Yvan Seth's Hole in the Internet

Pigeon and Potato Salad

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 01:01:00 GMT

Sadly I've not had the time to write much in the last few months, and especially haven't written many food entries. I've started many, but they get stale before I can complete them. I'll try to keep this one short!

I have two motivations to be writing this one, first I have a "new" camera. New to me, at any rate. It is a second hand Canon 40D DSLR, a "proper" camera at last. One of the many benefits of this is that I can now take photos in lower light without a flash, and that's just with a stock lens, I can't wait to get hold of something faster. I've now entered the complicated and expensive world of the DSLR lens buyer, it is a scary place.

The second reason is the titular pigeons. We got 3 wood pigeons from our local shooting friend up at the pub last night. They were from a cull, wood pigeons are quite a pest to the local farmers – note that these are quite different to typical townie sky-rat pigeons. Anyway, 3 woodies don't make a banquet, but they make a good enough feed for the two of us. Being time-poor I've only used their breasts, as it is a cinch to tear off a pigeons bodice and carve off the tasty flesh beneath.

Pile of Pigeon

First I quickly yank away most of the feathers in the breast area, this keeps things a bit cleaner. Next I pinch up the skin near the bottom of the breast and make a small horizontal incision. It is then easy to just grab the skin and peel it off the breasts. At the neck end be careful to tease the crop away from the body, preferably without tearing it (it can be pretty messy and often stinky in there after a few days.) The breasts can be removed by sliding a knife (very sharp please, and I prefer a thin long knife for this job) down each side of the breast bone, then peeling the breast away with the help of the point of the knife. A little like filleting a fish.

Stripped Breasts

Alas, my breastless birdies now go into the compost bin (we're permitted to put meat trimmings and chicken carcases in there, that extends to pigeons I suppose.) It would be somewhat more efficient to use the rest of the carcass in a stock – I just don't have the time right now. (But I feel bad about throwing them out.)

Breastless Birdies

[DSLR geekery: The photo above is taken with a 1/10 exposure at the highest ISO setting of the 40D, which is 3200. Quite noisy, but still better than I could have gotten with my old compact using the flash (which would have been necessary.) The lighting in all the above photos was pretty dim, getting onto darkish by the final photo. The first two photos were taken on ISO 400, at 1/30 and 1/15. All were taken at f/3.5 using a cheapie 18-55mm kit lens. Still very early days for me yet! Right now I'm just happy I can take any sort of photo in low light without having to resort to the flash.]

The breasts then require a little trimming to remove some raggedy bits. I ensure as much skin membrane as possible is pulled off. And investigate, maybe trim, any areas of clotted blood – which are usually shot entry wounds. I also separate the "tenderloins" from the breasts, as it is easier to cook this way. After all this I have 300g or meat, 100g per birdie.

Trimmed Breasts

It seems that a classic destination for pigeon breasts is salad. So that's the idea I started with here. We also had some leftover potatoes from the weekend, and some egg-yolk mayonnaise that Kat made today. So, a small warm potato salad on top of a bed of peppery salad leaves (quickly picked up from the nearest supermarket) was the order of the day.

Oiled Up Breasts

The breasts themselves were marinated for a mere 10 minutes in plenty of EVOO and fresh-ground pepper, plus a small dash of truffle oil. My approach to dark breasts is hot and fast. I used a cast iron grill pan heated until the old oil residue on is smoking. The breasts go onto this, well spaced, for just one minute per side. If not keen on rare meat another 30 seconds per side will probably do, but you'll be missing out! This is my favourite sort of cooking, the type that sets off all the smoke alarms. The tenderloins don't even need a minute all up.

Hot Breasts

The breasts rest for about 10 minutes while I prepare the potato salad. That is simply a matter of warming the pre-diced boiled potato pieces in the microwave (shock, horror), then tossing them to rough them up a bit and combining with:

a couple of spring onions, finely chopped
a couple of teaspoons of capers (in vinegar), finely chopped
a couple of tablespoons of mayonnaise
generous few grinds of pepper
ground salt "to taste"

Salad leaves go in bowls, handful of potato goes in the middle, half the freshly sliced pigeon breast goes onto the potato, finally I add a sprinkling of vinaigrette. Dinner!

Pigeon and Potato Salad

You should be fine with just one pigeon per person really.

Improvements? Some crisp croutons and perhaps some crispy bacon bits feel like the right direction to go with this.

Snow!

