sous vide: egg

After steak and salmon, the next protein we tackled was eggs. This is where I think the sous vide machine really shines because eggs are even easier to overcook than meat and seafood. I mean, if you're trying to do a batch of soft-boiled eggs, forget about it, the sous vide machine is the way to go.



For soft-boiled eggs, 150F for 30 minutes.

While the eggs were cooking, we each got to work cooking the rest of the brunch dish that the egg was going to top. Namely, bacon (or lardo)-wrapped asparagus, frisee salad and shallot vinaigrette.

I chose bacon because of the higher meat ratio and because it was better for wrapping. The asparagus was blanched, wrapped in half-cooked bacon, then fried some more with garlic and thyme.



The frisee I tossed in shallot vinaigrette (shallot, olive oil, champagne vinegar, salt and pepper) and plated in a shallow bowl (to reflect the roundness of the soft-boiled egg).



Besides placing the bacon-wrapped asparagus on top I also added some bits of compressed cantaloupe (vacuum-sealed so less watery and more flavor-intensive). The bacon made me think of proscuitto, which goes with melon.



On top we had the option of shaved bottarga, which is cured fish roe but when shaved adds a savory/salty dimension, like what Parmesean cheese does. Of course then I added some shaved Parmesean as well. Once the soft-boiled egg went on top I sprinkled some smoked paprika on too.



Soft-boiled eggs are hard to plate. Mine slid halfway off the mound of frisee, so in retrospect I should have made a bigger hole for it to sit in. This is a very rich dish, not what I would normally eat, but delicious with an extra helping of shallot vinaigrette to cut through all the richness. Very good for brunch.

sous vide: steak and salmon

The advanced technique classes on offer this semester were Sous Vide Cooking, Modern Sauces, and Charcuterie. I tried to get into the first two, wanting more experience in those, but since I've taken advanced classes before I had to be part of a lottery, which I lost. But then somebody dropped the class and I was able to add.

So I missed one class, but the class I started on was sous vide steak and salmon! The class was divided into team of 5-6, and each team had to come up a steak dish and a salmon dish. The proteins were all cooked sous vide (in a temperature-controlled water bath) for the same amount of time. For example, all the steaks were cooked for 45 minutes in 135F water (making the meat medium rare throughout) and then seared with butter, garlic and thyme. But the seasonings, side dishes and sauces were up to us.

My team did steak, mashed potatoes and green beans. I volunteered myself for green beans, which I blanched and then sauteed (olive oil, sesame oil, garlic, shallot, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar). Then I helped up with the sauce (brown, otherwise known as beef stock with mirepoix, roux, tomato paste, and a sachet of herbs). And I did the plating. Very traditional looking, as Chef Morse commented.



This team did a take on beef pho - fried noodles, basil, chili, broth.



Another did a modern plating with baby carrots, thin-sliced potato and micro herbs.



And another did an appetizer-like plating with steak cubes, potato puree rosette, pesto sauce, horseradish foam.



For our salmon dish we did wild rice pilaf and tomato salad. The sous vide salmon was melty and soft, sashimi-like in texture.



Overall I prefer sous vide steak but not sous vide salmon. But of course any day with steak and salmon is a good day.

lessons from pumpkin flan

Since moving from New York, I haven't seen most of my East Coast friends at all. But by chance my friend Vanessa was flying home to NYC after a summer in Hong Kong, and she had a layover at San Francisco airport! So I went to meet her, but before I went I asked her what her dessert preferences were so I could make something to bring her. She said: "chocolate, pumpkin, macarons". Of course I really should have made her chocolate pumpkin macarons, but instead I opted for pumpkin flan.

My favorite kind of flan is soft, silky, the melt-in-your-mouth kind that Irving Cafe sells. It's harder to get pumpkin flan this way because pumpkin is kind of fibrous and chunky. My only experience with pumpkin flan was in the fall season of 2009, after pumpkin picking, and I had overcooked it then. So I tried again with this recipe. It turned out custardy, which is better than overcooked, but still not what I'm looking for. But I learned a couple of lessons.

1) You can get caramel just by cooking sugar by itself. Without water. But keep a close eye on it, because I burned it twice. Take it off the heat as soon as a portion has turned brown. The liquid can be poured into the bottoms of the ramekins. Then soak the pot immediately in hot water, so the residual caramel can be washed off.



2) When combining ingredients for flan (or anything that requires egg yolk and sugar), make sure to add the sugar last (or only when you're whisking) so the egg yolks and sugar don't sit together for any length of time. I kind of absorbed this rule subconsciously in Advanced Baking, but this article cleared up why. Basically the sugar will suck up all the moisture and cause the egg proteins to clump up.



3) When you're baking anything that's supposed to turn out smooth, rich, or custardy, make sure to bake it in a hot water bath that covers half of the item's height. Cold water is no good because it will mess with the cooking time.



