Baselerd

A slightly modern take on beef & broccoli, adapted from the Volt Ink cookbook. Sous vide short ribs (36 hours at 149 F), broccoli puree, sauteed broccoli, and spicy soy caramel. The caramel is fantastic - essentially the recipe has you make a standard caramel (reduce some water, sugar, and corn syrup until amber in color), then mix it with soy sauce. Once it cools, mix in a tiny bit of garam masala and sherry vinegar.

Impulsively grabbed some foie gras from the supermarket and mixed it with some leftover pieces of other dishes I had laying around: Seared foie gras, pomegranate syrup, pistachio crumble, candied quinoa, raspberry puree.

To make it you blend tomatoes (de-seeded and skin removed), egg whites, and corn syrup in a ratio of 2:1:1 (by weight), then spread out the resulting foam onto a sheet of acetate (or another non-stick, flat surface). Then I simply put it in a dehydrator overnight and broke it into shards.

Here's a dessert I made from the same Uchi Cookbook. A little unconventional, but it turned out surprisingly well: Roasted tomato sorbet with goat cheese custard, pistachio crumble, confit Cherub tomatoes, tomato paper, sherry vinegar syrup, and tomato salt.

Here's a recipe I adapted out of the Uchi cookbook - Hamachi crudo with pickled shallots, Kaffir lime oil, quick-cured (salted) cucumbers, Yuzu juice, mint, and Jalapeno. The pickled shallots were great - the pickling juice called for a good amount of sugar, and the sweetness paired well with the Hamachi.

I made a peanut butter themed dessert, adapted from this recipe at Starchefs. The peanut butter semifreddo from this recipe is fantastic, and very easy to make. My ice cream maker is out of service, so I decided to go for a granita. I ended up simmering the raisins in the sake syrup to make the sake raisins, rather than just steep as per the recipe (they didn't seem to take up enough flavor using that technique). -Peanut butter semifreddo -Apple-miso granita -Peanut butter powder (4:1 ratio of N-Zorbit to peanut butter, blended) -Raisin fluid gel -Sake-ginger raisins -Peanut brittle

Sure. After cooking the breasts sous vide for one hour at 133 F, I removed them from the bags and cut the skin in a crosshatch pattern (spaced about 1/2 - 3/4 inch apart), about 1/2 to 2/3 way into the skin. You don't want to cut all the way through into the meat. The purpose (allegedly, from what I've read) of doing this is to allow the fat to render more quickly while searing. After scoring, I sprinkle a little bit of salt over the breasts, let them rest for about 45 minutes, then wipe them off before searing. To sear, I heat a skillet to medium / medium high, throw the breasts on skin-side down, then place a flat weight on top of them until crisp and golden.

Here's an adapted version of this recipe from Starchefs: -Sous vide duck breast (133 F for 1 hour, then the skin was scored, salted, and seared) -Sunchoke puree: Simmered 1.5 cups diced sunchokes in 1 cup of cream and 3 Tbsp butter until soft, then pureed with salt, adding the cooking liquid gradually until the right consistency was achieved. -Maple roasted beets -Orange-duck gastrique -Oranges -Sorrel

So I recently put together this dish, inspired by this recipe: pork shoulder with tofu-miso mousse, seaweed/Brussels sprout salad, pork jus, and ajitake tamago. First I cured some pork shoulder in a 1:1 mixture of sugar and salt for about 6 hours, then rinsed it and cooked sous vide for 12 hours @ 160 F. I drained the bag liquids into a pot, added some soy sauce, mirin, and leftover ramen broth and reduced until it was thick enough to coat a spoon. I followed the recipe for the miso-tofu mousse in the link, which was simply blending some miso, tofu, and soymilk and then loading it into a whipping siphon. It was topped with a Japanese-style marinated egg (ajitake tamago) and salad made with charred Brussels sprouts, Wakame seaweed, sesame seeds, and black rice vinegar. Overall it was a pretty great dish, if not a tad bit intense (perhaps my red miso was a bit strong).

mm84321, that Mackerel looks fantastic. Is that modernist-style fried sauce? I made some ramen recently - turned out pretty good (although I've made better.) I followed my standard (read: lazy) ramen prep technique in which I make some traditional dashi, then pressure cook (1.5 hours @ 15 psi) it with a crapload of chicken / pork bones, scallions, burnt onions, dried shiitakes, sake, and some bag juices from sous vide pork belly. Then I strained it, added some shiro miso, soy sauce, and mirin to taste. The toppings included some sous vide pork shoulder (150F for 36 hours), wakame, ajitake tamago, charred broccoli, scallions, sesame seeds, and togarashi.

It's been a while - here's some steamed Gua Gao buns with pork belly (cured in salt/instacure #1, then cooked for 48 hours @ 144F), Brussels sprouts kimchi, hoisin sauce, and togarashi. The kimchi was pretty great - I pretty much used the same exact process for Napa cabbage kimchi, but brined sliced Brussels sprouts (rather than just salting them).

Some steak, potatoes, and roasted Brussels sprouts. The hangar steak was seared, then cryovacced with olive oil and garlic. This was cooked for 3 hours @ 133 F, then unbagged and seared in hot oil. To make the potato puree, I peeled and sliced (about 1 cm thick) some Yukon gold potatoes. They were cooked on the stove in a mixture of milk, butter, salt, and cream for about 40 minutes. I strained the potatoes and pressed them through a fine sieve, then gradually whipped the reserved milk/butter into the potatoes until I reached the desired consistency.

