Everyday Yumminess: Chicken Divan Casserole

My mom tells me that she sometimes made Chicken Divan Casserole for us when we were growing up. I am not about to call my mother a liar, but somehow the food memory didn't dig itself very far into my brain, so this isn't a dish I would have thought to seek out a recipe for and make... A couple weeks ago, though, a friend mentioned some pangs of nostalgia for the Chicken Divan his mom had made for him when he was young...and what kind of friend would I be if I didn't try to make a version of this classic for him? (I know the pictures of the finished dish are a little scrappy, but it's comfort food so I wasn't about to mess around with fancy plating...)

Sous Vide Makes it Better: Two Curries

I haven't made a lot of "new" dishes lately, but something I do a lot of is re-making things I've made before, only switching the cooking method over to sous vide.  I tried this with two curries last week, and was incredibly happy (for different reasons) with both dishes...  The first dish was Beef Rendang with Roti Canai.

Everyday Yumminess: My Favorite Buttery Flatbread

As I mentioned when I made the Mission Street Food Buttery Flatbread, one of the reasons I was a little disappointed by that flatbread was my preexisting love of an easier version...  I first made these Roti Canai almost 5 years ago when I was still living in Australia.  (I have no idea where the original recipe came from anymore...) They're kind of fun to make, super-delicious, and super-buttery...  

Valentine's Feast (Alternate Title: My Mom is Awesome)

UPDATE: I've now uploaded the recipes here if anyone wants to recreate portions of this meal... The soup with lemon dumplings is here.

As I was enjoying an amazing 5-course dinner with my parents last night, I realized something: Nobody has ever cooked a dinner party for me.  I love to cook (obviously), and I love throwing dinner parties, but it was one of the nicest gifts my mom could have given me when she prepared everything for this feast and then brought the whole production over to my house so that she and my dad could share it with me.  There's sometimes a misconception about us people who are obsessed with food and cooking... an idea that, because we love to go crazy in the kitchen, we're going to be harsh critics of other people's cooking and thus are too intimidating to cook for... (When, in fact, I love very simple food, too... and even a grilled cheese sandwich is enough to rock my world if I didn't have to make it myself...) Even though this wasn't a cool restaurant or my own cooking, I wanted to share the meal my mom prepared for us...

Cookbook Adventures: Mission Street Food (Updated)

Mission Street Food is another one of those books that I couldn't wait to get my hands on, but then didn't manage to play with until now...  

Now that I've tried a few recipes, I think it may be a while before I break it out again... Everything was sort of in that "good... but not as great as I'd hoped..." category.

I love the philosophy of the book, and I love the ideas behind the recipes, but it may end up being one of those books that I turn to more for inspiration than for guidance...

Sous Vide Duck Confit

I've been meaning to make Duck Confit for a long time, but it took a while to decide I really wanted to stock up my freezer with duck legs and duck fat...  I finally took the plunge and picked up some gorgeous duck products a few months ago, and then it was on...

Pizza Fest: Playing with My New Baking Steel

After all the buzz on the interwebs, I couldn't resist spending some Christmas-present money on a new toy: the baking steel... It turns out all the hype is correct.  

(As you can see, I got the 1/2-inch version.) I tried three different crusts on my new steel, and every one of them blew me away with how amazing it turned out... 

Yum...

Another Sous Vide Trick: Über-Caramelized Onons

I love caramelized onions, and I love them super-duper caramelized.  When I did this for Thomas Keller's French Onion Soup, it took about 8 hours of caramelizing (stirring every 30-45 minutes) to get the onions as dark as I wanted.  That's not really an option these days.  I've heard a rumor (which I believe) that you can't caramelize onions from raw using sous vide because the gases released by the onions will make the bag explode... (I didn't want to test this...)  Instead I did a bit of a hybrid technique.  While I was putzing around in the kitchen, I threw the sliced onions in a pot with a bit of salt over medium-high heat, covered.  

(This is how I always start my onions, since it forces them to release their liquid early and thus allows faster caramelization later...)  After a good amount of liquid is rendered, you can uncover and let it cook off, stirring every now and then.  Because there is so much liquid at this stage, there's minimal risk of burning so you can totally ignore the onions for the most part...

Once the onions had given off their liquid and that liquid had mostly cooked off, I tossed them into a vacuum bag, closed the top with a bag clip, and plunged them into an ice bath to chill (since hot things do not vacuum-seal well...).  After sealing, the onions can go into a 180-degree water bath until they achieve the desired caramelization...  A couple hours for moderate...

or overnight for super-duper-crazy-caramelized... 

Pretty awesome, yeah?  Again, this is just (regular, not sweet) onions with a bit of salt... and this is totally how my onions are getting caramelized for my next batch of onion soup...

Everyday Yumminess: Sriracha Salt

I bought my food dehydrator back in the day because I wanted to use it as a yogurt-making incubator.  While that remains its primary purpose in my kitchen, I like finding other random uses for it (e.g., prosciutto-powder).  The most recent application was to streamline a recipe for Sriracha Salt.

Everyday Yumminess: Homemade Tonic Water

This is something I'd been wanting to try for a while so, once I got a soda siphon for Christmas, it shot to the top of my queue.  Homemade tonic water (or, more accurately, tonic concentrate that is mixed with soda water to make tonic water) isn't necessarily going to save you any money over generic-brand store-bought versions.  This is a case where the DIY version is superior because it lets you tweak the flavors to your palate.  (I, for example, hate how sweet store-bought tonic water often is... so when I made my own I cut back on the agave the recipe called for and it was perfect...)