Something we gut-wrenchingly miss about Italy: the plentiful celebratory festivals that take place in small towns across the countryside. A typical Saturday in Piedmont would consist of Jonas and me revving up the Alfa to hit the hills in search of a gathering of townfolk united in their reverence for classic Fiat 500’s, white truffles, esoteric antiques, gelato, formaggio, vino, et cetera.  One of our favorites was the Festival delle Sagre, translated that’s the Festival of Festivals.  It takes place in the town of Asti, famous for great wines (Barbera d’Asti, Asti Spumante), horseracing (The Palio), and its close proximity to the heart of the best white truffles on earth, tartufo bianco d’Alba.  The festival is a great place to sample rustic Piedmontese cuisine in a large-format, entirely informal setting.  It is also a great place to drink plentiful amounts of wine poured directly from large glass damigiane (carboys, casks, huge glass vessels used to store wine) and have a sinfully good time.

One of the more memorable dishes on hand at the Festival delle Sagre is carne battuta, which means (now get your mind out of the gutter here) beaten meat.  The longer version, carne battuta al coltello just means beaten with a knife. In other words, you cut up chunks of raw, very high quality beef or horsemeat, then beat it into submission (and tiny little pieces) with a super-heavy meat cleaver.  It’s like the Italian version of the French dish Steak Tartare, only with different flavors.  Typical Piedmontese additions would be lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper, and perhaps some herbs. I have seen people add cream as well, though rarely.

In my case, I wanted to top my battuta with a quivering quail egg because I thought it would add a nice, carbonara-like texture to the finished plate.  I started with extremely fresh Wagyu filet mignon cut from the center of the tenderloin and trimmed of any oxygenated pieces just before preparation.  Then I roughly chopped it before going to town with my man-sized meat cleaver. I beat up half a pound of filet so much my arm is sore today, no kidding. Perhaps I am just a big wimp!

Once I had my perfectly beaten cubes, I used a fork to stir in lemon juice (one small lemon for half pound of meat), olive oil-to taste, ½ c of freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano, ½ tbsp chopped fresh oregano, and Maldon salt.  I then plated the battuta using a cookie cutter as a form, topped it with a sous vide quail egg (you could just soft boil too), and sprinkled on some fresh pepper.  I served the battuta with celery and carrot ribbons because they are nice to break up the mouth feel of the meat.  It’s a great appetizer for a more adventurous dinner party, of course you’d want to be sure everyone was ok with raw meat before you wasted all that delectable filet.

When I think of poutine I think of romance, legs in pencil skirts gracefully exiting limos, Concord dashes to Paris for a quick shopping jaunt. Those of you who have had poutine are surely shaking your heads right now thinking what it should conjure for me is glutted arteries and heart attacks at 45, but no matter. Poutine is one of those insanely attractive foods that I’ll never refuse, even if it means an extra five miles on the treadmill the next day.  A quick bit of history: poutine originated in Quebec in the late 1950’s and consists of fries, cheese curds, and sauce.  There are many variations on the sauce, but it is essentially agreed upon that the most traditional sauce is a veloute made with chicken stock (the difference between veloute and gravy being that the former is made with stock whereas the latter cream or milk).  By the 1970’s, poutine had worked its way into the hearts of New York and New Jerseyites who often referred to it by another moniker: disco fries.  I’m sure Lady Gaga would be proud.  I think this is where my non-lived-through nostalgia comes in. I just imagine the fabulous queens (gay and otherwise) of the Studio 54 set tumbling out of the club at 5 am ordering disco fries from the nearest greasy spoon to sop up all of the vodka tonics consumed during a wild night of dancing and debauchery. 

I’ve been on a bit of a poutine kick lately, which is perfectly ok since I’m also on a bit of a training for a half-marathon kick too, so there.  I’m not sure any amount of running can justify the fact that I recently bought a deep fryer, but it sure makes kick ass fries, so I’m throwing caution to the wind.  I’ve been experimenting up a storm with the Okinawan purple sweet potatoes that are flooding the shelves of Uwajimaya right now, and the true test of a good potato is to fry it straight up.  I feel like by buying a deep fryer I’ve suddenly become initiated into a secret club where I get to learn little secrets like when you’re frying potatoes you must double dip.  Yup, it’s true, the interior gets cooked but stays soft, then the second dip in the fryer crisps up the exterior and provides necessary crunch. 

