Sous-vide Steak

The trouble with home cooked steak is that you cannot get the meat cooked at the right level: usually it is uncooked or overcooked it. Getting the steak to be cooked at the right level for me is like winning lottery: lot of consolation prizes and none for the big ones. Reading various food blogs, I stumbled across an article that explains how to cook a prefect steak like Michelin chef easily. This article explains a rather peculiar method called "sous-vide" (or "under vaccum"). This requires the steak to be vacuum-packed and soaked in a water at certain temperature over a period of time. Whether it works or not? Well, there is only one way to find out...

Since I have neither a vacuum pack machine nor a sous-vide machine, I have to make do with zip-lock steam bag, a big pot and a thermometer:

oh ya, I marinated the rump steak with garlic, thyme, salt, pepper and a bit of lemon zest over night in the zip-lock steam bag. Sous-vide is not magic. It will not make the steak tasty without marinate.

The most tricky part of the sous-vide business is to maintain the water temperature. For medium-rare steak, it requires the water temperature to be at 60 degree celsius. After several trials, I noticed that big volume of water will make the temperature goes up/down slower. This allows you to control the temperature better especially you are trying to figure out what stove setting you will require. If the water gets too hot, just pour in some cold water. This brings down the temperature, and you might want to turn the stove setting a bit lower. Once you get the right stove setting + water volume, you might want to record the setting down (unless you want to spend your time tweaking it for the next time).

Depending on the size of the steak, the minimum cooking time will vary. For one and half inch steak, it will take at least 1 hour for it to cook thoroughly. Since it is constant temperature, I can always leave it longer if I wanted to. This will give me enough time to prepare elaborate side dishes to go along with the steak.

Once it is ready, take it out from the pot and heat up a heavy-bottom pan with a bit of olive oil. Pan fry the steak till the meat is browned from the outside (This should not take more than 1 minute for both sides, if the pan is very hot.). Here is how it looks like:



Sous-vide steak, mashed potato with fried and fresh leek, and sauté brussels sprouts with smoked bacon :)

Here is how the meat looks like:

I think I hit the jackpot for this one. Every part of the steak is medium-rare. Not even a single part of it was undercooked or overcooked. The meat was tender and succulent. The best part of it, no sauce was needed because it was just perfect! It is definitely the best steak I have ever eaten at home.

This is the article that inspires me to do so: How to sous vide steak

There is a health and safety requirement for sous-vide (undercooked meat will promote dangerous bacteria growth). Please refer to this before you attempt to do anything: Practical guide to sous vide.

If you have some money to spend, you can buy this home edition sous-vide machine:Sous vide supreme. Only 450 USD :)

Beer Can Chicken

Shawn and I have been talking about this idea for a while now (inspired by various posts on the internet at that time). We thought of giving it a try this summer. The principle is kind of easy, I think it is best to show it in the picture:


Yupe, there where the beer can goes :) and we made sure we used the best beer can we had - Carlsberg Export. If Carlsberg did a beer can chicken, it would be something like this. Oh ya, one more thing , you need to open the can, drink half of the can , and poke holes on the top half of the can. This could spell disaster in your oven if you used an unopen can.

We put some marination under the chicken skin. This way it will make the meat tastier. Once it is done, just pop it into the oven:


This is picture of me trying to justify why a beer can should be up the chicken's arse:


Here is the result:


I cannot remember much of the details of the chicken now. From what can recall, the chicken was beautifully roasted - every part of the skin was golden brown. The meat, hmm, did not taste like beer. It is definitely something I will be doing again for christmas, probably a beer keg turkey :)

Coffee Chicken

Coffee is one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world today, and yet, it is hardly used in cooking. Is it that bad to eat it. If so, how bad can it be? Well, there is one way to find out...

Roast some fresh coffee bean:


Marinate the chicken with coffee bean, salt, cumin and paprika. Wrap it up and pop into the oven:



After 20 mins in 250 degree temperature oven, glazes it with some honey. Pop back into the oven for 2 mins:



Serve:

Coffee chicken done! :)

Despite all the efforts and coffee, it still tastes like chicken :) The chicken breast has the smell of smoky, barbecue coffee. The sauce is sweet with a hint of bitterness like espresso, but with savoury taste. It feels like having your main meal and after-meal espresso at the same time. It is weird, but it is somehow rather pleasing, especially when the caffeine kicks in :)

Mussels With Beer

A while back, I did a mussel dish with pasta dish. One of the readers suggested white wine instead of water. In classic mussel recipe, white wine is usually the choice. Well, I was a bit crazy and went for Belgium wheat beer instead!

