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I haven’t updated in a while.  I have a few things I’ll take care of soon.But for now, here’s some Shrimp Pad Thai.

I used a combination of recipes to come up with something that might be authentic. The sauce included tamarind, fish sauce, thai basil, sriracha, red pepper, rice vinegar and palm sugar.

Luckily Whole Foods carries weird stuff like palm sugar, but it really helps make it taste like some weird Thai restaurant where nobody speaks English. Other than the noodles (”rice sticks” ??) everything was made from scratch. Not that that means much. I mean, I didn’t catch the shrimp or anything. And Sriracha could be made from rabbits for all I really know.

I retooled my sous vide steak recipe tonight. It was seasoned with kosher salt, smoked pepper and smoked paprika. I still used butter, but left out the shallots and garlic, which were a little too prominent last time. The result was better.

I can imagine that using garlic powder would be better than fresh minced garlic in this case. The heat levels involved seem to make the garlic a little too bitter and pungent. By the same reasoning, the shallots had to go as well. They’re a relative of garlic afterall. The parsley was simply pointless.

Bottom line - in the case of flavor-enhancing sous vide technique, less is more. The smoked pepper and paprika both added a nice (surprise) smokey hint, but weren’t overbearing.

Additional site note: My avatar is not supposed to be Dakota Fanning. That is the placeholder for new users. Something broke and I haven’t been able to fix it. I swear.

Tonight I made sous vide top sirloin with butter, garlic and shallots. I’m going to post the technical details so I remember them.

Cooking Details:
Cut: Top Sirloin Steak (petite)
Weight: 0.45 pounds
Initial water temp: 141°
Temperature drop after submersion: -2°
Hold temp: 139.2° (±0.6°)
Cooking time: 45 minutes

Internal Temp at Removal: 138.5°

I removed the butcher’s twine netting holding the cut in a round, and flattened it with manual force. The steak was seasoned liberally with kosher salt and black pepper, plus a dusting of cayenne pepper. It was packed with 1/2 of a shallot, thinly sliced, 2 cloves of garlic, and about 2 teaspoons of butter, one tsp per side. There was also some parsley because I love how it retains its color.

After packaging:

In bath (after 2 hours in the fridge and a few on the counter to come back to room temp):

@ 20 minutes:

Out of bag:

Seared quickly and plated:

Inside:

It was extremely tender and tasty, and pretty much even in texture from tip to tip and edge to edge - other than the briefly seared edges. Other than those weird seams, it wasn’t too bad looking either, if I do say so myself.

I felt like having nachos for dinner. I used grilled marinated flap steak, fresh homemade salsa and guacamole, organic black beans, queso fresco and cilantro/mexican onion. The salsa was made from organic roma tomato and red onion, jalapeno, fresh lime juice, salt, pepper, mexican oregano and a pinch of sugar.

Eff yes.

I made too much, but that’s fine with me.

My Calphalon Commercial 9-piece set showed up today. To make some good use out of it, I decided to roast a chicken and make a meal out of it.

I was really hoping to get a nice, free-range chicken, but the local market only had Foster Farms in whole roasters. Here it is, posing for the camera in its bag and some of its new roommates.

I removed the innards and neck and threw them in the sink. Technically I could have used them, but I still consider them gross. I noticed the chicken’s nuts were still attached up in the cavity so I had to pull them out. Awesome and appetizing, huh?

Here he is all dried and ready to go!

And a mirepoix with garlic all chopped and ready as well.

That, along with some rosemary and bay leaf, were about all that went into this. I should have added some sage, in retrospect.

Everything went into a hot casserole/dutch oven with some good olive oil.

I flipped him over, after it was a little browned. I will continue to refer to the chicken as a “he” since I had to actually handle his balls, out of respect.

A little butter , then into the oven.

A little while later, things got pretty cluttered. I made a salad and put it in the fridge, then I boiled some potatoes, blanched some green beans, and got everything ready for the next step.

The camera died at this point, so I charged the battery while I finished up. I chopped up the boiled potatoes, tossed them with olive oil and minced garlic, and pan fried them for a while until they were golden brown. I sauteed the green beens with some butter and tossed them with pepper and feta. The juices from the chicken were strained, half-assedly de-fatted and then thickened with some corn starch.

