Some urban topic resources...

Baltimore: DTI - href="http://www.dtinational.org/">Development Training Institute
2510 St. Paul Street
Baltimore, MD 21218
Phone: 410-338-2512
Fax: 410-338-2751
info@dtinational.org

MIT OpenCourseWare » Urban Studies and Planning » Introduction to Housing, Community and Economic Development, Fall 2004

MIT OpenCourseWare » Urban Studies and Planning

Rockefeller Institute of Government: Urban Studies

Milano Graduate School A division of The New School -- Innovative master's degree programs in professions of critical importance to urban areas; a commitment to racial, ethnic, and gender diversity; and a concern for social responsibility, these are the hallmarks of the Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy.

Center for Civic Innovation

Urban Studies Program @ Stanford

Paris; And tonight, garlic scape Thai fish soup; fresh strawberries from the farm and cheese

Arrived in Paris, we met the crew during breakfast.

Karl held the baby, who also showed she could stand on her own (almost.)

Her mom and dad joined us, too.


Tombeau de Sartre & de Beauvoir en Montparnasse.


On our trip to Paris we walked one morning after breakfast through the Jardins Luxembourg up to the Montparnasse cemetery. Found Sartre's tomb but could not find Poulenc.

Saturday last, we stayed home: dinner

For dinner we had pasta, fish, strawberries:

• Pasta was a combination lemon-flavored garlic scape sauce arrabiata with penne
• Lightly floured haddock fillet sauteed in butter and olive oil with a quick sauce of fish sauce, lime juice, mirin
• Strawberries fresh from my last local GSA delivery - outrageously good, cut up on a bed of fresh salad greens with a bit of balsamic vinegar
• A bottle of prosecco
  

Garlic Scape Pesto / Hummus Dip

Garlic Scape Pesto / Hummus Dip was a huge hit at a Marla's farewell party this past Sunday. Note that only a couple recipes I found on the Internet point out that you should cut off the scapes below the bulge where the flower bud begins. Use the tops as decorations for the pesto / hummus dip. In the recipe certain ingredients are not essential but enhance the result, making it smoother, richer or both. You may omit the spinach or pine nuts, for example, if you don't have them, but they are nice touches.

INGREDIENTS
1-2 cups of garlic scapes
1-1 1/2 lemons
1 can chickpeas, drained.
1/8 - 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1-2 cups extra virgin olive oil
1-2 teaspoons salt
2-3 cups "tender" greens such as spinach, arugula, spicy greens mix
2-3 tablespoons sesame tahini
1 cup or more finely grated parmesan or romano cheese
1 cup pine nuts

PROCEDURE
Remove tops from 1-2 cups of scapes and reserve as decorations; cut in 2 in. lengths. Process with 1/2 - 1 cup olive oil in food processor for 2-3 min. until finely chopped.

Add drained chickpeas.
Add 2-3 tablespoons sesame tahini.
Add juice of 1 - 1 1/2 lemons, seeds removed.
Add 1/8 - 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper, to taste. You (I) want it to have an edge, but not to be overtly "Hot."
Add 1-2 teaspoons salt - I use kosher, but any will do. Salt to taste, not too much.
Process until chickpeas are finely ground.

You may want to taste at this point to see if more cayenne is needed. Note that the sauce will "heat up" as it sits.

Add 2-3 cups spinach or spicy greens or arugula, whatever you have, for more green color and to lighten the hummus. Process until finely ground and well integrated in sauce.

I also added 1 cup finely grated parmesan and a cup or so of pine nuts, also all ground in for another minute or two.

You want the sauce to be smooth for dipping. The raw scapes resist chopping so they require a good deal of processing. The end result will still have a little texture from the scapes and the pine nuts - a good thing!

As a dip, finish by putting dip in a bowl and dribbling fine extra virgin olive oil over it. As a future revision I would add some lightly toasted cumin seed: heat 1 teaspoon whole cumin seed in a skillet until it begins to be aromatic; grind it coarsely in a mortar; mix 1/2 in the dip. Sprinkle the remainder over the top.

This sauce / dip could as well be used as a pasta dressing or over a piece of fish to be baked. In this instance I served it as a dip in a bowl with peeled raw kohlrabi sliced thin and cut in half as chips. It got rave reviews.

Posted by: Mark Lindley | June 6, 2005 10:07 AM

Friday dinner, other developments

Dinner:

• Fresh sushi quality yellowfin steaks seared and sliced with ginger garlic sauce - per Pat Wells Bistro Cooking and Pleasures of the Viedtnamese Table of Mai Pham.
• Pommes de terre Savonette again, this time with organic russet potatoes more uniformly shaped - some cooked too long in water and were breaking up but still wonderful flavor, texture, the crisp skin on the soft potatoes
• Stir fried veggies - thai eggplants sliced and stir-fried with some left-over mixed greens, with soy sauce, hot sauce, mirin,
  
• lovely tossed salad with salad greens, spring onions, vinaigrete ala Jacques Pepin
• Nice bottle of merlot
• 
  

- Good meeting at MCIJ: got list of inmates for next Thu evening discussion
- Met Dr. Peters, Annapolis Gastro Assoc. who will perform endoscopy on me this Thu afternoon or earlier in the week if a cancellation occurs.
- firmed up plans after speaking to Chuch Weikel for discussion group on city planning for Annapolis
- Working with several lenders on refinancing real estate
- Monitoring investments
-

Dinner Monday, Memorial Day: Baked Shrimp w. Feta, Potatoes Savonette

Visited Loudon Park to review the stone where my family is buried. The inscription for Mother was done correctly. The cemetery seems to be going through a growth period as well as needing better maintenance. Our stone was okay but a number of older stones, of marble, seemed to have weathered badly. In a number of cases they were tumbled over or broken either by weather or vandals, unclear which.

• Baked Shrimp w. Feta
• Blanch shrimp 1 min. thawed, 1 1/2 min if frozen. Shell the shrimp. Make a tomato sauce. Layer shrimp, crumbled feta, tomato sauce. Top with feta. Bake 5-10 min. until sauce bubbles, feta melts. From Meze, by Kochilas (I think.)
• My changes: not enough shrimp, I cut up a fillet of haddock to fill in the holes. Also, adding some minced garlic to tomato sauce was nice. Adding minced mixed herbs when assembling, e.g., on the tomato sauce was a nice add, also. The minutes seemed off - I left in oven for 15-20 min or more. Fish did not overcook and the feta never melted.
  
• Dish was delicious. Could do same just with fish fillets whole or sliced up. Also tasty cold. There was a lot of liquid when I took it out, perhaps a result of too long in the oven. The juice was a great soup - would have been better with bread to soak it up.
  
• Potatoes Navonette:
• Julia and Jacques, a recipe by Jacques Pepin. Thick sliced potatoes are boiled with 1 tbsp each butter and peanut oil; covered with a lid to keep in steam. When potatoes are soft through per a knife inserted goes in and comes out with no resistance, let the rest of the water boil off and brown the potatoes on both sides in the remaining oils. Salt and pepper to taste. Be sure to scrape up any fond that sticks to the pan. It is the fried starch that leached into the water and it is tasty. Outstanding result.
• Perhaps this could be sprinkled with parsley or other herbs to serve but it works well to soak up the extra juice rendered in the shrimp/fish dish.