Raamo

Dinner tonight, halibut with mashed potatoes and fried zucchini. The Halibut was cooked Sous Vide at 113F with a little bit of Soy Sauce, Honey, one clove of Garlic, and 2 slices of Lemon. Made for some very yummy halibut!

Continuing with fried green beans this time it's american wagyu sirloin. 2nd time in my life I've cooked sirloin for myself (last time was Friday, I liked it so I went back for another). The "normal" ones at the store were huge and not nearly as marbled... Another reason our travels have ruined "normal" food for me. Steak was done Sous Vide at 133F for 2 hours, with 1 smashed garlic, some rosemary, and a little canola oil.

Tonight, Lamb chops cooked sous vide at 131 with 1 smashed garlic, a sprig of Rosemary and olive oil. Very tasty, the green beans are fried and also yummy! The wine is a 2013 Syrah from HDV.

Chicken Tikka Masala - from the indian cookbook I've linked before. This tastes just like what I get at good indian restaurants, so I love I can make it at home!

This afternoon my wife made Sameh Wadi's slow cooked green beans. (for dinner) It's from The New Mediterranean Table: Modern and Rustic Recipes Inspired by Traditions Spanning Three Continents There was a great Restaurant in Minneapolis called Saffron where we first had these green beans, it's closed now. But before it did a cookbook linked above was published. The green beans are from our garden, here's everything that goes into the dish, the spices are numerous of course... All this goes into a pot... and cooks for ~2 hours.. And this is what you end up with, it's SO GOOD! We ate this with homemade naan - it works great warm and at room temp (never tried cold) We forgot to take a picture of a dinner plate, but she took pictures of the steps and wanted me to post this. If you like mediterranean food this is a great cookbook, but note it's not really weeknight meals unless prepared in advance.

1000 Indian recipes by Neelam Batra

Today for lunch, something new to us from our Indian cookbook. Fried Salmon with Cilantro-Yogurt sauce. That is a simple title for a very complex flavor dish, the salmon was marinated in a cilantro + ginger + hot chile + spices mix, 1/2 of the mix was mixed with yogurt and forms the sauce. We had basmati rice with it which really helps. The salmon was super flavorful. P.S. We made a lot more salmon then this, but I don't like to crowd the plate. We ate it all.

Today is our 17th Wedding Anniversary, I've made these at least once in the past, and had some ideas to improve on them, we zapped the eggplant since neither of us are fans and I cut the veg much smaller (the basis is from Sara Moulton cooks at home) It takes a few hours but it was the best Ratatouille I've made! Roasted Ratatouille Crepes with Goat Cheese: As plated (we didn't pre-freeze the goat cheese, but we're not going for 100% presentation) And here you can see the filling: The intact bits are roasted red pepper. My wife's comment she put on facebook: "Even though I maintain that Nutella belongs on crepes and these had no Nutella, they were still amazing."

This is from America's Test Kitchen recipe Super tasty Red Curry + Coconut Milk + Shrimp + Veg / Pineapple + Peanuts + Bulgarian Carrot.. It has the right amount of sugar (some brown sugar) and fat (Coconut fat) to be REALLY GOOD! We made a lot more than is pictured here, there's now a note to make more rice to go with this recipe!

This weekend I made what might be my favorite thing from Modernist Bread - Modernist Pretzels! The first thing you do is mix up Methocel F50 with water and let it hydrate for 18 hours. This is what it looks like right after some immersion blender action. Then 12 hours before make a poolish Here it is right before it's used, nice and bubbly. Mix the water, poolish, and a bunch of other things including flour until full gluten development and you end up with something like this: It's coated with oil for it's fermenting step. After 90 mins with no folds it grows: Make this into 7 ~140g pretzels. I had a bit more dough so 2 were a little bigger. These are proofed, I did 5 in my oven on proof and 2 in my steam oven on proof. As I proofed them I got the lye all setup: Safety First! Post proof they bake for ~10 mins: Don't really look like preztels yet, face down into lye and add some salt, bake for 5 more mins and you get these: Turns out they come out OK in both the steam oven and the regular oven. These are super tasty!

