Dr. J

Sunday night dinner. Vegetables cooked with some brown sugar, butter and dill, on a bed of Creme fraiche cheese sauce. Korean style marinated steak on a bed of rice, sweet potato. Garnished with carrot, radish, capers. Having the same today ill see if i can come up with a completely different presentation.

Pete, great looking food as usual. Love the choice as well as the pics. Very nice. Prawn that crab quiche looks very nice. Great pics as well.

peter the salmon and the goat are awsome. That is the kind of stuff I love to eat. Keep posting. mmmmmm homemade bacon bits. Nakji - Prasantrin is correct, that tempura sauce she links works well and I have used it in the past. However I currently use tempura sauce from a restaurant whos owner I know, and there are different variations on making the sauce. One of which involves adding sake. Since I mostly cook for myself I try to stay away from making those sauces myself. (Tempura, Eel, Tozasu, etc.). I just get them from the local restaurant and focus on new stuff. Very nice stove rooftop, i think everybody here is very envious. Kelly you should be proud of your daughter. I also have the same problem she does, i get involved in cooking and end up eating super late. That jicama lime dressing sounds like it would be a great way to put a twist in ceviche. Going to try that next time i get some decent white fish.

For the nikujaga for example lets say you use 4 parts soy, 4 parts mirin. I use 2 parts soy, 2 parts tempura sauce, 4 parts mirin. Its just a variation on the recipe. I also use tempura sauce for gyudon and its great.

Ce'nedra thanks for the compliment, I really appreciate it. The pork was a big ol' pork chop that I pan seared and placed in the oven to finish. The vegetables were the ones that I had made in a special chicken stock which I added fish sauce. Came out great. The first sauce was a brandy creme faiche sauce. Basically reduce chicken stock, on a separate pan get some butter and dissolve flour. Mix together, season and finish with a little brandy and port. Black sauce is just tonkatsu sauce, goes great with pork and the tangy ness just went great with the meal. Ok, here is about tonights meal. Have you ever came up with something that was waaaay better that you thought it was going to come out. To the point where you taste it and think hey who made this? Well that stuff only happens to me every once in a while and I am proud to say that it happened tonight. Tonights meal was for a friend that was supposed to come over but got sick. So my friend was very excited to eat and she likes to cook too so I kind of documented the process and will post here. I hope I dont bore you too much. We start out with some ribs cut longitudonally. You have to ask the butcher to do this for you. Then shave it down and tie it together with a simple knot. I marinated it with a red wine marinade for 2 days. Then pan fry it before we get started. Then it goes on the pot to slow cook for about 4 hours to be nice and tender. The ribs are cooked nikujaga style with some changes. I half tempura half soy, I also added some veal stock. And spiced it up with oregano, bay leaves, and basil. I added the marinade to what was left in the pan and added some veal stock and some of the stock that the ribs were marinating on and reduced it. Next to it is the best surprise of the night. Here is the finished product. I cored and cut potatoes and sweet potatoes in such a way to create a cylinder. In that cylinder I made a creme fraiche sauce, butter, cheddar and monterrey jack cheese sauce that was AWSOME. Next to it was a salad I made with European cucumber, tomato, orange, and crab. The dressing is a hazzlenut, rice vinegar, lemon, sugar mix.

Kobi, those cheese steaks look sooo tasty..... Love the colors chufi, food looks great! Ok, here is my presentation of my craB. This time i made a crab ravioli. Now i expected for it to taste the same as the other presentations but honestly the cutting of the avocado lenghtwise really did provide a different flavor. I will certainly be trying to do different things with this technique. I did a stepwise pic by pic on the dish, if anybody is interested i can put that up. I unfortunately forgot to take pictures of my other dish, i took the pic after i ate.

Holy crap!...... I meant to write crab...so sorry guys. The technique is not too hard. Here is a stepwise instruction on how to do it. 1. slice the avocado in quarters. 2. Pell of the skin. 3. Place the quarter on the cutting board. 4. Now, you slice the avocado in AlMOST parallel fashion (like a 5 degree angle) to the board, this technique is used when you see sushi makers make dragon rolls in which the cover the roll lenght wise with avocado. Use a nice clean knife and the thin cuts should be close to the board. As you cut you slice the avocado piece forward and cut again. 5. Repeat with another quarter. I used hass avocado (not my favorite by any means but its whats availale 6. Using the Knife to scoop up the slices, you lay the cut pieces in saran wrap so as to make a square or round area. 7. Place the salmon, crab, QP mayo, Sesame oil mixture in the middle. (Only add like 3 drops of sesame oil, its strong) 8. Carefully fold the saran wrap and using your hand mold into a ball. 9. At first its going to be this weird egg form but you can mold it carefully with your hand as long as you keep the saran wrap tight. 10. If you have a round cup i am sure you can push it on top and just remove the wrap. It shoudl work. I just used my hand. 11. For the foam, just add a little lecithin and use an immersion blender. Going to try another technique of cutting the avocado tonight and ill try to take some pictures of the crab and salmon mixture before i put it in. Ce'nedra and nakji please keep posting I love your food. Lucy can you post some quick info on that butter prep for the steak.

Last night. Pork chop topped with sweet potato, pearl onion. Dressed with tonkatsu sauce and Brandy-Port wine-Creme fraiche sauce. The second dish is a avocado ball with salmon, crap, QP mayo. Served with ponzu and sesame oil and topped with a foam made from the sauce.

