Asian Fusion

Asian food. We all get it. Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Korean, Mongolian... But what about those other Asian countries? You know which ones I mean. I'm talking about Russia, Iraq, Egypt, and Kazakhstan. Why don't we order Egyptian cuisine on Christmas? Today really got me thinking about those cuisines which we don't honor when we talk about Asian cuisine. Poor guys.

You may be thinking that this post will honor the lesser known Asian cuisines. Wrong. We're gonna keep it traditional up in here. Maybe we'll talk about Borscht another time.

This morning we started with pot stickers. For those of you who don't know, but I know a few of you do (because we've made them together), pot stickers are Chinese dumplings. How did they come about, you ask?

Chinese dumplings are called guotie. Originally, the dumplings were boiled in a wok, the standard Chinese cooking pot. Legend has it that a Chinese chef boiled the dumplings but forgot about them while he was cleaning up, and when he returned to the wok, the water had boiled out and the dumplings were stuck to the wok. The result? Crispy, tender, delicious dumplings. And so, guoties were born. Guo, Chinese for Wok, and tie, for stuck.

We actually started our pot stickers by browning them first and then we moved to steaming. When I've made pot stickers in the past, I've used a skillet or a soup pot instead of a wok, simply because I don't have one at home (hint hint). A wok has a small bottom and wide sides, so you can only fry a few pot stickers at a time in there. In a skillet, your surface area is much bigger, so you can fry many at a time.

After we made the dough and the filling (ground chicken thighs, scallions, ginger, and spices), we made the dumplings, pinched the sides and started frying.

After the color developed and a few minutes passed, I threw in (a little too much) water. Chef says to put in about a cup, I probably did more and I think you probably need less than a cup. Maybe 3/4 cup. But who knows? Then I quickly covered it and let it steam for about 5 more minutes.

We served them with a mild dipping sauce and ate pot stickers at like 10:30 am. Pura vida.

Then we moved on to General Tso's chicken with fried rice. We marinated dark meat chicken tenders and then coated them in corn starch and deep fried them. We got some high temperature oil in a wok (hot wok, cold oil) and threw in some whole chili peppers. It was very cool actually, since the peppers weren't cut, they didn't give off an intense heat, but they flavored the oil just slightly to give the whole dish a little bit of a kick. We got the deeply fried chicken into more oil, because never too much oil, apparently. Poured some sauce in, added ginger and garlic, and finished it off with some scallions and bean sprouts.

The sauce had a great balance of sweet and salty. We even added some more soy sauce and sugar to intensify those flavors and the result was deliciousness.

Last dish of the day was Szechuan Beef with Lo Mein noodles. Szechuan is uber spicy. We took very tender meat, a surprise steak, and marinated that in dark soy sauce. I'd never worked with dark soy sauce before, it's thicker than regular soy sauce and tastes more like La Choy rather than Kikoman. We added chili oil, chili paste, garlic, ginger, and other spicy things so that it could live up to its name. We browned the meat first and set it aside, and then added sticks of carrot, celery, red and green pepper, put some spicy sauce on it, and added the beef back into the pan.

Tip of the day: When working with fried food, specifically deep fried, always have a wire rack on a sheet pan next to the stove. Take the fried food out with a skimmer or slotted spoon and put it on the wire rack so that any excess oil drips off. Paper towels are a popular choice when frying shnitzel and latkes, but if you want your food to stay crispy, put it on a wire rack. Even if you place on serving the food immediately after frying, do the rack thing for a minute or two and then serve. 

Try not to crack up from this post..

Let's face it. All egg puns are, to put it delicately, not too eggcelent. So, let's lay off of them, shall we?

But we should definitely talk about eggs.

Eggs serve many different purposes in cooking. They can be used as an egg wash for pastries, they help with rising, they help coagulate, they make souffles puff up, and they serve as insulation (like egging a cutlet before frying it).

There are tons of ways to eat an egg:

• Poached
• Fried
• Sunny side up
• Over easy, medium, hard
• Scrambled
• Frittata 
• Omelette 

On egg day, Chef told us to make a simple sunny side up egg. That's when you crack the egg straight into a hot pan with oil without breaking the yolk, then getting the yolk on the plate without a spatula. We did a few, then he made us do it with two eggs, then he showed us eggs over easy. Eggs over easy is two eggs sunny side up, and then flipped over in the pan without the yolks being broken.

