Anna N

Serious Eats has this to say on the topic of salting steaks: “Seasoning a steak prior to vacuum-sealing it, then letting it rest in the bag, can result in meat with a firm texture, similar to that of a mildly cured ham. Some folks find this texture off-putting, though I personally don't mind it. To avoid this texture, it's best to season and bag a steak immediately before cooking, or after cooking sous vide and before searing.” And Chef Steps has this to say: ”You may have heard talk about holding off on adding salt to your food toward the beginning of the cooking process, and it’s true that over time, salt will interact with proteins to alter a meat’s texture. This is a function of time—the longer the meat and salt interact, the more the texture will be altered. In the case of sous vide steak, we ran tests to see whether salting impacted the texture in any discernibly negative way. It didn’t! So go on and season that stuff before you cook. It’s all gonna work out great.”

Even I did not ask what they cost since Kerry said she’d already remortgaged her house to get them! I asked which house. She said it was her own not the townhouse. That only made me realize even more that they must’ve cost a bomb!

Lunch: coffee and a muffin.

I have every intention of attempting the experiment but it, too, needs to be fitted into a schedule that is not always easy at accommodating wait times or defrost times.

We needed limes and sour cream and perhaps milk for Kerry’s team. The first two were on the shopping list. What we have is some lovely blueberries from Sudbury that were at the mini farmers market, some pearl onions in balsamic vinegar, Romaine lettuce, green beans and campari tomatoes. Who said shopping with a list would save money?

No. It hasn’t happened yet.

Thanks. I am opting to go just a little higher on the temperature. My choice is going to be 57°C/134.6°F this time. I may regret it but I feel little more secure at this temperature. I seem to have a double standard for myself between sous vide and just throwing it on the grill where if it still mooing I’m OK with it!

So far I have defrosted some chicken drumsticks and will marinate them in some ginger and garlic. I think they will work hot cold or room temperature once they are cooked. Have cooked some eggs in the Instant Pot with a view to making a bacon, asparagus and egg salad with a dijon dressing. It should tolerate some wishy-washiness about serving times as long as I don’t dress it till the last minute. Now I am debating what to do with the blade roast that is in the freezer and that I would like out of the freezer. I know @rotuts has offered some suggestions but sometimes I can be quite contrary. Or perhaps contrary is not quite what I mean. I know have to fit this into a schedule and so Iblook to the cooking method that will most easily accommodate the schedule and it’s beginning to look like sous vide from frozen. That would preclude any trimming which I believe was suggested.

Literally. Kerry reminded me that I have Asian pears literally fermenting in the refrigerator. Not sure they’re going to show up but they might.

Good morning. Woke to cloudy skies and evidence of rain over night. No rain in the forecast but not much sunshine either. Kerry is back on call for the next 24 hours. A friend is driving up today to spend some time at the cottage out at Freer Point. She might dop in for a quick visit and to grab some potable water from our tap. Was more successful with my eggs this morning. We are not having a lot of success tracking down farm eggs this trip. No point today in making a dinner plan that isn’t amenable to being served cold, room temperature or re-heated! One never knows what will transpire in the ER when dinner time rolls around. I have a couple of ideas fermenting.

Me too! Not prepared to give up money or counter space for one of those!

I have to really disguise the taste of rum to get it down!

So I searched and searched for your chawanmushi in the photograph until the caffeine finally kicked in and I realized you didn’t post a photograph of it. Duh! Lovely meal nevertheless. I am quite jealous.

We will drink until our check liver lights come on!

Tonight I took my ginger snaps straight up. The ballpoint is there for scale.

Dinner. Kerry’s with a low carb cheese delivery system. Kerry pointed out that we did indeed have lovely cider vinegar ( it is hiding in the cocktail picture if you look very carefully) so the salad was made correctly. Not sure if I blame the CSO but I have never had this result from this recipe before. It is an old, old recipe I have used many times. It has obviously split. It is basically a cheese fondue with seafood and asparagus. In this case shrimp and asparagus. I worked slowly and hard to get the perfectly smooth cheese and wine combination. Damn. My not-low-carb version with toast croutons as the cheese delivery system.

Tonight’s cocktail is an Oriental. According to the Savoy Cocktail Book the recipe was given by an American engineer to his doctor in the Philippines to think him for curing a fever.

And I don’t even want to belong to this club.

I do hope the “boys” are staying out of the way when you get this enthusiastic!

Yes. My thoughts were the same on covering them. Like I say it’s really not going to be critical. I’m probably overthinking everything. I can do that sometimes.

Good point! Thanks.

Kerry asked me to post photographs of our “bar”. She is open to get suggestions as to how to use up some of it. I think it will be more helpful if we take the time to move the almost empty bottles into a space of their own so you have something more useful to work with. Stay tuned for when one of us has the energy and the ambition to undertake this task. We might need a couple of cocktails first.

No typo. I have made this recipe many times before but never when I owned a CSO. Basically it is pre-cooked before being poured into ramekins and brought back up to temperature slowly in a bain marie so we are not actually cooking anything. Probably isn’t critical at all but I just wanted to put it out there and see what you all thought. Same abbreviation had occurred to me but, like you, I decided better not. Think I will just put it into the CSO probably at a little higher temperature, maybe 325 maybe 350 and just keep an eye on it. I will use the gentler steam bake function out of respect for the “emulsion”? We can get specific after dinner.

Thank you, @rotuts and @Shelby. Next question: I want to cook a dish which normally calls a bain marie. I hate mucking about with boiling water and shallow pans. I have a CSO. Why can’t I do it in there? If the original recipe called for a bain marie at 300°F for 5 to 8 minutes or until bubbly (I will have to go longer because it’s been refrigerated), would you go steam bake for the same amount of time? You can’t ask me what it is or you will spoil the surprise!

Looking for your best advice. Committed the cardinal sin of not checking on the availability of ingredients, again. I swear I saw apple cider vinegar. Only in my dreams apparently. I am in the middle of making the Everyday Cucumber Salad from DeepRun Roots. I have sherry vinegar, white vinegar, white wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar but no apple cider vinegar. What do you think?