Publicity happenings ...

My favorite quote of the day comes from an article about FlixQ, a video sharing website co-founded by my friend Ryan Peterson that reads: "After about a year of operation, FlixQ hosts several thousand videos, ranging from parades to Cornell Glee Club doings to a cat washing its face" (http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-video-site-quality-barrier.html). The website focuses on high resolution video sharing, so it's worth taking a look.

In separate, but also interesting news, the Hangovers tour to the UK in 3 weeks is starting to get some attention: http://cornellclubnyc.com/events/the-cornell-club-welcomes-the-hangovers

I've had kind of a split focus organizing that tour, but it's still coming together with a lot of fun events to look forward to, including a gig for two Cornell alumni societies (Hotel School and Business School) in London (venue TBA). Now if I could just lock down inexpensive transport to Scotland ...

Salmon Tortellini in a Reduced Wild Mushroom Sauce, served with mixed, spiced vegetables

Appetizer

Mixed grilled, spiced vegetables (White/Button Mushrooms, Bell Peppers, Snapped Peas, Green Beans (or French Beans) ==> blackening spices (try a rub), garlic, balsamic vinegar, salt, black pepper

Instructions:

Put a few drops of olive oil in the pan and heat. Add the veggies (chopped) with a little big of water as needed. Grill until they release water and then add spices to taste - lots of garlic powder, 1-2 tbsp of the balsamic vingegar and then salt and black pepper. Add some basil if you'd like too.

Spinach Tortellini:

6 cups of wheat flour

6 large eggs

1/2 cup chopped spinach

Water as needed (for moistening)

Salt to taste

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp dried basil

Instructions:

Add the flour, oregano, and basil to a mixing bowl before mixing and then adding the spinach. Then break and add the eggs, slowly mixing all the ingredients as they're added. If after some time the mixture looks too dry, add water as needed to moisten the dough. Once everything is mixed well, knead the dough ball by hand and then refrigerate for 30 minutes. Afterwards, flatten the dough using either a pasta make or rolling pin dried with a little bit of flour. Using an inverted glass, cut circles in the flattened dough and keep the circles while kneading and flattening the rest of the dough until all of it has been used. Now, see filling recipe below.

Wild Mushroom Sauce:

2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 sprig marjoram, plus more for garnish

1/2 tsp dried oregano

1/2 tsp of dried thyme

1/2 pound assorted wild mushrooms (golden chanterelle, shiitake, cremini, oyster, porcini, etc.), trimmed and sliced

1 cup mushroom stock (see below)

1 cup light cream + additional skim milk as needed

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Grated Parmesan (for serving)

Instructions:

In a large saute pan, over high heat, heat the olive oil. Add the garlic and saute for 1 minute, just until browning begins. Add the marjoram and saute 1 more minute. Add the mushrooms and saute until they begin to brown and release their liquid, after about 5 minutes. Add the mushroom stock and reduce for 5 minutes. Add the cream and reduce about 5 minutes, or until the sauce begins to thicken. If the reduced solution looks too watery, add some skim milk and reduce it a little more. Season, to taste, with salt and pepper. Keep simmering until the tortellini is ready.

Mushroom Stock (vegetarian):

1/2 cup of mushroom trimmings

2 cups of water

Salt and Garlic Powder to Taste

Instructions:

Add the water to a pot, put in the mushroom trimmings, salt and garlic powder and stir. Let this slowly boil until it has reduced to about 1 cup of solution. Strain the solution and toss out the trimmings.

Salmon Tortellini filling:

2 pounds of skinned and de-boned salmon filets

2 cups ricotta cheese

½ cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 cup chopped spinach

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Instructions:

Using a knife, finely chop salmon to the consistency of ground meat. In a food processor, combine remaining ingredients and process completely to a purée consistency. Remove cheese mixture from processor and mix thoroughly by hand with the finely chopped salmon. Set aside in the refrigerator while making the pasta dough.

Generously fill each piece of tortellini. Place filled tortellini into boiling water and cook until ravioli floats to the top.

Drain and serve with the wild mushroom sauce poured over the tortellini. Top it all off with grated parmesan cheese and a sprig of majorum.

Wasted Days ...

The best part of keeping a blog (especially one that no one reads), is that I still feel bad when I think I want to write something down, but don't think I have enough to say at that point to make it worthwhile. It's bizarre, really, but apparently I feel like I'm letting myself down. Oh well ...

Anyways, today was what I'd classify as a productive, wasted day by all accounts. Eating the leftover salmon tortellini stuffing spread on toast 2 nights ago for a late dinner came back to bite me starting yesterday evening and I still went to Whiskey 101 at Stellas (a Whiskey tasting "course" every Tuesday night at my favorite local haunt on College Ave). I then followed that up by eating a big dinner with a slice of deep dish pizza with artichoke hearts, feta cheese and spinach and a less delicious 4th topping of broccoli (it just didn't mesh with the textures and flavors of the rest) with about 1/3rd of a pitcher of Cascazilla beer.

Probably not the best decisions, but it was all in support of local business for what it was worth. The Whiskey 101 tasting this week was hosted by Brian McKenzie of the Finger Lakes Distilling Company, an up-and-coming local distillery about 30 minutes from Ithaca on the east-end of Seneca Lake. He brought an unfinished 1-year-old whiskey which had potential, followed by an off-the-market wheat whiskey, a rye and a bourbon. The McKenzie Rye was by far my favorite, but that's not surprising. The sweet spicy mixture of a good rye, I often liken to a good curry or a sweet chili sauce, depending on the rye. The experience was pretty positive on the whole and my friend Ryan and I make a soft resolution to visit and taste at the distillery at some point. The bar manager Greg, who I've become friends with through these tastings, was also quite pleased. As a grad student in the Plant Sciences department, he seems to have a good rapport with the lab-types who often frequent the bar.