I decided all the live mussels a great send off. Gave them a premium Belgium wheat beer to drink before dunking them into a hot pot.

After 30 mins, I checked on the mussels and they were like this:

Judging by the look of it, I guessed they were pretty smashed up by now. All these drunken mussels were ready for cooking.

This is the end result:


It smelled wonderful while it was cooking, this probably due to using beer instead of water. The stock was sweet with a hint of bitterness. This is probably the reason why white wine is commonly being used and not beer. Despite that, I quite like it though, especially with fresh bread.

Simplified Fa Teow Kai

It has been a while since the last post. Apart from being lazy to write, I have not been experimenting much lately, just the usual pan fried steak with salads. So, there have not been any interesting stuffs to blog about.

Anyway, I learnt this recipe from Shawn when I was at his place (many many months ago). The dish is very simple to make and tastes quite good. Anyway, here are the the ingredients:


Left to right: spring onion, caramelized soya sauce (this is important), light soya sauce, Shao Hsing Wine, chicken thighs.
middle part: dried chillies, peppercorns, bunga cengkeh, garlic, ginger and mushroom.

I took the liberty of modifying Shawn's recipe by adding some mushrooms, and bunga cengkeh. Why I did that? well, I couldn't remember it too.. probably because I had those ingredients in my cupboard kuar...

Next, heat up a pot with some oil. Saute the dried chillies, peppercorns, bunga cengkeh, garlic, and ginger for a while. Add the chicken thighs in, stir fry for a minute. Cover the chicken with enough caramelized soya sauce, light soya sauce and Shao Hsing wine. Add the chopped spring onion on top, and cover the top with a lid.


This dish has to be cooked in a very low heat for a long period of time ( ~2 hours). Oh ya, stir it occasionally . Don't try to switch to high heat to speed thing up, you will burnt it. Here is mine look like after I waited for two hours:


For those in Malaysia, you can avoid this by taking 2 hours drive to Seri Kembangan to have it there... you lucky fellas :)

Honey Grilled Rabbit

A while ago, I bought a wild rabbit meat from my colleague (his neighbor was selling it). It was a bargain - 2.50 pounds for a headless, skinless and gutless rabbit.

First thing popped into my mind was Guinness rabbit, so I marinated the cute little rabbit with Guinness, garlic and rosemary:


Put the marinated rabbit on the grill:


Just minute before the rabbit is done, glaze it with some honey:


The meat tastes quite nice, too bad it is too little.

Thai Spicy Pork

Due to busy workload, I haven't been eating properly. Ready-made pizza, maggie mee, takeaway food and beers have been my diet for the past one week (no complaint with the beer though). The crappy food has driven me crazy, and the only thing that will help is cooking a good decent meal to please my stomach. Here is my take on Thai cuilinary - spicy pork.

Here are the ingredients:

• Fresh basil leaves and its stems (bai horapah ใบโหระพา)


• Chili (prik kee noo พริกขี้หนู )


• Garlic (gratium กระเทียม)


• Tumeric (kah min ขมิ้น)


• Few pinches of salt (gluea เกลือ)


• Pork ( mu หมู)


• Fish sauce (nam pla น้ำปล่า)

You can put more basil into the dish. I used less because I do not want to kill my precious basil plant.

Sliced the pork chop ~ 3mm. Finely chop the garlic, basil and chili. Add in the salt and fish sauce. Mix them together:


Ready a hot wok with oil. Stir fry all the stuffs in it. It should be fried till they are slightly crispy from the outside.

Once it is cooked, serve it with rice:


อร่อยมากๆ (a-roi mak mak)!

Note:
- less tumeric will be better as its smell is too strong that it overpowers the basil's fragrant. Alternatively, you can put in more basil leaves.
- I called it Thai dish as it smells and tastes like thai cooking :)

A Proper Big Beef Burger

I am kind of dissapointed with the state of beef burger today; It fills you up alright but it is not satisfying. The reason is the meat in the burger- There are more other stuffs than meat in a burger nowadays. Worst till, some of the burger patties do not even taste like beef.

Hence, I am creating a proper big beef burger; the one that packed with so much meat that it will make Big Mac or Double Whooper looks like skinny little kid...

Since most of the stores do not sell the burger patty the size that matches the requirement, I have to make it myself. Here is the ingredients:


Mix them into a bowl. Add in 2 tablespoons of Oregano, 2 tablespoons of Thyme, 1 teaspoon of cumin, sea salt and grounded black pepper.


