The Triple Crown Will Never Be Won Ever Again

I've watched a lot of horse racing over the years.  A lot.  That's what happens when you grow up in a family of compulsive gamblers an hour drive from three different horse tracks (well, more than that, but I don't count the trotters - thoroughbreds only).

I'll save my reminiscences about track life (and there are many) for future posts.  The issue at hand is the impending flurry (horse racing doesn't merit a deluge any more) of media coverage touting the possibility of horse racing's first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed turned the trick in 1978.

No need to read any of those articles; I will save you the trouble:

It's not gonna happen

The Triple Crown will never be won again in its current form.  And it's The Belmont's fault.

If you've at least casually followed horse racing in the past, you'll probably have noticed the following pattern:

• Nobody has any clue who will win the Derby
• The horses that run well in the Derby are always right up there at the Preakness.  Maybe the Derby winner pulls it out and sets up a possible Triple Crown
• Someone else always wins The Belmont.  Always.  (well, at least since 1978)

Here's why:

1. The Schedule:
   The Triple Crown is 3 races in a little over a month.  That is incredibly demanding on the horses, who at just three years old, often haven't run much more than a half dozen or so races in their lives.  Triple Crown hopeful I'll Have Another will be running his 8th race ever at the Belmont, meaning that nearly half of his races have been run since the first Saturday in May.  He's had to run the race of his life twice so far.  Does he really have a 3rd race in him?
   
2. The Distance:
   Ever wonder why so-called experts have so much trouble picking the Kentucky Derby winner every year?  It's the distance.  As two-year olds, most horses rarely run much more than 1 mile.  Early in their three-year old season, they'll usually run at 1 1/16, or maybe 1 1/8 miles.  At 1 1/4 miles, The Derby is the longest race those horses have ever run - until The Belmont.  The Belmont is 1 1/2 miles long.  It is the first, and in most cases, the ONLY time in their lives that these horses will be asked to run that extra 1/4 mile.  And that makes a huge difference.  But maybe not as much of a difference as...
    
3. The Professional Spoilers:
   Because of The Belmont's unique distance, the training, and strategy for that race has evolved to where it is now completely different from that for the other two Triple Crown Jewels.  As a result, there has also evolved a subset of horse owners and trainers who will take a two-year old with perceived long-distance qualities, and train it specifically for The Belmont.  These horses will not even be entered into The Derby or The Preakness - They are dedicated Belmont horses.  Does it work?  Hell yeah.  Since 1978, of the 34 Belmont winners, 22 of them have skipped at least one of the previous two Triple Crown races.  Dedicated training, plus lighter race schedule, equals Belmont advantage.

So why stack the deck?

Tradition.  That is the only reason to keep things as they are.  The schedule and distance are sacred cows, but the racing bodies should be able to do something about the Professional Spoilers.  Back in the old days, everybody used to run in all three races, but now, with stables picking their spots, the task of winning all three races has become sisyphean.  And a Triple Crown that is unwinnable is bad for the sport.

And horse racing so badly wants, and needs a Triple Crown winner.  Year by year, horse racing drops further out of the public eye, and the horse racing demographic gets older, and less numerous.  It needs a Triple Crown winner like Greece needs a bailout.  But it won't get one.  Not like this.

So who do I see winning The Belmont this year?

Well, let's start from the outside post and work our way in:

PP12: My Adonis
Skipped both The Derby and The Preakness (check)
Has not won a race this year
Had his worst finish in his longest race (1 1/8 miles)
Prognosis: No chance

PP11: I'll Have Another
Won both The Derby and The Preakness
Prognosis: No chance, but may have just enough in him to fool you as he hits the home stretch, makes a valiant, glorious push, and ultimately fails.

PP10: Optimizer
Finished 11th at The Derby.  6th at The Preakness
Has not won a race this year
Prognosis: No chance

PP9: Paynter
Skipped both The Derby and The Preakness (check)
In 4 races this year, has 2 wins and 1 place (that means "came in 2nd")
Longest win this year: 1 1/16 miles
Prognosis: Intriguing, but Paynter likes to run from the front, and The Belmont is not kind to front-runners.  At 8-1, there's some value to be had there, but I have my doubts

PP8: Guyana Star Dweej
Skipped both The Derby and The Preakness (check)
In 3 races this year has 1 win and 2 places
Has not run more than 1 mile - EVER
Prognosis: Hard to read given he has no experience at over a mile, but he has the right running style, has a great pedigree (that actually does matter) and has been hanging out at the Belmont track since April (he ran his most recent race there).  At 50-1, he is absolutely worth a flier - plus, he has the best name in the field.

