Breast of lamb is a cut of lamb I had never prepared before. It is interesting that similar cuts from different animals can have completely different names. In this case, breast is to lamb what belly is to pork. The … Continue reading Breast of Lamb Sous-Vide
Usually I am a substance over form kind of guy, but this time around I went for the look — without forgetting about flavor of course! The flavors in this dish are a classic combination: lamb, rosemary, eggplant, and potato. … Continue reading Lamb-Eggplant-Potato Mosaic
After seeing a nice recipe for caramelized red onions on Viaggiano con Bea I wanted to try, all that was left to do was pick what I would serve it with. I had some lovely wagyu blade steaks in the freezer, … Continue reading Wagyu Blade Steak Sous-Vide with Caramelized Red Onions
After my trip to REMCooks I was inspired to try some more Mexican/Southwestern food. Carnitas is a dish made of braised or roasted and then fried or sauteed pork in Mexican cuisine. Richard had served us delicious sous-vide duck carnitas, and … Continue reading Carnitas Sous-Vide
After my post about Viennese potato salad, it won’t be a surprise that my next post that was inspired by my trip to Vienna is about Wiener Schnitzel. Although this is probably the most famous savory dish from Vienna (unfortunately … Continue reading Wiener Schnitzel
I used my first homemade corn tortillas to make tuna tacos. Tacos are stuffed tortillas (either wheat or corn). Tuna tacos are not very traditional, but they sure are delicious. I stuffed the tacos with ancho seared tuna, pico de … Continue reading Tuna Tacos
Pork tenderloin is amazing cooked sous-vide, it is the most tender and juicy pork tenderloin you have ever tasted. And it is so easy to do: simply season the pork tenderloin with salt and pepper, vacuum seal it, cook it … Continue reading Pork Tenderloin Sous-Vide with Sweet & Sour sauce
Mackerel is a cheap and tasty fish, and healthy because it’s loaded with omega-3 fatty acids. I’ve prepared it as ceviche, in a quiche with sauerkraut, and marinated ‘in saor’. Recently I saw oven-roasted mackerel on two of my favorite … Continue reading Roasted Mackerel (Sgombro al Forno)
Rack of lamb is one of my favorite meats. When I saw a rack of venison, it looked just like a huge rack of lamb and I couldn’t resist buying it. I cooked it sous-vide with sage and served it … Continue reading Rack of Venison Sous-Vide with Salsify and Pickled Green Cabbage
That fillet of sole looks thick, doesn’t it? That is because the two fillets have been ‘glued’ together with transglutaminase, a natural enzyme sold as Activa RM (USA) or Activa EB (Europe). This way the sole has its original shape … Continue reading Reconstructed Sole à la Meunière
I had never heard of Jambalaya, but it looked delicious when I saw Shrim & Crayfish Jambalaya on REMCooks. (Kees had heard of it, because it is the title of a Carpenters song. Go figure.) I decided to try it, … Continue reading Shrimp Jambalaya
It’s been a while since I’ve done my last sous-vide temperature experiment. There is one I have been wondering about, and that is chicken breast. I don’t prepare chicken breast often, because I think chicken thighs have better flavor and … Continue reading Chicken Breast Sous-vide Temperature Experiment
Bison is not usually available around here, so when I saw a bison ribeye I picked it up at once. Great meat like that needs very little, so I decided to only ‘warm age’ it sous-vide, and then quickly pan … Continue reading Bison Ribeye with Eggplant
It was no surprise at all that the first recipe of 2014 on REMCooks.com was a chile recipe. This pork dish from New Mexico seemed fairly straightforward and delicious, and I thought it would be nice to tweak it just … Continue reading Carne Adovada Sous-Vide
Conor has invited me to join his board. He had commissioned four handmade chopping boards to be cut from the same block of walnut by his friend Terry from 2 Wooden Horses and has sent them as Christmas gifts to Richard, Nick and myself. As chairman of the board, Conor challenged us to use the board. And so all four board members are showing today what they have done with their boards.