I had sous vided a quartered duck the day before, so I made a veloute of the remaining jus and simply slathered it over the pretty fries. I completed the look with a smattering of fresh cheese curds from Seattle’s own Beechers Cheese.  It couldn’t be simpler, like Canada’s answer to nachos, but to my mind, much better, and irrefutably more romantic.  What are you waiting for- go out and imbibe too much of your favorite liquor and soak it all up after you’re good and drunk and danced out with a steaming plate of poutine.  You’ll be hooked before you can say “I wanna take a ride on your disco stick.”

Best. Dinner. Ever.  When you challenge yourself to the limits of personal creativity, more often than not the result is an epic failure. I have had my fair share of those: popovers that didn’t “pop”, mousse that was more like sludge, pasta fit to line the rubbish bin, not the inside of a happy mouth.  That’s why I was so elated when I tasted the first bite of this bite-sized bliss.  Who knew Jerusalem artichokes would make such great gnocchi- certainly not me, though I thought I’d try because I had success with parsnip gnocchi recently, and what the hell, right?

Many of you may be asking yourself what in the god-damn is a Jerusalem artichoke aka sunchoke? It looks to me like a cross between ginger and galangal with a purplish skin if you are familiar with both of those roots, but it tastes like, well, an artichoke.  Sort of a really condensed artichoke with the minerally flavor many roots take on that is vaguely reminiscent of licking a D battery (in a good way!). 

I had a healthy handful so I baked them along with some purple potatoes and milled them into an even texture.  Then I added salt, a banty egg (but any egg would do) and enough flour to form a dough.  I rolled pieces of the dough into very thin tubes, maybe ½”.  Then I cut the tubes into ¾” lengths as you would gnocchi and placed them on a parchment-lined baking sheet.  I find that resting the gnocchetti (little gnocchi since they are so small) for up to an hour helps it to develop a nice solid exterior post-boil, but anything over an hour makes them too hard and dried out. 

This dinner in all actuality started three days before I served it, however, as I wanted medium-rare beef short ribs, and the only way to do that is in the sous vide machine.  It takes quite a bit of time for the collagen to break down and tenderize the meat at medium rare temperature (134°) so I planned ahead and gave myself 72 hours to tenderize the ribs.  I removed them at more like 60 hours and they were actually completely ideal, so in the future I’ll stick with that number.  Before I sealed them in the foodsafe bag I seasoned them with salt, pepper and smoked garlic powder (which you can learn to make here).  I tossed in a mango that I had sliced, since I wanted a sweet, tangy sauce made from mango and the sweetish effervescent Italian wine, Moscato.  Pan-global, I know, but it worked so well together I make no apologies. 

When I pulled the ribs from the sous vide bath (pictured above, before deep-frying), I added the juices from the bag to a shallot I had lightly sautéed in a saucepan.  I let the juices reduce a little, then added another chopped mango.  Finally I added a cup of Moscato and let the sauce reduce until slightly thickened and all the flavors came together.  I gave it a few whirrs with the immersion blender et voila.  I didn’t even add additional salt and pepper as the bag juices were already seasoned to the perfect level.  The smoked garlic powder came out stunningly in the sauce, and lent a subtle savory hint to the sweetness of the mango and Moscato. 

The final step in putting together this plate of scintillating savory seduction is to throw the sous vide short ribs in the deep fryer at 375° for 60 seconds.  This all came about because a few days ago I was excitedly tweeting (on twitter, for those of you wondering whether I regularly walk around the house acting like a bird-follow me @saltyseattle) about my new deep fryer.  One of my wonderful twitter follows/followers who is also sous vide-obsessed (@bamiyahara) suggested I deep fry sous vide short ribs a la Chang of Momofuku fame. 

still rare but so soft after three days

I couldn’t track down a recipe, but it’s not exactly rocket science, so I worked my own magic, and after one minute in the fryer I was very pleased with the nice caramelized crust that had developed on my short ribs.  Much more than a minute and I’d have worried too much about undoing all the great pains I took to keep the ribs at medium rare, but any less than a minute and not enough caramelization occurs.  I am very thrilled that this was the inaugural use for my deep fryer. It has convinced me unequivocally that there will be many more to come.

