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.
Sometimes it’s funny how things work out. Not really here, though. We just started thinking that we should introduce a new outdoor space and instead decided to fix up an underutilized one.
There’re two things you need to know about outdoor furniture. It’s expensive and, it’s generally pretty ugly. We drove around last Saturday trying to put something together searching yard sales, antique shops, and eventually ending up in Target curled up sleeping in a corner.
Then we remembered we already had a table and two chairs. The yard sales were great to find more ceramic planters, and Target was great for more cheapo plastic ones. We built up some legs for a couple with some wooden dowels.
Maggie’s sister and kids were coming over Sunday and we wanted to make the space nice before that. We’ve still gotta make our lives seem good enough that she abandons her child’s school and moves closer into the city, so we don’t have to drive as much. We were going to grill some wrapped zucchini, artichoke spread, mushroom spread, eggplant, tomato and then eat the spiral with a blob of mozzarella. We were jokingly calling it our Pinterest dream dinner.
We also got some corn and decided that the kids would probably like eating chicken wings more than veggie wraps, so we got tons of wings too. Quantity seems to be key with mid-size children.
I prepped it all in a circulator. It’s nice to not have to worry about much other than getting your cheapo tiny grill as hot as possible and searing everything like crazy. Especially if you’re cooking for a crowd. I like to do corn with some of the husks, butter, and salt. I did the wings at 70C for 4ish hours, one buffalo spicy and one garlic herby. We tossed in some spices and sauce, but it got a bit diluted with the chicken juices. Next time I’d leave a little more time to make a final sauce with the cooking juices, but sometimes it’s better to cut your losses and enjoy the good weather with family.
We’ve made a tradition of staying in on Valentine’s Day, avoiding the crowds and lousy pre fixe menus and using the day as an excuse to splurge on food we ordinarily wouldn’t buy. This year we spotted a few pounds of duck breast at Wild Purveyors and decided to keep it simple with a recipe that left ample time to enjoy a couple ChefSteps chocolate soufflés.
I used the cook time and temp that Polyscience recommended for the duck breast. Once we pulled it from the bath, Ed crosscut the thick fat layer and seared it on high for a few minutes rendering out some of the fat. We tossed the dried sour cherries in the duck fat with a bit of balsamic and used that as a glaze for sliced duck. Please note: a little goes a long way with the cherry glaze, but sure not to go overboard and mask the great flavor in texture of the duck. We also plated the dish with a few leaves of baby arugula and a sprinkle of goat cheese for added depth.
The duck was great, but the real star of the night were the soufflés we made from a favorite ChefSteps recipes. I recommend that you if you haven’t tried these, you make them immediately (again and again and again). Some of the commenters seemed to take issue with the amount of salt used in the original recipe, but I’m sticking with the experts on this one and vouch for the original ingredients.
A simple preparation that lets the natural flavor and texture of the duck breast shine. The sour cherry glaze provides a great contrast to the tender duck. A decadent meal for a night in.
Author: Disturbing the Peas
Recipe type: Entree
Serves: 2 servings
Ingredients
1 duck breast
1 pinch salt
1 pinch pepper
2 tbls dried sour cherries
2 tbls balsamic vinegar
1 tblsp goat cheese
1 handful baby arugula
Instructions
Set immersion circulator to 57C
Once water bath is up to temperature, salt and pepper duck breast, seal in a vaccuum bag, and cook for 45 minutes
After duck breast has been submerged for 45
In the dripping from the turkey breast, combine cherries and balsmic and reduce slightly
Slice breast into ¼" slices, top with cherry glaze and sprinkle with goat cheese
Last year we did a pork sandwich test, one with ground cherries was the clear winner. We’ve been waiting anxiously until ground cherry season to try it again. It seemed like a fun exercise to try to adapt the sandwich into a main course and practice some plating with it.
We decided to do pork belly and shoulder. The pork belly was spiced with Benton’s country ham, which is now about two years old, star anise and xx. The shoulder was spiced with cumin, coriander, white pepper, smoked paprika, cayanne, and molasses. I used the modernist cuisine recommendations and cooked for 48h at 65C.
I vacuum bagged a lemon with some Pectinex Ultra SP-L, a pectin destroying enzyme. I put some slices on the lemon’s skin, but I don’t think that’s necessary. Left out for a few hours all the pith and rind fall away and leave perfect supremed lemon slices. Maggie made a greek yogurt, mint coriander, lemon sauce. Lots of mint. Lots of coriander.
The runoff in the bags was reduced by about 50% and thickened with xanthan. The belly and shoulder were portioned and seared off on the hottest pan we’ve got. We realized that we had forgotten to make a crispy dark grainy cracker to put with them, so we toasted some triscuits until they were burned and smashed them up.
We had a plate-off, I tried to make a somewhat natural looking plating with lots of herbs. Maggie went for a saucy cross thing.
After waiting a year to try this again, we were just as excited as last time. The mixture of the pork belly exploding on your tongue then the lemon and mint and fruit salady ground cherries then dark spices doesn’t get old. It’s not a combination that reminds me of anything else. I really don’t use ground cherries enough.
We didn’t do too well with tomatoes this year. In my old apartment I had a pretty big garden and could plant twenty or so plants to guard against about a third of them not really producing too much fruit. Here there’s not much room for any of that. We were going to build a raised bed planter and started doing that, but found out that dirt is surprisingly expensive and got a couple large pots instead. So, I’ve got two tomato plants and a hankering for gazpacho. Not willing to use every tomato that we’ve grown in one bowl of soup. I had to buy them.
Well, at least we’re bookended by farmers markets these days. Oops I missed the Thursday one, better wait until the Saturday one right next door. Or sometimes you miss both of them and you just go to the grocery store. Oh well.
I thought I’d try making a vegetable stock sous vide, tossing some olive oil with basil and olive oil with red pepper flakes and smoked paprika into the circulator, and doing the ideas in food cryo blanch trick to the tomatoes (There’s a seriouseats article too). I cut up onion, celery and carrots browned them a bit, then put them in a bag with a few ice cubes (since things were hot and I didn’t want the water to boil out in the vacuum machine) and some savory. I put that in the water bath at 70C ish. Also put in the flavored oils.
The tomatoes went into the freezer in a bag, salted. I waited about an hour, took the tomatoes out and thawed them a little then back to the freezer. This is to create large ice splinters that pop the tomoato cells and let you get more of the tomato taste out. I didn’t do a side by side or anything to see if it’s worth it. It’s not really that much extra effort, I was waiting for the stock anyways.
After about three hours I pulled out the stock, strained it, thawed the tomatoes in the circulator water. Put both into the blender, strained, strained, added a dark piece of toast and some cream, blended then seasoned, blended again. I probably put some fish sauce in there too.
Bowl soup, drizzle oils, plop with greek yogurt. The oils made it rich, and varied the flavor bite to bite. The tomatoes tasted fresh and bright. Then the nearly burned bread and smoky paprika brought it all together. It was pretty great. Suggested pairing: spicy grilled cheese and vernors.
