This Sourdough Bread Stuffing is one of my favorites around this time because it can easily be made vegetarian to accommodate your vegetarians friends, the ingredients should easily be found at most grocery stores. So if you’re in a bind, go ahead and try this recipe out. Just don’t blame me when there are 3 Sourdough Bread Stuffings on your thanksgiving spread. =)

Sourdough Bread Stuffing

Sourdough Bread Stuffing

1lb loaf sourdough bread
8Tbsp butter
10oz crimini mushrooms, sliced 1/2 thick
salt and fresh ground pepper, to taste
2-4 stalks celery with leaves, halved lengthwise and sliced
1 medium onion, chopped
10 sprigs of fresh thyme
10-12 fresh sage leaves, chopped
3 1/2C low-sodium chicken broth
3Tbsp chopped italian parsley leaves

1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 2-quart baking dish and set aside.
2. Cut or tear the bread into 1-inch cubes and spread it evenly on 2 baking sheets. Toast the bread in the oven until completely dry and beginning to crisp and brown, about 20 minutes. Transfer to a large mixing bowl.
3. Melt 2 Tbsp of butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the mushrooms and a few pinches of salt and saute, stirring occasionally, until golden brown, about 6-8 minutes. Add celery, onion, 2 Tbsp butter and thyme. Once the butter has melted, cook, stirring frequently, until the vegetables have softened, about 5 minutes. Add sage and remaining 4 Tbsp butter. Add chicken broth to skillet and stir to combine. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.
4. Transfer toasted bread cubes to a large bowl. Pour the chicken broth mixture over the bread cubes and toss to combine until the bread cubes absorb the liquid. Pour the mixture into the greased baking dish, and sprinkle with parsley. Bake in the center of the oven until heated through and the top is golden brown, about 40 minutes. Remove the stuffing from the oven and allow to cool about 15 minutes before serving.

6-8 servings

The scallops is probably one of my favorite proteins, so I didn’t have any problem coming up with a menu. Here’s the menu and some pictures from the night.

Menu
January 3, 2010

Crab Cakes
Spaghetti Squash Slaw, Cilantro Oil

Coquille St. Jacques
Bay Scallops, Gruyere, Mushrooms

Seared Diver Scallops
Swiss Chard, Butternut Squash Puree

New York Style Cheesecake
Strawberry Coulis

Centerpiece

Pasta Zachy (For the kids...)

Swiss Chard

Spaghetti Squash Slaw

Crab Cakes

Seared Diver Scallops

As I’ve said before, one of the biggest advantages of sous vide is that it gives you the ability to cook things precisely to the temperature desired. When you consider a tougher cut of meat like short ribs that usually require an extended period of time braising to get it tender, sous vide can produce something that cannot be done by “traditional” methods of cooking – a piece of short ribs that is perfectly tender, yet only cooked to a medium doneness.

The B-E-AUTIFUL short ribs...

While I was fortunate enough to have quite a lot of braising liquid leftover (from Thomas Keller’s Boeuf Bourguignon) in the freezer, the thought of cooking the short ribs sous vide for 72 hours while sitting in the braising liquid seems like it would completely overpower the beef. So I decided to do the simple (lazy) thing – salt and pepper. 72 hours in 57C – This was going to be my biggest challenge, as this is the longest I’ll be keeping food in the water bath. (I’ll talk about safety and sous vide in a later post)

72 Hours Later...

Note the difference in appearance between straight out of the bag and seared – looks a lot more appetizing.

Straight out of the bag...

Seared

After consulting my friends in twitteronia, I listened to Carol’s advice and paired these short ribs with celery root puree. I reduced the braising liquid (that had 2 bottles of red wine in it at one point) and walla… Sous vide short ribs, red wine reduction, celery root puree…

Plated

Sous Vide Short Ribs, Red Wine Reduction, Celery Root Puree

I’ve never had short ribs like this before. The short ribs were sooo tender. The “medium” texture makes it very similar to a ribeye.

