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Saturday, January 5, 2013

Sous Vide Duck Breast inpired by AD HOC at home

AD HOC inspired Sous Vide Duck Breast with roasted root vegetables (from someone else's garden).

AD HOC inspired Duck Breast Sous Vide


















Happy 1st year anniversary to my love!  Rather than going out for a fancy dinner on our 1st year marriage anniversary, I decided to try and cook an amazing meal for Ying.  My brother bought me a $400 Sous 
Vide Supreme machine and  I thought this occasion would be the perfect time to break it in and try to make that perfect medium rare duck breast with crunchy skin you dream about from fancy restaurants.  Along with a sous vide duck breast, I roasted some yellow beets and brussel sprouts picked from someone else's garden, inspired by Thomas Keller's AD HOC at Home cookbook  =) .  The meal was paired with salad made of fresh living greens, sweet orange slices and pickled onions (to take off the raw onion bite).  This was all washed down with a bottle of wine and a wonderful evening on our patio!

How did it taste?  The duck was perfectly medium rare throughout, and bursting with duck juice. The subtle marinade of orange zest and herbs on the duck provided depth and acidity to the duck while the crunchy skin gave each duck slice a multi textural explosion.  The root vegetables provided a nice roasted crunch with some subtle sweetness that complimented the duck quite well. TTT approved!



How to Sous Vide a duck breast -

  1. Criss cross duck skin and season high duck breast with salt, pepper, orange zest, nutmeg, thyme,  alsamic vinegar, and vinegar.  Get a high quality duck breast from your local butcher and specialty shop.  We got a duck breast from Grimaud Farms.  
  2. After seasoning let sit and rest for a few hours to soak in marinade.  Try to pat dry any excess moisture and vacuum seal duck breast. Sous vide in Sous Vide Supreme machine set at 57°C / 135°F depending on when you are ready to sear!  Sous vide for 45 minutes to 3 hours to get the perfect medium rare!
  3. Giraud Farms Duck Breast
    Take out of the water bath and let sit for 10 minutes while preheating a cast iron skillet.  Take out of the vacuum seal, pat dry and re-season with a pinch bit of sea salt and pepper.
  4. Add a splash of high temp searing oil (grapeseed, canola) to the cast iron skillet and wait until the oil starts to smoke.  
  5. Now throw that duck breast skin side down onto the skiller and hear that sizzle, feel that sear, and start to salivate for some crunchy duck skin!!!   (mmmmmm getting hungry yet?)  it only takes one minute to sear on that skin side down and just turn over and kiss the meat side on the pan for a few seconds.  
  6. Let sit and and rest on a cutting board while staring at your beautiful peace of duck.  Wait don't cut it yet!  Let it sit for 3-5 minutes to let the juices back in.  Then slice....
Sous Vide Supreme Machine
Vacuum Sealed Duck Breast



Cast Iron Seared Duck Breast

Living Greens Salad

Sliced Sous Vide Duck Breast (Sliced too early! look at that love)
Happy 1 year Anniversary!


Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Go Hawk in Singapore - Best Singapore Street Food

Go Hawk in Singapore

The wife and I just recently traveled to Singapore with one goal in mind, to experience the true essence of Singapore street food.  So to truly embrace the Singaporean food culture, we ate our breakfast, lunch, and dinner at Hawker stands.  Hawker stands typically specialized in one Asian specialty dish and charged either $3(small), $4,(middle) or $5(large) dollars per item.   Within a food center, we were able to experience wide array of Chinese, Thai, Malaysian inspired comfort dishes.  Overall, I consider Singapore Hawker stands as the mecca for delicious, inexpensive, no frills culinary experience.  Now on to the food and Singapore hawker stands...


Lau Pa Sat  

Our experience started at Satay Street in Lau Pa Sat. In the heart of the business district, this street is blocked off and vendors setup stands to serve a variety of meats on sticks and regional specialties (stingray anyone?) and let's not forget the local beer. along with plastic tables/chairs to serve some delicious satay sticks along with beer, and some other specialty items such as stingray.  This experience purely exemplified what ones perception of street food should be like with the smoke and smells of grilled meats coming from the satay stands, humid air combining with spicy food to cause profuse sweating but all being washed down with ice cold tiger beer.  energy from large groups of people laughing, hanging out and enjoying dinner after work with friends after work showcases how satay street can provide a great dining experience in a completely unpretentious and open environment.  It was truly memorable.  So now on to the food.

