Zucchini Puddings

(part of From Provence to the Catskills, our celebration held as part of of the Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24 blog event)

Following on from Elizabeth David, Richard Olney was assigned the entrée (in the French meaning of the term). Flipping through his cookbook Simple French Food for inspiration, I came across this description: “one of these little puddings, prelude to an amicable chunk of rare meat, might take many a jaded gastronome by surprise.” Well, zucchini are abundant at Gill’s farmstand, and our menu certainly included an “amicable chunk of meat,” so Dick’s zucchini pudding soufflés sounded just the ticket.

Well, delicious it certainly was, but as a soufflé, it was something of a flop (pardon the pun), hence the renaming of the recipe. As an aside, if you’re ever tempted to cook from Richard Olney, bear in mind that “simple” is a complete oxymoron for this publication. Any recipe that reads in part “prepare the béchamel as usual” with no further guidance is not for the novice. These recipes also require a fair bit of stamina and concentration.

Zucchini Puddings

Zucchini:
1 lb of zucchini
Salt
2 tbs butter

Béchamel
2 tbs butter
3 tbs flour
¾ cup milk

3 eggs, separated
Salt/pepper

Sauce
2/3 cup tomato puree (home made – see below)
1 cup heavy cream

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan

The first step is to prepare the zucchini: grate about one pound of peeled zucchini (Olney recommends hand-grating or using a Mouli-julienne, but he was writing in 1974; two cycles of the Cuisinart saved me about 2 hours). Arrange the grated zucchini in layers in a bowl, sprinkling each layer with salt, and let stand for 30 minutes. Then work the zucchini with your hands to get the liquid out of it: squeeze it repeatedly “until it is swimming” in juice, strain it a couple of times through a sieve, and press well “to rid it of flagrant moisture.” This is a fairly labor-intensive step and takes a while to get the zucchini properly dried out. Next, sauté the zucchini over a medium flame in a generous amount of butter (well, it is French cooking) until well dried out and starting to color, about 10 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Next, the béchamel. In a saucepan over a medium flame, melt the butter, add the flour and stir with a wooden spoon for a minute or two to make the roux. Turn down the heat and add the milk to the roux a little at a time until well combined (this works best if the milk is warmed up for about a minute in the microwave first. Continue to stir until thick and creamy – this will happen fast with only 3/4 cup of milk. You can also use a whisk to keep the sauce free of lumps. Remove the saucepan from heat as soon as the béchamel has thickened and let it cool slightly. Then, mix in the 3 egg yolks one at a time. Season with salt and pepper. Then stir in the cooked zucchini.

In a mixing bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Add about a third into the béchamel/egg/zucchini mixture to loosen it up, then gently fold in the rest of the beaten egg whites. Take care with this step – do not let yourself become too distracted by interesting political conversations or attention-seeking 3-year-olds and over-mix the egg whites, or the puddings will not rise and you will have to change the name of the dish from souffle to pudding. Don’t worry if you do – they will still taste good.

Pour the mixture into well-buttered ramekins (or a single larger souffle dish). Place the ramekins in a large shallow baking dish. Pull out the oven rack half-way, put the dish on the rack and then pour in enough boiling water to immerse the ramekins to two-thirds of the way up the sides (a bain-marie). Cook at 350F for 20-25 minutes, until the surface of the puddings is firm and springy to the touch. Take ramekins out of the bain-marie and allow to cool for 10 minutes.

Turn the oven up to 450F.

While the puddings are cooling, make the tomato sauce: whisk together the tomato puree and cream, season with salt, pepper, cayenne. You can used canned puree, or make your own as we did by cooking up 2 tins of skinless plum tomatoes, a handful of basil and several sprigs of oregano, a few pinches of salt and sugar. Bring this to a boil, then simmer for an hour. Run this through the food mill, then cook it down further for another hour or two until it has a nice thick consistency (this yields much more than you need for this recipe, but tomato puree is quite useful to have around, so we made extra).

