one pot lunch

Took 15 mins, if you don't count the home made pesto, which was done yday.

Boil (11 min) pasta in salted water. 7 mins remaining, add the egg in shell. 5 mins remaining, add the frozen broad beans. Take out egg, cool, and peel. Take out the rest, and toss with pesto.

Potato Rosti

Not too bad. The outside was crisp and non oily. Inside was potato'y and tender. Critical advice was followed from this recipe:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2011/oct/13/how-to-cook-perfect-rosti

Basically, I boiled the potatoes in their skin the night before and placed in the fridge. Only the next morning, did I shred them.

One note: actually I think one large potato is enough for a moderate 2 person breakfast (with fruits etc). 

Spanish Tortilla

This was a hit too tonight.

http://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/spanish-tortilla

I took a hint from the above link to first slowly cook the potatoes and onions/bell pepper in lots of oil (basically braise it in oil). Then cool it and mix it into the egg mixture.

(I reused the oil for the porchetta)

I then cooked it for the first part of the combined eggs/potatoes/onions in the pan, then finished it off in the oven under the broiler. As this was my first time, I monitored the temp - when it hit 55C, I transferred it to the pre heated broiler and took it out when it was browned and the internal temp is 69C. Residual cooking did the rest.

69C is probably too high - the temp would continue to rise for a while. I might take it out at a lower temp - say 65C - just to get some runny parts in the dish.

Porchetta

I followed fairly closely to the recipe in the following link: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/12/the-food-lab-deep-fried-sous-vide-36-hour-all-belly-porchetta.html

It was delicious.

Couple of problems.
1. The skin of the pork belly, while crispy, seemed a little thin? Perhaps its the cut.
2. The use of all that oil in the deep fry seems a waste and messy.

I'll repeat this again, but without the deep fry. I'll use the oven at 300C and see what happens.

The sum of parts is worth more than the whole

$9 chicken rendered into the component parts. Cheaper than buying the separate parts.

I think I'm getting neater and faster also. Just need maybe 10 more chickens to practice on!

Fried potatoes

There's an alternative way to have your potatoes. Fry them.

Slice the potatoes into approximately 3cm slices. Make sure they have flat tops on both sides. Then par cook the potato slices in heavily salted water until a fork inserted goes fairly easily in (but not too tender or they'll fall apart). Drain the potatoes and shake them a bit to get a bit furry. Then fry the potato slices in a pan under high to medium high heat till brown.