Leftovers :-) where great stuff happens.

Hand roll: Crispy Thai beef, crisp fried Chicken, celery, chive and basil cream cheese and toasted wasabi pea powder.

Crispy Thai Beef: definitely worth trying.

I had gotten a dish at P.F. Changs(yes i know) that caught my interest. It was a stir fry of sorts with small shreds of beef that had a great texture and really great flavor. They were dry but it was in a really good way, almost like a hot savory jerky, only not tough at all. It piqued my curiosity into the makings of a great chewy, crispy beef, and as it sometimes happens my assumptions were right: corn starch is the answer. I decided to try my hand at a crispy beef so off to the supermarket i went.
I decided on a few thin sliced ribeye steaks. Looking back you probably could've gone cheaper in quality and still acheived great results, however i still use the ribeyes. When i got home i broke out my trusty vacuum sealer and compressed them in a 40/60 mixture of pad thai sauce and sweet mirin cooking saki, with a dash of Sriracha hot sauce. just a dash because the mirin is sweet and i didnt want to lose that. you could just as easily marinate traditionally with out vacuum but it cuts your time at least in half, and theyre about 1/4 inch thick so it was a good scenario. Before i threw them in the bags however, instead of pounding them i picked up each steak and use a kind of back and forth yanking motion along the length of the meat(ha, ha, very funny) in order to start to break apart the fibers and thin it out a little its ok to put a few holes in it during this process because its going to ultimately add textural interest to the finished product. The more mangled ones were much better in the end. So moving right along, when they come out of the bag, cut into strips and cover with corn starch while you heat up bout 1/4 incyh of cooking oil in a skillet wait until the starch gets gummy on the beef and fry away! and yes, well done is how i thought it came out best. drain and serve! i paired it with a baby bok choy slaw with mayo, honey, a dash of dijon mustard and lemongrass. sprinkle it all with sesame seeds and you have a great combo that is a really nice presentation.

My epic Tamale fail.

Well i wouldn't call it a COMPLETE failure.. although it was definitely not good. Our friend Dave over at Ridiculous Food Society of Upstate New York did a recent review on a popular brand of canned tamales. and while he wasn't overly impressed with them it got me on that tip. so after work i went and bought some stuff to make some damn tamales as per instruction from some type of southern cooking resource i found on the web. It called for a shredded beef filling in a corn meal dough wrapped in a husk(or wax paper) which you then steam. Well the filling was to die for and i will include a recipe for that because it would be pretty versatile for quesadillas, pizza, omelets even a sandwich. but the finished product was wack:-) too much dough and flavorless, grainy texture that was just not good. i wonder if the amount of work that went into this disappointment will dissuade me from a second trial... i guess we'll see how good those quesadillas are.
So here's the recipe for the filling which was great.
vegetable or corn oil
2 lbs stew beef
1/2 lbs sindonis(or any high quality) loose sweet Italian sausage
3 cloves garlic
1 cup finely chopped yellow onion
1 finely diced jalapeno
i small can fire roasted chiles
1/2 tsp smoked serrano chili powder
1/4 cup fresh chopped cilantro
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1-2 cups beef broth(varies)
1-2 cups beer (varies)

Heat the oil till its hot(almost smoking) Add stew beef and sear for a few minutes until you get a decent amount of browning on one side then reduce heat, stir beef and add sausage. Cook for another couple minutes and add your vegetables and seasonings(not the cilantro). Cook for a while(maybe 10-15 minutes until vegetables are soft, and then add your beer and half of your beef broth it should look like theres quite a lot of liquid in the pan but that's ok. cook for another 10 minutes at a decent simmer and then put it all in a casserole dish, seal tightly with foil and throw it in the oven at 350 for about an hour and a half. When you take it out and uncover it, take out all the large chunks of stew beef which should be pretty tender by now, and chop/shred them and add them back to the sausage and vegetables. now that the surface area has increased you can stir it up, add ur cilantro and add enough beef broth to give it the consistency you're going for. if you want you could also add some tomato paste(which would require more beef broth to compensate for its thickening properties) or some chili sauce or salsa. Enjoi`!

Authentic "wood-fired" pizza crust at home?

one of my favorite publications for cooking is called Cooks Illustrated. It's an add free magazine run by a test kitchen who will take a recipe and make it 200 different ways to find the best way to do it perfectly. Something we've all wished to have the budget for I'm sure. One of my favorites is when they undertook the hard to perfect art of the crisp bubbly wood-fired crust you find coming out of 900 degree ovens in brooklyn. well I'm happy to say its not unattainable in ur own home with the help from our friends in the test kitchen the secret apparently is a few things... numero uno is temp. you gotta crank your biz to 500 degrees which almost all consumer level ovens are capable of. second is a pizza stone, you can get one for cheap at most stores that cater to cooks. i even found one at wal-mart- its not a real high tech item we're talking about here. so maybe the most important part of this equation is the fact that the dough recipe calls for all-purpose flour as well as cake flour, which is lower in gluten. about a 1:2 part ratio, respectively. This allows for the type of texture we're going for, and it worked like a dream.

you put it directly on the stone with a peel(which is one of those big paddles that you see pizza guys using), or you could use a piece of floured cardboard or a cutting board after you've assembled your pie directly on it. i like to use a simple sauce diced tomatoes, sugar and salt, and thick slices of mozzarella as opposed to the grated kind. you'll know when its done. and its fantastic. after you've mastered the margherita style go crazy with the toppings.

