Are you afraid of the silence?

Who's going to be the next defensive coordinator at UGA?  The silence is deafening.  I really think we'd be in better position had we made our move last year.  Look at the competition this year, which is significant:  UF and FSU.  These are schools that are recruiting out of our backyard, and we're having to fight with them over a defensive coach, now?  Like MNF, "C'mon, man?!?!?"

Don't get me wrong.  I've got the utmost faith in Richt about choosing someone that's more than capable of filling the vacancy, but it would be nice to hear something about interviews or at least discussions with someone other than Kirby Smart (forget it, seriously?) and Bud Foster (even bigger pipedream).  CMR is a man of faith, and I guess he's pushing ours to the limit.  The upside is the donation to the Hartmann fund is likely to be less than it was a couple of years ago.  So at least we've got that going for us.  Which is freaking nice.

I'm still in, lock stock, and barrel.  But I don't have to like it.

Frankly, I'm nervous, and becoming more nervous with every passing hour.

GDSEWWWWW





Didn't you get it?
(go 'dawgs, sic 'em, woof woof woof woof woof)

WTP2 College Football Bowl Pool

The 5th annual White Trash Porch Party College Football Bowl Pool is up at Fun Office Pools dot com. CLICK HERE to play. Picks are due by Saturday. Forward this link to your friends. More players = more in the kitty. If the link does not work, copy http://www.funofficepools.com/joinpool.php?Passed_Pool_Key=4816421fb10 into the address field of your browser.


Pool Name: White Trash Porch Party 2009-2010 Football Bowl Pool




MAB

Caramelized pecan tart

Pecan.  The way I see it, there are three ways to say this word, and at least one of them is wrong. I say this being a self-proclaimed authority as I'm from Mitchell County, GA, one of the top pecan-producing counties in the entire country. And when the old-timers down there say PEE-KANS, then by God, that's how you say it.  You can say pi-KAHN ("pin" not "pie") if you'd like. Just please don't say PEE-KAHN.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. And if you really like pecans, check out this link to my uncle and cousin's farm. (No disclosures to report.)

From Drop Box

This is a recipe in two parts. One for the crust, and the other for the filling.
I've wrestled with the pastry dough recipe for a few months, and I think I've finally found something that works for me. This is fun recipe because it strings a bunch of techniques together all into one, and I think it helps you become a better cook for other stuff. Here are the rules:

1. Pie dough should be made with low-gluten flour or else it will be tough and shrink (it shrinks?). Low-gluten flour includes White Lily, Swansdown, and King Arthur cake flour. In general, the further north the flour comes from, the higher the gluten, having something to do with the grain variety and cold weather.
   
2. There's a tradeoff between ease of use (Crisco or shortening) and flavor (butter). Butter gets too soft at room temperature or more precisely kitchen temperature, and if it forms a dough paste instead of staying flaky, the game's over.
3. Acids and sugar make for softer dough because of their interaction with gluten.
4. Add flavorings to your dough depending on what you're making (eg. cinnamon, nutmeg, grated parmesan, etc.).  Use the microplane grater.
   
5. Sugar will set harder the higher the finishing temperature.

Tart-dough (pate sucre) for 10-inch tart pan

300gm low gluten flour
200gm butter (or 50/50 Crisco and butter)
1 tsp of salt
1/4 cup of sugar

Pulse this in the food processor until it looks like oatmeal or at worst coarse, wet sand. You can do this in a large bowl with the pastry blender, but it takes longer, and if it's not going well, you may have to take a break and stick in the freezer. Main thing is not letting the butter melt and form a paste.  Since it's winter time, do it outside.

Add ice water a couple of tbsp at a time until the dough is wet enough to come together. This DOES NOT necessarily mean to pulse it until it forms a ball. Once you can get it together, wrap in plastic wrap, and stick it in the fridge for about 30 minutes. Normally that would be while you're working on your filling, but not this one. After the 30 minutes, take it out of the fridge, and roll to about 1cm or 1/4 inch or so. Blind bake it at around 400F in your tart shell until just brown, don't forget to put parchment paper or foil down with pie weights (pinto beans that you can reuse).

