Don'cha just hate it when you have just a little steak left? Almost, but not quite enough to fill up the number of sandwiches you meant to make. This, fridge searchers, has been a problem since the concept of sandwiches and leftover met on a street corner one hungry evening.
This steak begs to be stretched, but not in a bland, gummy, flavor-killing kind of way, but rather in an exciting, tongue-tingling manner that makes you wonder why you don't eat steak this way all the time.
(Hey Lady! Why no photos? Cuz' everything got eaten for this round of steak before I found the camera. Keeps HAPPENING!)
Steak Salad Sandwich
Make the most of every last bit of steaky-goodness.
Equipment:
cutting board
knife
small bowl
spoon
plate
Ingredients: These are for 1 sandwich. If you have more steak, or need to make more sandwiches, adjust accordingly
1 large palmful of steak leftover steak (any sort)
2 slices bread
1 - 2 slices onion (sweet or purple are best, but all work)
1 Tbs mayonnaise
1 tsp sriracha (chilli garlic sauce - adjust to your taste)
1/2 tsp sesame oil (the secret ingredient)
1/2 lime or lemon (or vinegar if neither is available)
salt and pepper to taste
4 leaves lettuce
bread or other flat surface of your choice
Prep & Cook!
Slice your leftover steak, and then chop it to strips or cubes; small pieces that won't tear the sandwich apart as you're eating it.
Make the lettuce clean and edible, stack the pieces, and cut across the ribs into thin strips. Set aside on the sandwich plate.
In the small bowl mix the mayonnaise, sriracha, sesame oil, the juice from your fruit (or a tsp or so of vinegar - add, taste, adjust). Mix. Add salt, pepper, or more of anything else.
Spread a little on your bread.
Mix in the steak.
Spoon it onto your bread. Mound a handful of lettuce over the steak.
Top with the other bread.
Nom, nom, nom, nom.......
Variations:
Use cilantro instead of lettuce.
Roll this up in a tortilla.
Add tomatoes and or cucumbers.
Cut into Happy Hour sandwiches, win friends and influence people.
Monday, May 14, 2012
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Spring, Herbs & Tuna Salad
Spring is really here, the new herbs are potted, the old ones repotted at last, and I've finally got a sunny day, so my garden has a chance of growing.
And to celebrate the herbs it is Tuna Salad Day*. Also because it is Tuesday, but that's another thing. And really it is more of a Take Back Tuna Salad day. I don't know how we let this perfectly nice, low-stress, tasty way to transform leftovers into something delicious into a vilified sink of greasy blandness, but we have.
It must stop now. Lunches, snacks and dinners need to be revived with the real deal, and we can all make it ourselves, especially when we're in a hurry, or have nothing in the the fridge.
This need not stop with tuna. Other leftover aquatic denizens - salmon, shrimp, trout... benefit from the same treatment. Egg salad is begging to be perked up in the same way. And chicken salad, or even as a way to use up that last little bit of steak. Stay tuned and learn the secret to cilantro/basil/sriracha steak salad. It'll be here soon, now that there is enough sun to keep me awake during the day.
Break out the scissors and get clipping.
 |
| dill, new oregano and tarragon peeking through in the back |
It must stop now. Lunches, snacks and dinners need to be revived with the real deal, and we can all make it ourselves, especially when we're in a hurry, or have nothing in the the fridge.
Basic Tasty Tuna Salad
Eat as a sandwich, or my favorite, scooped up with grainy-seedy crackers.
Equipment:
fork
knife
cutting board
small bowl
measuring spoons
Ingredients
3 oz tuna - or other leftover fish (about 1 small can's worth/ 1 generous palm full)
1 garlic clove or a bit of leftover onion
1/2 rib of celery or *additions*
1 tsp mustard
2 Tbs mayonnaise
splash of vinegar
salt & pepper
bread or crackers (or tortillas? flatbread?)
Prep & Cook:
Place the tuna in the bowl. Slice up the celery and smash, peel and finely chopped the garlic (or something similar to the onion). Add these to the tuna. Stir in the mustard, only 1Tbs of the mayonnaise. Taste.
Add salt, pepper and vinegar until it tastes almost right.
Taste!
Stir in some of the rest of the mayonnaise until you get to a taste and texture you like. This may mean a bit more mayo, vinegar, salt & pepper (maybe even a bit more mustard) and it may mean less than the full 2Tbs.
Always add a bit, and then taste again. Easy to add more, tough to remove. Let your own personal taste be your guide.
But that is only the basic recipe. Back to the herbs that brought me here. Time to get out the scissors and start clipping to make up some spring time specialties.
My three favorite combinations so far this spring have been:
1) French Inspired Tuna Salad
Take out the watery sweet celery and instead use
-a few leaves of nice sour sorrel
-a few leaves of mysterious licorice-y tarragon
-and some lemon (or regular) thyme.
If it is in your fridge, go for the spiky flavor of dijon mustard.
Maybe add a few more leaves of sorrel as the lettuce on your sandwich.
 |
| oregano front, marjoram next to the ball |
2) Italian Leaning Tuna Salad -
If you have some oil packed tuna - this is a great place to use it.
Track down all the Mediterranean leaning herbs (even that "Italian Seasoning Blend" will do in a pinch!)
Skip the celery, and instead use
- a sprig of thyme
- a few leaves of peppery oregano
- a sprig of marjoram (if you don't have it fresh, toss in some dried)
- leave out the mayo, and use olive oil to make up the creaminess.
- use red wine vinegar
Bonus: throw in a chopped tomato if you happen to have some about.
 |
| chives almost ready to bloom |
3) Swedish-ish Salmon Salad
OK, this one isn't a tuna recipe, but it was the perfect way to rescue the overcooked parts of the salmon.
