Archive for August, 2009
Barbecued Chicken Pizza
I’ve mentioned before that this pizza was one of the first recipes from Everyday Food I attempted to make. Because of that, it remains one of my favorites. I also love how easily it comes together. If you use store-bought chicken and pizza crust, it’s in the oven in minutes. And if you’re feeling ambitious, substitute homemade versions for either one of those ingredients, or both! Taking a cue from the “Stretch It” article in this month’s Everyday Food, I opted to poach my own chicken and stretch the remaining broth into a soup so I’d get more bang for my buck.
Want more pizza recipes? Check out our gallery for more pizza, pasta, and side ideas — why not throw a pizza party tonight?
Spinach-and-Brie Chicken with Tomato Orzo
Don’t you just love it when a recipe is easy enough for a weeknight, but also tastes special enough for company? This is one of those dishes! But don’t just take my word for it. See what other cooks had to say in the comments section of the recipe.
Here’s a recap:
“Delicious! Even the kids loved it!”
“…fantastic and so easy…truly a crowd pleaser!”
“this recipe was delicious, and so easy!”
Do you really need any more convincing? Make this tonight!
Chicken Thighs Braised in White Wine
Braising is a basic cooking method that chicken thighs hold up great to, leaving you with flavorful, juicy results. And even better, you get a bright, lemony pan sauce on the side. Be sure to cook up some rice or have bread on hand to take advantage of it. This meal is simple enough for a weeknight, but would be good to bookmark for the next time you need to impress guests. They’ll never guess it only takes 15 minutes of prep time.
And I’m not the only one who loves this recipe. The author at Dining Alone loves recipes involving chicken thighs, and Alex and Andrea at Blissful Bounty like pairing lemon with chicken.
What’s your favorite braising recipe?
Seared-Chicken Salad with Cherries and Goat-Cheese Dressing
I am addicted to Bing cherries during the summer months and was excited to find a way to incorporate them into a healthy weeknight dinner. I had used dried cherries in salads before but never fresh. In this light salad, salty walnuts balance the sweetness of the cherries, and a tangy sour cream and goat cheese dressing brings it all together. Slices of chicken add more protein, so you’ll feel sated at the end of your salad dinner.
What fruit do you like to eat in salads?
Jerk Chicken Breasts, Fried Plantains, and Bibb Salad
The sunny colors of this dish are enough to make me forget it’s raining outside, again (it has rained for weeks in New York City). Orange segments brighten up a simple Bibb lettuce salad and fried plantains add some sunny warmth to the plate. But the star of the dish is the spicy jerk-seasoned chicken—bone-in breasts yield extra juicy results. And while it roasts in the oven, you can focus on pulling together the sides.
Do you have a favorite rainy-day meal?
Anger at UK file-sharing policy
Internet service providers (ISPs) have reacted with anger to new proposals on how to tackle internet piracy.
The government is proposing a tougher stance which would include cutting off repeat offenders from the net.
UK ISP Talk Talk said the recommendations were likely to “breach fundamental rights” and would not work.
Virgin said that “persuasion not coercion” was key in the fight to crack down on the estimated six million file-sharers in the UK.
TalkTalk’s director of regulation Andrew Heaney told the BBC News the ISP was as keen as anyone to clamp down on illegal file-sharers.
“This is best done by making sure there are legal alternatives and educating people, writing letters to alleged file-sharers and, if necessary, taking them to court.”
But introducing measures to simply cut people off will not work, he said.
“Disconnecting alleged offenders will be futile given that it is relatively easy for determined file-sharers to mask their identity or their activity to avoid detection,” he added.
There are also concerns that the method of identifying offenders using the IP address of a specific machine may punish those who share a web connection.
A spokeswoman for Virgin Media was concerned that a “heavy-handed, punitive regime will simply alienate consumers”.
Engelbart’s demo, 40 years later
On December 9, 1968, before a packed Brooks Hall auditorium in San Francisco, Douglas Engelbart, the director of Stanford Research Institute’s Augmentation Research Center, took the stage and changed computing forever.
During a 100-minute presentation, Engelbart demonstrated to 1,000 people the work that he and SRI’s chief engineer, Bill English, had been doing, work that is still recognizable in the way that everyone uses computers today.
It’s possible, some have said, that there never had been, nor never would be, another presentation that unveiled as many new paradigm-shifting technologies. They included the world’s first publicly seen mouse, as well as the introduction of hyperlinks and navigable windows. The presentation drew a standing ovation.
