brainwagon

If you are a long time reader of this blog, you know that it wasn’t always about ham radio. It’s really about whatever I happen to be thinking about and doing that I wish to share and talk about. Tonight’s topic was simply this: applesauce.

I was watching America’s Test Kitchen, where they were making homemade “shake n’ bake” style porkchops and applesauce. I didn’t really feel like having porkchops, but because I’ve been eating poorly lately (too many restaurants because of visiting son and his wife, and my own visits to my brother) I had a bit of a sweet tooth, and the idea of making some homemade applesauce sounded really good, and much better for me than the ice cream which I’ve been indulging far too often in lately.

If you buy applesauce in a can or jar, far too often it suffers from a number of problems. It can be made from apples which just aren’t very good. It’s often far too sweet, with lots of high fructose corn syrup. It can have preservatives or other additives. Often it includes overpowering spice elements like cinnamon. Yuck.

America’s Test Kitchen suggested a very simple recipe. Take 4 pounds of apples. Wash them, core them, and dice them into coarse chunks (skin on). Put them in a pot. Add 1/2 a cup of sugar, a pinch of salt, and a little water. Cook for around 15 minutes, until the apples are soft, and then put them through a food mill to remove the skins and even the texture.

They suggested a number of different apples that could be used. For my experiment, I used eight of the Pink Lady variety. They are related to the Golden Delicious, but have a nice rosy color to them that’s pretty. Eight of them was about 3.5 pounds uncored. I chopped them fairly coarsely, added a splash of water, a pinch of salt, and just a little sugar (no, didn’t measure, but probably less than 1/2 a cup, maybe just two table spoons). I set this covered on medium heat.

After a few minutes, you could smell a cider-like smell, and the apples began to boil and liberate a lot of water. I thought that maybe I had too much water, but after a few more minutes, the apples began to break down and lots of the liquid was reabsorbed. After about 15 or 20 minutes, the apples were soft and smelled delicious.

I don’t have a proper food mill, so I just took a potato masher and crushed ‘em. Yep, skins still on, but as I mashed them, they lent their rosy color to the mash, and I actually liked the textural element. I added a very small amount of cinnamon, stirred it in, and then let it cool for a couple of minutes.

It was delicious. What’s really great is how the fresh complex flavor of the apples really come out. They are sweet, and tart, and clean tasting. Next time I make pork chops, I’ll have to make some of this applesauce. I think it would also be good with a scoop of good vanilla ice cream, or maybe with a cobbler like topping of oatmeal and brown sugar and maybe some cold cream.

We don’t appreciate these classic foods very often, at least in the way that they used to be made. Thanks to America’s Test Kitchen for motivating this delicious culinary experiment.

Okay, I’ll admit it: I like cooking, and I’ve begun to read a bit upon the subject of so-called “molecular gastronomy”. I was also watching Iron Chef America, and saw (not for the first time) a chef use the “sous vide” technique of cooking: where a protein is sealed in a vacuum bag and placed in a temperature controlled water bath to cook. This is an interesting technique because it prevents eggs and meats from being overcooked, even with very long cooking times. The temperature simply never rises high enough to cause the chemical reactions which overcooking typically causes. You can (for instance) place eggs in 148 degree Fahrenheit water for 75 minutes, and they won’t overcook. If you place an egg in 135 degree Fahrenheit water for at least 75 minutes, you can pasteurize an egg (it won’t solidify).

Anyway, there is a lot to this, and I’d been thinking I should look up more details on this technique. And of course, the Internet delivers.

A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking.

Lots of interesting stuff here, including instructions on cooking beef, pork, fish and eggs, and important food safety considerations.

Don’t worry, I’ll be back to radio stuff soon.

Carmen and I have reached the point in our lives where buying stuff for each other at Christmas is kind of superfluous. Stuff we need, we already buy, and stuff we don’t need aren’t the greatest gifts. What’s really valuable is the time we spend together. Toward that end, my wife Carmen used her own creativity, and signed us both up for a cooking class at Kitchen on Fire, a little place next to Chez Pannisse in Berkeley.

From their website:

Founded in 2005 by seasoned restaurateur and author Olivier Said of Cesar and popular chef instructor and caterer Chef MikeC.of Party Lifestyle, Kitchen on Fire® is located in Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto. Kitchen on Fire® is located in the Epicurious Garden which is an expansion and continuation of the gourmet cuisine legacy started by Alice Waters at Chez Panisse more than 30 years ago. Our classes offer a range of real skills for entertaining from learning how to throw a party on a budget to uncovering the mysteries of baking the perfect chocolate chip cookie. We also offer kitchen design consulting, corporate teambuilding workshops, in-home classes, classes for kids , private parties and events.