- replace the celery with a half a pickle chopped into smallish pieces
- add a few sprigs of chopped dill, until it tastes dill-y enough for you
- add some chives if any are on hand
- use onion instead of garlic, and use thin slices of onion instead of chopped bits
- salt, pepper and mayo, and adjust the vinegar accordingly.
*No I don't know if there is really Tuna Salad Day. In fact I bet there is one, but this has nothing to do with that.
This need not stop with tuna. Other leftover aquatic denizens - salmon, shrimp, trout... benefit from the same treatment. Egg salad is begging to be perked up in the same way. And chicken salad, or even as a way to use up that last little bit of steak. Stay tuned and learn the secret to cilantro/basil/sriracha steak salad. It'll be here soon, now that there is enough sun to keep me awake during the day.
Break out the scissors and get clipping.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Caramelized Onions - Sous Vide hack
After making dulce de leche, and caramelizing milk, French Onion Soup and the required Caramelized Onions was a totally logical next step.
I was worried about the "gas bloat" that affects all raw veggies when put through the sous vide process. And with good reason. When I looked up my favorite sous vide blog's recipe for making caramelized onions (SVKitchen) they even suffered burst bags, and resorted to double bagging. That is one solution.
I try not to using the sous vide bags only once, especially if I don't get them very dirty, but I really hate washing them. And reusing bags is a pain since they curl at the edges and can be tough to seal the second time.
Now onions are juicy little creatures, and will rapidly slump into their own liquid. So they seemed like they were perfect fodder for my next test of the "jar in the sous vide" method.
Cook the onions at 200˚F (93.3˚C) for the recommended 15 hours. I had the water about 3/4 of the way up the sides of the jar. So when I started there was a bit of onion above the water level. Lids were on, and the screw bands were on loosely (about a 1/4 turn back from finger tight).
The one drawback seemed to be the onions on top, out of the onion juice got a bit darker. When I tasted them, they had just a hint of a bitter flavor. This could easily be avoided in the future by pushing all the onions into their juice around 2 to 4 hours in.
I was forced to eat all the dark bits to keep them from ruing my soup. Turns out, eating a non-dark onion with an over-darkened onion was heavenly. I bet they wouldn't have ruined the soup at all.
I was worried about the "gas bloat" that affects all raw veggies when put through the sous vide process. And with good reason. When I looked up my favorite sous vide blog's recipe for making caramelized onions (SVKitchen) they even suffered burst bags, and resorted to double bagging. That is one solution.
I try not to using the sous vide bags only once, especially if I don't get them very dirty, but I really hate washing them. And reusing bags is a pain since they curl at the edges and can be tough to seal the second time.
 |
| A 2 C jar |
Now onions are juicy little creatures, and will rapidly slump into their own liquid. So they seemed like they were perfect fodder for my next test of the "jar in the sous vide" method.
 |
| chop chop chop |
 |
| layer: butter, onion 1/2, butter, onion1/2, butter & pitch of salt |
 |
| 1 onion per jar smoosh it all in |
Cook the onions at 200˚F (93.3˚C) for the recommended 15 hours. I had the water about 3/4 of the way up the sides of the jar. So when I started there was a bit of onion above the water level. Lids were on, and the screw bands were on loosely (about a 1/4 turn back from finger tight).
 |
| The Results... Hey it worked! |
The one drawback seemed to be the onions on top, out of the onion juice got a bit darker. When I tasted them, they had just a hint of a bitter flavor. This could easily be avoided in the future by pushing all the onions into their juice around 2 to 4 hours in.
 |
| Mostly... the top looks a bit dark. |
 |
| 1 onion's worth |
From there, I drained the onion juice, and cooked the onions down to a little darker, and followed the rest of the SVKitchen French Onion Soup recipe.
Luscious soup, no popped bags, no double bags and still no oniony smell taking over the house!
P.S. Well now its hailing! I have the perfect remedy.
When is a Sous Vide not a Sous Vide?
When you are using it like a crock pot! (Insert evil laugh here)
Well, ok it's always sort of used like a crock pot, but as I was scratching my head over the whole cooking dried beans problem, and the making chili problem, the time I spent using the SousVide as a yogurt (and dulce de leche) maker came floating back into my head.
Is it so important to have a package that conforms to the ingredients if your ingredients will conform to any package?
-or-
Attacking the "SousVide a liquid" problem
So what is the vacuum doing anyway?
The magic is in the lower pressure created by the vacuum! Right?
I, like many others, have labored under the mistaken idea that the vacuum sealer was imparting some superior virtue to the "food stuffs + flavorings" combinations in those vacuum sealed bags. My main mistake was bolstered by the correct but completely out-of-context knowledge that water boils (changes from liquid phase to gas phase) at lower and lower temperatures as the pressure on it is decreased. The pressure has somewhere between NOTHING and Practically Nothing to do with the magic of Sous Vide.
But the vacuum pump is sucking out all bubbles so all the food surfaces contact water through a solid with out the interference of air. We're not creating an importantly lower pressure.
The magic is in the full contact of the highly efficient heat-transfer-medium (water) to the surface of the food. And the plastic vacuum bags allow the water to be in contact without draining the food-of-choice of flavor by water logging it. (And protecting it from the the drying and oxidizing properties of hot air.)
So not magic at all - just poaching with a barrier to the liquid.
