An experiment with new equipment. Weekday steak dinner.

Got 318g of 2 pieces of F/R tenderloin at about $11. Basically, a very ordinary cut of meat that is usually fairly tough if you just pan fry. Next time will try with a "gourmet" version.

Meat was very lean so I put in a couple of pieces of bacon to add fat. Otherwise, it was just salt, pepper and a small piece of rosemary. About 5 hours (from frozen meat) starting from room temp to 60C.

I then added a fairly heavy layer of char on the pan to finish. The sauce was the juices from the pack + a few 100 ml of chicken stock (no beef stock) + a couple of hundred ml of wine. The sauce was thickened with potato starch.

Result : meat had reasonably pleasing char on the outside, inside was still medium (with some pink). Reasonably tender (but could stand more time in bath to make it more tender). Sauce was decent. Appearance wise, the meat didn't look that promising, but taste was pretty reasonable, maybe even good.

Overall, good for a dinner made for about $15 (for veg, had steamed head of brocolli and corn. Also had bread).

Modernist char siew

Tastes lovely and very tender. Meat is from pork shoulder with a streak of fat. Nice blend of sweet, tart and savory.

Char Siew marinade was (approximately and to taste):

• 2 tablespoons light soy sauce and 1 tablespoon dark soya sauce
• 2-3 tablespoons of hoisin
• 4 tablespoons honey
• My 5 spice powder approximation: rosemary sprig, fennel seeds, cinnamon powder, nutmeg powder, pepper.
• 4 tablespoons shaoxing wine.
• About 1-2 teaspoons of apple cider vinegar (to taste).
• 1-2 tablespoons of Heinz BBQ sauce (for the smokey and tart flavor).

Mix and boil on stove until the marinade runs slowly down the ladle. Stop and cool (it will thicken further).

I brined the meat for a couple of hours before the marinade, but I suspect its not necessary.

Use just enough marinade to coat the meat, reserving the rest. Marinade for a few hours. Then bag it up and cook at 59.8C for 12 hours approximately.

After 12 hours, take out the meat (reserve the sauce in the bag), brush with fresh warmed up marinade and blow torch the sucker until you see moderate char.

Put the sauce in the bag on a pan, pour in the remaining fresh marinade and boil it down. Strain it into a container.

Dinner at home. Football as dessert.

Ran out of titles. Hence "football". Watched Netherlands slaughter Spain 5-1 from recording. Actually dessert (chocolate cake and ice cream) was provided by my brother.

Anyway, dinner tonight was garden salad, boiled corn with butter and black pepper, french style potato salad, roast chicken thighs (for the kids mostly), Bouf Bourguignon (beef stew french style), and home made baguettes.

Beef Stew was basically to recipe except that instead of small onions, i used carrots. Is my best attempt yet at this dish. I think the long low temp stew time helped (about 100C in the oven for about 2.5 hours). This dish calls for tomato puree, and as usual I now always fry this for a few minutes with the veg/mirepoix to caramelize it (the recipe didn't call for it). I like this technique of caramelizing the puree - it may have helped.

The potato salad was boiled mini potatos (and sweet potatos I had on hand), with Tarragon/Wan Sui for herbs. The sausage was a bit unnecessary (did not add to the dish). Dressing was a mix of a couple of tablespoons of white wine, my djion vinegrette and a few spoonfuls of last weeks pesto. I also had thinly sliced raw celery in there for the crunch.

The chicken thighs was my basic brine + roast in oven at 180 (40 mins), then take out and baste with a BBQ sauce/Dijion mixture and put back in the oven, raising the temp for 5mins + a few mins with broiler.

Baguettes were already premade from last week.

Yet another pesto inspired pasta dish

The pesto was made with the following herbs: Wan Sui, Ang Mo Basil, a small corner of fresh fennel and one tomato (sans pulp). Tastes "lighter" and with a better finish I think. The mild tartness of the tomato comes through.

I have lots more pine nuts to use up. I'll try not to post more pesto blogs unless they are different in some way.

This particular pasta dish was done with a small amount of bacon, half a bell pepper, a large handful of cherry tomatos and the remainder of the fennel.