The wonders of kitchen technology...

Sunday morning fail...

NOOOOOO!!! For what it’s worth, this is one of my pet peeves. I mean I’d much rather know that there are no eggs in the fridge than thinking there are eggs in the fridge and only finding out there’s only one. Anyways, I must digress. At one point, I thought about making scrambled egg, but the thought of firing up the SVS with all that water and using a bag for one egg seemed pretty ridiculous to me. So I bit the bullet and went to the store. Doesn’t this look a lot better??

Sunday morning win!!

A couple of eggs get mixed in with some cream and a just little goat cheese. Doesn’t this looks like a slice of American cheese??

In the beginning...

I set the bath at 75C. After 10 minutes, I took the bag out for a quick “massage” (to get the scrambed effect), then another 5 minutes in the bath and out comes some scrambled goodness.

Scrambled Eggs (in a bag)

Breakfast is served

I’m not sure what conclusion you can come up with just looking at the picture, but cooked to a precise temperature, these scrambled eggs were creamy and velvety… While they’re not as set as conventional scrambled eggs, they almost have a yogurt like consistency. So really… how good were these “perfectly cooked” scrambled eggs?? This was a game changer for me. After having sous vide scrambled eggs, I don’t think scrambled eggs will ever be the same for me ever again.

This was actually my roommate Enoch‘s idea. Ribs were one of those things that I didn’t think about doing sous vide just because I tend to think of easily overcooked food. Since ribs are a tougher cut of meat, it’s not surprising that it’s going to take awhile. I used a recipe I found from “A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking”:

Cut the ribs into portions which will fit in the vacuum pouches (say 3–4 ribs per piece). Then brine roast in a 7–10% salt, 0–3% sugar water solution (70–100 grams salt and 0–30 grams sugar per 1 liter) in the refrigerator for 12–24 hours.

Drain, rinse and pat dry with paper towels. Generously season the top of each rib with a barbecue spice rub (say 2T paprika, 1.5T celery salt, 1.5T garlic powder, 1T black pepper, 1T chili powder, 1T ground cumin, 1T brown sugar, 1T table salt, 1t white sugar, 1t dried oregano, and 1t cayenne pepper). Place each piece of pork in a vacuum pouch and seal.

Place the pork either in a 176°F (80°C) water bath for 8–12 hours or in 155°F (68°C) water bath for 24 hours. When cooking at 176°F (80°C), the bag will puff (from water vapor) and may float to the surface. To prevent uneven cooking, the bags should be held under water using a wire rack or some other restraint. [After cooking, the pork may be rapidly cooled in ice water (see Table 1.1) and frozen or refrigerated at below 38°F (3.3°C) for three to four weeks.]

After removing the ribs from the bag, sear the top with a blowtorch. Then, serve immediately with barbecue sauce.

Pre-Bath

Needless to say, I chose to do 155F for 24 hours (as opposed to 176F for 8-12 hours). Slower is better right?? =)

Post-Bath

After a day in the bath, I took the pouches out, drained and dried the ribs, and seared the outside with a torch.

Fun with torch... =)

I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t expecting much from the ribs. But aside from missing that smoky flavor, the texture of the ribs were perfect… like it doesn’t get much better than this perfect. The meat was moist and falling off the bone. The flavor was good and (of course) very evenly distributed. I would recommend, however, using your favorite rub (so go lightly on the salt if you’re going to brine the meat before) instead of the rub in the recipe. I felt that the rub above have just a tad too much paprika for my taste.

Perfectly tender ribs...

I’ve been a bit busy/lazy this week, I’m about to fire the SVS up and make some scrambled eggs for breakfast. Later this week, I’ll be using one of my favorite things EVER in the SVS… PORK BELLY!!! Oh I can’t wait!! If you haven’t already, please follow @gastronomics on twitter and/or become a fan on facebook!!

