Congratulations to Pat Haden

So the news just broke: Mike Garrett will be stepping down after 17 years as the Athletic Director of USC. Former Trojan and Ram QB Pat Haden will be taking over. I am very happy for you Pat. Congratulations! It just feels right. I think you are where you aught to be. I am sure you are the best guy for this job.

For those of you who don't know, Pat is a famous Rhodes Scholar from USC. He was their quarterback during the epoch of John McKay. They won three Rose Bowls and two national championships during his run. He went on to modest 6 year career with my Rams. Pat's career was interrupted for some 2 or 3 years by the arrival of Vince Ferragamo, who remains a folk hero in these parts.

There is some question regarding the departure of Garrett. It was a successful run, however, he leaves under a cloud. We all know the suspension USC is suffering right now. Sources say Garrett will be allowed to retire, but there are already plenty of whispers that he was pushed.

I disagreed with Pat Haden like crazy about Joe Montana, and I was a supporter of Ferragamo, but I never disliked Pat Haden. I have usually been a supporter of his. He is a good commentator, and he has always remained close to the USC Football program. I think this is a solid move.

Don't ask me why I am commenting on this subject. I am a Bruin. I was never a Trojan. I was Ram fan, but not anymore. I really should butt out.

One of the classic bug reports of all time

So, later on in the afternoon yesterday, I got a bug report. It came from Marina here at work. Something like 2.5 years ago, I wrote a piece of software for our media partners which delivers advertisement campaign reports, according billing information, and facilitates requests for "advertising cap increases".

Our advertisement program works on a pre-paid basis. It is one of the key reasons we are still afloat in these dark economic times. Mortgage companies need to pay us upfront before we begin advertising their 'financial products'. They give us a corporate credit card, we bill them, the money hits our bank account, we begin metering out advertisement rotations to them. We never get cheated. That is why we still live.

This brings us to the subject of "advertising cap increases". I constructed a very simple .ASPX page which allows an authenticated, permission rich user to request a fresh billing of those corporate credit cards. Of course, this uses https super-secure sockets, and 128 bit encryption.

I was a little flummoxed that a problem had arisen. The app is deadly simple, not rocket science by any means, and it had been functioning flawlessly for 2.5 years. Nobody every complained. More than 6,000 billing requests had been made (according to the log) without error over the past 2+ years.

Of course, my thinking was typical of most programmers in this situation. What happened? What changed? Who changed some server or system security setting(s). My code has not been altered in 2.5 years so some externalities must be impacting my system.

I went over to talk to Marina and we went through the steps of recreating the error. She spotted the problem before I did. The almighty user who has the authority to order cap increases needs to provide us with an email address. This is partially for authentication, and partially for notification. We notify the almighty one when his or her corporate card has been charged, we notify of the billing results, we notify when the advertisement rotations increase, begin again, or cease.

Guess what the almighty one typed in for his (and it was a him) email address? He put in http://www.bgnobgno.com. The URL has been changed to protect the guilty, in this case. As you can see, this is not an email address. This is a web address. There is a difference between a eMail address and a URL, just as surely as there is a difference between a mail server and an http server.

Marina quickly changed the web URL to the proper eMail address. She had the eMail address because the almighty one had been sending her complaints about my web work. Marina is a Capricorn (yeah!) and she is good at handling the organizational politics of an embarrassing user error like this one. As a tactless, blunt and factual Virgo, I would have simple sent him a short mail telling him he put his website were his email should have gone. You complained about me too! Embarrassing aye?

She will find a nice way to smooth this over without alienating or embarrassing a paying client.

Anyway, this event served as a reminder of why I am so damn bored around here all the time, and yet still employed. I wrote some pretty good software in the first 18 active months I was here. I wrote at least 3 small apps that are continuously pumping money into the corporate coffers. That is not exceptional for a corporate programmer. That is the way it should be. I am not boasting about that.

What I am boasting about is that my software has been clicking away flawlessly for some 30 months without error, and it took a nice dumb error on the part of a user to produce a failure. I would say that this is an example of the "Do it once and do it right" mentality I love, except for one little nasty little fly in the ointment.

It would appear that my input validation failed in this case. I used simple JavaScript to validate the User's inputs in this case. I chose a routine that was recommended by Google Codeplex some 4 years ago. I did not write the JS myself. It would appear that this smart little piece of code is just too smart. It does more than I originally thought it would. It will parse FTP addresses, email addresses, and URLs. It will tell you if your string conforms to any of these specs.

