mossity dot com

Thai cucumber salad

2011-07-08T00:00:00Z

Ingredients

4 cucumbers , peeled, halved lengthwise, seeded, and sliced very thin
1/3 cup white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 seeded and minced Thai chiles
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup chopped fresh mint leaves
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
1/4 cup coarsely chopped peanuts , toasted

Instructions

1. Evenly spread cucumber slices on paper towel–lined baking sheet. Refrigerate while preparing dressing.
2. Bring vinegar to simmer in saucepan over medium-low heat; cook until reduced to 2 tablespoons, 4 to 6 minutes. Transfer vinegar to bowl and set aside to cool to room temperature, about 10 minutes. Whisk in lime juice, fish sauce, chiles, oil, sugar, and salt.
3. When ready to serve, add cucumbers, mint, and basil to dressing and toss to combine. Let stand for 5 minutes; retoss, sprinkle with peanuts, and serve.

Sortable lists with acts_as_list and ActiveAdmin

2011-07-08T00:00:00Z

For a small project I’m working on I wanted to give the client a nice admin interface, so I shopped around. My first attempt was with rails_admin, but I had issues installing it using the Rails 3.1 branch, and preferred to build this on edge Rails. I tried out ActiveAdmin and had found that Rails 3.1 support was already pretty much there.

The client wants a system of sortable ‘artworks’, and to achieve that through the ActiveAdmin interface was a bit of a challenge. I’ve done this sort of stuff before, but wrangling the ActiveAdmin interface into it was a different story, since it comes by default with tables instead of a unordered list, as most jQuery examples use. Through this issue I came across this useful tutorial which helped refresh me on the fundamentals.

The first issue I ran into was understanding how RailsAdmin loads its' javascripts. The active_admin.js manifest just requires “active_admin/base” from the gem, which is just a few lines of custom Javascript and vendored copies of Rails UJS, jQuery, and jQuery UI. I decided just to get rid of that and bring the gem’s code into mine, ditch Rails UJS (since I won’t be using it), and using the jQuery and jQuery UI from Rails' jquery-rails gem. So my active_admin.js looked like this:

// = require jquery
// = require jquery-ui

$(function(){
  $(".datepicker").datepicker({dateFormat: 'yy-mm-dd'});

  $(".clear_filters_btn").click(function(){
    window.location.search = "";
    return false;
  });
});

I found this useful blog post about using jQuery UI’s sortable with a TABLE, as is the default in RailsAdmin. Implementing that, scoped to the default id of #artworks on my artworks index

function serializeArtworks(){
  var artworkIds = $.makeArray(
    $("#artworks .artwork").map(function(){
      return $(this).data("id");
    })
  );
  return {ids: artworkIds};
};

$("#artworks tbody").sortable({
  update: function(){
    $.ajax({
      url: "/admin/artworks/sort",
      type: 'post',
      data: serializeArtworks(),
      complete: function(){
        $(".paginated_collection").effect("highlight");
      }
    });
  }
});

My artwork objects only need to show a title and the default “show/edit/delete” buttons from RailsAdmin so my admin/artworks.js looks like this:

ActiveAdmin.register Artwork do
  config.sort_order = 'position_asc'

  index do
    column :title do |artwork|
      content_tag(:span, artwork.title, :"data-id" => artwork.id, :class => "artwork")
    end
    default_actions
  end

  collection_action :sort, :method => :post do
    params[:ids].each_with_index do |id, index|
      artwork = Artwork.find(id)
      artwork.update_attribute(:position, index.to_i+1)
    end
    head 200
  end
end

I provide the id of the artwork in an HTML5 data-attribute and access it with jQuery’s data method. It posts to a custom collection action, which sorts through the ids it receives and assigns the artworks a position corresponding to the order that they are received in. The hardest part for me was creating the serializeArtworks function, because of some bizarre shit involving jQuery’s map creating some special kind of array that refused to be converted to params by the $.param method that gets called on data being posted. The solution I ultimately went with was calling $.makeArray on the result of the map call, which gives you a pure Javascript array, which can be successfully turned into params.

Ultimate Hummus

2011-05-01T00:00:00Z

Ingredients

1/2 cup dried chickpeas
2 quarts water
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
3 tablespoons juice from 1 to 2 lemons
6 tablespoons tahini , stirred well (see note)
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil , plus extra for drizzling
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1 small garlic clove , minced or pressed through garlic press (about 1/2 teaspoon)
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
Pinch Cayenne
1 tablespoon minced fresh cilantro or parsley leaves

Instructions

1. Pick through and rinse chickpeas. Place beans in large bowl, cover with 1 quart water, and soak overnight. Drain. Bring beans, baking soda, and 1 quart water to boil in large saucepan over high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer gently, stirring occasionally, until beans are tender, about 1 hour. Drain, reserving 1/4 cup bean cooking water, and cool.
2. Combine lemon juice and bean cooking water in small bowl or measuring cup. Whisk together tahini and 2 tablespoons oil in second small bowl or measuring cup. Set aside 2 tablespoons chickpeas for garnish.
3. Process chickpeas, garlic, salt, cumin, and cayenne in food processor until almost fully ground, about 15 seconds. Scrape down bowl with rubber spatula. With machine running, add lemon juice-water mixture in steady stream through feed tube. Scrape down bowl and continue to process for 1 minute. With machine running, add oil-tahini mixture in steady stream through feed tube; continue to process until hummus is smooth and creamy, about 15 seconds, scraping down bowl as needed.
4. Transfer hummus to serving bowl, sprinkle reserved chickpeas and cilantro over surface, cover with plastic wrap, and let stand until flavors meld, at least 30 minutes. Drizzle with olive oil and serve.