Ok here was last nights dinner and today i had the day off so here is my breakfast. Chicken ballotine seved with butternut squash, pearl onion, and sweet potato. The sauces are a glace from the ballotine and a chicken stock with crem fraiche, port wine and brandy. Breakfast on a day off. Onion and ham omlet stuffed with cheddar, monterrey jack and american cheese, topped with avocado, tomato and shiracha. Points of interest, I experimented with infusing certain cheeses on my sauces which use heavy cream. I think it would be great with some chicken and beef dishes. Tried it with the leftover sauce and it was very nice. Used Gorgonzola. Also the ballotine technique is very cool, i was going to do it with some left over duck skin but i didnt have enough.

Very nice stuff, that stew looks good prawn. japanese pastries...droool..makes me wish i was back in japan. Ok here are a couple of dinners i made from some steak I bought. First is a steak made fried in butter and oil and finished in the oven, topped with carmelized onions on top of gorgonzola cheeze. The next day I ate some rice, empanadilla de pollo, and pepper steak. Kind of weird combo of latin, chinese and middle eastern techniques but it was all pretty good and most importantly a very fast and easy to make meal.

Thanks, I collect plates and bowls. For the rice, one of my secrets is that I only use premium japanese rice. Like tamanishiki or kagayaki. Depends on what is available where I live. And most of the time I cook it with my japanese rice cooker that i brought back from japan from when i lived there. p.s. I use a transformer to change the voltage from 120 to 110 which is what the rice cooker uses. Although I heard that plugging it straight in still works, I know for a fact that there is a small difference. Everybody asks me how do i make the rice, and its just simple, good rice cooker and good rice.

Here is last nights dinner. Ostrich steak, with rice made with thyme, beef broth, and onion. escargo the sauces are the anti-cucho red and orange from the nobu now book. Here is my take on the sauces. First the quantities are like enough for 3 or 4 servings. Second the red one asks for a lot of salt. I found the sauce way too salty I used wine instead of sake, i may remake the sauce with sake and reduce the salt in half. The Orange sauce basically tasted like a ponzu sauce with chilli paste. I reccomend to just buy ponzu and add chilli paste and save yourself the work. All in all, the sauces combination were Ok. But not reaaaallly good. Also, the sauces are very watery so i thikened up with xantham gum. The rice came out good, I try using different stocks to see how they work with rice, and so far beef has been my least favorite. Although the rice was still the best part of the meal along with the escargo which are always good.

First of all. Very nice on the venison pot pie Shelby. I am intrigued by the buttered spaghetti squash rooftop, Any hints on the prep for that? Love the pork with green asparragus nakji. I will try to make that dish soon! Duck looks awosme Prawncrakers Ok here we go. Sundays dinner. Scallop cooked in clarified butter topped with Papaya on a bed of Oragne slices. The sauce is a Orange/Honey glaze infused with spices and finished with stock. Also in the plate some basil infused oil. Vegetable Tempura. Baby mixed green salad with Gorgonzola, Walnuts, Cantalope and a Strawberry Vinagrette.

very nice.....great work.

So sorry guys, I keep forgetting to add the description. Vanilla Ice cream with some mint leaf up top. With basil infused oil on the sides. The oil came out great and its very subtle flavor went very well with the ice cream. Everybodys food looks great. Vanilla IceCream is good ol' Hagen dazs.

Here is tonights desert. Dinner was tough to photograph.

I ended up cooking the first one more than 20 minutes and it came out medium well. The second time i did it I did it for 20 and it came out pink and nice. (I put the bag in once the water reached proper temp) I personally did not sear it after although I have read it done that way and agree that it would look nicer that way. I was super hungry so i skipped that step. I also marinated the breast a day in advance with seasoning in Orange juice. I honestly was very surprised with how easy, simple and tasty the breast came out. I honestly do recommend it. As for SV other proteins? Well I read that they are SV ribs and other meats but the SV times are something like 8-10 hours. Which in my opinion is excessive. I read that the meat comes out nice looking inside but it is not butter in your mouth soft so I will not try that. Also, I read about SV seafood and will not even experiment because I believe that if you overcook seafood by a little then you kind of messed everything up and when the stuff is in the bag you cant tell by looking at it. I hope that helps. If I am not being exact, I can certainly put up all instructions in a scientific notation noting every little step. I apologize if I have skipped certain steps. Feel free to ask any questions, I love chatting about this stuff.

I SV the duck for around 20 min at 58 Celcius. I normally buy the whole duck, use the breasts for SV and use the rest trying new recipes. Sorry to disappoint, but I am not Julius Erving. Only place I can dunk is on the kiddie baskets with the pizza hut basketball.

Ok, first pic is a seabass on a bed of rice. the sauce is a saffron/vanilla infused clam base. The sauce is a recipe from the french landry. It was ok, but honestly i dont like the proportions they used in the book, so i am going to do it again, and repost with what i feel is perfect. The second pic is a duck breast sous-vide. Made with a squash, shallot, mushroom base with a mustard creme fraiche sauce. On the top is a Honey, Soy, ginger sauce which i thickened with Xantham gum. Also topped with a basil infused oil. The mustard creme fraiche sauce is a sauce i used from a recipe in le bouchon. I changed the quantities of the original recipe here, i used less stock, and less mustard. The sauce came out with a hint of mustard which went great with the squash. If i had to redo the picture I would have put less stuff and a lot less sauce. The pic would have come out nicer that way, but the stuff was soo good and I was soo freaking hungry that i just put it all in and ate it all. The third pic is a duck leg that I marinated and cooked with this recipe http://recipes.egullet.org/recipes/r1132.html I didnt use onions and instead of chili flakes I used a chinese garlic chilli paste. Came out great! If anybody would like the complete recipes with quantities just let me know.

Here is some pictures of my dinners from last week. I am still learning a lot about plating and taking pictures of my stuff. Another Learning point. It is very tough to take pictures and plate your own dinner when you are starving!