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Captain Ron

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Posts posted by Captain Ron

  1. On 5/2/2023 at 9:21 PM, Celery Man said:

    Alright I think I've got it down with the tortillas

    16 oz flour
    1 tsp salt
    2/3 cup room temperature butter
    1 cup lukewarm milk
    mix flour, salt, and butter in a stand mixer on low, gradually add the milk.
    continue mixing on medium low (periodically scraping the flour down the sides and reseating the dough) until it is dry/not sticky to the touch, about 15 minutes

    divide into 16 pieces, smoosh/fold/pinch into smooth balls, let rest on the counter covered (i use saran wrap I bet a tea towel would work fine) for a few to several hours(potentially overnight - i've waited as long as 8 or 9 hours between making the dough around noon in the morning and cooking the tortillas after putting the kid down for bed)
    heat your big cast iron over medium high until thoroughly heated up. no oil - go in dry
    generously flour your working surface, flatten a ball and then roll it out with even pressure to make as close to a circle as you can. It shouldn't be hard to make a thin disc that fits just about perfectly in a 12" skillet
    place the tortilla into the skillet and start rolling out the next one. flip the tortilla when it starts to to bubble up. remove when done. repeat until finished. clean.

    i think the butter gives it a better flavor than shortening, and I didn't notice any difference in terms of how the dough comes together. still need to try with lard but honestly I'm happy. i think using milk rather than water gives it some flavor and pliability as well, but I think the big thing I was fucking up early on was not mixing it thoroughly enough. I checked back on my notes from talking to the baking scientist, and the "until it is dry and not sticky to the touch" is from her. that takes a minute. I think the other thing to learn as a shortcut is that cleaning up takes less time and effort than trying to do bullshit to avoid making a mess.

     

    image.thumb.png.bf80ec839e2354904e3ae493f62923f1.png

    I might give your recipe a shot. The milk is weird to me.

     

    Here's mine, which is my mom's and grandma's recipe. You guys do "small batch" I usually go 3 dozen at a time:

    6 Cups flour (I use King Arthur all purpose, but I've heard good things about using bread flour)
    1 Tablespoon salt (I use table salt NOT sea salt or kosher salt)
    2 Teaspoons baking powder
    5-6 Tablespoons Crisco shortening (I've been going near 6 Tbsp with this lately)
    2+ Cups hot water (I microwave mine 3 min 30 seconds while mixing ingredients)

    I use a kitchenaid stand mixer for all of this. Mix the flour, salt and baking powder use the paddle to evenly distribute the ingredients. I then add the shortening and let that mix in a minute or two. Then I start adding the hot water - half of what's left each add: 1 cup (this should make the dough shaggy), then 1/2 cup, then 1/4 cup until is starts to come together as a whole dough. Once this starts, I take out the paddle and put on the dough hook and let the dough fully come together about 5 or so minutes. I actually like my dough to be a touch "wet" or sticky. If it's too dry it ends up being a little hard to roll out.

    Once I've finished with the dough hook, I put the dough in a gallon ziplock and put it back in mixing bowl I don't let it sit on my counters*

    * - so I live in Boston - my counters are too damn cold, even in the summer, and the cold is bad for the dough/gulten. My first few batches here was an absolute nightmare to deal with until I figured out the cold counter issue.

    They get at least a 30 minute rest at this point (If it's longer I will put the bag on a wooden cutting board with dish towels insulating both sides).

    When I take the dough out it should be sweaty. I throw it on a wooden cutting board (that is only used for making tortillas - again keep it off the counter). I kneed all the moisture back in. Then I start tearing out dough balls and making these (If I want to be crazy precise they should weigh ~40 grams).

    Note on doughballs- I've always found this to be the key to making round tortillas - you need round and well formed dough balls and they need to be smooth. You get this by pushing the dough into itself while rotating it. I do this by making an OK sigh with my right hand, I put a dough ball in the circle formed by your thumb and pointer finger. I usually push the dough in from the palm side with my left pointer finger and rotate the dough ball as I do this. Once they are smooth I put them along the edge of my cutting board.

    I get to rolling immediately - UNLESS I put them back in the ziplock and then I can take up to 12 or so hours to get back to them (same insulation as above). 

    I also roll on the cutting board and I don't use flour at all to keep them from sticking, this is likley because the cutting board is seasoned well enough I don't need to, but if my dough is right - it won't stick.