Turn the puddings out of the ramekins and return them to a baking dish large enough to hold all of them comfortably. Pour over enough tomato sauce to coat the puddings well, allowing the sauce to run down around them in the dish. Top with grated parmesan cheese and return to the oven for 20 minutes or so, until the surface is browning and the sauce bubbling. Plate and serve, spooning some of the tomato sauce around the puddings.

table post entre
We served this with a viognier wine with decent acidity. The puddings (aka souffles) might not have puffed up to full glory, but they disappeared quickly from the plates.

Chilled Potato, Leek and Onion Soup (with alfalfa / tomato garnish)

amuse grouped
(part of From Provence to the Catskills, our celebration held as part of of the Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24 blog event)

The amuse bouche for our 24, 24, 24 dinner was to be inspired by Elizabeth David, a brilliant chef who by many accounts woke the English up to Mediterranean cooking in the 1950s. We wanted something relatively light that could be served in small portions, and Elizabeth David’s potato and watercress soup in French Country Cooking caught our eye.

In our actual implementation, I took the dish more in the direction of a vichyssoise, and garnished with alfalfa and tomato.

Chilled Potato, Leek and Onion Soup (with alfalfa / tomato garnish)

Serves 2 large bowls or 6 small portions

4 medium red potatoes, peeled
2 tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 white onion, thinly sliced
2 leeks (white to light green portion), diced
3 1/2 cups of whole milk
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
pinch of nutmeg
Handful of cherry tomatoes, carefully minced
Handful of alfalfa sprouts, chopped

Boil the potatoes until tender. In a separate saute pan, melt the butter on low heat and cook the onions and leeks for 20 minutes, stirring periodically.
amuse cookingleeks

Normally I would just use a food mill for a vichyssoise, but we wanted the texture to be really smooth so I added the step of quickly pureeing the potatoes, onion and leeks in a food processor once everything was cooked. Then shift the combination to a food mill on a fine-mesh setting, and run it through the mill into a bowl.

amuse-foodmill.jpg

Add the milk, salt, pepper, and nutmeg and stir. Then stir in the white wine. Taste for salt and pepper, and you can err just a little bit on the salty side as its effects will be reduced when chilled. Chill in the fridge.

To serve, chop up some alfalfa sprouts and finely mince up some cherry tomatoes (try not to mush it up with the knife). Garnish the top of your servings with a pinch of alfalfa and then a pinch of the tomatoes. Serve with a small spoon.

One of the key criteria for this first course was that we could make it in advance, and serve it with minimal final prep work, since the second course was a complex pudding / souffle. We served it with white wine and it was a hit at the table. The above amount make enough for two full bowls of the soup, and was more than enough for the 6 portions we needed to kick off our dinner.

table starting

Romanos in sauce; Cuban Black Bean combinations

romano beans in sauce

I discovered romano beans earlier this summer at our local farm in the Catskills and have been going back to them ever since, usually quick-sauteing or parboiling with minimal treatment such as lemon or a small amount of butter, or including in a cold tomato salad. I had not thought of slow cooking them with a rich sauce, but that’s where this bubbling fount of ideas called the food blogosphere comes in. Smitten Kitchen caught a New York Times article that I missed and brought this approach to my attention. So thanks Deb!

Tonight I wanted a hearty “one pot” meal, so I took a kind of bolognese approach and the result was delicious and filling.

Roma Beans

Romano Beans in Meat Sauce

serves 2

2 handfuls of romano beans
1/2 lb ground beef
1/2 onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
2 large white mushrooms, or handful of smaller, diced
6 skinless plum tomatoes
1/3 cup tomato puree
1/2 cup red wine
1/3 cup of water
oregano
sage

In a large saute pan, pour in a touch of olive oil and brown your ground beef, then set aside. Add a touch more olive oil, and saute the onions, then add the carrots and mushrooms and cook for several minutes. Add in the whole plum tomatoes without breaking them open yet, add the tomato puree, and return the ground beef to the pan.

Add a couple pinches of salt and ground pepper, a couple pinches of dried oregano (or a bit more if using fresh), and a pinch of dried sage. Add the wine and water (or if using canned tomatoes, as I did, some of the juice from the can). Stir gently so as not to break open the tomatoes, loosely cover and let cook on medium low heat for 10 minutes.

While this is cooking, wash the beans, cut off the ends, and cut the beans themselves to 2″ length or so to make more manageable to eat. A nice aesthetic touch I picked up from Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food is to slice the romano beans at a consistent 45 degree angle.