Of course, this is not what I had in mind. I wanted to validate eMail and just eMail. Only this and nothing more. I don't want a boolean true value when a URL is entered. I am going to have to fix that code.

Oh-no! Not another Angelina Jolie movie!?!?!

I know you guys are really not going to believe this, but guess what? I am the world's worst Angelina Jolie fan. I don't like the chick at all. I don't find her attractive, and I damn sure don't want to fuck her.

There is a cult of Angelina Jolie out there in the world, and I cannot even fathom the existence of such a thing. Angelina Jolie's stardom is one of the most baffling things I have ever encountered in my nearly 44 years of life. The fact that so many are mad for this woman is one of the strangest phenomenon I have ever seen.

My cousin, Ana Julia, once told me she thought Angelina Jolie was the most beautiful woman in the world. I was non-pulsed when I heard that. That was an utterly baffling and bizarre statement. I was buffaloed, and I don't mean maybe. She is an Ecuadorian and from Quito, specifically. How the Hell could she say such a thing when there are women like Paz Vega running around the Latin world?

I want to go on the record, and make this perfectly clear: Paz Vega absolutely crushes Angelina Jolie. It's not even close. That's not even a subjective value judgement. This is concrete empirical fact. Were this an NFL footall game, the score would be 95-0.

Just to be a little naughty, and execute a back-handed compliment, I told Ana Julia that she was better looking than Angelina Jolie. I was telling the truth, but it was also a backhanded compliment. This is damning with faint praise. Ana Julia utterly freaked out. She was absolutely certain that I was trying to bone her from that point forward. If I had known that this girl could not conceive of any man not wanting Angelina, I would have understood that this was a dangerous joke I should have kept sheathed in my scabbard.

I am told that the French voted Angelina the sexist woman of all time. I find that stunning as hell given the fact that every third French woman walking to the bus in Paris is far, far more attractive than Angelina Jolie. We shouldn't even bring the French Canadian women of Montreal into the conversation. That is where an all-out route would begin. Anytime the French might want to talk trade, we Americans should be more than willing to make deal. If the Canadians call, we need to invite them to the State Diner immediately.

If you were to ask me what I would like better: Angelina Jolie or a Montreal French Canadian girl picked at random, there would be no contest. I wouldn't need two seconds to make that decision. Pick me a Montreal girl and send her to me. I will be glad you did.

I am told that Angelina is every woman's lesbian fantasy girl. Is that so? I guess that is because she has a masculine bull-dyke face. A better explanation is that she is her father's daughter. She looks just like a slightly-feminine version of John Voight, the man who is her father. I guess the chicks also liked John Voight at one point in his career.

I don't know about you gents, but I never wanted to have sex with John Voight. In fact, the thought never even occurred to me. By the same token, I am not exactly enthusiastic about the idea of having sex with his daughter. So strong is the resemblance, in my opinion, that I knew she was his daughter before this fact was public knowledge. I can make a list of a hundred women I would rather have first, before Angelina.

So why did Brad Pitt want her? I haven't got the slightest idea. This another baffling fact. The dude was so much better off before... I know he really, really wanted to have a family, and I totally understand that, but still... Brad, you could have picked any woman in Montreal at random and done better. There are no shortage of women looking for a sample from your loins. You could have gotten just about any woman to carry you baby.

Awe but DAVE! SHE'S SO HOT! Okay, let's deal with this subject. Some men and women are dogs. They respond exclusively to the pheromone signals that indicate the female is in heat and prepared for sex. Nothing else matters. The bitch in heat might have only one leg and two teeth, but if she is giving off the "fuck me" stank, it's time to get aroused. This is a chemical call to action, you know?

Some brutally honest people in Hollywood say Angelina has one unique star quality: She is able to transmit the chemical heat signal through film and video. So what? Hillary Scott and hundred other women in the porn business can do that. Am I supposed to be impressed by the fact that she can cocotte like a porn chick? Why does that matter to you in this case?

We need to make a serious distinction at this point: beauty is one thing, heat is another. There are extremely beautiful women who are cold. They call them Ice Princesses. There are ugly women who are very sultry. They are known by many names. I call them skanks or skeazers. I could finish this paragraph, but you already know...