Filling

1 1/4 cup of light brown sugar
1/2 cup honey
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 sticks of butter
1/2 - 1 cup of water (optional)

Put all of this in at smallest a 2.5 quart saucepan, preferably 3 qt, and heat it until it turns amber and starts to foam a little bit, about 10 minutes.

1 cup heavy cream
1-2 tsp of curry powder (trust me)

You'll need a candy thermometer to do this, or some experience making candy. Add your final ingredients, and bring to high heat. If you have a lot of water in there, it may take longer to get to your target heat.

Here's where you can diverge a little. If you have a candy thermometer, you want the mixture to get to 240F and immediately take off heat. If you don't have a thermometer, you can set up a cup of ice water and intermittently slide a few drops of your candy into the water. It sets immediately, and that's going to be the final consistency. You want caramel (soft ball stage), probably not as chewy as tootsie rolls. Remember, the higher the heat, the harder the candy. Of course you can try this way (from Ian Kelly's biography of Antonin Careme, Cooking for Kings)

• Freezing his hand first in iced water, Antonin then plunged it straight into the boiling sugar, and back into the cold. A kitchen-boy gasped - Carême's patissier trick never failed to impress. He repeated the process, then took a knife, dipped it into the top of the sugar-lava and then into the cup of water. He brought it straight out, cracking the crystalline sugar clean from the knife and announced in his thick Parisian accent, 'Cassa.' The sugar was cracked and ready to spin. Antonin stood back from the stove with the first spouted pan. He held the base mould at his waist and raised the pan to head height and started to pour. The thread of sugar fell towards the mould, like a perfect skein of hot wax, and Antonin laced it round in one continuous movement.

When you get the consistency you want, act quickly. Pour the caramel into your tart shell, drop some pecan halves in there (about 1/2-3/4 pound). My picture shows a full pound, which is too much.  You can put the pie back into the oven at high temperature for a couple of minutes. What this will do is harden the top of your candy and the exposed pecans. Don't leave it for more than 5 minutes or so. The caramel will continue to cook making it too chewy.

Final notes

• The curry powder isn't necessary but it adds a nice sharp tang to it, just don't add too much.
• The salt is in it because most everything needs a little salt to add accent to flavor.  According to Thomas Keller, the only seasoning agents are salt and acid.  Pepper is a flavored spice.
• You can add water to the caramel mixture as you start to use the "wet method."  This may make it take a little longer to get to your target temperature, but sometimes that extra time is nice.
• The higher the butter percentage of your pastry dough, the colder it needs to stay.  Shortening is easy to use because it's solid at room or kitchen temperature.  Butter starts to melt at 75 or so.  An average kitchen with an oven on is hotter than that.
• Blind baking is a useful technique because fillings may frequently finish at a different time than the crust.  Most recipes you can cook filling and crust separately, and put them together at the end.
• If you don't have brown sugar, you can make caramel with regular granular sugar.  I've made it this way and I used molassess instead of honey.  It's a slightly different flavor profile, but still comes out great.  Brown sugar makes it darker (obviously), but the addition of molasses, corn syrup, or honey adds a non-sucrose sugar to the mixture that helps prevent crystallization.

Not As Bad As It Could Be

No, really, it's not. Truett Cathy should have paid more attention to who was selected for his namesake bowl. The Hello Kiffy machine at UT is being investigated by the NCAA in the middle of recruiting season, for sending ho's to high school games of potential recruits with signs and other "sundries". And that's just since Kiffy took over.

And on the Dawg front, I was listening to the pre-game show before the UGA vs. St. Johns basketball game tonight (12/9) in Madison Square Garden, and Scott Howard offered this statistic: Georgia Basketball is 10-47 (or maybe it was 42?) in non-neutral away games in the past 6 years - that's a win percentage of 17.5%. There are just 3 t0 5 neutral games per season.

Just think about the football program having that type of winning percentage, and be thankful Mark Richt has been a 10 win per season coach til this year.

Changes

You gotta know that the past few years have been tough for CMR, culminating in agony over the last 2-3 days, despite the win at Tech.  I wonder if the demeanor that we saw from him when he got doused in Gatorade was because he knew he was going to have to do something almost unthinkable and didn't feel like celebrating.