Next we turn to Eggs Benedict. It's something that I'm not familiar with since it's typically not served in kosher restaurants. Served on an English muffin, Eggs Benedict is complete with fried bacon (or kosher beef fry), a poached egg, and a hollandaise sauce. Everything needs to be times perfectly so that everything gets on the plate hot. 

I guess this class was the breakfast class, and no breakfast is complete without pancakes and french toast. 

And of course we finished it up with a delicious apple-cinnamon filled crepe. 

So, all items we made here contained eggs. I guess you wouldn't think that french toast is an "egg" dish, but I guess this just turned into breakfast all day long. All. Day. Long. 

Tip of the day: It's very important to use fresh eggs. And yes, there are ways to check to make sure eggs are fresh. 

-The float test: If an egg sinks in water, it's fresh. It means that the yolk takes up most of the space in the egg. When eggs aren't fresh, air gets in through the pores of the shell, and the air in the shell will make the egg float in water. 

-The spread test: When you crack a fresh egg, it'll stay close together and the yolk will be very high. Older eggs spread out a lot once cracked. 

What do you do with older eggs? Hard boil them. Eggs are actually easier to peel if they're older. 

Outside the Work

Hors D'oeuvres. We all know how it's pronounced, but none of us really know why. Do we even know what it actually means?

Back in the day, when a waiter wanted to impress a table (presumably to get a bigger tip), after a table would order, he would bring them an appetizer on the house. Usually, this appetizer was created by the waiter himself. He would slip to the back of the kitchen, sneak around and find odds and ends that weren't being used for dinner service. He'd quickly put something together and bring it to his table to impress his customers. This dish was made "outside of the kitchen," and so the dish became called "Hors D'oeuvres" which means "outside of work" in French.

Hors D'oeuvres are usually one biters. When you're a a cocktail party and you're meeting new people, you usually have a drink in one hand and an hors d'oeuvre in the other, and when someone comes to shake your hand, you need to act fast. So, you pop the food in your mouth, and viola! A free hand! Simple as that.

We know hors d'oeuvres as mini hot dogs and little potato knishes. On Wednesday, we took it a little further. We also learned something about canapes, which have a base of a bread, cracker, or chip. Canapes consist of a base, a spread, a body (protein), and a garnish.

My lovely cousin, Aliza, came to cook with us on Wednesday. It was such a great day for her to join and we had so much fun! We started on blinis with sour cream, smoked salmon, and garnishes. Aliza tasted the first one and immediately suggested that we add some heat. So, instead of chives, we added jalepeno to half of our blinis.

The blinis were made from a buckwheat flour mixture. It's very similar to a pancake mixture and the blinis are made similarly, too.

She's a natural!

We also worked on these (fake) crab meat wontons with an apricot dipping sauce. It wasn't anything I would have thought to put together in the mix, but they turned out to be delicious! We used the fake crab meat, mixed it with cream cheese, and added scallions, sesame oil, worcestershire sauce, garlic, salt, and pepper. We wrapped them in wonton wrappers (so time consuming when you wrap a hundred of them!) and then deep fried them. Meanwhile, the we made the apricot dipping sauce with apricot preserves, ginger, dry mustard, and red wine vinegar.

After everyone was done with their dishes, we made a banquet table filled with hors d'oeuvres.

And how great does Aliza look in (my) chef's coat?!

Tip of the day: When making small pancakes, or blinis, heat up the griddle and spray it with nonstick spray. Use a squeeze bottle as a way to keep the mess to a minimum, instead of dripping batter everywhere with a ladle. 

Just Beet it

This Monday was "Garde Manger" day. The Garde Manger in the kitchen is also known as The Pantry Chef, in charge of cold foods, elaborate buffets, salads and dressings, desserts, snacks, and most importantly, ice carvings.

We worked on preservation. A few techniques or tools in the kitchen can help with preservation, such as salting, jarring, curing, and pickling.

