Baselerd

I recently made some spring rolls, stuffed with charred baby octopus, bo nhung dam, rice noodles, fresh herbs, cucumber, and lettuce. Served with a spicy peanut sauce.

That looks awesome, what'd ya do to make the dashi? I recently made a multi-course meal: To start, the roasted mushroom salad from the Momofuku cookbook. Pan-fried/seared oyster and shimeji mushrooms with braised pistachios (in dashi/soy sauce), pistachio puree (said pistachios blended with water), pickled sunchokes, and cured radishes. After that, I made this pork belly recipe. Tamarind-glazed pork belly (braised with lemongrass and ginger), served with a Korean cabbage salad with lime vinaigrette. After that was the Boeuf Bourguignon recipe found here. This truly was fantastic (and the roast was pretty easy). It was simply a trimmed beef chuck cooked at 135 F for 24 hours, then it was dusted with burnt scallion ash and served with baby root vegetables and beef demi. Finally, I prepared this dessert from the Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook. Pear sorbet, pumpkin ganache, Cornflake crunch, and Humbolt Fog ripened goat cheese.This pumpkin ganache was truly addictive, I'd recommend anyone with the cookbook make it - it's super easy and crazy good.

Thanks, To get that black, crispy crust I made a glaze with liquid smoke, molasses, and liquid amino. The brisket was cooked in the sous vide bath with this glaze, removed, and patted dry (this helped color the exterior a little bit). Then to finish it off, it was glazed again and generously coated with a rub (smoked salt, smoked pepper, chipotle, mustard powder, brown sugar, onion powder, garlic powder) and roasted in the oven at a low temp (275 F) for 4 hours until it was black and crispy. If you're interested, I followed this recipe. (I'm not affiliated with them, but they do put out some awesome recipes). And yes, the brisket was served with some pressure cooked Boston beans and a dense, moist cornbread.

The ring is really just aesthetic, but I threw a little bit of Prague powder #1 into the brine at the end (it had been brining for 24 hours, I threw in the pink salt and let is brine another 2 hours). All the ring is (in both traditional smoking and in this case) is a reaction between myoglobin (a protein in muscle tissue), water, and nitrogen.

As I do not have a smoker (since I live in a highrise) I tried the sous vide smokerless smoked brisket recipe from Chefsteps. They claimed it was indistinguishable from properly smoked brisket, and while I have had better BBQ (living in Texas, naturally), this was up there among the best. Unfortunately my meat was pretty lean, I'm thinking of trying it again with some fattier brisket, since that perfect melt-in-your-mouth fat is what would likely set the sous vide approach apart from traditional BBQ.

I recently made the deconstructed everything bagel salmon from Chefsteps. This was no joke the best salmon recipe I've ever prepared. The salmon was brined in a smokey brine, then dry rubbed prior to cooking en sous vide for 30 minutes at 113 F. It was served with an everything bagel crumble, warm cream cheese, pickled pearl onions, and tarragon.

I made a sort of modern dessert recently. I had a big block of caramelized white chocolate laying around, so I made some caramelized white chocolate sorbet - using David Lebovitz's recipe as a starting point (I added some stabilizer and used some half-and-half in place of milk). This turned out fantastic. To go with the sorbet, I made some chocolate ganache, chocolate crumbs (from the Momofuku Milk Bar recipes), and peanut butter sponge cake (the instant variety with an ISI Whip a la Modernist Cuisine). Topped it off with some micro-basil.

I recently made some ramen, one of the more delicious incarnations that I've made. To make the broth I did the following: -In the base of a large pressure cooker, I made some dashi by steeping kombu in hot water (just under boiling), removed the seaweed, simmered bonito flakes for a few minutes, then strained the flakes out. -Next, I added 2 lbs of honey glazed ham hocks, 2 lbs chicken thigh bones and scraps, a big bag of dried shiitake mushrooms, a bunch of chopped green onions, about 2" sliced ginger, 1 onion (halved), 2 carrots (coarsely chopped). I filled the rest of the pressure cooker with a good amount of sake, mirin, and a bit of soy sauce. -The pressure cooker was cooked on high pressure for about 2 hours, then strained. I added soy sauce and mirin to taste. Finally, I put the liquid in the refrigerator to let it set, then scraped off the excess fat. The rest of the ramen was pretty standard, Chashu pork belly and shoulder (sous vide, 24 hours at 160 F), ajitsuki tamago (made with the marinating liquid strained from the pork bags), scallions, wakame seaweed, and some corn sauteed with butter and more of the pork bag juices.

