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Cake day: July 23rd, 2023

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  • “Crust” makes it sound like superfluous detritus. It’s cornicione! Pizza is mostly bread, so if the bread is bad then it’s not worth eating.

    Neapolitan pizza has a high hydration dough cooked at very high temp, resulting in a delightfully light cornicione filled with large air pockets. The bread is delicious enough to enjoy on its own, which is why it only needs simple toppings like uncooked San Marzano tomato and a few shreds of mozarella. IMO Italian cuisine excels at allowing high quality produce speak for themselves through its simplicity and elegance. What they’re shitting out at Papa Johns and whatever is an abomination.



  • Everything about the exact timbre of your voice is captured in the waveform that represents it. To the extent that the sampling rate and bit depth are good enough to mimic your actual voice without introducing digital artefacts (something analogous to a pixelated image) that’s all it takes to reproduce any sound with arbitrary precision.

    Timbre is the result of having a specific set of frequencies playing simultaneously, that is characteristic of the specific shape and material properties of the object vibrating (be it a guitar string, drum skin, or vocal chords).

    As for how multiple frequencies can “exist” simultaneously at a single instant in time, you might want to read up on Fourier’s theorem and watch 3Blue1Brown’s brilliant series on differential equations that explores Fourier series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spUNpyF58BY




  • I used to use FL Studio, but hated using Windows. I got almost all features (including VSTs) to work in Ubuntu under Wine, but had a problem with WineASIO, which I seemed to require to use the USB sound card properly.

    Because of that, I since changed to a DAW called REAPER which is built natively for Linux and works flawlessly and is very nice. There is a program called Yabridge to help run Windows VSTs. I even got more complicated plugins with authentication like Addictive Drums 2 to work using Wine no problem.

    If you want a fully FOSS solution there is Ardour which is also great but a little less slick than Reaper IMO.





  • The foodtuber Adam Ragusea happens to have two videos addressing these specific topics:

    The superiority of flash frozen foods: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_PMnCpaJiQ

    Food starts rotting the instant it’s harvested, and continues doing so while it’s packaged, transported, and stored on the shelf. Modern flash freezing techniques preserve foods perfectly, halting the microorganisms that cause decomposition, and avoiding the damage caused by large ice crystal formation that’s inevitable with slow domestic freezers.

    The selective breeding and genetic engineering of sweetcorn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIVG54wNPd0

    Interestingly with the sweetcorn, it used to be that it had to be eaten immediately after harvest, so much so that you’d have the water boiling before even picking them. However with modern developments they can remain fresh much longer.


  • There’s many options for sauces, depending on your preferences and dietary requirements, but there are a few key common steps.

    For example many Indian curry type sauces can begin with frying diced onions, some ginger, garlic, chillis, coriander seed powder, cumin powder, turmeric powder, black pepper, and tomato paste, then coconut milk to form the main body of the sauce. Don’t worry if you don’t have access to all of these, mix and match. Then finish with fresh coriander leaves.

    Or a simple marinara type sauce begins with frying diced onions, garlic, tomato paste, followed by a glass of wine and a can of tomato to make the main body of the sauce. Add basil at the very end, as the flavor is delicate and destroyed by heat.

    Notice in both cases we begin with aromatics - onions, garlic, spices - that get heated up to release the volatile flavor compounds. Then deglazing the pan and simmering with something that constitutes the main bulk of the sauce - e.g. canned tomato or coconut. Then finishing with more delicate herbal flavors that get desroyed by extended cooking. This is a general pattern that appears in foods from all over the world. The crucial part is learning how long each ingredient requires to cook for, and therefore what stage it gets added.

    Once you get used to this you can begin to enjoy the creativity and rewarding nature of cooking, and explore the world through food. Like the Indian example above can be quite easily modified into a Thai green curry with a few substitutions such as extra green chillis, galangal instead of ginger, and finishing with Thai basil.

    I’d say another crucial aspect is appreciating the importance of emulsions - a colloidal suspension of small fat particles in water - which results in a rich and unctuous mouthfeel. Many of our favorite foods and sauces are emulsions (butter, mayonnaise, pesto, curry). But I don’t want to overload you with information as I’ve already written a lot. Good luck.