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 :-).