“B” Dinner: Buffalo Wings, Blue Cheese Dip, Broccoli Soup

I recently purchased

Modernist Cuisine at Home: Nathan Myhrvold,Maxime Bilet: 9780982761014: Books

and finally gave in and bought a pressure cooker.

Fagor Duo Combi 5-Piece Pressure Cooker Set: Kitchen & Dining ASIN: B00023D9S0

I love this set since I couldn’t decide which size to buy. This comes with a 4 and 8 quart pot, trivet and steamer basket, a glass lid in addition to the pressure lid so it’s not a single purpose item, two pressure settings, and it works on my induction burner.

 

Tried the much lauded (from Modernist Cuisine) @ Home version of the Caramelized Carrot Soup and brown chicken stock last weekend to christen the pressure cooker.

I strained the stock first through a colander, and then through a 100 micron mesh bag.

 

Very tasty and wonderful body. I used it 50:50 with water in the carrot soup because I didn’t want to search for carrot juice.

 

I see what all the fuss is about. The soup was wonderful.  And I wish I’d bought that pressure cooker set last year when I got MC.

 

Yesterday I was indulging in my usual Saturday morning food blog surfing and followed a link on egullet.org to a Food Lab article on Korean Fried Chicken by Kenji. I had been tempted by the crispy wings in MC@H, but I don’t have the sous vide capacity to make very many at once, and if I make wings (and have to share with my husband), I want a lot.

The Korean Wings post lead me to Kenji’s Food Lab article on The Ultimate Extra-Crispy Double Fried Confit Buffalo Wings. This recipe uses four pounds of wings – now that’s more like it.

 

I used the oven method to confit the wings; I like the unattended cooking aspect of it. Even though it’s not from MC@H, it does have the same spirit.

 

With all this impromptu cooking, conceived that morning, I didn’t want to burden my husband who was shopping for me on his way home by adding all the ingredients needed for the MC@H Buffalo sauce. I went with my standard sauce of half butter and half Crystal Hot Sauce.

 

I did feel I could impose on him enough to find some blue cheese and milk so I could make the Blue Cheese Sauce. He brought home some lovely Stilton.

 

The Caramelized Carrot Soup was so good, I was anxious to try the Broccoli-Gruyere Soup (especially since I had broccoli, gruyere, and the MC@H brown chicken stock  in the fridge already).

I didn’t have hazelnuts for the garnish, so I used roasted-salted pumpkin seeds with the thyme. My husband and I loved it. It’s more olive toned than Gordon Ramsey’s bright green broccoli soup. I may cut down on the pressure cooking time next try to see if I can keep a better color.

 

Since the MC@H Blue Cheese Sauce is heat stable with the sodium citrate, I warmed a portion of the sauce to use in my whipper and try it in addition to the chilled sauce. I think I prefer the contrast of the cold sauce with the hot wings.

(Sorry about the messy plating, by this time my husband and I were so hungry, we just put the food on the plate and I took one quick photo.)

Either way, the Blue Cheese Sauce is great. Well worth making rather than using store-bought or standard home-made dressing. Intense blue cheese flavor. The wings were as Kenji promised; ultra-crispy and kept their crispiness even with standard Buffalo sauce.

I will be making all of these again, and hopefully frequently.

Sous Vide Supreme

Technorati Tags: Sous Vide,beef,chicken,eggs

I convinced my husband that if I got a Sous Vide Supreme for Christmas, it would be a great excuse to use our blowtorch more often.

 

First, I made creamy scrambled eggs with thyme cooked at 158 F for 1 hour. Served with my bacon.

 

Then, beef short ribs at 135 F for 48 hours.

 

My husband torching the short ribs.

 

Served with cauliflower pureed with horseradish and cheddar cheese. As I’ve learned from further reading, large bits of fat might not render out at this low temperature. The ribs were fork tender, but a bit “blubbery”.  I’ll try a higher temperature next time.

 

Next up, chicken breasts with herb sachets: sage, thyme, and oregano.  Cooked at 140 F for 3 hours.

 

In   it is recommended to wrap herbs in plastic wrap to make sachets so the herbs don’t come in direct contact with the food and create sites of overpowering flavor. The juices from the meat seep in the cut ends of the plastic wrap and steep the herbs to extract the flavor.

 

I quick-chilled 4 of them to freeze for later.

 

Rather than sear the two chicken breasts with oregano that I was serving for dinner, I made a sauce with sundried tomatoes, goat cheese, lemon juice, garlic and basil.

