leaves individually with a knife. This way, I was able to move them onto the fish, however they always ended up folded in half. I was able to make a half-decent layer of green on top of the potato, but it would defiantly make a much better presentation if there were a way to keep the leaves unfolded.

Julie made the cilantro-lime butter. This time, we put butter, cilantro and the juice into the “Bullet” food blender.

We made basmati rice and black beans to go with the fish. I cooked the basmati rice with some good olive oil and a sprinkling of cardamom.

We served the fish with the rice and black beans. The cilantro-lime butter was served “cold”. We had 2003 Simi Reserve Russian River Chardonnay with the fish. It all turned out ok, but clearly we need to stick with sea bass. The fish was well cooked, but the texture of the schrod was clearly inferior. It was just too oily and slippery. The potato didn’t stick to the fish, despite the egg. The potato should be broiled longer or pre-cooked, since there were portions that were still uncooked and stiff. The green cilantro-lime butter spread was quite tasty. The restaurant had heated the mixture to spread it more evenly over the dish, but I think that it is better without being heated. I experimented with adding some sweet Hungarian paprika, but it didn’t seem to affect the dish much. It might be better in the beans. We’re close: next time, we’ll have something special.

Here are a couple of wine recommendations from the past few weeks:

Nantucket Vineyard Syrah: This one evoked memories from childhood… grape-flavored cough syrup. I fed most of my glass to our “Marble Queen” Pothos plant. The second half of the bottle waits in the fridge until the time we need it to flavor some sausage.

Bedlin Sparkling Wine: This is a nice sparkling wine, without any objectionable flavors. We brought a bottle home from Helen and Charley’s wedding. We enjoyed it for the second time with a chocolate fondue and various berries.

Our desk is essentially complete now. We didn’t install the decorative dowels or aluminum wire, but it is really quite handsome the way it is. There are some very slight gaps since the glass didn’t come in cut straight or flat enough, but we can probably fill them with some wood slivers. Maybe it’s better to leave the gaps in case we need to replace the glass with another piece cut in some equally odd shape. We’ve loaded the desk up with computer equipment since taking this photo. It seems to be quite sturdy, despite the unsupported eight foot span. It creaks a little if you lean on the middle of the desk, but it doesn’t deflect much at all.

I had hoped to put home improvement projects on hold until the spring. I need to make some time to explore other enterprises, but it’s not to be. Since Lo used her superpowers to command control of most of the bathroom closet, we badly need some new shelving space. Luckily we bought a combo clothes washer/dryer anticipating this need. Now we just need to fill the empty space above the washer with three broad shelves.

Julie and I did finish the shelving projects in our office. We built six shelves that will eventually overhang an 8′ long desk at one end of the room. At the other end of the room, Julie installed five shelves in the small closet. Packed full, the closet shelves seem a little droopy.

The office desk will take a bit longer, due to its complicated design. It will be made out of oak and glass. Underneath the glass will be 14-gauge aluminium wire, woven around thin dowels. We started fabricating the parts for the desk last weekend, and put in another day of work today.

It doesn’t take much to make good guacamole dip. We tasted very nice guacamole dip for corn chips at Zocalo, a small mexican restraunt near our home. We recreated the recipe for ourselves:

• three ripe avacados
• a handful of fresh cilantro leaves
• one plum tomato, diced
• three shakes of salt
• juice of a small lime

It’s harvest time, and it’s time to eat up the ripe vegetables from our garden. First, we made a salad from red leaf lettuce, basil, tomato and green pepper. We topped it off with pearlini mozzerella, oil and balsamic vinegar. The salad was just perfect.

Julie prepared some asparagus for grilling. The asparagus stalks were prepared by cutting off the hard ends and shaving the skin from the final two inches. Next, she put two tablespoons of olive oil, one teapsoon of balsamic vinegar, a minced clove of garlic and salt and pepper in a lasagna dish. The asparagus was loaded onto a pair of bamboo skewers (previously soaked in water), and then left to marinate in the mixture in the lasagna dish.

While we ate the salad, we loaded the grill up with the salmon and asparagus. We used a one pound piece of a fillet of Alaskan Wild King Salmon, that was about an inch thick in the center. First, I placed the meat side down (that is, the skin is facing up). I tried to get the neat criss-cross lines by rotating it 45 degrees after a minute. However I forgot to oil the fish first and the pattern was ruined because a little of it stuck to the grill. After five minutes, I flipped the fish (skin-side down), and let it cook covered for another four minutes.

To season the fish, we took three stems of sage, one stem of rosemary and a good handful of marjoram from our herb graden. We pulled the leaves from the stems and mashed them with a mortar and pestle. Finally, I mixed in some olive oil and applied it to the fish in the last minute of cooking.

We removed the fish from the grill and brought it inside for inspection (it was quite dark here by this time). Julie sent it back, so I put it back on the grill for another four minutes.