Our class was entitled “A Chef’s New Years Feast”, and included:

• Spinach and Smoked Salmon Salad with Soft Cooked Egg, Radish, and Lemon Dill Dressing
• Winter Vegetable Tarte Tatin
• Truffled Three Cheese and Seasonal Mushroom Cheese Gratin
• Maple Glazed Ham with Root Vegetable Puree
• Spiced Poached Pears With Almond Brittle

The class was three hours, with the first spent just discussing the menu, and the last two hours spent prepping and eating the food. Each of the dishes was just a little bit more elegant than the version that I would attempt. I’ve done salmon and spinach salad, but typically don’t make my own dressing from scratch. Their vegetable Tarte Tatin was very similar to the ratatouille that I’ve made a few times, but over puff pastry dough. The gratin is dressed up mac and cheese (very tasty). The ham was cooked over a bed of apples, tangerines and oranges, and was scented nicely from the fruit. And the poached pears were awesome, served with a little almond brittle, some pomegranate molasses and a scoop of vanilla gelato.

We had a great time. The class wasn’t intimidating at all, and the resulting dishes were delish. We’ll probably go back for another class sometime in the future.

Here are some camera phone pics:

ReadyMade Blog has a nice article on making your own butter, ricotta cheese, or cottage cheese.  I may give the ricotta a try sometime, fresh cheese like this have a mild creamy flavor that I really enjoy.

[tags]Recipes,Butter,Cheese,Ricotta[/tags]

Have those little sirens of cookiedom (otherwise known as Girl Scouts) lured your diet onto the rocks with promises of Thin Mint cookies? Me too. Well, I’m probably preying on you when you are already in a state of weakened resolve, but check out the following recipe:

101 Cookbooks – Thin Mint Recipe – homemade and all-natural

All natural ingredients, including whole wheat flour and obsessively organic ingredients. I suspect I’ll have to give these a try.

[tags]Cookies,Recipes,Thin Mint,Girl Scout Cookies[/tags]

Addendum: Here is the Girl Scout cookie FAQ.

Courtesy of a Japanese TV show, learn how to peel a potato in one step.  Well, to be fair, it’s not really one step.  You do this by:

1. Cutting the skin all around the middle of the potato.
2. Boiling the potato.
3. Immersing it in cold water to the count of ten.
4. And then, just pull the skin off.

It’s not quite as radical as folding T-shirts, but it’s kind of cute.

What can I say?  Life sucks today, but there isn’t a day so bleak that isn’t improved by a massive plate of brownies.  Over at Cooking for Engineers, those kitchen elves whipped up a batch of “John’s Favorite Brownies”, made with none other than  the excellent Scharffen Berger chocolate.  Yum-mee.

Cooking For Engineers – Recipe File: Dark Chocolate Brownies

[tags]Cooking,Recipes,Chocolate[/tags]

Dan Lyke’s Flutterby! has an interesting article on cooking with sugar. I haven’t looked into this as closely as Dan apparently has, but I am aware that the addition of some corn syrup into sugar recipes can prevent crystallization as you heat sugar mixtures. I recently had some fun making my first real caramel for an apple tarte tatin that I made for Christmas dinner, but there is lots to this whole science of sucrose manipulation: check out this cool recipe for lollipops from the Exploratorium.

[tags]Cooking,Candy[/tags]

For tonight’s dinner plan, I’m doing the same thing that I did last year, a variation of Rachel Ray’s Christmas Pasta recipe. I find her base recipe simply has too much meat in it, mine will be more like a amatriciana sauce, with onions and red pepper flake, seasoned with some sweet and some spicy italian sausages. Of course, we do have to use the classic Christmas Pasta shapes that we got from Cost Plus. Yum!

I’ve mused about potroast before on my blog, but it’s such a great (and now overlooked) dish when it came up on Slashfood
I thought it deserved a link. A couple of additional comments on the recipe presented:

• This is a long cooking recipe, so if you want any of the vegetables to actually be in one piece, I wouldn’t add them until later. The mirapois (celery, carrots, and onion) add a lot to the flavor, so I’d go ahead and use them from the get go, but I’d add the potatos and peas later in the cooking process, after the meat is half done at least. Otherwise the little potatoes will dissolve and the peas, well, I usually add frozen peas just before serving.
• I’d probably brown the meat, set it aside, lower the heat and sweat my mirapois for three minutes or so, then add the garlic for 30 seconds longer, deglaze the pan with a little red wine, and then dump it all in the slow cooker.
• I like chuck for pot roast, which can have quite a bit of fat. Skim it off as it cooks. It doesn’t add any flavor, and just makes the roast greasy.

