About sarajane

I want to live my life fully. I am a cutting edge scientific researcher and I knit and make jam. Sometimes I feel a strong disconnect between the home and professional sides of my life, sometimes it all just feels like me.

Location

California Bay Area

Favorite Foods

chocolate paprika garlic steak and sushi morello cherries

Favorite Food Writers

Michael Pollan, obviously. Tom Philpot, Shauna Ahern, Mark Bittman, Eric Schlosser. I read Grist and Ethicurean obsessively

Dream Dinner Guests

Really, I'd rather just feed friends and family rather than the celebrities listed in the example

I call myself a…

scientist, wife, Good cook, poor cleaner-upper, Food enthusiast, not quite a luddite, interested in old and new food technology

News about sarajane

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  • sarajane Feb 1 2:57 PM - Comment
    commented on Sweet Tart Valentine Dessert: Lemon Creme Brulee.

    is this 2 servings or 4? looks very tasty

  • sarajane Jan 31 12:21 PM - Comment
    commented on In a jam.

    In 2008 or so, I was going to visit my parents and taking them a gift of some apricot jam I had made. I managed to get it through by opening and tasting the sealed jar :(

  • sarajane Jan 24 10:44 AM - Comment
    commented on Our Mark Bittman app is tops.

    Once again, I’m going to enter a plea for an android version! :)

  • sarajane Jan 4 3:17 PM - Comment
    commented on Bubbly bonanza.

    or one could just drink seltzer water! or mix seltzer with juice to make your own ‘soda’. much cheaper and more enjoyable to my mind.

  • sarajane Nov 17 8:46 PM - Comment
    commented on Quartering a turkey.

    Great idea. I can break down a chicken no sweat, this would be great esp as i would really like to make some turkey stock :) (curried turkey soup! delicious)

  • sarajane Jul 1 5:43 PM - Comment
    commented on How to bake eggs.

    That looks wonderful. Great breakdown, thanks for all the pictures. Any measurements on how much cream to add? My ramekins are rather small, do you think halving the recipe to one egg would work with the temperatures and times?

  • sarajane Jun 23 11:55 AM - Comment
    commented on Seeing pink.

    I have been having so much trouble finding a good rose wine. Sadly, any bottle I pick out ends up being way too sweet to stomach. Thanks for the suggestions, I will keep an eye out for them!

  • sarajane May 4 10:34 PM - Comment
    commented on Rhubarb Custard Pie.

    I just made this :) I followed the editors notes for a less sweet, firmer pie (Although I only had 4.5 cups of rhubarb after it all was chopped, and it only needed 45 min, my oven runs hot, and I added a lattice crust). So good! Seriously, this may be the best pie I’ve made to date!

  • sarajane May 3 3:07 PM - Comment
    commented on Cook it all, anywhere.

    It would be wonderful if you developed a version of this app for droid! :) just sayin...

  • sarajane Feb 24 12:17 PM - Comment
    commented on Eating up 'Eating In'.

    On our honeymoon, my husband and I rented a place with a teeny, tiny kitchen in Aptos. The second day there we found a fantastic little grocery store, and that night cooked one of the best meals I’ve ever had. Maybe it was the company, but that night almost outshone the meal we had at the end of the trip at the Ritz-Carlton Dining Room in SF. So, yeah, I’d say it was pretty good :)

    Also, on our first date (well, first date the second time around, long story), he took me home and fed me homemade spaghetti with zucchini and that’s how I knew it was serious :)

  • sarajane Feb 5 6:45 PM - Comment
    commented on Triple-washed?.

    Re-washing the greens won’t do much. The amount of agitation required to actually remove the microbes would pretty much destroy the lettuce. Triple washed greens probably don’t have any residual soil, it’s more that coliform bacteria are ‘sticky’. I’ll agree it’s plenty gross that there are high levels of coliforms on the lettuce. But telling people to wash the lettuce is just a placebo. I think a better focus would be to look at the water that is being used in the fields. And to face the fact that, living on earth, we are going to be surrounded with coliforms 99.99999% of the time.

  • sarajane Dec 25 8:33 AM - Comment
    commented on My inner Child.

    In highschool, I had to make a christmas dish for my 3rd year french class. I loved that class, and was determined to impress my beloved teacher with something truly french. So my mother pulled Julia’s ‘Mastering the Art’ off the shelf and I picked Creme Bavarois A L’orange. And it was so much work (although mom did most!), I think it took two full days. Very persnickity. But unmolding that opaque, trembly vaguely-jello like thing to the astonishment of my classmates - I’ll never forget how proud I was. And it tasted like nothing else I’ve ever had :) So this story really makes sense to me. It is NOT about easy. It’s about being the best you can be.

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From Lab Bench and Kitchen Sink by
November 16, 2009

Most of my daily effort goes into producing cutting edge scientific research to save the world through better diagnostics for a multitude of human diseases. But at the same time, I have a love for and fascination with doing things ‘the old way’, be that spending the time to make my own chicken stock, learn a classic french sauce, or take the time to seed and juice over a hundred pomegranates to make jelly for friends and family. On the surface, they seem very different. However, they have a number of common themes. Attention to detail for one. The imagination to figure out ways around obstacles. The need to start with quality ingredients, or quality data. To not be afraid to try new things, and to learn from your mistakes.

Something old to start with: my mother’s recipe for chicken picatta. She must have made this recipe thousands of times for me growing up, but I’ll never ever tire of it. Goes indelibly in my mind with my least favorite vegetable of all time: steamed broccoli. Despite my lingering childhood abhorrence, I do try and eat it regularly. Should also be accompanied with buttered noodles.

Chicken Picatta:

Ingredients:
Chicken breasts, pounded thin
Seasoned flour, to dredge the chicken in (I like it with powdered garlic and onion, paprika and fresh ground pepper)
Olive oil and butter, in a pan, heating up till the butter foams
Half a glass of white wine
Juice of half a lemon
Several big spoonfuls of capers (mmm, capers)

Pound the chicken breasts thin so they will cook quickly. This can be wonderful stress relief after a long day. Dredge them in the flour to lightly coat and set aside while you get the pan heating up.

Pour enough olive oil into the pan to cover most of the bottom, and add about a tablespoon of butter. Turn the heat on medium high. When the butter froths, but before it starts to brown, add the chicken to the pan.

Most important step in the recipe: walk away for three minutes and have a glass of that nice white wine.

After three minutes, the chicken should be nicely brown on the bottom (I suppose I could up my molecular biology cred by talking about the Maillard reaction here, but this is comfort food, really) and look slightly wet on the top. Flip the chicken over, and walk away for another three minutes. Have some more wine if that’s what it takes!

When the chicken is nicely brown on both sides and firm to the touch, remove to a plate. Deglaze the pan with half a cup of white wine and the lemon juice, stirring to get all those delicious brown bits into the sauce. Reduce it to maybe half or a third the volume. Add the capers, then the chicken back into the pan, and gently flip it around to coat.

Kick back and enjoy. Make sure you get plenty of capers, I’d say about 2-3 per bite of chicken is about ideal.

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