Duvel

Got some nice veal shin yesterday and decided to do a SV braise. I prepared a sauce with the usual suspects: onions, carrots, garlic, tomato purée, white wine, bay leave - and augmented with fish sauce, oyster sauce, powdered porcini and two tablespoons of ‘Nduja. The sauce was probably the most umami thing I have made in a long time; I had difficulties not to eat it on the spot, but 90% survived. As my vacuum sealer is a very basic model that can’t handle liquids, I froze the sauce on a tray. Veal shin got a quick salt, pepper and sear treatment and was bagged with the frozen sauce sheet. 24h @ 176F. Crostinis with the buttery bone marrow and Maldon flakes as a starter, followed by the tender shanks in just the strained bag juices (solids were discarded) on top of mashed oven potatoes with copious amounts of butter and nutmeg. Very, very satisfying ...

Spaghetti Vongole ... for the family. I had two eggs, boiled in soy sauce 😉 (not pictured)

Already did

Noooooo ... Kale is my favourite veggie by far. What I can’t wrap my head around, however, is how you can eat Kale that is still green with distinct leaves and has not been harvested half-frozen and boiled for hours with cured meat products. Maybe if you give the German version a go, you’ll fall in love with it as well. Especially in it’s ritualised version ...

More gelatinous in terms of the meat ? This is very interesting ... Would your assessment then be that the browning “facilitates” the leakage of gelatine into the sauce ?

New one here in Hong Kong: CoCo House curry - this one is FANTASTIC !!!

More cabbage pizza ... today I shredded the cabbage more coarse, resulting in a rougher texture, more like a veggie pancake. Taste again was neutral, but the mouthfeel was better than the “riced” cabbage version . It simply had more “bite”. Toppings were mushrooms and smoked lardons ...

Yessss ! That looks so good, @Anna N...

Sunday night is pizza night. And while preparing the pies for my family I decided that after two weeks of ketogenic diet I might just have one or two slices ... Tomorrow back to meat and veggies, but tonight I enjoyed the mushroom & salami one (that disappeared so fast that I couldn’t make a picture) as much as the flammkuchen with chicken and rosemary ...

“Chicketta” - chicken legs, scored and rubbed with salt, garlic, fennel, rosemary, chili and black pepper. Rolled in the skin to form a roulade and SV’d for 150 min @ 70oC. Checked for consistency & taste, very pleasant. Will think about deep frying or finishing from cold in the convection oven. Or maybe removing skin layer and then breading and deep frying - so many options 🧐 ...

That’s basically tiny shreds of shirataki, right ? How satisfied are you with those ... can you compare it to cauliflower rice ?

Nothing more romantic than enjoying a fancy dinner with your love interest wearing a pair of Mickey Mouse ears ...

Yup. One has to prioritice ...

As if you could tell ...

Just saw the second episode on Spain - very informative. I like the format ...

I started last night and liked the format. I do enjoy the "country" themes, highlighting national dishes and (in the elimination round) special produce from the respective region. The discussions around the dishes in the second half of the show are indeed more interesting than the first part, but I have seen only one episode so far, so lets see ... Overall, an interesting new cooking contest show, and one that comes without much drama between the contestants and rants from the judges. I'll keep watching ...

Remove excess fat. Then cook. Sear at the end to render surface fat.

24h worked like a charm for me, albeit at 135F ... this however, was just a slice of said roast, so you need to adjust the cooking time, depending on thickness.

Thanks, @heidih! I have come to the conclusion that the fiber component can be very flexible, as long as you can process it to the desired size and it has a neutral flavor. So, egg + cream cheese + partly cooked and desiccated veggie pulp does make a usable tortilla / flat bread substitute. Next time, when zucchinis are on offer, I'll give it a try ...

It’s not that I am actively trying to avoid gluten, merely a side effect of my low carb approach to dieting and the general avoidance of flour (at the moment). I spend some time trying to find a “neutral” (e.g. not eggy, porky, “green”, coconutty ...) tasting flatbread substitute. What I use now works decently for pizzas, tacos, quesadillas etc ... It does not taste like bread, but makes a good delivery system for any toppings you have. And packs a lot of fiber plus some nutrients. 1 egg 50 g cream cheese (“Philadelphia”) Pinch of salt ~350 g of preprocessed* cauliflower (original, a bit better to process) or cabbage (Duvel’s low cost shortcut) Blend egg and cream, add salt, add everything to preprocessed vegetable and mix thoroughly. At this point you can add dried herbs, or spices. Let stand for 10 min. Spread thinly (5 mm) onto a baking paper. Please look at my other posts for a more visual guide. Slide into a preheated oven at 200 oC and bake for 25 min. Take out, flip and bake for 10 min more. At this point it will have a leathery texture when cooled down (it’s still a bit brittle when warm) and can be used for tacos. Or top with tomato sauce, whatever you like and cheese and put back into the oven. I turn the convention on and give it some 5-10 min more until it looks decent. Please note that it needs to cool down a bit to achieve a good textural quality. The longer you bake the “naked” dough, the more integrity it has, and drier it gets (for pizza this is desirable). *preprocessed vegetable: grate the cauliflower or cabbage (I use the food processor and get thin, 1 cm long shreds). Put into microwave and heat at high for about 7 min. You want that smell and taste are more or less “neutral”. Let cool down slightly, put into a clean tower and press out the formed water - which is a lot. Typical yields are: 650 g of raw cauliflower or 800 g of raw cabbage give ~350 g of preprocessed vegetable to be used in the recipe above.

Fregola sarda with fresh clams, plenty of garlic and - oddly - wakame for the non-dieting part of the family (so ... all but me). Cabbage taco with oven-roasted chicken thigh & the works. Followed by cabbage lahmacun, that were meant for tomorrow ... Both were actually quite tolerable - the pasta however was great ...

Back when we were still living in Germany, we would go once every month to Alsace and spend an evening shopping in Strasbourg. Getting great food was always my treat for the day and cheeses were on top of my wish list. Typically I bought: - St. Marcellin / St. Felicien or a similar soft dauphinois cheese. - Munster, overripe or alternatively a ripe Epoisses - Soft goat cheese in ash - Brie de Meaux - Comte - Bleu de Auvergne or Roquefort, whatever was on offer Gewürztraminer, pain de campagne and some terrine or foie and I was a happy camper for two days ... I have to live now without most of these cheeses, but I will religiously buy one good cheese per week for our Weekend breakfasts. Doesn’t compare to those above, but having a ripe raw milk Brie is still one of the best ways to start the day for me (or end it) ...

What about Roquefort ?

Even more efficient (or maybe not, given that you are in the medical profession) is a visit to the Tokyo parasite museum (https://www.tofugu.com/travel/parasite-museum-tokyo/)

In that case, please visit "Ramen street", in the underground level of Tokyo station. All are good, but I'd go for Tsukemen at Rokurinsha (https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2012/07/06/food/a-ramen-line-up-worth-dipping-into/#.W_edThqpW70)...