PP7: Five Sixteen
Skipped both The Derby and The Preakness (check)
In 3 races this year has 1 win and 1 show (that means "came in 3rd")
Longest win this year: 1 1/8 miles
Prognosis: Likes to run with the leaders, which is a Belmont no-no.  50-1 longshot for a proper reason.  No chance.

PP6: Ravelo's Boy
Skipped both The Derby and The Preakness (check)
Has not won a race this year
Has not run more than 1 1/16 miles
Prognosis: No chance

PP5: Dullahan
3rd in The Derby.  Skipped The Preakness (check)
In 3 races this year has 1 win, 1 place, 1show
Longest win this year: 1 1/8 miles
Prognosis: A solid contender.  Proved at The Derby he can run with the big boys (was closing at the end and very nearly took 2nd), and is better rested than I'll Have Another.  Public has bet him down to 5-1, and he's still good value at those odds.

PP4: Atigun
Skipped both The Derby and The Preakness (check)
In 3 races this year has 1 win (1 1/16 miles)
Prognosis: His 1 win was in a race against marginal competition. Has not looked great against better horses.  30-1 and should probably be longer.  No chance

PP3: Union Rags
7th at The Derby.  Skipped The Preakness (check)
In 3 races this year has 1 win and 1 show
Longest win this year: 1 1/16 miles
Prognosis: Ran well down the stretch at The Derby coming from 13th up to 7th.  The public likes him at 6-1, but in his one win, he was up near the front the whole race, and I don't know if he is up for negotiating traffic at this inside post.

PP2: Unstoppable U
Skipped both The Derby and The Preakness (check)
In 2 races this year, has 2 wins
Longest win this year: 1 Mile
Prognosis: His other win was 6 Furlongs (3/4 miles), and he won both races going wire-to-wire. That's not how you run The Belmont.  No chance.

PP1: Street Life
Skipped both The Derby and The Preakness (check)
In 3 races this year, has 1 win, 1 show
Longest win this year: 1 1/16 miles
Prognosis: Ladies and Gentlemen, your 2012 Belmont winner!  Perfect running style for The Belmont.  Likes to sit in dead last and then make a move late.  In the two races he didn't win, he started his move too late and ran out of track.  His last race was at Belmont and he looked great (for video of that race click here), coming from way off the pace to finish 3rd and still closing at the final pole.  He'll have plenty to work with here as long as he doesn't fall too far behind in the early going.  Sitting at 12-1 he is awesome value. 

So, your next question is probably "How do I bet this?"

Glad you asked.

I obviously love Street Life, and think that Dullahan looks solid too.  I'll Have Another is totally set up for a heartbreaking 2nd place finish, so you need to have him on your ticket for that.  Leaving you with:

$2 Exacta Box: Street Life + Dullahan + I'll Have Another
That will set you back $12

For your longshot, put $2 on Win, Place and Show for Guyana Star Dweej
That will set you back $6

Enjoy the race!

Gluten Free Livin' - The Best Gluten-Free Beer In The World: Celia by Zatec

Ever since Liz's celiac diagnosis, we have made it a point to try every gluten-free beer we come across.  This has led to several misadventures involving well-intended, but poorly-executed "beers" that, while gluten-free, are clearly not beers.

Yeah, it's kinda like that

The fact of the matter is: Beer is made of barley.  And without barley, it is very difficult to make beer.

Oot and Aboot in DC: Rogue Sessions With Jen Caroll

This past Saturday, Liz and I splurged on a dinner reservation at Rogue24, enticed by the Jen Carroll edition of the Rogue Sessions concept that has been getting a lot of presumably well-deserved hype around DC the past several weeks.

Adventures in Charcuterie - Episode 1: This is how sausage is made

Every culture in human history that has achieved any kind of success has figured out a way to make some variation on tubular meat.  Much like humanity's eternal need to get a buzz (a post for another time), the need for delicious, preservable, and portable meat preparations is universal.

Having grown up eating a variety of different European and Asian sausages, I was very excited to receive Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie cookbook for Christmas.

And so, after doing some reading and ordering some materials online, I set to work at making my first ever batch of sausage.

Mise-en-Place:

5 lbs  Pork Shoulder / pork butt / picnic ham / etc (this cut of pig has a lot of names)
3 tbsp Salt
1 tbsp Pepper
3 tbsp Chopped Garlic
1 cup Red Wine (ice cold)
Casings, rinsed, and soaked (optional)

Butchery:



You don't want the pork skin in your sausage, so trim that off.  It should go without saying to make sure you use a very sharp knife, but I'm saying it anyways.  Dull knives are dangerous!

