Wine PhD

From the time my mom started dating Ira, her now-husband, I have had an immersive introduction to Persian cuisine. For me the take away message of Persian food is two-fold: 1) Flavor, flavor, flavor without spice; and 2) rice.

I was first introduced to tahdig at a Persian restaurant in Irvine, CA. We ordered tahdig with a few stews to go on top. Actually, I think we ordered stews with tahdig to go underneath, but I soon learned that the true star of the dish was the rice.

So what is tahdig? Tahdig is crunchy rice created cooking rice hard over heat, resulting in a sort of burned, crunchy bottom layer. Easy right? Add the water to the rice and cook on high the whole time instead of simmering. Wrong. That won't work. Even with the simple instructions on the production of tahdig it took me half a dozen attempts to get it right.

A prerequisite for crunchy rice is... rice. To cook the rice properly, I've found that the bulk water method ("pasta method") is best - bring a whole pot of water to a boil and cook the rice, then drain. This is better than the usual rice instruction, which I call the "risotto method" in which a perfect amount of water is combined with the rice and it is cooked until the water is just absorbed. The bulk method is much more predictable.

The rice is cooked using the bulk method for about six minutes until the rice is cooked but not cooked through - one could call it al dente, perhaps. After that, the rice is drained and put aside. Now, the hard part. How to burn rice in a controlled manner.

At my mom's house in in Los Angeles, she has a gas burner. It is much easier to make tahdig on a gas burner as the temperature control is much better. I have a glass cooktop with a halogen lamp at my house in Davis. So after the hard boil on the rice, I need to cool down the burner. I do this by wiping the cooktop carefully with a wet paper towel. Nothing like using the high heat capacity of water to my advantage, right? After the burner has cooled slightly, I wash out the pot that the rice was cooked in and mix some turmeric (poor man's saffron) with vegetable oil and heat that up on the bottom of the pot over medium high heat. Once the turmeric starts to sizzle, I carefully spoon back in the rice. Now the burning begins. As the rice sits in the oil, it basically undergoes a shallow frying. The pot is covered with the lid lined with a dishtowel to absorb the moisture.

The most important thing is to now make sure the rice doesn't burn and carbonize. I use my nose and the rate of steam escape from the lid to judge. I think it is one of those things that takes practice to know what it is supposed to look like. If I had to describe it, I'd say that the steam comes out at a slow leak and smells fragrant. If the steam starts to smell burned, it's too hot. If there is no audible sizzle, it's too cool. I tend to pull the pot off and back on the heat during the 10-15 minutes of medium-high heat. After these first critical minutes of high heat, the pot is turned down to low and cooked for another 30-45 minutes.

After this is done, if you are lucky, you will find this at the bottom of the pot.

Topped with a lentil stew, a perfect dinner.

Before I share with you my letter to the editor of the California Aggie, I want to make something clear. I like wine. I like spirits. I even like beer. Occasionally I enjoy them for their alcohol content, but more often than not, the enjoyment comes from 1) sharing quality time with friends and 2) marveling at the complexity and flavor, as well as the ingenuity of the producers.

The article I responded to is titled "Recipe for a party" and appeared in the October 27, 2009 edition of the paper.

A pdf of the paper can also be found at http://theaggie.org/pdfs/20091027.pdf, which gives some reference to the juxtaposition of the front page elements.

Now, the letter (which was published October 29th, 2009 in the Aggie):

Dear Editor,

I often plan to write to you about the content in the Aggie but until today have not followed though. After shaking my head for a few seconds I continue on with my day, usually by 5 pm forgetting what piqued my interest earlier in the day. It is 10:30 and now and two hours after seeing the front page of today's newspaper, I am compelled to sit down and write.

Two articles appeared above the fold relating to alcohol. "Governor signs DUI legislation" (Oct. 27, 2009) was an interesting and informative article outlining steps that the state is taking to protect the public from drivers previously convicted of DUIs. Directly adjacent is your article "Recipe for a party" (Oct. 27, 2009), outlining how to maximize alcohol consumption on a budget. Putting these articles next to each other is tasteless and contradictory, but I can forgive that error in judgment. What compelled me to write to you today are the internal inconsistencies of the latter article.

