by Maggie and Ed | Nov 23, 2016 | Dessert, Equipment, Food, New Techniques, Vegetarian
We’ve been waiting on Joule to arrive for the last few months. One of our circulators didn’t make it out of Steve’s Deli alive, and Ed’s fairly convincing when he believes the latest gadget will make us overall better human beings. The little guy came in the mail last week, and we decided to test out a variation on ChefSteps creme brulee.
High on my recent squash mania, we decided to do a quick test on a last minute thanksgiving addition: Kabocha Creme Brulee. I roasted a halved kabocha for 90 minutes at 400 degrees and tossed it in a vacuum bag with creme to bring it up to temp to temper the egg mixture. I left the two to mingle for a few hours while I did some stuff around the house, and then blended before adding to the eggs.
This may have been the nail in my coffin for texture. Some overzealous blending left me with kabocha whipped cream, which is really fucking good, but maybe not the optimal choice for custard. C’est la vie! Jar, water bath, chill, and slightly over an hour later we had some delicious cups of squashy pudding. The final result edged a little more toward pumpkin pie texture than I planned, but not a total failure.
by Maggie and Ed | Mar 19, 2016 | Entrée, Food, New Techniques, Recipes, Tiny Food
We grew up in a weird time for food. I, personally, come of age eating a hell of a lot of canned vegetables. Questionable textures, often drowned in butter and saccharine sweet. One thing my mother really did right, though, was artichokes. I have nothing but fond memories for spaghetti dinners that began with artichokes and lemon butter, and equally as many (potentially false) myths about the edible thistle. Did you know the Greeks ate artichokes before every meal as a palette cleanser?
My go-to preparation is normally steamed until tender and served with caper butter, but we’ve also taken to serving them alongside an herbed aioli [see: half mayo + half sage brown butter]. The dip is from one of our diehard favorite cookbooks, Maximum Flavor. They recommend roasting halved filled with garlic, but after a few attempts to change my ways I’m still a 100% advocate for steaming.
After a full out artichoke drought in the grocery store the last few months, we were pleasantly surprised to find a super affordable box of baby artichokes this week. Pinterest told us to bake them. With some hesitation from our previous disappointments, we opted to steam the quartered baby ‘chokes first and then toss in olive oil, panko, and parmesean and broil in the oven until crispy.
The final result was really satisfying, but definitely some room for improvements. The one thing I love about steaming is that it leaves the vegetable super tender and green. The added time for cooking in an oven tends to allow the artichoke to oxidize and dry out, and the outer leaves were a bit too tough to eat in their entirety. We had trouble deciding if it was the fault of drying out the leaves in broiling, or if the smaller of the bunch steamed more fully yielding a better texture.
Served with a bowl of lemon caper aioli, any minor setbacks in preparation are quickly eclipsed by the joy of eating a giant bowl of “vegetables” dipped in mayo while binge watching Seinfeld. 10/10
by Ed Hyp | Apr 2, 2013 | Entrée, Food, New Techniques
I have a hard time with tropical cooking. That feeling of fear when you know you’re intentionally leaving the burger on the griddle too long. Cause, there’s nothing more tropical than burned food. You’ve gotta time it right though or that shit gets gross. Plop some pineapples on it and you’re in the tropics. Great way to pass winter. I prefer to eat mine in front of a fan with a space heater and a humidifier behind it, with Men at Work blasting. I call it the warm island breeze
(more…)
by Ed Hyp | Jan 31, 2013 | Entrée, Food, New Techniques
My mother grew up in Maine, so she’s a lobster-complainer. It’s too rubbery, it doesn’t taste like anything, my butter is solid, etc. I wanted to make a lobster roll that even she wouldn’t put her nose up at. So, I bought a 4 lb lobster and after a staredown, looked into the best way to kill it. Answer: knife through the head.
(more…)
by Ed Hyp | Nov 1, 2012 | Equipment, Food, New Techniques, Technology
The Polyscience Smoking Gun has a pretty funny origin story. This is off the cuff, so don’t complain if some of it isn’t true. Hand held keyboard vacuums were popular in the 90s. People in their basements smoking jazz cigarettes like playing on the computer. They eventually realized that it was too much work to manually smoke the hot weed. Someone eventually noticed that if they reverse the direction of the fan in their keyboard vacuum and add a bowl, then blammo, auto-smoker. As modernist cuisine says, “inspired by a different type of smoking.” Ha. Anyway, I wanted something to play with and I like my polyscience circulator, so I got one.
(more…)
by Ed Hyp | Oct 20, 2012 | Food, New Techniques
Why can’t I buy lamb belly? Why do I feel too weird I tell my halal butcher that I want to make lamb bacon, so I need it? He sold me lamb ribs, which I thought might be a good time to try out some of the transglutaminase which I just bought. That’s meat glue if you’re not into big words. So I deboned the ribs, sprinkled on some TG RM and put them into the refrigerator overnight wrapped in plastic wrap and under some weights (Oh scratch off lotto tickets please buy me a minipack mvs35xp). I took it out of the plastic wrap and rubbed it in a standard curing salt rub with some curry powder, spices, etc added. Refrigerated it for 5 or six days in a cambro. I got out my bradley smoker to smoke it and found out that my heating element had died over the winter. Rats. Double rats. Shit, even.
(more…)