Perhaps it is just because of really bad Synastry or something, but I just don't feel it for this girl at all. She is very Gemini and I am very Virgo. This is always a bad combo. These two brain signs of Mercury are like Lead and Gold. They may be only one slot away from each other on the periodic chart, but they are very different critters entirely. Our Moon signs conjunct, but the Venus thing is totally off. Her Venus is in Cancer. Mine is in Leo. This is just a bad, bad matchup.

The Synastry experts have declared that the ultimate woman for Dave would have all of the following:

• Sun at 8 degrees Cancer or 8 degrees Scorpio. This forms a Sextile (60 degree angle) with my Sun at 8 degrees Virgo
• Moon at 07 Aquarius, forming a sextile with my Moon at 07 Aries
• Venus at 05 degrees Leo, conjunct my Mars at 05 degrees Leo.
• Mars at 22 degrees Leo, conjunct my Venus at 22 degrees Leo.

Incidentally, Paz Vega does not quite match this criteria. She is extremely Capricorn in her make-up. That is a high-quality match for a very Virgo dude, according to what I have been told. It's just no quite as ideal as Scorpio or Cancer.

You Synastry experts better reconsider that one. Paz Vega seems pretty damn ideal to me.

According to the Synastry bullshit, the list of criteria above would be the overwhelming combo of dynamic forces. The firestorm resulting from first meeting between me and female like that would be so great, it just might destroy the entire universe as we know it.

I would add to that that she would need to be half Spaniard and half Italian. She could also be French Canadian. Old-World Latin women drive me out of my frickin' mind.

Incidentally, if you happen to be a woman having these criteria, don't hesitate to contact me.

This Paella is brought to you by Blue Rhino Propane Exchange

If it has a ring-tone, it just isn't a real camera. One of these days I am going to have to go down to Fry's (about 1 mile away) and buy a real camera.

In any case, here are a couple of shots of the paella I cooked on Friday night. My brother, who lives in the SF Bay Area and plays guitar in a rock-n-roll band, flew into L.A. for the weekend. We did some serious cooking.

I kicked things off with a beastly paella. As you can see, it was dark by the time the thing was finished, and I believe the time was around 9:30pm. That is fairly late to get going with a paella party. What can you do? I get home from work around 6:00 PM, and the prep for a paella like this takes some time.

My buddy Colin, who was a member of Ben's graduating class, and journalism team, came over for the feast. These dudes gorged themselves. Too bad there were no ladies at the party! Frankly, my apartment was not up to it at that moment. The joint was in a shambles due to the great balcony reorganization that had taken place a week earlier. Ben and I worked on it yesterday, and my apartment looks good. It is now time to do some serious entertaining.

That Paella was a monster. Here are a list of the ingredient:

1. 24Oz Santo Thomas Bomba rice from Alevante, Valencia Spain, courtesy of Amazon.com
2. 21 threads of Princesa de Minaya Saffron from La Mancha Spain, courtesy of Sur le Table
3. 1 package of Goya Sazon con Azafran, courtesy of the market 300 yards from my door.
4. 150 grams of de Leon hard dry garlicy Spanish Chorizo, courtesy of my local German sausage shop
5. 150 grams of Leon Herradura paprika loaded Spanish Chorizo, courtesy of my local German sausage shop
6. Williams Sonoma House Olive Oil. This is an extra virgin oil directly from California.
7. One whole Rabbit (2.5 pounds) chopped to bits with my F. Dick meat cleaver, and brined for 24 hours in the frige. This was courtesy of Bristol Farms.
8. About 2 pounds of chicken thighs, courtesy of my local store
9. 2 big red bell peppers cut into strips
10. 2 small yellow peppers cut into strips
11. 5 cloves of fresh garlic
12. 2 carrots, chopped fine
13. 2 stalks of celery, chopped fine.
14. 3 Roma tomatoes, diced
15. 4 large oyster mushrooms, sliced
16. 1 very large yellow Spanish onion, diced.
17. 1 large branch of Rosemary, stripped and chopped fine
18. 1 leaf of Savory, chopped fine
19. 1/4 teaspoon of dry thyme (my AeroGarden died)
20. 1/4 teaspoon of dry sage
21. 48 ounces of Chicken Broth
22. 24 ounces of highly purified water, courtesy of La Wateria down the street.

One good tip for you: you need to be careful to select California Extra-Virgin olive oils. Most so-called extra virgin olive oil is not. A lot of the Italian and Spanish products are rip-offs. The stock on the shelves at most grocery stores--this includes Whole Foods--will fails one or all three of the critical tests for extra virgin olive oil.