 

Very tender, juicy, and tasty (except for too much lemon juice in the sauce).  I wish I had thought to take a photo of a cut surface of the chicken breast.

 

Prime rib eye steaks.

 

After cooking 4 hours at 135 F.  I had planned to take them out after 2 hours but my husband had to work late unexpectedly – not a problem with Sous Vide.

 

Seared in an enameled cast-iron skillet.

 

I think we might have seared them a touch too long.  Almost have a grey ring at the very edge, but not too bad.  Certainly not a regular bull's-eye you’d get from grilling. Nearly perfect medium-rare throughout.

McDonald’s type French Fries and Fresh Ground Beef Burgers

I’ve been looking forward to trying this method for making McDonald’s type French Fries at home ever since I read this post, How to Make Perfect Thin and Crisp French Fries, by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. My husband just completed 3 months of exercise and dieting, and wanted to have an over-the-top nasty (in a good way) dinner to celebrate. I decided I wanted to try frying the potatoes in beef fat for old-style McDonald’s fries.

 

My husband persuaded a local butcher to save us some beef fat to render for frying. This is 12 lbs. trimmed beef fat ready to go in a slow oven to render over several hours.

 

After straining and cooling overnight; I got lovely, creamy-white beef tallow.

 

The fries must be exactly 1/4 inch for the process to work. My Oxo mandoline worked very well with the French Fry insert.

 

The cut potatoes must be parboiled in acidulated, salted water until tender. Unfortunately, I made a slightly larger batch than called for in the recipe and since the water took longer to come to a boil, the potatoes were overdone. It finally occurred to me to check them before the time specified, but I was a bit too late. They didn’t crumble into mashed potatoes, but most of the long ones broke in half when I drained them. I’ll start checking them much earlier next time.

After drying on a paper towel-lined baking sheet, I fried the potatoes in the beef fat for 50 seconds, then spread them on another paper towel-lined sheet and froze them for several hours. They are supposed to be even closer to McD’s fries if frozen overnight, but I didn’t have the time.

 

I wanted a great burger to serve with the fries, so I adapted another of Kenji’s recipes:  The World's Best Burger for a Single Man (or Woman). I ground a well-marbled chuck roast and some boneless beef short ribs with my KitchenAid meat grinder attachment.

 

Very minimal handling is key to preserve the ground beef “noodles” for a greater surface area for crisping and catching melted cheese, and to prevent a dense interior. I ground the meat directly onto the lined sheet pan and gently coaxed the burgers into shape.

 

A close-up of the desired loose structure of the patty.

 

The burger recipe called for frying one burger at a time (hence the “Single” modifier) in a small skillet so the fat from the burgers would get about 1/8” deep to get the edges as crispy as the bottom. To get all the burgers to finish as the fries were getting their final 3.5 minute fry (by my husband outside on the grill side-burner), I just added a bit of the beef tallow I had made to reproduce the effect.

 

My goodness! Everything came out so delicious. The burgers were crispy outside – tender and juicy inside with lots of crags for the cheese to melt into. The fries (though shorter than they could have been) were light-golden bits of heaven. They were fluffy inside, not greasy (really), and stayed crispy to the last fry. I hope to get the gumption to make some batches up to the freezing stage (they are supposed to keep frozen for 2 months). How nice to be able to serve fresh fries like this in just a few minutes. But, I’ll think I’ll just buy the tallow next time…

 

Can I get a little extra credit for difficulty - cooking in the American Mastiff Obstacle Course?

Ice Chest Sous Vide

Ah, near perfect medium-rare steak from edge to edge with no large, grey ring of overdone meat around the sides. (I’m sorry the plate is so messy; I’m always rushing to eat when the food is done and forget proper plating.)

I’ve been interested in trying sous-vide for a couple of years but didn’t want to try to build a homemade system and certainly couldn’t afford a commercial setup. With the SousVide Supreme now available for home use, the technique is approaching the realm of the possible; but I wanted to give it a trial run before thinking of plunking down around $500 (though it’s not that much more than a nice KitchenAid mixer). Thanks to J. Kenji Lopez-Alt at Serious Eats, a limited version (not hot enough for vegetables, thickness of meat and cooking time limits) of sous-vide is possible for just about anyone. In the comments section of the article Cook Your Meat in a Beer Cooler: The World's Best (and Cheapest) Sous-Vide Hack, I found a wonderful calculator Sous-Vide in a Cooler - water temperature calculator that will tell you what temperature of water is needed based on the dimensions of your cooler; type and starting and ending temperature of the meat, etc. Check out Kenji’s Sous-Vide 101: Prime Steak Primer for a detailed explanation of the process.

