No biting the personnel

I was in Montreal this past weekend for a friend’s wedding. Enough happened that I’ve decided to write about it. Plus I’ve learned that AM reads it to keep in touch.
 
The wedding itself was a blast. The ceremony was one of the most original I’ve had the chance to attend. I especially enjoyed the 4 consecutive readings: each in a different language. French speakers spoke a lot about the French poem afterwards but, in truth, every text was great. Even if you didn’t speak the language, you could feel the emotion in the speakers’ voice. It was very moving.
 
What struck me the most was how international the attendees were. The bride is from Montreal and met her husband in Boston. His family is from Puerto-Rico. They now live in Oxford. I got to chat with people from New York, Boston, Mountain View, Vancouver (on her way to Lausanne, Switzerland), Martha’s Vineyard, Nova Scotia, Israel, Montreal and many others. The jobs were as diverse.
 
Besides the wedding, I also caught up with many - but not all - of my friends in Montreal. It’s interesting when you see people twice a year to hear and see how lives evolve. You finally meet the girlfriends and boyfriends (or you learn they’re single again). The baby I saw over the holiday is now walking.
 
I got asked a lot whether I miss Montreal and if I like Seattle. I miss Montreal: the smile on people’s face and the city’s energy and vibe. Bars and dance clubs are open until 3 AM. On Thursday evening I went dancing until 2 AM. On Friday I chatted over drinks with friends in a downtown bar until closing time then went out for poutine. Downtown was packed. I got home at 4:20 AM. There’s one or more festival every weekend: the Jazz Festival finished last week and the Just For Laughs started a few days ago.  This morning I was awake (and re-energized) at 6 AM. The sunshine makes such a difference.
 
Would I want to move back is the next question I hear a lot. I would not. Funnily (or sadly), most understand to some degree. Some are even planning their own move out of the province. It was a great place to grow up in, it’s nice to vacation too but you wouldn’t want a career there. The locations I named earlier? These people all once lived in Montreal. Yeah, brain drain is a reality. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of youthful energy still floating around. It’s just fewer and fewer of my acquaintances. Whatever this crush is, it’s even starting to affect French-Canadians (who, in my statistics, have historically remained in the province).
 
Interestingly, my grumpy Francophone friends have different reasons than the Anglophone one’s. The complaints range from: work culture that doesn’t encourage the “go-getter” personality type, family and friend mentalities that push down the dreamer or over-achiever, a medical system that’s falling apart, a lack of professionalism in some professional circles, the increasing number of bums and migrants, etc.  Crime is becoming an interesting topic. A man died from machine gun wounds at the other end of NDG a few days ago. That’s only a few miles from my parent’s place. A machine gun! A friend just bought an Audi A3 which he showed me proudly. It is a nice car. The insurance rate isn’t too high either; not because he’s got a good driving record or because statistics show that Audi A3s don’t get into accidents as often but because it’s not a popular car for thieves in the city: the parts don’t resell well. Work ethics and employment policies are another interesting topic. For all the evil things we hear and say about performance evaluations, I know now that I wouldn’t want to go back to a world where my worth to an organization isn’t directly tied to my performance and measured mostly objectively. I don’t think I could live now with the idea of working x number of years before pension eligibility.  Montreal is a changing city.

Year after year I keep wondering: what are the great jobs in Montreal? Law firms are still big business but, besides them, where do you go if you’re young and willing to kill yourself at work to change the world and get rewarded for it? I hear even investment banking doesn’t pay that well since there are so few openings for the number of candidates compared to Toronto.
 
It’s a weird feeling that I can’t completely put into words. I doubt I’m the only one thinking about this. Enough for now. I’m back in Seattle.

“He’s not getting the real one; I can’t believe people like that really exist,” she said looking at me.

Oops, I missed the chance to help.

I’m not friendly when I travel. The bubble closes and nothing will reach in. My mind narrows on a task. Frankly, I don’t want to socialize: I don’t want to talk or play card games. I’m a very bad traveling companion. You wouldn’t even want to tag along when I’m walking around the airport.

In fact, you could be a single woman who came off of the same AC8100 flight from Seattle I was on. You could be stuck in a very boring one-way conversation with a random guy (who also came off of that flight). Said companion even approached with the truly creative line: so, where are you going today? Sadly, you could be in line with him behind me at customs for 90 minutes; I wouldn’t notice.

To whoever you were, I’m sorry. It would have been easy for me to step in: my brain was elsewhere.

A few Sundays ago we decided to make one of our favorite dishes: gumbo. For this, we use the recipe from Cook’s Illustrated book. The results are always amazing and there’s always enough left overs for a few days. Cooking gumbo, it turns out, takes a while but is not difficult. The biggest unknown is the roux.

Here’s the step on roux from the recipe:

Heat the oil in a Dutch oven or large, heavy bottomed saucepan over medium-high heat until it registers 200 degrees on an instant-read thermometer, 1 1/2 to 2 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium and gradually stir in the flour with a wooden spatula or spoon, working out any lumps that form. Continue stirring constantly, reaching into the corners of the pan, until the mixture has a toasty aroma is deep reddish brown, about the color of an old copper penny or between the colors of milk chocolate and dark chocolate, about 20 minutes. (The roux will thin as it cooks; it is begins to smoke, remove the pan from the heat and stir the roux constantly to cool slightly.)

The first time we did the recipe, it took us more than 80 minutes to get the roux to a copper color. We got a nice copper roux without ever burning the oil. You need dedication to your stomach though to move a wooden spatula in oil and flour for that long. You can’t let the roux alone otherwise clumps of flour will form. The entire recipe took more than 4 hours to complete.

So what’s the trick to obtaining a dark roux in 20 minutes or less? Notice the words “reduce the heat to medium?” If you raised the temperature to 200 degrees then reduce the heat, will the temperature keep rising or will it drop below 200 degrees? The recipe doesn’t say. The sentence is misleading. This time, having other plans for my evening, I cheated; I raised the heat up to 350 degrees after adding the flour. By continuously stirring and monitoring the temperature, I kept the mixture right below the burning point. Low and behold the white roux became a dark roux in ~18 minutes.

There are two lessons here:

1. Although America’s test kitchen’s recipes are wonderful, their recipes are often misleading and confusing. Read between the lines.
2. Get yourself an instant read thermometer.

P.S.: Our other pet-peeve with Americas]’s Test Kitchen is that, in their big book, they didn’t total the preparation and cooking time for the recipes. You have to read the recipe very carefully ahead of time. Otherwise, what you think will take an hour turns into 3.