Sorry I have not been blogging, but it is the summer holidays and the kids have been hanging out at Dads. We have been eating well:
pizza,
smoked chicken breast,
sweet and sour pork (tarted up of course) ,
and spag boll with bread sticks.

My daughter asked me the other day what my favourite sandwich was when we were eating lunch, and I said a Rueben (and then had to explain what it was). I asked her the same question in return and she said hers was pulled pork on a bun with apple sauce. I was at Costco today and so I bought a shoulder of pork to make her a pulled pork sandwich.

I removed the bag and the corset and washed the pork in the sink and patted it dry with paper towels. I cleaned it up a bit removing any fat I could find. I then rubbed sea salt and cracked pepper into it. In another bowl I mixed a tablespoon each of cumin, smoked paprika and coriander and then rubbed that onto the shoulder. Into a Sous Vide bag and then added a tablespoon each of liquid smoke and mushroom ketchup.

To seal the bag and remove the air I hung the bag over the edge of the counter and put the open end of the bag into the Vacuum Sealer. This is a trick I learned. If you have liquid in the bag it will not get sucked into the vacuum if it is hanging over the edge of the counter, the other trick is to freeze the liquids first.

I cranked up the SousVide Supreme to 135F and sat the pork shoulder in the bath.

How was it you may ask? Well I have to write again tomorrow as it cooks for 24 hours.

Left over Best Ever Lamb? Smash it up with mint jelly, mayo and fresh shredded lettuce, that’s what!

OK, first thing is you need to know in advance that you are going to have left over lamb. The reason is that you have to make the mint jelly.

Aside: Since I know this is a multi-national blog please note:

Jelly = Gelatine = Jell-O

Normally, I would buy mint jelly from a store but on my excursions to 4 different stores on the weekend I did not find 1 brand that did not have vinegar as one of the ingredients. Vinegar in jelly is just sick! Vinegar is for those losers who like mint sauce, not mint jelly. So on the weekend I made my own mint jelly and it is really nice.

First you need some fresh mint

And some lemon jelly

And that is it. You need to smash up the mint so my device of choice is a food processor

Make up the jelly with boiling water and then add the mint and stir. Then put into a sterilized spaghetti sauce bottle cause your too cheap to buy a new jar. Then watch all the mint float to the surface and say, now what! I gave the jar a shake and put into the fridge to set. Then I set an alarm for 20 minutes and went back and shook it again, rinse repeat about 5 times then you have some mint jelly with evenly dispersed mint.

Why mint jelly you may ask?
Well the slight sweetness of the jelly makes the final dish quite pleasant. Also the jelly kind of attacks the mint and makes it soft and subtle so it is not an “eating grass” texture. The reason lemon works in the jelly is that it is the citrus and peel used in the marinade of the original dish.

What is the reference to “smashing” all about?
I have mint jelly and I have mayonnaise and they need to be combined. Therefore a fork and some smashing needs to be done to combine them.

Basic ingredients are wet and dry. Kind of like making muffins you combine the wet ingredients and then combine the dry ones. Then you add the dry to the wet. So here is the dry.

Shred the lettuce and cut the lamb into small cubes.

Now you need to combine the wet ingredients, so about equal parts of mayo to mint jelly and then smash them together with a fork.

Combine the dry and wet ingredients.

Just to wrap up…

I convinced Ex-Boss that if he wanted to BBQ with the Big Dogs he needed a Weber Gas BBQ which is the Rolls Royce of machines for cooking al fresco.

Then he needed a fool proof recipe to wow his BBQ guests and make them go yuuuummmm at his prowess in the cooking arena. I had just the recipe for him, as it was fool proof (sorry Ex-Boss):

Best Ever Lamb

In the UK, Costco does a boneless leg of lamb in a bag.

I adapted a recipe from one of Rick Steins books, Rick Stein’s Food Heroes to make it a bit easier.

First we need to prepare the meat and marinate it the day before, so open the bag and give it a wash. Then we need to remove the corset.

Find the holes where they removed the bone and insert your knife to make it a butterfly of lamb.