We chose to eat from satay stand #8 which was a good choice especially since we were able to take of picture of the satay master in action.  We ordered satay sticks of beef/chicken and prawns.  All were cooked well with a good smokey char, the meat was tender, the marinate was with cumin, lemongrass, sugar and some other fragrant spices.  The touch of cucumbers were nice to calm the mouth down.  But really the star and most interesting dish was the stingray fin cooked in banana leafs and covered with spicy sambal sauce and a hint of lime (which are much different here than in the U.S as they are similar to small key limes but the pulp is a rich dark caramel color and extremely juicy). The meat on the stingray was minimal and came along with quite a bit of soft bone and skin, but the meat was very tender and soaked in the delicious and spicy sambal sauce.
 




After boozing and eating in satay street, move into the actual hawker stands and try some of the specialty Asian dishes.  We started off with a singaporean staple of Char Kway Teow which consists of chow fun noodles mixed with chow mein egg noodles, cooked together with soy, sugar, an egg, and cockles!  Once perceived as unattractive shellfish for consumption, the Char Kway Teow dish was able to integrate the 'sea snails' and add a delicious briny/firm seafood item to the dish while maintaining a low cost.  The Lai Heng stand executed well and I would definitely recommend. 

 Lai Heng
Right next to Lai Heng, Song Kee Noodle offered a fairly solid fish ball noodle soup.  The ho fun noodles were not dried, keeping a slippery soft texture without being mushy.  The fish ball and fish cake was delicious as they were plump, bouncy, and seasoned well.  The broth was a clean clear Pork/chicken/fish broth that was very comforting.  

Song Kee Noodle Soup
 


Maxwell Food Centre - Our favorite food court in singapore.

Zhen zhen porridge Stall #54
Wow!  Our strategy was to get to the food court as early as they opened and wait in line at the places that had the longest queues!  If the locals liked it, we figured we probably would too.  So stall #54 it was a 10:30 a.m, 15 patrons in line and a 45 minute wait.  This place had many food awards and you could definitely tell it was a famous hawker stand.  So on to the food.



a mechanical pot stirrer that slowly turns the porridge to help break down the rice kernels until the porridge becomes smooth, gelatinous, and you no longer taste the rice kernels.  A heavy helping of firm sliced white fish added texture and flavor to the porridge, and the raw egg put into the bowl before the hot porridge was poured over added a creamy full to the mouth feeling that added to the creamy gelatinous porridge.  Similar to vietnamese style porridge a heavy helping of fish sauce was added to enhance the natural sweetness of the fish porridge.  This was all topped off with a nice helping of freshly fried shallots, fried ground pork, and some green onions to provide some freshness.  This was my favorite porridge I've had and I hope you can one day enjoy some of this $5 deliciousness!

Raw Fish Plate -
Wow wow wow!  Mmm now this is what I call value based carpaccio!  We got a huge plate of this raw fish salad for $5!  It was awesome.  It was full of thinky sliced firm white fish similar to snapper, a plethora of thinly sliced green onions, a heaping of thinly sliced green onions, toasted sesame seeds, freshly fried shallots, chili peppers, and a huge heaping of lime.  The combination of spicy, sour, savory and vibrant flavors were delicious, and very memorable.  TTT appproved!

 


Fish Head Bee Hon Stand - 
Directly across from Zhen Zhen porridge.  Excellent and life changing bowl of noodle soup!  Who would have though fish noodle soup could be so amazing?  Similar to Zhen Zhen, there was a line of nearly 15 people and the wait was about 35 minutes.  So was the wait worth it?  Yes!  This dish inspired me to learn how to cook milky fish head noodle soup!  You can choose between either fried fish slices, regular sliced fish, or fish head to join this delicious noodle soup.  We chose to go with fried =).  The broth was really the star, as it had a milky smooth and full to the mouth velvety texture, full of fish/chicken/pork flavor, some ginger and onions to provide some fragrance, fish sauce for the questionable sweet umami flavor, all topped off with fried shallots and red chili to add an explosion of flavors and textures.  The rice noodles were nice, but it was really the broth that defined this to be TTT (Tim to table worthy).  There are some websites that discuss the milky broth can be achieved by quickly boiling fried fish heads on extremely high heat.  I think really the trick is just to use condensed milk.  Please check out a link to my homemade version of fish head bee hon.  TTT worthy.


Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice -

An Anthony Bourdain absolute disappointment.  For all the hype, all of the bullshit Bourdain billboards of having such fragrant chicken, this place fell way way short.  We of course ordered the Hainanese chicken rice, which is essentially boiled chicken served with chicken broth infused rice, and a sweet soy to add flavor to the bland dish.  This could be my personal preference, but there is a particular type of chicken I now enjoy and which in my opinion produce the best hainan chicken and chicken pho. These are "teenage chicken" that have properly balanced sweet meat, bouncy skin, and still tender but firm meat.  The chicken used for this Hainanese chicken was a young chicken, so it was very one dimensional with soft meat but no natural sweetness, no texture to the meat and definitely no bouncy yellow skin.  Don't waste your time and money on this famous hainan chicken restaurant. 
 

Lao Ban Soya Beancurd
 
Excellent!  There a huge line for this well established soy Beancurd stand.  It is chilled silken Beancurd which provides an extremely refreshing dessert after sweating bullets from eating spicy soupy food in a non air conditioned humid environment.  Unfortunately we had to get the almond flavored silken Beancurd as they ran out of regular flavor.  This was so really good, very smooth, and refreshing.  A definite TTT approval, but remember to get there early.


Chinatown Food Court
This food court is close to Maxwell and is in the heart of Chinatown.  Some of the items we had in this fairly good, but our favorite would still be Maxwell food court.

Ann Chin -

We were lured by the man in the front hand making popian skin paper wraps.  It looked very similar to a crepe as he put a thin layer of popian batter on a flat hot surface and spread out to a very thin layer.  Similar to a Vietnamese spring roll, the rolls had lettuce, bean sprouts, crushed nuts, and were served with a slightly sweet sauce.  Overall these looked delicious, but as they were vegetarian and the popian wrapper was dry, they sure looked a lot better than they tasted.  However they were cheap at $1.60 per roll.












Ah Ling Cooked Food stall #02-173
Specializing in Fried Kway Teow, we got a small sized plate for $2.50.  The char Kway Teow consisted of freshly stir fried chow fun noodles along with bean sprouts, egg, chow mein noodles, and cockles in a slightly sweet soy sauce.  Although this was fairly good, it wasn't great as it was still a bit dry and lacked the Wok Hay that produce the nicely charred flavors on noodles.  I preferred Lai Heng back at Lau Pau Sat as each order was individually cooked versus a large batch being cooked at Ah Ling.  The conclusion is that taste is fine, but there is definitely better out there.
 
Next to Ah Ling, there seems to be also a famous stand serving the raw fish salad.    I ordered a small plate which was more expensive than Zhen Zhen porridge for $6 dollars.  It was subpar as it lacked in robustness of flavor vs. zhen zhen.  Not enough sesame seeds, not enough lime, not enough fried shallots, no chili.  The fish was firm and fresh but lacked any type of sweetness.  The verdict is go to zhen zhen porridge at Maxwell for a good raw fish carpaccio!  Ok but I do not recommend.
 

Newton food court -
We weren't too impressed with this tourist driven food court.  The second you got there, you know it's not that place the locals eat as you have many stall owners trying to lure you in to try their products.  The prices are 1-2 dollars higher than the other food courts, the food served at each stall are very similar with little differentiation, and on top of of this the stall owners must be known to try and rip off tourists on seafood (look at the comic to the left).  I suggest you not to come here.

Heng Carrot Cake -
similar to Lo Bak Go which you typically consume during dim sum, this was a freshly made pan fried white turnip cake with egg.  Although supposedly well known, the texture was much too soft and tasted like mush with oil.  I wouldn't recommend. 

Banana Leaf -
We trekked out to little India to try the famous fish head curry from Banana Leaf Apollo.  The fish head was big, deep fried and then put into a red gravy full of Indian spices and subtle deep heat.  We attacked the fish head from all angles including the meat on the collar, the chewy meat of the cheek, even around the eyes.  The fish head curry was served with an unlimited amount of basmati rice and cooked potatoes/onions that were fairly delicious.  We also ordered Saag paneer, naan, and a limeade to wash down the spicy food.  You can definitely tell the restaurant is catered to get tourists in and out.  Although its a restaurant, let me warn you that it is by no means a fancy restaurant as the wait staff come by once to drop off your food and never come back, yet expect a tip.  The bathroom  is a shithole(literally there is no toilet to sit on).  We spent about $50 and weren't satisfied with our dinner.  We should have just stuck with the hawker stands and got full for $10 bucks!  I do not recommend Banana Leaf Apollo.