Dice the pork.  I went with about a 1-inch dice, and to be honest, I should have gone smaller, as the bigger pieces required more effort to get through the grinder.

Season the pork with the salt, pepper and garlic.  It's easiest to just use your hands to mix all the ingredients and get everything uniform.

SUPER IMPORTANT: Chill everything in the freezer for 30-60 minutes.  Also, put all the pieces of your grinder in the freezer too.  The grinding process will generate a fair bit of heat, and if your meat heats up too much, the fat will melt, thereby killing your sausage's texture.  Warmer temperatures are also more conducive to microbial growth, and bacteria growing in your sausage is bad.

Grinding:

Grind your meat through the coarse die, into a bowl set into ice (again, temperature control is tres important).




This is a visceral process, so be prepared for that if you've never done it before.  I used the grinder attachment for our KitchenAid Mixer, and it worked pretty well, although there was a fair bit of what sausage geeks call "smear" going on, which isn't ideal.

Nonetheless, I managed to get everything ground without too much hassle.  I did have to stop and clear the grinder once during the process, which was every bit as gross as you'd think it would be.

Mixing:

Add the cold wine to the ground meat and mix to combine.  I used the paddle attachment on our KitchenAid for about a minute or so.

Chill and Test:

Pull a sample (2 tbsp or so) of the sausage mixture and put the rest into the freezer to chill while you do some quality control.


Saute your sample in a pan with a little bit of oil and taste it.

My sample tasted salty as all hell - you know, if hell were a salt flat that you were trying to eat.  In retrospect, I should have reduced the amount of salt to account for the amount of pork lost when I removed the skin at the start of the prep.  Ah well, not much to do about it at this point except press on to:

Stuffing:

Not strictly necessary.  It's totally fine to shape the sausage into patties at this point and call it a day, but I wanted to try our sausage stuffer attachment too, so away we went.

I bought pretubed, natural hog casings from thesausagemaker.com and soaked them overnight to make sure they'd be ready to go.

As with grinding, I made sure to chill all the stuffer parts in the freezer prior to use.

The stuffing process takes some getting used to, and my inner 12-year old kept wanting to make terrible, and juvenile comments the whole time.  I had some difficulty gauging how full to stuff the casings, and wound up splitting the casing at one point when I overstuffed one section, and also wound up with a few sections that were woefully understuffed.  But after a little while, I sorta got the hang of it, and after twisting the stuffed coil into links, wound up with this:



Not a bad-looking result for a first time, I figure.  Total yield was about 18 six-inch links.

Cooking and Tasting:

As noted earlier, this first batch was a fair bit on the salty side.  In an attempt to off-set that in the cooking process the first time I went to cook some of these, I did two things:

1. I blanched the sausages for a couple of minutes in simmering water to draw out some of the excess salt.
2. I sauteed the blanched sausages together with onions, peppers and mushrooms that had not been seasoned with any salt, allowing the salt from the sausage to do the seasoning for me.

That approach worked pretty well, and Liz and I enjoyed a couple of dinners the following week using this formula.

Other things we're looking forward to trying with this sausage include pasta sauce, and cassoulet, which also seem like good applications that can off-set a salty sausage.

A Few Other Notes:

There is a lot of garlic in this sausage.  Make sure you have a fresh box of baking soda in your fridge and in your freezer so that you don't wind up flavouring your entire food supply with garlic.  Not that it's necessarily a bad thing in all cases, but chilling a beverage with garlic-infused ice cubes probably isn't what you're looking for...

Watching The Wire Part III: End Season One

I've been slacking on keeping up with my Wire-watching thoughts and impressions, but suffice to say that Season One is in the books, and I am really looking forward to watching Season Two.

I can tell that one of the tactics that David Simon seems to enjoy is getting you to like a character, and then having bad things happen to that character.  He's a bit of a bastard that way, to be honest, although he at least gives you the courtesy of telegraphing it ahead of time so that you can prepare yourself.

Case in point - did any of you not see Wallace's death coming a mile away?  That was an upsetting one for me - I liked that kid...  You also had to know that the newly-promoted Stinkum was going to get it before long too.  No shocker there.

Kima getting shot though... that one surprised me.  That whole sequence where her undercover situation just keeps getting worse and worse (music's too loud to hear anything, street signs are spun around, no backup) is really well done, and yet, despite all signals to the contrary, I still found myself thinking "well, she's got a gun taped under the seat, she'll be ok... I mean there's no way that they would - OMG SHE GOT SHOT!!!"

