Panic Entertainment

Hi everyone!

My new project is live... check it out!

http://panicentertainment.com

Also not cooking: Rogers DNS hijack, foiled.

I am writing my own webserver for my computer networking course, and have been annoyingly forwarded to Rogers' search page every time my server fails to acknowledge on the connected socket.

I'm sick and tired of Rogers using deep packet inspection to hijack DNS requests for unresolved DNS hosts.

What does this mean? It means that every time you try to go to a website like "www.thiswebsitedoesntactuallyexist.com", you get forwarded to an ad-revenue search page hosted by Rogers.

Every link on the page is an advertisement, and the "opt-out" is also a scam. You get redirected to a fake IE 404 page every time.

I found out today how to fix this problem. Here's what you do:

1. Put DD-WRT on your router.
   
2. Enable DNSMasq. In the DNSMasq options window, enter:
   

domain-needed
no-resolv
no-poll
server=64.71.255.198 # rogers DNS

# Rogers crap servers
bogus-nxdomain=8.15.7.107
bogus-nxdomain=63.251.179.17
bogus-nxdomain=65.200.200.47

1. Set the router to distribute DNSMasq as the default DNS server to DHCP clients.
2. Reboot all attached clients, verify they now have the gateway IP of the router as the primary DNS server, and you're ready to rock.

That's for you, Rogers.

EDIT: A friend of mine pointed out that if you are a big fan of the Google "I'm feeling lucky" trick in Firefox, you can just type in your Google search in the Firefox URL bar. Rogers effectively takes that luxury away from us. Use this to get it back!

Why Gordon Ramsay is the best chef on TV.

Not only does Gordon Ramsay star on multiple shows, he owns many restaurants, with his own personal touch in each one of them. Angry head chefs? Probably!

That's not why I think he's the best. You might want to skip this post if swearing offends you.

This is:



and this:



Not only does he have a colourful palate of words (ha ha, funny), he manages to come up with unique and interesting way to insult people on every show.

He also has become so big, there are mock videos about his adventures critiquing various restaurants; see these "little Gordon" videos:

Recipe: DiZazzo home made pasta sauce! pt.3

Today, I'm going to continue part 3 of my pasta-sauce epic.

Making a Meat Sauce

To turn this already delicious sauce into something more awesome, we need to add some ground beef to the sauce.

NOTE: If you are using less than 5 cans of tomatoes, you'll want to decrease the amount of ground beef you put in the sauce so the sauce doesn't become too laden with meat.

Additional Ingredients:

• Ground beef (1 lb.)
• Canola oil (1 cup)

Instructions:

1. Add the Canola oil to a pan and heat until it becomes less viscous (read: moves around more freely).
2. Add the ground beef to the hot oil. It should sizzle.
3. Chop of the ground beef with a wooden spoon, so that there are very small pieces.
4. When the ground beef is brown, this is when any self respecting person would drain the fat and oil from the meat. Not us. DO NOT DO THIS ... It's not any fun!
5. Close your eyes and pour everything into the sauce, meat, oil and all. Keeping the fat and the oil adds a significant taste and consistency to the sauce. If you're going to drain it, just give up and go to East Side Mario's now.
   
6. Mix the meat into the sauce and let it simmer!

Making pork side ribs Additional Ingredients:

• Pork Side ribs (see image)
• Canola oil (1 cup)

Instructions:

1. Cut the fat (large white portions) from the ribs. You can see a picture of them with it removed below:
2. Cut up the ribs between the bones, so you end up with good sized pieces:
3. Place the oil in a frying pan, heat it, and start placing the ribs into the pan. Make sure you have a lid to cover the entire pan. It's going to splatter!
4. Once the ribs are browned on all sides - empty entire contents (again) into the sauce. Mmm flavour!
5. The ribs need to boil for 3 hours in the sauce to become tender! Do not boil them for any less. This means that you should probably start getting the ribs into the sauce as soon as possible after you've started simmering it.
   

Finishing up

When everything is said and done, you will end up with a pasta sauce that has the consistency of the picture below: Well, that's everything for now. I hope you'll some day get to enjoy this recipe. I've made it for many people and their testimonies have made me think that I might some day open an Italian restaurant!

Recipe: DiZazzo home made pasta sauce! pt.2

This post is a continuation of my first 'home made pasta sauce' post.

Lets get all the prep and other stuff sorted out!

Instructions

Prepping the tomato sauce

We need to blend the tomatoes to break them down into smaller pieces. Keep in mind, the longer you blend them, the smaller the tomato pieces will be, and the more "watery" your sauce will be. I like to grind my tomatoes on a "pulse" setting for literally under two seconds (super blender!). This leaves somewhat medium-small size chunks of tomato, which gives a nice rich flavour to the sauce.

1. First thing you want to do is to open all your canned tomatoes and tomato paste. Set them aside.
2. Add 1/2 cup of canola oil to the bottom of the empty sauce pot. Let it heat and spread across the bottom completely. Turn heat up to 3-4 (medium-low).
   
3. Empty the contents of a single can into the blender, and add a single can of tomato paste. Fill up the empty can of tomatoes half way with water and add that to the blender. Blend on a low setting for 1-2 seconds at a time, checking until desired consistency is reached.
4. Pour the blended tomatoes into the sauce pot! Repeat until done.

Now it's time to chop and fry some garlic. I've made a few videos for you. They're super interesting. Of me. Chopping .... garlic. Okay maybe they're not that interesting. Here they are anyway. (Please excuse the extremely poor sound quality, camera mic)

A note for the second video, at the end there's quite a bit of garlic left in the pan after I empty it into the sauce, I had to put the camera away to salvage all of it. Make sure you scrape the pan clean and get all the garlic in your sauce!

Now that we've chopped and fried garlic, we need to add the rest of the spices to the sauce. Remember to check my first post for the quantities!!

1. Add the basil. Grind it up in your hands and sprinkle it in if you have fresh stuff!
   
2. Add the salt.
   
3. Add the sugar.
4. Half the onion and put each into the sauce. This absorbs a lot of the acidity from the tomatoes and I think it's a pretty important addition to the sauce!
   

At this point, the base tomato sauce is complete. It's really that simple. Here's the kicker.

It needs to boil for 4-5 hours until a thick consistency is reached!

The truth is, the slower you cook something, for some reason, the better it tastes. Mind you, there are exceptions, but this is not one of them. When I made this sauce, my pot was as full as you saw in the basil picture. It boiled to about just over half that amount, and that was adding meat (which increased the total volume of solid items displacing sauce).

I'm going to leave you with this final video showing you how to stir the sauce so that its mixed well!

Check my next post for instructions for a meat sauce and pork side ribs (so so so good!).