There you have it: more on pot roast.

Well, today is one of those rare days when I miss two days of work: I’m home sick with body aches, a headache, stuffed head, and a bit of a fever. I was also a bit hungry, so I decided to dig through the fridge, freezer and pantry to see what I could make. I found most of the ingredients for some kind of navy bean soup, so that’s what I’m making, in my pressure cooker.

Want the “recipe”?

1 onion, diced
2 carrots, peeled and chopped into slices
2 stalks of celery, diced

Sweat these in some olive oil. You aren’t looking to brown them, just get them going. I seasoned them after they were translucent with a bit of fresh ground black pepper, some kosher salt, and a couple sprigs of fresh rosemary (I’ll fish the twigs out when its done).

1 bag of navy beans. I sorted out one or two of the worst looking ones, but just dump them in, no need to soak them because we are gonna use the pressure cooker.

1 big can chicken broth. Dump it in.

Bring to a boil, cap with the pressure cooker lid, and let it go for 45 minutes on setting 2 (my pressure cooker has two settings).

If I had some ham, bacon, or a hock, I would have added some of that in, but those aren’t frequently found in my cupboards since I’m trying to lose weight.

Some recipes I’ve seen also add diced canned tomatos. If I don’t like the flavor when this comes out, I might add those in too.

Anyway, that’s about it.

I’m also trying a bit of an experiment: I don’t much like my pressure cooker because it has a nasty tendency to get a hot spot in the middle of the pan, burning whatever is in contact with it. To help alleviate this, I placed the pressure cooker in my heavy cast iron skillet, and placed that on top of the burner. Hopefully the heavy mass of the skillet will even out the temperature and prevent scorching.

Stay tuned for the results. I’m gonna go rest now.

Update: Soups on! I cracked the pressure cooker after 45 minutes, and while edible, I didn’t the beans had reached their sufficiently soft stage, so I went ahead and added the diced tomatoes that I mentioned above, and let it go for another 30 minutes in the pressure cooker. The resulting soup, while not amazingly sophisticated in flavor, was hearty and delicious. I think the large can of diced tomatoes gave it a bit too much of tomato flavor, next time I’ll only use one of the small cans. Still…

Oh, and the experiment with using the cast iron frying pan as a heat diffuser seemed to work admirably! No hot spots. And it probably helped season my pan some more. I merely rinsed it out again and applied some vegetable oil. Looks great.

While watching Food Network the other day, I saw an episode of Calorie Commando that featured a dish I thought I might like to try: Buffalo Chicken and Blue Cheese Dipping Sauce. I gave this a whack this weekend. Basically I took a bunch of chicken breasts that I had lying around, and cut them up into smallish uniform pieces. I then soaked them in some Louisiana hot sauce for an hour, took them out, dusted them with a mixture of Pappy’s Cajun seasoning and flour, and then fried them for three minutes a side in a couple tablespoons of hot olive oil. I also prepared their Blue Cheese dipping sauce. Carmen proclaimed them delicious. I thought they were good, but could have been a bit spicier. Perhaps I’ll use more pepper flake and cayenne in the flour mixture next time.

It’s actually not the lowest point recipe you’ll find: in the portions specified in the recipe (4 servings in 12 oz of chicken tenders) it’s about 7 Weight Watchers Points which means that I probably consumed about 14 or 16 points worth, but they are tasty and when paired with some fresh vegetables can be delicious. Certainly they help satisfy the craving for something like KFC which would be much, much worse.

Courtesy of lifehacker, here is the account of one intrepid hacker attempting to learn the secrets of egg poaching. Interestingly, he comes up with a solution that I’ve never heard of before.

I did have a couple of thoughts though. His attempt to use the conventional method (simmering water bath) was flawed by something simple: his pan was boiling, not simmering. Simmering occurs below the boiling point. You want to minimize convection to keep the yolks tight.