The first thing that came to mind was a dish that is certainly fit for a board: Bistecca alla Fiorentina. This is a T-bone steak as it is served in the Tuscan city of Florence. I have prepared the Bistecca alla Fiorentina in the traditional way that doesn’t take into account the latest ideas on how to prepare a steak but is delicious anyway. A true Bistecca alla Fiorentina should be of a special Tuscan breed of cattle called Chianina. It should be about two fingers thick (4 cm or 1.5 inches, about 750 grams/26 oz). It should be cooked over a charcoal fire and otherwise as little as possible should be done to it: only salt and freshly ground black pepper should be added, strictly after cooking. Such a simple preparation with such a lot of flavor is certainly fit for a board of which Conor is the chairman.
And so thanks to Conor, Kees was building a charcoal fire in our back yard in the middle of January. Luckily the local hardware store still had some leftover charcoal from last season.
Continue reading “Fit for a Board: Bistecca alla Fiorentina”
Ham hocks (pork shanks) are an inexpensive cut of meat. They can be turned into something delicious by first hot smoking them and then cooking them sous-vide. This is a technique I’ve used before on ham of lamb and brisket, and I wanted to try it on a ham hock. It was absolutely delicious. A light smoky flavor, tender and juicy. Many recipes call for brining the ham hock first, but there does not seem to be a reason to do this for this preparation. The sous-vide cooking allows the smoky flavors to penetrate all the way to the core of the meat and will turn the meat completely tender without drying it out. Continue reading “Smoked Ham Hock Sous-Vide”
“Modernist Cuisine” is an amazing set of books by Nathan Myhrvold and a team. It was supposed to be a single book on sous-vide cooking, but things got a little out of hand and it ended up being a 5-volume standard textbook on a modernist approach to cooking. It actually also covers traditional cooking techniques. I’ve had the books for two years and I still haven’t finished ‘reading’ them completely. When I do, and I intend to, I will write more about them. It is good to know that in the meantime a smaller version called “Modernist Cuisine at Home” has been published, which is probably more suitable for home use. That wasn’t around yet when I got my copy.
The fifth volume contains recipes for plated dishes. These are complex recipes that are fare more suitable for gourmet restaurants than for the home kitchen. Many take multiple days to prepare and fancy equipment like a centrifuge or a pacojet. I’ve used information the Modernist Cuisine books in my cooking from when I got them, but so far I had not ventured into the daunting fifth volume. When Auldo came over to cook, I thought it would be nice to finally try some of the plated dishes. He has quite some experience with complicated modernist dishes, because he’s cooked his way through Heston Blumenthal’s Big Fat Duck Cookbook. We browsed through the recipes and selected two for which we had the equipment and the time (as it was Friday when we did the selection for what to cook between then and Sunday). We selected a ‘shrimp cocktail’ and a modernist take on the Spanish (well, Galician) classic of Pulpo a la Gallega, octopus with potatoes. This post covers the octopus, the shrimp will follow soon. Continue reading “Modernist Cuisine Pulpo a la Gallega”
After all the complicated cooking over the holidays, I felt like making something simple. I felt I should give salsify another chance (especially after Eha had proclaimed it her favorite vegetable), and I had picked up some guinea fowl breasts. I decided to cook both sous-vide (no surprises there) and to pair them with a porcini mushroom sauce and mashed potatoes. This made for a fine meal. Continue reading “Guinea Fowl and Salsify Sous-Vide with Porcini Sauce”
Braised beef is known as “draadjesvlees” in the Netherlands. This literally means “thread meat”, referring to the flaky structure of the meat. Good draadjesvlees should be juicy and tender, not tough and dry. This means braising it over low heat for a long time. One of the most common cuts that is used for this “sucadelappen”, which in the US is called flat iron steak. The difference is that in the Netherlands the tendon is in the middle is left in and after long braising is eaten. The braised tendon looks like candied peel, which is “sucade” in Dutch. Hence the name.