Break apart the tomatoes and taste for spices. Stir the beans into the pan, loosely cover, and cook on low heat for 30 or 40 minutes.

Part 2
Cuban Black Beans

I’ve already blogged this marvelous black bean recipe from Gregory Triana of Blue Cashew in High Falls, NY, so am just going to write a few notes here. Sunday was miserably humid outside, so we took refuge in air conditioning and that made making the beans possible. If you know you can be somewhat near your kitchen over a few hours, this is a great recipe for black beans, with a fabulous sofrito of green pepper and onion. See the recipe here. And you know I love Low and Slow cooking!

I make it differently almost every time, and often bump up the amount of green pepper, onion and cumin from the recipe. Making it is work, no question, but once made there are so many uses that are usually incredibly fast to put together.

You can make great quesadillas, by adding some corn, scallions, hot peppers of some kind, cilantro, shredded monterey jack cheese, and in my case, some smoked ham:
Black bean quesadillas

You can serve it as a side dish (that’s a sliced red jalapeno around it):

Black beans

I’ll also mix it into a salsa, such as the below which has chopped tomatillos, a jalapeno, a red hot chili pepper, fresh corn niblets, cilantro, and the juice of two limes (obviously topped with some avocado). I think it’s an ugly picture (nothing to see here folks, move along!), but it tastes great with some chips!

black beans salsa

And finally, this picture has no bearing whatsoever, except that I snapped a pic of some ingredients going into the black beans and liked it:
black bean veggies

Why is it that tomatoes spelled with an “e” and tomatillos is spelled without? Ponder.

Recipe Links 9-15-08; Rum & Poached Peach

Boy, between Texas flooding, Wall Street collapsing, the heated election and Tina Fey bringing me to tears (of laughter), it is hard to think about food in the evenings, but nevertheless, we sally on! Lisl has been dragged to Switzerland for work this week, which either means that I’m going to be doing crazy experimentation in the kitchen or subsistence eating… you never know. I find it harder to motivate to cook properly when I’m the only one eating the results (our munchkin is a good eater but she likes food bland bland bland!).

First, here’s the latest list of recipes I’ve discovered recently (roughly in the order found) and would like to try at some point:

Recipe Links

Part 2:
Rum and Poached Peach
The other night we had some friends over to dinner. I grilled some New York strips (interestingly, the butcher told me they were “grass raised and corn finished”, which he said is an increasing trend) and made a Mediterranean gratin with layers of eggplant, roasted red peppers, olives, plum tomatoes cooked with onion and garlic, cheese, rosemary and breadcrumbs.

Lisl made a play on Peach Melba, which, rather than topping with rasberry sauce, we topped with some really good dark rum from St. Lucia called Chairman’s Reserve. Delish!

peach melba
Pre-Rum (and the attack of my spoon)

To make: Bring a pot of 1 1/4 quarts water, 1 1/2 cups sugar, and some lemon zest to boil, then lower heat to a light simmer. Poach your peaches (in batches if you have many) for about 5 minutes, allow to cool, then place in the fridge the chill. When cold and you are ready to serve, slip off the skins (they should come off easily), halve and pit. Place on a scoop of vanilla ice cream and lightly pour some high quality dark rum on top.

Simple & Hearty Late-Summer Salad

Late summer salad
(I wanted to start by wishing the best to all the folks dealing with hurricane season this year. Hang in there!)

I’ll count my blessings that up here the weather has been quite civilized. I think I’ve commented before how Fall is my favorite season. It’s like baby bear’s porridge: not too hot, not too cold… it’s just right! We ate lunch outside today after whipping up the following salad that was simple, hearty and delicious.

Served 2
1 cup mayacoba beans
2 italian sausages, medium spicy
1/2 green pepper
1/2 red pepper
1/2 jalapeno pepper
large handful of red and/or orange cherry tomatoes
2 large handfuls of flat-leaf parsley
2 lemons
olive oil
salt and pepper

I used mayacoba beans from Rancho Gordo, but any favorite salad bean can be swapped in here. Mayacoba beans take on flavor well and are nicely meaty. I cooked the beans without soaking until tender (about an hour) before making the salad. To cook, cover the beans with about an inch of water in a saucepan, bring to a boil for a couple of minutes, and then lower to a light simmer and cover. Cooking time will depend on bean type and age, so you can check for tenderness by biting into a bean periodically.