Similar experiences in texture are available through poaching, but keeping the water at the desired "just below a simmer" is quite a trick on a stove top. And the liquid is still above the optimal cooking temp. Braising and stewing get one there as well, but again, water logging, and losing luscious flavor and texture (come back gelatin!). Wrapping in foil and baking at low temps works too, but always risks drying the food out and is horribly inefficient (air is a low density, low heat capacity, heat transfer medium. Seriously, would you rather stick your hand into a box of 400˚F air for 5 seconds or 400˚F liquid for 5 seconds?)
So that explains why fried fish is the best!
Frying does it exactly. Wrap the food in an oil proof coat (batter), and fry until it floats. This occurs because an appreciable amount of the water in the food has converted to steam (gas) and pops the food to the top of the liquid (lower density). This also explains why frying is best with small pieces of food, or objects with a large-surface-area-to-actual-amount-of-matter ingredients (don't plug the hole in that turkey you are planning to fry), but isn't so poplar with large chunks of stuff (french fry, YES! entire potato, NO!). And whatever you do, keep water away from the hot oil, or you are a Mythbusters Episode without the insurance.
But when the cooking is complete, there's all that hot oil. And not all foods respond well to that quick cooking. Deep fried dried beans anyone? (Yes, the Chinese and Indians have made this good too, but that's another topic for another day. And they are no longer the low-fat nutrition delivery systems they began as.)
The real magic is just better technology.
Two words, temperature control. By today's standards "old fashioned" (Ya' know, ancient times, like from the 1970's) crock pots have wild fluctuations in temperature, but manage to make a go of it since they depend on the slow-motion-power of the ceramic crock to keep the transfer of temperature fluctuations to the food encased within to a minimum.
Today, when I sous vide my chicken breast to 140˚F (60˚C), I want it at 140˚F. Not 138˚F (58.9˚C), not 142˚F (61.1˚C). With eggs, the same thing. 64˚C (147.2˚F) means just that, and let me tell you, a degree of difference makes a whole different egg (protein folding thermodynamics, of course).
Which brings me back to the dried beans.
Crock pots are great for cooking them. Long, low and slow with minimal power input.* But I only want a small bowl of beans - enough for 3 people, not an entire baby-bathtub of beans. I'm not feeding a hockey team here. Which is what kept me from using my crock pot most of the time. Sure if I were part of bigger family, large amounts of food at one time would make more sense. But I've chosen the minimalist route, so my food needs on a given day are smaller. And I can only eat the same meal so many days in a row before I go a bit batty (never would have made it as a wild-west prospector).
What your are saying is, cooking beans is different from cooking meat!
I know, crazy, right? But the time/temperature/liquid combinations that are good for fresh meats are are different than for dried plant protein sources. (Hmmmm, bacalao?) But the real key here is the beans are already in a liquid medium. And all I need is a way to keep my small amount of liquid away from the large amount of heat bearing liquid. Canning Jars! They are supposed to be boiled - or even pressure canned. (That is, heated to above boiling.) So having them hang out below boiling for several hours seems like a great idea. And they are easier to clean than the darn bags. And they are in exactly as good a shape the second or tenth time as they were the first, no curly edges and problems shutting them.
Well, what do your experiments reveal?
Using 2C jars, I filled each with 1/2C dried beans and 1 1/2C liquid (water).
I popped them in the SousVide at 195˚F (90.5˚C) for the recommended 6 hours.
After 6 hours....
They looked cooked...
Delicious, tender beans! The long cook did make them extra flavorful.
Pro Tip: The jar lets you test the beans along the way. Especially handy if you are working with a new sort of bean. You can take them out early if you need to, and let them cook longer if they need to.
Next: Hacking the Caramelized Onions
Well, ok it's always sort of used like a crock pot, but as I was scratching my head over the whole cooking dried beans problem, and the making chili problem, the time I spent using the SousVide as a yogurt (and dulce de leche) maker came floating back into my head.
Is it so important to have a package that conforms to the ingredients if your ingredients will conform to any package?
-or-
Attacking the "SousVide a liquid" problem
So what is the vacuum doing anyway?
The magic is in the lower pressure created by the vacuum! Right?
I, like many others, have labored under the mistaken idea that the vacuum sealer was imparting some superior virtue to the "food stuffs + flavorings" combinations in those vacuum sealed bags. My main mistake was bolstered by the correct but completely out-of-context knowledge that water boils (changes from liquid phase to gas phase) at lower and lower temperatures as the pressure on it is decreased. The pressure has somewhere between NOTHING and Practically Nothing to do with the magic of Sous Vide.
 |
| (thanks MIT) |
But the vacuum pump is sucking out all bubbles so all the food surfaces contact water through a solid with out the interference of air. We're not creating an importantly lower pressure.
The magic is in the full contact of the highly efficient heat-transfer-medium (water) to the surface of the food. And the plastic vacuum bags allow the water to be in contact without draining the food-of-choice of flavor by water logging it. (And protecting it from the the drying and oxidizing properties of hot air.)
So not magic at all - just poaching with a barrier to the liquid.
Similar experiences in texture are available through poaching, but keeping the water at the desired "just below a simmer" is quite a trick on a stove top. And the liquid is still above the optimal cooking temp. Braising and stewing get one there as well, but again, water logging, and losing luscious flavor and texture (come back gelatin!). Wrapping in foil and baking at low temps works too, but always risks drying the food out and is horribly inefficient (air is a low density, low heat capacity, heat transfer medium. Seriously, would you rather stick your hand into a box of 400˚F air for 5 seconds or 400˚F liquid for 5 seconds?)
So that explains why fried fish is the best!
