Dinner! 2013 (Part 2)

[Keith_W]

Hi Simon, I saw your thread about duck confit a little too late. I would have told you to cure it for one hour only, instead of 12. Well, even if it was too salty it looks good on the plate!

[patrickamory]

Soba The chicken chettinad was fantastic. It's very unusual (for me anyway) - you make a dry paste out of chunks of coconut, garam masala, fennel seed, green cardamom pods and cloves, and fry that in browned onions, garlic and ginger. The dry spices go in next with the chiles, then you brown the chicken in that, then add tomatoes and finally water. The chicken gets simmered, and curry leaves and cilantro go in at the end with a generous amount of lime juice. The small chunks of coconut and curry leaf give the sauce an agreeable chewiness, and the heat of the chile powder and green chiles is nicely offset by the sourness of the lime.

I agree with Tina btw - your dishes smell like spring! I'm in California right now and wishing I was eating ramps.

[Zmaster]

72 h @62C pork cheek, Celery root puree, pickled apples and coffee butter spinach. The soup is a chilled tomato with basil oil.

Edited May 6, 2013 by Zmaster (log)

[Simon Lewinson]

Hi Simon, I saw your thread about duck confit a little too late. I would have told you to cure it for one hour only, instead of 12. Well, even if it was too salty it looks good on the plate!

Keith, thanks. I think 1 hour would not be long enough. Next batch I may try a few different times to optimise the curing. The flavours of thyme, garlic, juniper and bay were fantastic and I thought about dropping the quantity of salt and upping the herbs along with a three hour cure.

Simon

[Zmaster]

Simon,

I've made the MC version of it, and they call for the duck to cure for 10 h under vacuum. When I did that it was too salty for our tastes. We have now dropped the time to 5-6 h and that was the sweet spot for us.

[percyn]

Kimchi Fried Rice w/Fried Egg

Edited May 7, 2013 by percyn (log)

[Keith_W]

Sole meuniere.

[sigma]

hmm.

[Kim Shook]

Patrick – mimolette is wonderful cheese, though I always think that it looks like Cheddar that’s been allowed to sit out too long. I love the vibrant green of your Tart Garlic Chicken! And that lamb kabob and lavash dish looks amazing. I’m still full from lunch and shouldn’t be succeptable, but I am.

Judiu – so sorry! Sometimes I am less than precise. The shrimp and grits recipe is here: http://www.recipecircus.com/recipes/Kimberlyn/FISHandSEAFOOD/Sherry_Shrimp__Grits.html

Tina – I know that you had problems with your rosti, but I am SO impressed with those potato strands that you cut. Amazing. And you are NOT the only person who has trouble with sticking pans. I know all the “tricks” for getting food to not stick and I still have the disasters you describe. I almost never use anything but non-stick pans (and still have issues – see my post re: polenta cakes!).

Bruce – gorgeous color on that grilled endive. And the mahi-mahi in the later post looks so good.

mm – the suckling pig – simply astonishing!

Ashen – never heard of ‘wing steak’ – Googling gave me porterhouse, Delmonico, NY - but it looks fantastic!

Mark – gorgeous pastrami! I’m still waiting for Mr. Kim to make that.

basquecook – fried oyster sandwich! One of my favorite things in the entire world! And if that’s how you feed drop-ins, you must be inundated with them.

Dejah – trip sounds incredible! Be safe and have a wonderful time.

A recent breakfast-for-dinner:

Spinach salad and baked eggs with ham and cheese.

Night before last:

Chili-cheese dogs, beans, kraut and corn. The corn was very early, but surprisingly good.

Yesterday was my mother’s 75th birthday. As requested, I did the hoisin braised short ribs (my mom’s and daughter’s favorite thing I make), polenta cakes and a salad. Salad:

Just my basic – romaine, cukes, carrots and radishes – dolled up with pear, dried cranberries and sunflower seeds.

Polenta cake:

I had an incredible amount of trouble with the polenta cakes. They spattered horribly – it was like cooking popcorn in a pan without a lid. And the crust wouldn’t stick to the cakes – it just kept getting stuck to the skillet. I finally got 4 fairly decent looking ones to serve. I’ve never had that happen before. I did these with the slow cooker polenta that I’ve started to use and they were extraordinarily creamy. Maybe that had something to do with it. But the polenta had been chilled for 24 hours and was completely firm.

Finished dish:

When Marlene did this recipe she subbed a bit of honey for some of the hoisin. I tried that this time and liked it a lot.