It’s springtime in Seattle and the land is engorged with possibility.  You don’t need to go farther than your own neighborhood to make a meal fit for royalty, let me show you.  I cook by feel rather than by rote more often than not, and it’s a good habit to be in if you want to focus on seasonality. Rather than go to the store armed with a nitpicking recipe and a fastidious commitment to detail, loosen up. Go with the flow.  Take a walk. That’s what I did, and two blocks from my house I ran across a patch of stinging nettle ripe for the taking.  There may have been a touch more planning involved as I was armed with gloves, shears and a bag for my bounty- all necessary for harvesting stinging nettle lest you desire prickly pain all day.  In fact if you’re not sure it’s stinging nettle there is one surefire way to check, though I don’t recommend it :)

I brought my nettle home and lightly steamed it to render it harmless, then plucked the leaves from the tougher stems.  Harvest younger, shorter nettle for best flavor and tenderness.  Once I had my nettles ready to go the rest of the meal fell into place readily.  I had a fresh fat duck sitting in the refrigerator waiting to be fabricated (broken down) and cooked sous vide, so I thought I’d make a pasta with the nettles and some kind of saucy meaty accompaniment with the duck. 

I fabricated the duck into four parts and seasoned each quarter with homemade salt, thyme, smoked garlic powder, bay leaves, and oregano.  I packed each quarter into food-safe bags and sous vided the legs and thighs for 15 hours at 180° and the breasts at the same temperature for five hours. Normally you can get by with cooking duck breast at 140°, but since I kept the bone-in I maintained a higher cooking temperature as I was looking for more of a fall-off-the-bone tenderness rather than a firm breast.  Funny, kind of the opposite as you’d want in a human, no? 

Initially I thought of making gnocchi with the nettles, but settled on its ricotta-based cousin called gnudi (which means nude in Italian and is short for gnocchi gnudi- aka gnocchi nude of the pasta itself).  Some folks refer to gnudi as malfatti, which means badly made, but I like gnudi better, plus I take time in forming each gnudo, so they’re not really as roughly made as some malfatti can be.  As I see it, a main difference between malfatti and gnudi (though this varies regionally and is hotly debated) is that malfatti can be made by simply dropping dollops of dough into boiling water (you can even plop them out using a pastry bag) whereas gnudi tends to be formed using spoons or hands.  I thought gnudi rather than gnocchi would bring out the flavor of the nettle as it wouldn’t be competing with potato. I thought correctly- who woulda known? 

Making gnudi is fun. That sentence wasn’t meant to sound sexual, I promise.  First you press out all the liquid from one tub of ricotta and the nettles, then whir them in a food processor with either two duck egg yolks or three chicken yolks.  Plop the goo into a mixing bowl and add salt, smoked garlic powder if you wish, and flour as needed to form a light dough.  A cup and a half of flour should more or less suffice.  (tip- the amount of flour needed in most recipes will vary with your humidity and altitude. Learn to adjust by feel rather than rely on a specific number). 

To form the gnudi roll a teaspoon of dough between your palms into a little oval. Place on a parchment-lined sheetpan and repeat with remaining dough. Cover while waiting for the water to boil and finishing the duck and sauce.  Cook gnudi as you would gnocchi- by dropping into salted boiling water and removing with a slotted spoon once they float to the top.  Keep in warming oven while boiling the remainder. 

Rhubarb became the base for the duck sauce because it is seasonal and growing like mad all around Seattle.  I chopped it into small pieces and reduced it in moscato wine, chicken stock and the juice of one orange. After ten minutes I strained it, tossing the rhubarb chunks.  I poured some duck fat and jus from one of the duck pouches into the saucepan and lightly sautéed a spring onion in it. Then I added the rhubarb sauce and reduced a bit further, adjusting seasoning as needed.  To finish the dish, I crisped up the skin on the duck by deep-frying them for two minutes. Then I plated the gnocchi, a quarter of duck, and drizzled rhubarb reduction over both. 