Frying does it exactly. Wrap the food in an oil proof coat (batter), and fry until it floats. This occurs because an appreciable amount of the water in the food has converted to steam (gas) and pops the food to the top of the liquid (lower density). This also explains why frying is best with small pieces of food, or objects with a large-surface-area-to-actual-amount-of-matter ingredients (don't plug the hole in that turkey you are planning to fry), but isn't so poplar with large chunks of stuff (french fry, YES! entire potato, NO!). And whatever you do, keep water away from the hot oil, or you are a Mythbusters Episode without the insurance.
But when the cooking is complete, there's all that hot oil. And not all foods respond well to that quick cooking. Deep fried dried beans anyone? (Yes, the Chinese and Indians have made this good too, but that's another topic for another day. And they are no longer the low-fat nutrition delivery systems they began as.)
The real magic is just better technology.
Two words, temperature control. By today's standards "old fashioned" (Ya' know, ancient times, like from the 1970's) crock pots have wild fluctuations in temperature, but manage to make a go of it since they depend on the slow-motion-power of the ceramic crock to keep the transfer of temperature fluctuations to the food encased within to a minimum.
Today, when I sous vide my chicken breast to 140˚F (60˚C), I want it at 140˚F. Not 138˚F (58.9˚C), not 142˚F (61.1˚C). With eggs, the same thing. 64˚C (147.2˚F) means just that, and let me tell you, a degree of difference makes a whole different egg (protein folding thermodynamics, of course).
Which brings me back to the dried beans.
Crock pots are great for cooking them. Long, low and slow with minimal power input.* But I only want a small bowl of beans - enough for 3 people, not an entire baby-bathtub of beans. I'm not feeding a hockey team here. Which is what kept me from using my crock pot most of the time. Sure if I were part of bigger family, large amounts of food at one time would make more sense. But I've chosen the minimalist route, so my food needs on a given day are smaller. And I can only eat the same meal so many days in a row before I go a bit batty (never would have made it as a wild-west prospector).
What your are saying is, cooking beans is different from cooking meat!
I know, crazy, right? But the time/temperature/liquid combinations that are good for fresh meats are are different than for dried plant protein sources. (Hmmmm, bacalao?) But the real key here is the beans are already in a liquid medium. And all I need is a way to keep my small amount of liquid away from the large amount of heat bearing liquid. Canning Jars! They are supposed to be boiled - or even pressure canned. (That is, heated to above boiling.) So having them hang out below boiling for several hours seems like a great idea. And they are easier to clean than the darn bags. And they are in exactly as good a shape the second or tenth time as they were the first, no curly edges and problems shutting them.
Well, what do your experiments reveal?
Using 2C jars, I filled each with 1/2C dried beans and 1 1/2C liquid (water).
 |
| Ratio - 1:3 beans to water A garlic clove, a pinch of red pepper flakes and some cumin seed |
I popped them in the SousVide at 195˚F (90.5˚C) for the recommended 6 hours.
I placed the lids on top and barely screwed on the rims so any gasses could escape easily, same as when canning.
After 6 hours....
 |
| I did cook with the lids on. This was removed for peeking in and testing purposes. |
 |
| Black eyed peas! |
They looked cooked...
Delicious, tender beans! The long cook did make them extra flavorful.
Pro Tip: The jar lets you test the beans along the way. Especially handy if you are working with a new sort of bean. You can take them out early if you need to, and let them cook longer if they need to.
Next: Hacking the Caramelized Onions
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Making Better (Chicken) Soup
Last week started with one of those rotisserie chickens. I wondered why I don't buy them more often. When I do, it seems like half my kitchen time disappears. Boom! Dinner is almost instantly ready.
Oh right, I can only eat chicken all week every once in a while.
But when I do get one of those chickens -
Step 1 - Breast meat gets eaten first. This lean mean dries out the fastest, so enjoy it at it's juiciest. This time it got stirred in with a beurre rouge (red-wine butter sauce - which I had time to monkey with since the chicken was all cooked) and herby pasta. Then lots of vinegary greens on the side.
Step 2 - Shred all the rest of the meat for fast access for the rest of the week. I make 2 piles - larger pieces for sandwiches, etc. and smaller fussy pieces and all the juices in another for soup.
Step 3 - House favorite sandwiches. Here that means chicken and swiss on flat bread.
Step 4 - And I hadn't done this in way too long - make soup!
It has actually been quite a while since I made soup from leftovers, and had forgotten just how darn simple it is. Happily my recent cooking adventures have taught me a few tricks and this soup turned out much better than the variety I had stopped making.
Better Chicken Soup:
I went basically minestrone, but with chicken instead of beans.
How to make better soup? Cook your vegetables so they are tasty! Badly cooked vegetables are at the root of so many unenjoyable meals. Develop the flavor in your vegetables when you cook them, don't just get them hot. Anne Burrell really drives the point home when making her Pasta Bolognese.
Equipment:
soup pot
cutting board
knife
long spoon
(ladle - optional)
Ingredients:
1 C (or so) left over cooked chicken (bite sized pieces - dark meat is best)
4 - 8 C kale or other dark greens (spinach, chard)
Prep:
Make sure the chicken is bite sized. Wash the greens and strip the leaves off the tough stems (or get the baby kales!) Cut or tear the leaves into palm-sized pieces. Smash, peel and finely chop the garlic. Cut the onion into smallish pieces. (Cut in thirds toward the root end, and the then slice thinly).
Open the can of tomatoes. Drain most of the juice out of the can (add it to your broth, or toss it) and have the drained tomatoes ready to add to the soup.
Cook!
Heat the soup pot with the oil over medium high heat (I used bacon fat because it adds so much flavor. A chopped up slice of bacon or two would also do a great job here as well.) A sliver of onion in the pot will let you know when the oil is heated up and ready to go (by sizzling), usually about 4 minutes.