If there are any thick sections of meat then give them a cut halfway through to make sure all the lamb is the same thickness so it cooks evenly.

Now it is time to make the marinade.

2 tsp of Cheats Garlic
2 tbsp of Sweet Chilli Sauce
Go to the garden and grab herbs (rosemary, thyme, chives, marjoram, parsley etc.) until you have 3 tbsp after being chopped finely.
1 bay leaf cut into shreds with a scissors
3 strips of lemon zest (not the white bit under the skin)
Juice of ½ a lemon
1 teaspoon of Smoked Malden Sea salt
1 teaspoon of cracked pepper corns
6 tbsp of olive oil

Then give it all a good stir with a fork.

Place the lamb into the marinade and use your hands to rub the marinade into the lamb. Turn the lamb over and scoop the marinade up from the pan and continue to press into the meat. Cover with cling film and into the fridge for an over night to bathe in the spicy loveliness.

If you have a chance the next day before cooking, give the meat a turn and good rub. I am sure there is a joke here but I will pass as it is before 9:00.

About 2 hours before you are ready to eat, take the lamb out of the fridge to get to room temperature. An hour before you are ready to eat put the BBQ on to medium heat. Put the lamb onto the grates and then dump the rest of the marinade on the top. Watch out for flair ups but make sure you big it up for your guests as they will be amazed at your cooking skill.

Cook the lamb at most for 50 minutes, but you can get away with 40-45 if you like it a bit rare. Every ten minutes you need to turn the lamb over and move it to a different area of the BBQ.

Lamb is quite fatty and prone to ignition and fire, charcoal not food if you leave it one spot for too long. A little colour is one thing, but this recipe can go up in flames. I remember the first time I cooked this, looking out the window saying to myself, that is a lot of smoke…. oh no fire!!!!

Oh wow was this good and made me and the kids go yuuuummmm, but there are leftovers and they are almost as good, and I will post that soon….

Brine is used as preparation method for BBQ chicken. From Volume 3 of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

“The goal of brining is to apply enough salt to meat or seafood that the food retains more juices during cooking and that the flavor is enhanced without curing the flesh in the process. Thus, the challenge of brining is to disperse dissolved salt evenly throughout a piece of food, while preventing the salinity from becoming too high.”

Jamie Purviance, author of Weber’s Time to Grill: Easy or Adventurous, It’s Your Call (review) sent out one of his recipes in his weekly email which was Rosemary-Brined Rotisserie Chicken. I decided to try this yesterday since the weather was so nice in England, and I like chicken. So I popped into the local Sainsbury’s and bought a Taste the Difference Woodland Trust Free Range chicken. If you are going to spend lots of time making something nice then start with great ingredients.

OK I have the chicken. I have the brine ingredients but the recipe says the chicken goes into the brine mixture and then into your refrigerator. My guess is that Jamie has an American fridge the size of my entire kitchen; he does not have an issue. Hmmm I have two problems. I don’t have a pot big enough for the chicken and the brine and if I did it would not fit into my fridge unless I took all the shelves out and food. But I do have a beer cooler that fits a 12 pack and some ice so badah bing we are ready to brine that puppy. I mixed the brine in the cooler, but changed the recipe a bit to include ½ smoked sea salt and ½ regular.

I thought I should taste the brine to see what it was like – BIG BIG mistake, yuck.

And placed the chicken into the brine

I put about ¼ bag of ice into the brine and on with the lid for 6 hours.

After the brine was completed I removed the chicken and patted down with paper towels. Do not wash the chicken because you will rinse the brine out of the skin and meat, which you just spent 6 hours infusing. I then followed Weber’s Time to Grill: Easy or Adventurous, It’s Your Call in the section “Prep School” that shows how to truss a chicken for the rotisserie. If you do not truss the chicken then two things happen. The legs and arms hang off of the chicken and as they get cooked they fall even further away from the body. They then get too close to the heat and burn before the body is cooked. Also since they hang off of the body they cause the rotation to be slow then fast as they are raised and lowered which also causes uneven cooking.