This dining experience is an example of how relatively simple it is to incorporate local, seasonal elements into cuisine.  Rhubarb and nettles were foraged and duck eggs come from a local farm as does the duck itself.  Herbs all came from my garden, salt I made from Washington waters, garlic powder was made and smoked at home.  While I buy my ricotta from DeLaurenti in Pike Place Market and they make it themselves, I easily could have made it too. It’s one of the quickest cheeses to make; in fact it’s a byproduct of many other cheeses.   I hope this post inspires you to take a walk and cook off the beaten path.  Your diners will thank you for it.

 

In honor of a recent visit from a distinguished out-of-town guest, aka my dad, I decided to prepare a veritable locavore’s delight to give him a little taste of what the Seattle surroundings have to offer.  If you’ve read my blog before, surely you know that I can’t resist an esoteric egg.  So tell me then, with what willpower was I supposed to refrain from purchasing Banty hen eggs when they practically begged me to take them home? That’s right, I was meant to buy them; and the amazing green-hued eggs from the Araucana hen that were sitting right next to them, too. I’m dreaming up something funky to do with those too, but for the time being please note the full splendor and beauty of the beholden Banty egg.

The size is quite nice, actually, smaller than a typical chicken egg, but larger than a quail egg.  I figured dolloping two atop each portion of pasta would just about do it, though two normal chicken eggs would have been too much. One duck egg might have done the trick, but damn, these Banty eggs are just so fresh and good I’m happy I used them.  I put the eggs in shell in a sous vide bath for one hour at 144° and they came out with the white just hardened enough to keep the yolk from spilling all over everything, but just runny enough to make a perfect custardy-carbonara-esque sauce for the handcut tagliatelle. 

On to the next ingredient du jour: fiddlehead ferns.  If I was a true locavore worth my SEA id I would have foraged these babies myself; in fact Jonas and I headed out to the yard where we typically have them growing this time of year, but sadly they were too mature. 

Spring came early in the Pacific Northwest, though it seems to be persisting indefinitely.  What that translates to in terms of flora and fauna is that things are blooming and hatching ahead of schedule.  Someone somewhere found some fiddleheads, though, as I was able to source them at the Pike Place Market along with some meaty morels.  I threw in some asparagus tips since I plan to make a puree of the stalks soon, and called it a good blend to top my tagliatelle. 

While I was rolling out the pasta dough I boiled the fiddleheads and asparagus for five minutes, then shocked in cold water to stop the cooking.  Once the pasta was rolled, cut, rested and ready, I boiled the noodles. Meanwhile I sautéed some green garlic in a nonstick frying pan and added the asparagus and fiddleheads.  I added ¼ c white wine and tossed in halved morels toward the end.  I seasoned simply with salt and pepper, preferring to let the flavors of the ingredients take the center stage to spices.  To assemble the dish I tossed the noodles into the morel mixture, plated it with a generous shaving of Parmigiano Reggiano, and topped each portion with two banty eggs that I gently coaxed out of their shells so as not to break the white.  Both native and non-native Seattleites will lust after the creamy woodsy nutty flavors in this dish. The added bonus: if eggs aren’t on the taboo list it’s totally vegetarian too.

Disclaimer: this post will mention sous vide cooking, I know, I know, again.  It will have value for anyone, though, since good garlic powder is something all of us should have in our kitchen arsenal.

The lovely pulverized goodness that inspired this post came to be as a result of mucking and fuddling about with my newish favorite kitchen gadget- the Sous Vide Supreme.  Now that it’s been out for a few months there are plenty of converts and just as many naysayers on their respective bandwagons. All I can say is that it has revolutionized the way I cook, but no more than, say, my food processor or stand mixer. Funny how you don’t hear a bunch of divisive derision on either of those culinary staples. It’s not like by adding in the sous vide machine someone’s taking away your frying pan, blow torch, or dutch oven, it’s just another notch on the belt, people.  Ok, enough of my rant.  On to the garlic powder.