Don't believe me? You don't have to. Just consider this. The UCD Olive Oil center conducted a series of tests in partnership with the Austrialian Oil Research Labratory, located in South Wales. They selected a wide assortment of recognized brand-name 'premium grade' extra-virgin olive oils. They subjected them to a series of three commonly accepted tests for quality.

The bastards flunked like crazy. Most brands flunked one or all tests. The results of the study are clear: people are paying a lot of money for crap oil that claims to be ultra-high quality Spanish and Italian stuff. Aparently, the Europeans have been panicked by these findings. They are going to hold a conference in Verona Italy focused entirely on achieving and maintaining excellence in super-premium olive oils.

California is making a hard push right now to be recognized as the finest producer of olive oil in the entire fucking world. Yep, that's right Italy and Spain. You are in the cross hairs. The quality of our fruit is amazing high, and the quality control is even higher. These California oils are the best you can obtain right now. As Brett Favre says, you can pay more, but you won't get more.

I removed the steel grills from my Weber Genesis 310, placed the iron paella directly on top of the flavorizering bars, and pre-heated with the lid open for about 10 minutes. That was a mistake. I should have pre-heated with the lid closed for 15 minutes. The Paella was not quite hot enough to begin with. My Weber is powered by Blue Rhino Propane. I like it.

In any case, we dug in, and ate hearty. That is a 17 inch cast-iron Paella from Lodge Manufacturing of South Pittsburgh Tennessee, and it was fully loaded. I would say that the three of us demolished more than half of that Paella in the first sitting. I was surprised at how little was left over after we ate it.

Ben and Colin were pretty stunned. They did not expect to like it so much. They were both a little queezy over the thought of eating rabbit. I had to talk them into it. They changed their minds quick. They went back for seconds and pounded it down with lusty greed. They were thinking about getting thirds, but they knew they were over-stuffed already.

I have to say that brining the rabbit for 24 hours is the key. The rabbit was moist and tender; it was falling off the bone really. If you have not had a well prepared rabbit, you are missing out on the finest white meat on the market. It is better than chicken. I don't say that lightly. I am a big fan of chicken. I love chicken. However, in this case, the rabbit was the star of the show.

RottenTomatoes' annual ranking of SciFi

In honor of Christopher Nolan's new movie Inception, Rotten Tomatoes decided to do their (roughly) annual run-down on top ranked Sci-Fi movies. The list they came up with looked like this:

Rank	Name	Year	T-Meter	Fresh	Rotten	Total	Precise
1	The Terminator	1984	100	41	0	41	100.00%
2	Blade Runner	1982	94	120	8	128	93.75%
3	Ghost in the Shell	1996	93	27	2	29	93.10%
4	Minority Report	2002	91	198	19	217	91.24%
5	12 Monkeys	1995	87	39	6	45	86.67%
6	The Matrix	1999	86	103	17	120	85.83%
7	Alphaville	1965	82	18	4	22	81.82%
8	The City of the Lost Children	1995	82	27	6	33	81.82%
9	Gattaca	1997	81	44	10	54	81.48%
10	Dark City	1998	76	57	18	75	76.00%

I have to say that this is a damn interesting list. This is one of the better looking lists I've seen. A lot of my all-time favorite movies are represented here. I would quibble with the order. Terminator is a huge crowd pleaser, but it is greatly over-rated. It should be lower on this list. I would put it much closer to 10 than to 1.

This is not say Terminator is a bad movie. I say that it is a Top-10 movie, so don't flame me fan-girls. However, I do want to go on the record declaring that Terminator got the top spot for just 3 reasons:

1. It is a 1984 movie, and that means it was reviewed long before RottenTomatoes.com was ever founded.
2. A small sample of critics chose to post-up.
3. Terminator got all the chick-critics because, at its core, The Terminator is a romance about a guy who fell in love with a girl's photograph and was willing to sacrifice all to father the hero of the future with her.

Ghost in the Shell is over-rated for similar reasons. It also features a small self-selected crew of back-posting critics who love the movie. At its core, Ghost in the Shell is also a reproductive drama in which the female heroine has to make the decision to risk all for the sake of reproduction. Chicks like that sort of story.