While I am far from poached egg perfection, I have made a few of them that seemed okay. I suspect that if my diet could suffer the assault that is Eggs Benedict (among the three or four perfect breakfasts in my estimation) then I’d probably get better at it. Here are my tips for a slightly more conventional approach to poached eggs:

1. Use fresh eggs. This should go without saying, but it really does help. Older eggs tend to have looser whites, and you want nice tight dense whites.
2. Use a wide pan, with about an inch of water. Bring it to a simmer, not a boil.
3. Add a small amount of vinegar to the water. To be honest, I’m not sure how important this is, but the idea is that the acids help keep the egg whites together.
4. I usually also lightly salt the water.
5. If I really want a perfect poached egg (like, say for the aforementioned Eggs Benedict, where such an egg must sit serenely atop a toasted english muffin) then I take my egg rings (usually used for frying eggs) and spray them with nonstick spray and then put them into the water and gently slide the egg into the circle after them.
6. Don’t overcook them. For the aforementioned Eggs Benedict, you really want the yolks to be rich and creamy, not solid.

Damn, wish I could have an Eggs Benedict right now.

Maybe next time I’ll describe my recipe for scrambled eggs with smoked salmon.

While I was out touring wine country this last weekend, I began to think a bit more about something that I’ve only recently become to realize: that many of the foods which are handed down to us over the years are only edible because of the actions of other critters. Beer, bread, and wine all owe their existance to the operations of yeast. Many cheeses owe their flavors to the actions of molds. Yogurt only exists through the action of bacteria. It’s amazing actually how many of our classic foodstuffs rely on, rather than try to inhibit the action of these helpful critters. Now our food is increasingly sterile, homogenized and bereft of life.

Hey, this is what you think of while munching a loaf of bread and a hunk of good cheese while surrounded by beautiful vineyards.

If you need to ponder this mystery further, try reading How to Make San Francisco Sourdough Bread and make some loaves of bread.

Yeah, my blog was a little sparse on the nerd front this weekend: Carmen and I were off for a short anniversary getaway in Napa, sampling some of the local food and wine and generally trying to relax. We give a hearty thumbs up to Julia’s restaurant in the Copia center in Napa. We began with salads: I ordered a beet salad which was very delicate, Carmen had an assortment of fresh vegetables including peas and beans. Both were perhaps a bit subtle for us, but delicious. I ordered a pork chop, and was pleased when the waiter said that the pork chop was brined and assured me despite its juice texture, it was fully cooked. Bravo! People fear undercooked pork to the extent of ruining perfectly delicious chops by cooking them to 180 or higher. The best pork chops are cooked until they are slightly pink on the first cut, but turn opaque white after a couple of seconds, more like 165 or so. And brining helps. But I digress. The pork chop was excellent quality, large, delicious, flavorful and tender. It came with a tart made from cream, onions, and bacon and a side of purple potato chips. Delicious. Carmen had the rib eye steak, which I sampled and gave it my seal of approval. Also delicious. Dessert for me was a sampler of three cherry desserts, while Carmen went with a sampler of three chocolate pot de creme with small cinnamon churros. Each chocolate was infused with a different aromatic herb. Delicious again, but perhaps a bit too refined for our more rustic tastes. Still, a great meal for our anniversary.

The next morning we decided to ride the Napa Wine Train from NAPA to Calistoga, and sample their gourmet breakfast/luncheon service. I am a huge fan of Eggs Benedict (which I sample very rarely now that I am trying to lose weight, but it was our anniversary), so I went with their variation which substituted beef tenderloin for ham. Carmen had a stuffed French Toast, filled with creme cheese, craberries and grapes. Both were good, but not likely to be classic recipes. The tartness of the cranberries tended to overwhelm all the other qualities of the French Toast, and I don’t really think that Eggs Benedict is improved by the expensive beef tenderloin. Give me the classic any day.

For dinner that evening, we went to Tuscany in downtown Napa. I had an interesting pasta dish which had chunks of stewed wild boar. It was a very rustic dish, with hand made pasta served al dente. I suspect that it is a dish which originally would have been made with venison, and I enjoyed it a great deal. Carmen had a roasted half chicken, which while competently done, was nothing very exciting. The ambience of the restaurant was nice though, with an open fireplace and lots of roasting chickens. We had fun.

The following morning: a picnic at the Clos du Val winery consisting of a loaf of bread and two kinds of cheese: one, a rustic Irish cheese and a softer mild cheese. Good stuff, and a beautiful setting.

A fun time. Happy fifth anniversary honey, and I’m looking to the next five, even as I rue the scale this morning (back on weight watchers for the rest of the week).