One thing I’ve learned from sous vide that I am now considering with various other cooking methods as well is that different foods are ideally cooked at different temperatures.  You would certainly cook a steak in the sous vide bath at 134°, though if you throw in some onions or garlic to give it extra flavor they won’t cook properly at such a low temperature.  In order to work around this quandary, you have to come up with a way to get the flavor you want without expecting the sous vide bath to do the cooking.  Same goes for lots of other flavor-enhancing ingredients in the sous vide such as wines, vinegars, ginger, some herbs, et cetera.  Often a chef will pre-cook an ingredient, or merely add it via sauce after the meat is done cooking on its own in the sous vide bath.  I really wanted to experiment with post and pre flavor additions in sous vide, however, to see if the slow and low approach lent any depth or detracted in some way.  This is how I came up with the idea of making garlic powder (aka pre-cooked garlic) to add at will to my sous vide concoctions.  I found a great post on the matter on Pablo Escolar’s blog and I decided to shake things up a bit by adding smoke. 

I was smoking some bacon and artichokes that day anyway, (bacon, always a success, artichokes, not so much) so I figured no harm done by throwing the garlic in the smoker and cooking it that way.  After two hours at 200° in the Weber Smoky Mountain, my garlic had taken on a burnt sienna hue and smelled like savory ambrosia.  I also really liked how I could truthfully state I was smoking cloves, but without the nasty smell and lung-hacking most clove-smoking high-schoolers experience.  Talk about umami- the fifth taste was all up in this piece that day.  That’s when the waiting game started.  Regardless whether you decide to make garlic powder by smoking or roasting the garlic first, unless you own a dehydrator you then need to air dry your garlic to the point that you can successfully pulverize it and it turns to powder, not paste.  I air dried my garlic for three weeks before I ground it in the mortar and pestle followed by the blender for good measure.  I didn’t mind much, though, because whenever I wanted to use some I just spirited away a clove or two from amongst the drying bulbs. 

I’ve been experimenting with the finished product for a week now and I couldn’t be happier with the result. The only thing I wish I had done differently is make more of it.  You might heed that if you try it.  For the trouble you go to, you may as well yield a greater quantity than half a cup, which is what I got from five heads of garlic.  In retrospect I probably would do twenty at a time- that way you would only need to repeat the process maybe twice a year.  It is absolutely perfect sealed into the sous vide bag with a grass-fed filet, a touch of fine salt and nothing more.  I considered pre-mixing some salt with the powder, but I kind of like to individually administer both because different foods require different amounts of both garlic and salt.  The smoke really lends a kick to the flavor, by the way.  Any notions I had of it softening the taste of the garlic are gone.  Instead, it intensifies it, much like smoke intensifies pork belly when making bacon whereas pancetta (which is the same thing sans smoke) has a more subtle flavor.

Corned beef doesn’t exactly conjure images of glamour and sophistication; nevertheless it’s one of those things I get a craving for it roughly once a year. How convenient that my craving happened a short while before St. Patrick’s Day so I can share my results with you lot (I’m told that’s a right Irish way of saying things- correct me if I’ve misspoken). 

Supermarket corned beef, in my experience, is tough, plagued with a lingering flavor of skeevy salt, and downright bilious in many cases.  Doing it right, which means doing it yourself, really only takes a bit of planning, is more economical and tastes infinitely superior.  I borrowed the corning technique from Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie with only minor adjustments based on my own taste preferences.  I’m a bay leaf fanatic, so I doubled up on those since my bay leaf tree is only too happy to oblige me with her radiant foliage.  I started with a lovely first-cut brisket that I picked up for a song from my favorite butcher in Pike Place Market.  The capable butcher men are always eager to help now that they know I write a Seattle food blog and they can log on and check out the crazy things I do to their meat. 

The brisket needs to sit in the cure for five days in order to achieve proper “corning,” which is great because it gives you lots of time to think about which sundry delicacies you’ll serve alongside it.  I also pickled some vegetables using a salt-brine rather than vinegar and let those get nice and infused over the five day period.  I came up with two appetizers that at first seemed slightly incongruous to me but in retrospect I realize there was, in fact, a common thread uniting the meal.  Appetizer “A” consisted of bresaola, which is air-cured beef, wrapped around stracchino cheese topped with a leaf of mache lettuce.

 Next up was an inventive take of seared foie gras.  I had gluten-free folks coming to dinner so the toast squares I might have normally served the foie gras with were out.  I decided to be inventive with the base of my dish and use baby artichoke halves as the “bread” to the foie gras’ “butter.”  I halved them and cooked them in pear butter in the Sous Vide Supreme for two hours at 183° and they were perfect in texture.