Add all the onion and stir over the heat for about 6 minutes - until the onion starts to soften and get a few brown edges. Add the chopped garlic and Tbs of herbs. Stir in for a few sizzles, then add the drained tomatoes. Cook all the plant matter for about 10 minutes - until things look dry-ish and have a few browned spots.*
Stir in about a cup of stock, then add the kale. Stir until all the kale is wilted and tiny.
Stir in the pasta and the rest of the broth. Place a low boil if the pasta is uncooked - until the pasta gets cooked.
When the pasta is cooked, add the chicken and cook until the chicken is hot all the way through (just a few more minutes).
Ta-da better soup.
* Why all this vegetable browning? It makes the most of the cooked flavors of the plants by driving out excess water and caramelizing - or gently burning - the sugar inside them.
Adding vegetables to broth to cook is the same as boiling them. It makes them water logged and often mushy and unpleasant. Cooking them dry-ish, this way, is more like roasting or grilling them, and creates more flavors rather than stealing them away.
Oh right, I can only eat chicken all week every once in a while.
 |
| Lets face it - this is using far less energy per chicken than if I were to cook it at home. |
But when I do get one of those chickens -
Step 1 - Breast meat gets eaten first. This lean mean dries out the fastest, so enjoy it at it's juiciest. This time it got stirred in with a beurre rouge (red-wine butter sauce - which I had time to monkey with since the chicken was all cooked) and herby pasta. Then lots of vinegary greens on the side.
Step 2 - Shred all the rest of the meat for fast access for the rest of the week. I make 2 piles - larger pieces for sandwiches, etc. and smaller fussy pieces and all the juices in another for soup.
Step 3 - House favorite sandwiches. Here that means chicken and swiss on flat bread.
Step 4 - And I hadn't done this in way too long - make soup!
It has actually been quite a while since I made soup from leftovers, and had forgotten just how darn simple it is. Happily my recent cooking adventures have taught me a few tricks and this soup turned out much better than the variety I had stopped making.
Better Chicken Soup:
I went basically minestrone, but with chicken instead of beans.
How to make better soup? Cook your vegetables so they are tasty! Badly cooked vegetables are at the root of so many unenjoyable meals. Develop the flavor in your vegetables when you cook them, don't just get them hot. Anne Burrell really drives the point home when making her Pasta Bolognese.
Equipment:
soup pot
cutting board
knife
long spoon
(ladle - optional)
Ingredients:
 |
| lazy! but tasty |
 |
| Who knew? Big bags of baby kales at Costco! |
 |
| when the freezer is empty |
 |
| Dried herbs do great things for soups |
1 C (or so) left over cooked chicken (bite sized pieces - dark meat is best)
4 - 8 C kale or other dark greens (spinach, chard)
1 Tbs Italian seasoning (basil, oregano, marjoram, thyme rosemary, savory & sage)
1 14oz can diced tomatoes (or equivalent)
1 Tbs oil
3 garlic cloves
1/2 large onion
1 C cooked small pasta (or rice/barley) or 1/2 C uncooked small pasta (shells, broken spaghetti, cous cous)
4 C chicken stock/broth
salt & pepper
(hard italian cheese & tasty olive oil for a fancy finish)
Prep:
Make sure the chicken is bite sized. Wash the greens and strip the leaves off the tough stems (or get the baby kales!) Cut or tear the leaves into palm-sized pieces. Smash, peel and finely chop the garlic. Cut the onion into smallish pieces. (Cut in thirds toward the root end, and the then slice thinly).
Open the can of tomatoes. Drain most of the juice out of the can (add it to your broth, or toss it) and have the drained tomatoes ready to add to the soup.
Cook!
Heat the soup pot with the oil over medium high heat (I used bacon fat because it adds so much flavor. A chopped up slice of bacon or two would also do a great job here as well.) A sliver of onion in the pot will let you know when the oil is heated up and ready to go (by sizzling), usually about 4 minutes.
Add all the onion and stir over the heat for about 6 minutes - until the onion starts to soften and get a few brown edges. Add the chopped garlic and Tbs of herbs. Stir in for a few sizzles, then add the drained tomatoes. Cook all the plant matter for about 10 minutes - until things look dry-ish and have a few browned spots.*
Stir in about a cup of stock, then add the kale. Stir until all the kale is wilted and tiny.
Stir in the pasta and the rest of the broth. Place a low boil if the pasta is uncooked - until the pasta gets cooked.
When the pasta is cooked, add the chicken and cook until the chicken is hot all the way through (just a few more minutes).
Ta-da better soup.
If you want to make this a little more special - grate some parmesan over the top, and drizzle a little tasty olive oil over the top. Yum!
 |
| snobby oil, non-snobby price |
We had this with cheesy garlic bread roasted under the broiler.
* Why all this vegetable browning? It makes the most of the cooked flavors of the plants by driving out excess water and caramelizing - or gently burning - the sugar inside them.
Adding vegetables to broth to cook is the same as boiling them. It makes them water logged and often mushy and unpleasant. Cooking them dry-ish, this way, is more like roasting or grilling them, and creates more flavors rather than stealing them away.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Yogurt results - Sous Vide style
How do you like your yogurt?
I'm a thick, slightly tangy yogurt lover. Like the kind I met in Greece, and is (for me) best replicated by the Fage brand. They are one of the few companies that actually strains their yogurt of enough of the excess whey to give it the right consistency.
Plenty of other people like theirs softer, more liquid or tangier. These are also completely in your reach even without adding gelatin, seaweed extracts, starch, or other odd bits added to the grocery store stuff that keeps it dependable and more shelf stable as it travels about.
