Random Musings and Tips

I wanted to share a few of the things we've done as hacks, or cheats, to some of the recipes lately.

High heat searing w/ Sunflower Oil: "don't trip the smoke alarm" technique
I've basically been paranoid about searing just about anything in our condo. One year, Ei-Lun bought be a nice cast iron pan, and I sear/baked some nice ribeyes. That technique called for putting the pan in the oven @500 degrees to pre-heat it, then taking it right to the flame for the searing, with butter. My entire place filled with smoke while it was back in the oven, setting off the ear-searing smoke alarm... From that point forward, I seared less, and if I did sear, I'd get a chair out prior (so I could reach the alarm to shut it off) and I'd wear earplugs.. (I know..ridiculous)

Anyway, I guess it should have been pretty obvious but cooking with butter and olive oil, at high heat = smoke. I've since bought a bottle of sunflower oil...450 degree smoke point! Using this oil I've been able to sear scallops, steaks, pork chops, and have yet to trip the smoke alarm. As a result pretty much anytime we go to whole foods or Costco, I pick up steaks...

Salt/Pepper Overload Sear: "high taste, high blood pressure" technique
In the steak frites recipe it calls for an obscene amount of pepper and salt for the sear. We SousVide prepared the steaks in a cryo-vac bag with salt/pepper, and then I patted the steaks dry before applying the salt/pepper mixture first to both sides. I applied the mustard by hand, i.e. with my hands. That seemed to work pretty well. After a low-smoke sear :) the steaks came out looking nice, but what got me more was the literal blast of flavor from the pepper/salt crust.

So since that time, I've SV/seared another ribeye, and tried just the salt and pepper "crust." Its awesome, and pretty much makes the steak a meal/snack on its own...really tasty. (I also tried a shallots/garlic/chicken-broth(instead of the demi)/red-wine/heavy-cream version of the steak sauce, it was awesome..kinda like that shallot butter they have at Cafe Rouge)

This concludes the "I'm going to die soon" techniques...on to the sorbet trial 2 commentary...

Orange juicing: "quarter and peel" technique
We have been using one of those bar juicers, the one that's kind of a domed, over-sized garlic press. The first time I spent time meticulously slicing off the peel/rind before pressing the juice out. This time, I simply cut the orange into quarters (like orange slices you'd get at a soccer game) and just peeled the peel right off... (duh) Then placing the peeled wedges in the juicer, was 100% juice. In fact we used less oranges this time, and got 3 full cups. Now, granted, these oranges might have had more juice, but I know I was getting every last drop of juice from the oranges this time.

Sorbet: "Alaska fishing cooler" technique
We just prepared the 2nd go of the blood orange sorbet. This time we cooled the sorbet mixture overnight, mostly because it was 3am and we didn't want to stay up another hour to do the sorbet...heh Anyway, it occurred to me when I woke up, that the last time we made the sorbet, we put the ice cream maker on the counter, and when I looked down in to the mixer, the top was always liquid, and the sides were more solid. This time, I decided to use the cooker I take up to Alaska to haul fish back in. (frozen) The cooker is pretty big, so it fit the entire ice cream machine inside. Before we got started, I put Ei-Lun's Popsicle maker that she got for her birthday in the cooler and kept the lid shut to pre-cool the cooler.

The sorbet mixture actually separated overnight, with the sugar on the bottom, so we had to do some mixing before loading it in to the machine. We prepped the machine and set it inside the cooler, added the sorbet mixture and shut the lid of the cooler. 30mins later, we had solid sorbet! A pretty big change from last time, the view down the top of the machine was a nice "mushy" sorbet that was able to hold its own shape. As I unloaded the mixture to the container for storage, I noticed that not only was the sorbet holding its shape nicely, but that the mixing container was still completely frozen. (you can kind of hear the liquid inside the frozen container when its not frozen)

Random musings
I just remembered what I was going to mention, and it was way back during my birthday week-end when Ei-Lun took us to Calistoga. We stopped by Bouchon bakery, and picked up one of their lemon tarts. Two things I wanted to share:
1) The Bouchon lemon tart, tasted like our tart! Ok, theirs looked nicer, (they added a nice meringue on top) and it was smaller, but the crust was the same consistency as ours, as was the filling. I felt a lot better about the first batch we made... I had some doubts when we were originally tasting it, but it seems that it was correct after all. (ps: they didn't braise the top as far as I could tell)
2) Maybe we should go to Bouchon as part of the club! I was chatting with John about this too, basically, now that we've cooked all these dishes, perhaps we can go "see how its done" in the professional setting, and if we go at the right time, we could even ask to speak to the chefs to compare notes or share techniques. (this may have just been the "aw crap we have to cook our dish again in a couple of days" voice talking...)

That's it for now, pâté coming up next. Pâté for lunch... mmm..

-Kirk

ps - lazy at the moment, will add pictures of the above things later. :P