Well, all I really did was boiled the quinoa in sugar water, then strained them. The water wasn't super syrupy, so they didn't really stick together. Following that I partially dehydrated the quinoa and deep fried it in batches, and spread it out on a baking sheet to cool.

Thanks - it was actually thawed from flash frozen, which is generally the best way to get sushi-grade fish where I'm at (non-coastal). However, a lot of tuna has dye injected into it to improve appearance as well. I also recently made another recipe from The Uchi Cookbook - Sous vide lobster tails, canary melon gazpacho, yellow pepper piperade, and cilantro puree. The chilled lobster went perfectly with the gazpacho, which was very simple (blended canary melon, salt, sugar, and xanthan gum).

I've recently been on a raw fish / crudo binge. It's so simple to prepare, yet so delicious. This one was somewhat inspired by a recipe in the Uchi Cookbook: -Yellowfin tuna -Nectarines -Goat Cheese -Candied quinoa -Thai basil This was all dressed with shiro shoyu, sanbaizu, and pumpkinseed oil. I also made this sous vide chicken liver pate from Chefsteps. It's really a fantastic recipe, the texture is perfectly smooth - and it will probably be my go-to pate recipe from now on. (The Eleven Madison Park recipe is great too, but this one is sooo easy to prepare). Served on toasted sourdough with honey.

I recently made some honey-glazed ham hocks following this recipe. It turned out great. Since cherries are in season now, I also went ahead and made black forest cake-themed dessert. A lot of the components were grabbed from recipes on this page. It was a ton of work, but delicious: Cherry sorbet Flourless chocolate custard cake Microwaved chocolate sponge cake Cherry fluid gel Chocolate fluid gel Chocolate crumbles

Recently made some pea puree (sauteed frozen peas, onions, and garlic, then blended them with a little oil and a good amount of mascarpone) then put some pan seared scallops, peas, and morels on top of it.

I've had good luck using Cream of Coconut (Coco Real brand, Gourmet) in coconut sorbets and gelatos (Not necessarily with the MC recipe).

I recently tried to fancy up some steak - I cooked a cheap (but well marbled) piece of chuck steak for 72 hours at 131 F. I took the bag juices, reduced with some red wine, shallots, garlic, and thyme and butter to make a sauce. I stir fried some broccoli in the sauce, and served it with some watercress puree (blanched watercress, salt, ascorbic acid, and xanthan gum). I also made a sort of thick blue cheese cream gel via melting some blue cheese in cream, then adding iota carageenan to set it to a solid gel. Then, it was blended to make a fluid gel - I was rather happy with how it turned out, it had a thick custardy mouthfeel, but tasted strongly like blue cheese.

I recently made one of the more unusual ice cream recipes from Elements of Dessert - baguette ice cream. The recipe had you toast slices of baguette, then blend the baguette with whole milk. The rest of the recipe followed standard ice cream preparation techniques, using the baguette milk as the base. A few added ingredients (active dry yeast, malt syrup) reinforced the bread flavor. However, after blending the baguette-milk base was a thick paste (no way I could churn the mixture in my machine). So I ended up throwing half of it away and adding more milk. Then I added 18% egg yolks (to baguette milk), 20% sugars (half glucose powder, half sugar), and about .5% stabilizer (guar gum/iota carageenan). Turned out well in the end, it tasted like a freshly toasted baguette - perhaps the book instructions would work well with a Pacojet, not sure. It was served with dehydrated milk foam, caramelized white chocolate, cajeta, and black lava salt.