The dish I prepared can be made with or without sous-vide. With sous-vide cooking, a flat iron steak or other types of beef that are usually braised, can be cooked for 24-72 hours at 55-57ºC/131-135ºF to obtain the texture of a tender steak cooked to medium rare. I’ve very rarely used sous-vide to get the texture of a traditional braise. Exceptions have been duck confit and pulled pork. This is the first time I’ve prepared draadjesvlees sous-vide. I cooked it for 5 hours at 88ºC/190ºF. The result was comparable to a good traditional braise on the stovetop. The advantage is that there is less margin of error.
The advantage of cooking the beef sous-vide at 88ºC/190ºF is that that is also a fitting temperature for cooking the potatoes and parsnips sous-vide. Continue reading “Braised Flat Iron Steak with Parsnip Fondant (Draadjesvlees)”
For the main course of our Christmas dinner I wanted to prepare iberico pork, as I had liked it so much when I tried it for the first time. Because REMCooks’ pork with pomegranate sauce had looked so Christmas-like with the red and green colors when I first saw it, I thought it would be nice to do a pomegranate sauce for this pork as well. I prepared a very simple sauce: reduced pomegranate juice mixed with pork demi-glace, garnished with fresh pomegranate arils. It worked very well with the pork. Continue reading “Iberico Secreto Sous-Vide with Pomegranate and Chervil Root”
This history of this dish and the origins of its name are uncertain according to Wikipedia, but it definitely plays an important role in my personal food history as Beef Wellington was one of the first gourmet dishes I learned to prepare. It was at the christmas party at my first job back in 1997. We were a small team at the office and since many of us loved to cook, for a christmas party we cooked our own dinner under supervision of a chef. I loved it and have since prepared it many times following the same recipe, even though I later found out that Beef Wellington often also includes pâté (which is not included in this recipe). Beef Wellington is beef tenderloin, wrapped in puff pastry with a umami bomb called duxelles (mushrooms, ham, tomato paste, shallots, garlic, and parsley). I always serve it with haricots verts and a strong red wine sauce. It is a great dish for festive occasions. Continue reading “Beef Wellington”
I don’t have many cookery books (at least not compared to many of you), and I do not use the ones that I do have very often. There is one exception, and that is my collection of Biba Caggiano books. By now I’ve probably cooked the majority of recipes in there, but there are still some that I haven’t tried. This recipe for fast stuffed veal bundles from “Modern Italian Cooking”, the first of her books that I owned and the one that got me started on Italian cooking, is one that I only recently tried for the first time. Perhaps because I thought it was too similar to Saltimbocca alla Romana, which is on the next page and one of my favorites. The main differences are that saltimbocca are never rolled up but always served flat, and that these stuffed veal bundles are cooked in a tomato sauce. They also take a bit longer to cook than saltimbocca. Continue reading “Stuffed Veal Bundles (Involtini di Vitello)”
I had a craving for rack of lamb after seeing Conor’s post on herbed rack of lamb. I picked up a nice rack of lamb, thinking I’d serve it with a sauce with a hint of ginger. When I thought about what to serve with it, I also remembered Conor’s post about carrot and ginger soup. And so I decided to serve the lamb with a carrot puree. Carrot, ginger, and cumin go well together, and lamb, ginger, and cumin go well together. So then lamb, carrot, ginger, and cumin should all go well together. And they did! There was only a hint of the thyme, ginger, and cumin in the final dish, but they did bring out the flavor of the lamb and the carrots very nicely. Continue reading “Rack of Lamb with Carrot Puree, Thyme, Ginger and Cumin”
After yesterday’s post about duck stock, it won’t come as a surprise that today’s post features duck. I love duck meat and this duck breast with a demi-glace sauce made from duck stock and red wine was particularly nice. It also won’t be a surprise what my next post will be about, as the side dish (a butternut squash tartlet) will have a post of its own.
