Power Breakfast

Breakfast during the outage has been a bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwich, hold the bread and double the bacon. 2 eggs with a slice of cheese melted over it and 6 slices of bacon from the little deli in my client's building. With power, but without a fully stocked refrigerator, I made breakfast with what I had on hand.
Left in my fridge, there were...eggs, cheese, and some chorizo.

I'll argue that I prefer the buttermilk blue cheese to the American sliced, that the chorizo is a bit more interesting than paper-thin bacon, and that eggs from pastured chickens do my liberal heart good and may or may not be better for me. But really, it's a bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwich, hold the bread.

I'm more pedestrian than I'd realized.

I Like Leftover Take-Out as Much as the Next Person...

...OK, so probably that's not true for the most part. But when it's Gored Gored from Bete, my favorite-for-meat Silver Spring Ethiopian restaurant, it is. In the picture, the Gored Gored is the meat on the bottom; the top dish is a cabbage, potato and carrot dish with a sweetness that blends quite nicely with the spicy beef. The raw beef of the Gored Gored is nicely spiced without the spices overwhelming the beef, and being cubes and not ground and marinated like kitfo, you can really tell it's raw.

Yes, the fact that I'm having leftover raw beef means that my power is back on, that I can reclaim my frozen and refrigerated foods from my friends, and that starting tomorrow with breakfast, I'm back in business. This makes me *very* happy.

Powerless Prawns

(Updated to add the picture. These guys were *big.*)

It's a good thing I blog ahead. Went to my high school reunion in Manlius, NY, last weekend and blogged through yesterday figuring I'd be catching up with chores and whatnot for a couple of days. Instead, I came home following a line of severe storms that blew through last Sunday. Still no power at my house and they say it won't be back until Friday the 30th at the earliest. Until then I'll limp along from other locations. Also, no pictures until I get the lights back on and can upload photos (which I am still taking).

The good news: after some scrambling, I found people who could take the important stuff from my freezer so I won't lose too much (thanks, Jen and Dottie!) and dispatched everything non-perishable that wasn't already stuffed into my client's refrigerator to them. In doing so, I found a bag of huge spot prawns (bigger than most crayfish I've eaten) that I'm pretty sure I ordered from Catalina Seafood some time ago. Gently poached them in some homemade fish stock and served them with leftover rice.

The taste of the prawns was excellent, but the texture was off - it was a bit mushy. I've since found out that

Whole frozen freshwater prawns will turn ‘mushy’ if they are frozen and held above -20°C, or if they are thawed and refrozen.

Live and learn.

Tonight I almost certainly will be in the dark again, so it's either grilling or stovetop (thank heavens I have a gas range), and the food will have to be fresh, with no leftovers.

Honestly, though, it's breakfast I'm missing the most.

Easy Food P0rn for Cats - Sous Vide Cat Food

OK this is the depth to which I've fallen, or the heights to which I've soared. Cat food done in the sous vide. Traditionally, because supposedly cats aren't really equipped to deal with burnt food, I've cooked the cats' meat for food in the microwave (yes, I know about the benefits of a raw diet for cats, but mine simply wouldn't accept a raw diet so I had to compromise). Today I decided to cook the turkey (I need to make a batch of poultry-based food) in the sous vide, so I let Kameko-san have at it.

The result was much more uniform, without the solid blocks of overcooked turkey I'm accustomed to.  The end product blended more readily and seemed to incorporate the added fat (for Nadja) and eggs (for Alex) better than microwaved batches. It will be interesting to see if the cats themselves notice a difference.

Jamaican Sous Vide Grilled Boneless Spareribs

OK, so I'm just stuck on the sous vide. This time with some pork ribs from Babes in the Woods. I rubbed them down with some Jamaican pork seasoning I got from a friend who is from the islands, put the generously rubbed ribs (still frozen) in a vacuum bag, then cooked them at 60C for about 48 hours.

After the 48 hours, I pulled the bag out and put it in the fridge while I went to my client's. When I came back, I fired up Minizawa-chan (the small Egg) and seared the ribs for about 3 minutes a side.

The real surprise came when I went to serve the ribs. I realized the the ribs would lift cleanly out with the most gentle pull of the hand - no cutting or tool of any sort was required. So I quickly deboned the rack and served the ribs almost as a steak, with a knife and fork.

And no surprise that once again the flavor result was phenomenal. Outrageously tender without being mushy, perfectly seasoned throughout, and the grilling gave the ribs just enough of a crisp/caramel feel to balance the extremely rich fat of the meat.

I've been trying to figure whether the sous vide introduces more or less fuss into cooking, and I'm coming down on the side of "less." Especially with things like ribs, which have a very long cooking window, it's easy to cycle things in and out. I did the previously posted mackerel and marrow bone while the ribs were cooking, and as soon as I took them out I started the ground turkey that will be the subject of my next post. Everything remarkably easy, the only caveat being that one must plan ahead.

Sous Vide Pickled Mackerel

Continuing the sous vide cooking experiment, I tried letting Kameko-san (the sous vide cooker) have some pickled mackerel intended for sashimi. The mackerel was perfectly fine raw, but I wanted to save half for lunch the next day, and eating raw fish that, by that time, would have been sitting out for 5 or 6 hours, struck me as a poor idea. Even Mr. Bento has his limits.

So I carefully slid the frozen mackerel out from its package so its seaweed topper would stay in place, slid it into a vacuum bag and sealed it, and put it, frozen, into the sous vide for 30 minutes.

The result was incredible. I will not be giving up sushi or sashimi any time soon, but this treatment, while completely different in taste, was on a par in quality and an absolutely acceptable substitute. The mackerel retained the fat taste within its muscle, as opposed to as a juice or coating, and the taste of the pickling wasn't lost.

I am left wanting to give Kameko-san some scallops.

Kameko-san Tackles a Marrow Bone

At the farmers' market I was wandering past the folks at Gunpowder Bison (my freezer still is full) when an internal voice said to me, "Marrow Bone. Sous Vide. Marrow Bone..." and so I bought a marrow bone. I told the woman at their booth that it was for me, not my hypothetical dog, so she kindly looked for a bone with a lot of marrow. After that, it would be up to Kameko-san, my sous vide cooker.

I cooked the vacuum-packed bone (shown above) overnight, then poked at it a little through the bag and decided more cooking wouldn't hurt it and left it to continue cooking while I was of at my client's. When I came home I pulled it out and ate it, using one of the marrow scoops Phil gave me for Christmas (arigatou, Phil).

Z.O.M.G. The marrow, as shown in the first post picture, was easy to remove, succulent, and full of beefy umami. I was amazed at how much I was able to retrieve from the bone - I thought initially that I'd be needing a Dinner Part II, but there was plenty for a main course for one person. As an added bonus, the tendon still attached to the bone on the outside was impossibly tender and full of an almost gamy flavor. I have been wanting to try beef tendon for some time, and this has only increased my desire.

Amazing and wonderful and again reminding me why the sous vide already has paid for itself.