4) You can get chocolate shavings by taking a vegetable peeler to a piece of chocolate!



5) The caramel poured in the bottom of the ramekins don't have to evenly cover the bottom, because once baked, it will spread over the bottom. (I was afraid the caramel would be spotty, but I was pleasantly surprised after I took them out.)



6) If you bake something in an otherwise-lidded jar, you can put the lid on later and it will be portable! That's how I was able to transport the flan.



7) Of course, I also unmolded one for myself to try. I waited for it to cool before I tried it, but I microwaved it later and it tasted better warm! So I guess the soft/silky flans taste better cold but the custardy ones taste better warm.



8) Hot or cold, food always taste better when shared. With friends. With iPhone sticky picture apps. Lesson learned :)

kimchi + nori + rice

I've probably mentioned somewhere that I've starved a lot in culinary school. Part of it is putting in a lot of hours in the kitchen without breaks, tasting food here and there but never actually eating. Part of it is having to support myself as a student and not having money for groceries. So time and money are big factors, which is why I often resort to cheap, easily assembled meals like pasta or frozen dumplings.

This meal I learned to make offhand. I kind of stumbled into realizing that it could be a meal. It was the spring of my senior year at college, in the agonizing weeks before thesis deadline. I was in a classmate's dorm, trying to take advantage of the change of place to not procrastinate. It wasn't working very well. I had followed my classmate into the kitchen and there she scooped some freshly cooked rice into a bowl, accompanied by kimchi (Korean pickled cabbage) and nori (salted dried seaweed).

I'd grown up thinking kimchi and nori were accompaniments to a meal, so by no means a full meal, even with rice. Little did I know that four years later I would consider it a subsistence meal, much like some students would consider instant ramen.

I just about finished this whole jar of kimchi in about two weeks. Of course I really should learn how to make my own kimchi. (As a side note, the best kimchi I ever had was in this vegetarian/vegan restaurant in Brooklyn. My friends and I went there religiously for it, until one day the kimchi no longer tasted the same and the owner said it was because they had started to make it in house, so it would be fully vegan. Which means that the taste probably had something to do with fish sauce, or shrimp paste.)

Several factors are important in the kimchi + nori + rice trifecta. The rice has to be freshly steamed and piping hot. The nori has to be the Korean kind, which is salted and slick with oil, unlike the Japanese kind, which is dry and more papery. The saltiness of the nori offsets the sour spiciness of the kimchi, and the papery crunch makes a great contrast to the steamy rice. I added the sesame seeds as an extra toasty garnish.



As an added bonus for the blog I decided to make kimchi sushi rolls. The nori absorbs the moisture from the rice and gets all soft, but other than that it works.



The sushi is great just because it's bite-sized, but the rice bowl is more satisfying as a meal.



So this was my subsistence dinner. Completed with some green tea. Very Asian, but very satisfying and simple.



I always find it nice to expend a little extra effort to make a meal look pretty. Even if one is dining alone and so very poor, it still makes a difference.

blueberry lime cheesecake

Another book from the library, 500 Cakes, inspired me to make my first ever cheesecake.

I had some limes at home, and there was a blueberry sale at Safeway, so this lime blueberry cheese cake was perfect.

Ingredients:
1 2/3 cups graham cracker crumbs, finely ground
4 oz butter, melted
16 oz cream cheese
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp cornstarch
2/3 cup sour cream
3 eggs
2 limes, zest and juice
1 cup fresh blueberries (more to decorate)



The graham cracker crumbs I ground in batches in my handy Black & Decker food chopper, purchased for $5 at a thrift store. The little thing packs more horsepower (or whatever you call it) than some blenders/food processors. Crazy!



The melted butter was mixed into the crumbs and packed into the bottom of a springform pan. This crust was left to chill in the refrigerator for half an hour. (One of the bakeries where I stage at, they actually bake the crust for a few minutes before pouring the filling in. I'll try that next time.)



In the Kitchenaid, I beat the cream cheese till smooth, then added sugar, cornstarch, sour cream, eggs and lime zest/juice, beating after each addition. The last to go in were the blueberries - aren't they pretty?



The springform pan's bottom was wrapped in foil before I poured the filling in, just in case there was leakage. Then the whole foil wrapped pan went into a shallow hot water bath (I used one of those disposable aluminum roasting pans for lack of a better tray) and into the 350F oven for 45 minutes.



In my eagerness to eat the cheesecake, I cut it after it chilled for only a few hours in the fridge. The texture isn't quite fluffy then, but it is after spending the night in the fridge. Still, it was delicious for being such a simple recipe.

The great thing about the book is that for every cake, it lists variations. The blueberries and limes can be substituted with any other berry/citrus combination. Personally, I might try strawberry basil before the summer season is gone!