We also made some basmati rice to go along with the fish.

In the end, I burned the asparagus. Only cook it three minutes on each side! Use a timer if it is dark out (to avoid my mistake). The basmati rice, which is usually good enough to stand as a dish by itself, didn’t seem to cook properly. The unburned portion of the asparagus was really very tasty, and we will try this again, the next time we grill. We ate the fish with 2003 Chardonay from Lamoreaux Landing (on Seneca Lake in New York).

It was the first rice from a new bag, so hopefully we did something wrong here instead of being stuck with a bad bag of rice. Luckily the fish turned out pretty well, though I think that it could have stood to retain a bit more of its moisture, and the herbs might have suffered a bit from the extra four minutes of cooking. Also, it would probably work better to use butter instead of olive oil. The wine worked well with the fish. I wonder if it would have been even better with something like tunafish. Next time, we will probably substitue some other starch for the rice. I really like polenta with salmon, however I will need to spend some effort to convince Julie of this combination.

These are the days where the acorns drop off of the oak trees with each gust of wind. We bought a 4×6′ seagrass rug at Pier One. It isn’t really meant for outdoor use, but since it was only $20, we decided to try it on our porch. It smells nice and grassy, but it would be rather intense for an indoor rug. And Lo really enjoys stretching her claws on it, so now we have another reason to let Lo out on the porch with us. Too bad they don’t have a larger size.

Lo seems to have conjunctivitis in one eye. This will make the third vet visit in two weeks! Lo is finally getting over her cat cold, and seems to have regained some appetite. This is turning out to be a very expensive kitten.

This weekend, Julie and I are building some shelves in the closet of the office. So far, we have completed demolition of an annyoing cheap-o shelf/clothes holder that the builder installed. We have had considerable trouble attaching brackets for the shelves to the walls. The studs were in the wrong place, so we tried to use some heavy-duty drywall anchors. Then I broke the anchors by installing them too close to a stud in the edge of the wall (where we couldn’t detect it with the stud finder). And then drilling out broken drywall anchors turned out to be nearly impossible. I think we have a good plan now: one side will screw into the studs and the other side of the shelf will have anchors. Hopefully we can finish it up this afternoon.

1. Plum tomatoes, each cut in half and placed face down on a plate. Make a puddle of balsamic vinegar, and put them in the oven at 300 degrees for 12 minutes. Or use grape tomatoes cooked for 8 minutes. We used more than a quart of tomatoes for the two of us as the main course.
2. Use a box of baby spinach placed on two very large plates. It’s better if you break off all of the stems on the leaves. Definitely take off the stems if you use traditional (mature) spinach. Put the warmed tomatoes on top of the spinach, and then drip the warm balsamic vinegar all over the plates. Put the spinach plates in the oven for another 5 minutes.
3. Once the spinach is warmed up, take it out of the oven and pour olive oil all over it.
4. Slice up some soft goat cheese, and put it on top of the warm spinach and tomatoes. Return the plates to the oven for another 4 minutes to warm up the cheese.
5. Serve while the plates are still dangerously hot!

Here in Boston, we had really wonderful weather this weekend (and it also seemed to be nice weather through my sampling of the Midwest on Friday.) To take advantage of it, we made our warm tomato dinner on Sunday night, and took it outside to eat. We used a mix of plum tomatoes and home-grown grape tomatoes. The grape tomatoes were quite sweet and intensely flavored. We drank our sparkling Northern Spy cider (from Bellweather Hard Cider on Seneca Lake in New York.) I think it might have been better if we browned some almonds in the olive oil, but Julie would have liked less oil. The cider tasted nice and sweet with the salad, but it wasn’t especially flavorful.

After dinner we went downstairs and made a fire in our outdoor fireplace. The Restoration Hardware fireplace was obviously designed for form, not function. Despite a nice breeze, Julie had to continuously blow air into the fire to keep it going.

We call the cat “Lo”. It is nicer than “Slow”, which is what I had called it. Since coming home with Julie, Lo has come down with a nasty little cat cold. She is sleeping all of the time and sneezing a lot. Helen got a cat at the same time from the same animal shelter, and it also got sick. We went right to the vet today after I got home from Chicago, but they couldn’t do much for Lo except inject some saline to reduce dehydration.

Well, Julie prevailed and we brought home a cat. It was something of an ordeal… The cat came from upstate New York. The animal shelter was closed on Monday, when we planned to return, so Julie stayed an extra day to pick up the cat and drive home in a rented car. We all reunited on Tuesday evening. The poor little cat was somewhat worse for the wear after a six hour car-ride, and the first order of business was to clean it up.

We don’t know what to name it yet, so we call it 1070C. Julie says that we should call it “Tensegrity” instead. It likes to stare at us, and it seems to move around rather slowly.