All those years in which I wasn't watching The Wire, many of you kept telling me how awesome it was, but couldn't really articulate why.  After noting my own reactions to Wallace getting killed and Kima getting shot, I understand now.  These are all obviously fictional characters, and yet the show is so well assembled that they all feel astonishingly real. 

Except for Omar - nobody's that bad@$$ in real-life...

Gluten Free Livin' - Buckwheat Pancakes

About 3 and a half years ago, after a long, and arduous diagnostic process, Liz found out that she was gluten-intolerant / celiac / whatever other term you want.  After an initial process of "ZOMG!!! NO PIZZA!!! NO BEER!!! WTFBBQ!!!" we went about eliminating gluten from her lifestyle (which coincidentally meant eliminating gluten from many aspects of my lifestyle too).  It's kinda like how Samuel L Jackson puts it in Pulp Fiction:

 "My wife is a vegetarian, which pretty much makes me a vegetarian." (just sub "gluten free" for vegetarian)

But after doing some research, we found that being Gluten-Free wasn't nearly as onerous as we thought it might be.  There are certainly compromises that need to be made, but by and large, Liz has made the transition pretty well.

A big part of going gluten-free involves finding ways to keep your carby comfort foods in the rotation in a gluten-free form.  And when it comes to breakfast, that means Gluten-Free Pancakes!

Here's the mise-en-place:

1 Cup - Buckwheat flour
1/2 Cup - Milk (plus a little extra as required)
1/2 Tsp - Baking Powder
3 Eggs

Buckwheat flour has no gluten in it, and has a great flavour to it.  It's classically used in a number of French crepe recipes (usually from Brittany), but the goal here is not for a thin, rolled-up crepe - We're going for a thick, fluffy pancake, something that can be difficult to achieve without a gluteny flour. 

The Key to a thick, fluffy, gluten-free pancake, as it turns out, is something that I pulled from a Jamie Oliver episode many years ago: Separate your eggs, and whip the whites.  Here's the drill:

Step 1:
Separate your eggs.

Step 2: Deal with the yolks
Yolks go into a bowl with the flour, milk and baking powder.  Mix them thoroughly.  You can add as much as another 1/4 cup of milk if your batter is thicker than you like it.  Any more than that, and you're getting into crepe batter territory

Step 3: Whip It
Whip the whites until stiff peaks form.  What the hell does "stiff peaks" mean?  Good question.  Here's a picture:

Stiff Peaks - Got it?  Good.

Step 4: Combine
Fold the whites into the batter.  Don't try to get everything 100% uniform, you'll just wind up breaking down the air bubbles you're trying to introduce into the mixture.  Just get the egg whites incorporated to the point where there aren't big white chunks of foam floating around, and then stop.

Photo courtesy of Liz - And yes, I always wear a Metallica T-shirt when I make rockin' food

Step 5: Prep your pan
Put a skillet on medium or medium-low heat depending on how nuclear your stove is.  Melt a tablespoon or two of butter and WAIT for the butter to melt and get hot.  The #1 reason (Number ONE) for subpar pancakes at this stage is a pan that isn't hot enough.  Test your pan by making a miniature pancake, about the size of a quarter.  If you don't hear an immediate sizzle, then your pan is not hot enough.

Step 6: Make Pancakes - Part I
Spoon dollops of batter onto your pan.  If you've done it right, the batter should stand up a bit on its own, and you may need to shake your pan to get the pancakes to flatten out. 

Step 6a: Garnishment
Optionally, if you wanted to add berries, or banana slices, or chocolate chips, this is where to do it.  Just press your chosen accoutrement into the top of each pancake as it's cooking.

Step 7: Make Pancakes - Part II
When you see bubbles come up to the top surface of the pancakes, it's almost time to flip.  When you see the bubbles around the edges pop and they don't close back over, it's time to flip your pancakes.  Again, if you got your egg whites nice and stiff, you may need to pat your pancakes down with a spatula to flatten them out properly.  They should only need a minute or two to get brown on the flipped side before they are ready.

Step 8: Eat Pancakes

You'll note that the buckwheat flour yields a darker colour than conventional pancakes.  That is totally normal.  You may also have some contrasting bits of egg white on the interior of some of your pancakes.  That is also normal.  If you stirred the mixture enough to get the egg whites 100% uniformly distributed, you would lose a lot of the fluffiness.

Tasting Notes:

Going with 100% buckwheat flour does result in some inherent differences with respect to taste and feel.  I have seen buckwheat flour described as tasting nutty, earthy, grassy... I don't think earthy is accurate (mushrooms are earthy - buckwheat not so much), but somewhere between nutty and grassy sounds about right.  I like it a lot, but it is distinct, and quite different in flavour than wheat flour pancakes.  The important thing is that it goes great with Maple Syrup!