Once it is mixed properly, make round burger patty from it. Here are my three lovely burger patties:


Each weighs ~130 grams and ~ 1 inch thick:


Then pan fry the patty with a bit of oil. Make sure you use low heat, so that the burger is cooked properly. The hard part is to flip it while retaining the shape of the patty. You may find that the burger might not be cooked inside due to its thickness, just pop it into the oven and continue cooking for ~15 mins on 200 degree celsius.

After the burger patty is cooked, melt some brie(cheese) on top. Served with tomatoes, chips, fried egg and salads:


This is how it looks like when I stacked everything together (~7cm tall):


Note:
It was quite a feat to eat the stacked burger. I had to open my mouth as big as I can to get a bite of it. This hurt my jaw. Having chips with the burger was a mistake too. By the end of the meal, I was laying on the sofa for two hour with a bulging belly and an aching jaw. Right now I know how an anaconda feels like after a big meal.

Coke Chicken

A reader in the blog suggested me to cook the chicken in coke, after the Beer Chicken post. I do enjoy drinking coke, but cooking chicken with coke is just a little bit too weird. Will the chicken tastes like coke or chicken? Well, there is only one way to find out...

Marinated half a chicken (instead of whole chicken) with coke. This shows how much confidence I had with the experiment..


I was thinking what else can make coke tastes good.. and what will be better than the classic combination of lemon and coke. So, I put in lots of lemon slices:


Added some salts for the seasoning, and left it for 3 hours. Then, I rubbed the chicken with oil and grilled it for 40 mins (flipped it occasionally to get even cooking for both side of the chicken). Once it is cooked, the chicken was removed. Using the juice left by the chicken, I put in the remaining coke to make the sauce (the sauce making step is similiar to the Beer Chicken recipe). To make the sauce tastes even better, I put in a dash of Malibu and here is the end result:


The coke chicken turned out to be quite good. It tastes like lemon chicken - sweet and sour. The Malibu's coconut fragrance reminds me of Ayam Percik that I used to eat so frequently in Kelantan.

Note:
I was so concerned with how the chicken will turn out that I forgot to take photo of the chicken grilling and sauce making process...thousands apologies.

I searched online and tried to see how others cooked their coke chicken. This guy beats me hand down:


Not sure about the taste, but it surely the most creative way of making coke chicken :)

Beer Chicken

I had a few cans of cheap lager lying in the cupboard for ages. Instead of letting them rot (or feeding it the neighbour's cat), I thought of using it to marinate some chickens.

I bought a big, fat chicken, chopped it into half. Marinated the chicken with beer, garlic, rosemary and black pepper.


Let the chicken enjoys the beer for 3-4 hours. Make sure it is drunk enough to cook it.



Then, pan fried the chicken, and sprinkled some salt on it before putting the chicken into the oven for 40 mins (~150 degree celcius):



Once it is cooked, remove the chicken, let it rest. In the mean time, use the juices left by the chicken, add in a bit of flour, the beer, and chicken stock. Simmer it till it thicken...


Here is the finished product:


Note:
Lager didn't give much taste to it. The gravy did have strong beer flavour. Strong flavoured beer such as ale, and stout will be a better choice.

* You might notice the excessive use of rosemary in this recipe. I bought a big bunch of it and I had no other means of using it (other than feeding it to the cat again).

Stir Fry Beef With Green Chilies and Pepper

This is a dish that takes that classic stir fry beef with green pepper and modifies it by adding some fiery green chilies. It only takes two steps(Well, big ones).

First, marinate the beef slices (~5mm thick) with soy sauce and corn flour for 30 mins. Deep fry them and keep them for later.


Then, fry some chopped ginger (1/4 thumb size), garlics and onions for 1-2 mins. Add in sliced peppers, chilies, baby corns and chopped spring onions. continue to stir fry for a while. For the flavour, soya sauce, ketchup, and caramelised thick soya sauce (oyster sauce could have been ideal, but I ran out of it).


Stir fry for 2-3 mins, and add in the fried beef slices. Continue stir fry for 2 mins and it is ready to serve.


It went well with rice. It was also good with noodles for the next day, and the day afterwards :)



Note:
It didn't taste hot as what I would have expected it to me. It was more sweet than hot. Well, this was fixed with a little bit of this insanely hot powder.

English mustard sesame seeds pan fried salmon

This is a modified version of Gordan Ramsay's Sesame-crusted tuna with watercress salad recipe. Instead of tuna, I was using salmon (It had special promotion), and good old english mustard as a replacement for wasabi.

First, marinate the salmon with soya sauce, and cover it with mustard.


Coat it with sesame seed, and pan fried it.


Once it is done, served with roasted potatoes, veg, etc just to make it a healthy meal.


Note: It didn't have strong mustard taste as I would expect it should have.