We'll probably never know, just like we'll never know why he fired both Jancek and Fabris, although either one probably had some probable cause in their bodies of work.  He did say that it was to make more room for CWM's successor, but maybe that was a contingency of someone they already had in mind.

One thing seems clear to me, though.  Richt is dead serious about moving the Dawgs in the right direction, and didn't make a half-hearted decision.  Does he already have a replacement in mind?  I'm almost positive that he does, or else you wouldn't have seen the move that was made today when he fired Martinez, Fabris, and Jancek.  Who the replacements will be obviously remains to be seen, but they have acknowledged to the fan base that the bar has been raised, and the status quo wasn't cutting it.

Again, our football future lives in dangerous times, because we're about to be in competition with the biggest dog on the block for a defensive coordinator.  The rumors are that Charlie Strong (DC at Florida) is being considered for head coach at Louisville which would leave that job vacant, but they aren't going to approach him until after the SECCG.  Expect UGA to make a quick and fierce move, maybe even this week.

The fate of Rodney Garner

I guess you have to ignore most everything that I predicted last night, because I was just proven wrong by CMR today.  The one thing that hasn't been decided yet is what's going to happen with Coach Garner.  By all accounts, he's a helluva recruiter, bonds well with the kids, and is integral to the program.  But if I had to guess, I'd say that there's something off under the surface.  David Hale reported some interesting stuff about him that suggest if he's not promoted to DC, he's gone.  Could be, don't know, and without inside knowledge of the program, it's hard to say what affect that will have.

So, hold on to your hats, change is coming.  Of course, there's no guarantee that it will be for the better, but one can only hope.

From the Munson Archives, circa 2006

"We are on the 4 1/2 yard line, third-down. You win or you lose here. 12 to 7, Georgia Tech. Mikey Henderson has come in, which means...if we can get the ball to him...speed.... Tech at the moment in a four-man line. we got four receivers out wide, Stafford retreats, looks, pumps, throw... TOUCHDOWN!! TOUCHDOWN!! TOUCHDOWN!! MY GOD A TOUCHDOWN!! TOUCHDOWN!! TOUCHDOWN!!
(crowd roars and barks) MASSAQUOI!!!!"

"Dan, did you see this? He did this, he didn't throw, and he just stood there."

"Stafford is in a shotgun, we want a two-point play. Massaquoi goes in motion. And Stafford now running to the right," (Bobo from the booth next door "There it is!!!") "...fires... and its COMPLETE!!! We caught it 1 yard in, Massaquoi! Now you've got 105 seconds to hang on, don't celebrate now, for God sakes! 15-12, we lead. 15-12, we gotta hang on, 105 seconds, and were too TIRED to hang on!"

Fortunately, we hung on.  I frequently find myself thinking about how many seconds are left in the game, even in the first quarter.  God, I miss Munson.

30-24, the Governor's Cup returns to it's rightful home.

You only need to look at the tape under Washaun's eyes to know that the guys in red and black came ready to play.  Quite simply, they

OUT-TECHED TECH AT TECH.

I RUN.  THIS STATE.

Yes, you did.  To the tune of 339 yards.  Maybe that could be the new area code for Tech's campus.

The good news for Tech is that their pants were the same color before and after they pissed themselves in classic Reggie Ball fashion.  How sweet the taste of Tech's tears- I could live off the stuff if you could bottle it!

Go DAWGS, thanks for an interesting year that resulted in the bottom of too many bottles.

Go to HELL Jackets, see ya next year in Athens!!

Football expectations and predictions.

• Coach Martinez will not be fired.  He might resign, but he won't be fired.
• Coach Garner will leave.  Interestingly, he has not signed a contract, and all things point to his having a bad relationship with Damon Evans.  This might hurt the team because of his recruiting and nurturing of several players, but is there already a rift between him and other coaches, players, and/or the administration?  Maybe in the big picture, it will help, but he's going to be hard to replace.
  
• Coach Fabris will not leave, but Richt will step up and visibly ramp up the special teams coverage.
• We're going to struggle to fill the DC spot if it comes vacant.
• Aaron Murray is going to be the starter next year.
• Bobo and Searles are quite secure.
• Bryan Evans is going to get a raise.

BTW-check out the link to these game pictures by a fellow named Josh Weiss.
Anyone else with any thoughts about it?