So I recently made the ginger-scallion sauce from Momofuku (it's the bomb), which inspired me to put this together. The puree is essentially the Momofuku ginger-scallion sauce, but blended (I added a bit of xanthan gum and a few splashes of boiled sake to make it a bit creamier). I took some of this puree and mixed with water, soy sauce, simple syrup, and sake to make a marinade for the chicken. I served it with some pan-fried broccoli crowns, and made some fondant out of the trimmed stalks by simmering in ginger cream. -Marinated chicken breast -Crispy broccoli -Ginger-scallion puree -Broccoli fondant

I recently made a greek dish, somewhat inspired by this recipe from Starchefs. The lamb shanks were de-boned, then cooked in a water bath for 48 hours at 143F. I let them chill, cut them, then seasoned and finished in a skillet. The chickpea cake from the recipe was very interesting, I had never known that garbanzo flour had the ability to set into a starch gel. What the recipe had you do is make a flavorful broth with rosemary, garlic, onions, etc, then use that broth to set the flour. Lamb shanks with eggplant puree, chickpea cakes, toasted pine nuts, mint, tomatoes, and kalamata olives.

Here's a pork dish I put together: Sous vide pork belly (brined, sous vide @ 144F for 72 hours), fried apple puree, kimchi marinated apples, pork-apple jus (reduced bag juices with apple juice, apple cores, onions, and garlic), egg yolk confit fluid gel, and kumquats.

Here's a roasted beet salad that I threw together with some random leftovers: Roast beets, beet puree (roast beets, lemon juice, salt, and butter), rye crumble, cherry tomatoes, micro beet greens. The beets were tossed in pumpkin seed oil and balsamic, while the tomatoes were tossed in white balsamic and olive oil. And a dessert made from the Uchi Cookbook: Lemon gelato with pistachio crumble, beet puree, cured lemon zest, white balsamic reduction, and beet glass.

I recently made some salmon crudo. I briefly (~4 minutes) brined the salmon in a salt-sugar water brine, and paired it with some cilantro oil, pickled shallots, sanbaizu (dashi + sugar + soy sauce + rice vinegar). Also, I pretty much made this dessert recipe exactly as stated: Olive oil cake, dehydrated cake crumbs, eggless vanilla ice cream, orange fluid gel, orange foam, and confit citrus supremes. For some reason the gel didn't set fully, so the foam wasn't as stable as I'd like it to have been. Other than that, it was damn good, and tasted more or less like an orange creamsicle.

Recently made this recipe for cauliflower. Fried cauliflower, herb-yogurt sauce, toasted pine nuts, golden raisins (softened a little), herb salad.

I recently made some tacos - decided to try and plate them all deconstructed-like to make for a fancy photo. The recipe was adapted from Starchefs, and for the beans I took the recipe straight out of Modernist Cuisine at Home. -Sous vide blade steak (marinated overnight in a crapload of pepper, thyme, and olive oil, then sous vide in said mixture for 12 hours at 130 F. -Harissa (I kind of spun my own by blending rehydrated Guajillo and New Mexico chilis with a roasted red pepper, lemon juice, coriander, cumin, salt, and olive oil.) -Fennel pollen yogurt (Bison yogurt whisked with lemon juice, fennel pollen, cream, salt, olive oil) -Bacon fat tortillas (the recipe above made good tortillas, but the bacon fat didn't really add anything. Lard would've been easier) -Lemon-mint pickles -Refried bean foam (delicious - pressure cooked pinto beans/lard, pureed, mixed with cream, and charged in a whipping siphon)

Here was a three course meal I put together recently. The first was the caramelized carrot soup from The Modernist Cuisine, garnished with some hot coconut chutney foam. The foam was outstanding, essentially the recipe has you made a fluid gel (using low acyl gellan) with coconut milk, coconut cream, mint, cilantro, and a small amount of hot green pepper. Then you charge it with a whipping siphon and serve it hot. I had a pork jowl dish at a local restaurant recently, which kind of inspired the next dish. I brined some chicken thighs (and added a good amount of liquid smoke), then cooked them sous vide for 4 hours at 150 F. I served the chicken with some Brussels sprouts kimchi, asian pear, whipped lemon creme fraiche, radish sprouts, and Togarashi. Finally for dessert I made about half of the components for the "Mint & Chocolate" recipe from Eleven Madison Park. This included spearmint sorbet, chocolate mousse, chocolate cookie crumble, and whipped creme fraiche.

I recently made some scallops by first marinating them for six hours in some olive oil, minced onions and garlic, and lemon zest. I served them with some sunchoke puree, grapefruit-rutabaga jus, fennel fondant (sous vide in orange juice at 185 F for 45 minutes, then seared with the scallops), and brown rice crackers. Some of these components were adapted from this recipe on starchefs.