The chicken rested during some of that, and then I “carved” it. I butchered the fuck out of it. I did manage to get the drumsticks off intact and separated the breast nicely into two good looking pieces.

Here’s the whole meal, everything dumped on a plate. I wanted to make bread but didn’t have time, so it’s fresh but store bought.

and that’s my chicken story the end

A few days ago I was experimenting with chocolate chip cookies. I added some molasses, which added much more flavor than I intended, and I also (accidentally) used jumbo eggs instead of large eggs. I completely neglected to account for the extra moisture and ended up with very thin, almost crunchy wafers instead of normal cookies.

Today I decided to make proper, by-the-book chocolate chip cookies to negate the fucked up batch. They turned out pretty good. King Arthur flour, cage-free eggs (I suppose it was the chickens were cage free, really), organic vanilla and brown sugar and plain old C&H cane sugar, plus baking soda and salt. The chips are Ghirardelli.

I made 40, and here’s a picture of 39 of them:

Meanwhile the cat helped by doing nothing while I played Rock Band between batches. Lazy slut.

I had a pretty long day and week, and missed lunch today, so I made myself a ton of food. The weather’s been great, so the grill was the clear choice tonight.

My meal included pork tenderloin, locally made andouille sausage, organic onion, green beans, tomato and yellow potato. Everything was grilled except the beans, which were sauteed with olive oil and a tiny bit of European style butter (85% butterfat). The grilled foods were seasoned with only kosher salt, and the pork also got a little pepper. The onion was cooked directly above the pork, so that some of the juices would drip down and add some mild flavor to the meat.

I have leftovers that will feed me all week, and I’ll be making some tasty sandwiches.

I’ve continued to work on my pizza, and tonight’s result was worth mentioning. I focused on controlling the moisture in the toppings so the crust would have a chance to develop a nice “snap” to it. I pressed the mozzarella and tomato slices between papers towels, with my large cutting board on top. This squeezed a lot of extra moisture out. I also chilled the sausage after I cooked it to keep it firm.

Fresh out of the oven:

And a side view of a slice. The crust is very thin and crispy, yet not hard or cracker-like.

I realize all of my pizza pictures probably look the same. This pizza was the best one so far, even if it’s not clear from the pictures.

A while ago I watched a video of Gordon Ramsay making scrambled eggs. He was pretty adamant that most scrambled eggs are overcooked, whether we realize it or not. I wasn’t convinced initially, because it just looked like he made runny, undercooked eggs.

It didn’t take too long before I decided to give it a try, with some slight modifications based on available ingredients. The texture was much less offensive than I expected, and the taste was amazing. For being so simple I was very surprised. I’ve been making them about once a week ever since, and actually look forward to making breakfast these days.

The trick is to keep the heat reasonably low, and to keep the eggs from coagulating into large blobs by constantly stirring. The eggs spend about the same amount of time on the burner as off the burner, to ensure they cook slowly and evenly. No salt is added until they are on the plate. At the end, just before they are done, some dairy is added to cool them off and halt the cooking. The video specifies crème fraîche.

Today I didn’t have any crème fraîche, so I used mascarpone (which is made from crème fraîche). Instead of sourdough bread, I used a freshly baked French boule. Instead of cherry tomatoes and mushrooms, I used a mix of tomato, green beans, baby yellow potatoes and sweet onion. The beans were blanched and the potatoes were par-cooked in advance. Everything was roughly chopped, tossed with olive oil and kosher salt, and spread evenly in a large skillet while the eggs were prepared.

Again, they are supposed to look runny and undercooked, but they aren’t. They just have a very uniform consistency that makes them look that way. The bread was pretty damn good too, I have to say.

My baking stone came on Wednesday, but unfortunately was cracked in half. My replacement showed up today.

Here’s version 2 of the tomato/onion/prosciutto pizza from the other night. The crust was much thinner and was nice and crispy. I was able to make it thinner and larger because I wasn’t trying to cook it on the back of a sheet pan.