And here's the recipe for the dough..

1 1/4 tsp instant yeast
1 cup water(room temp)
1 3/4 cups AP Flour
1 cup cake Flour
1 1/2 tsp Salt
2 tsp Sugar

Preheat oven to 500 degrees F with pizza stone in it.
Mix all dry ingredients in food processor with metal blade, then slowly add water until dough forms sticky ball that comes off the side of the bowl. Divide in half, cover in flour and let rise one hour or until doubled. then make ur pizzas and put directly onto stone with peel or a piece of cardboard. keep an eye on it but it should take about 10-15 minutes.

My first experience with hydrocolloids...

Molecular gastronomy is a term you've probably heard a lot in the past few years, especially if you read about food. Pioneer chefs like Ferran Adria of the world renowned El Bulli or Grant Achatz of Alinea are masters of their trades but will be the first to tell you that foams, encapsulations, meat/vegetable glues or any of the other weapons in the arsenal of the modern kitchen chemist are no substitute for straight-up good-ass cooking and knowledge of your ingredients. Be that as it may, there are a lot of fun things to do that can make a lasting impression on your guests! in this case i had read about a concoction that uses a 2 part alginate solution that when brought together forms a type of "fruit glue".. the trick is that you vacuum seal pieces of fruit in a calcified liquid, and then when you apply the alginate powder, in the presence of calcium it will form a soft gel. We then vacuum seal these stacks of fruit together for a few hours and when they're nicely sliced can achieve gorgeous results, as seen in the photo above. :-) This particular combo was kiwi, pineapple, honeydew and strawberry. I then coated them in melted white chocolate mixed with ground vanilla beans and put them in the fridge to harden.
For the second part of the dish i put some plain yogurt in a mason jar in the pressure cooker and started to carmelize it which is a process in itself, producing a darkier almost nutty tasting result to be later whipped with fresh cold vanilla yogurt. but in the meantime prepared a second alginate experiment...
As said before when sodium alginate comes in contact with calcium it forms a soft gel. but if you mix it with something in small amounts and drop it into a calcium bath properly you can achieve a thin skin around the droplet, in effect making tiny capsules that in proper size can resemble faux caviar. so thats just waht i did-added alginate to a blackberry juice and then used a syringe to drop them into a calcium bath. heres a closeup of the result:

So once we took care of those, held them in the fridge for a short time and sliced our chocolate dipped fruit in half lengthwive with a hot knife to avoid cracking the delicate shell(which i did anyway, FML). Then paired with a dabble of our yogurt, the "blackberry roe" and a sprig of my moms lemon balm a gorgeously plated summer dessert was born :-)

Deconstruction...

Sometimes a different take on a classic is not only a treat in itself but an opportunity to appreciate the original simplicity in a new light. By loose definition, to "decontruct" a dish would be more a function of how its presented to the diner... for instance and example of the cuff(and perhaps a poor one) would be to serve a ceasar salad as a pile of romaine with a grilled baguette, a few shavings of romano and a piece of grilled chicken seperated on the plate but maybe brought together with a drizzle of dressing.. you are essentially serving a salad in a way that puts each of the ingredients on display in their own light. In this case i've partially taken apart a favorite of mine, eggs benedict. the first thing i did was seperate the egg into yolk and white and beat tarragon salt and pepper and a small amount of smoked serrano powder into the white. then put them back together in a pouch of saran wrap in which it will be simmered. The egg actually was a little overcooked this time. In the place of the ham i used a cob-smoked turkey leg from Dakin Farms in Vermont(i had actually just gotten back fomr a road trip), and brought it together with 2 grilled chipotle-lime bacon scones and a lime pickle hollaindaise which i added a small amount of cherry pepper brine to. It was a real treat for me and i wont lie: my actual portion dwarfed the one pictured :-)

First post!

Well, its been a while now i've been thinking about starting a blog about food... i mean there are a lot of things id like to write about, but to me food really defines a part of my personality. In my mothers house growing up the social epicenter of the house was always the kitchen, and a lot of that rubbed off on me. Whether its a few drinks in the yard, a sunday night episode of Entourage, or even just an unexpected guest you can bet my time will be divided between you and the kitchen; I love to feed people. It must be the italian in me. I hosted a large thanksgiving party last year with the help of my friend Nick, and i remember after an entire afternoon of non-stop running around trying to get everything ready, we served dinner and did a toast and i took the opportunity to sneak out on the deck for a much needed smoke break. And i stood there and looked in the window and watched everyone passing around dishes and smiling and being together at the table and for the first time in my life i felt something that my mom and my grandma must have felt every time they sat at the head of the table on christmas or thanksgiving or any given tuesday night: and words fail me to convey that feeling to you, but i can sure as hell write a blog about it :-) Enjoi` - Jay