My new electric pressure cooker

I am sufficiently happy with this appliance to introduce this at last.

An electric pressure cooker. I've done rice, porridge, duck soup, lentil soup (3x), beef stock and even caramalized onions in it. 

Cost about 230 SGD, and it also came with 2 pots. A non-stick one and a steel one (which can be used over a stove top fire - e.g. to sweat veg).

Kiam Chye Ark (Pickled Mustard Greens Duck Soup)

This turned out quite nicely. mw and I finished most of the soup.

I had the entire center carcass of a whole duck (i.e. without the wings/thighs). I took it out while semi-thawed and removed the skin (easier to remove). I then blanched it in boiling water and then put it in a pressure cooker with 200g of well washed kiam chye (15 minutes with 3-4 changes of water), 2 tomatoes, 4 pieces of garlic, 2 small thumbs of young ginger (sliced), a small handful of peppercorn and 1.5 sour plums. Pressure cooked for 25 minutes in my new electric pressure cooker.

The duck meat was still just tender, providing some chewiness.

First attempt at home made ice cream

No machine involved.

Used 1:1 ratio of milk and heavy cream plus a generous glug of limoncello and 4 vanilla pods.sugar was 200g for the 400 ml of milk I used. Used 10! Eggs - which is perhaps a overkill (used a chefsteps recipe). I found out later that the number of eggs used can be highly variable and affect the texture of your ice cream.

Another finding : do this at lest once day ahead as the freezing is very slow. 

Result. Tastes nice to me but texture was a bit too soft and melts easily. Next time I will halve the eggs and perhaps use more milk. But I need to remember to hand churn more (this mixture I used is resistant to large ice crystals). 

Adults generally said its nice, but my brothers kids thought it "tastes like medicine" prob due to the limoncello.

R

Homemade vanilla essence anyone?

I had some freezer bagged vanilla pods lying in my fridge for a few years (literally) forgotten. I got these cheap from Bali when I was last there. They probably aren't the best quality, but if anyone wants some vanilla essence 8 weeks from now, hands up, supply me a container and I'll decant some for you.

Cook out on my day off

This is what I did today.

1. Vacuum packed carrot pickles (result out tomorrow - not pictured).
2. Pumpkin Ginger Puree.
3. A repeat of my lentil soup with a variation (not pictured).
4. Caramelized onions (done in a pressure cooker!).
5. Steak with a  black pepper sauce.

For (1), its basically a salt and vinegar with herbs saline solution poured over carrot batons and put to pickle in a vacuum box. Result tomorrow.

For (3), I repeated my lentil soup, but with bacon (instead of lap cheong) and barley and cooked for 20 mins in a pressure cooker. I also put in a dollop of creme fraiche. Its even nicer now. Goes very well with a pinot noir.

For (2), simmer pumpkin pieces in a milk+coconut cream+shredded ginger soup. Then blend the mixture to a puree (discarding most of the soup). This one also tasted pretty nice but was not as thick as I wanted. The next time, I think I will add a potato (for the starch).

For (4), pretty amazing when I learnt I could do it in a pressure cooker! Just julienne 2 onions, stuff into a canning jar mixed with about 0.6g of baking soda. Add small cubes of butter. Then loosely screw the jar and pressure cook for about 20 mins. The result was the onions really caramelized nicely. I strained out the liquid and used it for the steak sauce. Both the onions and the liquid were very fragrant.

For (5), the steak was not as tender as I desired, and taste was so so. Next time I will really low temp cook it for overnight. The sauce was a half and half mix of beef stock and onion liquid with starch, crushed black pepper and a dollop of creme fraiche, reduced till slightly thick and then strained. This sauce also very nice.

My plating still sucks :-).

Second try at poaching eggs

Looks nicer now. I used a soup ladle to contain the egg.

Must warn myself not to use a hot soup ladle though (use a cold one). My second egg had whites sticking to the ladle. i.e. wash and cool the ladle between uses.

Bacon wrapped dates

Saw this in cold storage and bought to try. I have memories of a bacon wrapped tapas some years ago in Seattle.

The date itself is quite nice. I tried 2 versions, one with just bacon over the date and the other where I soaked the date in apple cider vinegar for a few minutes. The vinegar soaked one won.

Beef stock in a pressure cooker

I've always been put off doing beef stock because of the length of time required, but I'm inspired to do this using a pressure cooker now.

Brown the oxtail (500g) with 2 tbspn oil in a 190C oven for about 40 mins. Brown minced beef (200g) with some bacon in the same pan. Then put the lot in the pressure cooker with water to cover, sliced leeks, onions, carrot, celery stalk, herbs and a small glass of fruity red wine.

First attempt at a new style of mashed potatoes

Instead of steaming or boiling the potatoes separately, just try simmering them in milk+butter+cream.

The taste is excellent but the texture is poor. I'm going to retry the next time by using more milk to cover the potatoes completely and simmer longer (40 mins?). Then take out the potatoes and mash them separately with some of the milk it was simmered in.

There's butter, creme fraiche in this too, along with a dash of nutmeg and salt.

Would you believe I have never poached an egg before?

Well, here's my maiden attempt. The first one is sorta ok'ish looking. The second one, the yolk just separated from the whites.

Delicious with fresh black pepper. But then, I'm a sucker for eggs.

Just to record.

1. boil water till bubbles form in a pot with a good amount of water and some salt.
2. Remove pot from heat.
3. Put the egg into a soup ladle. Gently lower the ladle into the water and release the egg gently.
4. Wait for about 3 mins (if from fridge, a little longer).
5. Scoop out with ladle and transfer to a sieve and drain the excess water.

I think my eggs aren't very good. When I hard boiled them, from this batch, in a previous time, the yolk just goes to the outside of the egg - it doesn't stay centered. I need to find a good source of eggs.

Second round. Duck porridge with loh

With the loh from the previous round, I did a second round of loh ark again, this time with some braised veg and porridge.

The duck was better and so was the egg (the yolk was v. nice since its not over cooked).

Overall though, I've done loh bak the regular way before and the taste wasn't much different, so maybe its not worth the trouble (except for the eggs - which had a nice texture).

Simple but nice night snack

A thin slice of hard bread from Cedele, half a slice of prosciutto ham (shredded), grated parmesean cheese and a little extra virgin olive oil. Toast for about 5 mins till cheese melted and bread browned. Ground black pepper on top.

Simple, but really nice, with a glass of milk.

An attempt at Modernist Loh Ark

Mixed result. I'm guessing its not a lot better (if any) than braised duck done the normal way - not sure if worth the trouble.

Duck leg and wing. Loh at 74C for about 10 hours (from frozen braise) overnight. The egg and tau kwa was basically just put into the loh after cooking and left in the fridge for 8-10 hours. After coming home, just reheat.

Result:
- meat is fairly tender (not too tender luckily) and tastes ok. In fact, tastes good with a little Shiracha chilli sauce. Looks a bit unprepossessing, but I think that's partly my cutting skill with the leg and wing.

- Egg white almost crumbled into the braise. I think it is partly the egg and partly the fact that loh needs a slightly overcooked egg when I tried to use a just barely cooked one. I also think just leaving it in the braise without cooking is probably not the right thing to do.

- Loh itself is ok, not great, slightly salty - tastes ok with rice.