Tangy?
Thick or Thin?
So what mediates the thickness? How hot you get your milk. The warmer the milk gets, the more the protein strands unravel, so they can recombine tighter, and in larger groups resulting in a thicker yogurt when hit with the lactic acid. If you heat up your milk to a lower temperature, the resulting yogurt will be looser.
Creamy?
This is all down to fat content. If you have non-fat milk, there will be no fat. The yogurt will be good, but it won't have the creamy richness of the fat. It's not a problem, just understand there is no way to simulate the particular mouth feel of fat.
Straining the yogurt to concentrate the solids will give it a richer texture, but it is still not the same as the creaminess you'd get with whole milk.
So what milks work?
For dairy milk - all of them. The stuff in the cartons, raw milk, box milk, powdered milk. I've seen claims that ultra-pasturized or UHT milks won't work. Not so. Milk turns to yogurt because you introduce particular bacteria into a liquid full of nutrients and relatively empty of other bacteria.
The bacteria are individual cells on the hunt for sugar, and when they find it, they eat it. Well fed, warm bacteria multiply, sending out more copies of themselves to find and digest the rest of the sugar.
Regular milk, the stuff we think of when we think of milk, has a pretty low concentration of bacteria. Since we keep it cold, what bacteria that is still in there has little chance to grow and ferment the milk. But as we all know, given long enough this milk will go bad.
Raw milk has more bacteria, but it is largely person friendly since its source is an animal that lives closely with humans. What's good for the cow gut is good for ours as well.
Powdered milk in its powdered form is free from any active bacteria since there is no water for the bacteria to live in. Once you rehydrate it (add water), it is just as open a canvas for the bacteria to move in. So populate it with your yogurt culture, and you'll get what you want. The down side? It'll still taste like powdered milk.
Ultra-pasturized and UHT (Ultra High Temperature) dairy products are super squeaky clean, (neither is sterile - that's a whole different ball game), but are so barren of bacteria they will keep extra long before going sour. And if that's what you have to work with they will do just fine, providing the materials your yogurt culture needs to live and grow.
'Nuff Biology. How Do I Make Yogurt?
Get your milk. 2-4 C is a nice amount to start with.
Not too much yogurt results, but enough to make it worth all the fiddling about.
Choose your fermentation container of choice, it needs to come with a lid.
Heavy glass jars are nice since they are reusable and easy to get super squeaky clean. I like 1 C canning jars (but only fill them about 3/4 full or a little more) so I end up with individual servings. And the canning lid rests on top nicely. No need for the screw on part.
There are special yogurt jars, but - ehh?
Glazed pottery works fine too, but you need to find a lid. In China they rubber-banded wax paper over the top - so it need not be high tech.
Get some (plain) yogurt with live active cultures.
These days most yogurts have the live cultures, but read the label just to be sure. Plain yogurt just simplifies things. (Dairy free people - get coconut or soy - still works!)
Get a cooking thermometer
I LOVE my Thermapen, a digital instant read
but a candy thermometer will serve as well.
A small bowl, a fork/whisk and a ladle
These are for mixing warm milk with the yogurt and moving hot milk about with the least injury to people.
Heat the milk to: Stir over medium to medium-high heat. Watch the temp with the thermometer.
120F - 160F super loose. In fact if you want "yogurt" like you are used to you'll need to add some powdered milk, gelatin or tapioca starch.
165F - 175F for loose yogurt. This can be drinkable after it is stirred.
175F - 180F for firmer yogurt
180F - 185F the thickest yogurt, but not yet grainy (185 is my sweet spot)
190F - boiling (212F) - starts to get a grainy texture. You are entering fresh cheese territory here. It will make a quick and dirty firm yogurt, but the texture won't be smooth. (How do I know? I tried. Not my fave, but I will be straining it to make yogurt cheese. No reason to waste those tasty coagulated proteins).
Let it cool: Either set it over an ice bath, or do other stuff in the kitchen and check on it until it hits
110F - 100F If it gets below 90F, you'll need to go through the heating part all over again. I got super paranoid my first time, worried it wasn't exactly 112F. Yeah, not such a big deal. Just keep it over 90F.
Ladle some of the warm milk into the small bowl. Use the fork/whisk to stir the still warm milk with 1Tbs plain yogurt for each cup you are making (more or less). Pour this back into the big batch of milk.
Ladle this into your fermenting jars.
Ferment!
Sous vide style - Pop your jars into a warm water bath somewhere between 100 - 115 (108 is the nice middle where I like to hang out). Cover the jars so condensation doesn't drip in. Let it go for 4-8 hours. (Depending on temperature, culture and how tangy you like it, 3-12 hours is a realistic range.)
Higher temps mean faster fermentation - thus faster coagulation and more whey, and sometimes a grainier texture.
Lower temps mean slower fermentation - so the curd forms more slowly, and typically incorporates more whey, and a generally creamier texture.
Cooler & a bowl of boiling water -
Line a cooler with a towel/towels. Place a large (8-12 C) bowl in one side, and the yogurt jars in the other. Use the towel to wrap and prop everybody up sturdily. Fill the bowl about 2/3 with boiling water, close the lid and let it sit about 6 hours.
Blanket and a heating pad -
This was the first way I made yogurt, and I didn't love the result. But it was definitely yogurt. It was a high temperature ferment of a mix that had powdered milk and honey added.
This works best if you have all your milk in a cylindrical container. Wrap a heating pad around the container, then insulate it in blankets. Set your heating pad to medium to start, and keep an eye on the temp. Adjust to low or high to keep the temperature at the range you want for 4-8 hours.