In the last post, I mentioned that carrots were next on the “to sous vide” list. But since I spent my friday evening doing something else… Saturday is a brand new day and I wanted some chicken. Growing up in HK, I ate a lot of ??? (poached chicken). On a trip to New York a few years ago, I saw that they were selling poached chicken already all covered in ?? (ginger-scallion oil), I thought I’d try the idea out in a sous vide machine. =)

The beginning: 2 whole chickens...

A few minutes later...

Making Ginger-Scallion Oil (??)

Ever since I received the Sous Vide Supreme machine for this little project, I’ve been reading a lot of things all over the internet about everything sous vide. I came across “A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking” written by a Applied Mathematics Ph.D. student at the University of Colorado that has all sorts of information (even mathematical formulas!!) about sous vide cooking in it. In the chicken section, I read (emphasis mine)…

Traditionally, light poultry meat is cooked well-done (160°F/70°C to 175°F/80°C) for “food safety” reasons. When cooking chicken and turkey breasts sous vide, they can be cooked to a medium doneness (140°F/60°C to 150°F/65°C) while still being pasteurized for safety.

My first thought upon reading that was, “hmmm, I wonder if that’ll be pink…” Then came, oh ok, I better tweet this in case something happens to me…

The test subjects

All wrapped up and ready to go...

For the chicken experiment, I wanted to test a few things.

First, I wanted to see if this “medium” chicken breast really is that much different than “traditional” chicken breast that we normally eat.

Second, I wanted to test the idea of not spreading marinade around the food (as mentioned in the comment section of the previous entry). Specifically, will the flavor be unevenly distributed if the marinade was not evenly distributed.

Third, I wanted to see if there’s any additional enhancement (taste/texture) through searing with a torch.

Finally, I am intrigued with the idea of the storage of cooked-sous vide food. I am reading a lot of things about reheating previously sous vide food*. I am specifically looking for strong flavors since the food will be kept with the marinade under vacuum for a few days.

Sitting in the SVS...

I evenly applied the ginger-scallion oil on 2 of the breast and put them in the same bag (one is to be “seared” with a torch, the other will be the “control”), then put 1 of the chicken beast in a bag (marked with the X) and just dumped some ginger scallion oil in it without evenly distrubting the oil, then finally, I placed a breast by itself that I will eat a few days later.

According to the manual, the chicken breast should have been done in under 2 hours, but I left it in there for a little bit longer because I went to watch the UT basketball game have a stroke… I came home to this…

146F...

Searing with torch...

Chicken A: Seared

Chicken B: Control

Chicken C: The Lazy/Uneven Marinade

A

B

C

As you can see, 146F chicken (24F under the “normal” recommendation) is not pink – at all. While I wasn’t expecting chicken sashimi, I was actually expecting it to be a little bit less done than that. For me, the texture was nothing revolutionary. I would, however, say that it was a very moist chicken breast. If I didn’t tell anyone that the chicken breasts were only cooked to 146F, I don’t think anyone would complained that it was undercooked.

As for the distribution of marinade, I find that unevenly distributed marinade made no considerable difference in terms flavor. I think this is generally because liquid escapes from the meat during the cooking process and escapes into the bag. However, one should probably take into account that this marinade has a little bit of liquid (oil, in the case) in it to begin with, which might have aided the unintentional distribution of marinade/flavor during the cooking process.

As for searing, while a quick run with the torch provides plenty of heat to give the chicken color but not enough heat to “over cook” the meat, I really don’t think “searing” does much to the taste/texture. However, I would say that visually, it’s definitely A LOT more appealing.

Winner Winner... Chicken Dinner!!!

Looking for the result of the storage test?? I’m going to have to make that another entry, since it’s still sitting in my fridge right now. =)

*PLEASE be careful and consider food safety issues when doing this.

Ribeye: Pre-Bath

After being fairly impressed with the egg, it is time to move to something better – Ribeye. So for today, I really wanted to give the SVS (as well as the whole concept of sous vide) a test drive. According to the manual, the suggested cooking temp for medium-rare beef is 134F for approx. 2 hours (for the thickness of my steak). I left it in the bath for 5+ hours just to see if it would over cook. But before I get into that, I had to find a quick marinate.