Adapted from this recipe: Sous vide squid, miso-cured egg yolks, Meyer lemon powder & oil, wasabi powder. To cook the squid, they were vacuum sealed with katsuobushi butter and cooked for 10 minutes at 162 F. Then they were seared in a screaming hot pan and basted in butter for a moment. This was the first time I had cooked squid sous vide, and to my surprise it was almost perfectly done (soft, but still had a bit of bite to it).

Ann_T that pizza looks amazing. Care to share the recipe for the dough? Here's a little salad I put together - marinated roast beets, comice pears, candied walnuts, goat cheese, arugula, spinach, and white balsamic vinaigrette. The beets were quite amazing - I scrubbed them and cut the tops and bottoms off, dressed them in olive oil, salt, sugar, a splash of water, and balsamic vinegar. Then they were roasted in tin foil at 400 F for 40 minutes, flipped, then roasted another 30 minutes. They were then cooled, peeled, cut into bite sized pieces, and marinated in the pan juices with some extra olive oil and balsamic.

It is quite good. I do think the Modernist Cuisine / ChefSteps short rib pastrami is my favorite though.

That's some nice crispy skin on those birds. I finally got around to making the Momofuku recipe for short ribs - a bit late to the party I suppose. Either way, it was definitely one of the better short rib recipes I've made (48 hours @ 140 F), probably due to the amazing braising liquid the recipe involves. Also on the plate was some dashi-braised daikon, pickled carrots, pickled mustard seeds, and a reduction of the braising liquids.

I always like to add some reasonably dark beer to my chili.

Ann_T that pizza crust looks amazing! I recently put together this plate - a fancy take on the classic chicken and mushrooms. It included some sous vide chicken breast, chicken liver mousse, pickled Shimeji mushrooms, braised oyster mushrooms, and a sous vide egg yolk (145 F), topped with some sorrel from my garden. It was one of the better renditions of chicken breasts I've made. I brined the chicken breasts (skin on) in 4 cups water, .5 cups sugar, and .5 cups of salt for about 3 hours, then cooked sous vide with butter, thyme, garlic, bacon, and peppercorns for 1 hour at 145 F. Finished it off by crisping the skin in a saute pan with olive oil. The liver mousse was great as well - I cooked it straight from the Eleven Madison Park cookbook. The great thing about that recipe is that it makes a ton, so I have many nights worth of pate frozen (ready for some wine and crackers).

I've been on an oyster binge recently - this topping was inspired by some oysters I had a local restaurant recently. Some more Conneticut Blue Point oysters, topped with a Thai Nam chim sauce, crispy shallots, and chives. This was pretty good - the sauce was made by reducing soy sauce, fish sauce, sesame oil, sugar, and water with ginger, garlic, coriander, and Thai chilies until it was almost syrupy.

A recent seafood dinner. I started out with some Blue point oysters on the half shell with some yuzu-pear mignonette (yuzu juice, champagne, diced pears, minced shallots, chives, olive oil, pickled mustard seed). For the main course, I adapted this recipe from Food Arts. Nothing too fancy here, but a tasty combination that worked well: pan-seared bay scallops with charred zuchini, pears, brown butter sauce, braised Maitake mushrooms, and watercress.

Here's a Japanese-inspired dinner. To make the pork, a cooking liquid was made by bringing sake, mirin, sugar, and soy sauce (2:2:1:1 ratio) to a simmer. Then some garlic, ginger, and scallions were added. This liquid was used to cook the pork sous vide (40 hours @ 144 F for the belly, 4 hours @ 140 F for the sirloin). Following that, the cooking liquid was reduced with some dry caramelized sugar and rice wine vinegar to make the tare sauce. The tare sauce was pure liquid gold. Chashu pork belly / sirloin Tare sauce Cabbage-miso puree Cabbage kinpira Quick-cured cucumber and radish

The whole point of using Ultrasperse is that it has much better flavor release than traditional starches.

Chris, what did you think of the Sunday Pork belly? That was one of my favorite plated dishes from that book (of the ones I've cooked). Here's a dish I came up with randomly, starting with the caramelized coconut cream from the Modernist Cuisine. I tried to tie it into a Thai flavor theme: thai-marinated sous vide beef cheeks (cured overnight then cooked in a thai beef broth reduction @ 140 F for 72 hours), caramelized coconut cream, roasted cauliflower, pickled carrots, beef thai-curry demi-glace.

It's been a while since I've posted anything - here's a Yuzu-cured salmon crudo I put together of when I noticed all of the interesting citrus fruits in season right now. Other components include thinly shaved fennel, various citrus supremes, grapefruit-white soy vinaigrette, yuzu-orange foam, mandarin orange creme fraiche, candied limequats, and dehydrated fennel chips. The salmon turned out great. I made a cure with sugar, salt, yuzu zest, a little bit of gin, juniper berries, coriander, and black peppercorns. I covered a good sized chunk of frozen "sashimi-grade" salmon belly in the cure, let it refrigerate for about 14 hours, then rinsed it off and kept it in the fridge until ready for eating.

I doubt the concentration of toxins in the pig skin is anything to worry about. We eat toxins in our food all the time, whether it be seafood, convenience foods, or vegetables. I always leave the skin on. After braising a piece of pork belly (or cooking sous vide), I always weigh the belly skin-side down on a searing hot skillet until it forms a delicious, crispy crust. If I take the skin off my pork belly I better be making some cracklings out of it.