(For me - if I'm going with a hack, I want a low maintenance one. This one wasn't.)
In all cases - take out your jars. Does the yogurt look solid-ish? If so, pop them in the fridge, let them cool down the rest of the way.
Ta-Da! you have yogurt.
Then add honey, fruit whatever. And use it in place of sour cream. It has the same tang and it won't break apart when heated. I tried adding honey before I fermented. Not worth it. Just top your yogurt with what you want when you want to eat it. Again, it makes the whole thing simpler.
So many options!!!!!
The thing that struck me are the ridiculous range of options out there when making yogurt - how high or low to heat your milk, fermentation temperature, additions (powdered milk, honey, gelatin, starch...). But what it comes down to, yogurt is the kind of thing that happens even when you aren't trying. So the recipe is very forgiving, and all that really matters is what you prefer.
Like I said... so many options.
If you are not a fan of the thermometer, and have a crock pot, check out this recipe:
Crockpot Yogurt
and then the add-on
Coconut Milk Crockpot Yogurt (will most likely work for all sorts of other non-dairy milks)
I'm a thick, slightly tangy yogurt lover. Like the kind I met in Greece, and is (for me) best replicated by the Fage brand. They are one of the few companies that actually strains their yogurt of enough of the excess whey to give it the right consistency.
Plenty of other people like theirs softer, more liquid or tangier. These are also completely in your reach even without adding gelatin, seaweed extracts, starch, or other odd bits added to the grocery store stuff that keeps it dependable and more shelf stable as it travels about.
Tangy?
The tanginess has to do with the length of fermentation. The longer the little milk digesting bacteria are left to do their work the more acid they produce.
Lactose, the main sugar in milk is digested and turned into lactic acid. This is why "lactose intolerant" individuals can eat yogurt. The lactose is eaten up, gone! Turned into lactic acid.
This is also why coconut milk yogurt works - there are sugars and proteins in there. The bacteria eat the sugar, and produce acid. These acids will then coagulate (turn solid) the dissolved proteins. But there are fewer proteins in coconut milk, so you get a thinner yogurt.
Soy milk can be made into yogurt only if there is some sugar added to it. The bacteria need something to eat and and turn to acid if the soy proteins are going to coagulate. (Most soy milk you buy at the store has some sort of sugar, so it is all set to go.)
Thick or Thin?
So what mediates the thickness? How hot you get your milk. The warmer the milk gets, the more the protein strands unravel, so they can recombine tighter, and in larger groups resulting in a thicker yogurt when hit with the lactic acid. If you heat up your milk to a lower temperature, the resulting yogurt will be looser.
Creamy?
This is all down to fat content. If you have non-fat milk, there will be no fat. The yogurt will be good, but it won't have the creamy richness of the fat. It's not a problem, just understand there is no way to simulate the particular mouth feel of fat.
Straining the yogurt to concentrate the solids will give it a richer texture, but it is still not the same as the creaminess you'd get with whole milk.
So what milks work?
For dairy milk - all of them. The stuff in the cartons, raw milk, box milk, powdered milk. I've seen claims that ultra-pasturized or UHT milks won't work. Not so. Milk turns to yogurt because you introduce particular bacteria into a liquid full of nutrients and relatively empty of other bacteria.
The bacteria are individual cells on the hunt for sugar, and when they find it, they eat it. Well fed, warm bacteria multiply, sending out more copies of themselves to find and digest the rest of the sugar.
Regular milk, the stuff we think of when we think of milk, has a pretty low concentration of bacteria. Since we keep it cold, what bacteria that is still in there has little chance to grow and ferment the milk. But as we all know, given long enough this milk will go bad.
Raw milk has more bacteria, but it is largely person friendly since its source is an animal that lives closely with humans. What's good for the cow gut is good for ours as well.
Powdered milk in its powdered form is free from any active bacteria since there is no water for the bacteria to live in. Once you rehydrate it (add water), it is just as open a canvas for the bacteria to move in. So populate it with your yogurt culture, and you'll get what you want. The down side? It'll still taste like powdered milk.
Ultra-pasturized and UHT (Ultra High Temperature) dairy products are super squeaky clean, (neither is sterile - that's a whole different ball game), but are so barren of bacteria they will keep extra long before going sour. And if that's what you have to work with they will do just fine, providing the materials your yogurt culture needs to live and grow.
'Nuff Biology. How Do I Make Yogurt?
Get your milk. 2-4 C is a nice amount to start with.
Not too much yogurt results, but enough to make it worth all the fiddling about.
Choose your fermentation container of choice, it needs to come with a lid.
Heavy glass jars are nice since they are reusable and easy to get super squeaky clean. I like 1 C canning jars (but only fill them about 3/4 full or a little more) so I end up with individual servings. And the canning lid rests on top nicely. No need for the screw on part.
There are special yogurt jars, but - ehh?
Glazed pottery works fine too, but you need to find a lid. In China they rubber-banded wax paper over the top - so it need not be high tech.
Get some (plain) yogurt with live active cultures.
These days most yogurts have the live cultures, but read the label just to be sure. Plain yogurt just simplifies things. (Dairy free people - get coconut or soy - still works!)
Get a cooking thermometer
I LOVE my Thermapen, a digital instant read
but a candy thermometer will serve as well.
A small bowl, a fork/whisk and a ladle
These are for mixing warm milk with the yogurt and moving hot milk about with the least injury to people.
Heat the milk to: Stir over medium to medium-high heat. Watch the temp with the thermometer.
120F - 160F super loose. In fact if you want "yogurt" like you are used to you'll need to add some powdered milk, gelatin or tapioca starch.
165F - 175F for loose yogurt. This can be drinkable after it is stirred.