Prime New York Steak Dinner done right

Cast Iron Seared Prime New York Steak
Friday night steak dinners are always enjoyable if you can produce delicious food without slaving over the stove all day; This meal can be completed in about thirty minutes. First we started off with a kale salad then we had cast iron seared prime new York steak.  Kale salad was made from dinosaur kale, parm chips, cherry tomatoes, and lemon vinaigrette. This salad is easy to make, balanced, extremely healthy, and a fresh change.  The parm chips are key to help give  a subtle nuttiness and saltiness to balance out some of the bitterness from the kale salad.

Instructions -
Kale Salad
Derib one bunch of kale leaves from the stems then julienne the leaves.  Save the stems for stir fry later on.
Parm chips - grab three finger pinch of shaved parm and put onto foil.  Repeat 8 times.  Bake at 375 for 5 minutes or until crispy but not burned. Cut cherry tomatoes in half. Emulsify 1/2 a lemon with a 1/4 cup of good evoo, salt and pepper to taste, and 1 minced garlic Clove. Toss and serve!  The kale will hold up so you can toss ahead of time and it will still taste delicious.
Basting Time
Dinner Table
Instructions
Prime 1/2 inch cut New York Steak with a simple cast iron sear.
Cast iron on high heat. Wait until slightly smoking. Add small pad of butter.Season steak liberally with large sea salt, black pepper, granulated garlic.  Sear 4 minutes, flip and sear the other side for 4 minutes, and baste with juices.  Set aside and let it rest for 5 minuted under foil to retain the juices.  Slice at diagonal in 1/4 inch slices against the grain.  Top with some extra evoo and some big sea salt.  Pair this thirty minute meal with a awesome Napa cab and your guests will be impressed.  TTT approved!


Finished Product




Vietnamese Noodle Salad (bun)


Today was really hot so Ying insisted we have a cold vietnamese noodle salad.  I didn't want to eat vietnamese noodle salad as typically it's heavy with grilled meats, fried egg rolls and grilled shrimp.   Therefore I tried to make a fresher version of this noodle salad.  I went into our pantry and found some dried rice noodles, found some fresh vegetables such as bean sprouts, cilantro, chopped lettuce, baby radish sprouts, some pickled carrots, and sliced cucumbers.  Fried some egg rolls and tofu. The vegetables helped to give a really good crunch along with the crunchy egg roll.  The bun rice noodles were cooked perfectly and cooled down with water.  Pre made nuoc nam fish sauce with sugar/water/garlic combined all the flavors together. This is a great summertime dish full of flavors and texture contrast with crunchiness from the egg rolls, fresh vegetable crunch from the cucumbers and pickled carrots, and some sharpness from the sprouts helped to cut the sweetness from the fish sauce.  It was Ying's favorite vietnamese noodle salads she's ever had and only cost us 5 dollars to make 2 servings!  TTT approved.

Ingredients
Bun rice Noodles - Cooked and Chilled (one bundle) makes 2 servings
Cucumbers - Julienned into sticks
Sprouts - Small pinch ful
Bean Sprouts - Medium handful
Pickled Carrots - Small pinch full
cilantro - Small pinch full
Fried Egg Rolls - 2 egg rolls cut into thirds
Nuoc Nam - Pre made fish sauce

Mangalamba burlingame

Good Burmese food in Burlingame. 
Nice rainbow salad with 18 different components consisting of noodles, spices, fried bits for texture, and topped off with some lemon and mixed at your table.  Fun and delicious dish!
Stewed chicken curry house noodles
Excellent slowly simmered stewed coconut chicken. 
Good rice noodle texture sopping up the curry.
Service, food were both good.
Overall 4 stars.  I would wait up to 20 minutes to eat dinner here.





New Years Breakfast Crostini Trio

Ying made me a delicious breakfast to start off the year right.
The dish consisted of 3 separate crostini's along with a kale salad.
1. The first was a chicken apple sausage with melted gruyere and whole grain mustard.
2.  The second was a Mexican inspired crostini with an avocado mousse and farm fresh tomato and onions that were soaked in water to take off the bite and finished off with some smoked paprika/ salt and pepper to taste.
3. kale salad topped with an overeasy egg.
Avocado mousse - whipped with a blender and a squeeze of lime juice until creamy. It was then flavored with chopped jalapenos and salt and pepper and blended in. The ratio is half a lime to 1 avocado.
FYI be careful when whipping avocado with open top as someone might just make a mistake and get avocado over the entire kitchen including the walls, the floor, the refrigerator, her cheeks and my face, and the stove. It sucked fyi.
Kale salad - Organic baby kale from Costco. Dressing was made from lime juice olive oil salt and pepper to taste and half a clove of minced garlic.
It was delicious and a great way to start off the year. TTT approved.