And beets. It was all about beets. Right beets are so good?

Pickling and preserving the beets is a tedious process, but I'm sure you know that I think it's worth it. First, we boiled the beets to soften them and make them easier to peel. We added vinegar, water, sugar, and salt to a pot with the beets and a bunch of onions, and got the mixture hot. Meanwhile, we had to sterilize the jars by floating them and the covers in boiling water, removing (carefully) with tongs and set them up on a wire rack over a sheet pan. We filled up hot jars with hot (delicious) beets, and then we had to process them. The time it takes to process the jars depends on the type of food and the altitude level. We placed the open jars of beets in a pot of boiling water and covered them for 30 minutes. Then we put the covers on but didn't screw them on tightly until the cap acted like a vacuum to seal it itself.

Finally, once we felt the cap get suctioned down, we were able to screw on the lid tightly. These jars can stay on your shelf for 10 years! It's amazing. And delicious. Did you know that I like beets?

Tip of the day: When working with vegetables which are difficult to peel with a peeler (like beets or potatoes) boil them first and the skin will just pop right off and make your life much easier. Also, when you work with beets, wear gloves. You'll thank me later. 

The veal deal

I always knew that there are a lot of people out there who don't eat veal, but I never really understood why. Just because it's a baby animal? But people eat pargiyot... so I never really understood what the difference was. Until today.

Just a disclaimer: I am pushing no political agenda here, nor do I think that my teeny little blog is powerful enough to change anyone's mind. The following information is just that: information.

The thing about veal is that it is a vender tender meat. It's tender because it comes from a very young animal. Most of the time no older than a year old. Young animals do very little exercise, so they build very little muscle, so their meat is tender. In the past, they've kept the animals in very small pens so they didn't have any room to move around and exercise. There were even animals that had their feet nailed to the ground so they couldn't move. The animals raised for veal are also only fed milk. Once they eat grass, they get more iron and their meat turns red. So, they keep them on a dairy diet. The animals are also raised in the dark so they become anemic. When they're anemic, their meat stays light, which is how people like their veal to be. Lastly, because the animals aren't getting any exercise and they're living in the dark, the animals can become very sick, so they have antibiotics fed to them right in their food. All in all, it doesn't seem like a great life for these animals. All for a tender piece of veal?

Again, I eat veal. I don't eat it regularly, mostly because of availability. So, this paragraph above is not meant to push any political or moral agenda. I honestly had no idea what the big deal was with veal. Now I get it.

I don't often work with meat at home when I cook for shabbos, so the idea of a stuffed veal chop, or a veal pocket, wasn't the first thing on my mind. But I'm glad it was on someone else's mind, because, boy was it good!

First, I got the stuffing ready. Sauteed garlic and arugula until it reduced, then I put it in the fridge to chill. I sliced a pocket in the veal chop (oh, so that's why it's called a veal pocket), and stuffed it with the cold arugula-garlic mixture. I dredged it in seasoned flour, seared it on a really hot pan, and popped it in the oven for a few minutes. Meanwhile, I made a Sauce Robert (the French way to say Robert), which is a shallot and white wine reduction with dijon mustard and demi. I have to say, if chef would have told me to throw together a sauce like that in the first week, giving me no amounts of any of the ingredients, I would've flipped out. But I think I did a pretty good job on the dish.

  To continue on our path in tenderizing meat by combination cooking (I mean, what else would we be doing?), we also made a Veal Fricassee. We started a dry cook by browning the meat a little, and then simmered it in a white wine sauce for about an hour so it really got tender. A Fricassee is very similar to a stew, it may actually be a stew, so you'd want to serve it over a rice or a mashed potato to be able to get all of the gravy.

Tip of the day: If you're interested in finding kosher certified meats and poultry which are antibiotic and hormone free and pasture raised, check out Grow and Behold. They deliver nationwide and provide you with healthy, safe food. Check it out!

How do you do under pressure?

Sous vide beef is a technique that isn't really used at home unless you have a temperature controlled bath. Sous vide actually means "under pressure," where the meat (or any protein) is vacuum sealed and placed in a water bath at the exact temperature you'd like the beef to be cooked. The magic of the bath is that it's impossible to overcook the meat you put in it.