    Since I use the double griddle my process is usually:

    roll out tortilla A. Put it on griddle

    roll out tortilla B. Flip tortilla A, put tortilla B on griddle.

    roll out tortilla C. Flip tortilla A, Flip tortilla B. remove tortilla A. put tortilla C on where A was.

    The last step is repeated a lot. Once this is going, I am generally getting a tortilla off the griddle every 45-50 seconds.

  2. On 8/11/2023 at 11:38 AM, Celery Man said:

     

    So I've still been making tortillas. I long ago figured out that a decent youtube tutorial is way better than tablature/music for figuring out how to play something on guitar, I don't know why it took me so long to look at tortilla tutorials. I think the thing I've found is that doing it correctly is much more about process and technique than it is about recipe. I watched a few videos (including the one above) and incorporated a few of the things into the same recipe I've been starting from (https://patijinich.com/flour-tortillas/ , using shortening or butter for fat and milk for water). One big thing that I think I was doing wrong that the above video highlighted was that i wasn't mixing the fat in with the salt and flour thoroughly before adding the liquid. In the posts above I talked about how long I had to mix the dough to get it to have the right consistency and the right lack of stickiness. The last time I made it, I hand mixed the dry ingredients with the fat until it had that sand like texture, and I found that upon adding the milk it came together much quicker. The other change I made that may have contributed to that is taking the temperature of the milk from "lukewarm" to "fairly hot". A big dumb stupid thing that i was doing was taking the big ball of dough and then halving it and halving the pieces until I got 16 little balls. Squeezing off the correct sized balls (I did 60g like she mentioned this time, I'll go slightly smaller next time around) is such a "duh" easier and more consistent process. I forgot to do the stuff she does here where she kinda rubs down each ball with lard before resting them.

    I found some tallow at a butcher's market down the street, trying that next. I also have some maseca for pupusas, so I need to give corn tortillas a go.

     

    Watching that clip of her roll tortillas - I am embarrassed for her.

     

  3. I haven’t read the whole thread yet, so sorry if these are already suggested or commented about.

    I have no problem rolling out circular tortillas. But a I’ve also been doing this a decade plus. I’m not an abuelita yet, but I can get mine done in about 5 rolls  

    One hint from my sister’s husband - small turns when you’re rolling out. Think roll, turn your tortilla 90 degrees. Roll again. Rotate back about 15 degrees, rolle, 15 degrees roll, wash, rince, repeat.

    Im also a proponent of a good teflon coated double burner griddle. I use the All-clad at home but the cuisinart one works too.

    Off to read a lot of this. 

  4. I’ve been reading a lot about this Supercharger team gutting;, all I can really say is that it makes zero sense at all. Of all the moves, this has to be the dumbest one. Their charging network was their strength. It set them apart from any and everyone. You can’t drive anywhere without seeing superchargers. It’s almost frustrating (primarily not seeing non-Tesla chargers).

    But it was a thing he understood - if you make EVs you needed a way to charge them at places other than your house. They have the big lead, but if they aren’t working at it, that can shrink or be lost. 

    Ketamine is a hell of a drug. 

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  5. Going back a few days one thing lost about the earning call that Tesla did was this:

    https://www.pymnts.com/earnings/2024/tesla-calls-itself-an-ai-robotics-company-as-profits-plunge-55/

    image.thumb.png.b3de24edd9ec361753370bb0e1e2bda7.png

     

    So a man that gets pissed about people identifying as whatever gender they choose to identify as, just said that his car company identifies as an AI Robotics company? Am I reading that right?

     

    BTW - on Pivot a few days after this earning call, both Swisher and Galloway called out Elon and Tesla. Especially Galloway who really noted a few things:

    • Elon Musk really does the Jazz hands when his earnings suck. In this case he ran off the Affordiable car thing, the Robotics thing, the AI thing and even noted the autonomous taxi idea (which they currently see as DOA).
    • There was zero reason for Tesla to increase stock price based on that call because their earnings were awful
    • Despite whatever Musk says, Tesla is a car company and they should trade around where a car company should traded. He ran some numbers on Enterprise Multiple (EV/EBITDA) and how out of whack Tesla is:
      • Tech companies
        • Google - 20
        • Meta - 21
        • Microsoft - 26
          Scott called these strong and well performing/good companies
      • Automobile companies
        • GM - 7
        • BYD - 6
      • Yet for some out of whack/people are having a fever dream about it - Tesla trades at 35