I have seen all these films, and generally love them. I am not so in-love with The Matrix. I feel that is a greatly overrated film. It owes much to Ghost in the Shell as it does to Dark City. There are two movies on this list I have not yet seen. I don't think I have seen Alphaville. I know I have not seen City of the Los Children.

I would love to see both of those movies. Perhaps this weekend.

How about Christopher Nolan's new movie. I am not sitting on pins and needles waiting for the clock to strike 5:00pm so I can get out of here and see Inception. Frankly, I am vaguely interested. Perhaps I will get to it, perhaps I will not.

Nolan's following is a point of upset for me. Personally, I think this guy is greatly over-rated. Batman Begins was solid, but The Dark Knight was considerably weaker. It carried a lot of excess baggage and needed a lot of trim. Memento was solid, but I didn't care for The Prestige at all. The Prestige just left me cold. It just didn't activate my mind & soul or make a memorable impression on.

The bottom line is clear: Nolan is the little girl with a curl. He's Jeckle and Hyde guy. When he is good, he is very good. When he misses, he's bad, but everybody pretends it is great. This reminds me of the Watchowski brothers (brother & sister?). Larry is now Lana. V was a straight-up piece of shit, but it got accolades due to the fact that it was interpreted as an anti-Bush screed. Nolan is a lot better than those guys, but he does miss, and his following never admits it.

Harvey Unga

So they held the NFL Supplemental Draft yesterday. Running back Harvey Unga was selected by the Chicago Bears in the 7th round. This means the bears forfeit their 7th rounder in the 2011 draft.

That is precious little to give up for such a running back. The 2011 draft is going to be a pretty dry well. A lot good sophomores came out this season. Even more juniors. Since 2007 was not a good High School recruiting class, 2011 is going to feature a depleted stock of just about everything. It will also feature a few one-season wonders. I don't know which is worse: A depleted stock, or a collection one-season hits.

This is a long way of saying the Bears gave up next to nothing to get Unga.

At just under 6'1" and about 244 pounds, Unga is a punisher with the ability to break some tackles and continue down field. The Bears are reportedly planning to use Unga as a blocking fullback. This is not the role he played in college, where he was the prime rock-runner. This is not the role most scouts projected for him. It is somewhat questionable what role he will fulfill in the Mike Martz offense. Mad Mike is extremely flexible in his approach, but he tends to go with a 3 receiver set and no fullback.

Some say Unga will have to fight for a roster spot. This is not unusual. Most 7th rounders do have to fight for a roster spot. Furthermore, as ESPN has reported, just 38 players have been taken in the Supplemental Draft since its inception in 1977. Of those 38 players, eight were running backs. Four of those never actually played in the league. The other four totaled only 3,809 yards and 20 touchdowns.

The Denver Broncos selected Bobby Humphrey in the 1st round of the 1989 Supplemental draft. He responding by accounting for 75 percent of the yards and all but five of the touchdowns. Humphrey, who rushed for more than 1,000 yards in 1989 and 1990, is the only running back chosen in the supplemental draft ever to register a Pro Bowl appearance. By 2005, Terrel Davis had taken his place.

Unga was considered by many to be worthy of a 3rd round draft choice. The St. Louis Rams were rumored (by the TurfShowTimes.com) to be one of several interested parties. Given the fact that they just drafted a top-end surgically repaired rookie QB, and given the fact that they have only one top-end surgically repaired Steven Jackson backing him, the argument made sense. Yet draft day came and went an the Rams made no move.

This is a continuation of a collection of the largely incomprehensible moves made by Billy Devaney. Given the Rams' need for a running back committee, and given the extreme poverty of the 2011 draft, you would guess that the Rams would be willing to spend a 7th round supplemental pick on Unga

No, evidently not. I am sure the folks at TurfShowTimes are extremely disappointed this morning. I don't blame them. This is why I quit folks. I have zip, zero, zilch, nada, no confidence in Billy Devaney. I do not believe the guy is competent, and I don't think he is seeking a winner roster. I think Buttism is his key philosophy. He is doing the butt-minimum mandatory things necessary to put some butts in the seats and keep his job. Only this and nothing more.

But this is none of my business. I should butt out. What butt-minimalists do is none of my business.

My Favorite Chefs

One of the leading theories in pedagogy states that it doesn't mater so much the subject you are teaching so much as what and who your are being when you teach. The role model you present is more important than whatever trivia you are covering today.