You can add any spices you'd like to the bag before you seal it, and it definitely needs some oil. We added cracked peppercorns and crushed garlic and some thyme to our bag and placed it in the bath at 131 degrees. This temperature produces a medium-rare meat which is what we wanted before we grilled/seared/broiled it to add some color at the end.

So first we started with getting our beef in the water bath, because it could stay in there as long as we'd need.

While the beef was cooking, things got real hectic. Probably the most hectic for me in the kitchen. Chef told us that by the end of the day we needed to present a full plate, meaning: protein, carb, and a vegetable. The protein, obvious. Except, we needed to serve it with a sauce. Chef asked me to make a Bordelaise sauce for the entire class to use. No problem. Shira, first, strain all the mother sauces that are on the fire, then get your mise en place ready for the Bordelaise, and then fight everyone else who is working on the stove to get a burner to make the sauce for everyone. No sweat.

Also, chef had us working on this Pommes Maxim dish which is potatoes sliced to 1/16 of an inch thick, cut in perfect circles, dredged in cornstarch, and formed this circular thing that we'll pan fry and then use some mashed potatoes to help stand it up on the plate.

Also... I TOTALLY fluted a mushroom! A few mushrooms, actually. Were they perfect? No. Give me a break. I'll get there.

Things finally came together: the beef, the sauce, the potatoes and the vegetables. It was the most stressed I've been, probably my least favorite day because of the stress. But, I got to sous vide some meat and it tasted great.

Tip of the day: When cooking meat, you can use a meat thermometer to see how "done" your meat is. If you like your meat very rare, you want a temperature of about 120-125 degrees. That's about 12-15 minutes of cooking time per pound of meat. If you like rare meat, 125-130 degrees, 15-18 minutes per pound. A medium cook is 135-140 degrees, 18-20 minutes per pound of meat that you're cooking. 

A beef

You know how people say "they have a beef," instead of saying, "they're fighting," or something like that? I hate when people say "a" before it. I feel like it's, "they have beef with each other." Am I wrong? I'm not wrong. They have beef. That's what it is. Okay. Let's have some beef.

Beef gets a full 3 days this summer. So, we're up to day 2. If you ask some of my friends, they'll tell you that day 2 of beef was The. Best. Day. Ever.

I left you off last post with the shredded beef. After I shredded it, I let it cool, covered it, and put it in the fridge. First thing the next morning, I popped it right back in the oven to continue to melt for another two hours. When I took the beef out, I toasted some slider buns, put on some bread and butter pickles and made the cutest, most delicious pulled beef sliders. Yum.

Right?

What else to pair better with sliders than a good, dark beer? I personally dislike the dark beers (and many others), but it was fun to use it while I cooked. I used it while I cooked, I didn't drink it while I cooked. Relax, Dad.

To start a Carbonnade De Boeuf Flamande (bless you), you start by seasoning swiss steaks with salt and pepper. Careful not to put too much salt on kosher meat since salting the meat is part of the kashering process. I dredged the steaks in some seasoned flour and seared them in a hot pan to get some color. Once they were at the desired color, I removed them from the pan and added the sliced onions. Once the onions were covered in the fond from the steaks, I added brown sugar to start caramelizing the onions. This trick came in handy (adding the sugar immediately as opposed to adding them with the rest of the ingredients) and it made the onions so much sweeter in the finished product. I added the steaks back into the pan, poured in the beer, bay leaf, and veal stock. Once that came to a boil, I covered it and put it in the oven for about 45 minutes. Dry cook + wet cook = combination cooking to tenderize the meat.

I added some green beans and almonds to the plate to add some color. We also fried some leeks to put on top and boy, were they delicious! 

This is one of my favorite dishes that we've made so far. Definitely in my top 3 of the summer so far. Now I'm craving it. Great. 

Tip of the day: After searing meat in a pan, you have something called "fond" at the bottom. This is all the fat and delicious crispy pieces that are left over once the meat has been taken out. Don't. Throw. This. Out. It's the best part! Add it to the dish. In this dish, we used it to start sweating the onions. It's built-in flavor.