For a change, we hosted the New Year’s Eve celebration. It was low-key and broke up well before midnight. (Blame my farm girl genes and my 5:30 am swim for that.) The menu was paella with chicken and Spanish chorizo, sous vide parsnips, salad, crusty bread, and chocolate cake. As an appetizer, I made bacon jam and brie phyllo cups. These were well received.
The next day we had leftovers that needed to be repurposed. The chicken thighs had all been consumed from the paella, so Julian suggested fried paella for lunch. This is similar to Chinese fried rice, with eggs scrambled in at the end. This was successful. For dinner I made a red lentil soup and threw in the crunchy sous vide parsnips. These softened up nicely with additional cooking. The soup also served as my lunch at work for the rest of the week. Gemisch is good.
Julian got me a sous vide stick and cookbook for Christmas. This particular device is made by Chef Steps, a Seattle-based company that was recently acquired by Breville.
The Chef Steps Joule.
The principle of sous vide is to cook food at a lower temperature for a longer period of time in a water bath. The temperature is high enough to kill bacteria. The food is sealed in a bag (sous vide is French for under vacuum) and submerged in the water bath. The temperature and time of cooking is controlled by cell phone for this model. As with many apps, the basic function and some recipes are free. If you want the “full experience”, you pay extra. And you get daily spam.
Our experiments thus far have been mixed. First, we “poached” two eggs in the shell for an hour. The results were too drippy for Julian to eat. (This is how a friend of ours pasteurized eggs for his aged eggnog.) The second experiment was cooking mushrooms. I had a mixture of creminis and fresh shiitakes that I needed to use up. Even with two clean glass votive candle holders inside, the bag still floated. Julian solved this problem by wedging a cereal bowl on top of the bag. The mushrooms were okay, but cooking in a pan would be much faster. I also cooked parsnips on New Year’s Eve. The results were a little too crunchy for Julian.
The most successful experiment was with a rib-eye steak. Julian cooked it via sous vide for an hour, then seared it in a pan. The steak was done perfectly and was quite tender. Because the temperatures are so low, most meat recipes call for searing or broiling following sous vide.
We still have more experiments ahead of us, but sous vide may be a good option for meats. Vegetables, not so much.
I am a mere mortal tea drinker. The obsessive-compulsive machinations Julian goes through to make his drug of choice are beyond my comprehension. So when the espresso machine he bought when we moved to Seattle (after the movers trashed his old one) was on its last pump, this set off a cascade of purchases.
First: A new espresso machine. He researched numerous options on the internet. The machine he had his eye on was not sold in Seattle. It was, however, sold at Clive Coffee in Portland. “Wanna go on a road trip?” he asked. “I can make it worth your while. Lunch at Pok Pok and a visit to Powell’s Books.” So we drove down I-5 to Portland the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The sales reps at Clive Coffee are as geeky as Julian is. He sampled one or two shots from different machines, although the coffee varieties used were too acidic for his taste. He got his new machine (with a couple of accessories, including a scale to measure out the exact quantity of ground coffee) and we went off to my parts of the trip.
Second: A new coffee grinder. His early experiments with the new machine convinced him that his old grinder was not up to the task. While I was back east, he bought a new grinder from a store hereabouts. He also got a new water purification pitcher that uses ion-exchange to substitute magnesium for calcium. We don’t have very hard water, so I’m not sure this confers any advantage. (As a matter of fact, his regular descaling of the old machine may have hastened its demise because our water is so soft.)
Third: A shelf to hold his expanding collection of coffee accessories. He drove down to Ikea and found a shelf that matched the trim on my bookcases. That’s freed up some space on the bar.
Fourth: A replacement scale. The one he got at Clive was malfunctioning, so he ordered a replacement. It finally came earlier this week. I suppose he’ll let me use it for small quantities of spices and the like if I’m really nice.
The Seattle area has had record rainfalls in the last week, courtesy of a climate phenomenon known here as the Pineapple Express. This weather system originates near Hawaii and barrels to the Pacific Northwest. Sometimes the rain is accompanied by high winds. This visit of the Pineapple Express was just rain, rain, and more rain. Skiers are happy, because the rain turns to snow in the Cascades.
As one can imagine, the Sammamish River behind our condo is quite swollen. The sandbar on the other side of the river is completely submerged. There have also been some mudslides here and there. On my way to church I saw a collapsed hillside. Said hillside is adjacent to a recently-built house perched precariously above the street. I daresay the owners are having second thoughts about the integrity of their home.