Regardless, it left me exhausted and still suffering from what was probably mild food poisoning when I woke up this morning. Instead of forcing myself to work, since my car was up on the Hill, I stayed in bed since it was a balmy -5 when I woke up at 6:45am. The result was that I tried to force myself back to to sleep until I woke up at 10:00am and saw my research professor's email about a 10:00am meeting to discuss the usage of our fresh off the sequencers genomic data for some D. melanogaster lines that I have been managing. Since I was still feeling ill, I didn't bother even trying to shower and race to campus (showing up late to the meeting might have just been awkward) so I just gave up and made it up in time to meet with my sister for lunch at 12pm where we discussed her interview for her two interviews this week - at Goldman Sachs and CitiGroup. After that I met with my housemate April to go over her speech for VP of the Cornell Chorus, which just inspired me to get back into Glee Club work.

First I started by remembering my desire to commission a "Chariot" song for the Glee Club. A Chariot song is a song sung at Glee Club "Chariot Nights" on Wednesday nights after 7:30-9:30pm rehearsals. The name Chariot is a reference to a bar called the Chariot that used to allow the Glee Club to occupy the space every Wednesday, located at the T-intersection of Eddy Street and Dryden Road. The events are a quintessential part of the Glee Club experience, in my opinion, and different iterations of the weekly tradition have gone back decades in CUGC history. At the event, we usually sing classic Glee Club songs, traditional Cornell songs, but also 3 "Chariot Songs" which are affectionately called "Itsy Bitsy Spider," "The Freshmen Up at Yale" and "Fireman." The former two make fun of the other Ivies, while the latter is a drawn out innuendo to make fun of a Glee Clubber who has a sister. For a few years that has been me (on and off) since my sister has been at Cornell for the past 2.5 years including a semester in the Chorus. While these songs usually cross a line in vulgarity, the spirit of them is a raucous college spirit that I'd love to capture in a new song. My thought is that it is definitely time for such an event, so I contacted the current Assistant Director of the Glee Club, Jesse Jones - a graduate student in music composition at Cornell University to see if he'd be interested. I'm waiting to hear on that ...

But that was just the beginning. I then drew out a long e-mail with my plans for the use of the photos and musical recordings of the Glee Club to put on the website and make available to our alumni. I've started getting some positive responses from the several alumni I emailed about the topic, so hopefully that will get going. For now I've got to make a proper photo album for the tour.

I then took care of some Hangovers tour things - I've still got to send out an $11,000 check to American Airlines for our flights and then pay for a few things in the UK, but things are shaping up well.

I contacted my old HS, New Trier to ask about a concert there for the Glee Club next January and also discovered something cool - my old newspaper sponsor, Tim Dohrer, had become Principal, which I suppose could help our cause for bringing the CUGC to New Trier - one of my many unrealized goals for the CUGC so far.

I also sent a long e-mail about Glee Club tour to John Nicolls, a particularly stern power-alumnus who I've had an up-and-down relationship with, depending on the context (Glee Club vs. Hangovers). I expressed a pretty strong interest in helping with the Midwestern Tour next year and cited my outreach to New Trier, as well as my outreach to the CSO (Chicago Symphony Orchestra) with the hopes of getting a rental rate. The rate itself was too high and the 2000+ seats too large, but the idea of going for a high-profile venue was made clear and I also apologized again on behalf for the Hangovers - something I had little to do with, but was being roped into by affiliation. Despite the significant improvement, the negative sides of being the Hangovers have been made clear to me again (then again I've enjoyed many of the benefits, so I can't complain too much).

After that, I finally was contacted by the *new* Outreach Coordinator for the IHA who contacted me back about organizing fundraising for their organization, after the old outreach coordinator Betsye had been somewhat difficult to meet with. And we may have now just set a meeting time.

All in all, a productive day out of a wasted one, but I should be careful with old fish, even old fish I've made ... even if it was part of a delicious Salmon Tortellini with a Wild Mushroom Sauce, served with mixed, spiced vegetables. I'll put up a recipe for that at some point ...

[And look at that, not such a short post after all]

Milk Chocolate Ice Cream from Go Fish in Napa Valley

When I organized the Cornell University Glee Club's Wine Tour in Napa Valley, we ate at a restaurant called Go Fish. Great food, but more importantly, the Milk Chocolate Ice Cream was divine. Honestly, this is some of the best ice cream I've ever had. I e-mailed the owner who I had been in touch with and she convinced the chef to give me the recipe. I highly recommend it as well as the restaurant Go Fish if you are ever in Napa Valley, CA. I saw it rated as the top fish restaurant in the area.

Without further ado:

Milk Chocolate Ice Cream- 1qt

230g Milk Chocolate

1.5C Heavy Cream

1.5C Whole Milk

150g Sugar

Pinch of Salt

4 Egg yolks

2t Brandy

Combine milk chocolate and cream in bowl set over simmering water. Stir until melted, then pour into container and set a strainer over top.

Warm milk, sugar, and salt in a saucepan.

In a separate bowl, whisk yolks until combined. Temper with warm milk, then pour back into saucepan.

Stir constantly over medium heat until nappe (170 degrees).

Pour through strainer into chocolate. Add brandy. Stir to combine then chill.