I decided to try making Modernist Knäckebröd. I recommend this cracker. It's tasty (we made it to go with some french double cream cheese.) The Modernist version uses pressure caramelization! If you have the books there are pictures in there, if you don't here's what the process looks like in less professional terms. This is basically fatty sweet oats in a jar (with a little baking soda) Those jars go in here for a 1 hour party! And come out looking like this - smells amazing - like some sugary fatty oatmeal now! Combine that with flour, buttermilk, salt, and a little yeast (they say for flavor), mix to make it into a cookie dough like batter. Spread out and cool in the refrigerator. Form into 110g balls, Flatten - take the middle 1" out and put on a baking sheet. Also dock them (which I forgot to do before I took this picture) Bake for 20-30 mins at 320-350F (convection vs non) It's very dry and crackery - but oh so very tasty!

We have two a polyscience one and a Nomiku. Both have needed service. The Polyscience runs great - cost 6x as much. But seems to use larger tubes for the pumps etc. The Nomiku is kinda a pain to use. Nomiku told me to clean with dishwasher soap - since it gets clogged up with hard water. Never had to do that for the polyscience on in years (service issue was electrical, bad solder or something I found reported that was rather common). Needless to say I'm going to question any cheap immersion circulator now.

Pizza Night!

Lunch today, we had some asparagus so hmm what to make - polenta! And we found Asparagus fried in bacon fat is good... so some bacon on the side!

Chicken Paprikash, 1st time I've made this. Quite tasty: It's basically a stew with sour cream. reminds me a bit of beef stroganoff, though that's the sour cream, it's tomatoes and red peppers + chicken.

Long list mostly spices - first I made the sauce and then added things to it along with the eggs. Book is 1000 Indian Recipes by Neelam Batra It's our favorite Indian cook book we've found.

We wanted to try something new to us from our awesome Indian cookbook. So why not an egg curry: 1st time I've had curry with eggs. Quite tasty - there's also toasted course grounded almonds in there.

We got some beets, so what to do besides have them as a side? Beet + Noodles + Walnuts + Goat Cheese! The noodles turned quite red...

Tonight, Lamb with Potatoes and a 2010 Cab from Whitehall Lanes Lamb was sous vide to 135F then seared in peanut oil at over 400F Potatoes I steamed in our steam oven.

Pretty easy lunch to make, it's a spicy Indian tomato sauce with potatoes and peas, served over basmati rice. Garnished with Garam Masala on top.

We love homemade pizza. This time it's new york pizza crust - from Modernist Bread. I'm really looking forward to Modernist Pizza 1/2 with a lot less cheese for me, and a lot more cheese for my wife. She does Pineapple and Onions (which she claims most people think is weird) I just do pepperoni + onion + red pepper This was really good crust - a bit more work then ATK's which is our easy standby but if I'm willing to put in a bit more effort this is so worth it.

Tonight, our new favorite way to do chicken breasts. Cut into smaller pieces, dredge in flour (w/ S&P), then egg, then panko, then fry! With some BBQ of course (not pictured, not homemade this time)

Tonight my wife was at her community band so I was on my own - she said I should get something just for me. This is american Wagyu ribeye. I cooked it sous vide and then in a very hot pan to get a nice crsp crust - might have had it on longer then it needed, but the crust was nice. I steamed some potatoes and smashed them to go along. I can only eat so much steak - I had a bit left over - it's approved by my cat:

My wife said to me: "This is what you get when you leave your wife alone in the kitchen all afternoon " (referring to having to run the dishwasher again) She made Tomato Sauce used in: and then Chocolate Macarons with a chocolate and strawberry ganache!

Dry Scallops on sale all month at our local grocer - so why not pick em up for dinner tonight. With a smashed potato