Grill or saute the italian sausage, then cut into 1/3 to 1/2 inch slices at an angle.

Slice the green and red peppers into thin strips, and cut any long strips in half so they are not unmanageable on the fork. Halve the cherry tomatoes, and chop up the parsley. De-seed the jalapeno and finely chop.

Combine it all in a bowl. Grind a bit of salt and pepper on top, add some lemon juice (I used the juice of 2 small lemons) and a tablespoon or two of extra virgin olive oil. Mix gently and let it sit for about 10 minutes before mixing again and serving.

Late summer salad

Ancho and Coffee Short Ribs, on Quinoa Pilaf

Ancho and coffee short ribs w quinoa
Back in January 2003, Gourmet Magazine wrote up a recipe for short ribs braised in coffee and ancho chile sauce. I put it aside to make. I can’t believe it has taken me over FIVE FRIKKEN YEARS, but there it is. Somehow, I can’t come with any creative excuses. It was good though! As usual I didn’t follow it exactly, so here is my attempted description of our meal:

Ancho and Coffee Short Ribs

4 lb short ribs
3 dried ancho chile chiles
1 dried chipotle chile
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons molasses (or maple syrup)
1/2 cup coffee
salt
smoked paprika

Preheat the oven to 300F.

Bring a pot of water to medium boil and boil your ancho and chipotle peppers for 20 minutes, then drain. Taste the liquid – if it is not too bitter, save.

In a blender, combine the ancho and chipotle chiles, the garlic, onion, molasses, and 1 tsp of salt and puree. Gourmet also recommends adding a tbsp of lime juice (I didn’t have any limes when making this, but the concept sounds good).

In a heavy bottomed pan or dutch oven, heat up some olive oil on medium high heat and brown the short ribs in batches, then set aside.

Pour the puree into the dutch oven and cook on the stovetop for several minutes. Add 1 1/2 cups of either the chile boiling water or regular water, and the 1/2 cup of coffee. Then add in the short ribs and spoon the sauce over the ribs so coated. Cover the dutch oven and put in the oven for 3 hours, occasionally checking to turn the ribs and spoon more sauce over them.

In our case, we made the short ribs in advance one evening and placed in the fridge for a couple of days, rather than wait hungry for them to finish. We then placed the ribs and braising sauce in a saute pan and warmed back up on very low heat until bubbling, tasting for salt and adding a sprinkling of smoked paprika.

Before you serve, spoon out any excess grease/oil, then remove the bones, tendon and any excess fat. Serve on a bed of quinoa pilaf, with a hefty red wine (a cab sav, zin, shiraz, malbec, or solid chateauneuf de pape would all work nicely). While I didn’t use a garnish, I imagine that some chopped parsley or finely chopped jalapenos might be a nice addition.

Quinoa Pilaf
Gourmet recommends serving this dish on a bed of polenta, but I decided to use my Rancho Gordo quinoa. Having never made quinoa, I checked my Bittman How to Cook Everything and discovered a nice little “quinoa pilaf” recipe. It is very simple and delicious and I will definitely be making quinoa more in future:

1 cup quinoa (repeatedly washed)
1 3/4 cup water (or stock)
1/2 onion, finely chopped
salt and pepper
olive oil

In a saute pan, heat up some olive oil and saute the onions for several minutes on medium heat, then add the quinoa and cook for another 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Add in the water (or stock), a few grindings of salt and pepper, reduce heat to low, cover and cook for 15 mintues. Taste for salt.

Blog Event: Low and Slow (Boulud or Stevens cookbook prize)

low and slow graphic
I can’t get enough of slow cooking… braises, stews… anything which cooks for a lonnnngggg time on lowwwwww heat. So I’m taking a stab at a monthly blog event – called Low and Slow – on that very topic since I haven’t come across one yet and because I’d love to learn from you all. I hope you participate! To make it a little more fun, for this round I’m going to send the person with the most interesting submission their choice of either a copy of Daniel Boulud’s Braise or Molly Stevens’ All About Braising.