A great science teacher presents a role model of how a scientific mind approaches a mysterious problem, devises a working hypothesis, and designs experiments to refute this hypothesis. In this way, you teach a kid how to do science, you don't tell him a story about science. A really crappy college political-firebrand presents a role model of how a really crappy college political-firebrand approaches a "problem", i.e. by screaming about it like a fool. In this way, you teach a kid how to scream like a fool. You don't tell him a story about screaming like a fool.

You teach the kid how to fish, you don't tell him a story about fishing trips.

So it is in cooking. It doesn't matter if one of the following five chefs is cooking some really nasty seafood with testicles, tentacles, claws, antennae, snails, clam shells and compound eyes floating around in the sewage. Although this is a dish I would never prepare myself, I can still watch anyway, because these 5 present a roll model showing how a great chef efficiently organizes the process of preparing complex dishes. Organization and fundamental technique in cooking is like blocking and tackling in football. Everything logically reduces to these two fundamentals.

Jacques Pépin

I love watching this guy work. He focuses a lot of fundamental techniques at the same time that he prepares some pretty sophisticated stuff.

He will go out of his way to show you how to properly crack an egg (on a flat surface). He role-models simple ideals, like selecting a knife just slightly bigger than the item you are trying to cut, or using a board just slightly longer in hypotenuse than your knife's length.

He is calm cool and collected as he cooks. He never panics. He loves what he is doing. He's not worried about getting it wrong. He is not bothered by the slight wobble in any given preparation of any given dish. Of course, this means you shouldn't worry about it either.

I also like the fact that he isn't afraid to use microwaves, and that he is a fan of French enameled cast iron. So am I.

He is also a dead-ringer for my Uncle Patrico. I mean these two guys look like virtual clones of one another. I'll bet my Uncle could easily sneak into a major cooking event in New York wearing a name tag that said "Jacques Pépin". A lot of people would buy that fake and never even suspect they were tricked. Of course, the Ecuadorian accident vs. French accident would give him away.

Tyler Florence

This is probably my favorite chef. Nobody on the Food Network does a better menu than this guy. I love the older shows where he travels around the globe (mostly to European destinations) to track down the most traditional and authentic recipes, and then do a slight American refry. His original Paella episode in Season 1 was utterly priceless. So was the omelet episode.

The new format for the show is encyclopedia of recipes I am going to put together one day. That Julia and Julia movie is going to be replayed as Tyler and Dave. Sooner or later, I am going to try every recipe in Tyler's book.

Tyler is a traditionalist. I like the fact that he doesn't go too far off the reservation. When he riffs on theme, he usually tries to do so culturally traditional ways. When I have prepared dishes for ethnic guests, I have done so from Tyler's vault, and the guests have usually been stunned that "I got it right". They wanted to know how I learned how to do Swedish Meatballs, or Indian food. Guess where I learned it?

Alton Brown

The arch scientist. The great teacher of organic chemistry principles. The guy who tells you "Why" and not so much "How". Some deride Alton as a geek. If so, I am a geek also. This is my kind of geek scientist.

I am a "Why" guy. How is interesting, but why is better and more important. If you know why, how can always be strategically improved. You also know when people are making mistakes in food prep. How so? Because you know why.

Alton's treatment of the Maillard Reaction was a major moment of revelation for me. The Maillard Reaction is ultra-important, but that was just the key, that wasn't the revelation. Nope, the revelation was that all cooking boils down to a series of chemical reactions. That was when I got my first good look at the whole iceberg. If I ever write a cookbook, it is going to be titled A Series of Chemical Reactions.

Understanding what chemical reaction you are going for, and how it can be screwed up, is utterly crucial to getting your results. For instance, I just put $1,200 in grilling equipment on my balcony this past Sunday. I did so for one specific reason: I realized I was not obtaining sufficient heat from my stove to produce a good and decent Maillard Reaction. I just dumped my aluminum cookware because I realized that just about all caramelization and seasoning processes work best on naked iron.

You won't learn why any of this is true unless you attend chemistry class with Alton. I can't agree with him about Shun knives and Kosher salt, but that doesn't matter.

If you haven't heard Alton's detailed breakdown of how Yeast works, you are just missing out on the finest things in life.

Sunny Anderson

Sunny has contributed two crucial favorites to my food menu: (1) Shepherd's pie and (2) Mac-N-Cheese.