  They took on a touch of sweetness from the pear which matched the rest of the dish well.  I topped the artichokes and foie gras with a pear-Sauternes sorbet I whipped up while the artichokes were stewing.  I steeped anise, cardamom, clove and nutmeg into the sorbet and those flavors really brought out the delicate taste of the foie gras. 

Have you realized what everything has in common yet? Every course features something that has been cured, aka something that falls under the vast realm known as charcuterie.  It is interesting that charcuterie is today considered a delicacy.  Much like necessity being the mother of invention, charcuterie at its source was really just a means of preserving food so it would last longer before the era of refrigeration.   Nowadays we don’t technically need to cure meats, so it’s moved into the domain of luxury and often the price of good charcuterie reflects that.  It’s a fun world in which to dabble; oftentimes all you need is an inexpensive cut of meat, some salt and a bit of time. 

Back to the corned beef.  After it finished curing in its rock star juice, I rinsed it and bagged it along with some homemade pickling spice liquid and plopped it into the sous vide bath at 176° for 26 hours.  For those of you battling with the sous vide/foodsaver bagging liquid issues, I’ve finally come up with a bit of a workaround.  I know many people freeze the liquid into a solid so they can suck all the air out. I also know Thomas Keller feels the foodsaver is unacceptable and everyone should really be using a $3,000 cryovac that really does the trick of sucking all the air out even when there’s liquid in the bag.

  Short of spending three grand or taking the time that I don’t often plan for to pre-freeze my liquids, I’ve found myself SOL on several occasions now.  It helps to use gravity, ie hold your bag below the foodsaver as you’re sealing and it will be harder for the foodsaver to suck up any liquid.  The other really great trick that has been working wonders for me is a double bagging system.  First I pack the corned beef (or whatever) and liquid into one foodsaver bag without sealing it.  Then I insert this bag sideways into a second, larger foodsaver bag.  I seal the outer bag and it’s able to get a ton more air out since the liquid is all trapped in the inner bag.  It’s not a perfect solution but until I have a spare three grand lying around, it will do. 

The time and temperature seemed to be just right, and I’m glad I went with my gut instead of listening to all the random voices on the internet.  If I had an extra day or two to play around I would have been really tempted to do a 48 hour cure at a lower temp, perhaps closer to 134°, but now that I’ve achieved a result I’m immensely satisfied with I think I’ll stick with it next time too. 

 The only truly great solution to this problem would be a parallel tasting. Don’t you think the good folks over at Sous Vide Supreme should lend me a second sous vide machine so I could throw in two briskets, two sea bassies, two Silkie chickens and two Jerusalem artichokes all at different times/temps to get down to the real nitty gritty of culinary perfection?  There are plenty of scientific studies on the affects of different sous vide temperatures and what happens to the sinews and muscles not to mention gasses released by the meat. 

 I would opt for a different approach, however, one that defies scientific logic in many cases.  After all, aren’t some of the greatest culinary feats in history achieved by happy accident? I’m thrilled to note that my typical “cook-by-feel” approach seems to work in the sous vide bath thus far, I only regret not being able to mess around with multiple times, temps,and preparations simultaneously so I can arrive at a final consensus sooner.  After too many words (why am I so long-winded) I will leave you to your gastronomic devices, any questions on sous vide corned beef? Leave me a comment and I’ll hit you back.

*One final note: I will be on vacation away from the land of technology in the coming weeks. I haven’t forgotten about my amazing readers, I just need a bit of r and r.  When I return I’ll be back with a vengeance, but in the meantime please enjoy this lovely springtime and join me in a virtual clinking of wine glasses. Salute, Linda :)

All three men in my life love meat.  The cat loves it for innate canine reasons that I can’t fault.  My husband loves it so much an ex once broke up with him because she thought his diet was excessively carnivorous.  My 18 month-old toddling bundle Bentley Danger gnaws on steak above chocolate, leading me to believe it somehow runs in the family.  It’s slightly appalling to me given the fact that I only started eating meat several years ago and I still view it as more of an accoutrement than a centerpiece, but I guess boys will be boys. 

