Stuffed French Toast

This post goes out to colormemj and was also months in the making.

So in my google reader feed one day, I see one of my friends has shared this article.  I like the looks of it and wanted to try it, so I mention this fact to her and then come to find out that secretly she wanted me to make this for her and that's one of the reasons she shared it on her google reader.  Oh well, I'm a sucker for experimentation.

I couldn't find bread as good as the one in the article, but previously I had used challah bread for french toast with delicious results!

In the first corner baggie, we have some marscapone cheese (couldn't find creme fraiche).  In the second baggie, we have some orange marmalade.  Then I cut the corners, being careful to keep the cuts fairly small, as the area of the opening is proportional to the square of the length of the cut.

Next step: making the incision into the bread.  I need a scalpel, stat!

Trying to squeeze the marscapone cheese and marmalade into the bread with this method was pretty difficult.  So after this picture we had to try and hold the sides of the bread more open.

First attempt: not that much filling made it in?

Ah this method works much better.

Glorious stacks of stuffed bread.

Dipped into a mixture of egg, cream, and a little bit of cinnamon.  Loaf pans work great for this because they're flat, about the size of a slice on its side, and have high walls.

First we must cook the opening for the filling shut!

Multiple pieces!

Ahh, the fruits of our labor. With some bacon for good measure.

I'd say this was definitely a success!  they were quite tasty.  But also, I tried an experimental piece where I actually just sliced two thinner pieces and spread the cheese and orange marmalade between them like a sandwich and then fried them after that and it came out just as good!  It was only slightly harder to cook the pieces together.  In the future I would probably recommend a hybrid approach by slicing most of the way through the bread but leaving it connected at the very top so that the two slices are still sort of a single piece.

Fresh Fish Sous Vide

Haha, wow it's been a long time.  Mostly I've been lazy and super busy at work.  Many of these posts are months old, but I will try to get them all out ASAP.

Recently months ago, I went fishing with a friend and his family.  We had an awesome time and caught a ton of mackerel!

So many that they were jumping out of the cooler!

Ready for transporting home:

I was also schooled in the ways of filleting them:

Back at home, I got out various ingredients to seal up the fish with:

I sliced up the lemons and lime, but just left the thyme whole.

All sealed and ready to sous-vide:

You'll have to excuse my inexactness; I should have written it down.  I believe I sous-vided this for about an hour at 136 degrees F.  I also sous-vided a small pouch of scallops around the same temp for a little bit less time, followed by a light sear:

Yum!

All in all a great meal, although I don't think I would sous-vide the scallops again. I like them just seared in some browned butter. It was interesting to me to see the fish portion of this meal from live wriggling creature all the way to my plate. A delicious adventure. Thanks to the JeffCP's family for taking me fishing with them!