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 20:38:00 GMT

With a new year well and truly underway, first week of work past and all, I thought I'd better reflect on things. Nah, stuff that. I'm off to Australia on the 15th, jumping from the sub-zero to the over-30 temperatures of the West Coast – perhaps even 40! We'll see. While I'm there my 30th birthday will pass, in lieu of having some sort of third-life-crisis I think I'll just enjoy the heat and sunlight.

For the moment I've taken a few photos around Hitchin, our current home-town in England. Everyone's going on about the snow here in the UK, but while pretty it really isn't all that impressive. That said, it does successfully wreak havoc and distress. Bring on more snow I say! Except on Friday, we want to have a nice clear departure from Heathrow on Friday.

Sledding on Windmill Hill

Kids sledding down Windmill Hill above Hitchin town centre. Last week one of them was taken away in an ambulance after discovering that stopping prior to ramming park furniture is generally a good idea.

Kat at the SE stairs up Windmill Hill

Another shot of Windmill Hill, looking up the stairs from Hollow Lane.

Ransom's Recreating Ground

This is Ransom's Recreation Ground, a small park behind out street in Hitchin.

More than 4 years in the UK and this is probably the first "proper" winter we've had. I'd always imagined winters here were much more like this, but it turns out that snow in winter is quite rare in most of England. Though if you talk to people who're 60+ it's all "'twas faar colder an' snowy when I were a lad!" Perhaps it's coming back :)

The Nightingale

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:48:00 GMT

The Nightingale is what we consider our "local". It is a, mostly, relaxed and friendly locals' pub with great beer. There is a core of regular drinkers from an interesting variety of backgrounds, from foreign imports like ourselves to people who've lived in the area since the day they were born. From time to time there is live music, and other special events – but not every weekend (that'd be a bit much, some people want a quiet drink on a Saturday evening!) There's a huge half-covered patio area out the back, with summery BBQs and heaters for the poor smokers in winter (while I feel sorry for them, I'm glad of the smoking ban, without it I'd be outside or not going to pubs.) A lot of the activity in the pub revolves around the seasonal pool and darts leagues, there's also a Thursday dominoes league. Us, we're useless at pool and don't know how to throw a dart, we're there for the beer, company, and conversation.

I remember when I first came to look at the house we now live in in Hitchin. I walked down the road from the station and saw the "5 regularly rotating real ales" sign out the front. It seems a bit obsessive I guess, but I immediately called Kat and told her there was a pub just up the street that may have good ale. We had become followers of real ale, and CAMRA members, over the previous year. It had been a somewhat slow path to total conversion since we'd lived in Rickmansworth, a pretty crap town when it came to real ale. The best ale pubs close to our place (in the middle of town) were the Land of Liberty, Peace, and Plenty in Heronsgate and the Rose & Crown in Harefield – the closest of which was a 40 minute walk distant!

To come to Hitchin from Rickmansworth is a most recommended move for the ale lover. As far as we're concerned The Nightingale is the best pub in the town, though there is always some bias to one's local. Hitchin doesn't stop there though, the other end of town sports the Half Moon, 2009's North Herts pub-of-the-year. And there are many pubs between, or varying range and quality when it comes to proper beer.

The Nightingale typically has 5 hand-pumps on duty, though from time to time a pump may be between-barrels. The almost-always-on beers are Colley's Dog (5.2%) and Brock Bitter (3.7%) from Tring brewery. The other 3 pumps rotate through a series of regulars, seasonals, and specials. Tring and Nethergate are the most common breweries, but other breweries from our region show their faces from time to time. Our personal favourites are Nethergate's Old Growler Porter and Umbel Magna (which is Old Growler with coriander.) There's also the lethal Old Rosie Scrumpy (7.3%) and crisp Aspall Cyder (5.5%) for the fruit lovers.

The Nightingale

The pub itself is the last remaining example of the railway inns that once lined the corner near the station. It has a bit of history, and perhaps a ghost or two. If you look carefully at the roof you can see that it was called the Leicester Arms at some point in the past. And while the interior has been opened-out, as is the modern way, it still retains a feel of having rooms. There's the bar area, with seating (sometimes stage) at one end, and the pool table area at the other, plus a snug area with couches around one corner – not to mention that huge patio out the back.

My inspiration for writing about our local all of a sudden is that we are so keen on the place that Kat has built a little website for the landlords: The Nightingale. The site tracks the scores for the various teams playing at the pub, advertises upcoming events, and (of course) has an up to date list of the beers available at the bar. As time permits we'll add the usual standard features of a modern website, things like RSS pull-feeds and Facebook push-feeds, blah. blah. For the moment a quick glance at the page of your choosing is supposed to tell you all you need to know. What beer's on at the 'gale? Easy.