I hate to say this, but Sunny's soul-food Mac-N-Cheese, beats up Tyler's French Mournay sauce approach royally. Frankly, it's not even close. I have to thank Tyler for the Panko bread crumbs, and the bacon garnish, but Sunny's approach is the more flavorful. Everybody seems to take the Mournay approach used by Thomas Jefferson. I think that is a mistake. Try Sunny's approach. It's better.

Sunny does Mac-N-Cheese by preparing a cold sauce with the following dry ingredients: flour, paprika, black peeper, cayenne pepper, mustard powder, sugar, salt. It also has the following wet ingredients: sour cream, heavy-whipping cream, half-n-half. She uses the following cheeses: Sharp cheddar, and Habanero Pepper Jack. She cuts the cheese into cubes rather than shredding it.

Just a few tips about Sunny's approach:

1. Put some Thyme, Garlic and Savory in that cold sauce.
2. The Mac-N-Cheese should be cooked in an Emile Henry Flame-Top roasting pan. Spread it out thin. Don't go tall. More surface area means more caramelized brown cheese crust at the top, and more Socorrat at the bottom. Both the crust at the top and at the bottom are crucial to flavor.
3. 350F is not sufficient to trigger the Maillard reaction. Increase the temperature to 400F-425F. Reduce cooking time to 30-35 minutes. Finish in the broiler for 5-10 minutes.
4. Cover the top with Panko bread crumbs. Garnish with well-browned bacon or panchetta, which ever you prefer.
5. You might stuff ripped chunks of day-old bread into the top of the Mac-N-Cheese.

Sunny's Shepherd Pie is totally non-English. It is a soul-food respin on the process, but this is another dramatic improvement, much like her Mac-N-Cheese. She goes off the reservation by adding double-thick tomato paste to the hamburger, adding in onions, garlic, savory herbs to the meat. She develops a lot of flavor there. Instead of simple peas and carrots, which are good, she makes an elaborate vegetable layer including things like egg plant, squash, peppers, carrots, etc.

I made this for the first time about a day or two before my brother showed up unexpectedly for a weekend visit. I had a large glass Pyrex roaster full of the stuff. I had eaten one small corner of the dish the night before. My brother utterly annihilated that Pyrex. It was all gone by Sunday. I hardly had any of it. Ben turned down meals at the Goucho Grill and Mazzarino's Italian Kitchen for more Shepherd's pie. He went wacko over it.

I have to say, I like it too. I make both of these on a regular basis now.

Jamie Oliver

Nobody loves cooking more than Jamie Oliver. If you want to see a guy who loves what he does more than anybody else, watch this guy. You are watching an artist in love with the thing he is painting. Jamie is rejoicing while he is cooking. He's having a good time, and it shows. I think he would rather be cooking than doing just about anything else in the world.

It is fun watching a guy have fun. It is fun watching a guy do his favorite thing in the world. Jacques Pépin signs off by saying "Happy cooking!" to his audience. Jamie is that happy cooking guy. Jamie's roll model is an important one. He shows that cooking is a form of creative recreation and relaxation. You have a good time. You don't approach it with stress. It's like a video game: You are highly concentrated, but you are relaxing and having a good time.

The first time I ever saw Jamie Oliver, I was looking for a video manual on how to make Tagliatelle Bolognese. I had lost my episode of Tyler's Ultimate (it is time to replay that one guys) and I was jonesing for a refresher course. I decided to look at YouTube. Jamie's video came up first.

You may laugh, but I honestly thought I was watching a SNL sketch in which Nigel Tufnel, fictional leader of Spinal Tap, was doing a mock cooking show. Jamie does look like Nigel from Spinal Tap. Then I realized this was no joke. The dude in question had serious skill. He knew what he was doing. In just a bit more than 6 minutes, he gave up the entire approach to making fresh-cut, home-made Tagliatelle.

That was quite a revelation. I had no idea what made Tagliatelle distinct as a type of pasta. I knew after I watched the video. It denotes a hand-made egg pasta which is floured, folded, and cut by hand with a knife. This is not extruded or machine cut stuff. You make little tangly nests of pasta noodles with your hands.

Tyler did the show on the Ultimate Tagliatelle Bolognese, HOWEVER, there remains one key way in which you can improve the recipe. You don't buy the Tagliatelle. You make it yourself, fresh.

Incidentally, I just did that last night. I decided to baptize my grill by doing a grilled Tagliatelle Bolognese last night. The results were pretty sensational. I cut the Tagliatelle myself, just like Jamie did.