In an effort to satisfy their primal desires I try to make a red meat-focused dinner at least once a week.  I get bored of filet mignon on the barbie which is what I think Jonas would prefer; from Angus to Kobe he just really enjoys that umami richness.  I’m forever dousing steaks in tamari, garlic, ginger, even hoisin sauce, which makes them tender, flavorful, and often decidedly un steak-like, according to Jonas.  I decided to treat him to a serious dose of unadorned meat, but went with lamb because I think it has so much more natural flavor than good-ole beef. 

I didn’t do much to pull this dinner together, in fact sometimes the simpler the better, I’ve found.  Just a quick smattering of salt and pepper, a vacuum seal in the sous vide, and a two hour cooking period at 134°.  Once I took the chops out of their bath and let them rest for a spell, I torched them on all sides with my overly-miniature crème brulee torch.  This helps to take the anemic pink-grey hue away, but it also caramelizes and seals in the meaty flavor. 

I served the lamb chops with healthy broccoli and cauliflower, but I couldn’t let it be that boring so I whisked together a cheddar cream sauce in which to douse the veggies.  They were happy to be covered by a layer of cheesy goodness, meanwhile my family had our calcium requirement satisfied in a rich and creamy way.  This simple, satisfying meal is the kind that makes me miss my kitchen when I’m away. It’s relatively easy to pull together with the right equipment, yet elegant in its homey ease.

Ok ok, I know I have a wee obsession with duck eggs.  I am seeking proper care to cure my addiction, but in the meantime I want to share yet another showcase meal featuring the lovely oval gems.  I present to you sous vide duck eggs on a bed of wilted greens flanked by butter egg biscuits and drizzled in Meyer lemon hollandaise.  Sexy factor is high on this one since you’ve got all sorts of beautiful consistencies playing off each other for a smooth mouthful. 

I am slowly but surely becoming more confident in my abilities with emulsion sauces.  Whenever you have a short ingredient list yet something beloved practically the world over, you know proper technique is what elevates the dish to excellence.  It is the same with hollandaise.  Use only the freshest egg yolks (duck in my case), creamiest unsalted butter, and Meyer lemons if you can get them. A Meyer lemon is sweeter and less acidic than a typical lemon.  This plays nicely with the custardy yolk/butter sauce because it adds just a hint of sweetness to take off the eggy edge.  If the hollandaise recipe you like calls for sugar, I would omit or decrease the amount if using Meyer lemons.  Once you have a nice custard-like texture to the egg yolks inside the double boiler, add butter that has been frozen and chopped into ½” cubes, whisking each cube in one at a time.  You can stop adding butter when you have the consistency you like, don’t keep going with the butter or your hollandaise will be runny; especially once you add the lemon juice.  I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but be judicious with the salt.  The sauce will already have a deep, rich flavor, and you don’t want to mask it with excessive salt. 

Some folks like their wilted greens braised in red wine, perhaps with a touch of caramelized shallot or garlic, but this dish has so many competing flavors I wanted the greens to serve as a backdrop.  I merely steamed them for four minutes and packed them on the plates in heaping mounds.  Use more than you think you’ll need- spinach always wilts to nothing.  The real star in this dish is the sous vide egg.  Jeffrey Steingarten believes the perfect egg is one that has been prepared sous vide, and I hate to belabor the point but I agree with him.  I do mine somewhere between a soft and hard boil at 150° for 45 minutes.  When you crack through the skin and reveal the soft egg it will be all you can do to keep yourself from eating it before it hits the plate.  Resist that urge- egg, spinach and hollandaise are an unreal combination that belong on the dinner plate together. 

I flanked the dish with some fresh biscuits almost as an afterthought, but I ended up glad I did.  I threw an egg into the biscuit dough this time just for fun and wow, does it ever make for fluffy bread.  The baking powder I’ve always used makes for a predictable, acceptable leavening, but the egg addition creates a different animal altogether- like a biscuit soufflé.  This dish in its entirety is knock-your-socks-off delicious- something you should probably only serve for immediate family since you don’t want to be embarrassed in front of dinner guests when you inevitably lick the plate.