Jamie Purviance says to cook the chicken on the rotisserie in the BBQ with the lid closed over medium heat. The Modernist Cuisine says that is not roasting but instead baking. Spit-roasting also called rotisserie of a chicken is an essential feature of the cooking. The food goes from hot when the food faces the fire or heat, and slowly rotates away from the heat into the cool which is the secret to a great roast.

“These two competing processes balance out such that the average heat below the surface of the roast is only a fraction of the peak heat at the surface. If everything is judged just right, the interior of a roast ends up, over a dizzying number of rotations, gently cooked to a shallow gradient of doneness from just below the surface all the way to the center, while the surface itself gets cooked to a crisp, deep-brown finish.”

I have been wanting to try open lid cooking since I read that section, so here is the start of the process at 5:30 ( I wanted to eat at 7:00).

I just put the front burner on medium to get the hot cold thing going. After about 45 minutes it was supposed to be half done, not even close. I cut the stick in half. After another 45 minutes it was supposed to be done, nope. I cut another 2 inches off the stick and turned on the back burner too. Now I was really hungry and it still was about an hour away. Cranked up both burners to high and started to get sound of fat hitting the flavour bars, now we are cooking with gas. Another hour and it was finally done.

Waiting the 15 minutes for it to rest was agony, the smell was great and it looked so good. I took a pair of scissors and cut in half.

I grabbed some paper towels and sat down and trough’d the lot. It was great and so juicy I had to stop half way through and re-towel. Nothing left but bones, this made me go yuuuummmm!

Lessons learned:
– When the chicken comes out of the brine it is very cold, allow an hour to come to room temperature, before BBQ.

– The height that the BBQ lid should be open is about 8 inches not two feet.

– Preheat the BBQ with both burners on high and then leave it that way.

– Try putting some smoked paprika on the skin before roasting.

After eating deep fried pizza yesterday (post tomorrow), I decided a salad would be a good idea for tea tonight. My favourite salad is a Chef Salad with cheese, ham and eggs, oh ok, maybe not that healthy after you cover it with Salad Cream.

I decided to “try” and cook the eggs

Sous Vide.

When I was waiting for my Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking books I purchase a Sous Vide, but did not know how to really use it. So I downloaded an online recipe book Beginning Sous Vide which is really very good. I have done a crazy Scrambled Egg Recipe but tonight we I wanted soft boiled. I opened the Beginning Sous Vide and it said the “perfect” egg was 148F for 60 minutes. So I fired up the Sous Vide and set the temperature to 148F

I did not have to vac pack the eggs as they are already done. So I gingerly put them in the bottom of the Sous Vide and sat back for an hour.

I then cut up some lettuce, cheese and ham to go with the eggs (classic Chef Salad).

OK this is getting quite weird. After an hour I took one of the eggs out of the bath and tapped it with a back of a knife, but it was still wet. Hmmm, back to the Beginning Sous Vide book and came across a recipe that said.

“Take the eggs out of the water bath using a slotted spoon or tongs. One at a time, gently crack the eggs on the counter and remove the top ¼ to ½ of the shell. At that point you should be able to turn the shell upside down and the egg should slide out. Add 1 sous vide egg to the top of each salad. Drizzle some olive oil on each salad, grind some pepper”

Huh “slide out” what is that all about!!! I dumped the egg onto a plate and it was quite wet but it stayed together. So I put some sea salt on it and ate it with a spoon. It was really quite good, but not what I wanted on a salad. So I cranked up the temperature to 151F and let them cook for another 10 minutes. Trial and error when you are hungry is not really a good idea.

This is a bit too weird. The egg whites are like mayonnaise but the yolks are cooked. So the second egg is put on the salad, which has been cooked for 80 minutes at 151F. And here it is plated up and ready to eat.

I decided to try another couple of degrees so up to 153F for another 10 minutes.

And the only thing that was cooked further was the yolk.

So there is no way to cook hard boiled eggs in a Sous Vide. The whites always turn out like mayo and the yolks go from liquid to solid. I thought is was nice but not for a salad, but on toast with beans and bacon it would be really good.