Perfect Sous Vide Tuna

I'm always futzing with my tuna-cooking technique in our family-favorite recipe of Seared Tuna with Ginger-Shiitake Cream Sauce.  The recipe for the sauce is pretty much perfect as written (except I make a double-batch of sauce for 6 servings... because it's that good and I always want guests to get as much as they want...), but the prescribed method of cooking the tuna is kind of stupid.  After playing around with a few methods, I have finally found The One, giving me just a couple millimeters of sear on the outside with an interior that is warm and bright pink all the way through.

The key to this technique was to partially freeze the tuna steaks (for about 30-60 minutes... we just threw them in the freezer while we enjoyed a pre-dinner cocktail on the patio) before searing in a very hot pan.  (This prevents the interior from overcooking while you get a good sear.)  From here you chill again for a few minutes before vacuum sealing and throwing into a 110°F water bath for 30 minutes.  This is the only way I'll be doing my tuna steaks from now on...  Perfection!

Cookbook Adventures: Amazing Zucchini Dumplings

While pondering what to do with some extra zucchini from my mom's garden, I stumbled across a Cook the Book post over at Eatocracy with pictures of some insanely delicious-looking dumplings.  I knew the moment I saw that picture that I was going to have to make them myself as soon as possible..

 

My brother was laughing at me because I was explaining that I almost never cook vegetarian...  I told him I was planning to make these dumplings, and I said, "Ooh.  Those are vegetarian!  I'm serving them with pork..."  Subtract the pork from the equation, though, and they'd be a really impressive vegetarian appetizer...

Chicken Makhani and Other Yumminess

Prompted by another pound of beautiful green beans in my last produce delivery and by a desire to try some new recipes, those beans led to my cooking an Indian(-inspired) feast...

Chicken Makhani, Saag, Dal, and Green Beans with Coconut Spice...  (Plus homemade Naan, of course...)

From the Garden: Fava Bean Agnolotti with Curry Emulsion

While I was still crashing with my parents, I had the brilliant idea that "we" should grow our own fava beans in their amazing garden. 

I say "we" in the sense that I came up with the idea, ordered the seeds, then sat in a reclining patio chair with a glass of wine while I watched my mom plant them... I left the rest of the work to my mom, but she was kind enough to bring me the bulk of the harvest anyway...

Everyday Yumminess: Perfect Ricotta Revisited

In all the chaos of preparing to move and then moving, it had been quite a while since I'd made a batch of ricotta. In the meantime, a comment appeared on my last post about ricotta from a brilliant woman named Lynn suggesting an improved technique that has all the convenience of the sous vide method but doesn't involve any consumables (bags, cheesecloth, etc...).
I tried this technique for yogurt-making a couple weeks ago and it was fantastic, then today I finally got around to making a batch of ricotta with this new method and it's super-cool. Thus, I thought I'd better share the new method as its own post so that even people who don't read the comments on the older post can learn about it.

Everyday Yumminess: Ad Hoc Fried Chicken Revisted

When I first made Thomas Keller's fried chicken recipe from the Ad Hoc at Home cookbook, it was pretty much the most amazing fried chicken I had ever tasted in my entire life. The recipe is pretty simple, especially by Thomas Keller standards, but I get super-stressed-out frying chicken on the bone, worrying about whether or not I will get it cooked perfectly all the way through to the bone without over-cooking it. The solution to this "problem" is the same solution I come up with for most kitchen problems: sous vide!

Everyday Yumminess: Totally Awesome French Fries (and a Tasty Burger)

I've always felt that perfect french fries are an important dish to have in one's making-your-friends-think-you're-a-good-cook repertoire. Historically, I used the method that "everyone" uses: soak in water, fry at low temperature to cook the interior, fry at high temperature to get the exterior crispy, then be sad 2 minutes later when your once-crispy fries have lost all crispiness. (Maybe that last part only happens to me? I don't know...) Poking around the interweb, I can across a lot of blogs (e.g., this one, which has step-by-step pictures) talking about cold oil french fries, a recipe that appears to have originated at Cook's Illustrated (and was inspired there by Jöel Robuchon). In short, they are super-easy to make, incredibly crunchy long after they finish cooking, and even have 1/3 less fat than fries cooked the usual way. Awesome.

Sous Vide Pork Roast with Savory Fennel Bread Pudding

Just when I came up with a new game plan to be able to cook a bit more, my life is going through some more upheaval. I'll write about that more as it happens, but for now one implication is that I need to start using up my stockpile of proteins in the chest freezer. To help me with this, I invited a couple friends over for a simple dinner the other night.

A Low-Maintenance Thanksgiving

Oh. Hello, there. Long time, no write. Things haven’t been so great around here, pain-wise, so it’s been hard to spend much time in the kitchen (or doing much of anything worth writing about, really). I have an idea of how I may be able to start posting here again, which I’ll write about this week, but first I managed to put together a Thanksgiving feast for myself with minimal time in the kitchen.

Cookbook Adventures: Momofuku Ramen

A little over a year and a half after buying the book, I finally got around to making the dish I knew I had to make: Last night, I finally made Momofuku Ramen for dinner (fresh alkaline noodles and all).