We helped out with this site because, well, the Internet is generally pretty crap. There are websites out there that list information for establishments like pubs, often these are inaccurate and sometimes slanderous (often the latter comes from comments, I've seen few good pubs on sites like Beer in the Evening that don't have at least one user comment that heads in this direction.) What's worse is when these sites don't permit incorrect data to be fixed, unless you pay them of course. To be permitted the honour of updating information about your own pub on BitE will cost you nearly 150 quid per year. It doesn't seem like much of course, but the pub trade is pretty tough at the moment, and something feels fundamentally wrong about paying to have errors corrected! I'm not singling out BitE here, it is just the most prominent (in the pub trade) of a pile of sites that follow this sort of business model. It sucks, and people feel unhappy, powerless, and even victims of extortion because of it. Anyway, that's enough politics.

The Fish Pond

In case you're wondering:

There is no:

Sky
Wireless (unless you have a good enough receiver to leech from McDonald's across the road)

There is:

A big screen, projector screen, and other screens; used to show selected sporting events
A pool table
2 darts boards (plus 3 more concealed ones used in comps)
5 hand-pumps, usually all on
Fairly typical selection of lagers/etc
Covered "smokers' patio", with heaters
Outdoor seating and BBQ
A fish pond :)

It's all there on the new Nightingale website!

Happy retirement GSSP-C!

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:19:00 GMT

Some time ago I wrote about the GSSP-C exam. Being a certification non-believer I thought it would be interesting to have a poke at a certification. The one in question being the, at the time, new GSSP-C (GIAC Secure Software Programmer in C.) It seemed at least relevant to my work (mostly C/C++ back then) and my industry (the dirty world of infosec.) In general I was impressed by the practical resources and also by the message the people behind the exam (SANS) were trying to get across. Afterall… many software security issues are caused by bad programming, the GSSP-C seemed a worthy attempt to address this.

Here's the amusing thing, the GSSP-C has been quietly retired already. Or, perhaps, "become a victim of infanticide" would be more accurate?

As of 10/27/09, the GSSP-C Certification has been retired. This is a business
decision GIAC has made due to decreased demand for the certification, and the
need to focus our efforts and resources on higher performing certifications. 

While this does not invalidate the skill sets that you have or the GSSP-C
credential you've earned, we just cannot support the exam's maintenance moving
forward.

You are still free to use the GSSP-C logo on your personal correspondence
(signatures, business cards, etc)

It's short and to the point really: we were in the for the money, but the money ain't there. No surprise! I just love the language in the email text above, it illustrates so much of what's weird about the certification world. How on Earth could this "invalidate the skill sets that [I] have" anyway? The measure of a "high performing certification" is "more people take it" which translates to "makes us more money."

I'm enjoying the thought that this whole situation is a statement on the mindsets of different groups within the tech community. The GSSP-JAVA.) has not been retired as far as I can see.

The Java crowd are more into certifications (most of the Java population work for big old banks and similar institutions, there's also more of them of course)
The certification crowd are an insecure lot (haw haw haw!), they need their certifications to validate their "skills"
In the C world, especially amongst any C/Systems level programmers I've known, certifications are anathema. They're for "programmers in suits"!

I wasn't sure at the time of doing the certification (which I safely acquired by the way) whether or not it had any inherent value. I think that we can now say the answer is no – for the time and money involved the value for the majority is probably negative. For me, the value was in the experience of the certifications world and this retirement of the certification increases the value even. Then again, I just did it for a bit of a lark in the first place.

I'm reminded of a time just before the exam when I received an email from some SANS bigwig (as I imagine every GSSP-C victim did.) The email asked what we thought about this particular SANS campaign, and generally solicited feedback. I fed-back of course, questioning the validity of the certification route and its likely ineffectiveness at improving the world's C-coding standards. I never received a reply of any sort :) surprised? It would be been good to get one though. I was genuinely interested to know more about this. I wondered how they were going to take this to the sorts of programmers who really need it. I imagine those few of us who sat the exam while it existed were already quite security aware, we'd have to be to have even heard of the exam in the first place! In other words, we're the people least in need of sitting the exam. (I did learn a couple of interesting C gotchas in the process though!)

Will I ever touch a certification again? Certainly not out of my own time and pocket, and unlikely even if someone else is footing the bill and paying me for my time.