Cooking Experiment: Salisbury Steak

Sometimes I am remiss in posting when it gets a little bit busy, so I have to post a slew of journal entries to get them all out the door. This is one of those times!

For this particular experiment, I was trying to make salisbury steak, using (if I recall right) a mix of turkey and beef. It wasn't very successful.

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Cooking Experiment: Ginger Beef with Trader Joe's Orange Chicken

I've noticed that when I cook one Chinese food entree and serve it with rice, it just doesn't seem like a fully finished dinner. That, it turns out, is because eating at Chinese restaurants has trained me to expect several entrees! So for this dinner, I simplified my cooking by using Trader Joe's Orange Chicken, and made ginger beef with asparagus.

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Cooking Experiment: Teriyaki Pork Chops

I've been trying to perfect my pork chops... I think I've finally succeeded. This is a kind of tricky approach, and takes a lot of time, but it's perfectly tender and delicious.

I made a teriyaki marinade first, then I put each pork chop (0.5 lbs, bone in) into a bag and froze it overnight before vacuum sealing. If you have a vacuum sealer that allows you to seal with a marinade, your job is a lot easier. I totally should have gotten one of those.

Then I sous vide'd for about 5 hours-- I'd suggest longer, like 6 or 7 hours if you're heating from frozen-- at 134 degrees. Once that was done, I stuck it in the fridge for a couple hours before finally searing it in a hot pan at 2 minutes on each side. This step is the difference between the last time I tried sous vide pork chops, which came out a bit too firm, and real tender meat. Cooling the meat down like this means the heat won't penetrate as far when you're searing it, so you can get the outside crispy and just warm the inside.

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Eating Out with Kagetsume: Pictures of Food

Poor kagetsume was forced to come out here several weeks-- and not even two weeks in a row, but they brought him out one week, sent him back, then brought him back again just a few weeks later. On top of that, he had to spend a night in an airport because flight delays made him miss a connection, and the airline wouldn't comp him for it. Jeez!

While he was out here though, we did make it to several restaurants, where I took some pictures of food. Because, you know, people love food pictures, right?

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Eating Out with Family: Tai Pan Dim Sum

Almost done with the food-related part of my journal flood! Here are a couple of pics of a dim sum outing that I undertook with relatives. We were pondering where to eat, and I mentioned that I'd been wanting a dim sum restaurant that brought you entrees cooked and brought right to your table, rather than from carts where you have to guess what you're getting. I browsed about on Yelp a bit and Tai Pan cropped up.

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2015 Cherry Blossom Festival and Bacon Chocolate (Redux)

Around this time of the year, the Cherry Blossom Festival crops up in San Francisco, and dracosphynx shanghai'd me once again.

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Catch-Up: Food and a Fairy at the Fleadh

Almost done with catching up! ^_^

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Cooking Experiment: Croissant Bites

Maybe you remember that back in December, I took a class in croissants.

Well, they sent me home with a third of a croissant dough, and it's been sitting in my freezer ever since. So I decided since this was a weekend where I had nothing else I needed to cook, having stocked plenty of "prepared meals" (a fancy term for 'intentional leftovers') I would finally get around to using it. But how to use it? Well... I did have some sausages that hadn't been used in a while (in the freezer) so I could thaw those out too...

I rolled the dough out and cut it up into inch squares, then placed them on a baking sheet to proof in the oven for a while. Then I put slices of chicken-apple sausage on each one. Here's what they looked like prior to baking.

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