    Fun listen - you should check it out:

    https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/karas-ketamine-trip-meta-and-tesla-earnings-and-the/id1073226719?i=1000653671341

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  6. 24 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

    Those of us who were 80s kids, a lot of our parents flipped out over the Adam Walsh murder, the Tylenol poisonings, and the rumored needles in Halloween candy.  That shit happened a long ways away from a lot of us and should not have affected our parents.  Plenty of parents all of the sudden got nervous about dumping their kids at the mall, or worse, they turned their Gen X kids into helicopter parents.

    And some of these were nothing more than pure. rumor that never happened - throw the drugged candies in with that too.

    I think this comment really nails it.

    23 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

    I think a couple of other things are at work here, as well, also stemming from the internet.

    The news cycle is lightning fast now, which encourages ethical journalists perhaps to cut corners.  In this case, I mean lack of editing, revision, and consideration of a story or article.  And that is a recipe for letting personal bias through.

    Second, the short, "sound bite" format of Twatter/X and other platforms virtually eliminates nuance from the news; there's just not room for it and I think this again encourages personal bias.

    And these are the factors weighing on journalists, real ones who strive to be ethical and have editors and staffs as noted above.  Let alone the "citizen journalists" who have no conception of journalistic ethics.

    Those two factors also weigh on the news consumer, who doesn't seem to want or have the capability to absorb nuance anymore.  So many have damaged attention spans anymore.  Maybe that ability was always limited by stupidity and lack of education, but I think the nature of things contributes as well.

    The two big takeaways here is the need to be the organization to break some angle of news and how much we have just devolved into a sound bite era when it comes to quotes/comments.

    You look at this, of course people think "Oh hey! I can do that!!" <Narrator's voice> No, in fact they really can't</Narrator's voice>. They think they can curate their own sound bite and videos - but they don't get all of the need for ethics or even how to be fair/balanced on these things. Heck, they don't even understand that news is really supposed to be providing facts.

    We've been living in an era for a few decades now where everything has to be attention getting or emotional swaying etc because of how the news cycle has changed. Tack on top of that how much engagement is the key word at places like Facebook and Twitter and what people "think" is news is really nothing of the sort.

     

    The result of all this? People are just putting up so much Bullshit for people to lap up. And they do.

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  7. Damn this is crappy all around. It sucks for the US because of the major loss of such an important player. But also for Dest if it hurts his chance to improve his standing among teams. 

  8. 10 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

    https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/30/24145133/tesla-layoffs-supercharger-team-elon-musk-hard-core

     

     

     

     

      Reveal hidden contents

    Others impacted by the new layoffs include Daniel Ho, a ten-year Tesla veteran who served as director of vehicle programs and new product initiatives, and as program manager for the Model S, 3, and Y vehicles. Most of the public policy team led by former head of policy and business development Rohan Patel (who left the company during the previous wave of layoffs) are also being let go.

    These latest job cuts follow what’s already shaping up to be a terrible year for Tesla. The company’s stock price has taken a beating as profit margins sunk to six-year lows amid price reductions that came in response to increased competition and lower demand for EVs. It’s also dealing with a plethora of reputational issues impacting its brand — including never-ending investigations into its Autopilot feature, a recall of its Cybertruck, and Musk’s contentious behavior both online and in the courtroom.

     

    It sounds an awful lot like he’s cutting his top earners and that he thinks he can replicate their work with lower earning people in similar roles. I wish him well on that one. 

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  9. On 4/24/2024 at 1:40 PM, mdmost said:

     

     

    The motion passed today meaning it will be voted on at the annual general meeting in June. I don't know what the vote was. It needed 14 votes to pass today. What I heard was:

    No: Man City, ManU, Villa

    Abstain: Chelsea

    But there could have been 1 or 2 other clubs to vote against this.

  10. 13 minutes ago, Schulz2.0 said:

    Both sides can argue they were unlucky.  Saka's goal came immediately after Kulusevski should have got a penalty. 

    I gotta wonder if VAR waived that one off because Arsenal scored. It’s been a question for a long time what would VAR do if their call would make that huge of an impact (give a penalty and remove an opposing goal). Maybe we now know. 

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