 

Start with a couple of rib-eyes.

 

Season with fresh-ground black pepper and Kosher salt and enclose in plastic. You can use Ziploc bags with the immersion method to remove as much air as possible, but it’s nice to vacuum seal the bags if you have one.

 

The steaks relaxing in their (should have been) 139.6 degree bath. (I swear I scrubbed out the cooler – those are stains – not dirt. And the steaks are vacuum sealed anyway.) I was pretty lucky for a first try. My hot tap water is 130 degrees. I filled the cooler to 8” deep with the hot tap water then added 1” of simmering water from a large pot on the stove. It looked like about a gallon of simmering water (and that’s what the Sous-Vide in a Cooler - water temperature calculator shows). I had figured on a final water depth of 9” and the temp. was 139.9 degrees at this point. I probably should have added some ice to get the temp. to 139.6, but I was afraid to mess with it too much. That may be why the steaks weren’t quite perfectly medium-rare; or, perhaps the final sear on the charcoal grill lasted a tiny bit too long. I’m sold on the technique, however. The steaks were tender, juicy and delicious. There’s no need to rush with sous-vide steaks. Suddenly decided you want to oven-bake rather than microwave your potatoes, forgot to decant the wine, or expecting chronically-late dinner guests? The steaks will stay at your chosen doneness for another hour or two, no worries.

Egg & Herb Ricotta Ravioli

I was trying to think of some way to use up some leftover ricotta and decided to make egg yolk ravioli again. I adapted the filling from this delicious days days post.

 

And I’ve been looking forward to using the new ravioli mold my husband got for me.

 

Giant sage leaves (my herbs love their EarthBoxes), oregano, a little thyme, Parmigianino Reggiano, ricotta, nutmeg, extra virgin olive oil, pepper & salt for the filling.

 

I love this attachment for the microplane grater.

 

And this mini chopper my mother found for me at a garage sale.

 

It works well when you need herbs very finely and evenly chopped.

 

Ready to mix all the filling ingredients together.

 

I put this in the refrigerator to let the flavors meld while I made the pasta dough.

 

While surfing for egg yolk ravioli variations, I found a great post on total food processor pasta dough (no kneading) and was anxious to try it. The instructions may look overwhelming, but the actual method is easy and the detailed instructions are to help insure success and troubleshoot any problems. I found a similar post here – the instructions aren’t as detailed, but there are some helpful photos of the stages involved to show you what to expect.

 

 

Either the instructions were very good, or I’m very lucky. The dough was wonderful to work with on my first attempt. Not too sticky, not too dry.

 

No cracks, easy to handle with minimal flour.

 

Unfortunately, I put in a little too much of the filling trying to make a nice nest for the yolks. I tore the back, right “sling” while pushing the filling low enough to leave room for the yolk and the yolk slipped out the side.

 

I managed to retrieve the yolk from the counter by moistening the spoonula and my fingers with egg white and easing the yolk up onto the spoonula. As the ravioli with the yolks are so rich, I decided to only use eight. I put a sprinkle of P-R on each yolk to protect it while adding the top layer of dough. I used a pastry brush to paint some reserved egg white beaten with a bit of water to seal the dough.

 

I was afraid to push too hard with the rolling pin and risk disrupting the yolks so I sealed the dough by pressing along the seams and cutting them apart with a knife run along the cutting ridges.

 

One of the yolked raviola blew apart when I flipped the form over – hence the smeared yolk on the parchment paper. I also discarded the one the rescued yolk had escaped from. (It’s best to start this recipe with lots of extra eggs.)

 

I cut up some odd pieces of my pancetta-style bacon into near-lardons.

 

While cooking the bacon I made beurre noisette.

 

Then I fried some small sage leaves in the bacon fat for garnish.

 

Served with the beurre noisette, bacon, fried sage and a sprinkle of P-R. I wish I had thought to cut into one  and photograph it before my husband and I ate all of them. Oh well, it looked a lot like my first egg yolk ravioli:

 

I had enough filling and pasta left over to use the other, smaller form that my husband also got for me.

 

No yolks this time. I will freeze these for another day.

 

I love the little rolling pin that came with this form.