You have probably heard that saying “once you go black you never go back?” Well I recently went on a mission to discover if that was also true in the fowl family.  One of my favorite places in Seattle, Uwajimaya, sells black Silkie chickens.  I’ve been eyeballing their lush, purple- black skin for a few months now but I wanted to make something of them that would truly showcase their ebony splendor.  Silkie chickens are one of the oldest breeds of chicken, and the most well-documented and earliest mentions come from China.  They are prized today for their downy white plumage said to be as soft as silk- hence their name, Silkie.  From a culinary perspective they are most frequently seen in Chinese dishes such as soups and stews, but not very usual in Western culture.  I don’t mean to generalize, but I feel this is because they lack the over-bloated unnatural abundance of flesh most Westerners now expect on the genetically modified animal commonly known as a chicken. 

The texture of Silkie meat is tougher and more sinuous than most of us are used to, so going into the project I wanted to cook them in a style that would complement rather than overshadow this.  I decided a long slow cook at a low temperature would probably soften up the flesh, so I employed the use of the Sous Vide Supreme.  Though they are common in Chinese brothy soups, I don’t have a lot of experience with that, so I decided to incorporate Thai ingredients like coconut milk, galangal, lemongrass and lime leaves.  Without an insanely expensive vacuum sealer you really can’t seal too much liquid into the sous vide bag along with your meat, but my Foodsaver can accommodate a can of coconut milk if I press the seal button before too much liquid seeps up into the heat-sealing element.  If you have a Foodsaver and want to try this, here is a little trick I’ve discovered. When sealing liquids, bring the Foodsaver to the edge of the counter and hang the bag you want to seal off the edge.  Insert the edge to be sealed into the Foodsaver, but make sure the bag is hanging far below it, this way you will have gravity on your side and very little liquid will seep up into the element while allowing more air to be removed. 

Back to the Silkie.  Most Asian grocers sell Silkies with the head and feet attached, so if this is a problem of squeamishness for you a Silkie may not be your best bet.  The beauty of including the head and feet is that they give a significant amount of intense flavor and depth to whatever you’re cooking, especially in a braise or sous vide preparation.  What I am saying is don’t remove them, at least until you serve the dish as their flavor is prized, so work with it, not against it.  I butterflied my Silkie for more even cooking, then tossed it in a large Foodsaver bag.  I added a can of coconut milk, several rounds of lemongrass, an equivalent amount of galangal, three lime leaves, a Thai chili, some cilantro, a quartered fennel bulb, four cipolline and some salt.  Then I sealed the bag using the technique described above and immersed in the sous vide bath at 170° for seven hours.  I pulled the bag from the bath, cut it open and put the coconut milk, flavorings and fennel into a small stockpot.  I added a cup of chicken broth and set it to simmer over medium low heat in order to fully marry in the chicken broth.  Meanwhile, I set a large ovenproof skillet over medium heat inside which I placed a generous tablespoon of duck fat.  Once sizzling I added the chicken, skin side down.  I crisped it for five minutes, and then placed the skillet and chicken in a 400° oven for 10 minutes without moving the chicken at all.  At this point I removed the feet, placed the chicken in serving bowls, and poured the broth and veggies over it. 

The texture of the meat was unlike any fowl I’ve ever tasted, but perhaps the closest would be a Cornish game hen.  There is not a lot of meat on Silkies, really just a few bites of breast (which is more like turkey dark meat) and if you’re really resourceful a nibble or two on the legs and thighs.  The skin crisps up nicely, and reminds me a little of duck confit.  The real treat was the powerful flavor slow-cooking the bird imparted on the brothy sauce.  In order to enjoy a Silkie I had to forget my usual Western mindset and concentrate on the nuanced essence of the marriage of all the ingredients in the broth.  The Silkie broth seemed almost curative and restorative, like it would be the perfect thing to lap up in the throes of a bad cold. 

This first foray into the mighty power of the Silkie chicken will not be my last.  My head is ruminating with ideas on different ways to showcase the pretty bird, so expect more Silkie scenes in the months to come.  I really enjoyed all the Thai flavors, but next time I’m thinking a slow and low French braise might be interesting.  Also the birds are small enough that I could just confit them whole, crisp up their skin, then splay them on a bed of wilted greens.  The green and black would make such great contrast, much like the creamy white of the coconut milk and fennel against the delicate slate skin.