Crusty bread to sop up all that incredible sauce:

Bite:

Momma wanted strawberry shortcake for dessert. I adapted a Food Network shortcake recipe to make brown sugar biscuits:

The taste and texture was perfect, but I wish they had risen a little more.

I found some very early local strawberries at WF:

They were good, but not great yet. Can’t wait to see what they are like in a couple of weeks.

[Franci]

Tonight we had a salad of artichokes and bottarga

peas with chorizo

and some affettati: bresaola, coppa and prosciutto

[mm84321]

Those look delicious, Franci.

[FrogPrincesse]

Great to see you Franci and I agree with mm84321, your food looks great (as always)!

[Ashen]

Kim ... I love the look of those short ribs and polenta.. I did some with grits a few weeks and it is one of my favourite recent meals. A wing steak is cut from the short loin like a porterhouse or T-bone but it is the end of the short loin next to the Rib primal. This means it has a bit more fat but unlike the porterhouse or T-bone it has very little tenderloin/fillet. Basically think of it as a bone in strip lion. It has pretty much disappeared from most grocery stores here since they have stopped doing inhouse butchering since the commercial packers just cut out the strip loin and sell it that way instead. I have next to no use for tenderloin/fillet so it is my favourite bone in short loin cut. The steak Shane cooked and posted shortly after mine was also a wing steak he said.. It looks like it was even closer to the rib end maybe even at the transition and somewhat thinner than mine.

Edited May 8, 2013 by Ashen (log)

[rarerollingobject]

Gua bao, or pork belly buns. Braised the belly, bought the buns!

Also some gai lan with ginger, which barely made it into the shot.

[pastameshugana]

Gua bao, or pork belly buns. Braised the belly, bought the buns!

Also some gai lan with ginger, which barely made it into the shot.

What... no chili? Are you feeling OK, RRO?

[rarerollingobject]

Gua bao, or pork belly buns. Braised the belly, bought the buns!

Also some gai lan with ginger, which barely made it into the shot.

What... no chili? Are you feeling OK, RRO?

You know me too well, pasta! I got up halfway through the first bite and went and got my Koon Yick fix on.

[Keith_W]

RRO looks like both of us had similar looking pork for dinner

Dinner tonight was chicken rice with char siew. This is a pretty traditional Cantonese meal, but I used unusual cooking methods to update it to the 21st century (I can already hear the groans from the other Chinese people on this thread).

Condiments and spices for char siew. The fermented soybean paste is not traditional. I wanted to boost the soybean flavour so I used more soybean paste in lieu of soy sauce. There was also much more ginger than traditionally called for. I like ginger! Ingredients: Japanese soy sauce (3T), oyster sauce (5T), sesame oil (1t), soybean paste (3T), honey (3T), malt extract (3T), five spice powder (1T), white pepper (1T), Xiaoxing wine (5T), ginger (3cm, minced), garlic cloves (4, minced), pork neck (2kg).

The pork was cut into strips and packed with the marinade into a sous-vide bag and left to marinade overnight. I then sous-vided it at 62C for 18 hours. Rationale for sous-vide: traditional char siew calls for pork belly. It needs all that fat to cut through the dryness of the pork. I suspected that sous-vide would allow me to use a leaner cut of meat (in this case, pork neck) because the prolonged cooking time would make the meat tender. Also, careful temperature control would stop me from overcooking the meat, which should make it tender. I am pleased to report that I was right - sous-vide'd char siew is less fatty, more moist, and more packed with flavour than traditional char siew.

The charcoal grill was then fired up. In the meantime, all the liquid was drained from the SV bag and reduced until thick and sticky. The pork was then returned to the marinade and liberally basted on the charcoal BBQ. Once little burnt bits started to develop, I took it off the heat.

Modernist chicken rice with char siew and choy sum.

The chicken thigh fillets were also sous-vided at 62C for 90 minutes. Last night I popped the chicken fillets into the bag along with traditional ingredients (ginger, pandan, Hsiaoxing wine, white pepper). Nobody that I know of has ever made a sous-vide chicken for Hainanese chicken rice. I believe this method to be much superior. The traditional way of poaching the whole chicken leaches chicken flavour into the stock. Sous-vide'ing chicken this way uses MUCH less water. As a result, both the chicken and the stock are far more intense. I still had enough stock left over to make the accompanying soup, even after using some to cook the rice.

Both the rice and choy sum were cooked the traditional way.

[rotuts]

that C.S. looks delicious. I project Id try, for sure. unlikely to find pork neck, so will go with shoulder.