Low and Slow Guidelines

The When
This round will be over October 15, 2008. You can submit more than once – this is about having fun and sharing after all!

The What
We want to keep this flexible: it can be vegetarian or with meat; it can be cooked in the oven or on the stove top; it can be a braise, a daube, a stew, a chili, a slow barbecue, and more. The key is that it is a dish that requires long cooking (at least an hour) at relatively low temperatures where flavors mix together in delightful ways.

How to submit
Put a link back to here in your post, and either send an email to larder (at) constable.net, or post a comment here with a link back to your recipe and pictures.

The cookbook
As mentioned, we’ll send the person with the most interesting or irresistable submission their choice of either a copy of Daniel Boulud’s Braise or Molly Stevens’ All About Braising. For this first Low and Slow event, Lisl and I will pick the “winning” recipe.

Round-up
After the deadline, I’ll post a summary of all the submissions with links and pictures (so please only submit if you are willing to let me put a picture on here that links back to your blog)

UPDATE: Roundup posted here. Thanks all!

Favorite food locations; damn good corn fritters

Greece Trip 2002
Watching the Paris photos over at Stacey’s Snacks has made me think about memorable food in far off places. I had only traveled around the US before I met Lisl, but marrying an Australian comes with a substantial increase of global travel. It seems to be part of the contract, but there are worse trades! I’m convinced that at any point in time at least 10% of the total Aussie population is overseas. While we’ve certainly had great meals all over the place (mussels in Bruges and some of the gastropubs in the English countryside outside of London come to mind), my personal top food locations are Greece and Italy.

In Greece, Lisl dragged me a little island called Serifos in the Cyclades. We had a friend that knew all the locals, so we got to experience the “authentic” restaurants rather than the fancy tourist places. In Italy, Lisl has so far “dragged”me (yeah, twist my arm) to Rome and the Cinque Terre. In Rome, we would wander around the streets and eventually see it – the place we *had* to have dinner that night. In both Greece and Italy, the produce was so fresh and the treatment brilliant and not over-complicated.

Where are your favorite food locations?

All this came back last night when we had a fabulous meal at the Greek restaurant Peryali in Manhattan, an old favorite. Speaking of Australians, the night before last I tried out an Aussie recipe for corn fritters that flat out rocked. It came by way of an old post from The Wednesday Chef and discovered through foodblogsearch.

corn fritter cooking

Paranoid me is going to post the ingredients here, on the off-chance that Wednesday Chef ever decides to take down her blog (I hope not but this is so good that I am resorting to a “backup”). To read about the process, please head over to her blog.

corn fritter sauce
The dipping sauce

We had most of what the recipe called for, however we were out of scallions and cilantro (dammit!) and so swapped in shallots. I also only had 1/4 cup rice vinegar for the dipping sauce, so made up the difference with apple vinegar (it was still very good). The only change that I made voluntarily was to the batter, where I only used 1/4 cup of water and added 1/4 cup of beer (I love beer batters!).

Munchkin was a very good helper.

kitchen helper

The fritters were served with swiss chard, with the leaves and stems chopped separately and sauted with a chopped onion in a couple tbsp of olive oil. I spotted this in Alice Waters’ Art of Simple Food. Start by cooking the chopped chard stems for several minutes, then add the onion for several minutes, then the chopped leaves. Salt to taste (adding the right amount of salt is critical).

Ingredients for Corn Fritters

Dipping Sauce
1 red jalapeno, finely chopped
1/2 cup rice vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup sugar
1 small clove garlic, minced

Fritters
1 cup flour (or 1/2 cup all-purpose flour, 1/2 cup rice flour)
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 cup water
2 cups corn kernels, cut from 3 large cobs
4 spring onions, finely sliced
3 tablespoons chopped cilantro
Oil

corn fritter plated

Braised Pork, Poblano and Cream Sauce; weekend pictures

poblano solo
Work demands tonight required a speed meal so a few leftovers and miscellaneous fell together into a great little combo – a braised pork, poblano pasta and cream sauce to accompany pasta.

