Food
Tostones or patacones (made whenever we find green plantains at SavMor, which isn’t often). 😋
[Crispy Cheese and Kimchi-Topped Skillet Rice](https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2019/10/kimchi-cheese-rice-recipe.html) — quite delicious.
... made from the left over Bulgogi the next day, Bibimbap! Crisped up the white rice a bit too.
Homemade Bulgogi.
Inaugural cook on the Baking Steel Mini Griddle. We love the original size for pizza, cooking lots of vegetables etc but it is too big for most of our griddle applications.
Lunchtime snack: Sweet Cherries fresh from the backyard tree.
Freshly churned strawberry ice cream.
Lunch today: Chuck Roast (left over) Sandwich. Cooked on Baking Steel.
chuck roast (left over) sandwiches on homemade sourdough. The Baking Steel is pretty great as a griddle.
Homemade Naan atop a piping hot Baking Steel.
Falafel soft tacos tonight since we had dry chickpeas, the herb garden was begging for it, and we always have corn tortillas. Topped with red onion quick pickle and herbed buttermilk 🧆
Our (majority) whole wheat crust pizza.
Home fried sweet potato chips. Because we didn’t use the potato in a Massaman curry last week (had spaghetti instead).
Yellow Dal w/Garlic & Brown Basmati and make ahead veggie enchiladas all at once.
Takeout from a local Orland, CA restaurant. Even in rural California, online takeout is available! Several restaurants here are offering online orders or call-in. One restaurant has kits to make meals. Another has frozen takeout. 🤞
Sous Vide London Broil (Beef)
We had a two pound London Broil in the freezer chest and nowhere to go because of SARS-CoV-2. Might as well try Sous Vide!
We did the water displacement method with a 1-gallon freezer bag. I massaged out as many air bubbles as possible. I also pinched the sides of the bag together. The idea is to make sure as much direct contact happens with as much meat surfaces as possible with water.
Straight out of the Sous Vide bag the meat is grey and even more oddly, not leaking juices (which always happens with meat removed from blazing hot cooking environments creating a huge temperature and pressure gradient):
Then we cooked it in the water bath for 8 hours at 132ºF or 55.56ºC for 8 hours. It looked grey straight out of the bath and was as you’d expect after reading Kenji’s The Food Lab.
We seared it off in a smoking hot cast iron on all sides and suddenly it was quite appealing to the eye! (plus actually added tangible flavor at the crust).
Seared off in a smoking hot cast-iron gave the meat some color and delicious Maillard reaction
We’ll do this again but next time try it at 131ºF or 55ºC; some of the meat closest to the surface was getting close to over cooked despite still being mid-rare. The meat had just enough chew after being thinly sliced. I doubt this tough cut could get any more tender. I’ll also push the meat down flush against the cast-iron to get better color and take my time searing the sides.
Mid-rare doneness - tender enough and not dried out:
Not going anywhere unless necessary so time to try Sous Vide London Broil. Just under two pounds of meat held at 132°F/55.6°C for 8 hours. Just salt and pepper for the beef. Will sear it to finish.
There are many **vision**s brewing in these caskets at [Moksa Brewery](https://moksabrewing.com).
Alcohol dreaming to escape their bottles. Later, I had a dry gin martini on the rocks.
Ember leaping from a pepper roasting over a gas flame.
