She: Absentee

So, we haven't posted in a while, and in particular I haven't posted in even longer...with good reason. We got married! I can assure you that I had very good reason to ignore the blog. First there was the planning, then the pre-emptive push with my classes for while I was gone. THEN we got married, and then its been catch-up for all the things I couldn't preschedule. But we are back. Its exam weeks now, but I assure you I will be adding posts about some of the interesting food we had while in Hawaii, and some of my stress-baking I did in the weeks prior to the big shebang. But for now, I come almost directly from William Sanoma...

Since its exams week, and photo classes use part of that time in critique, I try to bake stuff for my students. As much as I love cupcakes though, with 100+ students, its too much work. So I bought a mini cupcake pan! I love it when I can buy things with the excuse that I need something for work. I'm not fooling my wallet at all, but it's still fun.

However, that isn't why I'm posting. I'm posting because I think I saw the most ridiculous device ever. The "Peanut Butter & Jelly Spreader". It is a knife. One side is for peanut butter and one for jelly. They are color coded ends, so there is no unwanted mixing of peanut butter and jelly. :| This costs 10 bucks with tax! I KNOW there are some things there we don't need but are great toys: premade pancake mixes, once-a-year overpriced cookie cutters, but a special peanut butter sandwich knife? COOOOOOME OOOOON! If mixing is such an issue, use two knifes, but don't waste money on this!

He: Sous Vide pictures

For anyone that is keeping track of things based on the dates that are posted at the top of the posts...get over it. Sure, I've taken a lot longer than I said I would to put up pictures...what can I say? I'm a king at procrastination...even when it's something that I like.
This first image is the bag of chicken and the seasoning, and the thermometer. The thing that I want everyone to see is the temperature on the thermometer (which is right around 120 degrees). This is lower than the final cooking temperature that was reached several hours later, but important to see nontheless.

The second image is of the bones at the end of the cooking of the chicken. I wanted you to see this to illustrate a principle that happens in meat that everyone takes as law. Chicken meat that is still red is not necessarily undercooked. According to my favorite food scientist/chemist/god to all chefs Harold McGee, 'When meat is heated quickly, its temperature rises quickly, and some of the muscle proteins are still unfolding and denaturing when the pigments begin to do the same. The other proteins are therefore able to react with the pigments and turn them brown. But when meat is heated slowly, so that it takes an hour or two to reach the denaturing temperature for myoglobin and cytochromes, the other proteins finish denaturing first, and react with each other. By the time that the pigments become vulnerable, there are few other proteins left to react with them, so they stay intact and the meat stays red'. Basically what he is saying is that since the myoglobin(the particle in meat that has the color) breaks down so slowly the color never has a chance to react before the molecules that it will react with will already be denatured and unable to cause a reaction to change myoglobin from red to brown. This accomplishment can also be done chemically through sodium nitrite (the salt used to cure meats like bacon), or through normal table salt (if it has enough time in contact with the raw meat). Therefore, with this very slow cooking method that I have presented here, since the meat is raised to a temperature that will kill all errant microbes very, very slowly the myoglobin never has the appropriate proteins to react with to break down.
Oh, to answer the question that was asked about the website of the food chemist that explains how to do sous vide at home it's: www.khymos.com

He: Sous Vide cooking

Okay, what the hell is sous vide, and why in the heck would I want to do it. Sous Vide means 'in a vacuum' in French, and it's been all the rage in high end restaurants for the last several years. Chances are, unless you've dropped a couple hundred bucks for one of those multi-course extravaganzas at a mecca of great food, you've never seen the term....that's okay I will explain.
The principle behind the technique is based in the idea that there is an absolute perfect point, temperature-wise, that you want to bring any protein to where it will be the most palatable. The trick to all of this is best shown by making a custard...creme caramel, creme brulee, or for that matter creme anglaise or even just french toast. With all of the aforementioned dishes there is that idea 'sweet spot' where the egg is just set and the dish is creamy without being runny. I really like the way that Alton Brown explained it in his first book. If you don't have his first book, I'm not going to go through the explanation for you in detail. As always, if you would like the long explanation, please post a comment and I will answer to the best of my ability (just expect to learn a lot more than anyone could possibly want to know).
In terms of the 'sweet spot' for meats, there is some variability depending on the final results that you're after. For the sake of simplicity, and because I don't have any pictures to back up any other meats today, I will just stick to chicken. The ideal 'sweet spot' for chicken is 152 degrees. How did I come to this number you ask? Well, the number is something that many chemists and food scientists that have hated having dry chicken (or for that matter any other poultry) so they did experiments and research into the actual chemical and physical changes that take place. Luckily for me, I didn't have to wade through millions of pages of scientific papers to find out about this 'sweet spot' for America's favorite bird I just checked out the section on meat in Harold McGee's food bible. Okay, I also used this great website written by a chemist that explains how you can scam the true technique for minimal money at home. Again, if you want that link you will have to post a comment.
The pictures that you see are of the last chicken dish that I put together. In the bag are two chicken leg quarters, along with a pile of seasonings. For those of you that wish to attempt this technique here's the other ingredients: Annatto seeds, cumin seeds, black pepper, garlic cloves and bay leaves....oh yeah, and one gallon ziplock freezer bag.
All that you do for this techique is to flash blanch the chicken for 5 seconds in rapidly boiling water to kill external bacteria, and any other nasties that you might not want to have. Stick the chicken in the bag with the seasonings. Suck as much of the air out of the bag as you can(I found that a straw works really well for this). Then all you have to do is drop the bag of chicken into water that is maintaining 152 degrees for at least 6 hours. I want to say that this batch I think I cooked for 36 hours, but who's counting really. 36 hours you say!...is he absolutely deranged? Nope, the chicken never has a chance to overcook because it never exceeds the temperature range of the 'sweet spot' which is anywhere over 160. How did I maintain temperature for that long? Well, the only thing that I did was to add ice cubes if the temperature ever went too high...which happened once or twice....and I'd turn the heat up just a touch if it was too low.
This technique is sooooooooo stinking simple that anyone should be able to make the most succulent chicken of their entire lives this way.