The big buzz in the apple world these days is the Cosmic Crisp, a variety developed by Washington State University. This is its debut season in grocery stores. It’s a daughter to the ubiquitous Honeycrisp variety.
We were shopping yesterday when we saw a display of Cosmic Crisps. Julian said, “Why don’t you try one and give me a report?” I picked up a single apple. At lunch today, I cut up the apple and gave it a try. Here’s my assessment:
Appearance: It’s a pretty apple, suitable for a fruit bowl. When I cut into it, Julian said that it looked almost brown. That may be due to the high sugar content.
Texture: It’s definitely crisp and juicy. It’s even juicier than Honeycrisps. Julian tried a small bite: “Too crisp for me.”
Taste: As I said in a previous post, I’m not a big fan of super-sweet apples. I’m more fond of old school East Coast varieties. Give me a McIntosh, Cortland, or Empire any day. Julian has an aversion to some of these varieties due to some chemical, probably the one that makes them attractive to me. His favorite apple: Red Delicious, which is my least favorite.
Enzymatic browning: It took me a while to finish the apple. The flesh didn’t get brown as fast as other varieties do.
Overall verdict: Okay if you like sweet apples. If you like apple-tasting apples, go for another variety.
One of the first cookbooks I bought in college was Joy of Cooking. Although I grew up cooking out of my mother’s 1950’s-era Betty Crocker Cookbook, Joy seemed to be a bit more cosmopolitan to this farm girl. I liked the chapter on ingredients. I also liked the conversational tone of the recipes. Even though I’ve got many more cookbooks from which to choose, Joy of Cooking is still a go-to volume in our home. When we’ve had a dispute about something, Julian will often say, “Let’s consult Irma on this.”
All my Joys.
Over the years I’ve added three more editions to the collection. I bought the “cast of thousands” edition (edited by Maria Guarnaschelli) in the late 90’s. Last month I bought the latest edition, edited by Irma Rombauer’s great-grandson, John Becker, and his wife, Megan Scott. The new edition is a keeper. Becker and Scott have added hundreds of new recipes and updated many older ones. The new recipes include gluten-free breads and items from all over the world. I daresay Irma would look askance at the inclusion of kimchi jigae (Korean kimchi soup) in the latest edition of Joy.
The edition on the left (copyright 1943) is a treasure. I picked it up at my church’s used book sale about 15 years ago for $1. It had belonged to the mother-in-law of a church member. I didn’t realize it when I picked it up, but it was AUTOGRAPHED by Irma. In addition, the original owner had notations and other recipe clippings stashed in the book. Definitely a find.
Julian’s knock against the various editions of Joy is the recipe format. Rather than having all of the ingredients listed at the start of the recipe, the ingredients are listed at the step where they’re added. My response to this: Read the *&^%$#@! recipe!
I’m always amazed at the diversity of avian life at Casa Sammamish. This afternoon I saw one of our neighborhood bald eagles on the sand bar across the river looking for lunch. Needless to say, the ducks kept their distance while said eagle was hanging out.
Friday morning we got the news that our former next door neighbor’s mother had died, two months shy of her 97th birthday. She’d been transitioned to hospice care earlier in the week. The cause of death was heart and respiratory failure. I took over half a batch of Miami onion rolls for condolence food.
Next month we will have a potluck to honor this amazing woman’s memory.
I’ve spent the last week in my hometown catching up with my family and checking in on my mother at the nursing home. My grand-niece and nephew are growing up quickly. I also have a grand-nephew-to-be who’s set to make his debut in late February. Mom’s doing well.
The downtown areas of small cities like Fulton and Oswego continue to be hollowed out, while the peripheries hold every big-box store and fast food joint imaginable. Dollar stores are also breeding like rabbits. I counted three different dollar stores on a two-mile stretch of street in Fulton. As a strike against this ugly trend, I try to frequent downtown businesses. Today I bought a couple of items at the River’s End Bookstore in Oswego. This store has a lot of titles I wouldn’t expect to see in upstate New York. I got several ideas for children’s books to order for the church bookstore. I also had lunch twice at Canale’s Italian restaurant. (Sometimes you just have to feed your red sauce need.)
The same plague of dollar stores was evident on the way to the Rochester airport today. I lost count of the number I saw on route 104. Downtown Rochester is also hollowed out, courtesy of Kodak’s successive cutbacks over the years. At least the universities and medical center seem to be thriving.
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