Sous Vide Pork Belly (plain and char sui)

 Both have a common method.

Both sous vide at 68C.

1. To make pork belly and put into freezer. Use when you need small bits of savoury pork to add to a dish.

2. To make char siu 

For (1), cut the pork into long strips or medium cubes (what ever is the serving size). Season liberally with salt and pepper. Then sous vide at 68C for 24 hours. When done, cool and store separately (including the gelatinous liquid) into seperate bags. When using (e.g. for fried rice), defrost, and cut into slices. Don't throw away the liquid in the bag - use it.

For (2), marinate in Lee Kum Kee char sui sauce. Then sous vide for about 10 hours at 68C. Take it out. Prepare the basting sauce 

- half of it is the marinade.

- add a dollop of BBQ sauce, honey, lemon juice and a wine (shaoxin or other) to taste. (next time will try rose water).

Preheat oven to 300C. Baste the meat once and put into oven. When the sauce on the meat is boiling off and looking a bit sticky, take out and baste once more. Roast until you see charred bits.

Pecan Pie

 Result seems quite nice. Crust at the edges may be slightly too brown.

Make the pie crust roughly as per https://www.davidlebovitz.com/french-tart-dough-a-la-francaise/

With the following modifications.

1. I have 10in dish, so should increase the amount.

2. I used a stove and steel pot, instead of oven. This is also a lot faster.

3. I put pebble weights on the dish, put in the freezer for 10 mins. Then baked in oven at 210C for 10 mins. After that, I remove the weights and bake until slightly brown and set. I wanted to avoid the crust rising and cracking.

I used the pecan pie filling as per https://cookiesandcups.com/easy-pecan-pie-recipe/

Except that I halve all quantities, and use a little less sugar. The intention is to make the nuttiness shine and make it less sweet.

Then I glazed the result with the remaining filling and a brush.

Refine yoghurt recipe

Doing too much on-the-fly. Will now start recording the method, so can refine from there.

Trial 1

1. Bring 3 liters of 2% milk to 92-94 C and keep it in this range for 15 mins. Stir continuously during this time to prevent burning the milk too much.
2. Turn off heat.
3. Add 150g honey and 1/2 tablespoon vanilla essence. Stir it in.
4. Cool milk to around 43 C
5. In sterilized containers, spoon in at least 5% to 10% by volume of a previous yoghurt batch. Or else use store bought yoghurt with live culture. 
6. When milk is cool enough, pour in the milk mixture into the sterilized containers.
7. Cap the containers and put them in a bath at 41C for 8 hours.

Result: texture was pretty good. Slightly sourish, so needs a bit more sweetness. Cannot taste the vanilla. Overall, this is pretty good yoghurt.


Trial 2

Add more sweetness and vanilla essence. Keep everything else the same. i.e

1. Bring 3 liters of 2% milk to 92-94 C and keep it in this range for 15 mins. Stir continuously during this time to prevent burning the milk too much.
2. Turn off heat.
3. Add 180g honey and 1 tablespoon vanilla essence. Stir it in.
4. Cool milk to around 43 C
5. In sterilized containers, spoon in at least 5% to 10% by volume of a previous yoghurt batch. Or else use store bought yoghurt with live culture. 
6. When milk is cool enough, pour in the milk mixture into the sterilized containers.
7. Cap the containers and put them in a bath at 41C for 8 hours.

Result: This is weird. The result is slightly sweeter, but the texture is now slightly runny (which should have been the impact of cooking time and temperature, which I did not change).

Will revert to Trial 1 again strictly. And see what happens.

Trial 3
This one’s the best yet.

Basically the same as trial 1, but ferment in bath for 10 hours instead. Texture is nice and blend of sweet/sour is balanced.