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.