And it moved John Markoff, reporter at The New York Times and author of What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry, to write: “There were two things that particularly dazzled the audience on that rainy Monday morning.”
First, computing had made the leap from number crunching to become a communications and information-retrieval tool. Second, the machine was being used interactively with all its resources appearing to be devoted to a single individual. It was the first time that truly personal computing had been seen.
On Tuesday, SRI will present “Engelbart and the Dawn of Interactive Computing: SRI’s Revolutionary 1968 Demo,” a 40th anniversary celebration of what technology writer Steven Levy once called “the mother of all demos.”
Olympic aim to get Britons online
The race is on to get as many British people online as possible by 2012, Martha Lane Fox has told the BBC.
As the government’s new Digital Champion she has been charged with getting millions online who are not yet connected to the internet.
Speaking to BBC Business Editor Robert Peston, Ms Lane Fox said she wanted a “virtual race” to coincide with preparations for the 2012 Olympics.
She also said there were too few women working in technology in the UK.
“They’ve asked me to see what really clever applications of technology could help people get more employment, get more choices, take control of where they live of their own situation in a slightly more cohesive way,” the co-founder of lastminute.com said.
She called for “a kind of virtual race to get as many people online by the Olympics alongside all the real physical races that will be going on.”
Some 17 million Britons are currently not online, either out of choice or because they cannot afford internet connectivity.
Ms Lane Fox has indicated that she wants to concentrate on the six million poorest “nonliners” first.
She will be relying on people already online to convince others to join them.
“The only way I think we can do that is if all of us as individuals sit down and think okay, how can I bring someone on this journey with me?
“Get kids training grannies, get all of us kind of plugging into our local communities to try and pull the whole country along.
“If we all took it on ourselves to train 10, 20 people, the job is done,” she said.
Being Iron Man, in real time
At Industrial Light & Magic in San Francisco, motion-capture specialists work with a system that allows them to shoot video of an actor in a special suit and then have his or her movements reflected in real time in 3D. The idea is that they can superimpose the animation of the actor on just about any kind of background, allowing for a much more diverse, and more efficient, selection of potential settings for a movie scene.
Here, Iron Man is superimposed on a background of a desert setting. An actor in a motion-capture suit can be filmed and his or her movements reflected in real time by the Iron Man character.
Thousands call for Turing apology
Thousands of people have signed a Downing Street petition calling for a posthumous government apology to World War II code breaker Alan Turing.
Writer Ian McEwan has just backed the campaign, which already has the support of scientist Richard Dawkins.
In 1952 Turing was prosecuted under the gross indecency act after admitting to a sexual relationship with a man. Two years later he killed himself.
The petition was the idea of computer scientist John Graham-Cumming.
He is seeking an apology for the way the young mathematician was treated after his conviction. He has also written to the Queen to ask for a posthumous knighthood to be awarded to the British mathematician.
Alan Turing was given experimental chemical castration as a “treatment” and his security privileges were removed, meaning he could not continue work for the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
“This added insult and humiliation ultimately drove him to suicide,” said gay-rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, who also backs the campaign. “With Turing’s death, Britain and the world lost one of its finest intellectual minds. A government apology and posthumous pardon are long overdue.”
National legacy
Alan Turing is most famous for his code-breaking work at Bletchley Park during WWII, helping to create the Bombe that cracked messages enciphered with the German Enigma machines.
However he also made significant contributions to the emerging fields artificial intelligence and computing.
In 1936 he established the conceptual and philosophical basis for the rise of computers in a seminal paper called “On Computable Numbers”, whilst in 1950 he devised a test to measure the intelligence of a machine. Today it is known as the Turing Test.
After the war he worked at many institution including the University of Manchester, where he worked on the Manchester Mark 1, one of the first recognisable modern computers.
There is a memorial statue of him in Manchester’s Sackville Gardens which was unveiled in 2001.
“I kept reading about potential funding cuts at Bletchley Park and I suddenly felt really mad about it,” said Mr Graham-Cumming.
“I felt Turing was getting overlooked as being a British genius and that there was a blindspot in the public eye about an important man.”
He has so far collected more than 5,500 signatures.
He admits that an official apology to Alan Turing is “unlikely”, as Mr Turing has no known surviving family, but he says that the real aim of the petition is symbolic.
“The most important thing to me is that people hear about Alan Turing and realise his incredible impact on the modern world, and how terrible the impact of prejudice was on him,” he said.