By the way, someone recently blogged another pasta sauce with leftover pork braise which gave me the idea, but when I went looking for it, I was at a loss even after much searching. I winged the meal in this post, but I’d love to try the other recipe so if you know what I’m referring to (it was just in the last few days) please post a link in the comments!

braised pork poblano
Braised Pork, Poblano and Cream Pasta Sauce (photo is pre-cream)

Served 2

braised pork, shredded (enough for two people)
1 poblano pepper, chopped
1 cayenne pepper (or a jalapeno), sliced
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp ground cumin
dried oregano, sprinkling
salt and pepper
heavy cream and a touch of milk
pasta (preferrably egg noodles)

Shred the pork it into smallish pieces with two forks. In a saute pan on medium-low heat, saute a the onion and garlic in olive oil. Seed and chop the poblano pepper, then slice the cayenne pepper was sliced crosswise (into thin rings), keeping some of the seeds to add some heat. Add to pan.

Stir in half a teaspoon of ground cumin, a sprinkling of dried oregano and a few grindings of salt and pepper. Raise heat and stir for a few minutes, then turn the heat all the way down.

Pour in a small amount of cream, maybe a quarter cup (just enough to nicely coat everything — do not let it get soupy). I didn’t want the sauce to be too rich, so I cut the cream with a little bit of milk, and then added a spoonful of the starchy water from the pasta pot. Taste for salt and pepper and serve by spooning over the pasta. Note: we only had spagetti but I would have preferred egg noodles, campanelle or farfalle (in that order).


Weekend Pictures
Most of the cooking Lisl and I did over the weekend was for recipes that still need tinkering, but I thought I would share some photos from our flickr set.

peaches
We have a tree with little white peaches which can be great to cook with.

peaches

cranberry beans shelled
I loooooovvvveeeee fresh cranberry beans!

Flowers
In our neighbor Gail’s garden

morning glory

Art, craft, and shoemakers

shoemaking
Ideas in Food lived up to their name recently with the thought-provoking post “Are you a shoemaker?” Aki and Alex relay an anecdote from another chef as follows:

“Jacques Torres would often refer to the savory cooks as shoemakers because they were always fixing dishes at the end of the preparation process, adjusting the seasoning and compensating for any mistakes. On the other hand pastry chefs weighed and measured all of their ingredients each time they made a recipe and so the dishes were prepared properly from start to finish.”

As they note the increasing use of precision, planning, and scales on the savory side of the business, they then relay a comment from Wylie Dufresne who said, “”How can you reproduce a dish if you don’t know what went into it?”

It made me ask myself, do I even want to be able to exactly duplicate my dishes.

I understand why a restaurant chef would need to, but that is a world away from the home cook in love with the process of creating and sharing great food. I also see it as a world away from food as art form, and I believe that the cooking process can be as much about art as it is about craft.

However, I understand where Dufresne is coming from (or at least, where it sounds like he is coming from), because making art, and making a living from art, are two very different things. With the latter, the business brain often has to rise up and focus on what is popular and predictable rather than what is inspired. Inspiration means risk, risk means possible failure, and failure in the restaurant business can be deadly. So if most professional chefs save shoemaking for personal time, that would not surprise me.

Of course, “art” is also a loaded term, partially because the 20th century art market worshipped innovation at the expense of craft and technique. The word applied to food makes many think of haute cuisine and culinary stunts. But the word also represents the organic, the spontaneous, and the independent spirit, rather than the rote task of following directions.

If I actually thought that shoemaking was an accurate analogy, I would say that I love being a shoemaker. I never expect people to follow my recipes exactly, any more than I exactly follow my own. It begs the question why I blog recipes at all. Like many, I blog to push myself, to share, hopefully to inspire, and to engage in the invaluable process of trying to learn and teach at the same time.

There are also degrees. To Wylie’s point, I generally know exactly what goes into my dishes, just not down to the milligram. I taste for salt, rather than measure it. I do adjust and compensate, not just at the end but during the process. It’s part of the fun.

Answering my own question, do I want to be able to exactly duplicate my dishes, the answer is both yes and no. I am happy with “close enough”, and the freedom to veer off into uncharted territory. I hope you pardon this intellectual navel gazing, but I’m happy that Aki and Alex made me stop for a second and think through the how and the what and the why.