Texturally, buckwheat flour is pretty much always sold as a whole-grain flour.  That means it is high in fibre and very good for you.  It also means that it is going to be less luxurious from a mouth feel standpoint than refined wheat flour.

I'm sure that I can improve on this recipe by subbing in some chickpea, rice or tapioca flour to lend a little more smoothness to the mouth feel, but by and large, these pancakes are delicious as they are, and simple to prepare.  That egg white trick works great with regular pancakes too, btw.

Jeremy Lin, AZN solidarity, and Learning to cheer for a team from NY

Eight years ago, William Hung went on American Idol, and single-handedly set the cause of the Asian dude back 10 years.

Eight days ago, Jeremy Lin became the starting point guard for the New York Knicks and got those 10 years back, and then some.

It's a bit of a funny thing being a North American of Asian descent.  The stereotypes that precede you are ubiquitous, often unflattering, but by-and-large tolerated for reasons that I will leave a sociologist to cover.  It's no big thing though, and no Asian person I know would ever acknowledge those stereotypes as representing any kind of real adversity - just a social annoyance for which you learn a compendium of sharp retorts to use when necessary at an early age.  Reality is too nuanced to get caught up in uncreative rhetorical exchanges with morons, right?  Right.  Society has moved on, and is all post-racial now, right?  Right.  After all, Asians are a prosperous demographic, and model minority, right? Right.

So... why is it that every North American of Asian descent has jumped on the Jeremy Lin bandwagon with the kind of zeal usually reserved for... well, no-one?

The kind of Asian-Solidarity that has emerged in the wake of #Linsanity is fascinating to me, precisely because it's the kind of thing that I thought I should be immune to.  I identify more as being Canadian than as being Asian.  I'm a hockey guy, and Paul Kariya broke through as a sports star of Asian descent long ago.  I dislike NBA basketball.  I hate every New York sports team.

And yet, I am 100% down with #Linsanity.

This past weekend, I was out in San Diego for a friend's wedding.  At the reception, I happened to be seated at a table with two other North Americans of Asian descent.  As often happens when dudes are first introduced and playing the small-talk game, the conversation soon drifted sports-ward.  I can't remember which one of us first broached the subject, but at some point the question "did you watch the Knicks/Lakers game last night?" was asked, and instantly the bonds of AZN brotherhood were formed.  We couldn't help ourselves.  None of us were Knicks fans.  If you had asked us the previous week, I doubt that we could have named more than 3 players on the Knicks between the 3 of us.  And yet, there we were, raving about Jeremy Lin's 38 point demolition of the Lakers as if we were stereotypical Asian parents talking about a son who had gotten into Harvard.

I would have been disgusted with myself if I hadn't been so happy about it.

How did I get here?  Where did this compulsion to throw my unquestioning support behind an obscure benchwarmer solely because he is Asian come from (and make no mistake, I would not have spared this story 10 minutes of attention if Jeremy Lin had been, say... Maltese)?

I'm not going to try to speak in generalities here.  All I can give you is my own assessment of myself - and here's what it comes down to for me: I am a huge Jeremy Lin fan, because he has given the public's concept of "The Asian Dude" just enough of a jolt to question the old stereotypes, and to have people looking for new ones.

Yes, Jeremy Lin went to Harvard.  Yes, Jeremy Lin has supportive (but undoubtedly demanding) parents.  Yes, Jeremy Lin has a brother who is a dentist who let him sleep on his couch.  Yes, Jeremy Lin is a nice guy, and a hard worker.  All a standard part of the standard Asian dude package.

But being able to throw out a ridiculous spin move on Derek Fisher is not a part of that package.  Going shot for shot with Kobe Bryant in the 4th quarter is not a part of that package.  Blowing by John Wall and throwing down a one handed dunk is most assuredly not a part of that package.

When I look at my Twitter feed, and see it blowing up with puns and nicknames and barely-understandable ebonics phrases that border on being a little on the racist side, I love it, because all of a sudden, the old stereotypes don't apply the way they used to.  The Twitterverse has had to get a little bit creative with incorporating racial elements to their Asian dude humour.  Some attempts have been less successful than others (that means you, Jason Whitlock), but by and large, I'm kind of enjoying it.  I mean, let's be honest here, "Yellow Mamba" has a pretty bad@$$ ring to it, doesn't it?  And when I see myriad African-American commentators use the phrase "my yellow n*gga", I gotta be honest - it feels kinda validating in a Dave-Chappelle-Skit kind of way.

It just feels refreshingly different.  And a million miles away from American Idol.