[Franci]

Keith, your char siew looks so good, and I'm sure the chicken is really succulent. I've seen Food canon cooks his hainanese chicken sous vide. We have just come back from Singapore and, of course, I immediately tried to replicate with the traditional method HCR, not successfully I'm afraid. Still have in mind the perfect cooked chicken at Tian Tian's stall. How is that sauce made btw, I tried Food's Canon but didn't feel was the same. As soon as we move in September I'll finally buy a sous vide set!

Thanks mm84321 and Frogprincess for you kind words

Yesterday pictures were taken with a terrible light.

I made duck in plum sauce from Sunflower food galore. She has always trustworthy recipes, too bad she stopped blogging. Served with more sauce on the side

Then I had some chestnut pure in the freezer and wanted to do something with it. I thought of making spaetzle to go with the duck but it started as a disaster. the spaetzle were too mushy. So I put them in the oven, under the broiler, dotted with demi sel and as soon I had some crunch I turned them around. Much, much better, very nice chestnut flavor and I liked them with the sauce.

And as greens we had Ottolenghi's string beans and coco plats with hazelnut and orange zest

[Keith_W]

Franci, thanks for alerting me to Food Canon's version of HCR. I also checked out the SV char siew that he made. What a coincidence, someone else who thinks like me!

My chicken recipe is quite different from his though. Where he poaches a whole chicken in a pot (at 76C!!!) I use skinless fillets and cook in a bag at 62C for 90 minutes. It could perhaps be removed at 60 minutes, but I wanted insurance that anything pathogenic in there was really dead. I also include NO salt in my SV bag - I have found that salt + sous-vide = loss of LOTS of juice. I wonder why he chooses to cook his chicken at such a high temperature. He doesn't say what the final interior temperature is after 60 minutes. Perhaps it might work with Singaporean chickens - those are smaller than big breasted Aussie chickens.

The char siew recipe is also different. Again he poaches pork strips in a pot, whereas mine is done in a bag. This time, the addition of fermented soy paste means that salt is inevitable. As expected - after 18 hours in the SV machine quite a lot of juice had leaked out, such that the liquid was too thin to baste with. This is why I had to reduce the liquid to make it thick and sticky - perfect basting consistency.

[Kim Shook]

percyn – your gorgeous stuffed steak stirred a memory of something that I haven’t made in years. I dug out my recipe for a stuffed flank steak with Swiss cheese and Italian sausage (very international dish, huh? ) and am going to make it soon!

dcarch – wonderful looking meals and your little jewel-like aspic discs are lovely!

Soba – love the mussels and ramps. I haven’t had time to visit a farmer’s market yet this season and hope to find ramps when I get the chance. I’d love to duplicate your dish.

Franci – oh, that charcuterie! My favorite summer meal is platters of really good cured meats, some tomatoes and all the sweet corn we can eat!

Ashen – thanks for the wing steak information. The naming of cuts of meat is very confusing!

RRO – lovely belly buns! And you gave me an idea. I’m going to check our fairly large Asian market to see if they have the buns. I can just barely imagine myself finally managing to prepare good Char siu (Bruce sent me a recipe), but don’t think that I will manage that AND the buns!

Dinner last night was salad and Breakfast Crostatas:

The crostatas were good, but need some work. You start with a crust of refrigerated bread dough and top with herbs, Gruyere and ham and then the egg. There wasn’t enough dough to make four crostatas, the recipe called for WAY too much cheese and you were supposed to cook them for 25 minutes with the egg on top! In that amount of time, I knew that the egg would end up like a hockey puck, so I made some adjustments. They ended up being very tasty, but a bit fiddly. I’d make these for dinner again, but probably not for company (as I had intended).

[Baselerd]

That pork neck looks great Keith.

Last night's dinner was lemongrass-glazed pork shoulder, glazed shimeji and shiitake mushrooms, carrot/celery root/dashi puree, and some short grain rice, topped with pea shoots dressed in lemon oil.

To make the pork shoulder, I brined (4 cups water, .5 cups sugar, .5 cups salt) it for 4 hours, cooked it sous vide (36 hours @ 149 F) in smoked pork fat, then pan seared it on a skillet. Once seared, I glazed it with a lemongrass glaze which was made from pork jus, honey, soy sauce, and a ton of lemongrass - I used this recipe but quadrupled the lemongrass quantity.

[Moderator note: This topic continues in Dinner! 2013 (Part 3)]

Edited May 10, 2013 by Mjx
Moderator note added. (log)