Now there is more to this dish than just the use of duck stock to make a demi glace (which in the modern form is just duck stock reduced until it is thick and syrupy and loaded with duck flavor). You see, I took a bit of a risk when I cooked the duck breast and duck skin separately and glued them together with Activa, and then called this ‘Perfect’ duck breast. Grant from An American Baker in London left a comment saying that he had seen something similar on Masterchef, but with the duck skin cooked sous-vide rather than in the oven to render the fat out of it before gluing it to the duck breast. The advantage of cooking the duck skin sous-vide would be avoiding shrinkage. Cooking the skin sous-vide sounded like music to my ears, and I quickly forgot that my previous version was perhaps not as perfect as I had thought it was. Continue reading “Duck Breast Sous-Vide with Duck Red Wine Demi-Glace”
Recently we took a plane to Dublin for a return visit to Conor and ‘the wife’ (a.k.a. Sharon). They showed us a really great time.
We stayed in a wonderful house with a huge kitchen by Lough Derg (a beautiful lake in the county of Tipperary). Continue reading “Irish Mussels with Irish Blue Cheese and Irish Parsnips”
When I wanted to try and make chili con carne from scratch for the first time, the natural place to go for a reliable recipe was REMCooks.com. Richard’s recipe for what he calls Super Bowl Chili, Texas-Style has been the basis. According to Richard (and I consider him a reliable source), true Texas-style chili includes only meat, chile peppers, and spices. This means that the chile peppers used for it are very important, as they are the determining factor in how the chili will taste. This is why I made my own chile powder rather than using store-bought. By using different types of chiles you can achieve great depth of flavor. Continue reading “My First Chili con Carne”
Rose fish is called “Roodbaars” in Dutch, which literally translates to “Red (sea) bass”. I like all seafood so when I checked out the market and the rose fish looked the freshest, that is what I got. From the name and appearance I assumed wrongly it resembled sea bass or snapper, but instead the texture and flavor turned out to be more like cod. I prepared it like I prepare sea bass, by cooking it sous-vide and then crisping up the skin. It turned out okay, but not as nice as actual sea bass and just slightly dry and flaky. Next time I’ll prepare it more like cod, cooked sous-vide at a slightly lower temperature (45ºC/113ºF instead of 48ºC/118ºF). White fish pairs nicely with roasted cauliflower, and so I served the fish with lemon-roasted cauliflower that turned out nicely. Continue reading “Rose Fish Sous-Vide with Lemon-Roasted Cauliflower”
Rendang Daging is beef stewed in coconut milk with spices until all of the coconut milk has been reduced and the beef is tender. The stew becomes more and more dry, and turns from a light color to a dark color because of the caramelization that will occur. Rendang is traditionally served at festive occasions. The cooking method was developed to preserve meat in a tropical climate before refrigerators were available. Now rendang is still prepared because it is loaded with flavor. Rendang is so popular that it is regarded the national dish of Indonesia. Continue reading “Rendang Daging (Indonesian Beef Stew)”
Beef short ribs sous-vide are great, and I already did a post on the best cooking time and temperature for them. With some experimenting I found that for ‘regular’ beef short ribs, 48 hours at 57ºC/135ºF is best. However, not all beef is alike and I found that for wagyu short ribs a lower temperature and longer cooking time are better: 72 hours at 55ºC/131ºF. I suppose I could stop the post here, but I’m going to show you the nice photos that I took 🙂 Continue reading “Wagyu Short Ribs Sous-Vide”
Chicken Fajitas are my favorite Mexican dish. Part of the reason for this is that I do not know a lot of Mexican dishes 😉 and I have never actually been to Mexico. My first introduction to chicken fajitas was … Continue reading Homemade Chicken Fajitas
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