You include a disclaimer as an obligatory CYA to avoid potential litigation. Better safe than sorry! While necessary from a legal perspective, its inclusion comes off as disingenuous especially since the remainder of the article advocates irresponsible drinking.

Environmental impacts

Juxtaposing the deleterious environmental impact of red cups with a tip on where they can be purchased in bulk as inexpensively as possible pays lip service to the problem. Had you compared prices on where to purchase the biodegradable, recyclable cups that you suggested as an alternative to red cups, you would have at least been consistent in your message.

Binge Drinking

A 2001 Harvard study of drinking patterns of college students found that 43% OF ALL people surveyed were binge drinkers. That is not among those who drink at parties - among ALL students. Your quote as to the number of students who drink at parties at UC Davis is a gross misrepresentation of the results, which state "43% of UC Davis students reported not drinking in the past 30 days."

You then go on to suggest a few drinking games that can be played as an alternative to beer pong. First, the sole purpose of a drinking game is to promote speedy alcohol consumption. Second, to suggest Seven, Eleven, or Doubles as a drinking game in the same article where you warn against binge drinking is ludicrous. Seven, Eleven, or

Doubles has one purpose - to get drunk as fast as possible. The probability of rolling a 7, 11, or doubles is 37.5% on each roll. After 6 rolls, there is a 94 % chance that 7, 11, or doubles will have been rolled. Rolling 2 dice 6 times is fast compared to drinking a pint/cup of beer. Again the sole purpose of this game is to promote binge drinking.

Half-hearted disclaimer. Faux environmentalism. Two-faced discussion of binge drinking including erroneous reporting of statistics. Besides appearing on the same page as articles on DUI prevention and healthy lifestyles, the author and you, the editor, continue to promote binge drinking out of one side of your mouth while extolling the virtues of moderation out of other. I have no problem with social alcohol consumption, but by including this type of article in the paper, it is no wonder that binge drinking is still such a problem on so many college campuses.

Greg Hirson

Graduate Student in Agricultural and Environmental Chemistry, researching wine flavor

Harvard Study - Wechsler H, Lee JE, Kuo M, Seibring M, Nelson TF, Lee H.

Journal of American College Health. 2002; 50(5): 203-217.

43 % statistic - http://safeparty.ucdavis.edu/alcoholfree/index.html

I just wrote today on Twitter that I think that iTunesU is one of the greatest sources of knowledge on the internet. My first experience with iTunesU was listening to Michael Pollan chat with John Mackey on the future of food. Currently I'm watching Statistics 21 at Berkeley and Computer Science 6.00 at MIT. Seriously, this is amazing. I am basically attending UC Berkeley and MIT from MY DESK. If you have a broadband internet connection, you can basically attend college for the price of the connection. Sure, you won't have a degree, but you will have the knowledge, and in some ways, that's what really counts.

Thank you iTunesU and the participating institutions and faculty for enriching my life.

Once a week, Elwyn's bees get 10 pounds of sugar mixed with just enough water to dissolve the sweet meal. They are lucky to have him as their personal chef; there are not many flowers this time of year in hot, dry North Carolina to sustain their endless hunger for sweet meals. Although I didn't have any protective clothing on, I felt totally comfortable around the bees. Instinctively, I knew that they didn't care much one way or the other that I was there, as long as I didn't mess with their lunch.

Elwyn has 7 bee boxes, but I think only 5 of them are currently occupied. Each box has its own queen, and all of the bees eating and making honey in each box are sisters. I had no idea that feeding bees required so many steps. I naively thought that we would go to the bee boxes, pour in the syrup, and be on our way in 10 minutes.

Open the boxes. Smoke the bees. Remove the floating racks. Refill sugar syrup. Replace racks. Close box. This dance between Elwyn and the bees was repeated five times, each as methodical as the last. Watching him working with is bees, I couldn't help but let my mind wander to my own future. Where will I be at 75? What will I be doing? I hope that I am able to have a hobby like beekeeping in 50 years. Maybe I can go back and be Elwyn's apprentice, learning from his accumulation of apian knowledge.

Hopefully I will write soon about Elwyn and his sensational journey.

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