175F - 180F for firmer yogurt
180F - 185F the thickest yogurt, but not yet grainy (185 is my sweet spot)
190F - boiling (212F) - starts to get a grainy texture. You are entering fresh cheese territory here. It will make a quick and dirty firm yogurt, but the texture won't be smooth. (How do I know? I tried. Not my fave, but I will be straining it to make yogurt cheese. No reason to waste those tasty coagulated proteins).
Let it cool: Either set it over an ice bath, or do other stuff in the kitchen and check on it until it hits
110F - 100F If it gets below 90F, you'll need to go through the heating part all over again. I got super paranoid my first time, worried it wasn't exactly 112F. Yeah, not such a big deal. Just keep it over 90F.
Ladle some of the warm milk into the small bowl. Use the fork/whisk to stir the still warm milk with 1Tbs plain yogurt for each cup you are making (more or less). Pour this back into the big batch of milk.
Ladle this into your fermenting jars.
Ferment!
Sous vide style - Pop your jars into a warm water bath somewhere between 100 - 115 (108 is the nice middle where I like to hang out). Cover the jars so condensation doesn't drip in. Let it go for 4-8 hours. (Depending on temperature, culture and how tangy you like it, 3-12 hours is a realistic range.)
Higher temps mean faster fermentation - thus faster coagulation and more whey, and sometimes a grainier texture.
Lower temps mean slower fermentation - so the curd forms more slowly, and typically incorporates more whey, and a generally creamier texture.
Cooler & a bowl of boiling water -
Line a cooler with a towel/towels. Place a large (8-12 C) bowl in one side, and the yogurt jars in the other. Use the towel to wrap and prop everybody up sturdily. Fill the bowl about 2/3 with boiling water, close the lid and let it sit about 6 hours.
Blanket and a heating pad -
This was the first way I made yogurt, and I didn't love the result. But it was definitely yogurt. It was a high temperature ferment of a mix that had powdered milk and honey added.
This works best if you have all your milk in a cylindrical container. Wrap a heating pad around the container, then insulate it in blankets. Set your heating pad to medium to start, and keep an eye on the temp. Adjust to low or high to keep the temperature at the range you want for 4-8 hours.
(For me - if I'm going with a hack, I want a low maintenance one. This one wasn't.)
In all cases - take out your jars. Does the yogurt look solid-ish? If so, pop them in the fridge, let them cool down the rest of the way.
Ta-Da! you have yogurt.
Then add honey, fruit whatever. And use it in place of sour cream. It has the same tang and it won't break apart when heated. I tried adding honey before I fermented. Not worth it. Just top your yogurt with what you want when you want to eat it. Again, it makes the whole thing simpler.
So many options!!!!!
The thing that struck me are the ridiculous range of options out there when making yogurt - how high or low to heat your milk, fermentation temperature, additions (powdered milk, honey, gelatin, starch...). But what it comes down to, yogurt is the kind of thing that happens even when you aren't trying. So the recipe is very forgiving, and all that really matters is what you prefer.
And if you made yogurt, but want it thicker, wrap it in a tea-towel or plop it in a coffee filter. Put in in a colander over a bowl for a few hours. Ta-da thicker yogurt. Or yogurt cheese. depending on how long you left it.
Like I said... so many options.
If you are not a fan of the thermometer, and have a crock pot, check out this recipe:
Crockpot Yogurt
and then the add-on
Coconut Milk Crockpot Yogurt (will most likely work for all sorts of other non-dairy milks)
Friday, February 10, 2012
28,000 Words
Draft 1 is off to the editor!
The cookbook is leaving the coop. I can quit pounding the keys and obsessing over words, and let someone else do it for me for a bit. Until I get it back.
In the meantime - the yogurt results are just around the corner.
One thing I've run across is everyone has their favorite kind of yogurt, and give the recipe for that. But different yogurts are good for different things.
So clearly the internet needs a table of temperatures and times.
OK really, yogurt is something people have been making with out thermometers and sterile containers for ages. (And my first off the cuff attempt is disappearing rapidly.) But hey, we are who we are. And I have a SousVide, an instant read digital thermometer, and a biology degree. So - WEEKEND PROJECT!
Step 1. Get some good Honey
Step 2. Don't eat all of last weeks yogurt
Step 3. Don't forget to use BOTH the regular milk and the ultra-pasturized (and powdered milk only... that sounds like a challenge!!!!!) There is the contention that U-P won't work. But biology says it should work just fine, U-P should mean that it has fewer fermenters than usual, so if inoculating the milk, it really seems like it means a freer field for the new inhabitants. But we will see!
The cookbook is leaving the coop. I can quit pounding the keys and obsessing over words, and let someone else do it for me for a bit. Until I get it back.
In the meantime - the yogurt results are just around the corner.
One thing I've run across is everyone has their favorite kind of yogurt, and give the recipe for that. But different yogurts are good for different things.
So clearly the internet needs a table of temperatures and times.
OK really, yogurt is something people have been making with out thermometers and sterile containers for ages. (And my first off the cuff attempt is disappearing rapidly.) But hey, we are who we are. And I have a SousVide, an instant read digital thermometer, and a biology degree. So - WEEKEND PROJECT!
Step 1. Get some good Honey
Step 2. Don't eat all of last weeks yogurt
Step 3. Don't forget to use BOTH the regular milk and the ultra-pasturized (and powdered milk only... that sounds like a challenge!!!!!) There is the contention that U-P won't work. But biology says it should work just fine, U-P should mean that it has fewer fermenters than usual, so if inoculating the milk, it really seems like it means a freer field for the new inhabitants. But we will see!
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