Okay...in the hopes of having something posted, pics or no here it is. The pics aren't up because B won't materialize the cord for our digital camera, and I suck with photoshop. I promise that I will get the cord from her and post very, very soon.

He: Organics, and the price of labeling

This is a post just for me (sorry I'm sure you're hugely disappointed). It revolves around a very annoying conversation and a rather insane idea from a woman that I spoke with yesterday for what felt like an eternity. She wheeled herself up to me in one of those electric shopping carts to ask me if the salt that we were using in the kitchen was organic sea salt or not. In the process of arguing with this woman that the idea of having an organic mineral is just insane, I talked her into looking further into what she is trying to hold as ideals. Coincidentally, organic sea salt is just not possible...or is it?
Does everything in the free world have to have a label in order for it to be good? According to this woman that is hell bent on everything that enters into her body to be organic....yes. For the rest of modern society, should we be looking to organics to save our less than perfect eating habits...no. If you consume 4000 calories a day, and half of that is fast food or something fried covered in cheese...then you deserve to be the fat lazy slob that you are. If you consume that much food, and you're thin as a rail...be happy...the genetics roulette game has come out to your genetic advantage on this one.
I'm not in the best of moods about it all so I won't go into too much more of a rant. I just can't stand the idea of someone trying to hold anyone to some high and lofty standard if they don't actually hold themselves to that standard meaningfully.
Coincidentally, even though there are millions of organic products that are available to me every single day (thank god for California), I buy organic only when it makes sense. If anyone out there really wants to know what I think about it, or as a chef which products I feel warrant purchasing organically..just ask

She: Brandy Gets Creative

We have this problem in our house sometimes. Well, often. My partner tends to eat/use ingredients I've mentally earmarked for a recipe without either buying more or letting me know I need to (grumble, grumble)...typical stuff, really, but when you're halfway thru making oatmeal cookie dough to find most of your oats gone, ya gotta get creative. In the end, it turned out to be a great new recipe and a really unique cookie.
Ingredients:
3/4C butter
1C brown sugar
1/2C sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup oats
1 3/4 C flour
1 cup shredded coconut
1 cup dried tropical fruit (I used a mango/pineapple/coconut mix)


As usual, cream your butter and sugars with the cinnamon. Add eggs and vanilla, and mix in the flour, salt and soda/powder. I mixed in the fruit stuff by hand and baked it at 375 for 10 minutes. This is a chewy cookie that gives a slightly different flavor than a regular oatmeal-raisin does.

She: Pecan Sandies

I think these were the most polished looking and tasting cookies we had over the holiday. I love pecan sandies, and haven't ever tried my hand at them. The recipe I used said that you needed to have a special cookie cutter, but I ignored that for common sense--I just used a small jar lid, about 3 inches diameter.

Ingredients:
3/4 C toasted pecans (3 oz), plus about 2 cups unroasted pecan halves for cookie tops
2/3 C plus 2 tbs powder sugar
1 1/4 C all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter @ room temp
1 tsp vanilla
1 large egg, separated

To toast the pecans, I just put them on a cookie sheet at 400F for about 5 mts and let them cool. Then you take them and your 2tbs sugar and pulse them together in your food processor til they become a fine powder. Then mix it with your other dry ingredients in a bowl. Mix your remaining sugar, butter and vanilla, then add egg yolk. Mix all your ingredients together (minus egg whites and unroasted pecans). My dough was crumbly, but it held when I shaped it into a ball. Then take what you can between wax paper and roll it til about 1/4 inch thick. Use your jar and cut out circles. Brush it with lightly beaten egg whites, and place your pecans on top. Brush that with egg whites too (I think to keep it in place) and stick em in the oven for 12-15 mts at 325F.

She: Striped Cookies

I think I had the most fun this holiday making these cookies. It wasn't really that difficult, but they looked reeeeally pretty, and since I used Scharffenberger cocoa powder the chocolate came thru nicely. I also did all the steps inbetween other cookies, so I wasn't waiting around for stuff to chill. Here's how it goes:

For each of the doughs, you mix the sugar, butter, then egg, and mix with the dry ingredients. It'll be crumbly, so you add the icewater and then roll it in a ball and put it in a container for a half hour. Now you should have 2 cold balls of dough. What you need to do is divide each ball in half. Put it between 2 sheets of wax paper and roll it out to about 8x12 and stick it in the freezer for an hour. Take off the paper and stack each dough (alternating vanilla and chocolate) so you have 4 stacks. Cut those stacks in half and place that on top so you have 8 layers--I used a rolling pin to press them together lightly. Trim off the excess and cut your stacks into 1/4 inch thick cookies. I baked mine for 12 minutes at 375.

VANILLA DOUGH:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (about 5 1/2 ounces)
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 large egg yolk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons ice water

CHOCOLATE DOUGH:
3/4 cup all-purpose flour (about 3 1/3 ounces)
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 large egg yolk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons ice water