My quick marinade

After a quick peek in the fridge, I threw some finely chopped garlic, shallots, parsley, thyme in together with just a slight dash of olive oil (really just so it’ll stick to the steak). Bagged it and sealed it with the FoodSaver** and then it’s ready for the bath!!

Bagged and Sealed...

Rub-a-dub-dub...

One of the questions that I got asked with my previous post was if I checked how close the water temp was to the digital read out…

Quick calibration test...

I am not going to lie, during the 5+ hour period, I checked the steak a few times. Personally, I felt that it was at a medium-rare state about 1.5 hour in. But I wanted to really test the “you can’t over cook this” claim…

5+ hours in a 134F bath later...

At the end of the bath, I gave the steak a nice little sear just to brown the outside. I used a smoking hot pan with some grape seed oil on one side, for the other side I used a butane torch. I personally thought that the butane worked a little better in this case because the steak was almost a little too moist to brown and I didn’t want it to cook any longer.

Med-Rare

To say that the steak merely turned out well was an understatement. Personally, I am impressed. Not only was the steak not over cooked, it was consistently med-rare throughout the whole steak, even right next to the bone… The result was one of the most tender and flavorful ribeye I’ve had – especially for a piece of steak that was previously frozen!! (Look, you don’t “try” a new cooking method on something you spend good money on ok… We gotta work our way up…)

Consistency check...

After 2 tests, I must say that I’m pretty impressed with the potential of this $450 water oven. To be able to consistently get this result time after time is… pretty amazing. Next up – carrots and other root vegetables. =)

—–

* This statement is not necessarily true because as some have pointed out, some foods (like fish) will start losing their texture after being kept in their desired temp for an extended amount of time.

** I’ll address the issue of cooking in vacuum bags at the end of this series.

For those of you who’re big Parkside fans, Chef Cirkiel has got two iron chef events coming up in the next few days. I talked to him briefly about it yesterday and he was pretty excited about both events. His first battle will be the “Stubb’s Bad to the Bone Chef Smackdown” on Friday (1/15) Saturday, 2/27 at Stubb’s. Tickets are $35 and you can buy them here. The other event is “Alamo Iron Chef VI: Streetcar Named Desire” on Wednesday (1/20) at Alamo Downtown. Tickets are $80 each (4 courses x 2 competing chefs + 4 wine pairings = 8 courses + 4 glasses of wine) and can be purchased here.

Anyways, here’s the interview:

EDIT: There’s been a time change due the the rain. Stubb’s Bad to the Bone Chef Smackdown has been postponed until Feb. 27th. [Link]

I think my biggest struggle usually is time… Being a person that haven’t really used an alarm clock in years, I don’t think hitting the snooze button a few too many times is my problem. And also it really doesn’t takes that much time to pour myself a bowl of sugar loaded cereal, or make myself a piece of toast… Those are just not things that really appeal to me in the morning. I usually just grab a banana or an apple and hit the road. But this little breakfast smoothie, is something that takes little to no time AND very appealing to me. Check out the recipe & the clip from “Live & Let Diet”:

I’ll be making my own version of this starting tomorrow!! (Maybe eventually one day in a Vita Mix… LOL)

Now, almost 20 years later, I find myself fascinated with how to “break things down”. For the last few years, I’ve moved from buying chicken breasts/thighs/wings to buying whole chicken and using everything for something. Working as a volunteer at the cooking school, I’ve had professional chefs show me how to properly break down all sorts of meats and seafood – I’ve loved every single minute of it!!

While a few people have just sworn off meats altogether in the post Food, Inc. era, I feel that the negative public opinion of these giant slaughter houses should give more business back to the local “old school” butchers. I came across a couple of videos yesterday and thought they were worth a look.

“From ‘Julie & Julia’ to Julie with a Cleaver” [Time.com]

The Pig & The Butcher from Quarter Productions on Vimeo.