my ramblings

on technology, food, nyc and... well, life

I would like to acknowledge that some of the comments that have been posted on this blog in regards to 99Vine (HomePeople Corp) and its CEO Tarik Sansal were extreme and false. I apologize if those comments misled any candidates and investors interested in the company.

Lamb burgers

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Love this fast and mouth watering fix to a good dinner. Makes two quarter pound burgers.

Start with a half pound of ground lamb. Mix in half an onion (finely chopped) with a clove of garlic (minced) and two tablespoons of chopped cilantro. Add salt, pepper and two tablespoons of cumin. Mix everything together well with the lamb and make two patties.

Heat a pan with a tablespoon of olive oil on medium heat and throw the lamb patties in. You can also sautee some mushrooms in the pan as the lamb cooks if you so choose. Serve on a bun. I also like to accompany these with some baked sweet potato fries (the frozen packets you get at Whole Foods are excellent and come out quite crispy).

Low calorie linguine with shrimp

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Having enjoyed the Cook's Illustrated Best 30 Minute Recipes book, I recently picked up their Best Light Recipes book as well and so far it has lived up to the expectations I had. The book looks at huge  number of recipes and talks about how you can make some of your favorite dishes in a radically new and light way without sacrificing too much flavor. For instance, it recommends using a cup of pureed Lima beans and 2 avocados when making guacamole instead of using 3 avacados (I have yet to try this).

I did however try out their linguine with shrimp, lemon and garlic last night and it was surprisingly delicious. The recipe called for using low fat cream cheese, corn starch and clam juice to give it its consistency and flavor (yes cream cheese) and I gotta admit it was pretty good. I'll share a slightly modified version of it as an incentive to check out the book yourself.

Serves 3-4:

Set about half a large pot-full of water to boil and add a tablespoon of salt. While the water boils, in a large skillet add a tablespoon of olive oil and half a chopped white onion along with a couple tablespoons of minced garlic on medium heat. As the garlic and onion brown, add a cup and half of chicken broth, 8 oz. of clam juice, red pepper flakes (to your spice satisfaction), a bay leaf and a tablespoon of thyme.

Let the mixture boil for about 7-10 minutes and then throw in a couple tablespoons of corn starch. This will help give the sauce a rich and thick consistency. While this reduces, add the pasta to your boiling water and let cook until al dente.

Add in two tablespoons of neufatchel cheese (I found this to be softer and melts faster than cream cheese) to your skillet mix. Stir until the sauce is thick and clump free (about 2 minutes). On a low heat add in a pound of peeled and de-veined shrimp and let the broth cook for a couple minutes (not too long because you do not want to overcook the shrimp).

Once ready, drain pasta from the pot and mix in with the sauce. Garnish with freshly cut basil leaves or parsley.

Observations from SES New York

I'm attending SES at the moment (going on till tomorrow March 26th) and being a bit of an outsider to this area it's just fascinating to step back for a second and see the amazing ecosystem that search has produced. There are an incredible number of groups of people existing and making a living in this ecosytem: marketers (PPC marketers, corporate marketers, SEM), affiliates, aggregators, optmizers, SEO gurus... The list is endless and dizzying.
 
The most predominant theme I've noticed so far is the growing emphasis on display/content advertising. This seems to be the result of two trends: 1. Because search is just 5% of a web users activity and a very mature market, it becomes obvious to start looking at other options as this area starts to become hyper competitive. With the mind numbing rate at which content is being produced on the web and introduction of self service tools, it's also becoming cheaper and easier to do display advertising. 2. Google, Yahoo, MSN are all working on adding more media and content to their search pages (try doing a search on "Rihanna" on the three to see what I mean) and the search page is essentially evolving into a content rich page as opposed to just a collection of links. These all lead to the need to create more interesting ads and innovative targeting technologies for this type of advertising. Two companies that are doing some really neat things in this space are Lookery and Dapper. They both have a common theme of breaking the silos of information that exist on different sites and making them accessible elsewhere. Very fascinating stuff and would be cool to see how this all shakes out.