Meatza!

So I believe I first read about this on freetheanimal.com, which is a paleo blog.  For anyone who has read up on the paleo diet and is a foodie, the thought of giving up all grains and the tasty foods that they are in can be overwhelming.  For me, one of the biggest things I would miss is pizza.  And there have been many attempts to create a paleo-friendly pizza, including ones with cauliflower crust, coconut-flour crust, etc.

But none have really whet my appetite as much as the meatza!  Basically, a meatza is a pizza with a meat crust.  How could it get any better than that??  Let's find out ...

First, I started with not just ground beef, but ground Italian sausage (spicy version, of course).  I love eating this stuff, especially for breakfast.  But it is rather oily ... so I think it's not the best suited for this application.  Spread it out like a crust (rectangular is optional but easiest since most of the packages of ground meat come in a rectangle) and put it in the oven at 350 degrees F for approximately 10 minutes, until browned like this:

Yeah ... a bit too much oil there for my tastes, so I soaked some of it up with some paper towels.

While the ground sausage was cooking, I sauteed some chopped shallots over medium heat with a little butter until they were cooked through.

Then I spread some tomato sauce, grated cheese, and the sauteed shallots on top of the ground (cooked) sausage base.  Back into the oven at 350 for approx 8 minutes!

Fresh out of the oven - mm looks really tasty!

I have to say, this was quite delicious.  I would definitely make this again (and I have!).  It makes me not miss pizza that much.  A couple of variables I have played with:
 - Trying to get the bottom of the "crust" more done
 - Using less fatty meat so that the bottom is more crust-like
 - Adding different cooked and raw toppings

Quick Slow Cooker Dinner

Using a slow cooker is a great way to save time and money, especially in winter, when stews are awesome.  Coming home to a hot meal that requires no preparation after a long day of work is so so nice.

Quick and easy!  I whipped out these ingredients in the morning - leeks, celery, carrots, and stew meat.  Chop chop chop!

Everything into the slow cooker with some salt and pepper and butter (of course).  Set on low and leave for work!

After work - voila!  Tasty meal for all of 10 minutes of prep work.  I think I set my slow cooker to shut off to the "warm" state after about 8-10 hours.

Here's a picture with the flash in case you don't like the other picture.

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!

Cupcake Experiments

So I was having some people over for dinner and wanted to whip up a quick dessert.  I had some cupcake mix but that's so plain.  What else did I have in my fridge?  Lots of eggs and some cream.  So with inspiration from these pictures, what did I do but try and make some different styles of creme brulee cupcakes!

I decided that there were 2 different methods I was interested in trying:
1. Pre-baking the cupcake slightly and pouring the creme brulee mix on top
2. Pouring the creme brulee mix directly on top of the cupcake batter

Since the cupcake pan has 4 rows, I also tried a normal cupcake batter row and a normal creme brulee mix row.

Here we can see the different cupcake mixes.  The top row was baked for about 5 minutes at 350 degrees F.  The middle row and third row are just cupcake batter and the fourth row has nothing in it yet.

As for the creme brulee mix, I used the first few steps of Alton Brown's recipe (except I didn't have a vanilla bean so I just put in some vanilla extract).  I think it was a mistake to use a hand mixer because of all the bubbles created, but I didn't feel like beating everything by hand with a whisk, so oh well.

Here is after the creme brulee mix has been added to rows 1, 2 and 4.  In the first row it seemed that it mixed slightly but for the most part stayed on top.  If I were going to do it again I would have baked the first row longer before adding the creme brulee.  In the second row, the creme brulee mixed pretty well with the cupcake batter.  As you can see in the fourth row, the creme brulee mix was way too foamy.

Then I proceeded to bake the cupcake platter placed inside a cookie sheet that was half full of water, approximately 30 minutes, until the creme brulee in the fourth row looked set.

A very interesting set of cupcakes, indeed.  As would be expected, the second row looks most mixed.  The creme brulee mix doesn't seem to have sat on the top of the first row, though, probably due to not having baked the underlying cupcake batter enough at first.

A cupcake from the first row.  Oddly enough it looked like the cupcake batter floated to the top around the edges and at the bottom is more of a pure creme brulee mix.  Even though it might not look that appetizing it was quite delicious.

This is a cupcake from the second row.  Much better integration between the creme brulee and the cupcake batter.  This was my favorite by far.  It tasted like a creme brulee flavored cupcake and was super moist.

A normal cupcake from the third row.  I think baking it in a water bath created more steam in the oven, which led to a thicker, more pronounced crust on the top.  The crust also seemed stickier, like it retained more moisture.  Interesting, although I think I'd rather have a normal cupcake in this case.

Overall they were very delicious, as any concoction of egg, sugar, and cream is likely to be.  But I definitely preferred the row 2, mix all at once creme brulee cupcake.

Reheating Sous Vide Beef

Because I've been using sous vide to cook a lot of meat lately, invariably there are leftovers.  So I asked myself, what's the best way to reheat the meat?

Probably the absolute best way would be to bring it back to serving temperature in a water bath.  But that seems like it would take too long.  And waste too many of my plastic bags.

Instead, I decided to try out 3 different methods:

1. Microwave - quick and dirty method normally used for reheating a variety of foods.
2. Pan fry - reheat and get some more crust, but will it overcook it?
3. Blowtorch - reheat the outside very quickly and create additional crust, but will it warm the whole thing?

Here we have 3 pieces of meat straight out of the refrigerator.  You can see the congealed fat (yum!).

Here are those same 3 pieces after each has been reheated according to one of the methods above.  Can you guess which piece was reheated in which manner?

The microwave method took about a minute.  I was afraid of overcooking the meat before heating it to a good temperature since the slices weren't that thick to begin with.  After 30 seconds in a rotating microwave, some of the congealed fat still hadn't melted, so I did an additional 30 seconds.  I heard it pop the second time, so I'm thinking maybe 20 seconds, rest, 20 seconds might be a good amount in the future.

The pan fry method took about a minute on each side once the pan with some butter had been heated to medium low.  I actively pressed down on the meat a bit to create some extra crust.  It certainly smelled delicious.

The blowtorch method took all of 30 seconds.  I torched each side for a little while until it looked like the fat on the outside had all melted and the piece browned a little.

Which method did I like the best?  Surprisingly, it was a tie between the pan fry method and the microwave method.  The pan fry method had an amazing crust but the meat was a bit tougher on the inside.  The microwave method was super tender and definitely the juiciest of the three, but with no crust.

Sadly, the blowtorch method failed to produce a better crust than the pan fry method and also failed to reheat the meat entirely through.

Sous Vide Tri-Tip Roast

I took a different (cheaper) cut of meat, a roast that you would normally (over)cook in an oven or slow cooker for an extended period of time to tenderize it and sous vided it for 24 hours at 146 degrees F.

The result?  Amazingly tender meat!  It seriously tasted like a good steak.

And what was just the icing on the cake of this deliciously prepared steak was the juice from the meat.  Pure goodness ... just like the jellied stock from the brisket post.  Except this time I simply served it on the side, meat au jus!




This meat was also accompanied by some vegetables (shocking, I know ...).  Some swiss chard sautéed with some of the au jus!

Green = good, right??

Finished meal: