So, I do have pictures to post, but the holidays descended upon us, and then the plague struck… it’s been a little busy.

But one of our family traditions is to eschew the insanity of Valentines Day, in favor of just having a nice steak dinner at home.  This year, we’re utilizing our AMAZING butcher shop and got some excellent looking ribeye steaks.

And we’re going to Sous-Vide them.  Sous-Vide basically means ‘vacuum seal your dish in a bag, and dump in water to cook’.  The trick is that water needs to be at a pretty tight temperature band.  We want our steaks medium rare, so the water bath is between 131 and 133 degrees Fahrenheit.

After that, you get a skillet rocket hot (cast iron for this), and sear each side for up to 30 seconds a side.

And the results?

Awesome.

Perfect 2 MILLIMETER crust/sear, 26mm of perfectly medium rare meat, 2mm of crust.  Everything was great.

How can you do this?

Hardware:

1. Tall Stock Pot
2. Good skillet (Cast Iron of Stainless steel)
3. Probe thermometer
4. Some way to vacuum seal the steaks (hack way: zip top bag, and a straw to suck air out)

Process:

1. Mix 1/2 teaspoon salt with 4 heaping tablespoons of minced garlic.
2. Put steak (refrigerator tempurature, not frozen) in vacuum seal bags, spread garlic/salt mix on both sides of steak.
3. Seal bag.
4. Fill stock pot 3/4ths to the top.  Put probe of probe thermometer in water, heat water to 125 degrees, drop heat to the lowest setting, and set temp alarm on the probe thermometer to 133 degrees.
5. Put steaks (in bags) into the water.
6. Whenever the temp alarm goes off, add 1 cup of cool/room temp water.  Temp should go down 2-3 degrees, and start climbing again.  I was going ~10 minutes between cool downs.  You may have to remove some hot water though as the process continues.
7. sous-vide steak for at least 1 hour.  You can go up to 4 hours. (there’s a chart out there which correlates thickness to length of time, but after 1 hour, you’re good
8. Open bags, rinse off steaks, pat steaks dry.
9. Take the skillet, put on stove top, set to MAX heat, let it get hot.
10. Sear steaks for up to 30 seconds per side.
11. Serve.  (No need to rest the meat)

It’s easy.

Now that some of you have your “Sam” fix, I can get back to our cooking experiments.  When I last wrote we were discussing The Dutch Oven Cookbook.  We have done a few more recipes for the book, and here they are.

Maple-Glazed Roasted Root Vegetables

This recipe ROCKED!  We have made it several times and maybe tweeked it just a bit.  We were introduced to a new spice called Garam Masala.  Those of you who cook indian food will recongnize it.   We actually added a little bit of hot sauce to this just to round out the flavor a little bit.  The original recipe follows.

1 medium sweet potato, peeled and cubed
2 medium parsnips, peeled, halved, and cut at an anle in 1-inch slices
2 medium turnips, peeled and stemmed
2 large carrots, peeled and stemmed
4 large shallots, peeled, stemmed, and halved
3 Tbsp Olive Oil
3 Tbsp Maple Syrup
3 Tbsp Brown suger
1/2 tsp of grated Nutmeg
1 tsp of garam masala
Salt and Pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 F

In a small bowl combine the olive oil, maple syrup, brown sugar, nutmeg, garam masala, salt, and pepper.  Pour the mixture over the root vegetable that are combined in a 5 1/2 quart dutch oven.  Roast uncovered for 30 minutes or until fork tender.

Now we did ours in a 9×13 pyrex pan and found that we needed to roast it for an hour or so before the vegies were tender.  We also added a little hot sauce to the wet mixture the second time we made this, and it did improve the flavor for us.

Flank Steak is cheap, and we can get at least two meals out of one piece, so it’s a great thing to play with.  That, and if you do it well, you’re in for a tasty hunk-o-beast.

Marinade:
~6oz Soy Sauce
~2oz Lemon Juice
1 teaspoon minced garlic
Some other spices to taste, but not much, and not cumin.

1 Flank steak ~2-3 lbs
~2 tablespoon whole cumin
3-4 pinches of a course salt

Mix up the marinade. Put the flank steak into a zip-top bag, add the marinade, remove as much air as you can, and park in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.

Take the flank steak out of the marinade, place on a cutting board, lightly salt the side facing up, and then put half the cumin on the steak. This should be a pretty hefty coating of whole cumin, but you should still see the steak. Also, the cumin shouldn’t be piled up on itself. Pat it down, and then repeat the salt and whole cumin on the other side.

Heat a skillet over medium-high heat. Once up to temp, place the steak in the skillet, and cook for 4-5 minutes. Flip the steak, cook for another 4-5 minutes, and then place the steak in aluminum foil to rest for 5 minutes.

Cut long and thin strips, against the grain, and if possible, on the bias. Serve 3-4 strips to a serving and enjoy.

Both Sandra and I are foodies, and I got somewhat inspired by Brandy’s Foodie blog, so I’ll throw this out there:

Inspired Pork Marinade:

3 cups Orange Juice
1 Cup Soy sauce
1 tablespoon heaping of minced garlic (3-4 cloves)
1 tablespoon of cumin
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon of Garam Masalla (not required, but nice)
1 Pork tenderloin (~3lbs)

I put all the marinade ingredients together into a large measuring cup usually and ideally, you stash that in the fridge for an hour or two to let the flavors marry. Two to three hours before cook time, you take out the pork and cut it into 1″ medallions. I usually put these (1 layer deep) into two 9×6 pyrex dishes with lids.  Cover with the marinade, put the lids on, and place in the fridge until cook time.

Cooking is easy… take a heavy skillet (This is one of the few times you should NOT use cast-iron… the acid in the orange juice will damage the cure) over medium-high heat, put 5-6 of the medallions in, and cook for 1 and a half to two minutes on each side.  Aim for medium rare (Modern pigs are safe to eat this way… 20-30 years ago? Not so much).

Every time I’ve made this, I’ve gotten rave reviews.  I’ll sometimes mess with the spices somewhat… cumin is always there, Garam Masalla is a new favorite, paprika (smoked if you’ve got it) is good, adding a few squirts of Chulua hot sauce is not a bad idea either.

Okay, so here is an update on the cookbook journey Jason and I are undertaking. We’ve decided to one cookbook a month. This will ensure that we don’t just try one recipe and make a judgement on the whole book. Our first choice to start in is the Dutch Oven cookbook. We picked this up last year on our way to Nashville.   We went up in July and of course I was very pregnant at that point and had to stop a couple of times on the trip to walk around, use the bathroom, and well etc.  On I-24, just off of the South Pittsburgh exit there is a Lodge Outlet store.  Both Jason and I wanted to try to find it and see what we would discover.  We really do love our cast iron.  (Ask us about The Hammer sometime.)  So we find the store and we were impressed by the quantity and variety of cast iron they had.  In fact they even had a wok.  Seriously?  A cast iron wok?  This thing was so heavy, but it would be a great heat conducter.  I want it just because.  Anyway this is where we found the Dutch Oven Cookbook.

Our first recipe was Yukon Gold Potatoe and Leek Soup.   I ended up making a double recipe, so we could freeze some to have later.  Overall we liked the soup, and after a day in the fridge it tasted a little better.   Even with the comingling of flavors we would do some tweaking of the recipe.  For example the leeks are sauted in olive oil.  Better would be leeks sauted in butter and bacon grease.  (sorry Mom, but it really would taste yummy)  We would also add some more salt and pepper to the mix.  We might even add some crisp bacon as a finish just before serving.  Admit it, bacon just makes a lot of things better.

This cookbook has a huge variety to recipes, so look back to see what we make next.

Jason and I both love to cook. This would be very apparent to anyone who saw our wedding registry. Life got interesting last year when I got pregnant and Jason had to pick up most of the cooking duties. I decided that chicken and salmon were gross, and I would no longer deem them acceptable eats. Jason thought that I had lost my mind about not liking salmon anymore, but I was firm in my belief that it was gross. Needless to say trying to fix food for a pregnant woman can test the fortitude of even the greatest of men. Jason really did do a great job keeping me feed and indulging some of my cravings. That brings us to the cookbooks. I love reading cookbooks and pick out what I want to make, but…..I just never get it done. Jason also likes the cookbooks, but never seems to go to them for inspiration. That is about to change. We are challenging ourselves this new year. We are going to pick a cookbook and make a new recipe each week. We haven’t decided if we will use a cookbook for a month with a new recipe each week or a different cookbook each week. I think the Japanese cookbook will be interesting.

By the way I am eating chicken again.